In 1920, the poet Paul Éluard and the literary theorist Jean Paulhan joined forces to create a magazine. They felt that existing rubrics in Paris, such as Littérature and La Nouvelle Revue Française, were too tethered to the past and too loyal to outdated artistic styles, Cubism included. Dada—the anarchic, anti-art movement born in Zurich during the war—was spreading across Europe, promoted by incendiary manifestos, performances, and journals that mocked logic and tradition. Éluard and Paulhan imagined a magazine that would rethink the role of language itself. They called it Proverbe. It would ask readers: What happens when a proverb says nothing at all?
The literary union was short-lived. By issue two, it was clear that Paulhan leaned toward essays while Éluard believed fragmented prose, stripped of moral weight, best embodied the principles of language. “Where,” Éluard asked, “is the beating heart of a sentence?” Though Paulhan’s name remained on the masthead, his words were no longer published.
Instead, in the March 1920 issue, the Dadaists appeared. Tristan Tzara contributed. Éluard published works by Francis Picabia. A drawing, La Jeune Fille, was on the cover: it featured a circular hole cut through the paper, suggestive of female genitalia, with the phrase “Bracelet de la vie” (Bracelet of life) printed in the corner. Minimalist and eerie, it forced viewers to confront what counts as art.
Alongside it, Éluard wrote:
Hoo! What were we saying? What were we saying?
We’ve lost the memory
Hoo! What were we doing? What were we doing?
We’ve lost the memory.
Proverbe came out six times, then folded in 1921. Although its creators didn’t know it yet, their questioning of reality was Surrealism taking shape.
To mark the centenary of the 1924 “Surrealist Manifesto,” the recently published Surrealism Through Its Journals: Les Portes du Rêve 1924–2024, edited by Franca Franchi, of the University of Bergamo, presents 10 essays on 10 experimental journals from the period. Proverbe and Le Surréalisme au Service de la Révolution are covered, but there are obscure publications, too, such as Britain’s avant-garde Experiment, which existed from 1928 to 1931, and Italy’s theater publication Comoedia.
How did these writings influence Surrealist art? As Paulhan wrote in Proverbe: “A theory should only clear away, not construct.” —Elena Clavarino
Elena Clavarino is a Senior Editor at Air Mail
