The Collection

Home Page > Works > The diamond cutting workshop near Versailles that opens its shutters...

    The diamond cutting workshop near Versailles that opens its shutters...

    Manuscript

    Author

    Author André Breton
    Person cited Suzanne Muzard, ép. Cordonnier

    Description

    Manuscript text written in August 1928 by André Breton, whilst staying with Suzanne Muzard in Moret-sur-Loing.

    These are manuscripts written at the end of August 1928, during a stay at Moret-sur-Loing with Suzanne Muzard. She had just asked André Breton to obtain a divorce, which he would request from Simone that autumn, and in that turbulent atmosphere the decision was taken at the end of October. On 1 December, Suzanne married Emmanuel Berl. This was a both mournful and complicated period, as witnessed by the tone of the poems (‘The ship had made no progress in a century’, and the tears welling up in one place or another). (1 to 35). [Atelier André Breton website, 2005]

     

    Handwritten manuscript, 29-30 August 1928.
    - ‘The diamond cutting workshop’, handwritten notebook by André Breton, Moret, 29 August 1928. These automatic writing texts date from Breton’s stay at Moret-sur-Loing with Suzanne Muzard, the inspiration for his poem ‘l'Union libre’, at the end of August 1928.
    ‘Suzanne I see immense portraits

    Because of a tress of hair that’s ten times too long 

    I see the mirror breaking beneath the soldiers 

    All is silent like the ark’s golden age 

    Imagination is a flower bed of broken lances 

    In imagination I find nothing but the heart’s grace

    I see the Templars in their immemorial habits 

    In my dream they are scattered and distant 

    What I adore what nothing would induce me to burn 

    Suzanne you who are the very form of fire.’

    - 1 handwritten text of half an in-8° page by Breton is also included. [Auction catalogue, 2003]

     

    Translated by Krzysztof Fijalkowski

    Bibliography

    André Breton (Édition de Marguerite Bonnet avec la collaboration de Philippe Bernier, Étienne-Alain Hubert et José Pierre), Inédits III, Œuvres complètes, tome I, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Paris, Gallimard, 1988, pages 1043 à 1049.

     

    Creation date29-08-1928
    Bibliographical material

    In-8° school notebook with 9 handwritten pages in ink with deletions and corrections.

    André Breton, Inédits III, Œuvres complètes, volume I (edited by Marguerite Bonnet with contributions from Philippe Bernier, Étienne-Alain Hubert and José Pierre), Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Paris, Gallimard, 1988, pp. 1043-49.

    LanguagesFrench
    Physical descriptioncahier ms [5 R°, 4V°]
    Library

    Bibliothèque littéraire Jacques Doucet, Paris : BRT 57

    Reference1855000
    Breton Auction, 2003Lot 2141
    Keywords, , ,
    CategoriesAndre Breton's Manuscripts
    Set[AB's Manuscripts] Miscellaneous Manuscripts
    Permanent linkhttps://www.andrebreton.fr/en/work/56600100461720