Ralph Dumain: "The Autodidact Project": Quotes: Andre Breton Out of His Element

ANDRÉ BRETON OUT OF HIS ELEMENT

by Edwin Denby

In the presence of New York at the end of the thirties, the paranoia of surrealism looked parlor-sized or arch. But during the war Bill [Willem de Kooning] told me he had been walking uptown one afternoon and at the corner of 53rd and 7th he had noticed a man across the street who was making peculiar gestures in front of his face. It was Breton and he was fighting off a butterfly. A butterfly had attacked the Parisian poet in the middle of New York. So hospitable nature is to a man of genius.

SOURCE: Denby, Edwin. Willem de Kooning (Madras: Hanuman Books, 1988), pp. 54-55.

C.L.R. James & Usona Kulturo
(C.L.R. James & American Culture) de Ralph Dumain (in Esperanto)

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Uploaded: 8 September 2001