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Maurice BLANCHOT

Lettre tapuscrite à Breton plus questionnaire signé par Breton

22 juillet 1955, 26,5x20,7cm, un feuillet.

Typescript draft of a letter to André Breton, with autograph corrections and one line written by hand, with a questionnaire addressed to Blanchot by André Breton concerning magical art, with one line written by hand and signed.
One 4to leaf, recto only, with corrections and a line in black ink in the hand of Maurice Blanchot, and another 4to leaf (27,5 x 21,5 cm) printed and illustrated in black, recto-verso, with a hand-written line and signature by André Breton in purple ink.
 
When, in 1955, André Breton wrote to Maurice Blanchot, the two men already knew each other and had spent time together, developing a mutual appreciation but always keeping a respectful distance. Breton was working at the time on his important book L'Art magique [Magical Art] (Paris, 1957) and it was for this work that he undertook a huge survey of eighty figures (mainly artists, but also sociologists, ethnologists, philosophers, art historians, critics, and so on), including Blanchot. In order to conduct this survey, Breton published a tract entitled “Formes de l'art [Forms of Art]” illustrated with twelve images (of Egyptian, Gallic, Pre-Columbian, and Oceanian art as well as tarot, Paolo Uccello, etc.) which showed his progress and ended in a series of five questions on the links between art, magic, and modernity. “I am taking the liberty, my dear Maurice Blanchot, of asking for [your responses ] most particularly. André Breton “.
On the 22nd July, Blanchot replies, ”It has always seemed to me that the word ‘magic', like the word ‘religion' can help us to approach what art truly represents, since in certain eras we could get to one via the other; but there was a moment when we had to forsake that path, and it is as though the thing for which art is the harbinger, the thing that speaks in poetry, is a more profoundly original word. It is as if works of art or poetry enunciated a beginning in a more fundamental way than the power – magic or religious – that they took on in order to manifest themselves or act. “Like the answers of other respondents, Blanchot's text was to appear in L'Art magique.
 
A very interesting collaboration between Maurice Blanchot and André Breton on the subject of magic.

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