Pleine marge (Full Margin)

Andre Breton’s poem Pleine marge take us on a dreamy journey through Paris, where we meet the ghosts of dead theologians that roam its streets. In the mystical imagery of his accompanying etching, Kurt Seligmann reinforces the poetry’s exploration of tension between the earthly realm and the celestial. Seligmann was among the first Surrealists to flee Europe in the face of the Nazis’ rise to power. Upon landing in New York, he began studying the history, applications, and cultures associated with magic, and that interest registers in his work from the time.

Here, a pile of entrails foregrounds a magic circle depicting Christian and occult symbols—among them, a cross, ladder, serpent and wheel—referencing Heaven, Earth, and the boundaries between them. The specific theologians named in Breton’s text and those who are subtly referenced in Seligmann’s artwork concerned themselves with the supernatural, suggesting that the “full margins” of the poem’s title can be known to us if we look beyond the physical world. The cryptic date “1713,” styled as handwriting in the lower left, resembles André Breton's initials (AB) and was sometimes used as shorthand for the poet’s identity. This, and other visual clues have led some scholars to speculate that Seligmann’s etching is a coded portrait of the poet.