Philippe Soupault Biography

Philippe Soupault (2 August 1897, Chaville, Hauts-de-Seine – 12 March 1990, Paris) was a French writer and poet, novelist, critic, and political activist. He was active in Dadaism and later founded the Surrealist movement with André Breton. Soupault initiated the periodical Littérature together with the writers Breton and Louis Aragon in Paris in 1919, which, for many, marks the beginnings of Surrealism. The first book of automatic writing, Les Champs magnétiques (1920), was co-authored by Soupault and Breton. In 1927 Soupault, with the help of his wife Marie-Louise, translated William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience into French. The next year, Soupault authored a monograph on Blake, arguing the poet was a "genius" whose work anticipated the Surrealist movement in literature. He directed Radio Tunis from 1937 to 1940, when he was arrested by the pro-Vichy regime. He fled successfully to Algiers.