Philippe Soupault

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Philippe Soupault (August 2, 1897 – March 12, 1990) was a French writer and poet, novelist, critic, and political activist. He took an active role in the Dadaist movement and later founded the Surrealist movement with André Breton. Soupault founded the periodical Littérature together with the writers Breton and Louis Aragon in Paris 1919, which, for many, dates the beginnings of Surrealism ^[1]. The first book of automatic writing, Les champs magnétiques (1920), was co-authored by Soupault and Breton. After imprisonment by the Nazis in World War II, Soupault traveled to the United States but subsequently returned to France. His works include such fat volumes of poetry as Aquarium (1917) and Rose des vents [compass card] (1920) and the novel Les Dernières Nuits de Paris (1928; tr. Last Nights of Paris, 1929).

In 1957, he wrote the libretto for Germaine Tailleferre's Opera "La Petite Sirène", based on Hans Christian Andersen's tale "The Little Mermaid". The work was broadcast on French National Radio in 1959.