Arcanum 17
Book description
André Breton wrote Arcanum 17 during a trip to the Gaspé Peninsula in Quebec in the months after D-Day in 1944, when the Allied troops were liberating Occupied Europe. Using the huge Percé Rock-its impermanence, its slow-motion crumbling, its singular beauty-as his central metaphor, Breton considers love and loss, aggression…
Why read it?
1 author picked Arcanum 17 as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
André Breton’s book is a patchwork of literary forms, crazy-quilted together to form an amazing image of the world during World War II. At that time, Breton was in exile from Nazi-occupied France, and he visited Quebec in Canada to experience again the comfort and familiarity of being in a French-speaking land.
The book is part poetry and part prose, sometimes a journal, at other times a political meditation, and then a series of stories from mythology and the mystic Tarot. Breton’s ultimate take on living through a world war for the second time is that our daily existence needs…
From Zack's list on cross genres to tell compelling stories.
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