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| Littérature (journal) | |
|---|---|
| Title | Littérature |
| Language | French |
| Country | France |
| Discipline | Literature |
| Editor | André Breton |
| Firstdate | 1919 |
| Finaldate | 1924 |
| Frequency | Irregular |
Littérature (journal) was a Parisian avant‑garde periodical founded in the aftermath of World War I that served as a nexus for writers, artists, and critics associated with early 20th‑century literary movements. The review published poetry, manifestos, essays, and visual work by figures who intersected with Dada, Surrealism, Cubism, and Futurism, shaping debates in Parisian salons, galleries, and cafés such as the Café de la Rotonde, Café de Flore, and Les Deux Magots. Contributors and correspondents included participants in circles around André Breton, Louis Aragon, Philippe Soupault, and later interlocutors connected to Paul Éluard, Max Ernst, and Man Ray.
Littérature emerged during the post‑war cultural reconfiguration that involved actors from the Dada upheaval in Zürich, the Dada events in Berlin, and the recovery scenes in Paris and Montparnasse. Its founding team—linked to André Breton, Philippe Soupault, and Louis Aragon—reacted to wartime ruptures epitomized by the Treaty of Versailles era and debated aesthetic reinvention alongside figures who had been active in World War I‑era networks. Early issues featured exchanges with correspondents associated with Tristan Tzara, Marcel Duchamp, and Hannah Höch, placing the review within transnational dialogues that reached the Netherlands, Italy, and Spain. Over successive numbers the journal navigated schisms between proponents of continuation of Dada provocations and advocates for a constructive theory later codified in connection with Surrealist Manifesto‑era positions.
The editorial collective aligned with editors such as André Breton and collaborators like Louis Aragon, Philippe Soupault, Paul Éluard, Pierre Reverdy, and visual artists including Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, Francis Picabia, and Georges Braque. Guest pieces came from writers and critics tied to institutions and movements such as Académie Française observers, participants in exhibitions at the Salon d'Automne, and émigré voices associated with Russian émigrés in Paris and the Dada Berlin milieu. The journal hosted polemics involving figures like Guillaume Apollinaire, Stéphane Mallarmé (posthumous references), and later interlocutors including Antonin Artaud and Louis-Ferdinand Céline in relation to evolving debates over poetics and ethics in literature and art.
Issues combined experimental poetry, automatic writing experiments, artistic reproductions, and critical essays debating topics such as chance operations championed by Marcel Duchamp and pictorial fragmentation associated with Cubism practitioners like Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso. The review published automatic texts from contributors influenced by Sigmund Freud’s theories and by ethnographic encounters with artefacts in institutions like the Musée du Louvre and the British Museum; discussions connected to Colonial exhibitions and debates about primitivism also circulated in its pages. Thematic clusters engaged with Cinema circles around Luis Buñuel and Jean Epstein, music intersections with Erik Satie and Igor Stravinsky, and the visual‑textual experiments of figures linked to Dada and early Surrealism.
The review occupied an intermediary position between the disruptive anti‑art gestures of Dada groups—such as those organized by Tristan Tzara in Zürich and Hugo Ball—and the more programmatic theorizing later consolidated in the Surrealist Manifesto authored by André Breton. Contributors included former Dadaists like Francis Picabia and Marcel Duchamp who negotiated their practices in relation to emerging Surrealist doctrines associated with automatic writing and psychoanalytic models. Conflicts and collaborations overlapped with public events involving participants from Société des Amis de l'Art gatherings, editorial disputes with rival reviews such as La Révolution surréaliste, and polemical exchanges touching figures connected to the Dreyfus Affair generation of writers.
Produced in Paris, the review issued irregular numbers with typographic experiments, reproductions of collages, and foldouts reminiscent of portfolios in exhibition catalogues for venues like the Salon des Indépendants and the Galerie Dalmau. Distribution relied on bookshops and newsstands frequented by readers of Mercure de France and La Nouvelle Revue Française as well as through salons that connected to the Montparnasse and Montmartre networks. Print runs were limited, copies circulated among subscribers and correspondents in centers such as Berlin, London, New York City, Barcelona, and Rome, while exchanges with émigré circles in Buenos Aires and Mexico City extended its reach.
Contemporaneous reception involved sharp criticism and enthusiastic endorsements from critics associated with Gustave Kahn, Jules Romains, and later commentators like Georges Bataille. The review contributed to conceptual formations that influenced later journals and manifestos in Surrealism, impacted visual practices of artists linked to Abstract art trajectories, and informed cinema experiments by Luis Buñuel and Jean Cocteau. Subsequent literary histories and exhibitions at institutions such as the Centre Pompidou and the Museum of Modern Art have foregrounded its role in early 20th‑century avant‑garde networks.
Archival holdings of issues, correspondence, and manuscripts appear in repositories including the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the Archives Nationales (France), and private collections associated with estates of André Breton, Louis Aragon, and Max Ernst. Research on the journal informs scholarship found in university collections at Sorbonne University, Columbia University, and Université de Montréal, and exhibitions at galleries like the Galerie Maeght and the Kunsthalle have revisited its materials. Its legacy persists in contemporary studies of early avant‑garde print culture, and in the continued citation by curators, critics, and historians mapping connections among Dada, Surrealism, and European modernism.
Category:French literary magazines Category:Avant-garde magazines Category:Surrealism