Great Liberty |
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Author:
| Gracq, Julien |
Introduction by:
| MacLennan, George |
ISBN: | 978-1-939663-89-4 |
Publication Date: | Jun 2023 |
Publisher: | Wakefield Press
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Book Format: | Paperback |
List Price: | USD $14.95 |
Book Description:
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A previously untranslated gem of Surrealist prose poetry from the acclaimed French novelist
In 1941, Julien Gracq, newly released from a German prisoner-of-war camp, wrote a series of prose poems that would come to represent the only properly Surrealist writings in his oeuvre. Surrealism provided Gracq with a means of counteracting his disturbing wartime experiences; his newfound freedom inspired a new freedom of personal expression, and he gave the collection an appropriate...
More Description
A previously untranslated gem of Surrealist prose poetry from the acclaimed French novelist
In 1941, Julien Gracq, newly released from a German prisoner-of-war camp, wrote a series of prose poems that would come to represent the only properly Surrealist writings in his oeuvre. Surrealism provided Gracq with a means of counteracting his disturbing wartime experiences; his newfound freedom inspired a new freedom of personal expression, and he gave the collection an appropriate title, Great Liberty: "In the occult dictionary of Surrealism, the true name of poetry is liberation." Gracq the poet rather than the novelist is at work here: Surrealist fireworks lace through bewitching modernist romance, fantasy, black humor and deadpan absurdism. A later, postwar section entitled "The Habitable Earth" presents Gracq as visionary traveler exploring Andes and Flanders and returning to the narrative impulse of his better-known fiction.
Julien Gracq(1910-2007), born Louis Poirier, is known for such dreamlike novels as The Castle of Argol, A Dark Stranger, The Opposing Shoreand Balcony in the Forest. He was close to the Surrealist movement, and André Breton in particular, to whom he devoted a critical study.