Cavalier Perspective

The final book by the founder of Surrealism, translated into English for the first time."Cavalier Perspective shows us the lion in winter, Andre Breton near the end of his life, trying to reconcile all the contradictions of his extraordinary career. It is unexpectedly moving to watch him wrestling with his ghosts, aiming for magic, fitting himself uneasily into the new alien landscape of the 1960s."-Lucy Sante, author of I Heard Her Call My Name: A Memoir of TransitionAs leader and chief theoretician of Surrealism, director of myriad publications from the 1920s through the 1960s, poet Andre Breton was a prolific writer of prose. Author of numerous books, essays, and manifestoes, Breton periodically collected his most significant short essays into carefully arranged volumes. His last such collection, Cavalier Perspective, appeared posthumously in 1970; in it, editor Marguerite Bonnet assembled "articles, prefaces, responses to surveys, interviews," written between 1952 and 1966. Modeled on its predecessors, Cavalier Perspective is considered Breton's final book.