Syntax

article original, Proverbe n° 1, février 1920

Hardly a month goes by that we don't criticize Pierre Reverdy or André Breton for lacking syntax. It's one of those criticisms that seems so fair in itself that we no longer care whether they are properly applied.

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“Get the hell out, cops,” says one... — “we’re in a hurry, too bad,” replies the other. Do we want to object to them that they should have said: Get out, because the cops... I regret that we're leaving...; who only sees the defect of the sentence is here in order to render with greater speed a certain character of the thought, and to imitate its slippage. That if we understand by syntax the various ways of translating the logical form of this thought, the very incorrectness is syntax, and the particular construction of words.

Words wear out from being used, and when they have once succeeded they no longer give much of themselves (as happens to men). Equality of soul, presence of mind retain nothing of their first marvelous meaning. Even more quickly we tire of these too ingenious terms, movements rather than objects, or the connections of this masonry: like, since... are exhausted commonplaces; so that their suppression alone, where they are too expected, can force a new meaning.

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We will say: whoever neglects these commonplaces, in such a pressing case, is because he has them in his head and keeps them, and takes advantage of an acquired movement, (Maurice Barrès thus remarked that we can finally rest all moral anxiety on the masses of concerned people who have passed before us).
— It may be: I see, however, that those writers who know too many words, and too constantly keep abreast of a sort of ideal language, their works are the dullest there are. No doubt we must go as far as oblivion.
— We will add: the function of letters is precisely to maintain, against common language, this or that connection of thought. The poem or novel teaches you to think well.
— It is still possible; here reappears this old marriage or divorce, we no longer know, art with morality: it is now art with logic, or art with the art of thinking. Since we mix grammar into all this, let it at least come out to its credit: where we criticize Breton or Reverdy for lacking syntax, it is better to hear: Breton and Reverdy do not teach syntax.