MELUSINE AS ALCHEMICAL SIREN IN ANDRE BRETON'S ARCANE 17 (1945)

In 1941 the founder of the Surrealist art movement, Andre Breton (1896-1966), fled from France to New York. Here he met the artist Elisa Bindhoff (1906-2000) who would become his third wife. In the summer of 1944 they stayed on the Gaspe Peninsula in northeast Canada and during their three months there Breton wrote Arcane 17, an extended prose poem named after the 17th card - The Star - in the tarot's Major Arcana. The work combined the personal with the mythical and reflected upon themes of love, loss and war, pertinent for Breton, who, like his new wife, had recently experienced profound personal misfortune. The Star symbolised hope and renewal. By associating this card with the medieval figure of the faery-siren Melusine, Breton found an image through which he could channel his thoughts about everything from alchemy and politics to the future of humanity. In this article I explore why a 14th Century legend re-emerged in the 20th and what it offered to a broken man in the midst of global war.