Revolution of the Mind: The Life of Andre Breton - Hardcover

Polizzotti, Mark

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374249822 ISBN 13: 9780374249823

Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1995

Synopsis

A portrait of an influential figure in modern culture traces his participation in the Paris Dada group in the 1920s, his seminal experiments with automatic writing, his role in the development of Surrealism, and his encounters with Duchamp, Freud, and Sartre.

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Reviews

In this, the first biography in English of the iconoclastic poet and founder of Surrealism, first-time author Polizzotti offers both an expertly researched life and an informed history of one of the defining cultural movements of this century. Beginning with a narrative of his subject's working-class youth in northern France, Polizzotti goes on to relate the concatenation of events and influences (most notably World War I and the literary supernovas Alfred Jarry and Guillaume Apollinaire) that conspired to shape Breton's uniquely opinionated personality. A cynical atheist, the poet, critic, and artist harbored an irrepressible streak of romanticism. Breton and his band of followers reached their pinnacle of genius and relevance in the late 1920s and early 1930s, after which the movement was beset by defections and excommunications?many largely in reaction to its founder's despotic leadership. The worldwide upheaval caused by World War II rendered the surrealist's efforts sterile and effete, and, to many onlookers, the war only proved how ineffectual these agents provocateurs had been all along. The artistic vanguard rapidly shifted from Paris to New York, and Breton's heyday had passed. Yet his influence had for a short time been truly revolutionary, and this very well written account can be highly recommended for all larger libraries. [For an in-depth look at the surrealists in the 1930s and 1940s, see Martica Sawin's Surrealism in Exileand the Beginning of the New York School, p. 73.?Ed.]?Douglas F. Smith, Oakland P.L., Cal.
-?Douglas F. Smith, Oakland P.L., Cal.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Polizzotti, editorial director at David R. Godine Publishers, weighs in with a monumental first book that also happens to be the first comprehensive biography of Breton, the father of surrealism. Breton is quite a subject. Always in the thick of things literary, artistic, and political, his life story reads like a who's who of the early-twentieth-century avant-garde. Polizzotti skillfully covers all of Breton's influential critical, polemical, and creative activities, providing brisk but telling profiles of his friends, colleagues, and loved ones. He also conveys the full extent of the turbulence that dominated Breton's complex personality. A magnetic man given to "violent enthusiasms" and mood swings, Breton possessed a prodigious memory and was fascinated by everything from anarchism to Communism, psychic automatism, Dada, dreams, coincidence, and the "marvelous," or unexplainable. Polizzotti tracks Breton's experiences in World War I and the establishment of his most important relationships, then follows the rise, triumph, and decline of Breton's circle, the infamous, world-altering surrealists. Breton emerges from this vividly detailed and invaluable tome as a brilliant if ambivalent catalyst, a leader in the mercurial realm of modern art. Donna Seaman

Edition details

• Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0374249822
• ISBN 13: 9780374249823
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 754