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And excerpts from ANDRÉ Breton's Manifesto of Surrealism & SECRETS OF THE MAGICAL SURREALIST ART Written Surrealist composition or first and last draft:
MANIFESTO OF SURREALISM
BY ANDRÉ BRETON (1924)
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?
--- And as for Guillaume Apollinaire he concludes...
...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 Gérard de Nerval in his dedication to the Filles de feu.* (And also by Thomas Carlyle in Sartor Resartus ([Book III] Chapter
VIII, "Natural Supernaturalism"), 1833-34.) 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.
...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, Gérard, Limbour,
Malkine, Morise, Naville, Noll, Péret, Picon, Soupault, Vitrac.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.
And Breton goes on to explain about the use of surrealist imagery:
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."
AND:
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.
and an outline of the Manifesto was released to the public:
A SURREALIST MANIFESTO
The Surrealist Manifesto was written in 1924 by Andre Breton and then signed by such artists as Louis Aragon, Antonin Artaud,
Jacques Baron, Joe Bousquet, J.-A. Boiffard, Jean Carrive, Rene Crevel, Robert Desnos, Paul Elaurd, Max Ernst, and Breton
himself. Released to the public on January 27th 1925.
With regard to a false interpretation of our enterprise, stupidly circulated among the public, we declare as follows to the
entire braying literary, dramatic, philosophical, exegetical and even theological body of contemporary criticism:
1. We have nothing to do with literature; but we are quite capable, when necessary, of making use of it like anyone else,
2. Surrealism is not a new means or expression, or an easier one, nor even a metaphysic of poetry. It is a means of total
liberation of the mind and of all that resembles it.
3. We are determined to make a Revolution.
4. We have joined the word surrealism to the word revolution solely to show the disinterested, detached, and even entirely
desperate character of this revolution.
5. We make no claim to change the mores of mankind, but we intend to show the fragility of thought, and on what shifting foundations,
what caverns we have built our trembling houses.
6. We hurl this formal warning to Society; Beware of your deviations and faux-pas, we shall not miss a single one.
7. At each turn of its thought, Society will find us waiting.
8. We are specialists in Revolt. There is no means of action which we are not capable, when necessary, of employing.
9. We say in particular to the Western world: surrealism exists. And what is this new ism that is fastened to us? Surrealism
is not a poetic form. It is a cry of the mind turning back on itself, and it is determined to break apart its fetters, even
if it must be by material hammers!
Bureaus de Recherches Surrealistes,
15, Rue de Grenelle
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