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      Break of Day

      by Andre Breton
      Published
      Dec 2008
      Main Genre
      General Fiction General Fiction
      Pages
      148
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      About This Book

      Originally published in France in 1934, Break of Day is André Breton's second collection of critical and polemical essays, following The Lost Steps (Nebraska 1996). In fewer than two hundred pages, it captures the first full decade of the surrealist movement. The collection opens with an essay composed in 1924 that examines key elements of surrealism and concludes with Breton's harsh revaluation in 1933 of automatic writing.
       
      Among the other essays in the volume are "Burial Denied" and "In Self-Defense," two pieces that, in translator Mark Polizzotti's words, "mark surrealism's conscious break from the mainstream and the beginning of its attempts to work alongside the French Communist Party." Also included are "Psychiatry Standing before Surrealism," which addresses Breton's complex, ambivalent views on mental illness and the emerging psychiatric establishment; "Introduction to Achim von Arnim's Strange Tales," which reveals surrealism's debt to such precursors as the German romantics and delineates a surrealistic aesthetic of the macabre; and "Picasso in His Element," in which Breton demonstrates his formidable talents as a critic of the visual arts.

      Genres & Themes

      Genres

      General Fiction

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      First Edition Dec 2008 University of Nebraska Press ISBN13 9780803220843 ISBN10 0803220847
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