‘I’m a hypocrite and a total fraud’ – the confessions of a French Surrealist poet

Michel Leiris (1901-90) was one of those intellectual adventurers who are the astonishment of French literature in the 20th century. Their achilles’ heel is that most were communists, in a few cases Nazis; and nothing kills the life of the mind more thoroughly than preaching. Their saving grace is that many were eccentric characters, and their autobiographical work can often be their most luminous legacy.

Because they were anti-form, the ideal prose vehicles became ‘aphorism’ or ‘fleuve’. The most brilliant of the French aphorists, Emile Cioran (though he was Romanian), exclaimed in an interview ‘Expression – that’s the cure!’, meaning not society’s cure but the writer’s. Leiris usually chose the fleuve route; and since he was a psycho-mess and wanted lots of therapy, there’s plenty of outpour. He married a rich woman, and so there was plenty of time too.