André Breton 120th Anniversary

❝ Toute ma vie, mon cœur a aspiré à une chose que je ne peux pas nommer. 

All my life, my heart has yearned for a thing I cannot name. 

❝ I know despair in its broad outlines. Despair has no wings, 
it is not necessarily found at a cleared table upon a terrace, in the evening by the seaside. It is despair and it is not the return of a quantity of little facts like seeds leaving one furrow for another at nightfall. It is not moss upon a stone or a drinking glass. It is a boat riddled with snow, if you please, like birds falling and their blood has not the slightest thickness. I know despair in its broad outlines. 

from Le Verbe Être

 - André Breton - 

February 19, 1896 - September 28, 1966 

by Man Ray, 1938 
Breton has dedicated this photo to his friends Frida Kahlo 
& Diego Rivera. 
Museo Frida Kahlo 

André Breton 

André Breton, Le Verbe Être 
© Poesie Net 
"The Verb to Be" a Poem by André Breton 
© The Paris Review 

Manifesto of Surrealism 1924 

André Breton : The Poetry Foundation


André Breton voice - in french.