Great Liberty - Julien Gracq

Great Liberty by Julien Gracq, translated by George MacLennan / ISBN 9781939663894 / 168-page paperback with flaps, 4.5 x 7 inches, from Wakefield Press *** “For me, surrealism never figured as a church; it was, above all, a new opening onto poetry.” —Julien Gracq In 1941, Julien Gracq, newly released from a German prisoner-of-war camp, put a projected second novel on hold, and instead 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 here, but the results exceed the classification of prose poetry. His manipulation of imaginative and metamorphic imagery generates bizarre, pha