When André Breton proclaimed in 1922 that poetry 'emanates more from the lives of men - whether or not they are writers - than from what they have written or from what we might imagine they could write', it is unlikely that Laure, then 19 and cloistered in the bourgeois family estate, would have got wind of it. Yet in many ways she was the embodiment of Breton's pronouncement. Indeed, most people, if they know of Laure at all, know her not so much for what she committed to paper as for her tortured, inspired relationships with several prominent French intellectuals, most notably Georges Bataille. And although this edition of her collected writings seeks to correct that impression, its ultimate effect is only to reinforce it. By the time one emerges from this compilation of autobiographical and biographical sketches by and about her, of poems, scattered notes and fevered letters, one can't help feeling that her true masterwork was her ability to make others react to and remember her.

LRB 28 November 1996 | PDF Download