MARK POLiZZOTTI
When Breton Met Trotsky
On April 2, 1938, Breton and Jacqueline embarked from Cherbourg on
the MS.
Orinoco,
bound for Veracruz, Mexico. In the headiness of travel
preparations, Breton had readily abandoned the Gradiva gallery that os–
tensibly he still ran, entrusting Tanguy with the task of liquidating its as–
sets and transferring its holdings to Jeanne Bucher's gallery. Nor did he
have many qualms about leaving preparations for the next
Minotaure
to
his fellow editors. For the latter, he nonetheless sent a hasty note from
Cherbourg to be inserted in the upcoming issue: "The Mexico toward
which I am heading,
Minotaure
that for once will appear without me -
you know that in my mind these two words hold 'the place and the
formula,' that they reveal two sides of the same truth ."
With, presumably, more concern, Breton and Jacqueline also left
behind the two-year-old Aube, who would spend the next four months
in the care of Andre Masson, his wife, Rose, and their two young sons,
in the Norman village of Lyons-la-Foret. From the outset, and despite
the good intentions of the little girl's hosts, Aube's stay presented prob–
lems. She first suffered what appears to have been a serious intestinal ail–
ment, which started with the Bretons' departure and lingered through–
out April, then came down with a bad case of bronchitis in June. What
troubled Aube more than her physical illnesses, of course, was the pro–
longed absence of "Ada and Zacline," as she called her parents. As Mas–
son reported, she at first refused to believe that they had gone away at
all: "She always insists that you're nearby: behind the door ... or at the
edge of the forest, near the garden," he wrote on April 14. Then, once
Aube had understood the situation, she refused to hear any more about
them. With scarcely concealed disapproval, Rose Masson watched as the
toddler's sadness slowly turned into deep resentment. "To be honest, I've
stopped talking to her about you," she told Breton and Jacqueline in
May. ''I'd noticed that she was troubled, worried, and depressed ... I'm
a little tormented by all this." And she warned them not to be surprised
if Aube spurned them on their return: "If her childish whims tell her
otherwise, no matter what we do, she won't open her arms to you."
Editor's Note: Excerpted from REVOLUTION OF THE MIND: The Life of Andre Breton by
Mark Polizzotti, to be published by Farrar, Straus
&
Giroux. Copyright
«:l
1995 by Mark Polizzotti.
All rights reserved.
