wasknijperclub

De wasknijperclub in Palermo, maart 2020

Het veldonderzoek voor de wasknijperclub in Palermo in maart 2020 had uiteraard wetenschappelijker kunnen zijn. Waar vallen de wasknijpers, welke blijven heel, is iedere kleur te vinden, zijn er verschillende formaten, is er een balkon met waslijn boven de plek waar de wasknijper ligt (om het bekende spreekwoord te verifiëren: de wasknijper valt niet ver van de boom). Nee, in feite ging het daar de  wasknijperclub niet om. De  wasknijper vervulde zelfs enkel een bijrol.  Ter herinnering, de wasknijperclub i.o. richt zich op  de instandhouding van het detail in het menselijk bestaan. De wasknijper is daar een element van. Van gelijk belang is een papiertje op straat, het lijkt op een boodschappenlijstje, maar door de vervaagde grijze letters mogelijk een gedicht. Of een stuk plastic, een onderdeel, van en kinderspeelgoed. Natuurlijk niet bij de plekken waar afval verzameld wordt, dat zou te eenvoudig zijn. Gewoon, op de stenen gevallen, op de plek waar het op de straat achtergelaten is.  

B.D. 

 THE CLOTHESPIN CLUB IN PALERMO, MARCH 2020

The field research for the Dutch (or better, Heerlen) Clothespin Club in Palermo in March 2020 could, of course, have been conducted in a more scientific way. Where do the clothespins fall, which remain intact, is it possible to trace every color, are there different sizes and models, is there a balcony with a clothesline above the place where the clothespin is found (to verify the well-known proverb: the clothespin does not fall far from the tree). No, in fact, that is not what the Clothespin Club was about. The clothespin even only played a supporting role. As a reminder, the Clothespin Club in formation focuses on the maintenance of detail in everyday life. The clothespin is only an element. Equally important is a fragment of paper on the street, it looks like a shopping list, but the faded gray letters may turn it into a poem. Or a piece of plastic, a part of a children's toy. Of course not objects found at the places where waste is collected, that would be too simple. Just fallen on the pavement, photographed where it was left derelict on the street.

Stille Omgang

I

In 1926, Louis Aragon sent André Breton a letter with a photo of a part of the painting La Profanation de l'Hostie. This painting by the Italian Renaissance painter Paolo Uccello consists of six separate panels. These scenes tell the story of the desecration of the Sacramental bread by a Jew. The story of Uccello's painting is naively painted like the Epinal engravings, it tells a story like in comics and on the Bayeux tapestry. The correspondence with Epinal engravings establishes a direct line between the photo received and the plates and prints sold by the peddler, a man whom Nadja and Breton meet a few days later in a restaurant.

The photo Breton received shows the second panel: there is a Sacramental bread is on the fire, some people are in a room, and soldiers are trying to force the door of the room. Breton receives the image on October 8, when he dwells trough Paris with Nadja, as described in the book with the same name. The evening of the seventh runs towards the end when Nadja exclaims: ‘Que ce baiser la laisse sous l’impression de quelque chose de sacré, où ses dents « tenaient lieu d’Hostie ».’[1]

The burning, but not burning Sacramental bread on Uccello's painting is like the flaming hand above the Seine seen by Nadja.[2] Like the burning / non-burning objects in the paintings of Dali and Magritte. Remarkably, in Breton description, both of Nadja's Sacramental bread / teeth and the reference to Uccello's scene are not anti-clerical, but strictly objective. The teeth transform into a Sacramental bread, as we see a transformation in the movie Le Chien Andalou, where a butterfly and armpit hair take the place of the mouth, well, there is the French expression ‘Prendre l'hostie à la chapelle’. The burning Sacramental bread elevates the sacral almost pubescent image of the kiss / Sacramental bread.[3]

The painting and its subject also bring a theme into the book, as a "ready made". In addition to the "profanation de l'hostie", Breton discusses the film L’étreinte de la pieuvre [The trail of the octopus], in which a Chinese tries to take over the dominion in America through self-multiplication.[4] Both ready made topics – marginalized Jews in medieval Italy and Chinese in America - treat xenophobia as everyday examples of the then prevailing zeitgeist. Breton had a general aversion to the Italian spirit all his life, he would never set foot on Italian soil where fascism reigned most of his life, the more striking is his interest in Uccello. André Breton wrote in his article Surrealism yesterday, today, tomorrow,, published in the This Quarter magazine in 1932, that Uccello was surrealist ‘in the free for all fight’.[5] Breton was not the only one in his admiration for Uccello, Antonin Artaud was also impressed by Uccello's painting, he published the article Uccello, Le Poil in La Révolution Surréaliste of December 1, 1926. Some years later, in 1929 (ten years after their Champs Magnétiques), the former surrealist Philippe Soupault wrote a monograph in the series Maitres de l’art Ancien about Paolo Uccello. Breton would return to Uccello in his Le Surréalisme et la Peinture (RS, no. 6, p. 30) and in 1949 he published the poem Sur la route de San Romano, almost similar to the title of a painting by Uccello: la Bataille de San Romano.

Nadja's Sacramental bread does not stand alone in the writings of Breton. “Ma femme à la langue d'hostie poignardée,” is a line in the poem L'Union Libre. Other surrealists were fascinated by this object. Dali painted a Profanation de l'Hostie (1929). There is a priest in Thirion's Le Grand Ordinaire (1934), who is present in the castle for the "Profanation de l'Hostie", Georges Hugnet made a La profanation de l'hostie (1935). The last to be mentioned is Pierre Mabille's description of this object in Thérèse de Lisieux from 1937. So far the Sacramental bread in some surrealist works.

Salvador Dali, Profanation de l’hostie (1929)

- 100 x 73 cm -

Dalí Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida

Salvador Dali, Giraffe en feu (1936/1937)

 René Magritte, L´échelle de feu (1939)

  

René Magritte, La découverte du Feu (1936). 

A similar composition appeared under the same title in Documents 1934. 

De Stille Ommegang 

II

The painter J.H. Moesman started work on the painting De Stille Ommegang in 1935, the heyday of Dutch surrealism. In a desert landscape an "Animal brut" walks with the hind legs of a lion and the head of a pelican. Several themes recur in this painting, which place this painting in the pivot of surrealist ideas.

J.H. Moesman, De Stille Ommegang, 1935

First, the design; the preliminary design of the painting is a cadavre exquis (a piece of paper is folded in half, the participants make a drawing on one part, without knowing what the other has made or is going to draw). The cadavre exquis was created by the writer Anton Koolhaas, (1912 - 1992) who gave the assist, and Moesman who responded. One side of the paper has the drawing of a Pelican Lion, the other side contains a Pig Elephant. This suggests that an agreement was made to draw animals, which is at odds with the premise that the cadavre is made automatically and without any rule or predefined theme.

In addition, the title should get attention. The title was given to the painting by the painter Fedde Weidema (1915 - 2000), and the usually stubborn Moesman has accepted it. Giving titles to paintings by others is a practice that was common practice in the group around René Magritte, where writers regularly gave titles to paintings, titles that could be completely separate from the image. In the Netherlands, where collective actions are virtually unknown, a collaboration as described above in creating works and giving a title to a painting is an exception. Comparable experiments are only known from the group around De Schone Zakdoek magazine.

The title is a reference to the Stille Ommegang ("Silent Walk" or circumambulation), a Catholic procession in the city center of Amsterdam, known from the 14th century and forbidden after the Protestant revolution. This custom was restored by two people in 1881, and in the 1930s, ten thousand people participated in this procession in March. The Stille Omgang commemorates the so called Miracle of Amsterdam. In 1345 a Sacramental bread floated above the fire in the home of an ill Amsterdammer. Just before that, the Sacramental bread had been thrown into the fire with the vomit of the man, and miraculously: the bread did not catch fire, as in the painting by Uccello (and until the 19^th century Catholics were marginalized in The Netherlands).

After the removal of several of his paintings from a exhibitions touching taboos in Dutch society of the 1930ties, this title in with a Catholic connotation fits in the line. Or maybe Moesman thought "Oh no, that animal just walks around, "à pas de loups" it is a silent detour." Here we can make a reference to the previous story in this series (Utrecht, 1713 & André Breton): The 1713 Peace of Utrecht, in the words of Breton a ‘Paix pattes de velours’ seems a reference to the words Breton wrote in Les Champs magnétiques: ‘Pneus pattes de velours’.[6] On March 31, 1963, Breton and the other surrealists of the Parisian group gathered in the café, as usual in the late afternoon. Here Arrabal, André Breton, George Goldfayn, Ragnar von Holten, Radovan Ivsic, Alain Joubert, Joyce Mansour and José Pierre wrote a brief and concise tribute to Moesman:

‘J.H. Moesman : trente ans durant une œuvre menée à pas de loup mais, au sortir du bois, des tapis se déroulant à la rencontre d’une nouvelle hypotase de la femme, ici gorgée d’insolite. D´un bouge voisin, par un soupirail, s´élève la voix de Monsieur Bougrelon : « Hypothétique luxure, Messieurs ! Hypothétique luxure ! »’[7]                    

André Breton

Vente Breton 2003, lot 2514

With this Pelican Lion, a mythological animal has been created like the phoenix and the griffin, and the Cameléopard from Apollinaire.[8] In addition, the pelican and lion have an important role in the gnosis. The lion would eat the sun loosing his head. The pelican ripped her body open to feed its young, and she has only her head left. Do the two continue together in an unknown stage of the transmutation of which the Sacramental bread itself is also an example?

We see the interaction between truth and fiction in the whole story. The Sacramental bread is a well-known example of this unity, and it is shown in Uccello's painting and the Amsterdam example that the power of the people should not mock this interaction. It is precisely within the philosophy of Breton and Moesman that it is a challenge to place the truth and fiction as close together as possible, so that an infra-thin field is created were these truths merge as communicating vessels.

Moesman's Stille Ommegang is a good example of showing that Moesman was interested in the similar phenomena that haunted surrealists in other countries - and these shared fascination form the surrealist movement, not a simplified comparison of colors used, statues without legs or place of the horizon in the composition.

Bastiaan van der Velden

[Translated and published on 22 march 2020; tonight this year’s Stille Omgang in Amsterdam was cancelled]

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[1] A. Breton, Œuvres complètes, tome I, p. 703.

[2] A. Breton, Œuvres complètes, tome I, p. 697.

[3] Brandend / niet-brandende voorwerpen komen ook in schilderijen van surrealisten veelvuldig voor. In de briefwisseling van René Magritte met Torczyner (Letters between friends (New York 1994) p. 35) zette Magritte uiteen dat hij de ‘bedenker’ van de brandende objecten was, maar dat Dali de publiciteitscampagne voor zichzelf beter organiseerde. Dali schilderde een van zijn schilderijen met brandende giraffen in Wenen in 1936, enkele maanden voor de Anschluss, en dit schilderij met de titel ‘Les inventions des monstres’ had volgens hem een profetisch karakter. In Dali zijn eigen woorden: ‘la giraffe en feu [représentent] le monstre cosmique apocalyptique masculin’ (Dali, catalogus Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam 1970, schilderij no. 56). In 1938 verscheen Bachelard’s Psychoanalyse du Feu (Paris: Gallimard 1938). Hierin tracht hij niet het vuur, maar het kijken naar vuur te onderzoeken, en analyseerde hij de wijze waarop het vuur – door wetenschappers – beschreven was.

[4] A. Breton, Œuvres complètes, tome I, p. 633.

[5] This Quarter, II, n. 1, september 1932.

[6] A. Breton, Œuvres complètes, tome I, p. 65. En dat veertien jaar voor het fameuze kopje van Méret Oppenheim.

[7] Monsieur Bougrelon is de titel van en de hoofdpersoon in een roman van Jean Lorrain (1897) die zich in Amsterdam afspeelt.

[8] Apollinaire Œuvres complètes en prose, tome I, p. 842.

Bonbons Hollandais[1]

       ‘Contrairement à l’ordinaire, je choisis de suivre le trottoir droit de la rue de la Chaussée-d’Antin. Une des premières personnes que je m’apprête à y croiser est Nadja, sous son aspect du premier jour. Elle s’avance comme si elle ne voulait pas me voir. Comme le premier jour, je reviens sur mes pas avec elle. Elle se montre assez incapable d’expliquer sa présence dans cette rue où, pour faire trêve à de plus longues questions, elle me dit être à la recherche de bonbons hollandais.’

                               André Breton, Nadja (6 octobre)[2]

The Bonbons Hollandais Nadja was looking for in this quote kept me busy for some time in and around 1995. I was  unable to find them. No dictionary could translate the words. There is no more a candy store in the Parisian rue de la Chaussée-d'Antin, only whores on the street, but even they were disappearing from the  scene in this neighborhood, none of my French friends could, even after long and frequent inquiries, tell what the Bonbons Hollandais were. In the Dutch translation of Nadja the translation "Haagse Hopjes" is chosen.[3] However, these Hopjes are according to the richly decorated boxes in which they were sold "bonbons au café". In the English translation Nadja is looking for ‘Dutch Chocolate’.[4]  So Nadja was looking for candies that I try to find sixty-five years later in vain. Could it be that Nadja was not looking for sweets, but something else, that this term is a euphemism? A day after the meeting between Nadja and Breton in rue de la Chaussée-d'Antin, Nadja told Breton:

‘Une seule fois, je me suis trouvée en possession de vingt-cinq mille francs, que mon ami m’avait laissés. On m’a assuré qu’en quelques jours il m’était très facile de tripler cette somme, à condition d’aller l’échanger à La Haye contre de la cocaïne.’[5]

Nadja is arrested by the police, who confiscate almost all contraband: ‘j’ai oublié de signaler que tout n’était pas dans mon sac, qu’il fallait aussi chercher sous le ruban de mon chapeau. Mais ce qu’on eût trouvé n’en valait pas la peine. Je l’ai gardé pour moi.’[6]  Nadja transported a total of almost two kilos of cocaine with a street value of almost 175,000 Euros nowadays. It was not really surprising that she traveled to The Hague for this. The Netherlands was one of the largest producers of this stuff, because the Dutch East Indies had the ideal climate for this branch of agriculture.[7] In the early 1900s, cocaine was quite popular. For example, Sigmund Freud sent a few grams to his girlfriend, with the accompanying letter instructing him to make 8 to 5 servings. One would become a wild man, with all that cocaine in the body. Were those Bonbons Hollandais perhaps a euphemism or argot for cocaine? My uncle immediately came up with the title of a song by the Rolling Stones: Brown Sugar [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59K2kF6o9Tk ]. Was she looking for cocaine for her own use?

The case of the Bonbons Hollandais can also be solved in another way. Breton lent some of his books to Nadja, including Les pas perdus. In this book, published in 1924, he collected essays on art and literature.

‘J’ai observé en la rencontrant qu’elle tenait à la main l’exemplaire des Pas perdus que je lui ai prêté. Il est maintenant sur la table et, à en apercevoir la tranche, je remarque que quelques feuillets seulement en sont coupés. Voyons : ce sont ceux de l’article intitulé : « L’esprit nouveau »’[8]

Breton here pretends that only the pages of the article ‘L’esprit nouveau’ were cut open. However, when Breton gave Les pas perdus and  Manifeste du surréalisme to Nadja, the whole book was cut open:

‘Elle feuillette l’ouvrage avec grande curiosité. Son attention se fixe sur un poème de Jarry qui y est cité :

       Parmi les bruyères, pénil des menhirs...’[9]

Les pas perdus, like most French books of this period, consists of folded pages making a signature that the reader had to cut open before he could read the contents. In the first edition of the book I consulted, Jarry's quote is exactly on the outside of a signature, so it was not necessary to cut the book open to read this part. Nevertheless, Breton wrote that Nadja leafed through the book, indicating that the book had been cut open. Could it be possible that while browsing  Les pas perdus, Nadja  read the article about the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, which is just before the piece on Jarry? Here you can read:

       ‘Songer alors : Guillaume Apollinaire est canonnier à Nîmes, me donnait toute la mesure du bouleversement.

                   La plate vie de garnison ne parvient pas à lui déplaire. Pour la poésie, il y a les chevaux à nommer, les relations nouvelles et les inscriptions des rues. Il y a surtout l’espoir du beau lendemain.

                               La grande force est le désir

       et je ne vois en tout ceci aucune contrainte Accordons plutôt au poète un don prodigieux d’émerveillement. C’est le même qui, boulevard Montmorency, attendra de Jean Royère des crayons de couleur et des bonbons hollandais.’[10]

Is it possible that Nadja has read more pages in Les pas perdus, not just the piece André Breton writes about in the text of 6 October? Did Nadja start looking for the Bonbons Hollandais, as I went searching for it?

[addendum anno 2020]

Today it is possible to search for almost everything on the web. ‘Brown sugar’ gives all the necessary images, but the Bonbons Hollandais are more difficult to be found, in a French magazine on food I discovered a short text, but  even here the author of this Q&A starts with a disclaimer ‘Bonbons hollandais (Hopjès). M. Wilfr..., Clam..., Angl. — C'est sans doute aux Hopjès auxquels vous faites allusion dans votre demande, sous votre désignation de « bonbons hollandais ». Ce sont là des spécialités qui sont fabriquées surtout par deux très grandes et sérieuses maisons hollandaises qui portent le même nom soit « Rademaker ». Maisons dont les produits sont impeccables et qui gardent fort jalousement leurs secrets de fabrication.’ (La Pâtisserie française illustrée, 1938/04)

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[1] L’Aigle Bleu, no. 4, août 1996.

[2] Breton, Œuvres complètes, tome I, p. 691.

[3] Breton, Nadja, Nederlandse vertaling door L. Vancrevel en R. de Jong-Belifante (Amsterdam 1973) p. 64.

[4] Breton, Nadja, Engelse vertaling door R. Howard (New York/London 1960) p. 77.

[5] Breton, Œuvres complètes, tome I, p. 702.

[6] Breton, Œuvres complètes, tome I, p. 702.

[7] M. de Kort et D.J. Korf : ‘Hollandse prioriteiten. De ontwikkeling van de drugshandel en de opkomst van de narcotica bestrijding in Nederland’, in: Tijdschrift voor criminologie, 1990, no. 1 p. 13-32.

[8] André Breton, Nadja (6 octobre); Œuvres complètes, tome I, p. 691.

[9] André Breton, Nadja (5 octobre); Œuvres complètes, tome I, p. 689.

[10] André Breton, ‘G. Apollinaire’, in: Les Pas perdus.

Utrecht, 1713 & André Breton[1]

Bastiaan D. van der Velden

(this is a translation of my text in Dutch)

Utrecht is the city where Dutch surrealism took shape. The painters Willem Wagenaar, Louis Wijmans, Van ’t Net, Perdok, Van Leusden and J. Moesman were active in this mediaeval town, the writers Hendrik Cramer and Theo van Doesburg were born here, the 1 copy magazine De Schone Zakdoek was published here by Van Baaren and Gertrude Pape; in the 1930ties French surrealist magazines were for sale in the Nord gallery situated in the Vinkenburgstraat and Johan Brouwer situated his novel Vandaag geen spreekuur in the labyrinth of the inner city of Utrecht. These facts, however, are not the reason to pay attention to André Breton, Utrecht and the year 1713. Breton only learned about Moesman's paintings long after the painter's most productive period, most probably Breton had no knowledge about the other facts.

The reason to investigate Utrecht and 1713 is the place this city occupies in the mythology André Breton  created around himself. It is a complex of facts and events related to Utrecht brought together in a poem-object he made in 1941. There are several "totem cities" in the personal mythology of Breton. Next to Paris, the town of Nantes plays an important role in Breton's work and people from Nantes were important in his life. Now back to Utrecht as a totem city for Breton. In the poem-object entitled "Portrait de l'acteur AB dans son rôle mémorable de l'an de grâce 1713” (Portrait of Actor A.B. in his memorable Role, in the Year of Our Lord 1713) several facts and fascinations of Breton come together.[2] The poem-object from 1941 got lost, only a small photo exist, and there are several short notes on the object written by Breton that will guide us.

From the early 1920s, Breton used 1713 as his initials, since this number or year 1713 has strong similarity with AB: the A is shaped into a 17 and the B is similar to 13. Arcane 17 is the title of a book he published in 1945, since the 17th card from the tarot game signifies hope; and 13 is in his own words ‘un nombre sûr’.[3] Around the numbers 1713 he created a mythology, including the historical events that took place in the year 1713.

  

letterhead & signature of Breton

1713 is the year of the Treaty of Utrecht, which established the Peace of Utrecht, which ended the Spanish succession wars. In the poem-object the peace returns, the ‘Paix pattes de velours’. The Peace with velvet paws is a reference to Utrecht as the center of the velvet trade. In the Treaty of Utrecht, the island of Ile de Cap Breton, which is located in Canada, was allocated to France. 

The ‘Paix pattes de velours’ seems a reference to the words Breton wrote in Les Champs magnétiques: ‘Pneus pattes de velours’.[4]  The significance of the velvet-legged tires is explained in notes in the copy of Les Champs magnétiques that belonged to René Gaffé:

‘Cette phrase, ai-je déjà dit, m’a joué les plus mauvais tours. C’est à elle que j’ai dû de me croire, une après-midi (les Champs magnétiques ayant dès le matin même définitivement pris forme), de me croire traqué place de l’Etoile par des chats qui étaient peut-être (mais je vous prie de croire : seulement peut-être) des autos.’ (This sentence, I said, haunted me. It was due to this line that I had to make myself believe, one afternoon (les Champs magnétiques had taken shape in their final version that very morning), to believe that I had been hunted down at Place de l'Etoile by cats who were perhaps (I have to stress: only maybe) cars.)

For completeness, Breton wrote in his own analysis of the Portrait de l’acteur A.B.:

‘Paix pattes de velours, par l’intermédiaire de l’expression « faire patte de velours »[5] qui veut dire rentrer ses griffes, et Utrecht, célèbre universellement par ses velours, engendrent ici un chat qu’il n’est pas trop difficile d’apercevoir dans les six cases inférieurs : tête et corps, pattes, queue.’ (Peace of the velvet paws, by means of the expression 'to make velvet paws' which means to hide its claws, and Utrecht, universally famous for the velvet made there, generate here a cat that it is not too difficult to see in the six boxes at the bottom of the object-poem: head and body, legs, tail.)

The next reference to Utrecht is the sentence ‘Les Diplomates s’arrêtent devant la Kleine Poortje’. Het Kleine Poortje should have been a seventeenth-century Utrecht restaurant or brothel. In an analysis Breton made of his object in 1942, he explains that it refers to the many diplomats who were involved in the preparations for the Treaty of Utrecht. These diplomats visited "Het Kleine Poortje" because, according to rumors and gossip, the place was frequented by cardinal De Retz. The cardinal, writer and politician played an important role in French politics during the affaire of Cardinal Mazarin in 1651, then falls into disgrace in 1654, is imprisoned, flees and travels through Europe as a nomad for years. On the run, he ends up in Utrecht, where - after many temptations - he falls for the charms of the waitress Annetje in this pub. The secretary of De Retz, Guy Joly, provides some information about this period:

‘Cependant [1658] sa vie obscure et vagabonde continuoit toujours, tantôt d’un côté et tantôt d’un autre, à Amsterdam, à La Haye, à Rotterdam, à Utrecht, et en plusieurs autres villes de Hollande. Mais on se plaisoit particulièrement à Utrecht, dans une auberge qui avoit pour enseigne : ’t Kleine poortje (la petite porte), dont la servante, nommée Annetje, ou Nanon, occupoit une assez bonne place dans la cœur du cardinal.’[6] (‘However [in 1658] his obscure and wandering life still continued, sometimes on one side and sometimes on the other, in Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam, Utrecht, and in several other cities in Holland. But he particularly liked Utrecht, where, in an inn with the sign ’t Kleine poortje (the small door), there was a servant, named Annetje, or Nanon, who occupied a preferred place in the heart of the cardinal.)

Breton will have consulted one of the many editions of Joly's Memoirs, or a biography of De Retz in which Joly's Memoirs are incorporated. However, in De Retz's Œuvres published in 1984, is written : ‘rien permet d’accréditer ces allégations.’, there is no proof for these allegations.[7] Breton attached great importance to De Retz, in the surrealist game ‘Ouvrez Vous?’, Breton was asked if  he would open the door for De Retz: ‘Oui, à toute heure, toujours, pour parler bas’ (Yes, anytime, always, to speak quietly).[8] There used to be a hotel called  'Het Witte Poortje' on the Ganzenmarkt, but my research in the city archives was not fruitful, no trace in the files stocked there on this place.[9]

Breton gives in his comment on the poem-object a third hint connected to Utrecht. 1713 is the year of the publication of the papal Bull Unigentius by pope  Clément XI, a document that led to the persecution of the Jansenists in France. In the poème-objet: ‘D’un judas de Port-Royal détruite mais invulnérable je te vois pape Clément XI, vieux chien.’ Breton was very interested in the Jansenists, fareinists and convulsionaires ('la beauté sera convulsive ou ne sera pas'), various religious sects with ties to the Old Catholic church. Many Jansenists were forced to leave France after the ratification of the Bull Unigentius and settled in the region around Utrecht where a certain level of freedom of religion existed. Breton wrote about this in a note from 1938, when he was searching for traces of the fareinists in the region of Ain: ‘Café devant l’église : aucun renseignement. Vu ensuite l’instituteur […]’[10] " The local teacher recommended to visit an old shoemaker:

‘un vieux cordonnier, chef actuel de la communauté. Chez le vieux cordonnier (86 ans) – Reconnaît que le fareinisme a perdu beaucoup de terrain […]. Il y avait une église du culte à Paris, l’église St-Denis, avenue d’Italie, qui groupait 300 fidèles. D’autres existent toujours aux Pays-Bas (Utrecht ?) D’après le vieillard, leur religion est purement l’ancienne religion catholique.’ (An old shoemaker, current head of the community. Visiting the old shoemaker (86 years old) - Recognizes that fareinism has lost a lot of importance […]. There was a church in Paris, the St-Denis Church, avenue d'Italie, where 300 people gathered 300. Others still exist in the Netherlands (Utrecht?) According to the old man, their religion is identical to that of the Old Catholic Church)

1713, the peace conference, the derive of De Retz, and the exiled Jansenists, for the city of Utrecht, the period between 1650-1720 when the visit of De Retz took place and the diplomats stayed in the town, was a short period of economic revival, on the eve of a long period of stagnation. Breton could have found the city of Utrecht in 1938 as it had been left by the diplomats anno 1713 (tough visiting The Netherlands in the 1930ties and 1950ties several times searching for ethnographic objects, I have found no trace that he made a detour to Utrecht (only visiting Amsterdam and Leiden)). The Old Catholic Church can still be found in Utrecht. The  dormant atmosphere, prolonged stagnation, centuries of black nonmoving water in the channels, derelict objects on the quays, an atmosphere that has been praised by many, the ideal breeding ground for that strange Utrecht surrealism and like in a hazard objectif also one of the totem cities of André Breton.

B.D. Utrecht, 1994

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[1] L’Aigle Bleu, no. 18, septembre 2001.

[2] Breton: Le surréalisme et la peinture (1965), p. 284.  

[3] A. Breton, Œuvres complètes, tome I, p. 66.

[4] A. Breton, Œuvres complètes, tome I, p. 65. En dat veertien jaar voor het fameuze kopje van Méret Oppenheim.

[5] ‘Faire patte de velours, Lors qu’un chat retire ses griffes en donnant la patte.’ Dictionnaire de L’Académie française, 1ere Edition, 1694.

[6] Guy Joly, Mémoires de Guy Joly [publ.] par MM. Michaud et Poujoulat: Nouvelle collection des mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de France (Paris: Ed. du commentaire analytique du Code civil, 1838) p. 139. Er zijn ook andere edities: Gui Joly, Mémoires de Mr Joli,... contenant l’histoire de la régence d’Anne d’Autriche et des premières années de la majorité de Louis XIV jusqu’en 1665, avec les intrigues du cardinal de Retz à la cour. Tome premier (Amsterdam: J.-F. Bernard, 1718) en Gui Joly, Mémoires de Gui Joly,... ouvrage qui sert de supplément aux Mémoires du cardinal de Retz. Nouvelle édition, augmentée de remarques et d’éclaircissemens curieux sur l’histoire de ce temps là (Amsterdam: chez Jean-Frederic Bernard 1738-1739).

[7] Cardinal de Retz [Jean-Francois-Paul de Gondi, cardinal de Retz] Œuvres; édition établie par Marie-Therese Hipp e.a (Paris: Gallimard 1984) p. 1671.

[8] In: Legrand, 1976, p. 202.

[9] Stadsarchief van Utrecht, inventaris 820 no. 655 & inventarisnummer 820 / 64 - 65.

[10] Vente Breton 2003, lot 2224.