6.05.2006

"The traveling theaters of the seasons that played my life"

I've been reading portions of André Breton Selections (University of California, 2003), considering Breton's influence on groups of Latin American writers. A partial list might include César Moro, Emilio Adolfo Westphalen, Javier Sologuren, Juan Sánchez Peláez, Lorenzo García Vega, Roberto Bolaño.

One Breton poem from 1931 included in Selections is "Curtain Curtain," which begins:

"The travelling theaters of the seasons that played my life
While I booed
The proscenium had been converted into a prison cell from which I could hiss
With my hands on the bars I saw a backdrop of dark green
The heroine naked to the waist
Who committed suicide at the beginning of the first act
Inexplicably the play continued in the chandelier
Little by little the stage filled with fog
And sometimes I cried out
I broke the pitcher they had given me from which butterflies escaped
And rose madly towards the chandelier
Under the pretext of another ballet interlude of my thoughts that they insisted on performing for me
I then tried to slash my wrist with bits of brown earth
But these were lands in which I got lost
Impossible to pick up the thread of these travels
I was separated from everything by the bread of the sun [...] "

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