Persécuté persécuteur

“Front rouge,” which opens the collection, first appeared in Moscow, in the 1931 issue of the journal 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 also having his manuscript rejected by Gallimard: Persécuté Persécuteur was thus published by Éditions Surréalistes de Corti.

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 too, but they treat us with new methods.”

Cancel label on the wrapper and title page from the Denoël et Steele edition, which bought up the unsold stock.