FRANCE HAS ALWAYS BEEN a country with a divided soul: on one side, a record of humanistic Enlightenment philosophy and modern art unrivalled by any other nation; on the other side, a record of scandals such as the appeasement of the Nazis from the 1930s until the end of World War II. It was only a few years ago that historians revealed the unfortunate fact that before D-Day the "French Resistance" was almost entirely made up of Jews, Spanish Republican refugees who had fled across the Pyrenees at the end of the Spanish civil war, North African Arabs, Armenians, and other "un-French" elements.

But something French continues to claim us--in fact, ought to claim us, as I remembered at the end of last year, when French newspapers reported the impending auction of one of the great literary archives of modernism, the collection amassed by André Breton (1896-1966).

The surrealist wizard was an outstanding art critic as well as a classic prose writer, a major poet, and a perceptive commentator on more general intellectual history. Because of his commitment to the work of leading painters and sculptors, Breton's art collection ranged from André Derain to Man Ray and Joan Miró, from Giacometti to James Rosenquist, a Pop artist he admired. But he was also a connoisseur of the indigenous arts of the Pacific, especially New Guinea and its neighboring islands, as well as of the Hopi and other Pueblo Indians and the pre-Columbian cultures of Mexico. What's more, his personal friendships extended from

FOR THESE REASONS, his archive is considered extremely valuable--perhaps too valuable, for the French government rejected appeals that it endow a foundation to house it. Some in the media suggested the total collection (5,300 lots, which are likely to fill six catalogues) could fetch up to $40 million when it comes before the public at the CalmelsCohen auction house next month.

Within weeks of the news report, however, a variegated group of minor hangers-on had issued a "surrealist protest" in which they tried to make a scandal out of the sale. With the names of Susan Sontag and John Ashbery affixed alongside lesser lights, the signatories labeled the sale "the shame of the French government." They demanded the authorities take action to preserve the "site" of the collection, an apartment on the Rue Fontaine in Paris where Breton lived most of his life.

Some sins of the surrealists and wannabe surrealists may be forgiven, but the sin of lacking a sense of irony is not among them. If there was ever an author who believed that an institutional commemoration, whether in the form of prize monies, a public archive, a museum, or a statue, should be considered a blot on his reputation, it was Breton. Generally derided as the authoritarian "pope" of the surrealists, avid to exclude dissidents from the movement's ranks, Breton may have been less than libertarian in private. But he was no seeker of state honors. He loved secret societies, and loathed official ones. For his latter-day mimics to demand official recognition for him is obtuse, to say the least.