Persécuté persécuteur

“Front rouge”, which opens the collection, first appeared in Moscow, in the 1931 issue of the review Littérature de la Révolution mondiale. Because of this publication, Aragon was formally charged with “inciting soldiers to disobedience” and “incitement to murder for anarchist propaganda purposes.”

The Surrealists, led by André Breton, immediately organized his defense. In a public declaration entitled “L’Affaire Aragon,” they protested against the principle of prosecuting a poet for his writings, and Breton also published Misère de la poésie to assert the poet’s autonomy.

However, Aragon did not recognize himself in Breton’s text and announced his break with him in L’Humanité of 10 March 1932, while his manuscript was refused by Gallimard: Persécuté Persécuteur had to be published by the Éditions surréalistes at Corti. Aragon commented: “In the seventeenth century, writers were arrested, censorship seized books, one had to have oneself printed in Holland. We Surrealists are in the same position, but they treat us with new methods.”

Complete with the erratum on page 18.

A fine copy on green paper, all copies hors commerce (after 15 copies on Imperial Japan paper, 30 on Hollande and 70 on vélin Johannot).

Lhermitte, 33.