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Presentation for a new edition of _Melmoth_

Manuscript

Author

Author André Breton
People cited Honoré de Balzac, Edith Birkhead, Pierre-Georges Castex, Cazotte, François-René de Chateaubriand, Samuel-Taylor Coleridge, Xavier Forneret, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Paul Hazard, Herbert Hoffmann, Kean, Alice M. Killen, Henriette Kingsbury, Isidore Ducasse, dit comte de Lautréamont, Macready, Christopher Marlowe, Charles-Robert Maturin, Charles Nodier, Anne Radcliffe, Friedrich Schiller, Walter Scott, Spiess, Mme de Staël, Henri Beyle, dit Stendhal, Eugène Sue, Jonathan Swift, de Sévigné, Johann Ludwig Tieck, Horace Walpole, Zschokke, Valentine Hugo, Franz Kafka

Description

File of reading notes and first draft manuscripts for the preface to the 1954 edition of Melmoth ou l'Homme errant [Melmoth the Wanderer) published by Jean-Jacques Pauvert.

This file contains notes taken by Breton from various authors, including the critic Georges Castex, in preparation for his preface to a new edition of Melmoth ou l'homme errant by the Reverend Charles Robert Maturin; the drafts of this preface also appear in the file. Breton’s interest in the gothic novel, and that of the Surrealists in general (one can recall Artaud re-reading Lewis's The Monk), contributed to the revival of this forgotten area of Western literature, a knowledge of which is indispensable to understanding Romanticism. In the case of Maturin, Breton is not the initiator of this rediscovery, but he supports it with all his energy, as he had done years before for the Tales of Achim von Arnim.

Autograph manuscripts

- 1 1/2 page in-4° handwritten in ink by Breton of his preface for a new edition of Melmoth ou l'Homme errantby Charles Robert Maturin. Numerous erasures and corrections.

- 4 pages in-4° handwritten in ink and pencil by Breton, with erasures and corrections, of notes relating to his reading of Melmoth ou l'Homme errant.

- 3 in-12 pages, handwritten in ink by Breton, of notes taken from La Revue encyclopédique (June 1921) concerning Goethe's Faust and Maturin.

"The present republication of Melmoth ou l'Homme errant fills one of the most considerable gaps in this information, which is necessary not only for the elucidation of the problem of sources - we have rarely seen such fruitful ones spring up - but also for fixing a truly crucial point in the history of ideas."