Rise of Surrealism by Bohn Willard

Author:Bohn, Willard [Bohn, Willard]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

8

T H E H O U R O F T H E S P H I N X

A n d r é B r e t o n a n d J o a n M i r ó

Le chat rêve et ronronne dans la lutherie brune. Il scrute le fond de

l’ébène et de biais lape à distance le tout vif acajou. C’est l’heure où

le sphinx de la garance détend par milliers sa trompe autour de la

fontaine de Vaucluse et où partout la femme n’est plus qu’un calice

débordant de voyelles en liaison avec le magnolia illimitable de la nuit.

(The cat is dreaming and purring in the brown stringed-instrument

trade. It scrutinizes the depth of the ebony and from a distance laps

the living mahogany obliquely. It is the hour when the madderwort

sphinx loosens by the thousands her horn around the fountain of

Vaucluse and when woman everywhere is no longer anything but a

chalice overflowing with vowels in connection with the illimitable

magnolia of the night).1

In 1958, André Breton wrote twenty-two poems inspired by a brilliant series

of gouaches that Joan Miró had created nearly twenty years earlier. Collected

the following year in Constellations, each poem was juxtaposed with the ap-

propriate painting in a mathematical progression based on skill and chance,

intention and accident.2 If, as Anna Balakian states, “Breton’s Constellations is a

cosmic venture in which man joins nature through his manipulation of lan-

guage,” the same may be said of Miró’s paintings in which birds, women, and

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T H E R I S E O F S U R R E A L I S M

stars offer a privileged view of the universe. This is particularly true of

“Femme et oiseau” (“Woman and Bird”), the eighth poem in the series,

whose title unites two of the artist’s favorite motifs (see Chapter 7).3 Through-

out the volume verbal language complements visual language in an elaborate

pas de deux . That Breton’s intention was not simply to evoke Miró’s art or to

reproduce relevant themes may be seen from the term he chose to describe his

creations: “proses parallèles.” As such they represent independent meditations

on subjects suggested by the paintings without any attempt to follow the path

taken by the artist. Stressing the profound originality of Breton’s undertak-

ing, J. H. Matthews describes this reciprocal relationship as follows: “The

image before his eyes liberates images within, and it is the latter that he seeks

to capture, in acknowledgement of the former’s evocative quality.”4

According to Philippe Audoin, each text takes its point of departure from

one of three sources: the painting’s title, its general tonality, or one or more

graphic elements.5 This explains why the title “Femme et oiseau” makes no

sense—it is entirely incidental. The poet does refer to a woman toward the

end, but she is only one of several characters who are equally important. Not

only is the bird nowhere to be found, but there is no indication that it will

ever appear. Although Breton appropriates Miró’s title for his poem, as he did

throughout the book, it was clearly not the source of his inspiration. Contin-

uing our inquiry in a similar vein, we can also rule out tonality as a potential

source.

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