Summary
Andre Breton: Anthology of Black Humor
Humor is a "high-class intellectual commodity", born from the ability of an extraordinary spirit to disrupt the order of the outside world, including the often more terrifying, inner world.
Black humor does not forgive anyone. Neither to those who, in accordance with their nature, shun it, nor to those who consider it a delicious poison, nor to those who release it like a merciless flame. It is no coincidence that with the latter, madness (Swift, Sade, Nietzsche), drugs (De Kency, Baudelaire), alcohol (Poe, Jarry), crime (Lanser) and suicide (Vache, Rigo, Roussel, Dipret) marked a style that goes beyond literature - a style of life and death.
It is no coincidence that the government in Vichy ordered the banning of the first edition of this anthology. All the selected texts and each of Breton's notes deal a blow to the moral order from which he can hardly defend himself.
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