Lost Profiles: Memoirs of Cubism, Dada, and Surrealism

"The gentlest of renegades, the most tender of the French avant-garde poets, the co-author of the first literary work of automatic writing (The Magnetic Fields, 1919), Philippe Soupault was a central figure in both the Dada and Surrealist movements but throughout his long life walked under no banner except the one of artistic freedom. In this previously untranslated book, he gives us a collection of richly remembered portraits of some of his best-loved friends from the old days of the new modernism. A young disciple of the short-lived Apollinaire, the translator of Joyce's Anna Livia Plurabelle, the son of one of Proust's jeunes filles en fleurs, Soupault crossed paths with nearly everyone from that time whose name is still remembered today. As a glimpse into that time, these lost portraits are invaluable--and often deeply moving. The chapter about Proust alone is worth the price of admission, and then there is more, much more packed into the pages of this small, indelible book. Bravo to Alan Bernheimer for having given it to us."--Paul Auster, author of Report from the Interior "Poets must encourage each other because time is indifferent to the lives that flow through it. Time is what we are made of, but we are a rare school of fish that can see, in Rimbaud's sense, the substance that everyone disregards even as it dissolves them. We have to be young because we are the only force that can slow time down to reveal the beauty of its devastation. Reading Alan Bernheimer's splendid translation of Soupault's memoir, I forgot that it was a translation, that it was Soupault writing or talking about another time, about his friends of one century past. I read myself into these vivid and virile (so, sue me!) assaults on time, and Time stopped."--Andrei Condrescu, author of The Posthuman Dada Guide: Tzara and Lenin Play Chess "First published in 1963, this charming collection of reminiscences by surrealist poet Philippe Soupault offers warm, generous, appreciative profiles of some of his famous contemporaries. ... Sharp, stylish, and anecdotal, the book offers a fresh glimpse into a fertile artistic world."--Kirkus Reviews "In [Alan] Bernheimer's graceful translations, Soupault's little reflections on many of his contemporaries give readers the poet's own insights into a host of literary giants ... For anyone interested in early 20th-century literary and artistic movements, Bernheimer's translation is a worthy event."--Publishers Weekly "Soupault's lively, up-close<