Three Surrealist Manifestos were issued during the Surrealist movement, in 1924 and 1929. Two were written by André Breton, who also drafted a third Surrealist manifesto which was never issued. One was written by Yvan Goll (1924).
Background
Based on the Dadaist movement in Paris, surrealism was a revolutionary movement that opposed the unbelievable values of the bourgeoisie. In contrast to satirical Dadaism, Surrealism propagated a novel view of things influenced by Symbolism, Expressionism, Futurism, the writings of Lautréamont, Arthur Rimbaud, Alfred Jarrys and the theories of Sigmund Freud.
André Breton was closely associated with the emergence of the surrealist movement in France. To Breton’s fundamental ideas, shared by his followers, was the view that there is no objective external reality. Breton published his first manifesto du Surréalisme in Paris in 1924 and subsequently dominated the movement. For the duration of the movement, the manifesto prevailed, in the so-called “Second Surrealist Manifesto” of 1930, only minor changes were made.
First manifestos
Leading up to 1924, two rival surrealist groups had formed. Each group claimed to be successors of a revolution launched by Guillaume Apollinaire. One group, led by Yvan Goll, consisted of Pierre Albert-Birot, Paul Dermée, Céline Arnauld, Francis Picabia, Tristan Tzara, Giuseppe Ungaretti, Pierre Reverdy, Marcel Arland, Joseph Delteil, Jean Painlevé and Robert Delaunay, among others.
The other group, led by Breton, included Louis Aragon, Robert Desnos, Paul Éluard, Jacques Baron, Jacques-André Boiffard, Jean Carrive, René Crevel and Georges Malkine, among others.
Yvan Goll published the Manifeste du surréalisme, 1 October 1924, in his first and only issue of Surréalisme two weeks prior to the release of Breton’s Manifeste du surréalisme, published by Éditions du Sagittaire, 15 October 1924.
Goll and Breton clashed openly, at one point literally fighting, at the Comédie des Champs-Élysées, over the rights to the term Surrealism. In the end, Breton won the battle through tactical and numerical superiority. Though the quarrel over the anteriority of Surrealism concluded with the victory of Breton, the history of surrealism from that moment would remain marked by fractures, resignations, and resounding excommunications, with each surrealist having their own view of the issue and goals, and accepting more or less the definitions laid out by André Breton.
Surrealist Manifesto (1924)
This text was originally conceived as a preface to Soluble Fish which will be published the same year.
A heterogeneous text, the text brings together various ideas and principles of writing, which Elisabeth Kennel-Renaud brings together around eight elements:
Tribute to the imagination
Call for wonder
Faith in resolving the conflict between dream and reality
Principle of automatic writing
Definition of surrealism
Surrealistic images
Collages of sentence fragments
Non-conformist attitude
Breton defines surrealism as: “Pure psychic automatism by which one proposes to express, either verbally, or in writing, or in any other way, the actual functioning of thought. Dictation of thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, apart from any aesthetic or moral preoccupation “.
Following the liquidation of the Aristophil collection in March 2015, the Manifesto of Surrealism manuscript is announced in an auction at Drouot. 4 After a government intervention the text is classified as national treasures and it is withdrawn from the sale.
Quotes
“Realistic attitude is the fruit of mediocrity, hatred, and creeping conceit. It is from her that the books that insult intelligence are born. ”
“The incurable mania of reducing the unknown to the known, to the classifiable, only serves to numb brains.”
“Nowadays, the methods of logic only serve to solve secondary problems.”
“The extreme difference of importance which, in the eyes of the ordinary observer, has the events of waking and those of sleep has always filled me with astonishment. … Perhaps my dream of last night went on the night before, and continue with meritorious rigor next night. ”
“Let us say it once and for all: the wonder is always beautiful; any kind of wonderful is beautiful, only wonderful is beautiful. … From an early age children are separated from the marvelous, so that when they grow up, they no longer have a virginity of mind that allows them to enjoy extreme pleasure in reading a children’s story. ”
“May the day come when poetry decrees the end of money and alone breaks the bread from heaven on earth.”
“In honor of Guillaume Apollinaire , Soulpault and I gave the name of” surrealism “to the new mode of expression that we had at our disposal and that we were anxious to put within the reach of our friends”
“Surrealism does not allow those who consecrate it, abandon it when they feel like doing it. It acts on the mind as the narcotics and many others of related epochs
“The mind that plunges into surrealism revives, with exaltation, the best part of its childhood.”
“Imagination dear, what I especially love in you is not to forgive.”
“Only what exalts me is still the only word: freedom. I consider it appropriate to maintain, indefinitely, the old human fanaticism.”
Breton
A Surrealist manifesto was written by Breton and published in 1924 as a booklet (Editions du Sagittaire). The document defines Surrealism as:
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 thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.
The text includes numerous examples of the applications of Surrealism to poetry and literature, but makes it clear that its basic tenets can be applied to any circumstance of life; not merely restricted to the artistic realm. The importance of the dream as a reservoir of Surrealist inspiration is also highlighted.
Breton also discusses his initial encounter with the surreal in a famous description of a hypnagogic state that he experienced in which a strange phrase inexplicably appeared in his mind: “There is a man cut in two by the window”. This phrase echoes Breton’s apprehension of Surrealism as the juxtaposition of “two distant realities” united to create a new one.
The manifesto also refers to the numerous precursors of Surrealism that embodied the Surrealist spirit, including the Marquis de Sade, Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud, Comte de Lautréamont, Raymond Roussel, and Dante. The works of several of his contemporaries in developing the Surrealist style in poetry are also quoted, including Philippe Soupault, Paul Éluard, Robert Desnos and Louis Aragon.
The manifesto was written with a great deal of absurdist humor, demonstrating the influence of the Dada movement which preceded it.
The text concludes by asserting that Surrealist activity follows no set plan or conventional pattern, and that Surrealists are ultimately nonconformists.
The manifesto named the following, among others, as participants in the Surrealist movement: Louis Aragon, André Breton, Robert Desnos, Paul Éluard, Jacques Baron, Jacques-André Boiffard, Jean Carrive, René Crevel and Georges Malkine.
Reissue of 1929
Reprinted unchanged in 1929, the Manifesto was however increased by a preface 6 and the “Letter to the blind” in 1925.
Second Surrealist Manifesto (1930)
In her study, Élisabeth Kennel-Renaud differentiates eight main themes:
Fake character of old antinomies
Surrealism does not claim any morality
Criticism of some surrealists
Recall of the foundations
Call for social involvement
Warning against political indoctrination
Attraction for esotericism
Refusal of the mercantile success
This Second Manifesto received a scathing reply to Robert Desnos.
Subsequently, André Breton will try to put in their respective contexts the conflicts he may have with some artists and he will write in 1946 a warning for the reissue of the second manifesto. However, he keeps his positions.
Prolegomena to a Third Surrealist Manifesto or not (1942)
It is a brief text, about ten pages and interspersed with “interludes”, that Breton writes while the Second World War continues without depression.
Third manifesto
In 1929 Breton asked Surrealists to assess their “degree of moral competence”, and along with other theoretical refinements issued the Second manifeste du surréalisme. The manifesto excommunicated Surrealists reluctant to commit to collective action: Baron, Desnos, Boiffard, Michel Leiris, Raymond Queneau, Jacques Prévert and André Masson. A prière d’insérer (printed insert) published with the Manifesto’s release was signed by those Surrealists who remained loyal to Breton and who have decided to participate in a new publication titled Surrealism at the Service of the Revolution. Participants, and thus loyal Surrealists, included Maxime Alexander, Louis Aragon, Joe Bousquet, Luis Buñuel, René Char, René Crevel, Salvador Dalí, Paul Eluard, Max Ernst, Marcel Fourrier, Camille Goemans, Paul Nougé, Benjamin Péret, Francis Ponge, Marco Ristitch, Georges Sadoul, Yves Tanguy, André Thirion, Tristan Tzara and Albert Valentin.
Desnos and others thrown out by Breton moved to the periodical Documents, edited by Georges Bataille, whose anti-idealist materialism produced a hybrid Surrealism exposing the base instincts of humans.
Quotes
“And since the safe flight of spirit depends on the degree of resistance opposed to this idea, it is not difficult to understand that surrealism has not hesitated to adopt absolute revolt, total insubmission, sabotage according to the rules that of expecting nothing and thing some other than violence. ”
“Whoever pretended to adopt this belief, without truly committing himself to this despair, would soon be seen as an enemy in the eyes of those who know.”
“If by surrealism we reject the idea that only the things that ‘exist’ are possible, if we declare by a path that ‘exists’, we arrive at what did not exist; if we are not afraid of insurrection against logic ; if we do not swear that an act performed in a dream is less important than one performed in a waking state; if we are not sure that one day there will no longer be ‘time’ (…): how do you want us to manifest any form of caring or tolerance towards any apparatus of social conservation, whatever it may be? ”
“We fight in every way, poetic indifference, artistic distraction, scholarly research, pure speculation, and we do not want to have anything in common with spirit-savers.”
“Even if there were none of those who measured their possibilities of meaning and their hunger for truth, surrealism would live … I had promised myself to abandon to their sad lot, a certain number of individuals.”
“I had to defend the surrealism of the accusation of being an anticommunist and counterrevolutionary political movement”
“Surrealism is considered indissolubly linked to the march of Marxist thought .”
Themes:
The themes are: oneiric visions, the recovery of prolific childhood imagination, mental illness as a revelation of truth, the abolition of logic in favor of automatism (concept of Freudian inspiration). The figure of Sigmund Freud has an enormous influence on Breton who adopts psychoanalytic analyzes on the dream (“Psychology is a subject on which I am not willing to joke” he declares). Freud will be the unaware prophet of Surrealism. Sleep is a state of consciousness that is elevated by Breton to the status of legitimate reality, like waking. The latter is instead seen as a phenomenon of interference, hypothesis validated by the presence of lapsus and misunderstandings of each species,, that is, the part of the most sincere and ungoverned conscience from the Super-ego. According to Breton, the combination of these two states generates an Absolute Reality called Surreality.
The automatism, which explains the very meaning of Surrealism in the definition of openness, is also of Freudian inspiration: it is to let words or images flow without them passing through the filter of the rational organization of meaning. The result can show disquieting images because they reveal undiscovered hidden desires, or fears. An example is the hypnagogic images or the auditory hallucinations of the half-sleep, to which many surrealist representations resemble. Breton leaves a personal example: There is a man cut in two by the window. Between dream and wake he had heard a voice that accompanied the perception of the image described. This spoken thought would have revealed in this case his fear of castration.
The last part gives advice of different kinds in the light of group poetry, for example how not to get bored, how to talk, write fake novels, opinions on death and examples of surrealist phrases.
The original manuscript was auctioned at Sotheby’s in Paris in May 2008, worth about 500,000 euros.
Adhering artists
They subscribe to the manifesto (or as Breton says ” they have made an act of Absolute Surrealism”):
Louis Aragon, Jacques Baron, Jacques-André Boiffard, André Breton, Jean Carrive, René Crevel, Joseph Delteil, Robert Desnos, Paul Eluard, Francis Gérard, Georges Limbour, Georges Malkine, Max Morise, Pierre Naville, Marcel Noll, Benjamin Péret, Gaëtan Picon, Philippe Soupault, Roger Vitrac, Joan Miró.
Source from Wikipedia