André BRETON (1896-1966). Autograph manuscript, André Breton, November 17, 1944; 2pages in-4. Autobiographical note. The manuscript is overloaded with erasures and corrections. After mentioning his birth in Tinchebray in 1896, and his medical studies: "At the age of 17, was strongly attracted by Paul Valéry", with whom he had "very close relations". Then came mobilization and his posting to neuro-psychiatric centers, his discovery of Freud, whom he met in Vienna; his "long association with Guillaume Apollinaire, in his opinion the greatest poet of this century", and his "momentous encounter" with Jacques Vaché, the publication of his first collection Mont de Piété, the founding of the magazine Littérature with Soupault and Aragon, the Dada movement, the writing with Soupault of Champs magnétiques, "the first truly Surrealist work", the break with Dada, the founding and rise of Surrealism: "If one part of this work is socially oriented, another tends towards the resolution of conflicts of the most general psychological order: the opposition of madness and reason, of dream and action, of mental representation and physical perception"... He comments briefly on his works, from the Manifesto of Surrealism to Arcane 17; and he mentions his "speaker's duties at 'La Voix de l'Amérique'", the founding of the VVV magazine, and so on. Former Jacques Millot collection (Bibliothèque du Professeur Millot, June 15, 1991, no. 21).