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Shapeshifter
Alice Paalen Rahon was a shapeshifter, a surrealist poet turned painter who was born French and died a naturalized citizen of Mexico. Her first husband was the artist Wolfgang Paalen, among her lovers were Pablo Picasso and the poet Valentine Penrose, and over the years her circle of friends included Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, Joan Miró, Paul Éluard, Man Ray, and Anaïs Nin. This bilingual edition of Rahon’s poems confirms the achievement of this little-known but visionary writer who defies categorization. Her spellbinding poems, inspired by prehistoric art, lost love, and travels around the globe, weave together dream, fantasy, and madness. For the first time in any language, this book gathers the three collections of poetry Rahon published in her lifetime, along with uncollected and unpublished poems and an album of portraits, manuscript pages, and artworks.
248 pages, Paperback
First published September 14, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
July 25, 2021
'I would like to find again
in your beggar’s pouch
the little suite of beaches
of mists of tides
that came in shrieking
to bring you the sea the moon
the winds and the grass
game of eternity’s wiles'
(from On Bare Earth, p39)
in your beggar’s pouch
the little suite of beaches
of mists of tides
that came in shrieking
to bring you the sea the moon
the winds and the grass
game of eternity’s wiles'
(from On Bare Earth, p39)
October 22, 2021
Alice Paalen Rahon was born in Chenecey-Buillon, France, June 8, 1904. Shapeshifter is the first complete compilation of all three of Rahon’s books of poetry, most of them extremely rare and virtually impossible to find and one, Sablier couché - Reclining Hourglass, with only six known copies. Infused with mythology, magic, memory, meaning, Rahon’s poems and thus, her paintings, awaken psyche, soul, mind and the agency of primitive spiritual hauntings found in dreamwork.
She married Austrian-Mexican painter, sculptor, and art philosopher Wolfgang Paalen in 1934. As Alice Paalen, the two travelled widely joining inner circles which included, among others, writers André Breton, Phillipe Soupault, Valentine and Roland Penrose, Paul Éluard, and Anaïs Nin; filmmaker Luis Buñuel; painters and visual artists Pablo Picasso (with whom she had a love affair), Leonora Carrington, Paul Klee, Man Ray, Joan Miró, Diego Rivera, and Frida Kahlo.
To understand the complex conditions of early twentieth century socio-cultural artistic movements in Europe from which she came, a consideration of Futurism (beginning about 1909), Dada (commencing in and around 1916), and Surrealism (1919-1920 onwards). Not only overlapping in chronologies but in their similarities, the developments contained in their artistic breakthrough possessed deafening calls to smear and to blur one’s self in the bewilderments and fantasies of art. To resist the shackling madness of World Wars and what followed, from the birth of the liberal Weimar Republic to the contrasting rise of Adolph Hitler in 1933, and the devastations that followed. Artists in these movements were driven abroad, many into exile. As Futurism largely died out due to its developing fascistic leanings - in 1924 the socialists, communists and anarchists walked out of the Milan Futurist Congress - Dada carried on.
In 1917, Dadaist Guillaume Apollinaire introduced Soupault to Breton, the latter known as the principal theorist and father of Surrealism. In 1924, Breton issued the Surrealist Manifesto after having broken with Tristan Tzara and the Dadaists. By breaking with the group, Breton embarked on an adventure to marry Surrealist writings, particularly poetry, with painting. Breton envisioned poems as the voice of paintings, revealing stories, exalting mysteries displayed upon canvases and together, talismans to viewers.
Four years earlier, Breton and Soupault released the first book of Automatic Writing, The Magnetic Fields (New York Review Books, 2020). It was through automatic writing where Rahon found herself on multitudinous journeys across the globe and into her unconscious mind, where the Surrealists believed art lived and waited to be unleashed upon the world.
In 1936, Éditions Surrealistes published Rahon’s first work, À même la terre - On Bare Earth, her first poetry collection which caught Breton’s attention. That same year, during Rahon’s journey to India, she met up with poet Valentine Penrose, whom she had first met in Europe. Her first reported love affair with a woman, Rahon’s life enlivened, both women expressed lesbian attributes present in their work at that time.
Rahon found previously unexpressed love with Penrose, the two women consummating their affair in India (her unconsummated marriage to Paalen eventually ended in divorce). In India with Penrose, new work emerges, a more liberated voice, fresh content and Surrealism evolving, her bisexual tendencies first appear in Sablier couché - Reclining Hourglass and later in Noir Animal - Bone Black.
Ultimately Rahon returned to Europe. Still married to Wolfgang Paalen, the two went on extensive travels through British Columbia and the United States. The photographer Eva Sulzer joined them at one point. Kahlo knew the Paalens and Sulzer were on the North American continent and invited them to Mexico City. The Paalens and Sulzer took up her invitation.
Kahlo and Alice Paalen Rahon found deep comradery in their physical impairments, both severely injured in the pelvic region in accidents during childhood. A shared love of canvas and color, their bond grew and Kahlo and her husband Diego Rivera invited the Paalens into their inner circle of artists in Coyoacan, the location in Mexico City of Casa Azul - the Blue House, Kahlo’s family home she inherited from her father.
But in Mexico, unsettled inside, she began to turn away from writing and turned to the canvas. With Kahlo she was able to flower, becoming the brilliant painter she is known more so than as a poet. In reading Shapeshifter, one can find the two art forms are, in fact, inseparable, as Breton had seen them a hundred years ago. Riches fill the collection, photographs, poems that break out to prose and complete prose texts originally published in Wolfgang Paalen’s art magazine Dyn.
Eventually, in 1947, the Paalens divorced and Alice changed her name to Rahon, spending the rest of her life in Mexico City. In her new home in the San Ángel neighborhood, not far from Kahlo at Casa Azul in Coyoacan, Rahon became a pivotal figure in bringing abstract expression to Mexico.
New York Review Books publishes vast collections of the finest literature in the world. The book publishing arm of the New York Review of Books, their published works are available at nyrb.com and at independent booksellers - Citylights in North Beach and Fabulosa in the Castro. For direct connection to the paintings of Alice Rahon, contact Gallery Wendi Norris in San Francisco.
She married Austrian-Mexican painter, sculptor, and art philosopher Wolfgang Paalen in 1934. As Alice Paalen, the two travelled widely joining inner circles which included, among others, writers André Breton, Phillipe Soupault, Valentine and Roland Penrose, Paul Éluard, and Anaïs Nin; filmmaker Luis Buñuel; painters and visual artists Pablo Picasso (with whom she had a love affair), Leonora Carrington, Paul Klee, Man Ray, Joan Miró, Diego Rivera, and Frida Kahlo.
To understand the complex conditions of early twentieth century socio-cultural artistic movements in Europe from which she came, a consideration of Futurism (beginning about 1909), Dada (commencing in and around 1916), and Surrealism (1919-1920 onwards). Not only overlapping in chronologies but in their similarities, the developments contained in their artistic breakthrough possessed deafening calls to smear and to blur one’s self in the bewilderments and fantasies of art. To resist the shackling madness of World Wars and what followed, from the birth of the liberal Weimar Republic to the contrasting rise of Adolph Hitler in 1933, and the devastations that followed. Artists in these movements were driven abroad, many into exile. As Futurism largely died out due to its developing fascistic leanings - in 1924 the socialists, communists and anarchists walked out of the Milan Futurist Congress - Dada carried on.
In 1917, Dadaist Guillaume Apollinaire introduced Soupault to Breton, the latter known as the principal theorist and father of Surrealism. In 1924, Breton issued the Surrealist Manifesto after having broken with Tristan Tzara and the Dadaists. By breaking with the group, Breton embarked on an adventure to marry Surrealist writings, particularly poetry, with painting. Breton envisioned poems as the voice of paintings, revealing stories, exalting mysteries displayed upon canvases and together, talismans to viewers.
Four years earlier, Breton and Soupault released the first book of Automatic Writing, The Magnetic Fields (New York Review Books, 2020). It was through automatic writing where Rahon found herself on multitudinous journeys across the globe and into her unconscious mind, where the Surrealists believed art lived and waited to be unleashed upon the world.
In 1936, Éditions Surrealistes published Rahon’s first work, À même la terre - On Bare Earth, her first poetry collection which caught Breton’s attention. That same year, during Rahon’s journey to India, she met up with poet Valentine Penrose, whom she had first met in Europe. Her first reported love affair with a woman, Rahon’s life enlivened, both women expressed lesbian attributes present in their work at that time.
Rahon found previously unexpressed love with Penrose, the two women consummating their affair in India (her unconsummated marriage to Paalen eventually ended in divorce). In India with Penrose, new work emerges, a more liberated voice, fresh content and Surrealism evolving, her bisexual tendencies first appear in Sablier couché - Reclining Hourglass and later in Noir Animal - Bone Black.
Ultimately Rahon returned to Europe. Still married to Wolfgang Paalen, the two went on extensive travels through British Columbia and the United States. The photographer Eva Sulzer joined them at one point. Kahlo knew the Paalens and Sulzer were on the North American continent and invited them to Mexico City. The Paalens and Sulzer took up her invitation.
Kahlo and Alice Paalen Rahon found deep comradery in their physical impairments, both severely injured in the pelvic region in accidents during childhood. A shared love of canvas and color, their bond grew and Kahlo and her husband Diego Rivera invited the Paalens into their inner circle of artists in Coyoacan, the location in Mexico City of Casa Azul - the Blue House, Kahlo’s family home she inherited from her father.
But in Mexico, unsettled inside, she began to turn away from writing and turned to the canvas. With Kahlo she was able to flower, becoming the brilliant painter she is known more so than as a poet. In reading Shapeshifter, one can find the two art forms are, in fact, inseparable, as Breton had seen them a hundred years ago. Riches fill the collection, photographs, poems that break out to prose and complete prose texts originally published in Wolfgang Paalen’s art magazine Dyn.
Eventually, in 1947, the Paalens divorced and Alice changed her name to Rahon, spending the rest of her life in Mexico City. In her new home in the San Ángel neighborhood, not far from Kahlo at Casa Azul in Coyoacan, Rahon became a pivotal figure in bringing abstract expression to Mexico.
New York Review Books publishes vast collections of the finest literature in the world. The book publishing arm of the New York Review of Books, their published works are available at nyrb.com and at independent booksellers - Citylights in North Beach and Fabulosa in the Castro. For direct connection to the paintings of Alice Rahon, contact Gallery Wendi Norris in San Francisco.
August 31, 2022
Surrealist gems, presented in both French with English translations.
I was very grateful for the translations because they helped me with my faulty French read the originals. The translations are good but the originals, of course, are better.
Beautiful sounds, and vivid imagery.
I was very grateful for the translations because they helped me with my faulty French read the originals. The translations are good but the originals, of course, are better.
Beautiful sounds, and vivid imagery.
Read
September 22, 2025couldn’t even be this incoherent if i got sloshed and hit a cart but that’s surrealism for you i guess
August 24, 2022
So beautiful.
The good ones move me to tears.
A guy read me some of this in French and it was gorgeous and perfect. I have no regrets
The good ones move me to tears.
A guy read me some of this in French and it was gorgeous and perfect. I have no regrets
September 2, 2022
The earlier work is much more interesting.
May 18, 2023
Elegantly translated from the French and with an introduction by Mary Ann Caws, Shapeshifter is aptly named for its startling, often magical surrealism. In poems and photos, Alice Paalen Rahon radiates charm.
“I don’t know how to read the lightning’s calligraphy”
“Je ne sais pas lire la calligraphie des éclairs”
“in the depths of sleep
these dreams of chrysalis
bursting bubbles on my surface”
“au fond du sommeil
ces rêves de chrysalide
crevant en bulles à ma surface”
“this leaf looks at me
out of its empty sockets
from the depths of a garden in flight”
“cette feuille me regarde
de se sorbites vides
au fond du jardin volant”
“Draw out the rain night after night
on strings of lightning.”
“Etendre la pluie nuit après nuit
sur des cordes d’éclairs.”
“The great shaft
of the bottomless well
is only a spoke
of the turning wheel
on the milk ways.
Now near the source, my Beloved”
“La grande vertical
du poits sans fond
nest qu’un rayon
de la roue qui tourney
sur les voies lactées.
Maintenant près de la source, mon Aimée”
“I sound unknown hours”
“Je sonne des heures inconnues”
“to Frida
Frida the living woman”
“singing on the far side of hope
the tongue of the trees has licked your dress and your hair
and your voice in my ear is their bark against my cheek.
“à Frida
Frida la femme vivante”
“chantant au-del de l’espoir
la langue des arbres a léché ta robe et tes cheveux
et ta voix à mon oreille est leur écorce à ma joue”
“I don’t know how to read the lightning’s calligraphy”
“Je ne sais pas lire la calligraphie des éclairs”
“in the depths of sleep
these dreams of chrysalis
bursting bubbles on my surface”
“au fond du sommeil
ces rêves de chrysalide
crevant en bulles à ma surface”
“this leaf looks at me
out of its empty sockets
from the depths of a garden in flight”
“cette feuille me regarde
de se sorbites vides
au fond du jardin volant”
“Draw out the rain night after night
on strings of lightning.”
“Etendre la pluie nuit après nuit
sur des cordes d’éclairs.”
“The great shaft
of the bottomless well
is only a spoke
of the turning wheel
on the milk ways.
Now near the source, my Beloved”
“La grande vertical
du poits sans fond
nest qu’un rayon
de la roue qui tourney
sur les voies lactées.
Maintenant près de la source, mon Aimée”
“I sound unknown hours”
“Je sonne des heures inconnues”
“to Frida
Frida the living woman”
“singing on the far side of hope
the tongue of the trees has licked your dress and your hair
and your voice in my ear is their bark against my cheek.
“à Frida
Frida la femme vivante”
“chantant au-del de l’espoir
la langue des arbres a léché ta robe et tes cheveux
et ta voix à mon oreille est leur écorce à ma joue”
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews