Slim 12 pp. booklet with texts signed off on by a variety of Surrealist and avant-garde figures, not illustrated. Octavo (8 x 5 1/8 inches). Original side-stapled printed wrappers. Consistent browning throughout, light foxing along fore-edge, overall very good. Paris: Éditions Surréalistes, 1932.

"L'Affaire Aragon" refers to the events surrounding the departure in 1932 of one of the Surrealist movement's co-founders, Louis Aragon. A few years prior, Aragon and André Breton spoke out about the need for the surrealists to support the Communist Party, Breton wrote the Second Surrealist Manifesto, and Aragon authored an article in La Révolution Surréaliste titled "Surréalisme au Service de la Révolution". In 1931, a poem Aragon had written in Moscow the year before was published in France, titled "Red Front". Aragon was prosecuted for telling soldiers to disobey orders in his poem. The following year, Breton and the other surrealists published a pamphlet in defense of Aragon, but the Communist Party's publication "L'Humanité" issued a counter-statement avowing that Aragon disapproved of Breton's pamphlet, calling the authors counter-revolutionary. This "Aragon affair" solidified the breach between the two and led to Aragon's leaving the movement and aligning himself firmly with the PCF.

This slim booklet regarding "notre camarade Aragon" contains brief texts signed by Aragon himself and noted members of the surrealist movement Georges Sadoul, René Char, René Crevel, Salvador Dali, Paul Eluard, Max Ernst, Benjamin Péret, Yves Tanguy, André Thirion, and Tristan Tzara.

Book ID: 53531

Price: $950.00