Photograph of Lamba and Breton by Claude Cahun, 1935-36

 

My lovely Demon … this to show you that I am still in the good graces of the demon. My beautiful liquid Element, I drown in you. Will there be heaths grey enough, rocks tormented enough, forests hollow enough for our flight together tonight? One more word, but let it be at least carried by my voice: I love you.

André

The Surrealist scholar and translator* Mary Ann Caws shares a letter from the leonine Pope of Surrealism to his second wife, Jacqueline Lamba, which Lamba gave to her one evening in the South of France. In this week's London Review of Books (subscription unfortunately required to see the full article, including the letter). The letter is being gifted to the Bibliothèque Littéraire Jacques Doucet in Paris.

*(and my dear friend & advisor)