Persécuté Persécuteur

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

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

Aragon, however, did not recognize himself in Breton’s text and announced their break in L’Humanité on 10 March 1932, while his manuscript was rejected by Gallimard: Persécuté Persécuteur had to be published instead by the Éditions Surréalistes at Corti’s. Aragon himself commented: “In the seventeenth century, writers were arrested, censorship seized books, one had to have oneself printed in Holland. We Surrealists have come to that point, but they treat us with new methods.”

Complete with its erratum on page 18.

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

Lhermitte, 33.