Aragon's Dada and Surrealist writing is much superior to his Stalinist and post Stalinist works that came in the late 1930s and after. The French TV series The Adventurers of Modern Art covers his career up to 1945 and goes into the break with Breton and his former Surrealist comrades. I read his socialist realist novel Passengers of Destiny and found it wanting. His poetry after the break with Surrealism is better than the fiction.
It's interesting how artists/poets can change their pathway. Surrealism (as a movement) is fascinating, but also interesting to those who left Surrealism.
Aragon's Dada and Surrealist writing is much superior to his Stalinist and post Stalinist works that came in the late 1930s and after. The French TV series The Adventurers of Modern Art covers his career up to 1945 and goes into the break with Breton and his former Surrealist comrades. I read his socialist realist novel Passengers of Destiny and found it wanting. His poetry after the break with Surrealism is better than the fiction.
It's interesting how artists/poets can change their pathway. Surrealism (as a movement) is fascinating, but also interesting to those who left Surrealism.