Det Surrealistiske Manifest og Salvador Dali

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Dansk/Historieopgave om

SURREALISMEN

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2.A, Rysensteen Gymnasium

Februar 2010

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INDHOLD:

• Side 3: Indledning

• Side 3: Det Surrealistiske Manifest

• Side 4: Samtidens kunst og problemer

• Side 5: Analyse af Drøm inspireret af en bis flyven om et granatæble et sekund for opvågnen

• Side 8: Analyse af Den Andalusiske Hund

• Side 11: Konklusion

• Side 12: Litteraturliste

• Side 13: Bilag 1: Drøm inspireret af en bis flyven om et granatæble et sekund for opvågnen af Salvador Dalí, 1944

• Side 14: Bilag 2: Merz 163 af Kurt Schwitters, 1920

• Side 15: Bilag 3: Enkeltbilleder fra Den Andalusiske Hund af Luis

Buñuel og Salvador Dalí, 1928

• Side 17: Bilag 4: Det Surrealistiske Manifest af André Breton, 1924

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INDLEDNING:

Det visuelle udtryk har altid interesseret mennesket, lige fra den tidlige stenalders hulemalerier til det moderne samfunds filmproduktioner og malerkunst. Vi har valgt at inddele de mange forskellige udtryksformer i forskellige genrebetegnelser baseret på den kunstneriske stil og til dels også på bestemte tidsperioder. At dykke ned i disse genrer, finde baggrunden for dem og fortolke deres værker giver en god forståelse for, hvorfor kunstneren har skabt disse, og hvorfor der er opstået et publikum omkring genren, og for hvad kunsten egentlig gør ved henholdsvis beskueren og skaberen, og endeligt hvorfor det visuelle kunstværk stadig vækker interesse den dag i dag. Jeg har derfor valgt at undersøge en af de mest banebrydende og alternative stilarter inden for kunsten, nemlig surrealismen. Jeg vil ud fra en danskfaglig synsvinkel analysere maleriet Drøm inspireret af en bis flyven om et granatæble et sekund før opvågnen fra 1944 af den surrealistiske kunstner Salvador Dalí samt filmen Den Andalusiske Hund af Luis Buñuel og Salvador Dalí med henblik på at belyse, hvad der kendetegner surrealismen som kunstform. Jeg finder det også væsentligt at undersøge, hvad baggrunden for surrealismen var ud fra en kunsthistorisk synsvinkel. Dette vil jeg gøre ved inddragelse af Det Surrealistiske Manifest skrevet af André Breton i 1924 i mine analyser samt en redegørelse for samtidens problemer og kunstsyn. Der vil primært blive fokuseret på det billed- og filmanalytiske, der kombineret med den kunsthistoriske baggrund skal skabe en forståelse for, hvad surrealismens kunstneriske udtryk og idégrundlag er.

DET SURREALISTISKE MANIFEST

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Den surrealistiske kunst stammer fra Paris, og selve ordet surrealisme blev brugt for første gang af den franske digter Guillaume Apollinaire i 1917 i forbindelse med Jean Cocteus ballet Parade. Han brugte ordet til at beskrive ballettens kunstneriske fornyelse, som han mente havde en sandhed, der sprang rammerne for realiteterne – deraf surrealisme. Dette ord valgte digteren André Breton at tilegne sig i 1924, hvor han skrev Det Surrealistiske Manifest, der den dag i dag anses for at være grundlaget for surrealismen, som vi kender den. Det er et litterært manifest, men fik betydning for alle kunstformer indenfor surrealisme. Breton kæder fantasien og kreativiteten uadskilleligt sammen med det underbevidste og uforudsigelige i menneskets sind. Manifestet giver udtryk for, at det vi kalder det virkelige liv er en distraktion, som forhindrer os i at nå de kreative og følelsesmæssige

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4 højder vi ifølge Bretons teori kan nå vha. fantasien og underbevidsthedens anarki. Manifestet er således et direkte angreb på realismen, positivismen, rationalismen, naturalismen og alt hvad der ellers forsøger at gengive virkeligheden. Breton giver, bl.a. igennem et uddrag fra Fyodor

Dostoyevskis roman Forbrydelse og Straf fra 1866^{2}, udtryk for, at litteraturens virkelighedsnære

beskrivelser er spild af tid, og at det ikke giver nogen mening at stræbe efter en komplet analyse af samfundet og verden, men at man derimod bør stræbe mod noget hinsides samfundet og realiteternes rammer: ”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.”^{3} Derimod lovpriser Breton Sigmund Freuds teorier om underbevidstheden og drømme. I

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manifestet udtrykker Breton begejstring for den vægt Freud lagde på drømme i hans forskning .

Breton mente, at den ukontrollable drømmeverden, hvor alt er muligt, er det tætteste mennesket kommer på at blive frelst fra virkelighedens intetsigende, irrelevante og kedelige væsen.

Yderligere gør Breton sig til dommer for, hvem der har ’udført handlinger af absolut surrealisme’. I denne sammenhæng nævner han kulturpersonerne Messrs, Aragon, Baron, Boiffard, Breton,

Carrive, Crevel, Delteil, Desnos, Eluard, Gérard, Limbour, Malkine, Morise, Naville, Noll, Péret,

Picon, Soupault og Vitrac^{5}, der alle var skikkelser inden for fransk litteratur og lyrik. Især digteren

Louis Aragon er efterfølgende blevet regnet for en vigtig person i forbindelse med surrealismen.

SAMTIDENS KUNST OG PROBLEMER

Surrealismen kan ses som sammenhængende med den dadaistiske kunst, der opstod under 1.

verdenskrig(). Det filosofiske grundlag for dadaismen var, at al moral og politisk mening ophørte pga. krigen, og dadaisternes værker portrætterede tilfældigheden i en verden, som de mente ikke længere kunne tillægges normer og regler. De benyttede sig meget af collage lavet af f.eks.

togbilletter og andre små lapper som det ses i Kurt Schwitters Merz 163 fra 1920^{6}. Tanken om

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5 denne ulogiske tilfældighed blev omfavnet af de kunstnere, som senere blev betegnet som surrealister, og banede vej for bl.a. sandmaleriet, hvor lim og sand blev drysset ud på et tomt lærred, hvorefter maleren skabte værket ud fra disse tilfældigt konstruerede former. Det var netop også dadaismens idealer, der fik mange surrealister til at orientere sig kommunistisk. En omvæltning af systemet måtte finde sted for, at det dermed kunne blive muligt at leve surrealistisk. Da netop socialismen og kommunismen var fremstormende op igennem 20’erne og 30’erne, var det ikke sært, at mange surrealister blev tiltrukket af tanken om en revolution. Surrealismen ville gerne gøre op med samtidens litteratur og kunst og så en ideel grobund for deres revolutionære kunstidealer i muligheden for en omvæltning af de politiske systemer. Breton nævner tilmed den franske politiker Benjamin Constant (), der var aktør i den franske revolution, som værende surrealist

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indenfor politik . Surrealisterne ønskede uden tvivl radikale ændringer i det borgerlige franske

samfund, som de fandt trivielt og uinspirerende ift. det, de sigtede efter rent intellektuelt – noget måtte ske, noget skulle ændres. Selve kunsten bærer dog ikke noget genkendeligt præg af de kommunistiske idealer.

Surrealismen er et direkte angreb på forudgående kunstretninger som realismen og positivismen, der forsøgte at afspejle virkeligheden, hvad end det galt samfundet, kærlighed eller naturen. Dette var slet ikke i surrealismens interesse, hvilket også klart kommer til udtryk i Det Surrealistiske Manifest: ”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

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these ridiculous books, these insulting plays.”

For at udvikle os intellektuelt skal vi altså give slip på den virkelige verden og inddrage det ukendte og fantasien i vores levevis.

DRØM INSPIRERET AF EN BIS FLYVEN OM ET GRANATÆBLE ET SEKUND FØR

OPVÅGNEN:

Drøm inspireret af en bis flyven om et granatæble et sekund før opvågnen (originaltitel: Rêve causé

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par le vol d’une abeille autour d’une grenade, une seconde avant l’éveil)

er et maleri af den

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6 spanske maler Salvador Dalí fra 1944. Det forestiller en sovende og nøgen kvinde, der svæver let over en slags klippegrund ud til et stort hav. Mod kvinden springer to tigre, der kommer ud af munden på en fisk, der springer ud af et granatæble. I linje med de to tigre ses et gevær med en bajonet, der er centimer fra at stikke den sovende kvinde i armen. I baggrunden ses en elefant med lange, tynde ben, og under kvinden ses et mindre granatæble med en bi svævende omkring sig.

Billedets indhold er understøttet af nogle store flader i form af himlen og havet, der er uforstyrret og roligt fremstillet. Ydermere er der en flade ovenpå havoverfladen i form af det helt plane klippegrundlag, som kvinden svæver over. Himmel og hav skilles af en lige linje, der brydes af den sovende kvindes albue, elefantens tynde ben, en klippe og det store granatæble. På trods af disse brud skaber denne linje en harmonisk opdeling af billedets flader, som altså udgør baggrunden.

Idet de himmel- og havbaserede baggrundsflader er så enkle, rolige og overskuelige gives der plads til billedets mere komplicerede former i form af de objekter, Dalí har valgt at placere i billedet. Dalí udbygger på en måde effekten af den vandrette skillelinje mellem himmel og hav med den ligeledes vandrette nøgne kvinde, og i hendes udstrakte længde ligger hun på tværs af billedrammen. Hun fremstår dermed som et slags bytte eller ’landingspuden’ for de glubske tigre og bajonetten. Fra det store granatæble til bajonetten bliver der skabt en buet linje af de to tigre og fisken. Denne linje går med sit fremadrettede perspektiv på tværs af billedets for- og baggrund og bliver dermed det uroskabende element i billedets komposition.

Billedet er klart domineret af lyse farver. De lyseblå og lyslilla nuancer øverst i himlen går via en flydende overgang over i hvid, indtil himlen stoppes af den vandrette linje, der påbegynder havet.

Her er farverne tilsvarende domineret af lyseblå og hvid, samt den lysegrå farve på klippegrunden, og kvindens hud er næsten lige så hvid som den nederste himmel. Tigrenes lysegule og sortstribede skind, fiskens laksefarve og de røde granatæbler kontrasterer en smule ift. resten af billedet, men på trods af de anderledes farver er de stadig lyse og lette i sit udtryk. Dalí gør også brug af skygger i sit billede, men ikke på en fremtrædende facon. Skyggerne under de svævende objekter samt den svævende kvinde er lette, runde og temmelig rolige i deres form. Den eneste kantede skygge i billedet er en skygge på tværs af en slags træstub med hul i, der stikker frem af højre side af billedet. Billedet er meget oplyst, og man har indtrykket af, at solen står højt på himmelen. Dette

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7 giver billedet en varme og en på sin vis tillokkende atmosfære. Det bløde og beskedne brug af skygger gør sammen med det ligeledes bløde og lyse brug af farver billedet behageligt at kigge på for beskueren og tilfører værket en form for overordnet ro.

Dalí skaber en opsigtsvækkende kontrast i sit billede. Han formår at få billedet til at fremstå roligt og venligt samtidig med, at det rummer en stor aggressivitet. Det fremadstormende og angribende element i linjen skabt af tigerne, fisken og bajonetten tilføjer hidsig bevægelse i billedet, men denne hidsighed bliver på en måde udlignet af de rolige farver og det rummelige udtryk, og der bliver altså skabt et billede med et tvetydigt men harmonisk arrangement af farver, former og udtryk.

Som titlen antyder, er det vi ser i billedet en drøm, hvilket uden tvivl stemmer godt overens med det absurde scenarium. Kvinden i billedet skulle eftersigende være Dalís kone Gala, og idet at vi ved, at det er en drøm, der er portrætteret, kan vi opstille følgende spørgsmål: Er Gala den drømmende eller blot en del af en andens drøm? Det kunne tænkes, at billedet er et udtryk for en af Dalís egne drømme, hvor det jo ville være sandsynligt, at hans hustru var i centrum. Fra denne vinkel kan drømmen måske ses som et mareridt hvor hans elskede hustru er udsat for stor fare i et fremmed sted. Dette ville dog ikke stemme overens med roen i billedet, med mindre Dalí på en eller anden måde har set angrebet på sin kone som noget positivt. Hvis man derimod antager, at Gala er den drømmende giver billedets titel måske lidt mere mening. Drømmen er nemlig beskrevet som udløst af den lille bi, der flyver rundt om et granatæble nederst i billedet. Biens summen kunne være det, der har vækket hende og er altså dermed sammen med granatæblet et element fra virkeligheden, som er kommet med i drømmen i et slags stadie mellem vågen og sovende tilstand. Det kan tænkes, at Gala har haft en stille og rolig drøm, hvor hun har svævet rundt i et rummeligt og fredfyldt univers, som så er blevet forstyrret af den lille bi, hvis summen er blevet overdimensioneret som et larmende og aggressivt rabalder, og man kan se, at hun er lige ved at lande på klippegrunden hvor hun vil vækkes og vende tilbage til virkeligheden.

Billedet er surrealistisk i form af sin behandling af drømmetemaet. Som nævnt tidligere har drømme og underbevidstheden været et vigtigt punkt i den surrealistiske kunst, og Breton giver også udtryk af en fascination af drømmen i sit manifest: ”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,

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8 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.

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The ease of everything is priceless.”

Surrealisternes fascination af drømmen er altså gennemgående for kunstretningen og godt repræsenteret i Dalís billede. Alle de uvirkelige og urationelle begivenheder i billedet er skabt af menneskets sind i en drøm, og netop dette viser, at menneskets sind på bundlinjen tillader alt og ikke lader sig begrænse af de umiddelbare realiteter i det virkelige samfund. I billedet er det forsøgt at finde en balancegang mellem det uvirkelige og det virkelige, og det er netop i denne balancegang hvor alt er muligt, at surrealisterne ønskede at befinde sig. Billedets belyste og fredfyldte fremstilling af det obskure drømmescenarium er således et forsøg på at få beskueren til at acceptere det unaturlige og surrealistiske som en del af en fuldendt og helstøbt fredfyldt tilværelse.

DEN ANDALUSISKE HUND:

Den Andalusiske Hund (originaltitel: Un Chien Andalou) er en stumfilm fra 1928. Filmens hovedroller spilles af Simone Mareuil og Pierre Batcheff, og den er instrueret og forfattet af Salvador Dalí og Luis Buñuel. Filmen er uden nogen egentlig handling, men består derimod af drømmelignende sekvenser stykket sammen i et ulogisk og abstrakt tidsforløb. I filmen føres de to hovedpersoner bl.a. gennem en romantisk gåtur på stranden, mandens forfølgelse af kvinden i en lejlighed, et skuddrama og meget mere, og det hele er krydret med myrer, der kravler ud af håndfladen, døde æsler på to flygler, der sammen med de ti bud og to præster trækkes hen ad gulvet, og en mund, der forsvinder - alt sammen altså uden forklaring, og i hvad der virker som en tilfældig og ustruktureret rækkefølge.

Den andalusiske hund er en stumfilm – dvs. at filmen ikke har noget lydspor. Filmen blev ved fremvisning akkompagneret med en fonograf, der spillede musikstykker udvalgt af Luis Buñuel.

Den Andalusiske Hund varer blot 16 minutter og kan dermed karakteriseres som en kortfilm.

Filmens udtryk er i høj grad baseret på en fiktiv og urealistisk verden, hvori seeren kastes rundt i tid og sted. Dvs., at filmen er en fantasifilm. Hver for sig indeholder scenerne elementer der er dramatiske, romantiske, spændingsskabende og måske sågar humoristiske. Filmen bryder på den

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9 måde med en masse af de genreregler, vi som filmseere er vant til bliver nogenlunde overholdt.

Disse brud på genrereglerne er med til at forstærke filmens abstrakte og forvirrende udtryk.

Det ville ikke give særlig meget mening at lave en model over strukturen, da denne er abstrakt og ikke bærer præg af et overordnet handlingsforløb. Filmens forskellige aktører synes hele tiden at skifte plads eller blive udbyttet, og det er ikke muligt at finde et decideret klimaks eller ’point of no return’. Selv filmens titel har ikke nogen umiddelbar relation til indholdet. Filmens anslag, og hermed mener jeg den første scene, kan dog siges at give en forventning omkring filmen. Der bliver indledt med en indstilling med skriften ”Il était une fois…”(der var engang) og en mand med en barberkniv står og ryger. Han skærer i sin finger og går derefter ud på sin balkon. Her betragter han månen og pludselig er han i færd med at skære i øjet på en kvinde med sin barberkniv. Denne begyndelse siger ikke som sådan noget om det videre handlingsforløb, men kan ses som et fingerpræg i retningen af filmens gådefulde og skæve opbygning.

Scenerne i Den Andalusiske Hund tilhører som tidligere nævnt ikke noget sammenhængende handlingsforløb. En understregning af dette er det sære tidsforløb. Undervejs i filmen er der indsat stillestående indstillinger med skrift (hvilket er typisk for stumfilm, da der ikke er nogen lyd og dermed ingen speaker), der angiver handlingens tidspunkt, f.eks. ”Seksten år før” [11] og ”Om

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foråret” . De i forvejen obskure og usammenhængende scener bliver således inddelt i et lige så

obskurt og usammenhængende tidsforløb. Vi får fra starten ikke at vide, hvor eller hvornår vi

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befinder os, og pludselig er vi ”seksten år før”, ”Otte år før”

, ”ved 3-tiden om natten” [14] eller ”om foråret”. Disse oplysninger synes ikke relevante for seeren, idet disse tidsangivelser ikke åbenlyst binder sig til filmens begivenheder. Dog må det konstateres, at den lange fortalte tid (med mindst 16 års varighed) bliver opsummeret i en meget kort fortælletid på 16 min.

Filmen er naturligvis i sort-hvid, da farvefilmen ikke var opfundet i 1928. Der gøres stor brug af skygger i filmen. I stort set alle indendørs scener er belysningen lagt således, at personernes skygge falder på væggen ved siden af dem [15]. Lyset er klart igennem hele filmen, og der bruges ikke mørklægning til at fremskynde mystikken.

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Ses 10 minutter og 4 sekunder inde i Den Andalusiske Hund af Luis Buñuel og Salvador Dalí, 1928

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Ses 15 minutter og 9 sekunder inde i Den Andalusiske Hund af Luis Buñuel og Salvador Dalí, 1928

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Ses 50 sekunder inde i Den Andalusiske Hund af Luis Buñuel og Salvador Dalí, 1928

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Ses 8 minutter og 36 sekunder inde i Den Andalusiske Hund af Luis Buñuel og Salvador Dalí, 1928

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Der benyttes alle former for synsvinkler i filmen, lige fra supertotal til ultranær [16]. De ultranære og nære indstillinger forekommer især, når der sker noget urealistisk og urationelt – det døde æsel på klaveret [17], myrerne, der kommer ud af håndfladen, øjet, der bliver skåret midt over, kvindens trøje, der forsvinder [18] osv. Denne effekt sætter et intenst fokus på disse bizarre hændelser. Ydermere indeholder filmen indstillinger i både frøperspektiv, normal perspektiv og fugleperspektiv. Den filmtekniske ’mangfoldighed’ giver seeren en oplevelse af at komme hele vejen rundt om denne sære og forunderlige verden, hvori Den Andalusiske Hund foregår, men den giver også en oplevelse af kaos. Klipningen i filmen forgår relativt konstant og hurtigt, hvilket yderligere præger udtrykket af kaos.

Der er brugt en række effekter for at fremme det fantasifilmiske udtryk; man kan sige, at effektstilen dominerer. F.eks. tager den mandlige hovedperson hånden op foran munden, og da han flytter hånden igen, er munden forsvundet. Effekter som disse har været nødvendige virkemidler for at understrege det bizarre og urealismen i filmens scener.

Den Andalusiske Hund minder med sit kaos og sin urealisme mest af alt om en drøm. Alt er muligt i drømmenes verden, ligesom alt virker muligt i denne film. Ligesom film er drømme skabt af menneskets kreative sind. Forskellen på drømmen og filmen er det ubevidste og det bevidste, og i Den Andalusiske Hund synes denne forskel forsøgt ophævet eller i hvert fald minimeret. I åbningsscenen bliver et øje skåret over af en mand, der faktisk spilles af Dalí selv. Dette kan ses som en åbning til menneskets sind, et sind der fremstilles vanvittigt og urationelt. Øjet bliver en tynd skillelinje mellem det udadtil observerede og det indvendiges ubevidste drømmeverden, og når denne skillelinje nedbrydes, kan alt altså ske. Tidens og stedets grænser ophæves, og de mest utrolige og unaturlige ting får lov til at finde sted – præcis som i en drøm. Det kan derfor tænkes, at alle de sære hændelser af hvilke filmen består slet ikke skal fortolkes og analyseres rationelt, men snarere accepteres. Som seer bliver man provokeret og forvirret af filmens overfladiske meningsløshed, og først når man accepterer de ting, filmen viser, kan man forstå, at grænsen mellem det uvirkelige og det virkelige måske er smallere end man tror.

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Filmen som værk er hverken bundet op på virkelighedens naturlighed, den menneskelige fornuft eller tanken om det rationelle og fattede. Der er derimod en form for nedbrydning af den virkelige verden. Alligevel bliver denne nye, uvirkelige verden kædet sammen med mennesket og dets følelser: kærlighed, liderlighed, død, omsorg, glæde, vrede, venskab, fjendtlighed – alle disse aspekter af menneskelivet er portrætteret i denne drømmeverden. Der bliver simpelthen skabt sammenhæng mellem det alment menneskelige og det uvirkelige og vanvittige. Netop denne accept af det vanvittige og inspirationen fra drømmes verden kendetegner den surrealistiske kunst. Filmen er surrealistisk, fordi dens univers er netop surreelt – altså en stærk forvrængning af det virkelige.

Skønt det virker åbenlyst, bliver det nemlig på intet tidspunkt konstateret i filmen, at det vi ser ikke er virkeligt eller en slags afspejling af det virkelige liv. Surrealisterne forsøgte at bringe menneskets vanvid væk fra det indre og op til overfladen, og det er det, Dalí og Buñuel tydeligt har forsøgt med denne utraditionelle, uvirkelige, drømmeagtige, absurde og forvirrende fremstilling af livet. Eller som Breton fremstiller det i sit manifest: “…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.” - Sandheden skal komme fra drømmen, fra fantasien.

KONKLUSION:

Det er tydeligt, at surrealismen er en kunstretning med radikale visioner. Surrealisterne ønskede at lave helt om på samfundets opfattelse af livets værdier gennem deres kunst. I stedet for rationalitet og virkelighedens fornuft skulle fantasien og vanviddet råde over individets handlinger og tankegang. Surrealisterne ønskede at nedbryde skillelinjen mellem virkeligheden og

’uvirkeligheden’, og de ønskede at nedbryde denne grænse ved at åbne samfundets øjne for det, der ligger uden for det muliges rammer gennem deres kunst. Der bliver arbejdet med drømme, da alt kan ske i dem, selvom de er et produkt af menneskets eget sind, og drømmen er derfor et godt redskab til at forsøge at krydse grænsen mellem den virkelige og uvirkelige verden. Den Andalusiske Hund og Drøm inspireret af en bis flyven om et granatæble et sekund før opvågnen leger begge med grænsen mellem fantasi og virkelighed og tager afsæt i en drømmeverden, hvori alt kan lade sig gøre. På hver deres måde udtrykker de to værker dermed en stræben efter det abstrakte, absurde og urationelle, og dette er netop Surrealismens kerne og grobund: at fange noget udenfor de umiddelbare realiteters rammer i sit udtryk og fremstille det som en intellektuel sandhed.

Dadaismens idealer og Bretons manifest inspirerede således en hel generation af kunstnere i Paris,

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12 der søgte ændringer i et borgerligt samfund til at gøre det ved at søge sandhed i ufornuftens, fantasiens og drømmenes verden.

LITTERATUR:

• Bradley, Fiona: ”Surrealismen”, Forlaget Søren Fogtdal, 1999

• Breton, André: ”Det Surrealistiske Manifest” – 1924, Benyttet virtuel version fra

http://www.seaboarcreations.com/sindex/manifestbreton.htm, James Sebor, 1999

• Buñuel, Luis & Dalí, Salvador: ”Den Andalusiske Hund” – 1928, rekonstruering fra 1960, udgivet på VHS af Danmarks Radio i 1995

• Den Store Danske Encyklopædi – Attende Bind, Gyldendal, Nordisk Forlag A/S, 2000

• Klingsöhr-Leroy, Cathrin: ”Surrealism”, Taschen GmbH, 2004

• Little, Stephen: ”…isms – Understanding Art”, Herbert Press, 2004

• Lucie-Smith, Edvard: ”Kunst – Begreber fra kunstens, kunstindustriens og arkitekturens verden”, Gyldendal, 1984

• Nielsen, Bo & Tonnesen, Lars: ”Billedernes Fortælling”, Gyldendal, 1999

• Nyord, Peter & Ravn, Ole: ”Filmanalyse”, Det Ny Forlag, 2008

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Drøm inspireret af en bis flyven om et granatæble et sekund før opvågnen - Salvador Dalí, 1944

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Bilag 2: Merz 163 af Kurt Schwitters, 1920

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Bilag 3: Enkeltbilleder fra Den Andalusiske Hund af Luis Buñuel og Salvador Dalí, 1928

Enkeltbillede 1: Den Andalusiske hund - Luis Buñuel og Salvador Dalí, 1928

Enkeltbillede 2: Den Andalusiske hund - Luis Buñuel og Salvador Dalí, 1928

Enkeltbillede 3: Den Andalusiske hund - Luis Buñuel og Salvador Dalí, 1928

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Enkeltbillede 4: Den Andalusiske hund - Luis Buñuel og Salvador Dalí, 1928

Enkeltbillede 5: Den Andalusiske hund - Luis Buñuel og Salvador Dalí, 1928

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Bilag 4: Det Surrealistiske Manifest af 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.

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18

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

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19 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

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20 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...."* (Pascal.) 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.** (Barrès, Proust.) 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

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21 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

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22 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.* (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.) 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

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23 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.

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24

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.* (What is admirable about the fantastic is that there is no longer anything

fantastic: there is only the real.) 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

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25 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

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26 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 Péret, 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 Gérard, 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

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27 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,* (See Les Pas perdus, published by

N.R.F.) 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

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28 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...* (Nord-Sud, March 1918)

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

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there could be no question of ambiguity, accompanied as it was by the faint visual image* (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.) of a man walking cut half way up by a window perpendicular to the axis of his body. 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.* (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

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30 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.).)

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 to spoken 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

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31 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.* (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.) 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 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.

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

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32 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....** (See also L'Idéoréalisme by

Saint-Pol-Roux.)

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.

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.

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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.

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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.* (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.)

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:

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"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* (NOUVELLES HÉBRIDES, DÉSORDRE FORMEL, DEUIL

POUR DEUIL.) 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.