"ANICET or the PANORAMA" by Louis Aragon (Atlas Press)

ISBN: 978-1-90065-69-1 Atlas Press

"ANICET or the PANORAMA (Atlas) by Louis Aragon

The beauty of DADA is that it came from total disaster, in other words, total destruction.  Out of the ashes of World War One, came DADA.   Like pollen floating in an air stream across Europe, writers/artists got a whiff of it, and it stayed within their DNA.  Perhaps the first literature to come out of the French DADA world is Louis Aragon's "Anicet or the Panorama."  It's a dis-jointed tale of crime life, but told by a writer that is not overly concern about narration from A to Z.   That map is re-written by Aragon, who uses the life surrounding him at the time, which means Andre Breton, Max Jacob, Picasso, and others, who all make an appearance in this work of "fiction." 

World War 1 changed the young doctor Aragon, and the future World War 2, will change him again.  So what we have here is a very young Aragon facing up to, as well as articulating the world around him - which is Paris 1918/1919.   A snapshot of the time especially with the cinematic references (Pearl White serials, Fantomas) but nevertheless, a snapshot taken by a poet with his poetic sensibilities in place. 

Once again, Atlas Press, goes beyond their duty to come out with another beauty of a production, which is this book.