Authors: Mary Ann Caws
ISBN-13: 9780262532013, ISBN-10: 0262532018
Format: Paperback
Publisher: MIT Press
Date Published: September 2002
Edition: 1st Edition
Mary Ann Caws is Distinguished Professor of English, French, and Comparative Literature in the Graduate School of the City University of New York and Co-director of its Henri Peyre French Institute. She is the author, editor, or translator of more than forty books in the fields of poetry and the avant-garde.
Art and writings by Surrealist painters and poets from a wide range of countries.
While the lessons of surrealism have been pretty well assimilated by contemporary artists, the encyclopedic inclusivity of this selection, along with its global perspective and attention to women artists, provides plenty of surprises and new perspectives on this unconscious-driven movement. Renowned scholar and translator of French modernism Caws (The Eye of the Text, etc.), whose anthology Manifesto: A Century of Isms has just appeared (Forecasts, Feb. 19), makes her first, necessary act here to ignore what the rather dictatorial Andr Bretonfounder, primary theorist and tireless proselyte of the movementdeemed "surrealist" in his time, and to include work that is not just "automatic writing" or collaborative in nature, the two types of writing Breton championed most. Memoirs, poems, fables, manifestos, games and collaborative works, as well as photomontages, paintings, drawings and odd, scandalous objects, are included by artists well-known and not: Giorgio de Chirico, Man Ray, Philippe Soupault, Hans Bellmer, Kay Boyle, the founders of "negritude" Aim C saire and L opold S dar Senghor, Salvador Dal , Duchamp, Frida Kahlo, Michel Leiris, the underrecognized painter Dorothea Tanning (wife of Max Ernst), Mina Loy, Antonin Artaud, Leonora Carrington and Joseph Cornell make their appearances among many others. Because it leans more toward the painterlyi.e., imagistic and spasmodically creativeside of the movement and less toward the exacting political and philosophical side, the book can seem unfocused, and the lack of scholarly material, such as chronologies or biographic introductions, may leave one in the dark about the minor figures and how they fit in. But Caws's goal (as with Manifesto) is to present an active constellation of work beyond the canonizing and historicizing of the academy, placing the work back in the lap of the creative reader, in the here and now of the culture today. On that level, this anthology succeeds richly. (May) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Preface: Surrealist Gathering | ||
Acknowledgments | ||
Am I A Surrealist? | 3 | |
Remembering Jacqueline Remembering Andre | 7 | |
The Journey Is Done | 21 | |
From The Memoirs of Giorgio de Chirico | 25 | |
Lifeline | 33 | |
From Self-Portrait | 41 | |
Painting Is a Wager | 47 | |
Hymn to Liberty | 51 | |
Automatic Drawing | 59 | |
Oneirocriticism | 63 | |
From Paris Peasant | 67 | |
From The Fate of La Fontaine | 77 | |
Notes from a Diary | 85 | |
The Folly Stone | 91 | |
The Shell and the Clergyman: Film Scenario | 95 | |
The Mountain of Signs | 101 | |
From "Van Gogh: The Man Suicided by Society" | 103 | |
The Absence of Myth | 111 | |
From "What Oozed through the Staircase" | 115 | |
The Anti-Plato | 117 | |
A Complaint for M and M | 121 | |
On the Fantastic: In Painting | 123 | |
Age | 127 | |
Unclean Night | 127 | |
The Sexual Eagle Exults | 128 | |
Less Time | 129 | |
Lethal Relief | 129 | |
The Verb To Be | 130 | |
Vigilance | 131 | |
Dreaming I See You | 132 | |
Ascendant Sign | 134 | |
Dear Hazel of Squirrelnut | 137 | |
I Am Still Waiting (Answer to Questionnaire: "What Was the Most Important Encounter of Your Life?") | 143 | |
The House of Fear | 145 | |
Uncle Sam Carrington | 148 | |
Serpent Sun | 153 | |
The Automatic Crystal | 153 | |
The Virgin Forest | 154 | |
Sentence | 154 | |
Breaking with the Dead Sea | 155 | |
The Domain of the Marvelous | 157 | |
Artine | 159 | |
From Moulin premier (First Mill) | 161 | |
From Sens plastique | 163 | |
From "Notes" | 169 | |
From Babylon | 175 | |
Every One Thinks Himself Phoenix ... | 177 | |
The Stinking Ass | 179 | |
The Great Masturbator | 183 | |
No One Remembers | 185 | |
From Deuil pour deuil (Mourning for Mourning) | 187 | |
Oh Pangs of Love! | 190 | |
I Have So Often Dreamed of You | 190 | |
Sleep Spaces | 191 | |
If You Knew | 193 | |
No, Love Is Not Dead | 194 | |
Obsession | 196 | |
Three Stars | 197 | |
From La Liberte ou l'amour! (Freedom or Love!) | 197 | |
The Bride | 201 | |
Nothing on Earth | 205 | |
Cafe du Dome | 207 | |
X-Ray | 207 | |
Lady Love | 209 | |
Second Nature | 209 | |
The Queen of Diamonds | 212 | |
Identities | 213 | |
The Victory at Guernica | 215 | |
Dawn | 217 | |
From Nuits partagees (Shared Nights) | 217 | |
The Hundred-Headless Woman | 219 | |
Kafka or "The Secret Society" | 225 | |
Poem in Seven Spaces | 227 | |
The Brown Curtain | 228 | |
Grass Coal | 228 | |
Yesterday, the Quicksands | 229 | |
Ross' Barrier | 231 | |
Healthy Remedies | 233 | |
From King Gordogain | 235 | |
Letter to Jacqueline Lamba | 239 | |
From "Chant III" | 241 | |
Twelfth Ring | 245 | |
About Fashion | 249 | |
From the Heart to the Absolute | 253 | |
In the Heat of Inspiration | 259 | |
Oh Marcel ... Otherwise I Also Have Been to Louise's | 263 | |
Auto-Facial-Construction | 266 | |
The Realm of the Marvelous | 269 | |
The Destruction of the World | 270 | |
Continuous Experience | 275 | |
The Passageway of Judiciary Pleasures | 279 | |
The Vices of Men | 285 | |
They Have Weighed | 285 | |
From "Pericoloso Sporgersi" | 285 | |
Your Figure or the War against Fat | 287 | |
Psychological Aspects of the Fourth Dimension | 289 | |
The Bed of Plato | 297 | |
Sensitive Mathematics - The Architecture of Time | 299 | |
Colors of Childhood, Colors of Blood | 301 | |
Poem | 303 | |
Harlequin's Carnival | 305 | |
Each Speck of Dust | 305 | |
Nothing | 308 | |
Sketch of the Human Body | 309 | |
My Friend's Dog | 317 | |
Round the World | 317 | |
Without Me Anyway | 321 | |
Finally | 321 | |
The Volcano-Pyramid: A Mythological Hypothesis Suggested By the Appearance of a New Volcano | 323 | |
May - 1941 | 327 | |
Listen | 331 | |
Where Are You | 333 | |
One to One | 333 | |
The Four Elements | 338 | |
Aphorisms | 345 | |
In the Corner a Violet Sword | 347 | |
Give and Take Twist and Kill | 349 | |
The Wool Dress | 351 | |
Surprises | 355 | |
Dream | 355 | |
The Rainbow | 356 | |
Interjections | 356 | |
Despair | 357 | |
From Lord Patchogue | 359 | |
Life and Death of the Amorous Umbrella | 363 | |
Bertha, the Child-Flower | 367 | |
Quadrangle | 369 | |
Priimiitiitiii | 373 | |
Lanke Tr Gl (skerzoo aux meiner soonate in uurlauten) | 373 | |
Paolo Uccello | 375 | |
Entries in a Journal | 379 | |
Rrose Selavy demande | 385 | |
An Eye for a Tooth | 389 | |
Speech and Image: An African Tradition of the Surreal | 391 | |
The Silent House | 393 | |
Twilight | 398 | |
One Two or Three | 398 | |
Georgia | 398 | |
Epitaph: Tristan Tzara | 399 | |
Epitaph: Andre Breton | 400 | |
To Drink | 400 | |
From "Blind Date" | 401 | |
Note on Art | 411 | |
Note on Poetry | 413 | |
Before Night | 415 | |
Part XIX | 418 | |
Euthanasia - a Cat Kidnapped - Thirty Francs - The Veterinarian | 425 | |
Theessentialroar | 429 | |
Collective works | 433 | |
Intra-Uterine Life | 435 | |
Simulation of General Paralysis | 436 | |
Simulation of Delirium of Interpretation | 440 | |
Force of Habit | 441 | |
The Original Judgment | 443 | |
From "Barriers" | 447 | |
Scenario for L'Age d'or | 449 | |
From 152 Proverbes Mis au Gout du Jour | 453 | |
The Dog: Parallel Story | 455 | |
Surrealist Game | 461 | |
About Giorgio de Chirico's Enigma of a Day | 463 | |
About Paris | 466 | |
Trance Event | 469 | |
Dream | 475 | |
Dream | 479 | |
Dream | 483 | |
Some Dreams, 1947-1969 | 485 | |
I Don't Know How to Cut It Up | 497 | |
The Country of My Dreams | 499 | |
Dream | 505 | |
The Dancer's Story | 507 | |
Address to the Pope | 511 | |
VVV | 513 | |
[Manifesto of umore] | 515 | |
Source Notes | 517 | |
Index | 527 |