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Rereading Breton's Debt to Apollinaire:
Surrealism and Aesthetics
of Creative Imaging

Adrianna M. Paliyenko

André Breton's reading of Guillaume Apollinaire maps a fundamental
ambivalence since he often acknowledged Apollinaire's concepts while
disparaging them. Rather than considering the significance of this
ambivalent stance, critics have taken exclusive positions. Those
focused on radical differences distinguish Breton from Apollinaire, whereas others
underscore similar premises to link them. 1 This critical opposition invites a reread-
ing of these two poets in terms of poetic revisionism which governs the relation
between creative artists dialogically, both distancing and connecting. 2 My discus-
sion retraces the surrealist notion of poetic imaging that Breton inferred from
Apollinaire's statements on creativity to sketch the revisionist dialogue between
them. This rereading reveals that Breton retained concepts he purportedly exclud-
ed through swerves aimed at repressing Apollinaire's literary paternity.

Breton, in asserting his originality in the 1924 Manifeste du surréalisme,
defends his poetic identity against Apollinaire's influence. He cites Apollinaire
only as the source of the term surréalisme, distinguishing Apollinairean poetics
(or lack thereof) from that of the early Surrealists:

En hommage à Guillaume Apollinaire qui venait de mourir et qui, à plusieurs repris-
es, nous paraissait avoir obéi à un entraînement de ce genre, sans toutefois y avoir
sacrifié de médiocres moyens littéraires, Soupault et moi nous désignâmes sous le
nom de SURREALISME le nouveau mode d'expression pure que nous renions à
notre disposition. . . . Je crois qu'il n'y a plus aujourd'hui à revenir sur ce mot et que
l'acceptation dans laquelle nous l'avons pris a prévalu généralement sur son accepta-
tion apollinairienne. (327) 3

-18-

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Publication Information: Article Title: Rereading Breton's Debt to Apollinaire: Surrealism and Aesthetics of Creative Imaging. Contributors: Adrianna M. Paliyenko - author. Journal Title: Romance Quarterly. Volume: 42. Issue: 1. Publication Year: 1995. Page Number: 18.
    
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