title: The Magnetic Fields
author:  Andr Breton 
description: Text: English (translation)<br /> Original Language: French
zlib_text: ![The Magnetic Fields](Images/Cover.jpg)
  
  
  ANDRÉ BRETON (1896–1966), the son of a Norman policeman and a seamstress,
  studied medicine in Paris and was drafted to serve in World War I in 1915.
  While working on a neurological ward, he met Jacques Vaché, a devotee of
  Alfred Jarry, and Vaché’s rebellious spirit and suicide at the age of twenty-
  three would powerfully shape Breton’s sensibility. Thanks to the auspices of
  Paul Valéry, Breton worked as an assistant to Marcel Proust, and in 1919,
  along with Philippe Soupault and Louis Aragon, he founded the journal
  _Littérature_. _The Magnetic Fields_ , the first book of automatic writing,
  appeared in 1920, and in 1924, having broken with Tristan Tzara and the
  Dadaists, Breton issued the _Surrealist Manifesto_. A Marxist, an atheist, and
  always a surrealist, Breton was a prolific author and a pugnacious
  controversialist whose works include the collection of poems _Claire de terre_
  and the novel _Nadja_.
  
  
  PHILIPPE SOUPAULT (1897–1990), the son