“Manifestos of Surrealism”, by André Breton, preface by Philippe Forest, Gallimard, “Bibliotheque de la Pléiade”, 1,138 p., €65.
Of the two Manifestos of surrealism published in 1924 and 1930 in Sagittarius (there is a third, but reduced to a few pages of prolegomena), and today republished in “La Pléiade”, the most famous is the first, whose centenary is being celebrated. Although it is the preface to a collection of poetry, Poisson solubleAndré Breton (1896-1966) provided a theoretical basis for the activities of the group, finally detached from the Dada movement, which was too anarchic. However, it is in the second that Breton's prose becomes the most sovereign (also the most polemical, with regard to former accomplices who are now reviled) and at the same time the most poetic.
There, in the midst of programmatic declarations and anathemas, Breton appeals to his troops. His allies of course, within a literary environment in full political restructuring. But, more broadly, all those animated by the spirit of revolt, because he still finds himself, he writes, « at this time throughout the world, in high schools, in workshops even, in the street, in seminaries and in barracks, young, pure beings, who refuse more ». It is to them above all that the author of Second manifesto is addressed, today as in 1930.
To make manifest is first of all to define surrealism. In 1924, Breton did it as in a dictionary: “Pure psychic automatism by which we propose to express (…) the real functioning of thought. » It all started in 1919 with a game – serious, like all the games of the Surrealists – with Philippe Soupault (1897-1990): taking turns writing down what came to their minds, quickly enough to lose control, in a « laudable contempt for what could follow literary ».
This experience of automatic writing suddenly revealed to them a psychic continent free from the constraints of reason or morality and accessible by several routes, in particular dreams and hypnotic states. Once achieved, a new form of inspiration burst forth, freed from all « literature » in the traditional sense – rehashed themes, rhetorical effects, poetic recipes…: all the old stuff. Is it out of irony, challenge or ambition? The surrealists titled their first review Literature.
A kind of magic formula
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