SOURCE: “The Poem in a World of Change: Péret's ‘Quatre à Quatre,”’ in Romance Notes, Vol. 15, No. 3, Spring, 1974, pp. 410–15.

In the following essay, Costich discusses the concept of change as a “constant condition” in Péret's poetry, focusing on the poem “Quatre à quatre.”

The Surrealist poem refers to the world of objects and events as well as to itself as a linguistic and poetic entity. By exposing the interaction between “le fonctionnement réel de la pensée”¹ and the world of things, the text participates in a mode of perception which defines the phenomena revealed. In Benjamin Péret's work, this reality is one of constant change, a permanent revolution which goes beyond that advocated by Leon Trotsky² because political, economic and ideological transformations are joined by metamorphoses of the modes and forms of existence. Poetry which is a part of this world must participate in its...