Surrealist Literature

When I presented on surrealism I talked about how the artistic movement was not limited to visual arts, but was really led by literary figures like Andre Breton, who really defined the movement with his Surrealist Manifestoes. Surrealist literature applies the same concepts that the artists I talked about used in their works. Specifically, emphasis is placed on the subconscious, automatism, and the importance of dreams over reality. Automatic works attempted to just let the subconscious write whatever it was thinking, free from conscious regulation. I read an excerpt from Les Champs Magnétiques, by Breton and fellow Surrealist Philippe Soupault, which is widely cited as the first work of surrealist literature and which follows this style, but I thought I'd post a few more quotes from surrealist works. I think this style is interesting in how it tries to apply these ideas, and it does create an interesting, almost poetic style. However, with the lack of real narrative and focus, I can see why surrealist literature could be difficult to read for an entire novel. Perhaps that is why the surrealist works of visual arts remain more popular and widespread today.

"It was the end of sorrow lies. The rail stations were dead, flowing like bees stung from honeysuckle. The people hung back and watched the ocean, animals flew in and out of focus. The time had come. Yet king dogs never grow old – they stay young and fit, and someday they might come to the beach and have a few drinks, a few laughs, and get on with it. But not now. The time had come; we all knew it. But who would go first?"

"Someone just died but I’m still alive and yet I don’t have a soul anymore. All I have left is a transparent body inside of which transparent doves hurl themselves on a transparent dagger held by a transparent hand. I see struggle in all its beauty, real struggle which nothing can measure, just before the last star comes out. The rented body I live in like a hut detests the soul I had which floats in the distance. It’s time to put an end to that famous dualism for which I’ve been so much reproached. Gone are the days when eyes without light and rings drew sediment from pools of color. There’s neither red nor blue anymore. Unanimous red-blue fades away in turn like a robin redbreast in the hedges of inattention. Someone just died,—not you or I or they exactly, but all of us, except me who survives by a variety of means: I’m still cold for example. That’s enough. A match! A match!"