Manifesto of Surrealism by André Breton

First published:Manifeste du surréalisme, 1924 (English translation, 1969)

Type of work: Essay

The Work:

The main goal of André Breton’s Manifesto of Surrealism is to free one’s mind from the past and from everyday reality to arrive at truths one has never known. By the time Breton wrote his manifesto, French poets—including Breton himself—and artists had already demonstrated Surrealist techniques in their work. In this sense, Breton was intent on explaining what painters and poets such as Giorgio de Chirico, Joan Miró, Robert Desnos, Max Ernst, and Breton himself had already achieved.

As a medical student in Nantes, France, before World War I, Breton became interested in the theories of Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud, now known as the founder of psychoanalysis. Later, during the war, Breton was an ambulance driver in the French army and found Freud’s ideas useful in helping to treat the wounded. Eventually, Breton and his literary and artistic colleagues contributed to the acceptance in France of Freud and his theories of psychoanalysis, even though Freud’s written work itself would not be translated into French until the late 1930’s.

In his manifesto, Breton alludes to Freud’s ideas about the meaning and significance of dreams and what Freud called the “psychopathology of everyday life,” those apparently inadvertent slips of the tongue and other behavioral “mistakes” that can be traced to states of the subconscious mind. Freud’s theories interested Breton largely because they refer to a subconscious life that, Breton believed, constitutes a resource rich in visual and intellectual stimulation.

In Breton’s view, one can learn to ascend to perception of a higher reality (the surreal), or more reality, if one can manage to liberate one’s psyche from traditional education, the drudgery of work, and the dullness of what is only useful in modern bourgeois culture. To achieve the heightened consciousness to which Breton wants humanity to aspire, those interested can also look to the example set by children, poets, and to a lesser extent, insane persons.

Children, Breton suggests, have not yet learned to stifle their imaginations as most adults have, and successful poets have, similarly, been able to break down the barriers of reason and tradition and have achieved ways of seeing, understanding, and creating that resemble the free, spontaneous imaginative play of children. On the other hand, as one grows up, one’s imagination is dulled by the need to make a living and by concern for practical matters. Hence, in the manifesto’s opening paragraphs, Breton calls for a return to the freedom of childhood. Furthermore, if the “insane” are, as Breton suggests, victims of their imaginations, one can learn from the mentally ill that hallucinations and illusions are often sources of considerable pleasure and creativity.

Because of Freud, Breton says, human beings can be imagined as heroic explorers who are able to push their investigations beyond the mere facts of reality and the conscious mind and seize dormant strengths buried in the subconscious. Freud’s work on the significance of dreams, Breton says, has been particularly crucial in this regard, and the manifesto contains a four-part defense of dreams.

Breton believes that Freud has shown that dreams must be respected as coherent sources of truth and of practical assistance in life. Indeed, despite what is often believed, it may be reality that interferes with dreams rather than the reverse. Hence, Breton recommends that one give oneself up to one’s dreams, allowing oneself to be satisfied by what is received from dream states instead of applying the criteria of reason to dreams. Here, Breton’s analysis takes on the language of religious fervor when he insists that if one reconciles dreams and reality, one will attain an absolute reality: surreality.

It is important to note, however, that the “surrealist consciousness” about which Breton writes is not uniquely the tool of artists. He believes, to the contrary, that ordinary people will be happier and will be able to solve heretofore difficult problems once they have regained what he sees as a psychic wholeness.

At this point, Breton’s manifesto divides itself broadly into two general elements: the development of theory and the accounts of practice, or how theory can be used. One way Surrealist theories can be put into practice is by means of what Breton calls “automatic writing.” This process is actually similar to activities of free association or, in the practice of psychology, tests such as the well-known Rorschach test, in which the person being tested is shown various inkblot designs and asked to name objects that he or she thinks those shapes resemble.

As Breton and his friend, poet Robert Desnos, practiced automatic writing, the activity involved writing as quickly as one could whatever came into one’s mind, without regard for constraints such as punctuation. The point is to bypass the restrictions of the analytical reasoning processes that one has learned and to which one has grown accustomed. As Breton says, the results of the automatic writing exercise include a new awareness of the relationships between things, words, and images. Automatic writing, which Breton calls “spoken thought,” therefore stimulates the creative process by allowing one to create new relationships between things, relationships that one never would have seen by means of the customary ways of thinking.

In a section of the manifesto called “Secrets of the Magic Surrealist Art,” Breton offers details of how one might participate in the Surrealist experience of automatic writing. One should make oneself as passive and receptive as possible and avoid thinking about literary criteria or items that others have written. Automatic writing must avoid any preconceived subject matter, and one should give oneself up to what Breton calls the “inexhaustible flow” of one’s inner voice.

Out of this experience come Surrealist images, which Breton likens to images that come from drug-induced mental states. Surrealist images result from the fortuitous juxtaposition of two disparate elements, such as “stream” and “song,” “daylight” and “white napkin,” or “the world” and “a purse.” Such juxtapositions, it is to be noted, have nothing to do with reason, which, Breton says, is limited in this process to observing and appreciating the work of the subconscious. Eventually, according to Breton, with the help of automatic writing, one arrives at an ideal realm, a “supreme reality,” where even one’s reason will recognize that one’s knowledge has been extended greatly, opposites have been reconciled, and the mind as a whole has made extraordinary advances.

The tangible results of this automatic writing led to Breton and poet Philippe Soupault’s idea of Surrealism. In the manifesto, Breton defines Surrealism as pure psychic automatism that allows one to express—either verbally, in writing, or in some other fashion—the true functioning of thought without regard to any concern for morality or aesthetics.

Breton argues that imaginative literature, such as the novels of British writer Matthew Lewis, is superior to realistic literature, in which the author carefully details physical description and, in effect, tells too much. Breton thinks that poetry and imaginative literature are worthy means of escape from the chores of daily reality. In fact, Breton says, the poet is like God, proposing and disposing of his or her own spiritual life and achieving a sense of fulfillment that reality steals from most people. He offers a list of writers, past and present, who have represented or represent Surrealist ideals: Jonathan Swift, the Marquis de Sade, Victor Hugo, and Arthur Rimbaud, as well as Victor Jarry, Leon Fargue, and Pierre Reverdy, among others. In art, Breton points to such painters as Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Gustave Moreau, Georges Seurat, and Marcel Duchamp as major figures in the development of visual Surrealism. Dozens of women, too, were part of its early development, and most have been left out of the histories of Surrealism. Women active in Surrealism in the 1920’s include Denise Lévy, Simone Kahn Breton, Nadja, Fanny Beznos, Suzanne Muzard, and Valentine Penrose. Breton believed, however, that Desnos was the ideal Surrealist artist, submitting to numerous experiments and perfecting the ability to follow his train of thought orally, to “speak Surrealist.”

While stopping short of recommending the application of the free-association spontaneity of automatic writing to action, Breton nevertheless emphasizes that the great discoveries of science, for example, will be made by truly independent minds, those persons who have transcended the past by means other than what he calls the “roads of reason.” Here, Breton deals with genius, as embodied by those scholars and scientists who work, he suggests, without a clear plan of exploration, striking out instead into the unknown. As for crime, where individuals might plead a kind of Surrealist lack of responsibility for what they have done, Breton does imply that a new moral order may one day replace the present ideas of right and wrong. This might happen, he suggests, once Surrealist methods gain widespread favor outside science and the arts.

Ultimately, Breton’s Manifesto of Surrealism has perhaps had less influence, especially in the United States, than Surrealism’s expressions in the visual arts. Spanish painter Salvador Dalí came to best represent Surrealism in the popular imagination in the second half of the twentieth century. Dalí’s strange paintings, such as the famous The Persistence of Memory, feature mirage-like landscapes in which the painter placed, as Breton had suggested, objects that ordinarily have nothing to do with one another or that exhibit bizarre properties. Oddly enough, Dalí’s melting watches, dead trees, and insects piqued the imagination of a large group of art lovers, and he became an international celebrity. Breton did not, however, approve of Dalí’s courting of public favor in such a theatrical way, and Breton eventually expressed his disdain of Dalí’s work and public image. Nevertheless, Dalí’s painting and his escapades must surely account in large part for the popular currency of the term “Surrealist,” which entered the everyday vocabulary of most Americans as synonymous with the extraordinarily unexpected or shocking in a dreamlike or nightmarish way.

Bibliography

Alquié, Ferdinand. The Philosophy of Surrealism. Translated by Bernard Waldrop. 1965. Reprint. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1969. Alquié examines the ideological origins and content of Breton’s ideas and those of other Surrealist writers. Chapters 3 and 4 deal in great part with Breton’s manifestos and how their ideas relate particularly to poetry.

Balakian, Anna. André Breton: Magus of Surrealism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971. Balakian’s biography devotes a long section to Breton’s two Surrealist manifestos. Equally thorough studies of Breton’s other writings are here as well, along with an entire chapter on Surrealism and painting.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Surrealism: The Road to the Absolute. 3d ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986. Balakian traces the development of Surrealism and considers its application to the visual arts. Even more interesting perhaps is that the author sees a relationship between Surrealism and the hypotheses of nuclear physics. Includes an updated introduction.

Caws, Mary Ann. André Breton. New York: Twayne, 1996. In this updated edition, originally published in 1974, Caws focuses on newer aspects of Breton’s work and adopts another point of view. Focuses on Breton’s texts, including his manifestos, and not on his life or the history of Surrealism, although it includes a brief introduction to the basic tenets of Surrealism.

Charvet, P. E., ed. The Twentieth Century, 1870-1940. Vol. 5 in A Literary History of France. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1967. Part 2, chapter 10 of this history focuses on Surrealism and poetry, beginning with the transition from Dada to Surrealism and Breton’s manifesto of 1924. This section includes a brief but pointed reference to Sigmund Freud and Surrealism.

Cruickshank, John, ed. The Twentieth Century. Vol. 6 in French Literature and Its Background. New York: Oxford University Press, 1970. Includes a chapter on Surrealism by R. Short, which is especially good on the historical and literary background of the movement. The volume also includes an extensive bibliography on Breton and Surrealism.

Durozoi, Gérard. History of the Surrealist Movement. Translated by Alison Anderson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Durozoi, a French philosopher and art critic, provides a voluminous history of Surrealist art and literature, heavily illustrated and spanning the movement’s global reach. The book looks at Breton’s life and his participation in and influence on the movement. Chapter 2 focuses on the publication and contents of the Manifesto of Surrealism.