‘Introduction to “Notebook from the Trip to Visit the Hopi Indians” by André Breton'

Authors

  • Etienne-Alain Hubert

Abstract

This Introduction was written for André Breton’s “Notebook from the Trip to Visit the Hopi Indians” when it was first published in 1999, in the third volume of Breton’s Complete Works, edited by Etienne-Alain Hubert. An essential text, this Introduction presents the context for the “Notebook” by situating it within Breton’s work and his life in 1945, clarifying with whom Breton was traveling, why he was in the American Southwest, what these notes meant to him, and what his plans were at the time for their publication. It also situates Breton’s “Notebook” within the greater context of the surrealist movement and the surrealist fascination with Native American culture.

Author Biography

Etienne-Alain Hubert

Etienne-Alain Hubert, honorary Maître de conférences at the University of Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV), has dedicated most of his work to the poet Pierre Reverdy and those who were close to him—Guillaume Apollinaire and Max Jacob—as well as those Cubist painters and illustrators who were his friends. He has published five editions of Reverdy’s work with Flammarion since 1973. He also published Reverdy’s Complete Works in two volumes totaling over 1500 pages in 2010, including previously unpublished texts. Most of his articles have been collected in Circonstances de la poésie: Reverdy, Apollinaire, Surréalisme (Klincksieck, 2000 and 2009).

He began contributing to the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade edition of André Breton’s Œuvres complètes (Gallimard, 4 vclumes) in 1984, at the invitation of the great scholar of surrealism, Marguerite Bonnet. They worked together harmoniously, meeting every Monday in Breton’s apartment at 42, Rue Fontaine, where Elisa Breton, with her lovely, dreamy gaze, opened up the library and archive to them. They would also often pursue their research at tge Breton archives located in the Jacques Doucet Library, with the knowledgeable help of the Director, François Chapon. In 1991, they published a re-edition of Breton and Paul Éluard’s Immaculée Conception, with a supplemented dossier of previously unpublished documents (Corti).

He took over the editorship of Breton’s Complete Works after Bonnet’s premature death in 1993 and enlisted the help of Philippe Bernier and Marie-Claire Dumas to complete the four volumes, the last of which, Écrits sur l’art,, appeared in 2008.

Since then, he has published Breton’s Lettres à Jacques Doucet, 1920-1926 (Gallimard, 2016) and the Breton-Eluard Correspondance, 1919-1938 (2019). He is now preparing for publication the letters of Breton to his childhood friend, Théodore Fraenkel.

Étienne-Alain Hubert has been the Secretary of the Pierre Reverdy Committee since it was created in 1972. He became co-President of the Society of the Friends of Paul Éluard in 2014. He is on the editorial board of several journals.

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Published

2024-03-18

Issue

Vol. 14 No. 2 (2023): Journal of Surrealism and the Americas

Section

Feature Articles