René Crevel
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Life
Born in Paris to a family of Parisian bourgeoisie, Crevel studied English at the University of Paris. He met André Breton and joined the surrealist movement in 1921, from which he would be excluded in October 1925. It was at this time that he wrote novels such as Mon corps et moi ("My Body and Me"). In 1926 he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. The 1929 exile of Léon Trotsky persuaded him to rejoin the surrealists. Remaining faithful to André Breton, he struggled to bring communists and surrealists closer together.
Much of Crevel's work deals with his inner turmoil at being bisexual.
Crevel killed himself by turning on the gas on his kitchen stove the night of June 18th, 1934 at the age of 35 after learning that he suffered from renal tuberculosis.
Publications
Original French
- Détours (1924)
- Mon Corps et moi (1925)
- La Mort difficile (1926)
- Babylone (1927)
- L'Esprit contre la raison (1928)
- Êtes-vous fous? (1929)
- Les Pieds dans le plat (1933)
- Le Roman cassé et derniers écrits (1934-1935)
English translations
- Babylon (translation of Babylone; Sun and Moon Press, 1996)
- Putting My Foot in It (translation of Les Pieds dans le plat; Dalkey Archive Press, 1994)
- Difficult Death (translation of La Mort difficile; Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1986).
See also