xxxviii
introduction
trances, and a number of liberating techniques to overthrow the rational
reserve that imprisoned the mind and the writing wrist.
A strange coherence is found in these automatic texts. In the neo-
Romanticism of Surrealism (‘‘We are the tail of romanticism,’’ Breton
used to declare, ‘‘but how prehensile’’), the enigmatic and the puzzling
were perceived as the marvelous—and so, to be saluted as the manifesta-
tion of a solution to a problem one didn’t know one had.≤∂ The canonical
texts of 1922 (like Breton’s ‘‘Entry of the Mediums’’) as well as those of
1924 (the first of Breton’s Surrealist manifestos, Aragon’s Vague de rêves,
and his extraordinary Paysan de Paris [Paris Peasant]) all salute the power
of the image, its ability to bring together what had seemed sadly separate.
This is the grand epoch of Surrealism.
These collective games and experiments were carried on amid a circle
of vivid characters and brilliant writers that included the novelist Louis
Aragon and the poet Paul Éluard, both of whom would later join the
Communist Party and remain two of its staunchest adherents. Robert
Desnos, perhaps the greatest Surrealist poet, was to die in the Terezin
concentration camp, choosing not to testify against other Resistance fig-
ures. Just before his death, he turned to a more traditional form of po-
etry, writing in what could be considered classic verse. Benjamin Péret,
Breton’s most ardent and faithful disciple, wrote excitedly about auto-
mata in his enthusiastic and temperamental way and vilified the political
engagement of Aragon and Éluard, believing—as did Breton—that poetry
was its own honor and should not fall into any shade of political trap or
praise. Antonin Artaud, for a while in charge of the O≈ce of Surrealist
Dreams and author of some of the most remarkably passionate texts,
including D’un voyage au pays des Tarahumaras (A Voyage to the Tara-
humaras), lapsed into madness. A few Surrealists were expelled from the
group for various reasons, among them making money in order to live or,
worse still, indulging in journalistic activities—clear betrayals of Surreal-
ism’s antibourgeois ideal. No less sacrilegious was the use of the hallowed
name of Lautréamont for a popular nightclub. Isidore Ducasse, better
known as the comte de Lautréamont, was a firm believer that ‘‘poetry is
made by all’’: in other words, down with the individual poet and the
creator (or finder) of the most celebrated Surrealist image, that of the
super-erotico-bizarre encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on
a dissection table. The author of Maldoror and forefather of Surrealism
was not to be associated with the light, the frivolous, or the horrors of
commercial undertakings.
But the Surrealist spirit in poetry, as in life, was to mark successive
generations. In World War II, the great poets Char and Reverdy refused
to publish during the Occupation. Silence was, they thought, the best