Robert DESNOS.

[On Jean Gengenbach]. No place or date [1927]. Autograph manuscript of 33 pages in-4. Unpublished autograph manuscript: recollections on Jean Gengenbach's "entry into surrealism". Often comical account of the irruption of Ernest de Gengenbach (1903-1979) in the surrealist group. Former Jesuit seminarian who insisted on wearing the cassock, he was a "mythomaniac and adventurer" according to Michel Leiris in L'Age d'homme. He tried in vain to extort money from André Breton (50,000 francs to kill the pope, then, having had no answer, he proposed 20,000 for a cardinal, then 10,000 for an archbishop, 5,000 for a bishop, 3,000 for a parish priest and, finally, 1,500 "to kill any priest or monk"), then Desnos evoked the purchase of very luxurious ecclesiastical vestments, the bill for which was sent by Gengenbach to the bishopric; the harassment of Kiki and Pierre Loeb, etc. Until the controversial conference on the devil in Paris. Desnos claims that Gengenbach "tried to reconcile Breton and Reverdy and even to make Breton a monk, even if it was on a trial basis for a few days. One can imagine how he was received." He also reports a walk one evening with Gengenbach and Artaud: "Surrendering, the first to his mystifying mysticism and the second to his capering and his delirium of persecution by disease, I soon sank into a quasi-abstruction. The religious and ethical evocations of the first one mixed with the filthy and organic images of the second one did not correspond well to the images that the night gives birth to in me [...]". He finally brought them back to Paris, leaving them "in a café frequented by cranes where they continued their sterile and desolate dialogue face to face." Desnos' account was undoubtedly used by André Breton to compose his introduction to Gengenbach's conference at the ADYAR hall on April 3, 1927 (cf. Breton, OEuvres complètes I, pp. 923-927) Attached is a letter entitled "Post cryptum" which seems to be from the very young Gengenbach.