Philippe Soupault Books
August 2, 1897 – March 12, 1990
Philippe Soupault was a pivotal figure in French literary modernism, co-founding the Surrealist movement and actively participating in Dada. His writing delves into the subconscious and redefines reality through experimental techniques. Soupault's approach, particularly his pioneering work in automatic writing, pushed the boundaries of language and narrative structure. His distinctive voice left an indelible mark on poetry and prose.
Lost Profiles
- 102 pages
- 4 hours of reading
A retrospective of crucial periods in modernism via portraits of its literary lions by the co-founder of the Surrealist Movement.
Last Nights Of Paris
- 176 pages
- 7 hours of reading
Written in 1928 by one of the founders of the Surrealist movement, and translated the following year by William Carlos Williams (the two had been introduced in Paris by a mutual friend), Last Nights of Paris is related to Surrealist novels such as Nadja and Paris Peasant, but also to the American expatriate novels of its day such as Day of the Locust. The story concerns the narrator's obsession with a woman who leads him into an underworld that promises to reveal the secrets of the city itself... and in Williams' wonderfully direct translation it reads like a lost Great American Novel. A vivid portrait of the city that entranced both its native writers and the Americans who traveled to it in the 20's, Last Nights of Paris is a rare collaboration between the literary circles at the root of both French and American Modernism.
A Rimbaudesque novella of wayward wanderlust and liberty from the cofounder of Surrealism Conceived in a hospital bed in 1917 and written a few months later after his fateful encounter with Lautréamont's Maldoror, Philippe Soupault's novella The Voyage of Horace Pirouellepreceded the author's involvement with Parisian Dada and the Surrealist movement he would later launch with his friends. Inspired by a schoolmate's sudden departure for Greenland on a whim and his subsequent disappearance, Soupault imagines his alter ego's adventures as entries in a journal both personal and fictional. Adopted by an Inuit tribe, Pirouelle drifts from one encounter to another, from one casual murder to another, until his life of liberty and spontaneity leads him to stasis at the edge of existence. After taking an active part in French Dada, Philippe Soupault(1897-1990) cofounded the Surrealist movement with André Breton and Louis Aragon, and authored with Breton The Magnetic Fields, the first official Surrealist work. After being expelled from the movement for the crime of being "too literary," he devoted his life to writing, travel, journalism and political activity (for which he was put in prison by the collaborationist Vichy government).
Les Champs magnétiques
- 182 pages
- 7 hours of reading
suivi de S'Il Vous Plaît et de Vous M'Oublierez
L'Imaginaire: Les dernières nuits de Paris
- 162 pages
- 6 hours of reading
«Je vivais à Tunis depuis 1938 où j’ai dirigé jusqu’à l’armistice de 1940 les services de presse, d’information et de radiodiffusion de la Tunisie. J’habitais dans une maison arabe, au centre de la ville indigène, qu’on appelle la Médina. Depuis juin 1940, dans ce protectorat français, spontanément des centres de résistance se formèrent. Timidement, maladroitement ceux qui ne pouvaient accepter Vichy (ce nom résume toutes les lâchetés, les bêtises, les crimes de la "Révolution" dite nationale) cherchèrent à se grouper et à agir. Ils firent de leur mieux. — Mais ceci est une autre histoire. De 1941 à 1942, la police vichyssoise chercha à réduire ces centres de résistance et à intimider les opposants. Une liste de suspects fut dressée. On me fit l’honneur de m’y inscrire. Puis au mois de mars 1942 on commença à poursuivre les suspects. Je fus chargé sur l’une des premières charrettes. Le 12 mars l’ordre fut donné de m'arrêter.»
Ce sont de merveilleux contes que Ré et Philippe Soupault ont rassemblés aux quatre coins du monde. Avec l'aide d'animaux bienfaisants, les héros de ce premier tome accomplissent des missions impossibles. Ici une colombe réunit une famille séparée. Là un cygne rouge se transforme en une belle jeune fille.
