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Butterfly dream

Manuscript

Author

Author André Breton
People cited Elisa Claro Breton, Charles Ratton, Valentine Hugo

Description

Handwritten manuscript by André Breton illustrated with a drawing, undated. 

Dreams... the oldest dates from 1931, the most recent from the post-war period; in them we see the appearance of figures Breton knew well from various periods, such as his parents, René Char in the first one, or Robert Denoël in the third... Les Vases communicants repeats part of the text from April 1931 and ‘Trajectoire du rêve’ quotes two from 1938, but unlike the dream accounts published sporadically by Breton or collected in the unpublished material in his Complete Works, these are texts written for his own use, with no concern for literary matters. Moreover, they are clearly very intimate in nature and some include drawings, both these aspects giving them an ‘extraliterary’ character, even if one should take care in use this term in the context of the surrealists. Whatever the case, we can note that they really don’t suit being put into literary form, other than through extensive reworking that would thus change their nature. [Atelier André Breton website, 2005]

Handwritten manuscript, undated.
- 1 in-4° page, written on a printed enquiry: ‘Should one die young?’ Signed handwritten dream titled ‘Butterfly Dream’, dedicated to Elisa and illustrated with a small original drawing by André Breton:
‘Not without the great regret of not knowing what the card expressing the sentiment of accomplishing an act of great heroic grandeur, of devotion to woman, might mean, I open my hands, and the butterfly flies away with the card while uttering a kind of cry of joy, rather like a bird.’ [Auction catalogue, 2003]

Translated by Krzysztof Fijalkowski