This weighty
tome might be used as a text for a class on Surrealism but is worth buying and
reading in its own right.  It is a collection of memoirs, prose text, poetry,
and art.  Its one disappointment is that the illustrations are all in black and
white.

 In her
introduction, Caws says that this book is a follow-up to Robert Motherwell’s
book on Dadaism.  She presents an interview she did with Motherwell that has
some definitions as well as lovely, gossipy tidbits.  Of surrealism Caws says, Surrealism
connects.  It celebrates the possibility of€”in fact, it claims the existence
of€”a capillary tissue that enables a mental circulation between states of
being, emotions, worlds, . . . " and she quotes Andre Breton as saying ‘plunging
the human consciousness into the unlimited connectedness of an eternal being,
falling with the stone, flying with the birds . . . in whom, far from
annihilating themselves, all the adverse wills of all things are combined and
marvelously limited’" (pp. xxviii-xxx).   

 My favorite of
the entries were the paintings like Man Ray’s "Portrait Through Wire"
(p. 44).  Or Victor Brauner’s "The Crime of the Butterfly King" (p. 112). 
Or Yves Tanguy’s "Fear" (p. 376).  Or Dorothea Tanning’s "Guardian
Angles" (p. 404).  All have a disquieting effect as if something slithered
out of the unconscious and reared its head at us.  Another example is Rene
Magritte’s "Le Balcon de Manet" (p. 432) which depicts coffins on a
balcony, one of which is seated as the person who occupies it might have been,
gazing out across it’s familiar domestic vista. 

 It is
difficult to understand the impact some of the entries must have had.  They are
no longer fresh.  Like Paul Nouge’s  "nothing but nothing that is nothing" 
which occupies a full page all in caps, giant letters marching across the blank
whiteness.   Rene Char’s terse "I do not banter with pigs" (p. 161),
a verse complete,  is still fresh though.   Many entries are in some way related
to dreams or dreamlike imagery.  A surprising number of the prose entries mention
feelings about religion, especially the Catholic church.  There are a few
surrealist games. There is a scenario for Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali’s "L’Age
D’Or."

 In a world of
low cal blandness, many of the prose sections are full of creamy goodness. 
Like Breton’s "Less time than it takes to say it, fewer tears than it
takes to die;  I’ve taken count of everything, there you have it.  I’ve made a
census of the stones; they are numerous as my fingers and some others; I’ve 
handed out some pamphlets to the plants, but not all were willing to accept . .
. " (p. 129).   Or there is Breton’s poetry "With his radium bougie he
quickens the dregs of the human crucible" (p. 130).

 I suppose some
people might think some of the entries are a bit over the top but I am
compelled.  For example, Rene Crevel’s  "They said you were mad, Amie, and
they locked you up.  Yet you alone were right. Flesh, beautiful white flesh. 
Tonight the storm will tear ravenously at the clouds as teeth tear at bellies. 
In the cemetery, the Queen has consumed in one fell swoop her supply of drugs,
and collapses on the cold marble.  Babylon, Babylon, Babylon, Amie howls aloud
her passion.  She is placed in a straitjacket.  Babylon, Babylon, Babylon.  And
that house facing the sea will never be finished.  Petitdemange, alone with his
blond beard, looks on all this drama as devilishly Ibsenesque.  Happy are those
who can escape the debacle in their Patagonia of frozen stones." (p.
175).  (No doubt it sounds even better in its native French).  Looking at this
passage, it is clear that there is no firm demarcation between prose and
poetry.

 Then there is
the this from Tristan Tzara, "Before night falls, in this moment as
disturbing as air suspended between liquid and solid states, when everything
hides its face in shame, even the noises take flight, timidly, when the feeling
that a vase is about to overflow plants itself with anguish in each breast as
if another announcement of the death of someone we love, of his awful suicide,
were going to strike us, when this hatred of life can transform sorrow into an
immense gratitude, when the heaps of corpses warming the winter frozen in us, 
. . ." (p. 415).   I didn’t misquote it, it has a nonlinear quality.   The
noises are like birds, taking flight.  There is a cognitive slip at "plants"
when the plants we imagine in a vase become planted in that anguished breast. 

One can present
an analysis of content or make commentary on the work as a whole, but this is
one instance where you had to be there.   Though I’ve given you a sample, there
is really no substitute for actually reading this volume.

©
2004 Marilyn Graves

Marilyn Graves
Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist and freelance writer.

Categories: Philosophical, Psychoanalysis