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Annie Le Brun

Annie Le Brun (born 1942, Rennes) is a French writer, poet and literary critic. While still a student, Annie Le Brun discovered the shock of surrealism; She read André Breton's Nadja first, hand copying his Mad Love and the Anthology of Black Humor. Shortly after, in 1963, she met Breton himself, and took part in the activities of the surrealist movement until 1969, upon the dissolution of the group. Later, against what she considered to be the programmed liquidation of singularity, love and distraction, she confided that "with the surrealists one breathed, if only to discover the multiplicity of horizons what will have opened this unique attempt in the twentieth century to think all man?" This is how she stood in the wake of surrealism, embracing her quest for "convulsive beauty" and her lyrical insurrection. In 1972, she found a collective activity around Editions Now founded by Pierre Peuchmaurd, with the poet and playwright Radovan Ivsic, who became her companion, as well as Georges Goldfayn, Gerard Legrand and the painter Toyen. The latter had illustrated in 1967 her first poetic book Sur le champ. In these years, she wrote and publishes several other collections, which will be collected in 2004 in a single volume, under the title Ombre pour ombre. During this prolific period of creation, she co-authored, among other collections and essays, three hybrid works in which her poetic writing is combined with illustrations – both photographic and plastics – from different artists: The Crossing of the Alps, co-written in 1972 with Radovan Ivšić and illustrated by the photographs of the Italian sculptor Fabio De Sanctis; Nearby the nomads, a poetic collection illustrated by Toyen in 1972; and finally Annular Moon, poetic story also illustrated by Toyen in 1977.