Great Liberty

By Julien Gracq

A previously untranslated gem of Surrealist prose poetry from the acclaimed French novelist

In 1941, Julien Gracq, newly released from a German prisoner-of-war camp, wrote a series of prose poems that would come to represent the only properly Surrealist writings in his oeuvre. Surrealism provided Gracq with a means of counteracting his disturbing wartime experiences; his newfound freedom inspired a new freedom of personal expression, and he gave the collection an appropriate title, Great Liberty: "In the occult dictionary of Surrealism, the true name of poetry is liberation." Gracq the poet rather than the novelist is at work here: Surrealist fireworks lace through bewitching modernist romance, fantasy, black humor and deadpan absurdism. A later, postwar section entitled "The Habitable Earth" presents Gracq as visionary traveler exploring Andes and Flanders and returning to the narrative impulse of his better-known fiction.
Julien Gracq (1910-2007), born Louis Poirier, is known for such dreamlike novels as The Castle of Argol, A Dark Stranger, The Opposing Shore and Balcony in the Forest. He was close to the Surrealist movement, and Andr Breton in particular, to whom he devoted a critical study.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 193966389X
• ISBN13: 9781939663894
• Release Date: June 2023
• Publisher: Wakefield Press
• Length: 168 Pages
• Weight: 0.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 4.5" x 6.9"