Читать книгу Anthology of Black Humor - André Breton - Страница 6

The current, revised edition brings to the preceding one a few corrections of detail. It has deliberately not been expanded, even at the risk of leaving a few readers dissatisfied. In the perspective that initially informed this book, it is certain that the author, in the course of these past few years, could not help but see new figures emerge who emit a similar light. He particularly had to resist the temptation to include the works of Oskar Panizza, Georges Darien, G. I. Gurdjieff (as he appears in his magisterial “The Arousing of Thought,” the opening chapter of Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson), Eugène Ionesco, and Joyce Mansour; but he finally chose not to, for obvious reasons. This book, published for the first time in 1939 and reprinted with a few additions in 1947, marked, as is, its era. Let us simply recall that when it first appeared, the words “black humor” made no sense (unless to designate a form of banter supposedly characteristic of “Negroes”!). It is only afterward that the expression took its place in the dictionary: we know what fortune the notion of black humor has enjoyed. Everything suggests that it remains full of effervescence, and is spreading as much by word of mouth (in so-called “Bloody Mary” jokes) as in the visual arts (especially in the cartoons featured in certain weekly magazines) and in film (at least when it deviates from the safe path of mainstream production). My wish is that this book should remain directly linked to our era no less than to the preceding one, and that it should never be seen as some sort of constantly updated annual, a pathetic honor roll bearing no trace whatsoever of its original purpose. Kindly consider this, then, the definitive edition of the Anthology of Black Humor.

Paris, May 16, 1966.