Great Liberty
About this book
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 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 Shore and Balcony in the Forest . He was close to the Surrealist movement, and André Breton in particular, to whom he devoted a critical study.