SOURCE: Calin, William. “The Poets' Poet: Intertextuality in Louis Aragon.” Symposium 40, no. 1 (1986): 3-15.

In the following essay, Calin explores Aragon's use of collage, and its meaning to his view of literary tradition, in some of his major poems.

Scholars are aware of the pervasive presence of intertextuality in the work of Louis Aragon. The poet himself defined one aspect of the intertextual process—what he calls collage—in his thought and in the creation of his works. Allied to collage as an esthetic phenomenon is Aragon's vision of literature, especially the literature of the past, viewed as a cultural phenomenon. His cultural vision, which dates from the surrealist years, can be seen in the interviews that he gave to D. Arban and J. Ristat:

il s'était au cours de 1921 pratiqué une rupture entre les dadaïstes et nous, c'est-à-dire ceux-là qui sont devenus nommément les...