SOURCE: "The Communicating Labyrinth: Breton's 'La Maison d'Yves' as a Micm-Manifeste," in Dada/Surrealism, No. 17, 1988, pp. 111-20.

Below, Zuern reads Breton's poem "La Maison d'Yves" as a surrealist manifesto.

André Breton's "La Maison d'Yves," in which Breton pays tribute to Yves Tanguy, presents itself as an inviting venue for the exploration of the surrealist aesthetic both in literature and the visual arts. The poem's interest lies not only in its testimony to Breton's enthusiastic support of the work of fellow avant-garde artists, but a careful reading reveals that in "La Maison d'Yves" Breton's tribute to Tanguy develops into an expression of the fundamental principles of surrealist aesthetics. The structure of the "Maison" shows itself to be essentially labyrinthine. The form of the labyrinth has close affinities to the images Breton himself uses to describe the surrealist orientation to the world, in particular the "tissu capillaire" which lies between...