TY - JOUR

T1 - André Breton and the Magic Capital

T2 - An Agony in Six Fits

AU - Sayer, Derek

PY - 2012

Y1 - 2012

N2 - While few would nowadays dispute Prague's claim to be "the second city of surrealism" after Paris, the popular notion that there is an intrinsic affinity between the Bohemian capital and the surrealist worldview—as first asserted by André Breton in 1935—is far more problematic. This article debunks the myth of "surrealist Prague," arguing that the coming together of former Czech poetists and French surrealists in the mid-1930s owed far more to the unique political circumstances of the time than to anything in the city's genius loci. If there is anything that makes Prague a fitting object of a surrealist sensibility it is the city's modern history, not its mythologized "magical" past.

AB - While few would nowadays dispute Prague's claim to be "the second city of surrealism" after Paris, the popular notion that there is an intrinsic affinity between the Bohemian capital and the surrealist worldview—as first asserted by André Breton in 1935—is far more problematic. This article debunks the myth of "surrealist Prague," arguing that the coming together of former Czech poetists and French surrealists in the mid-1930s owed far more to the unique political circumstances of the time than to anything in the city's genius loci. If there is anything that makes Prague a fitting object of a surrealist sensibility it is the city's modern history, not its mythologized "magical" past.

KW - Prague

KW - surrealism

M3 - Journal article

VL - 52

SP - 55

EP - 75

JO - Bohemia

JF - Bohemia

IS - 1

ER -