Cavalier Perspective: Last Essays, 1952-1966

Author: André Breton Translator: Austin Carder Publisher: City Lights (2025) As leader and chief theoretician of Surrealism, director of myriad publications from the 1920s through the 1960s, poet André Breton was a prolific writer of prose. Author of numerous books, essays, and manifestoes, Breton periodically collected his most significant short essays into carefully arranged volumes. His last such collection, Cavalier Perspective, appeared posthumously in 1970; in it, editor Marguerite Bonnet assembled “articles, prefaces, responses to surveys, interviews,” written between 1952 and 1966. Modeled on its predecessors, Cavalier Perspective is considered Breton’s final book. Over 50 years after its initial publication, its appearance in English today is a crucial cultural event; here we encounter Breton writing on topics nearest to our present day and most relevant to current social and political issues. Cavalier Perspective finds Breton steadfastly pursuing his anti-fascist, anti-coloni