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Title: Manifesto of Surrealism Author: André Breton Date: 1924 Language: en Topics: surrealism Source: Le Manifeste du Surréalisme (1924), from André Breton, Manifestoes of Surrealism, translated by Richard Seaver and Helen R. Lane, Ann Arbor Paperbacks, The University of Michigan Press, 1969.
It was to be expected that this book would change, and to the extent
that it questioned our terrestrial existence by charging it nonetheless
with everything that it comprises on this or that side of the limits we
are in the habit of assigning to it, that its fate would be closely
bound up with my own, which is, for example, to have written and not to
have written books. Those attributed to me do not seem to me to exercise
any greater influence on me than many others, and no doubt I am no
longer as fully familiar with them as it is possible to be. Regardless
of whatever controversy that may have arisen concerning the “Manifesto
of Surrealism” between 1924 and 1929 – without arguing the pros and cons
of its validity – it is obvious that, independent of this controversy,
the human adventure continued to take place with the minimum of risks,
on almost all sides at once, according to the whims of the imagination
which alone causes real things. To allow a work one has written to be
republished, a work not all that different from one you might more or
less have read by someone else, is tantamount to “recognizing” I would
not even go so far as to say a child whose features one had already
ascertained were reasonably friendly, whose constitution is healthy
enough, but rather something which, no matter how bravely it may have
been, can no longer be. There is nothing I can do about it, except to
blame myself for not always and in every respect having been a prophet.
Still very much apropos is the famous question Arthur Craven, “in a very
tired, very weary tone,” asked Andre Gide: “Monsieur Gide, where are we
with respect to time?” To which Gide, with no malice intended, replied:
“Fifteen minutes before six.” Ah!, it must indeed be admitted, we’re in
bad, we’re in terrible shape when it comes to time.
Here as elsewhere admission and denial are tightly interwoven. I do not
understand why, or how, how I am still living, or, for all the more
reason, what I am living. If, from a system in which I believe, to which
I slowly adapt myself, like Surrealism, there remains, if there will
always remain, enough for me to immerse myself in, there will
nonetheless never be enough to make me what I would like to be, no
matter how indulgent I am about myself. A relative indulgence compared
to that others have shown me (or non-me, I don’t know). And yet I am
living, I have even discovered that I care about life. The more I have
sometimes found reasons for putting an end to it the more I have caught
myself admiring some random square of parquet floor: it was really like
silk, like the silk that would have been as beautiful as water. I liked
this lucid pain, as though the entire universal drama of it had then
passed through me and I was suddenly worth the trouble. But I liked it
in the light of, how shall I say, of new things that I had never seen
glow before. It was from this that I understood that, in spite of
everything, life was given, that a force independent of that of
expressing and making oneself heard spiritually presided – insofar as a
living man is concerned – over reactions of invaluable interest, the
secret of which will disappear with him. This secret has not been
revealed to me, and as far as I am concerned its recognition in no way
invalidates my confessed inaptitude for religious meditation. I simply
believe that between my thought, such as it appears in what material
people have been able to read that has my signature affixed to it, and
me, which the true nature of my thought involves in something but
precisely what I do not yet know, there is a world, an imperceptible
world of phantasms, of hypothetical realizations, of wagers lost, and of
lies, a cursory examination of which convinces me not to correct this
work in the slightest. This book demands all the vanity of the
scientific mind, all the puerility of this need for perspective which
the bitter vicissitudes of history provide. This time again, faithful to
the tendency that I have always had to ignore any kind of sentimental
obstacle, I shall waste no time passing judgment on those among my
initial companions who have become frightened and turned back, I shall
not yield to the temptation to substitute names by means of which this
book might be able to lay claim to being up-to-date. Fully mindful,
however, that the most precious gifts of the mind cannot survive the
smallest particle of honor, I shall simply reaffirm my unshakable
confidence in the principle of an activity which has never deceived me,
which seems to me more deserving than ever of our unstinting, absolute,
insane devotion, for the simple reason that it alone is the dispenser,
albeit at intervals well spaced out one from the other, of transfiguring
rays of a grace I persist in comparing in all respects to divine grace.
André Breton, 1929.
So strong is the belief in life, in what is most fragile in life – real
life, I mean – that in the end this belief is lost. Man, that inveterate
dreamer, daily more discontent with his destiny, has trouble assessing
the objects he has been led to use, objects that his nonchalance has
brought his way, or that he has earned through his own efforts, almost
always through his own efforts, for he has agreed to work, at least he
has not refused to try his luck (or what he calls his luck!). At this
point he feels extremely modest: he knows what women he has had, what
silly affairs he has been involved in; he is unimpressed by his wealth
or his poverty, in this respect he is still a newborn babe and, as for
the approval of his conscience, I confess that he does very nicely
without it. If he still retains a certain lucidity, all he can do is
turn back toward his childhood which, however his guides and mentors may
have botched it, still strikes him as somehow charming. There, the
absence of any known restrictions allows him the perspective of several
lives lived at once; this illusion becomes firmly rooted within him; now
he is only interested in the fleeting, the extreme facility of
everything. Children set off each day without a worry in the world.
Everything is near at hand, the worst material conditions are fine. The
woods are white or black, one will never sleep.
But it is true that we would not dare venture so far, it is not merely a
question of distance. Threat is piled upon threat, one yields, abandons
a portion of the terrain to be conquered. This imagination which knows
no bounds is henceforth allowed to be exercised only in strict
accordance with the laws of an arbitrary utility; it is incapable of
assuming this inferior role for very long and, in the vicinity of the
twentieth year, generally prefers to abandon man to his lusterless fate.
Though he may later try to pull himself together on occasion, having
felt that he is losing by slow degrees all reason for living, incapable
as he has become of being able to rise to some exceptional situation
such as love, he will hardly succeed. This is because he henceforth
belongs body and soul to an imperative practical necessity which demands
his constant attention. None of his gestures will be expansive, none of
his ideas generous or far-reaching. In his mind’s eye, events real or
imagined will be seen only as they relate to a welter of similar events,
events in which he has not participated, abortive events. What am I
saying: he will judge them in relationship to one of these events whose
consequences are more reassuring than the others. On no account will he
view them as his salvation.
Beloved imagination, what I most like in you is your unsparing quality.
There remains madness, “the madness that one locks up,” as it has aptly
been described. That madness or another... We all know, in fact, that
the insane owe their incarceration to a tiny number of legally
reprehensible acts and that, were it not for these acts their freedom
(or what we see as their freedom) would not be threatened. I am willing
to admit that they are, to some degree, victims of their imagination, in
that it induces them not to pay attention to certain rules – outside of
which the species feels threatened – which we are all supposed to know
and respect. But their profound indifference to the way in which we
judge them, and even to the various punishments meted out to them,
allows us to suppose that they derive a great deal of comfort and
consolation from their imagination, that they enjoy their madness
sufficiently to endure the thought that its validity does not extend
beyond themselves. And, indeed, hallucinations, illusions, etc., are not
a source of trifling pleasure. The best controlled sensuality partakes
of it, and I know that there are many evenings when I would gladly that
pretty hand which, during the last pages of Taine’s L’Intelligence,
indulges in some curious misdeeds. I could spend my whole life prying
loose the secrets of the insane. These people are honest to a fault, and
their naiveté has no peer but my own. Christopher Columbus should have
set out to discover America with a boatload of madmen. And note how this
madness has taken shape, and endured.
It is not the fear of madness which will oblige us to leave the flag of
imagination furled.
The case against the realistic attitude demands to be examined,
following the case against the materialistic attitude. The latter, more
poetic in fact than the former, admittedly implies on the part of man a
kind of monstrous pride which, admittedly, is monstrous, but not a new
and more complete decay. It should above all be viewed as a welcome
reaction against certain ridiculous tendencies of spiritualism. Finally,
it is not incompatible with a certain nobility of thought.
By contrast, the realistic attitude, inspired by positivism, from Saint
Thomas Aquinas to Anatole France, clearly seems to me to be hostile to
any intellectual or moral advancement. I loathe it, for it is made up of
mediocrity, hate, and dull conceit. It is this attitude which today
gives birth to these ridiculous books, these insulting plays. It
constantly feeds on and derives strength from the newspapers and
stultifies both science and art by assiduously flattering the lowest of
tastes; clarity bordering on stupidity, a dog’s life. The activity of
the best minds feels the effects of it; the law of the lowest common
denominator finally prevails upon them as it does upon the others. An
amusing result of this state of affairs, in literature for example, is
the generous supply of novels. Each person adds his personal little
“observation” to the whole. As a cleansing antidote to all this, M. Paul
Valéry recently suggested that an anthology be compiled in which the
largest possible number of opening passages from novels be offered; the
resulting insanity, he predicted, would be a source of considerable
edification. The most famous authors would be included. Such a though
reflects great credit on Paul Valéry who, some time ago, speaking of
novels, assured me that, so far as he was concerned, he would continue
to refrain from writing: “The Marquise went out at five.” But has he
kept his word?
If the purely informative style, of which the sentence just quoted is a
prime example, is virtually the rule rather than the exception in the
novel form, it is because, in all fairness, the author’s ambition is
severely circumscribed. The circumstantial, needlessly specific nature
of each of their notations leads me to believe that they are
perpetrating a joke at my expense. I am spared not even one of the
character’s slightest vacillations: will he be fairhaired? what will his
name be? will we first meet him during the summer? So many questions
resolved once and for all, as chance directs; the only discretionary
power left me is to close the book, which I am careful to do somewhere
in the vicinity of the first page. And the descriptions! There is
nothing to which their vacuity can be compared; they are nothing but so
many superimposed images taken from some stock catalogue, which the
author utilizes more and more whenever he chooses; he seizes the
opportunity to slip me his postcards, he tries to make me agree with him
about the clichés:
“The small room into which the young man was shown was covered with
yellow wallpaper: there were geraniums in the windows, which were
covered with muslin curtains; the setting sun cast a harsh light over
the entire setting…. There was nothing special about the room. The
furniture, of yellow wood, was all very old. A sofa with a tall back
turned down, an oval table opposite the sofa, a dressing table and a
mirror set against the pierglass, some chairs along the walls, two or
three etchings of no value portraying some German girls with birds in
their hands – such were the furnishings.” (Dostoevski, Crime and
Punishment)
I am in no mood to admit that the mind is interested in occupying itself
with such matters, even fleetingly. It may be argued that this
school-boy description has its place, and that at this juncture of the
book the author has his reasons for burdening me. Nevertheless he is
wasting his time, for I refuse to go into his room. Others’ laziness or
fatigue does not interest me. I have too unstable a notion of the
continuity of life to equate or compare my moments of depression or
weakness with my best moments. When one ceases to feel, I am of the
opinion one should keep quiet. And I would like it understood that I am
not accusing or condemning lack of originality as such. I am only saying
that I do not take particular note of the empty moments of my life, that
it may be unworthy for any man to crystallize those which seem to him to
be so. I shall, with your permission, ignore the description of that
room, and many more like it.
Not so fast, there; I’m getting into the area of psychology, a subject
about which I shall be careful not to joke.
The author attacks a character and, this being settled upon, parades his
hero to and fro across the world. No matter what happens, this hero,
whose actions and reactions are admirably predictable, is compelled not
to thwart or upset — even though he looks as though he is — the
calculations of which he is the object. The currents of life can appear
to lift him up, roll him over, cast him down, he will still belong to
this readymade human type. A simple game of chess which doesn’t interest
me in the least — man, whoever he may be, being for me a mediocre
opponent. What I cannot bear are those wretched discussions relative to
such and such a move, since winning or losing is not in question. And if
the game is not worth the candle, if objective reason does a frightful
job — as indeed it does — of serving him who calls upon it, is it not
fitting and proper to avoid all contact with these categories?
“Diversity is so vast that every different tone of voice, every step,
cough, every wipe of the nose, every sneeze....”[1] If in a cluster of
grapes there are no two alike, why do you want me to describe this grape
by the other, by all the others, why do you want me to make a palatable
grape? Our brains are dulled by the incurable mania of wanting to make
the unknown known, classifiable. The desire for analysis wins out over
the sentiments.[2] The result is statements of undue length whose
persuasive power is attributable solely to their strangeness and which
impress the reader only by the abstract quality of their vocabulary,
which moreover is ill-defined. If the general ideas that philosophy has
thus far come up with as topics of discussion revealed by their very
nature their definitive incursion into a broader or more general area. I
would be the first to greet the news with joy. But up till now it has
been nothing but idle repartee; the flashes of wit and other niceties
vie in concealing from us the true thought in search of itself, instead
of concentrating on obtaining successes. It seems to me that every act
is its own justification, at least for the person who has been capable
of committing it, that it is endowed with a radiant power which the
slightest gloss is certain to diminish. Because of this gloss, it even
in a sense ceases to happen. It gains nothing to be thus distinguished.
Stendhal’s heroes are subject to the comments and appraisals —
appraisals which are more or less successful — made by that author,
which add not one whit to their glory. Where we really find them again
is at the point at which Stendahl has lost them.
We are still living under the reign of logic: this, of course, is what I
have been driving at. But in this day and age logical methods are
applicable only to solving problems of secondary interest. The absolute
rationalism that is still in vogue allows us to consider only facts
relating directly to our experience. Logical ends, on the contrary,
escape us. It is pointless to add that experience itself has found
itself increasingly circumscribed. It paces back and forth in a cage
from which it is more and more difficult to make it emerge. It too leans
for support on what is most immediately expedient, and it is protected
by the sentinels of common sense. Under the pretense of civilization and
progress, we have managed to banish from the mind everything that may
rightly or wrongly be termed superstition, or fancy; forbidden is any
kind of search for truth which is not in conformance with accepted
practices. It was, apparently, by pure chance that a part of our mental
world which we pretended not to be concerned with any longer — and, in
my opinion by far the most important part — has been brought back to
light. For this we must give thanks to the discoveries of Sigmund Freud.
On the basis of these discoveries a current of opinion is finally
forming by means of which the human explorer will be able to carry his
investigation much further, authorized as he will henceforth be not to
confine himself solely to the most summary realities. The imagination is
perhaps on the point of reasserting itself, of reclaiming its rights. If
the depths of our mind contain within it strange forces capable of
augmenting those on the surface, or of waging a victorious battle
against them, there is every reason to seize them — first to seize them,
then, if need be, to submit them to the control of our reason. The
analysts themselves have everything to gain by it. But it is worth
noting that no means has been designated a priori for carrying out this
undertaking, that until further notice it can be construed to be the
province of poets as well as scholars, and that its success is not
dependent upon the more or less capricious paths that will be followed.
Freud very rightly brought his critical faculties to bear upon the
dream. It is, in fact, inadmissible that this considerable portion of
psychic activity (since, at least from man’s birth until his death,
thought offers no solution of continuity, the sum of the moments of the
dream, from the point of view of time, and taking into consideration
only the time of pure dreaming, that is the dreams of sleep, is not
inferior to the sum of the moments of reality, or, to be more precisely
limiting, the moments of waking) has still today been so grossly
neglected. I have always been amazed at the way an ordinary observer
lends so much more credence and attaches so much more importance to
waking events than to those occurring in dreams. It is because man, when
he ceases to sleep, is above all the plaything of his memory, and in its
normal state memory takes pleasure in weakly retracing for him the
circumstances of the dream, in stripping it of any real importance, and
in dismissing the only determinant from the point where he thinks he has
left it a few hours before: this firm hope, this concern. He is under
the impression of continuing something that is worthwhile. Thus the
dream finds itself reduced to a mere parenthesis, as is the night. And,
like the night, dreams generally contribute little to furthering our
understanding. This curious state of affairs seems to me to call for
certain reflections:
1) Within the limits where they operate (or are thought to operate)
dreams give every evidence of being continuous and show signs of
organization. Memory alone arrogates to itself the right to excerpt from
dreams, to ignore the transitions, and to depict for us rather a series
of dreams than the dream itself. By the same token, at any given moment
we have only a distinct notion of realities, the coordination of which
is a question of will.[3] What is worth noting is that nothing allows us
to presuppose a greater dissipation of the elements of which the dream
is constituted. I am sorry to have to speak about it according to a
formula which in principle excludes the dream. When will we have
sleeping logicians, sleeping philosophers? I would like to sleep, in
order to surrender myself to the dreamers, the way I surrender myself to
those who read me with eyes wide open; in order to stop imposing, in
this realm, the conscious rhythm of my thought. Perhaps my dream last
night follows that of the night before, and will be continued the next
night, with an exemplary strictness. It’s quite possible, as the saying
goes. And since it has not been proved in the slightest that, in doing
so, the “reality” with which I am kept busy continues to exist in the
state of dream, that it does not sink back down into the immemorial, why
should I not grant to dreams what I occasionally refuse reality, that
is, this value of certainty in itself which, in its own time, is not
open to my repudiation? Why should I not expect from the sign of the
dream more than I expect from a degree of consciousness which is daily
more acute? Can’t the dream also be used in solving the fundamental
questions of life? Are these questions the same in one case as in the
other and, in the dream, do these questions already exist? Is the dream
any less restrictive or punitive than the rest? I am growing old and,
more than that reality to which I believe I subject myself, it is
perhaps the dream, the difference with which I treat the dream, which
makes me grow old.
2) Let me come back again to the waking state. I have no choice but to
consider it a phenomenon of interference. Not only does the mind
display, in this state, a strange tendency to lose its bearings (as
evidenced by the slips and mistakes the secrets of which are just
beginning to be revealed to us), but, what is more, it does not appear
that, when the mind is functioning normally, it really responds to
anything but the suggestions which come to it from the depths of that
dark night to which I commend it. However conditioned it may be, its
balance is relative. It scarcely dares express itself and, if it does,
it confines itself to verifying that such and such an idea, or such and
such a woman, has made an impression on it. What impression it would be
hard pressed to say, by which it reveals the degree of its subjectivity,
and nothing more. This idea, this woman, disturb it, they tend to make
it less severe. What they do is isolate the mind for a second from its
solvent and spirit it to heaven, as the beautiful precipitate it can be,
that it is. When all else fails, it then calls upon chance, a divinity
even more obscure than the others to whom it ascribes all its
aberrations. Who can say to me that the angle by which that idea which
affects it is offered, that what it likes in the eye of that woman is
not precisely what links it to its dream, binds it to those fundamental
facts which, through its own fault, it has lost? And if things were
different, what might it be capable of? I would like to provide it with
the key to this corridor.
3) The mind of the man who dreams is fully satisfied by what happens to
him. The agonizing question of possibility is no longer pertinent. Kill,
fly faster, love to your heart’s content. And if you should die, are you
not certain of reawaking among the dead? Let yourself be carried along,
events will not tolerate your interference. You are nameless. The ease
of everything is priceless.
What reason, I ask, a reason so much vaster than the other, makes dreams
seem so natural and allows me to welcome unreservedly a welter of
episodes so strange that they could confound me now as I write? And yet
I can believe my eyes, my ears; this great day has arrived, this beast
has spoken.
If man’s awaking is harder, if it breaks the spell too abruptly, it is
because he has been led to make for himself too impoverished a notion of
atonement.
4) From the moment when it is subjected to a methodical examination,
when, by means yet to be determined, we succeed in recording the
contents of dreams in their entirety (and that presupposes a discipline
of memory spanning generations; but let us nonetheless begin by noting
the most salient facts), when its graph will expand with unparalleled
volume and regularity, we may hope that the mysteries which really are
not will give way to the great Mystery. I believe in the future
resolution of these two states, dream and reality, which are seemingly
so contradictory, into a kind of absolute reality, a surreality, if one
may so speak. It is in quest of this surreality that I am going, certain
not to find it but too unmindful of my death not to calculate to some
slight degree the joys of its possession.
A story is told according to which Saint-Pol-Roux, in times gone by,
used to have a notice posted on the door of his manor house in Camaret,
every evening before he went to sleep, which read: THE POET IS WORKING.
A great deal more could be said, but in passing I merely wanted to touch
upon a subject which in itself would require a very long and much more
detailed discussion; I shall come back to it. At this juncture, my
intention was merely to mark a point by noting the hate of the marvelous
which rages in certain men, this absurdity beneath which they try to
bury it. Let us not mince words: the marvelous is always beautiful,
anything marvelous is beautiful, in fact only the marvelous is
beautiful.
In the realm of literature, only the marvelous is capable of fecundating
works which belong to an inferior category such as the novel, and
generally speaking, anything that involves storytelling. Lewis’ The Monk
is an admirable proof of this. It is infused throughout with the
presence of the marvelous. Long before the author has freed his main
characters from all temporal constraints, one feels them ready to act
with an unprecedented pride. This passion for eternity with which they
are constantly stirred lends an unforgettable intensity to their
torments, and to mine. I mean that this book, from beginning to end, and
in the purest way imaginable, exercises an exalting effect only upon
that part of the mind which aspires to leave the earth and that,
stripped of an insignificant part of its plot, which belongs to the
period in which it was written, it constitutes a paragon of precision
and innocent grandeur.[4] It seems to me none better has been done, and
that the character of Mathilda in particular is the most moving creation
that one can credit to this figurative fashion in literature. She is
less a character than a continual temptation. And if a character is not
a temptation, what is he? An extreme temptation, she. In The Monk the
“nothing is impossible for him who dares try” gives it its full,
convincing measure. Ghosts play a logical role in the book, since the
critical mind does not seize them in order to dispute them. Ambrosio’s
punishment is likewise treated in a legitimate manner, since it is
finally accepted by the critical faculty as a natural denouement.
It may seem arbitrary on my part, when discussing the marvelous, to
choose this model, from which both the Nordic literatures and Oriental
literatures have borrowed time and time again, not to mention the
religious literatures of every country. This is because most of the
examples which these literatures could have furnished me with are
tainted by puerility, for the simple reason that they are addressed to
children. At an early age children are weaned on the marvelous, and
later on they fail to retain a sufficient virginity of mind to
thoroughly enjoy fairy tales. No matter how charming they may be, a
grown man would think he were reverting to childhood by nourishing
himself on fairy tales, and I am the first to admit that all such tales
are not suitable for him. The fabric of adorable improbabilities must be
made a trifle more subtle the older we grow, and we are still at the age
of waiting for this kind of spider.... But the faculties do not change
radically. Fear, the attraction of the unusual, chance, the taste for
things extravagant are all devices which we can always call upon without
fear of deception. There are fairy tales to be written for adults, fairy
tales still almost blue.
The marvelous is not the same in every period of history: it partakes in
some obscure way of a sort of general revelation only the fragments of
which come down to us: they are the romantic ruins, the modern
mannequin, or any other symbol capable of affecting the human
sensibility for a period of time. In these areas which make us smile,
there is still portrayed the incurable human restlessness, and this is
why I take them into consideration and why I judge them inseparable from
certain productions of genius which are, more than the others, painfully
afflicted by them. They are Villon’s gibbets, Racine’s Greeks,
Baudelaire’s couches. They coincide with an eclipse of the taste I am
made to endure, I whose notion of taste is the image of a big spot. Amid
the bad taste of my time I strive to go further than anyone else. It
would have been I, had I lived in 1820, I “the bleeding nun,” I who
would not have spared this cunning and banal “let us conceal” whereof
the parodical Cuisin speaks, it would have been I, I who would have
reveled in the enormous metaphors, as he says, all phases of the “silver
disk.” For today I think of a castle, half of which is not necessarily
in ruins; this castle belongs to me, I picture it in a rustic setting,
not far from Paris. The outbuildings are too numerous to mention, and,
as for the interior, it has been frightfully restored, in such manner as
to leave nothing to be desired from the viewpoint of comfort.
Automobiles are parked before the door, concealed by the shade of trees.
A few of my friends are living here as permanent guests: there is Louis
Aragon leaving; he only has time enough to say hello; Philippe Soupault
gets up with the stars, and Paul Eluard, our great Eluard, has not yet
come home. There are Robert Desnos and Roger Vitrac out on the grounds
poring over an ancient edict on duelling; Georges Auric, Jean Paulhan;
Max Morise, who rows so well, and Benjamin PĂ©ret, busy with his
equations with birds; and Joseph Delteil; and Jean Carrive; and Georges
Limbour, and Georges Limbours (there is a whole hedge of Georges
Limbours); and Marcel Noll; there is T. Fraenkel waving to us from his
captive balloon, Georges Malkine, Antonin Artaud, Francis GĂ©rard, Pierre
Naville, J.-A. Boiffard, and after them Jacques Baron and his brother,
handsome and cordial, and so many others besides, and gorgeous women, I
might add. Nothing is too good for these young men, their wishes are, as
to wealth, so many commands. Francis Picabia comes to pay us a call, and
last week, in the hall of mirrors, we received a certain Marcel Duchamp
whom we had not hitherto known. Picasso goes hunting in the
neighborhood. The spirit of demoralization has elected domicile in the
castle, and it is with it we have to deal every time it is a question of
contact with our fellowmen, but the doors are always open, and one does
not begin by “thanking” everyone, you know. Moreover, the solitude is
vast, we don’t often run into one another. And anyway, isn’t what
matters that we be the masters of ourselves, the masters of women, and
of love too?
I shall be proved guilty of poetic dishonesty: everyone will go parading
about saying that I live on the rue Fontaine and that he will have none
of the water that flows therefrom. To be sure! But is he certain that
this castle into which I cordially invite him is an image? What if this
castle really existed! My guests are there to prove it does; their whim
is the luminous road that leads to it. We really live by our fantasies
when we give free reign to them. And how could what one might do bother
the other, there, safely sheltered from the sentimental pursuit and at
the trysting place of opportunities?
Man proposes and disposes. He and he alone can determine whether he is
completely master of himself, that is, whether he maintains the body of
his desires, daily more formidable, in a state of anarchy. Poetry
teaches him to. It bears within itself the perfect compensation for the
miseries we endure. It can also be an organizer, if ever, as the result
of a less intimate disappointment, we contemplate taking it seriously.
The time is coming when it decrees the end of money and by itself will
break the bread of heaven for the earth! There will still be gatherings
on the public squares, and movements you never dared hope participate
in. Farewell to absurd choices, the dreams of dark abyss, rivalries, the
prolonged patience, the flight of the seasons, the artificial order of
ideas, the ramp of danger, time for everything! May you only take the
trouble to practice poetry. Is it not incumbent upon us, who are already
living off it, to try and impose what we hold to be our case for further
inquiry?
It matters not whether there is a certain disproportion between this
defense and the illustration that will follow it. It was a question of
going back to the sources of poetic imagination and, what is more, of
remaining there. Not that I pretend to have done so. It requires a great
deal of fortitude to try to set up one’s abode in these distant regions
where everything seems at first to be so awkward and difficult, all the
more so if one wants to try to take someone there. Besides, one is never
sure of really being there. If one is going to all that trouble, one
might as well stop off somewhere else. Be that as it may, the fact is
that the way to these regions is clearly marked, and that to attain the
true goal is now merely a matter of the travelers’ ability to endure.
We are all more or less aware of the road traveled. I was careful to
relate, in the course of a study of the case of Robert Desnos entitled
ENTRÉE DES MÉDIUMS,[5] that I had been led to” concentrate my attention
on the more or less partial sentences which, when one is quite alone and
on the verge of falling asleep, become perceptible for the mind without
its being possible to discover what provoked them.” I had then just
attempted the poetic adventure with the minimum of risks, that is, my
aspirations were the same as they are today but I trusted in the
slowness of formulation to keep me from useless contacts, contacts of
which I completely disapproved. This attitude involved a modesty of
thought certain vestiges of which I still retain. At the end of my life,
I shall doubtless manage to speak with great effort the way people
speak, to apologize for my voice and my few remaining gestures. The
virtue of the spoken word (and the written word all the more so) seemed
to me to derive from the faculty of foreshortening in a striking manner
the exposition (since there was exposition) of a small number of facts,
poetic or other, of which I made myself the substance. I had come to the
conclusion that Rimbaud had not proceeded any differently. I was
composing, with a concern for variety that deserved better, the final
poems of Mont de piété, that is, I managed to extract from the blank
lines of this book an incredible advantage. These lines were the closed
eye to the operations of thought that I believed I was obliged to keep
hidden from the reader. It was not deceit on my part, but my love of
shocking the reader. I had the illusion of a possible complicity, which
I had more and more difficulty giving up. I had begun to cherish words
excessively for the space they allow around them, for their tangencies
with countless other words which I did not utter. The poem BLACK FOREST
derives precisely from this state of mind. It took me six months to
write it, and you may take my word for it that I did not rest a single
day. But this stemmed from the opinion I had of myself in those days,
which was high, please don’t judge me too harshly. I enjoy these stupid
confessions. At that point cubist pseudo-poetry was trying to get a
foothold, but it had emerged defenseless from Picasso’s brain, and I was
thought to be as dull as dishwater (and still am). I had a sneaking
suspicion, moreover, that from the viewpoint of poetry I was off on the
wrong road, but I hedged my bet as best I could, defying lyricism with
salvos of definitions and formulas (the Dada phenomena were waiting in
the wings, ready to come on stage) and pretending to search for an
application of poetry to advertising (I went so far as to claim that the
world would end, not with a good book but with a beautiful advertisement
for heaven or for hell).
In those days, a man at least as boring as I, Pierre Reverdy, was
writing:
The image is a pure creation of the mind.
It cannot be born from a comparison but from a juxtaposition of two more
or less distant realities.
The more the relationship between the two juxtaposed realities is
distant and true, the stronger the image will be — the greater its
emotional power and poetic reality...[6]
These words, however sibylline for the uninitiated, were extremely
revealing, and I pondered them for a long time. But the image eluded me.
Reverdy’s aesthetic, a completely a posteriori aesthetic, led me to
mistake the effects for the causes. It was in the midst of all this that
I renounced irrevocably my point of view.
One evening, therefore, before I fell asleep, I perceived, so clearly
articulated that it was impossible to change a word, but nonetheless
removed from the sound of any voice, a rather strange phrase which came
to me without any apparent relationship to the events in which, my
consciousness agrees, I was then involved, a phrase which seemed to me
insistent, a phrase, if I may be so bold, which was knocking at the
window. I took cursory note of it and prepared to move on when its
organic character caught my attention. Actually, this phrase astonished
me: unfortunately I cannot remember it exactly, but it was something
like: “There is a man cut in two by the window,” but there could be no
question of ambiguity, accompanied as it was by the faint visual image
of a man walking cut half way up by a window perpendicular to the axis
of his body.[7] Beyond the slightest shadow of a doubt, what I saw was
the simple reconstruction in space of a man leaning out a window. But
this window having shifted with the man, I realized that I was dealing
with an image of a fairly rare sort, and all I could think of was to
incorporate it into my material for poetic construction. No sooner had I
granted it this capacity than it was in fact succeeded by a whole series
of phrases, with only brief pauses between them, which surprised me only
slightly less and left me with the impression of their being so
gratuitous that the control I had then exercised upon myself seemed to
me illusory and all I could think of was putting an end to the
interminable quarrel raging within me.[8]
Completely occupied as I still was with Freud at that time, and familiar
as I was with his methods of examination which I had some slight
occasion to use on some patients during the war, I resolved to obtain
from myself what we were trying to obtain from them, namely, a monologue
spoken as rapidly as possible without any intervention on the part of
the critical faculties, a monologue consequently unencumbered by the
slightest inhibition and which was, as closely as possible, akin
tospoken thought. It had seemed to me, and still does — the way in which
the phrase about the man cut in two had come to me is an indication of
it — that the speed of thought is no greater than the speed of speech,
and that thought does not necessarily defy language, nor even the
fast-moving pen. It was in this frame of mind that Philippe Soupault —
to whom I had confided these initial conclusions – and I decided to
blacken some paper, with a praiseworthy disdain for what might result
from a literary point of view. The ease of execution did the rest. By
the end of the first day we were able to read to ourselves some fifty or
so pages obtained in this manner, and begin to compare our results. All
in all, Soupault’s pages and mine proved to be remarkably similar: the
same overconstruction, shortcomings of a similar nature, but also, on
both our parts, the illusion of an extraordinary verve, a great deal of
emotion, a considerable choice of images of a quality such that we would
not have been capable of preparing a single one in longhand, a very
special picturesque quality and, here and there, a strong comical
effect. The only difference between our two texts seemed to me to derive
essentially from our respective tempers. Soupault’s being less static
than mine, and, if he does not mind my offering this one slight
criticism, from the fact that he had made the error of putting a few
words by way of titles at the top of certain pages, I suppose in a
spirit of mystification. On the other hand, I must give credit where
credit is due and say that he constantly and vigorously opposed any
effort to retouch or correct, however slightly, any passage of this kind
which seemed to me unfortunate. In this he was, to be sure, absolutely
right.[9] It is, in fact, difficult to appreciate fairly the various
elements present: one may even go so far as to say that it is impossible
to appreciate them at a first reading. To you who write, these elements
are, on the surface, as strange to you as they are to anyone else, and
naturally you are wary of them. Poetically speaking, what strikes you
about them above all is their extreme degree of immediate absurdity, the
quality of this absurdity, upon closer scrutiny, being to give way to
everything admissible, everything legitimate in the world: the
disclosure of a certain number of properties and of facts no less
objective, in the final analysis, than the others.
In homage to Guillaume Apollinaire, who had just died and who, on
several occasions, seemed to us to have followed a discipline of this
kind, without however having sacrificed to it any mediocre literary
means, Soupault and I baptized the new mode of pure expression which we
had at our disposal and which we wished to pass on to our friends, by
the name of SURREALISM. I believe that there is no point today in
dwelling any further on this word and that the meaning we gave it
initially has generally prevailed over its Apollinarian sense. To be
even fairer, we could probably have taken over the word SUPERNATURALISM
employed by GĂ©rard de Nerval in his dedication to the Filles de feu.[10]
It appears, in fact, that Nerval possessed to a tee the spirit with
which we claim a kinship, Apollinaire having possessed, on the contrary,
naught but the letter, still imperfect, of Surrealism, having shown
himself powerless to give a valid theoretical idea of it. Here are two
passages by Nerval which seem to me to be extremely significant in this
respect:
“I am going to explain to you, my dear Dumas, the phenomenon of which
you have spoken a short while ago. There are, as you know, certain
storytellers who cannot invent without identifying with the characters
their imagination has dreamt up. You may recall how convincingly our old
friend Nodier used to tell how it had been his misfortune during the
Revolution to be guillotined; one became so completely convinced of what
he was saying that one began to wonder how he had managed to have his
head glued back on.
...And since you have been indiscreet enough to quote one of the sonnets
composed in this SUPERNATURALISTIC dream-state, as the Germans would
call it, you will have to hear them all. You will find them at the end
of the volume. They are hardly any more obscure than Hegel’s metaphysics
or Swedenborg’s MEMORABILIA, and would lose their charm if they were
explained, if such were possible; at least admit the worth of the
expression...”[11]
Those who might dispute our right to employ the term SURREALISM in the
very special sense that we understand it are being extremely dishonest,
for there can be no doubt that this word had no currency before we came
along. Therefore, I am defining it once and for all:
SURREALISM, n. Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one
proposes to express — verbally, by means of the written word, or in any
other manner — the actual functioning of thought. Dictated by the
thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from
any aesthetic or moral concern.
ENCYCLOPEDIA. Philosophy. Surrealism is based on the belief in the
superior reality of certain forms of previously neglected associations,
in the omnipotence of dream, in the disinterested play of thought. It
tends to ruin once and for all all other psychic mechanisms and to
substitute itself for them in solving all the principal problems of
life. The following have performed acts of ABSOLUTE SURREALISM: Messrs.
Aragon, Baron, Boiffard, Breton, Carrive, Crevel, Delteil, Desnos,
Eluard, GĂ©rard, Limbour, Malkine, Morise, Naville, Noll, PĂ©ret, Picon,
Soupault, Vitrac.
They seem to be, up to the present time, the only ones, and there would
be no ambiguity about it were it not for the case of Isidore Ducasse,
about whom I lack information. And, of course, if one is to judge them
only superficially by their results, a good number of poets could pass
for Surrealists, beginning with Dante and, in his finer moments,
Shakespeare. In the course of the various attempts I have made to reduce
what is, by breach of trust, called genius, I have found nothing which
in the final analysis can be attributed to any other method than that.
Young’s Nights are Surrealist from one end to the other; unfortunately
it is a priest who is speaking, a bad priest no doubt, but a priest
nonetheless.
Swift is Surrealist in malice,
Sade is Surrealist in sadism.
Chateaubriand is Surrealist in exoticism.
Constant is Surrealist in politics.
Hugo is Surrealist when he isn’t stupid.
Desbordes-Valmore is Surrealist in love.
Bertrand is Surrealist in the past.
Rabbe is Surrealist in death.
Poe is Surrealist in adventure.
Baudelaire is Surrealist in morality.
Rimbaud is Surrealist in the way he lived, and elsewhere.
Mallarmé is Surrealist when he is confiding.
Jarry is Surrealist in absinthe.
Nouveau is Surrealist in the kiss.
Saint-Pol-Roux is Surrealist in his use of symbols.
Fargue is Surrealist in the atmosphere.
Vaché is Surrealist in me.
Reverdy is Surrealist at home.
Saint-Jean-Perse is Surrealist at a distance.
Roussel is Surrealist as a storyteller.
Etc.
I would like to stress the point: they are not always Surrealists, in
that I discern in each of them a certain number of preconceived ideas to
which — very naively! — they hold. They hold to them because they had
not heard the Surrealist voice, the one that continues to preach on the
eve of death and above the storms, because they did not want to serve
simply to orchestrate the marvelous score. They were instruments too
full of pride, and this is why they have not always produced a
harmonious sound.[12]
But we, who have made no effort whatsoever to filter, who in our works
have made ourselves into simple receptacles of so many echoes, modest
recording instruments who are not mesmerized by the drawings we are
making, perhaps we serve an even nobler cause. Thus do we render with
integrity the “talent” which has been lent to us. You might as well
speak of the talent of this platinum ruler, this mirror, this door, and
of the sky, if you like.
We do not have any talent; ask Philippe Soupault:
“Anatomical products of manufacture and low-income dwellings will
destroy the tallest cities.”
Ask Roger Vitrac:
“No sooner had I called forth the marble-admiral than he turned on his
heel like a horse which rears at the sight of the North star and showed
me, in the plane of his two-pointed cocked hat, a region where I was to
spend my life.”
Ask Paul Eluard:
“This is an oft-told tale that I tell, a famous poem that I reread: I am
leaning against a wall, with my verdant ears and my lips burned to a
crisp.”
Ask Max Morise:
“The bear of the caves and his friend the bittern, the vol-au-vent and
his valet the wind, the Lord Chancellor with his Lady, the scarecrow for
sparrows and his accomplice the sparrow, the test tube and his daughter
the needle, this carnivore and his brother the carnival, the sweeper and
his monocle, the Mississippi and its little dog, the coral and its jug
of milk, the Miracle and its Good Lord, might just as well go and
disappear from the surface of the sea.”
Ask Joseph Delteil:
“Alas! I believe in the virtue of birds. And a feather is all it takes
to make me die laughing.”
Ask Louis Aragon:
“During a short break in the party, as the players were gathering around
a bowl of flaming punch, I asked a tree if it still had its red ribbon.”
And ask me, who was unable to keep myself from writing the serpentine,
distracting lines of this preface.
Ask Robert Desnos, he who, more than any of us, has perhaps got closest
to the Surrealist truth, he who, in his still unpublished works[13] and
in the course of the numerous experiments he has been a party to, has
fully justified the hope I placed in Surrealism and leads me to believe
that a great deal more will still come of it. Desnos speaks Surrealist
at will. His extraordinary agility in orally following his thought is
worth as much to us as any number of splendid speeches which are lost,
Desnos having better things to do than record them. He reads himself
like an open book, and does nothing to retain the pages, which fly away
in the windy wake of his life.
After you have settled yourself in a place as favorable as possible to
the concentration of your mind upon itself, have writing materials
brought to you. Put yourself in as passive, or receptive, a state of
mind as you can. Forget about your genius, your talents, and the talents
of everyone else. Keep reminding yourself that literature is one of the
saddest roads that leads to everything. Write quickly, without any
preconceived subject, fast enough so that you will not remember what
you’re writing and be tempted to reread what you have written. The first
sentence will come spontaneously, so compelling is the truth that with
every passing second there is a sentence unknown to our consciousness
which is only crying out to be heard. It is somewhat of a problem to
form an opinion about the next sentence; it doubtless partakes both of
our conscious activity and of the other, if one agrees that the fact of
having written the first entails a minimum of perception. This should be
of no importance to you, however; to a large extent, this is what is
most interesting and intriguing about the Surrealist game. The fact
still remains that punctuation no doubt resists the absolute continuity
of the flow with which we are concerned, although it may seem as
necessary as the arrangement of knots in a vibrating cord. Go on as long
as you like. Put your trust in the inexhaustible nature of the murmur.
If silence threatens to settle in if you should ever happen to make a
mistake — a mistake, perhaps due to carelessness — break off without
hesitation with an overly clear line. Following a word the origin of
which seems suspicious to you, place any letter whatsoever, the letter
“l” for example, always the letter “l,” and bring the arbitrary back by
making this letter the first of the following word.
This is very difficult. Don’t be at home for anyone, and occasionally,
when no one has forced his way in, interrupting you in the midst of your
Surrealist activity, and you, crossing your arms, say: “It doesn’t
matter, there are doubtless better things to do or not do. Interest in
life is indefensible Simplicity, what is going on inside me, is still
tiresome to me!” or an other revolting banality.
Just prior to the elections, in the first country which deems it
worthwhile to proceed in this kind of public expression of opinion, have
yourself put on the ballot. Each of us has within himself the potential
of an orator: multicolored loin cloths, glass trinkets of words. Through
Surrealism he will take despair unawares in its poverty. One night, on a
stage, he will, by himself, carve up the eternal heaven, that Peau de
l’ours. He will promise so much that any promises he keeps will be a
source of wonder and dismay. In answer to the claims of an entire people
he will give a partial and ludicrous vote. He will make the bitterest
enemies partake of a secret desire which will blow up the countries. And
in this he will succeed simply by allowing himself to be moved by the
immense word which dissolves into pity and revolves in hate. Incapable
of failure, he will play on the velvet of all failures. He will be truly
elected, and women will love him with an all-consuming passion.
Whoever you may be, if the spirit moves you burn a few laurel leaves
and, without wishing to tend this meager fire, you will begin to write a
novel. Surrealism will allow you to: all you have to do is set the
needle marked “fair” at “action,” and the rest will follow naturally.
Here are some characters rather different in appearance; their names in
your handwriting are a question of capital letters, and they will
conduct themselves with the same ease with respect to active verbs as
does the impersonal pronoun “it” with respect to words such as “is
raining,” “is,” “must,” etc. They will command them, so to speak, and
wherever observation, reflection, and the faculty of generalization
prove to be of no help to you, you may rest assured that they will
credit you with a thousand intentions you never had. Thus endowed with a
tiny number of physical and moral characteristics, these beings who in
truth owe you so little will thereafter deviate not one iota from a
certain line of conduct about which you need not concern yourself any
further. Out of this will result a plot more or less clever in
appearance, justifying point by point this moving or comforting
denouement about which you couldn’t care less. Your false novel will
simulate to a marvelous degree a real novel; you will be rich, and
everyone will agree that “you’ve really got a lot of guts,” since it’s
also in this region that this something is located.
Of course, by an analogous method, and provided you ignore what you are
reviewing, you can successfully devote yourself to false literary
criticism.
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Surrealism will usher you into death, which is a secret society. It will
glove your hand, burying therein the profound M with which the word
Memory begins. Do not forget to make proper arrangements for your last
will and testament: speaking personally, I ask that I be taken to the
cemetery in a moving van. May my friends destroy every last copy of the
printing of the Speech concerning the Modicum of Reality.
Language has been given to man so that he may make Surrealist use of it.
To the extent that he is required to make himself understood, he manages
more or less to express himself, and by so doing to fulfill certain
functions culled from among the most vulgar. Speaking, reading a letter,
present no real problem for him, provided that, in so doing, he does not
set himself a goal above the mean, that is, provided he confines himself
to carrying on a conversation (for the pleasure of conversing) with
someone. He is not worried about the words that are going to come, nor
about the sentence which will follow after the sentence he is just
completing. To a very simple question, he will be capable of making a
lightning-like reply. In the absence of minor tics acquired through
contact with others, he can without any ado offer an opinion on a
limited number of subjects; for that he does not need to “count up to
ten” before speaking or to formulate anything whatever ahead of time.
Who has been able to convince him that this faculty of the first draft
will only do him a disservice when he makes up his mind to establish
more delicate relationships? There is no subject about which he should
refuse to talk, to write about prolifically. All that results from
listening to oneself, from reading what one has written, is the
suspension of the occult, that admirable help. I am in no hurry to
understand myself (basta! I shall always understand myself). If such and
such a sentence of mine turns out to be somewhat disappointing, at least
momentarily, I place my trust in the following sentence to redeem its
sins; I carefully refrain from starting it over again or polishing it.
The only thing that might prove fatal to me would be the slightest loss
of impetus. Words, groups of words which follow one another, manifest
among themselves the greatest solidarity. It is not up to me to favor
one group over the other. It is up to a miraculous equivalent to
intervene — and intervene it does.
Not only does this unrestricted language, which I am trying to render
forever valid, which seems to me to adapt itself to all of life’s
circumstances, not only does this language not deprive me of any of my
means, on the contrary it lends me an extraordinary lucidity, and it
does so in an area where I least expected it. I shall even go so far as
to maintain that it instructs me and, indeed, I have had occasion to use
surreally words whose meaning I have forgotten. I was subsequently able
to verify that the way in which I had used them corresponded perfectly
with their definition. This would leave one to believe that we do not
“learn,” that all we ever do is “relearn.” There are felicitous turns of
speech that I have thus familiarized myself with. And I am not talking
about the poetic consciousness of objects which I have been able to
acquire only after a spiritual contact with them repeated a thousand
times over.
The forms of Surrealist language adapt themselves best to dialogue.
Here, two thoughts confront each other; while one is being delivered,
the other is busy with it; but how is it busy with it? To assume that it
incorporates it within itself would be tantamount to admitting that
there is a time during which it is possible for it to live completely
off that other thought, which is highly unlikely. And, in fact, the
attention it pays is completely exterior; it has only time enough to
approve or reject — generally reject — with all the consideration of
which man is capable. This mode of language, moreover, does not allow
the heart of the matter to be plumbed. My attention, prey to an entreaty
which it cannot in all decency reject, treats the opposing thought as an
enemy; in ordinary conversation, it “takes it up” almost always on the
words, the figures of speech, it employs; it puts me in a position to
turn it to good advantage in my reply by distorting them. This is true
to such a degree that in certain pathological states of mind, where the
sensorial disorders occupy the patient’s complete attention, he limits
himself, while continuing to answer the questions, to seizing the last
word spoken in his presence or the last portion of the Surrealist
sentence some trace of which he finds in his mind.
Q: “How old are you?”
A: “You.” (Echolalia.)
Q: “What is your name?”
A: “Forty-five houses.” (Ganser syndrome, or beside-the-point replies.)
There is no conversation in which some trace of this disorder does not
occur. The effort to be social which dictates it and the considerable
practice we have at it are the only things which enable us to conceal it
temporarily. It is also the great weakness of the book that it is in
constant conflict with its best, by which I mean the most demanding,
readers. In the very short dialogue that I concocted above between the
doctor and the madman, it was in fact the madman who got the better of
the exchange. Because, through his replies, he obtrudes upon the
attention of the doctor examining him — and because he is not the person
asking the questions. Does this mean that his thought at this point is
stronger? Perhaps. He is free not to care any longer about his age or
name.
Poetic Surrealism, which is the subject of this study, has focused its
efforts up to this point on reestablishing dialogue in its absolute
truth, by freeing both interlocutors from any obligations and
politeness. Each of them simply pursues his soliloquy without trying to
derive any special dialectical pleasure from it and without trying to
impose anything whatsoever upon his neighbor. The remarks exchanged are
not, as is generally the case, meant to develop some thesis, however
unimportant it may be; they are as disaffected as possible. As for the
reply that they elicit, it is, in principle, totally indifferent to the
personal pride of the person speaking. The words, the images are only so
many springboards for the mind of the listener. In Les Champs
magnétiques, the first purely Surrealist work, this is the way in which
the pages grouped together under the title Barrières must be conceived
of — pages wherein Soupault and I show ourselves to be impartial
interlocutors.
Surrealism does not allow those who devote themselves to it to forsake
it whenever they like. There is every reason to believe that it acts on
the mind very much as drugs do; like drugs, it creates a certain state
of need and can push man to frightful revolts. It also is, if you like,
an artificial paradise, and the taste one has for it derives from
Baudelaire’s criticism for the same reason as the others. Thus the
analysis of the mysterious effects and special pleasures it can produce
— in many respects Surrealism occurs as a new vice which does not
necessarily seem to be restricted to the happy few; like hashish, it has
the ability to satisfy all manner of tastes — such an analysis has to be
included in the present study.
1. It is true of Surrealist images as it is of opium images that man
does not evoke them; rather they “come to him spontaneously,
despotically. He cannot chase them away; for the will is powerless now
and no longer controls the faculties.”[14] It remains to be seen whether
images have ever been “evoked.” If one accepts, as I do, Reverdy’s
definition it does not seem possible to bring together, voluntarily,
what he calls “two distant realities.” The juxtaposition is made or not
made, and that is the long and the short of it. Personally, I absolutely
refuse to believe that, in Reverdy’s work, images such as
In the brook, there is a song that flows
or:
Day unfolded like a white tablecloth
or:
The world goes back into a sack
reveal the slightest degree of premeditation. In my opinion, it is
erroneous to claim that “the mind has grasped the relationship” of two
realities in the presence of each other. First of all, it has seized
nothing consciously. It is, as it were, from the fortuitous
juxtaposition of the two terms that a particular light has sprung, the
light of the image, to which we are infinitely sensitive. The value of
the image depends upon the beauty of the spark obtained; it is,
consequently, a function of the difference of potential between the two
conductors. When the difference exists only slightly, as in a
comparison,[15] the spark is lacking. Now, it is not within man’s power,
so far as I can tell, to effect the juxtaposition of two realities so
far apart. The principle of the association of ideas, such as we
conceive of it, militates against it. Or else we would have to revert to
an elliptical art, which Reverdy deplores as much as I. We are therefore
obliged to admit that the two terms of the image are not deduced one
from the other by the mind for the specific purpose of producing the
spark, that they are the simultaneous products of the activity I call
Surrealist, reason’s role being limited to taking note of, and
appreciating, the luminous phenomenon.
And just as the length of the spark increases to the extent that it
occurs in rarefied gases, the Surrealist atmosphere created by automatic
writing, which I have wanted to put within the reach of everyone, is
especially conducive to the production of the most beautiful images. One
can even go so far as to say that in this dizzying race the images
appear like the only guideposts of the mind. By slow degrees the mind
becomes convinced of the supreme reality of these images. At first
limiting itself to submitting to them, it soon realizes that they
flatter its reason, and increase its knowledge accordingly. The mind
becomes aware of the limitless expanses wherein its desires are made
manifest, where the pros and cons are constantly consumed, where its
obscurity does not betray it. It goes forward, borne by these images
which enrapture it, which scarcely leave it any time to blow upon the
fire in its fingers. This is the most beautiful night of all, the
lightning-filled night: day, compared to it, is night.
The countless kinds of Surrealist images would require a classification
which I do not intend to make today. To group them according to their
particular affinities would lead me far afield; what I basically want to
mention is their common virtue. For me, their greatest virtue, I must
confess, is the one that is arbitrary to the highest degree, the one
that takes the longest time to translate into practical language, either
because it contains an immense amount of seeming contradiction or
because one of its terms is strangely concealed; or because, presenting
itself as something sensational, it seems to end weakly (because it
suddenly closes the angle of its compass), or because it derives from
itself a ridiculous formal justification, or because it is of a
hallucinatory kind, or because it very naturally gives to the abstract
the mask of the concrete, or the opposite, or because it implies the
negation of some elementary physical property, or because it provokes
laughter. Here, in order, are a few examples of it:
The ruby of champagne. (LAUTRÉAMONT)
Beautiful as the law of arrested development of the breast in adults,
whose propensity to growth is not in proportion to the quantity of
molecules that their organism assimilates. (LAUTRÉAMONT)
A church stood dazzling as a bell. (PHILIPPE SOUPAULT)
In Rrose Sélavy’s sleep there is a dwarf issued from a well who comes to
eat her bread at night. (ROBERT DESNOS)
On the bridge the dew with the head of a tabby cat lulls itself to
sleep. (ANDRÉ BRETON)
A little to the left, in my firmament foretold, I see — but it’s
doubtless but a mist of blood and murder — the gleaming glass of
liberty’s disturbances. (LOUIS ARAGON)
In the forest aflame The lions were fresh. (ROBERT VITRAC)
The color of a woman’s stockings is not necessarily in the likeness of
her eyes, which led a philosopher who it is pointless to mention, to
say: “Cephalopods have more reasons to hate progress than do
quadrupeds.” (MAX MORISE)
1. Whether we like it or not, there is enough there to satisfy several
demands of the mind. All these images seem to attest to the fact that
the mind is ripe for something more than the benign joys it allows
itself in general. This is the only way it has of turning to its own
advantage the ideal quantity of events with which it is entrusted.[16]
These images show it the extent of its ordinary dissipation and the
drawbacks that it offers for it. In the final analysis, it’s not such a
bad thing for these images to upset the mind, for to upset the mind is
to put it in the wrong. The sentences I quote make ample provision for
this. But the mind which relishes them draws therefrom the conviction
that it is on the right track; on its own, the mind is incapable of
finding itself guilty of cavil; it has nothing to fear, since, moreover,
it attempts to embrace everything.
2. The mind which plunges into Surrealism relives with glowing
excitement the best part of its childhood. For such a mind, it is
similar to the certainty with which a person who is drowning reviews
once more, in the space of less than a second, all the insurmountable
moments of his life. Some may say to me that the parallel is not very
encouraging. But I have no intention of encouraging those who tell me
that. From childhood memories, and from a few others, there emanates a
sentiment of being unintegrated, and then later of having gone astray,
which I hold to be the most fertile that exists. It is perhaps childhood
that comes closest to one’s “real life”; childhood beyond which man has
at his disposal, aside from his laissez-passer, only a few complimentary
tickets; childhood where everything nevertheless conspires to bring
about the effective, risk-free possession of oneself. Thanks to
Surrealism, it seems that opportunity knocks a second time. It is as
though we were still running toward our salvation, or our perdition. In
the shadow we again see a precious terror. Thank God, it’s still only
Purgatory. With a shudder, we cross what the occultists call dangerous
territory. In my wake I raise up monsters that are lying in wait; they
are not yet too ill-disposed toward me, and I am not lost, since I fear
them. Here are “the elephants with the heads of women and the flying
lions” which used to make Soupault and me tremble in our boots to meet,
here is the “soluble fish” which still frightens me slightly. POISSON
SOLUBLE, am I not the soluble fish, I was born under the sign of Pisces,
and man is soluble in his thought! The flora and fauna of Surrealism are
inadmissible.
3. I do not believe in the establishment of a conventional Surrealist
pattern any time in the near future. The characteristics common to all
the texts of this kind, including those I have just cited and many
others which alone could offer us a logical analysis and a careful
grammatical analysis, do not preclude a certain evolution of Surrealist
prose in time. Coming on the heels of a large number of essays I have
written in this vein over the past five years, most of which I am
indulgent enough to think are extremely disordered, the short anecdotes
which comprise the balance of this volume offer me a glaring proof of
what I am saying. I do not judge them to be any more worthless, because
of that, in portraying for the reader the benefits which the Surrealist
contribution is liable to make to his consciousness.
Surrealist methods would, moreover, demand to be heard. Everything is
valid when it comes to obtaining the desired suddenness from certain
associations. The pieces of paper that Picasso and Braque insert into
their work have the same value as the introduction of a platitude into a
literary analysis of the most rigorous sort. It is even permissible to
entitle POEM what we get from the most random assemblage possible
(observe, if you will, the syntax) of headlines and scraps of headlines
cut out of the newspapers:
POEM
A burst of laughter
of sapphire in the island of Ceylon
The most beautiful straws
HAVE A FADED COLOR
UNDER THE LOCKS
on an isolated farm
FROM DAY TO DAY
the pleasant
grows worse
coffee
preaches for its saint
THE DAILY ARTISAN OF YOUR BEAUTY
MADAM,
a pair
of silk stockings
is not
A leap into space
A STAG
Love above all
Everything could be worked out so well
PARIS IS A BIG VILLAGE
Watch out for
the fire that covers
THE PRAYER
of fair weather
Know that
The ultraviolet rays
have finished their task
short and sweet
THE FIRST WHITE PAPER
OF CHANCE
Red will be
The wandering singer
WHERE IS HE?
in memory
in his house
AT THE SUITORS’ BALL
I do
as I dance
What people did, what they’re going to do
And we could offer many many more examples. The theater, philosophy,
science, criticism would all succeed in finding their bearings there. I
hasten to add that future Surrealist techniques do not interest me.
Far more serious, in my opinion[17] — I have intimated it often enough —
are the applications of Surrealism to action. To be sure, I do not
believe in the prophetic nature of the Surrealist word. “It is the
oracle, the things I say.”[18] Yes, as much as I like, but what of the
oracle itself?[19] Men’s piety does not fool me. The Surrealist voice
that shook Cumae, Dodona, and Delphi is nothing more than the voice
which dictates my less irascible speeches to me. My time must not be its
time, why should this voice help me resolve the childish problem of my
destiny? I pretend, unfortunately, to act in a world where, in order to
take into account its suggestions, I would be obliged to resort to two
kinds of interpreters, one to translate its judgements for me, the
other, impossible to find, to transmit to my fellow men whatever sense I
could make out of them. This world, in which I endure what I endure
(don’t go see), this modern world, I mean, what the devil do you want me
to do with it? Perhaps the Surrealist voice will be stilled, I have
given up trying to keep track of those who have disappeared. I shall no
longer enter into, however briefly, the marvelous detailed description
of my years and my days. I shall be like Nijinski who was taken last
year to the Russian ballet and did not realize what spectacle it was he
was seeing. I shall be alone, very alone within myself, indifferent to
all the world’s ballets. What I have done, what I have left undone, I
give it to you.
And ever since I have had a great desire to show forbearance to
scientific musing, however unbecoming, in the final analysis, from every
point of view. Radios? Fine. Syphilis? If you like. Photography? I don’t
see any reason why not. The cinema? Three cheers for darkened rooms.
War? Gave us a good laugh. The telephone? Hello. Youth? Charming white
hair. Try to make me say thank you: “Thank you.” Thank you. If the
common man has a high opinion of things which properly speaking belong
to the realm of the laboratory, it is because such research has resulted
in the manufacture of a machine or the discovery of some serum which the
man in the street views as affecting him directly. He is quite sure that
they have been trying to improve his lot. I am not quite sure to what
extent scholars are motivated by humanitarian aims, but it does not seem
to me that this factor constitutes a very marked degree of goodness. I
am, of course, referring to true scholars and not to the vulgarizers and
popularizers of all sorts who take out patents. In this realm as in any
other, I believe in the pure Surrealist joy of the man who, forewarned
that all others before him have failed, refuses to admit defeat, sets
off from whatever point he chooses, along any other path save a
reasonable one, and arrives wherever he can. Such and such an image, by
which he deems it opportune to indicate his progress and which may
result, perhaps, in his receiving public acclaim, is to me, I must
confess, a matter of complete indifference. Nor is the material with
which he must perforce encumber himself; his glass tubes or my metallic
feathers… As for his method, I am willing to give it as much credit as I
do mine. I have seen the inventor of the cutaneous plantar reflex at
work; he manipulated his subjects without respite, it was much more than
an “examination” he was employing; it was obvious that he was following
no set plan. Here and there he formulated a remark, distantly, without
nonetheless setting down his needle, while his hammer was never still.
He left to others the futile task of curing patients. He was wholly
consumed by and devoted to that sacred fever.
Surrealism, such as I conceive of it, asserts our complete nonconformism
clearly enough so that there can be no question of translating it, at
the trial of the real world, as evidence for the defense. It could, on
the contrary, only serve to justify the complete state of distraction
which we hope to achieve here below. Kant’s absentmindedness regarding
women, Pasteur’s absentmindedness about “grapes,” Curie’s
absentmindedness with respect to vehicles, are in this regard profoundly
symptomatic. This world is only very relatively in tune with thought,
and incidents of this kind are only the most obvious episodes of a war
in which I am proud to be participating. “Ce monde n’est que très
relativement à la mesure de la pensée et les incidents de ce genre ne
sont que les épisodes jusqu’ici les plus marquants d’une guerre
d’indépendence à laquelle je me fais gloire de participer.” Surrealism
is the “invisible ray” which will one day enable us to win out over our
opponents. “You are no longer trembling, carcass.” This summer the roses
are blue; the wood is of glass. The earth, draped in its verdant cloak,
makes as little impression upon me as a ghost. It is living and ceasing
to live which are imaginary solutions. Existence is elsewhere.
[1] Pascal.
[2] Barrès, Proust.
[3] Account must be taken of the depth of the dream. For the most part I
retain only what I can glean from its most superficial layers. What I
most enjoy contemplating about a dream is everything that sinks back
below the surface in a waking state, everything I have forgotten about
my activities in the course of the preceding day, dark foliage, stupid
branches. In “reality,” likewise, I prefer to fall.
[4] What is admirable about the fantastic is that there is no longer
anything fantastic: there is only the real.
[5] See Les Pas perdus, published by N.R.F.
[6] Nord-Sud, March 1918.
[7] Were I a painter, this visual depiction would doubtless have become
more important for me than the other. It was most certainly my previous
predispositions which decided the matter. Since that day, I have had
occasion to concentrate my attention voluntarily on similar apparitions,
and I know they are fully as clear as auditory phenomena. With a pencil
and white sheet of paper to hand, I could easily trace their outlines.
Here again it is not a matter of drawing, but simply of tracing. I could
thus depict a tree, a wave, a musical instrument, all manner of things
of which I am presently incapable of providing even the roughest sketch.
I would plunge into it, convinced that I would find my way again, in a
maze of lines which at first glance would seem to be going nowhere. And,
upon opening my eyes, I would get the very strong impression of
something “never seen.” The proof of what I am saying has been provided
many times by Robert Desnos: to be convinced, one has only to leaf
through the pages of issue number 36 of Feuilles libres which contains
several of his drawings (Romeo and Juliet, A Man Died This Morning,
etc.) which were taken by this magazine as the drawings of a madman and
published as such.
[8] Knut Hamsum ascribes this sort of revelation to which I had been
subjected as deriving from hunger, and he may not be wrong. (The fact is
I did not eat every day during that period of my life). Most certainly
the manifestations that he describes in these terms are clearly the
same:
“The following day I awoke at an early hour. It was still dark. My eyes
had been open for a long time when I heard the clock in the apartment
above strike five. I wanted to go back to sleep, but I couldn’t; I was
wide awake and a thousand thoughts were crowding through my mind.
“Suddenly a few good fragments came to mind, quite suitable to be used
in a rough draft, or serialized; all of a sudden I found, quite by
chance, beautiful phrases, phrases such as I had never written. I
repeated them to myself slowly, word by word; they were excellent. And
there were still more coming. I got up and picked up a pencil and some
paper that were on a table behind my bed. It was as though some vein had
burst within me, one word followed another, found its proper place,
adapted itself to the situation, scene piled upon scene, the action
unfolded, one retort after another welled up in my mind, I was enjoying
myself immensely. Thoughts came to me so rapidly and continued to flow
so abundantly that I lost a whole host of delicate details, because my
pencil could not keep up with them, and yet I went as fast as I could,
my hand in constant motion, I did not lose a minute. The sentences
continued to well up within me, I was pregnant with my subject.”
Apollinaire asserted that Chirico’s first paintings were done under the
influence of cenesthesic disorders (migraines, colics, etc).
[9] I believe more and more in the infallibility of my thought with
respect to myself, and this is too fair. Nonetheless, with this
thought-writing, where one is at the mercy of the first outside
distraction, “ebullutions” can occur. It would be inexcusable for us to
pretend otherwise. By definition, thought is strong, and incapable of
catching itself in error. The blame for these obvious weaknesses must be
placed on suggestions that come to it from without.
[10] And also by Thomas Carlyle in Sartor Resartus ([Book III] Chapter
VIII, “Natural Supernaturalism”), 1833–34.
[11] See also L’Idéoréalisme by Saint-Pol-Roux.
[12] I could say the same of a number of philosophers and painters,
including, among the latter, Uccello, from painters of the past, and, in
the modern era, Seurat, Gustave Moreau, Matisse (in “La Musique,” for
example), Derain, Picasso, (by far the most pure), Braque, Duchamp,
Picabia, Chirico (so admirable for so long), Klee, Man Ray, Max Ernst,
and, one so close to us, André Masson.
[13] Nouvelles HĂ©brides; DĂ©sordre formel; Deuil, pour Deuil.
[14] Baudelaire.
[15] Compare the image in the work of Jules Renard.
[16] Let us no forget that, according to Novalis’ formula, “there are
series of events which run parallel to real events. Men and
circumstances generally modify the ideal train of circumstances, so that
is seems imperfect; and their consequences are also equally imperfect.
Thus it was with the Reformation; instead of Protestantism, we got
Lutheranism.”
[17] Whatever reservations I may be allowed to make concerning
responsibility in general and the medico-legal considerations which
determine an individual’s degree of responsibility — complete
responsibility, irresponsibility, limited responsibility (sic) — however
difficult it may be for me to accept the principle of any kind of
responsibility, I would like to know how the first punishable offenses,
the Surrealist character of which will be clearly apparent, will be
judged. Will the accused be acquitted, or will he merely be given the
benefit of the doubt because of extenuating circumstances? It’s a shame
that the violation of the laws governing the Press is today scarcely
repressed, for if it were not we would soon see a trial of this sort:
the accused has published a book which is an outrage to public decency.
Several of his “most respected and honorable” fellow citizens have
lodged a complaint against him, and he is also charged with slander and
libel. There are also all sorts of other charges against him, such as
insulting and defaming the army, inciting to murder, rape, etc. The
accused, moreover, wastes no time in agreeing with the accusers in
“stigmatizing” most of the ideas expressed. His only defense is claiming
that he does not consider himself to be the author of his book, said
book being no more and no less than a Surrealist concoction which
precludes any question of merit or lack of merit on the part of the
person who signs it; further, that all he has done is copy a document
without offering any opinion thereon, and that he is at least as foreign
to the accused text as is the presiding judge himself.
What is true for the publication of a book will also hold true for a
whole host of other acts as soon as Surrealist methods begin to enjoy
widespread favor. When that happens, a new morality must be substituted
for the prevailing morality, the source of all our trials and
tribulations.)
[18] Rimbaud.
[19] Still, STILL.... We must absolutely get to the bottom of this.
Today, June 8, 1924, about one o’clock, the voice whispered to me:
“Béthune, Béthune.” What did it mean? I have never been to Béthune, and
have only the vaguest notion as to where it is located on the map of
France. BĂ©thune evokes nothing for me, not even a scene from The Three
Musketeers. I should have left for BĂ©thune, where perhaps there was
something awaiting me; that would have been to simple, really. Someone
told me they had read in a book by Chesterton about a detective who, in
order to find someone he is looking for in a certain city, simply
scoured from roof to cellar the houses which, from the outside, seemed
somehow abnormal to him, were it only in some slight detail. This system
is as good as any other.
Similarly, in 1919, Soupault went into any number of impossible
buildings to ask the concierge whether Philippe Soupault did in fact
live there. He would not have been surprised, I suspect, by an
affirmative reply. He would have gone and knocked on his door.