Benjamin Péret

Benjamin Péret (July 4th 1899, Rezé - September 18th 1959, Paris) was a surrealist writer with a “cutting fork with stereotype”.

His/her mother makes engage this rebellious teenager as male nurse during DER of Ders. It proves to be a gifted schoolkid of a humor medical student.

In 1920, dadaïste follower of the bad taste , it takes part in the lawsuit against Barrès, propagandist of the ground, deaths, the Patrie. Péret plays the part of the “unknown soldier”, covered of a hood of French soldier but speaking German.

In 1922, it meets Robert Desnos and the surrealist ones with which it launches out in the automatic writing, whose absurd syntax of the sentence hustles conventions of the language, and in particular the Proverbes.

It restores it to them by the Calembour, the Contrepèterie, the inversion of the usual order of the words in the sentence. For example: “I wonder a little: who does one mislead here? Ah! I am mistaken a little: who does one ASK here? ”.

Péret is one of the most singular Poète S surrealist: virtuosity of the automatic writing, luxuriance baroque of the images (started again infinitely by a single use of the relative clause), burlesque humor desacralisator, transgressive audacity. The poetry of Benjamin Péret fits in the Surréalisme higher flight, under the ascending sign of abundance, the Liberté.

Course

Brazil

In 1928, it marries the Brazilian Cantatrice Elsie Houston, and becomes acquainted with Mario Pedrosa, her brother-in-law, who has just subscribed to the theses of Trotski. With the Brésil, where it remains of 1929 with 1931, it invents a kind of new life which makes of him simultaneously: oppositional of left, a poet to defer curious about ritual about the Makumba and Candomblé, a corrector, a father (his son, Geyser, are born on August 31st 1931) and a Political prisoner. Péret is finally expelled like “communist agitator” by the government of Getulio Vargas. Returned in France, he is member of the Communist Union after having adhered in 1925 to the PCF. He moves away from there then to approach little time after Grandizo Munis.

Spain

He goes in Spain near the republican as delegated POI (Left Working Internationalist), left claiming ideas Trotski.

Returned to France, he is imprisoned in May 1940 with Rennes during three weeks with the reason for reconstitution of dissolved Ligue (trotskist) then released in bond by the Nazis which have just occupied the Brittany. Returned in Paris, it slips of very beautiful shells into a collaborator newspaper while directing the first meetings of the group the Hand with feather with Robert Rius. The cold and the hunger push it to leave the capital for Marseilles where it takes refuge in March 1941, it works a time with the co-operative Croquefruit.

Mexico

In Barcelona, Péret met the painter Spanish Remedios Varo and will marry it in 1946. When the Surrealist ones flee the Nazis, Varo and Péret leave for Mexico in 1941. (They will separate later on.) Péret remains of 1942 with 1948 with the Mexico under difficult financial conditions, but is fascinated by Maya art and the myths and legends of the companies précolombiennes. He undertakes vast a Anthologie which he finishes little time before his death. He writes the Dishonor of the poets (1945) , a lampoon against the versifiers who with the “Libération” were made the heralds of is delirious nationalist.

France

Income in France, it writes for the surrealist reviews while taking part politically in the Décolonisation and the critic of the Stalinisme.

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