Break of Day

André Breton author Mary Ann Caws translator Mark Polizzotti translator

Format:Paperback

Publisher:University of Nebraska Press

Published:1st Dec '08

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Break of Day cover

A collection of Breton's critical and polemical essays, presenting Surrealism's trials and mutations

A collection of critical and polemical essays. It features such essays as: "Refusal to Inter", "Legitimate Defense", "Surrealism and the Treatment of Mental Illness", "Introduction to the Strange Tales of Achim von Arnim", and "Picasso in His Element".Originally published in France in 1934, Break of Day is André Breton’s second collection of critical and polemical essays, following The Lost Steps (Nebraska 1996). In fewer than two hundred pages, it captures the first full decade of the surrealist movement. The collection opens with an essay composed in 1924 that examines key elements of surrealism and concludes with Breton’s harsh revaluation in 1933 of automatic writing. Among the other essays in the volume are “Burial Denied” and “In Self-Defense,” two pieces that, in translator Mark Polizzotti’s words, “mark surrealism’s conscious break from the mainstream and the beginning of its attempts to work alongside the French Communist Party.” Also included are “Psychiatry Standing before Surrealism,” which addresses Breton’s complex, ambivalent views on mental illness and the emerging psychiatric establishment; “Introduction to Achim von Arnim's Strange Tales,” which reveals surrealism’s debt to such precursors as the German romantics and delineates a surrealistic aesthetic of the macabre; and “Picasso in His Element,” in which Breton demonstrates his formidable talents as a critic of the visual arts.

ISBN: 9780803220843

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 193g

148 pages