SOURCE: “Jean Arp (1887-1966),” in Surrealist Poetry in France, Syracuse University Press, 1969, pp. 90-101.

In the following essay, Matthews discusses surrealism in Arp's poetry and his relation to the surrealist movement.

Jean Arp's reputation as an artist has tended to divert attention from his poetry, especially since he received the International Prize for Sculpture at the 1954 Venice Biennale. It comes as a surprise to many to hear that he admitted, “If, to suppose the impossible, I were obliged to choose between plastic work and written poetry, if I had to abandon either sculpture or poems, I would choose to write poems.”¹

As for Arp's situation as a poet of surrealism, it is an unusual one. His first poems in German, written as early as 1917 and published in 1919 under the title Die wolkenpumpe, belong to the period when he participated actively in Dada, in Zurich. His first poem in...