Le Paysan de Paris

Last updated
Le Paysan de Paris
Author Louis Aragon
LanguageFrench
GenreSurrealism
PublisherEditions Gallimard
Publication date
1926
Published in English
1971

Le Paysan de Paris is a surrealist book about places in Paris. Written by Louis Aragon, it was first published in 1926 by Editions Gallimard. The book was first published in English in 1971 under the title Paris Peasant by Jonathan Cape, in a translation by Simon Watson Taylor, English member of the Surrealist movement. [1]

The book was dedicated to the Surrealist painter André Masson and its preface was on the theme of a modern mythology. The two main sections of the books describe two places in Paris in great detail: Le Passage de l'Opera and Parc des Buttes-Chaumont . The detailed descriptions provide a realistic backdrop for surrealist spectacles such as the transformation of a shop into a seascape in which a siren appears and then disappears. This literary device is le merveilleux quotidien a contrast of the mundane with the marvellous. [2]

Arnold Bennett described the work as stimulating but uneven. He thought it the best of the six books which he bought in Paris when visiting there in 1927. [2] Walter Benjamin was deeply affected by the book, which became a point of departure for his unfinished magnum opus, The Arcades Project . [3] Louis Aragon was disappointed with the book's reception by the French literary establishment which he considered too bourgeois and commercial. [4]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marcel Proust</span> French novelist, literary critic, and essayist (1871–1922)

Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust was a French novelist, literary critic, and essayist who wrote the monumental novel À la recherche du temps perdu which was published in seven volumes between 1913 and 1927. He is considered by critics and writers to be one of the most influential authors of the 20th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Surrealism</span> International cultural movement active from the 1920s to the 1950s

Surrealism is an art and cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists aimed to allow the unconscious mind to express itself, often resulting in the depiction of illogical or dreamlike scenes and ideas. Its intention was, according to leader André Breton, to "resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality into an absolute reality, a super-reality", or surreality. It produced works of painting, writing, theatre, filmmaking, photography, and other media as well.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">André Breton</span> French co-founder of Surrealism (1896–1966)

André Robert Breton was a French writer and poet, the co-founder, leader, and principal theorist of surrealism. His writings include the first Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Simone de Beauvoir</span> French philosopher, social theorist and activist (1908–1986)

Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir was a French existentialist philosopher, writer, social theorist, and feminist activist. Though she did not consider herself a philosopher, nor was she considered one at the time of her death, she had a significant influence on both feminist existentialism and feminist theory.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Léon-Paul Fargue</span> French poet and essayist

Léon-Paul Fargue was a French poet and essayist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Éluard</span> French poet (1895–1952)

Paul Éluard, born Eugène Émile Paul Grindel, was a French poet and one of the founders of the Surrealist movement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Louis Aragon</span> French poet (1897–1982)

Louis Aragon was a French poet who was one of the leading voices of the surrealist movement in France. He co-founded with André Breton and Philippe Soupault the surrealist review Littérature. He was also a novelist and editor, a long-time member of the Communist Party and a member of the Académie Goncourt. After 1959, he was a frequent nominee for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Comte de Lautréamont</span> Uruguayan-born French author (1846–1870)

Comte de Lautréamont was the nom de plume of Isidore Lucien Ducasse, a French poet born in Uruguay. His only works, Les Chants de Maldoror and Poésies, had a major influence on modern arts and literature, particularly on the Surrealists and the Situationists. Ducasse died at the age of 24.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Walter Benjamin</span> German cultural critic, philosopher and social critic (1892–1940)

Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin was a German Jewish philosopher, cultural critic, media theorist, and essayist. An eclectic thinker who combined elements of German idealism, Romanticism, Western Marxism, Jewish mysticism, and neo-Kantianism, Benjamin made influential contributions to aesthetic theory, literary criticism, and historical materialism. He was associated with the Frankfurt School and also maintained formative friendships with thinkers such as playwright Bertolt Brecht and Kabbalah scholar Gershom Scholem. He was related to German political theorist and philosopher Hannah Arendt through her first marriage to Benjamin's cousin Günther Anders, though the friendship between Arendt and Benjamin outlasted her marriage to Anders. Both Arendt and Anders were students of Martin Heidegger, whom Benjamin considered a nemesis.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">André Masson</span> French painter

André-Aimé-René Masson was a French artist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">René Char</span> French poet and resistance member (1907–1988)

René Émile Char was a French poet and member of the French Resistance.

Les Éditions de Minuit is a French publishing house. It was founded in 1941, during the French Resistance of World War II, and is still publishing books today.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Desnos</span> French writer

Robert Desnos was a French poet who played a key role in the Surrealist movement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nicolas Restif de la Bretonne</span> French novelist

Nicolas Restif de la Bretonne, born Nicolas-Edme Rétif or Nicolas-Edme Restif, also known as Rétif, was a French novelist. The term retifism for shoe fetishism was named after him. He was also reputed to have coined the term "pornographer" in the same-named book, The Pornographer.

The Surrealist Manifesto refers to several publications by Yvan Goll and André Breton, leaders of rival surrealist groups. Goll and Breton both published manifestos in October 1924 titled Manifeste du surréalisme. Breton wrote a second manifesto in 1929, which was published the following year, and a third in 1942.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Julien Gracq</span> French writer

Julien Gracq was a French writer. He wrote novels, critiques, a play, and poetry. His literary works were noted for their dreamlike abstraction, elegant style and refined vocabulary. He was close to the surrealist movement, in particular its leader André Breton.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Philippe Soupault</span> French writer (1897–1990)

Philippe Soupault was a French writer and poet, novelist, critic, and political activist. He was active in Dadaism and later was instrumental in founding the Surrealist movement with André Breton. Soupault initiated the periodical Littérature together with writers Breton and Louis Aragon in Paris in 1919, which, for many, marks the beginnings of Surrealism. The first book of automatic writing, Les Champs magnétiques (1920), was co-authored by Soupault and Breton.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roger Vitrac</span> French surrealist playwright and poet

Roger Vitrac was a French surrealist playwright and poet.

Simon Watson Taylor was an English actor and translator, often associated with the Surrealist movement. He was born in Wallingford, Oxfordshire and died in London.

Le Surréalisme au service de la révolution was a periodical issued by the Surrealist Group in Paris between 1930 and 1933. It was the successor of La Révolution surréaliste and preceded the primarily surrealist publication Minotaure.

References

  1. George Melly (2005), Simon Watson Taylor; Surrealist turned anarchist, Pataphysician and hippie
  2. 1 2 Peter Edgerly Firchow (2003), "Nadja and Le Paysan de Paris", Reluctant modernists, ISBN   978-3-8258-5962-6
  3. "Walter Benjamin". The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. 2021.
  4. Robin Walz (2000), Pulp surrealism: insolent popular culture in early twentieth-century Paris, ISBN   978-0-520-21619-8