Dansk/Historieopgave om

2.A, Rysensteen Gymnasium

Februar 2010

INDHOLD:

INDLEDNING:

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

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

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

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

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

. Tanken om

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,

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

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

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

these ridiculous books, these insulting plays.”

på den virkelige verden og inddrage det ukendte og fantasien i vores levevis.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Bilag 4: Det Surrealistiske Manifest af André Breton, 1924

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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:

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

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

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 to joke.

The author attacks a character and, this being settled upon, parades his hero to and fro across the

And if the game is not worth the candle, if objective reason does a frightful job -- as indeed it does -

result is statements of undue length whose persuasive power is attributable solely to their

strangeness and which impress the reader only by the abstract quality of their vocabulary, which

moreover is ill-defined. If the general ideas that philosophy has thus far come up with as topics of

discussion revealed by their very nature their definitive incursion into a broader or more general

area. I would be the first to greet the news with joy. But up till now it has been nothing but idle

repartee; the flashes of wit and other niceties vie in concealing from us the true thought in search of

itself, instead of concentrating on obtaining successes. It seems to me that every act is its own

justification, at least for the person who has been capable of committing it, that it is endowed with a

radiant power which the slightest gloss is certain to diminish. Because of this gloss, it even in a

sense ceases to happen. It gains nothing to be thus distinguished. Stendhal's heroes are subject to the

comments and appraisals -- appraisals which are more or less successful -- made by that author,

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

Freud very rightly brought his critical faculties to bear upon the dream. It is, in fact, inadmissible

that this considerable portion of psychic activity (since, at least from man's birth until his death,

thought offers no solution of continuity, the sum of the moments of the dream, from the point of

view of time, and taking into consideration only the time of pure dreaming, that is the dreams of

sleep, is not inferior to the sum of the moments of reality, or, to be more precisely limiting, the

moments of waking) has still today been so grossly neglected. I have always been amazed at the

way an ordinary observer lends so much more credence and attaches so much more importance to

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

to my repudiation? Why should I not expect from the sign of the dream more than I expect from a

degree of consciousness which is daily more acute? Can't the dream also be used in solving the

fundamental questions of life? Are these questions the same in one case as in the other and, in the

dream, do these questions already exist? Is the dream any less restrictive or punitive than the rest? I

am growing old and, more than that reality to which I believe I subject myself, it is perhaps the

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.

will not tolerate your interference. You are nameless. The ease of everything is priceless.

What reason, I ask, a reason so much vaster than the other, makes dreams seem so natural and

allows me to welcome unreservedly a welter of episodes so strange that they could confound me

now as I write? And yet I can believe my eyes, my ears; this great day has arrived, this beast has

spoken.

If man's awaking is harder, if it breaks the spell too abruptly, it is because he has been led to make

for himself too impoverished a notion of atonement.

4) From the moment when it is subjected to a methodical examination, when, by means yet to be

determined, we succeed in recording the contents of dreams in their entirety (and that presupposes a

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.

in certain men, this absurdity beneath which they try to bury it. Let us not mince words: the

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.

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

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

legitimate manner, since it is finally accepted by the critical faculty as a natural denouement.

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.

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

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

Saint-Pol-Roux.)

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

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,

Chateaubriand is Surrealist in exoticism.

Constant is Surrealist in politics.

Hugo is Surrealist when he isn't stupid.

Desbordes-Valmore is Surrealist in love.

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.

Saint-Jean-Perse is Surrealist at a distance.

Roussel is Surrealist as a storyteller.

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

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."

"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:

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