ABSTRACT
In March 1935 André Breton travels east from Paris to Prague. He is drawn by his interest in the Czech surrealist group, which was founded the previous year and is enjoying close ties with the Czech Communist Party. It is his first visit to the city, for a lecture tour. On his third day he delivers his lecture “Surrealist situation of the object” at the Mánes Union of Fine Arts. He begins by referring to the “legendary delights” of Prague, describing it as “one of those cities that electively pin down poetic thought, which is always more or less adrift in space”. With its “towers that bristle like no others”, when viewed from afar he suggests that it seems to be “the magic capital of old Europe”. He states that of all the cities he had not yet visited it “was by far the least foreign to me”, and adds: “By the very fact that it carefully incubates all the delights of the past for the imagination, it seems to me that it would be less difficult for me to make myself understood in this corner of the world than in any other.” 1
