French writer, poet, essayist and critic known as one of the founder of surrealism. Defiantly unconventional, Breton had a life history of sordid love affairs with unstable women, emotional ventures into French radical politics and dramatic oscillations between needy dependence and bossy authoritarianism. Far from an admirable character, he was impulsive and self-centered, but always interesting. He met nearly everyone on the French literary scene and modern painters, including De Chirico and Picasso – and quarreled with some of the most famous figures of his day.
The son of a shopkeeper, he spent his childhood on the Brittany coasts, raised by a genial father and a severe, unloving mother whose main purpose seems to have been to terrorize her son into respectability, an assignment in which she conspicuously failed. He allowed himself to be pushed into studying medicine and as a medical student, served in psycho wards during WW I where he made some attempts to use Freudian methods to psychoanalyze his patients. In these wards, he began to form his theory on the kinship between madness, dreams and art. In 1916 he joined the Dadaist group, but left after quarrels. Turning to Surrealism, he co founded with Louis Aragon and Philippe Soupault the magazine “Litt‚rature.” Influenced by psychological theories, Breton defined Surrealism as a means of reuniting conscious and unconscious realms of experience so that the world of dream and fantasy would be joined to everyday world.
He found his vocation in poetry, searching all of his lifetime for the irrational sources of the mind as they erupt. He directed his unsurpassed gift for invective and noisy demonstration against conventional literature, middle-class tastes and liberal icons. He demonstrated his distaste for propriety with explosive, obscene gestures. Order and bourgeoisie were the enemy. His refusal to compromise made him the undisputed leader of the surrealist pack.
Indiscretion was his strong suit as a matter of principle; he would report his infatuations and his sexual triumphs to his long-suffering wife, Simone, until she could take no more and divorced him.
His private life remained as chaotic as before; he kept discovering dazzling women and being discovered by others. In 1934 he married again, hoping for some stability.
Early in 1927, after painful and prolonged discussions in the inner circle, Breton applied for membership in the Communist Party. It proved a calamitous move. When Hitler came into power with the Nazi Party, Breton took a safe stance by moving to the U.S. with his second wife and young daughter in 1941. While there, he refused to learn English but found former compatriots with whom he could speak French. He separated from his second wife and found a third before he returned to France in 1946. Breton remained as obstreperous as always, inducting a new generation into surrealism and refusing lucrative prizes although he needed the money. He held the role of an important guru to a group of young Surrealists in the 1940s and 1950s, influencing the generation of writers to come.
Breton was the author of “The Manifesto of Surrealism,” 1924. In the 1930s he published several collection of poems, including “Mad Love,” 1937. However, his prose has been more highly rated than his poetry, and among his masterworks is “Nadja,” 1928, a portrait of Breton and a mad and inspired woman.
He died on 9/28/1966, 6:30 AM, Paris.
Link to Wikipedia biography