This small essay is a presentation of surrealism as an introduction. In it are the most basic principles of the surrealist movement. In no way does it pretend to be a 'complete' study of surrealism as a whole. As La Révolution surréaliste continues to grow, it will further outline the aims, principles, theories and history of the international surrealist movement, and soon may it show its intimate and even inseparable relationship to the theory and practice of proletarian emancipation. The following is a book review of What is Surrealism?: Selected Writings by André Breton, an incredibly wealthy source of detailed information involving the Surrealist movement.
Where rises the spirit of revolt, there will be the living presence of André Breton. This superb collection of Breton's writings provides not only a necessary analyzation of surrealist thought, but an equally necessary corrective to the confusion about everything that pertains to surrealism in the English-speaking world. Disseminated by television, newspapers and textbooks, these misconceptions regarding the revolutionary movement of surrealism, may be regarded as the 'vulgar' reinforcement of the anti-surrealist confusion which would seem to constitute, to-day, a component of all repressive ideology. As bourgeois civilization remains a succession of monstrous crimes against childhood, the boredom of the mundane initiated Breton decisively into the realm of pure subversion and revolt. The Surrealist Manifesto, a declaration aiming at nothing less than complete human emancipation, and the reconstruction of society governed by the watchword, 'To each according to his desire', appeared in October 1924. In it, surrealism refused to accept rigid definition, boundaries assigned by conventional rationality, or academic compartmentalization. These young men representing the surrealist movement, were intelligent geniuses capable of extreme hatred; adventurers drawn towards the exceptional. Together they had through a war and were bored by the conventional opportunities awaiting them and truly lived the surrealist life: complete human freedom.
In 1925 the French surrealist group took its first steps in the direction of revolutionary politics, thus reaffirming surrealism's fidelity to the tenets of 'total revolt, complete insubordination, formal sabotage,' The movement's fundamental perspectives were global from the very beginning, and during the next decade, the list of countries involved in the movement lengthened, the number of activists expanded, and their activity intensified. The misconception of America's role in the movement is discussed as well, and Breton's efforts to globalize surrealism are documented, as well as the surrealist transformation in America. The selected writings of Breton, include essays (some of which have never been printed before in English) that place a significant emphasis on the surrealist adventure, the surrealist interrogation of dreams, the magisterial triumph of mad love, the 'systematic derangement of the senses' proclaimed by Rimbaud, and other methods which force inspiration and make it work to order.
Art and anti-art are imaginary solutions; surrealism lies elsewhere. It cannot be emphasized too strongly: Surrealism, a unitary project of total revolution, is above all a method of knowledge and a way of life; it is lived far more than it is written, or written about, or drawn. Surrealism is the most exhilarating adventure of the mind, an unparalleled means of pursuing the fervent quest for freedom and true life beyond the veil of ideological appearances. Only the social revolution, 'from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom'-- will enable the true life of poetry and mad love to cast aside, definitively, the fetters of degradation and dishonor and to flourish will unrestrained splendor. Vainly will one search in surrealism for a motive inconsistent with this fundamental aspiration.
'Human emancipation', wrote André Breton in Nadja, 'remains the only cause worth serving'. For the surrealists, surrealism remains precisely the best means of serving that cause. Historically, the advent of surrealism meant the end of a long succession of avant-garde cultural tendencies, constituting a qualitatively new basis for exploration along and beyond the lines formerly delimited by art and literature. This epochal achievement, comprehensible only within the framework of world revolutionary development, is roughly analogous, on the poetic plane, to the theory of permanent revolution, Freudian psychoanalysis, general relativity theory, quantum mechanics and other revolutionary developments of twentieth-century thought.
Turned forever toward the automatic message, André Breton will forever remain the surest guide to poetic action. Within these selected writings, are a compilation of various perspectives of international surrealism as they evolved over more than half of a century. Breton is forever instilled as and the principal spokesman of a movement, and an instrument of exploration and revolt, that still to-day, demands to be carried further. As Breton mentions in the introduction, "this book is dedicated to all who will take these risks, who will fan the flames of every true revolt, who will defend the revolutionary cause of poetry, freedom, and love-- no matter what." What is Surrealism?: Selected Writings is an obvious must-have for the initiated surrealist, placing the surrealist revolutionary movement in perspective-- a historical movement that is typically misinformed by biased critics. Despite any one person's political affiliation, surrealism's true political intent was based solely upon imagination. 'The imagination is revolutionary or it is nothing.'
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