The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Anthology of Black Humor by André Breton
James Sallis

André Breton. Anthology of Black Humor. Trans. Mark Polizzotti. City Lights, 1997. 356 pp. Paper: $18.95.

In the twenties, it’s said, via Freud the world discovered sex. About the same time, André Breton discovered surrealism—or was it the other way around?
Assembled in 1936, the Anthology was delayed first by publishing difficulties then by the wartime censorship board’s refusal to approve it. Finally it came out in 1945 to almost total silence and was intermittently available as over the years it slowly garnered attention. A new edition was published in 1966 shortly before Breton’s death; now for the first time it’s available in English. The Anthology, like the body, has a long memory. And what it remembers is the twentieth century: that nexus where unknowingly we changed railway cars, destination, clothes, habits, and mind. Breton’s collection includes selections from Swift, Poe, Lewis Carroll, Baudelaire, Nietzsche, Charles Fourier, Jarry, Roussel, Duchamp—altogether forty-five entries, each of them introduced by Breton, and it may be to the lancing percepts and verbal energy of these introductions that we’ll hereafter return as much as to the texts themselves. Surrealism, if it was about anything, was about enthusiasm, about attempts at engagement, beyond knowledge and experience, with the world’s raw stuff. It was also about humor. The two are inextricably entwined, which is why this book, this exploration of “the lugubrious tick-tock of the infernal machine that Lautréamont left on the mind’s doorstep,” is so important. Freud’s Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious first appeared in French translation in 1930, and Breton in his general introduction makes much use of it.
Beauty will be convulsive or it will not exist. Before Beauty, the surrealist lifts his hand to his forehead in salute—or to wipe away a tear the size of a plum? And always with one finger picking away at his nose. [James Sallis]


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The Review of Contemporary Fiction Anthology of Black Humor by André Breton James Sallis André Breton. Anthology of Black Humor. Trans. Mark Polizzotti. City Lights, 1997. 356 pp. Paper: $18.95. In the twenties, it’s said, via Freud the world discovered sex. About the same time, André Breton discovered surrealism—or was it the other way around? Assembled in 1936, the Anthology was delayed first by publishing difficulties then by the wartime censorship board’s refusal to approve it. Finally it came out in 1945 to almost total silence and was intermittently available as over the years it slowly garnered attention. A new edition was published in 1966 shortly before Breton’s death; now for the first time it’s available in English. The Anthology, like the body, has a long memory. And what it remembers is the twentieth century: that nexus where unknowingly we changed railway cars, destination, clothes, habits, and mind. Breton’s collection includes selections from Swift, Poe, Lewis Carroll, Baudelaire, Nietzsche, Charles Fourier, Jarry, Roussel, Duchamp—altogether forty-five entries, each of them introduced by Breton, and it may be to the lancing percepts and verbal energy of these introductions that we’ll hereafter return as much as to the texts themselves. Surrealism, if it was about anything, was about enthusiasm, about attempts at engagement, beyond knowledge and experience, with the world’s raw stuff. It was also about humor. The two are inextricably entwined, which is why this book, this exploration of “the lugubrious tick-tock of the infernal machine that Lautréamont left on the mind’s doorstep,” is so important. Freud’s Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious first appeared in French translation in 1930, and Breton in his general introduction makes much use of it. Beauty will be convulsive or it will not exist. Before Beauty, the surrealist lifts his hand to his forehead in salute—or to wipe away a tear the size of a plum? And always with one finger picking away at his nose. [James Sallis]

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