Fifty Years Later: The Manifesto of Surrealism

Author(s): J. H. Matthews
Source: Twentieth Century Literature, Vol. 21, No. 1, Essays on Surrealism (Feb., 1975), pp.
1-9
Published by: Duke University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/440524
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 I
PERSPECTIVE,
AESTHETICS, POETICS

Fifty Years Later:

The Manzfeslo of Surrealism
J. H. MATTHEWS

Reconsidered from a comfortable distance, any document of importance

in the history of ideas is likely to elicit condescension as often as admiration.
Although it does not make the Manifesto of Surrealism unique among docu-
ments of this nature, one distinguishing feature of the text Andre Breton
published in Paris in 1924 is that initially it succeeded in inspiring, among
critics anyway, more condescension than anything else, and continued for the
most part to do so for a long time. This fact lends weight to the question
with which I should like to begin: Has the moment come at last, fifty years
later, when someone who has not participated in the surrealist venture can feel
and even confess publicly to admiration for Breton's manifesto?
True, as time goes by we hear praise of surrealism voiced more and more
frequently, and from various quarters. Sometimes, though, our impression is
that surrealism at last seems to have earned the right to grudging approval
because, as everyone knows, it is not in good taste to speak ill of the dead, but
nevertheless reassuring, in some cases, to remind oneself of their passing. At
other times, it looks as if a number of those who confidently take upon them-
selves to comment on society and the art it fosters have made the belated
discovery of surrealism's presence in the twentieth century and are determined
not to give posterity the opportunity to condemn them for having ignored it

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TWENTIETH CENTURY LITERATURE

altogether. Then, too, there are those who, apparently bent on smotherin
realism with their attentions, generously credit it with having touched
about every aspect of our lives. Into this category fall commentato
gravely cap their tribute to surrealism as a vital force with the sup
persuasive observation that even the gentle art of commercial advertizing
the influence of surrealism these days-as though the launching of t
realist movement, marked by the appearance of Breton's 1924 manifest
somewhat comparable to the discovery of electricity.
Exactly because people can get away with this sort of thing, my gu
that the answer to the question I raised a moment ago is probably negat
is in the very nature of surrealism to draw a firm distinction between
and outsider. Hence we cannot hope to appreciate the true significance o
first manifesto without beginning, as I propose to do, by considering w
represents within the context of surrealist aspiration, rather than within
art and literature, where critics feel entitled to impose their deman
sometimes manage to do so successfully.
Our perspective on the Manifesto of Surrealism will be a distorted o
so long as we have failed to see Breton's purpose in writing as to issue a
to arms, not to lay down a rigid battle plan, arrogantly assumed by its a
and those who shared his views, to be equal to the task of coping w
contingency the future might bring. An interpretation that treats the
text as authority for regarding surrealism as a static rather than a dyn
phenomenon is, whether deliberately or not, twisting its meaning, the
ponents of such an interpretation being guilty of grave injustice to
Breton, and the ambitions he sought to bring into focus. By the same t
anyone who seeks to discredit Breton, his manifesto, or the movement
cially launched, by the expedient of referring to the Manifeste du Surre
solely with the aim of highlighting departures in later surrealist practic

theory as formnulated there (one thinks of vexing questions about the

played by automatism in surrealist creative effort, for instance)-such a
is paying tribute, inadvertently to be sure, to the remarkable vitality
which surrealism has drawn strength.
The first manifesto simply marked the opening of surrealist act
according to a concerted plan. It codified ideas that had been in gestatio
up to half a decade, and it gave a sense of unified purpose to forms of
and exploration, already tried out, projected, or just anticipated. Of cou
marked, too, the opening of the surrealist hunting season, which seems
to continue so long as there are sportsmen to be found blessed with ina
aim and blank cartridges.
Although it placed immediate trust in certain modes of inquiry, Br
1924 text by no means limited surrealist action to these directions only

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 THE MANIFESTO OF SURREALISM

did it preclude additional or even quite different methods for prospecti

surreal. Indeed, displaying that noteworthy lucidity for which he has re
all too little credit, Andre Breton himself warned against the dang
poncifs-of creating a surrealist stereotype-at the very moment when, in
interest of uncovering the surreal, he was recommending that the r
approached and handled in certain ways.1
One thing the Manifesto of Surrealism did very well, so making a se
claim on the attention of its readers in the mid-twenties, was focu
several basic human needs, no better satisfied today than then, under the
conditions imposed by western society. At first sight it may appear tha
impact made by what Breton had to say came from his proposals for me
these needs. It takes close acquaintance both with the manifesto itself and
the history of surrealism in the last half century to persuade us that th
mediate proposals-including the much debated theory of verbal automat
have been of less lasting influence than Andre Breton's insistence th
needs these proposals were designed to help meet are legitimate, and mu
recognized as such. The vigor of the first surrealist manifesto owes muc
its author's conviction that these needs cannot be set aside as inadmissible
that the individual has the right to seek their satisfaction, together wit
privilege of doing so by whatever means he deems appropriate.
The first surrealist manifesto is not a programme for revolutionizin
and literature, but a programme that appeals for a revision of human va
In other words, the treatment it has received from most commentators
important still, the perspective in which it has been viewed from outsid
surrealist circle-limits its scope to the point where its meaning is ra
changed. So it is that much that is in the programme Breton wished to
is lost on those who know no more of his text than that it supplies
veniently quotable definition, three or four lines long.2 In fact, the tro
begins with that definition and, more especially, with the narrow interpre
critics have felt free to place on it. The definition of surrealism in Bret
manifesto, so frequently quoted (as though it said all and as though,
carried its own refutation within itself) is somewhat like the tip of an ic
Its real value is that it marks, above the water line, the presence of som
of far greater proportions, beneath the surface.
There are times when it seems especially regrettable that Andr6 Bre
did not heed Mallarm6's warning about the limitations of naming t
There are moments when-aggravating though the consequences woul
been for so many people--one could wish that, while speaking of surreal
Breton had refused to define it, just as Benjamin P&ret refused to defin
marvelous, even though he saw it as "the heart and nervous system
poetry."3 For what happens, when the Manifesto of Surrealism falls int

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TWENTIETH CENTURY LITERATURE

hands of art critics and literary commentators? Bent over Breton's text
people give themselves up to examination of a document in which th
attention to the "letter" of surrealism. Even those who do so in good fait
reluctant to take the hint from Breton's statement, within the manifest
that Guillaume Apollinaire, to whom he was indebted for the word surre
possessed the "letter" of surrealism, but not its "spirit."4 And yet the m
of surrealism is plainly legible only to someone who is willing to seek th
behind the letter of its definition.
Now, as Robert Champigny has demonstrated efficiently enoug
definition of surrealism consigned to Breton's manifesto uses reasonable
guage in a way unreasonable.5 Cogently argued and objectively form
Champigny's objections set off the fundamental difference between the la
of criticism, utilized at the highest level of responsibility, and lang
surrealism calls for its use. To Champigny, language is an instrument per
by reason, its application reasonably governed. To Breton and those for
he spoke in his Manifeste du Surrealisme, language employed only with
sonable bounds is language misapplied.
Clearly there is a paradox here, from which surrealism has never es
altogether. It is a paradox that carries a heavy penalty, as we see whene
surrealist idea of poetry is confused with literary ideals and subjec
evaluation by standards in which surrealists have neither faith nor inte
Looking back from his Second Manifesto of Surrealism, first published in
Breton was to remark that the public should not be surprised to see th
surrealist revolt had first found expression on the plane of languag
neither in the Second Manifeste nor elsewhere was Andre Breton ever to
at a solution to the problem of how to make the public aware of the diff
between language used surrealistically and the language of literature.
It was not that Breton knowingly promoted confusion in this respe
the contrary, some of the far-reaching consequences of the surrealist con
of language can be detected already in his manifesto of 1924, where
suggested, the most important aspects of what he has to tell us elude det
by the process of linguistic analysis to which Champigny feels entitled to
Here we face another paradox that can hardly escape notice; one th
leave us wondering whether Breton was indulging in a hoax or whe
fell victim to his own system.
In turning to the manifesto form, Andre Breton was borrowing a m
of verbal communication that supposedly owes its persuasiveness-it
raison d'`tre-to the reasonable clarity of its dialectical presentation. Appa
then, this is a paradox just as insurmountable as the other. All the
believe Breton had more success in dealing with it. Indeed, when add
himself to the problem he had created for himself, he succeeded in dem

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 THE MANIFESTO OF SURREALISM

strating, within the manifesto itself, that the message of surrealism owe
force to the spirit rather than the letter of its definition.
True, as we watch Robert Champigny meticulously and expertly unco
ing the weaknesses in Breton's logic, the abuses to which he treats deduc
language, laying bare the inconsistencies to be noted in the progression o
argument upon which the very idea of surrealism appears to rest, we see
action a rigorously reasonable mind, intent upon demolishing a structure
which it can place no credence. But if this were all there were to i
should be left with the simple alternative of belief or disbelief--of
support for Breton's ideas or rejection of them--and this means we s
either be lining up behind Champigny or pretending that he had never o
the Manifeste du Surrialisme. Confronting Breton's text and Champ
strictures has something important to show us, however. For we glimpse,
contemplating the unbridgeable distance separating the author of the surr
manifestoes from his critic, what Andr6 Breton really meant, when he aff
that language has been given man so that he may make surrealist use of
Without intending to do so, Champigny has done the Manifesto of Surre
a valuable service.
Those weaknesses that reason brings to light, those all-too-evident breaks
in logical sequence, are less significant as signs of dialectical inadequacy or
muddy thinking than proof that the Manifeste du Surrialisme was never in-
tended to measure up to the demands of reasonable argument. Thus the
excitement Breton's text is capable of generating in the mind of a surrealist
is not stimulated by persuasive deduction at all. It comes directly from the
spectacle of successive intuitive leaps, taken with no display of caution-there
was in Breton a strange mixture of self-importance and humility-in a direc-
tion which that mind, tired of society and its ways (including its literary and
artistic ways)-is already predisposed to follow. In a very literal sense, Andre
Breton practiced what he preached. More precisely, he preached by example,
not precept, while yet adopting a form of expression that he seemed to have
chosen with the relatively uncomplicated purpose of setting forth a theory.
One cannot say, exactly, that the Manifesto of Surrealism carries within
it its own defense. Such a contention would reduce Breton's achievement to a
cleverly conceived plan, quite expertly carried out. But it does seem to me
that this is a text which-without even trying-sets itself outside criticism.
Generally acknowledged standards of critical appraisal do not apply, being
struck with irrelevance. Meanwhile, the appeal the manifesto offers those
whom it invites into the surrealist circle is sufficiently compelling to make all
reservations appear superfluous.
Examined from this point of view, the first manifesto is not an exception
among Andre Breton's writings. It explores, of course, some of the major

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TWENTIETH CENTURY LITERATURE

themes that its author and others will take up subsequently in the name of
surrealism. More than this, though, it illustrates the manner in which Bret
invariably will respond to these themes. Perhaps I can make myself clearer
saying that, in the Manifesto of Surrealism, Breton really only assumes the
posture of someone devoted to the defense of ideas important to him, whil
fact he believes these to be self-evident and incontrovertible truths that, s
long as they have been firmly stated, need no supporting argument to impre
the reader with their validity. In this important respect, indeed, both in qua
and character, in tone and mood, Breton's writing in the first manifest
different in no way at all from that of his Les Vases communicants (19
shall we say, or his L'Amour fou (1937). Gravity, a certain weightine
these characteristic features of his language are not called upon, ever, to se
a carefully controlled argument, painstakingly followed through. Instead, the
regularly are placed at the disposal of an intuitive interpretation of hum
destiny, which no evidence to the contrary can either halt or cause to falte
Breton's grandly structured sentences advance imperturbably across the pag
of the 1924 Manifeste du Surrcialisme just as they will do, twenty years lat
in Arcane 17.
Are we beginning to wander from the point, to lose sight of the central
text that is supposed to be commanding our attention, behind others which
followed it? I think not. For Breton's subsequent writings enable us to place
the first surrealist manifesto in the light under which surrealists view it.
Benjamin P'ret, the greatest of surrealist poets, wrote comparatively little
of a theoretical nature on the subject of poetry. To P&ret, evidently, creation
and commentary were separate activities, exerting unequal attraction. Breton,
on the other hand, theorized as he created, and created as he theorized-the
idea of diurnal experience and dreaming as communicating vessels, in Les
Vases communicants; the concept of mad love in L'Amour fou. Andr6 Breton
never felt the need to draw a line between theory and practice, between the
language of theory and the language of creative action, even in that initial
formulation of basic ideas which he issued as a manifesto.
This is one of the important discoveries the first manifesto has to share
with those who really hear its message: the fascination of language lies in its
being a less-than-adequate instrument and, at the same time, the most readily
available means by which man may assert his freedom from controls, socio-
political, ethical, moral, literary, and artistic. Obviously, Breton's manifesto
was not the first document, nor will it be the last, to celebrate the tantalizing
potential of language and its disappointing limitations. Its special value, at
least for many of those it has helped recruit to the surrealist cause, lies in the
tension it establishes between hope and despair (the fundamental tension on
which surrealist effort rests, after all), in the excitement released beneath the

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 THE MANIFESTO OF SURREALISM

surface of a text that, at first sight, looks to be far more indebted to th

demands of reasonable discourse-and therefore, in Breton's eyes, condemned
to failure-than it really is, and which, then, owes its magnetism to forces that
reasonable disputation can do nothing to invalidate.

There is in the Manifesto of Surrealism a passage that receives but limited

development, and indeed seems not quite in place. It is one in which speci
emphasis is given the surrealist possibilities of dialogue. Nothing later in the
manifesto appears to justify its presence, and Breton seems inclined to negle
to draw conclusions from it. What is its importance? I would not go so f
as to contend that this passage found its way into the text simply becau
Andr6 Breton wanted to place in his reader's hands a key for opening up the
meaning of his manifesto. Even so, his remarks on the nature of surreali
dialogue do assist us in arriving at a fuller understanding of the function serv
by the Manifeste, as seen from within the surrealist movement.
Discussing dialogue, Breton tacitly admits to one of the weaknesses o
verbal exchange, when he acknowledges that, uttering a statement, a speaker
is denied, ultimately, control over the effect it will produce in a listener. Fo
that very reason, though, language possesses a capacity for exciting stimulus
since the statement uttered now takes on value from the effect it has upon
the listener-an effect which the speaker cannot predict with complete accuracy
Each statement, therefore, is but a point of departure for response which, in
its turn, offers a starting point for further response. Hence as dialogue pro-
gresses, Breton intimates, so the weaknesses of language recede before i
strengths. Moreover-and this is the most enlightening aspect of all, in what
the surrealist manifesto has to tell us about dialogue-those strengths impress
themselves upon us most when (as during a conversation between a mentally
disturbed patient and his doctor) a statement elicits a response that is n
confined within the bounds of reasonable sequence.
In other words, Champigny's inability to enter into a dialogue wit
Breton is entirely predictable, because inevitable. This is not to say that the
only response to his manifesto that Breton would find acceptable would
an incoherent one, or that he wrote specifically for madmen. But it does me
that whatever satisfaction someone derives from the manifesto by attemptin
to respond to it in the language of reason, this is not the same satisfacti
reserved by Breton's text for those prepared to imitate the men named therei
as having given proof of "ABSOLUTE SURREALISM."
Since he viewed man as definitively a dreamer-stating as much in th
second sentence of his Manifesto of Surrealism, Andr6 Breton really cou
not be expected to have tried to make contact with others, except in th
language of dreams. There is no place for misunderstanding here, since to a

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TWENTIETH CENTURY LITERATURE

surrealist the language of dreams is that of desire seeking satisfaction,

aspiration reaching out to fulfillment. This then is the language that Breto
speaks most directly, both to those already dedicated to surrealism and to th
whom his monologue in manifesto form is able to draw into fruitful unscrip
dialogue.
Today the Manifeste du Surrialisme stands, as it did in the twenties, as
an act of faith. It still communicates Breton's confidence in the resonance his
words can find in the minds of others, in that echo which, in spite of every-
thing, justifies reliance upon words. His trust in the future which, for him,
gave meaning to the vanity of believing one can reach a public by means of
the written word, is entirely in keeping with Breton's optimistic assurance
that surrealism "is what will be." Indeed, as exemplified in the first surrealist
manifesto, it clarifies that affirmation by confirming that the full flowering of
surrealism is not to be sought in a statement like the Manifesto of Surrealism,
but in the response it solicits.
Has reconsideration of Breton's first manifesto really done nothing more
than bring us up against a truism? One writes, and Andr6 Breton freely admitted
this, to find an audience. All the same, the distinctive emphasis placed on
communication, effected at the extra-reasonable level that surrealism makes its
own, saved Breton from self-contradiction, as he published a manifesto while
yet firmly believing "it is absolutely necessary to keep the public from coming
in."s The public, that large majority of the reading population content with
life in contemporary society, and with the satisfactions it provides, must be
kept at a distance, surrealists have always been convinced; at no less a distance
than art critics and professors of literature. To such people the Manifesto of
Surrealism does have something to say, of course, because its medium is
language. Yet we can be sure that, however much admiration or condescension
it releases in them, their response will reflect reaction to the letter of the
manifesto. To this extent, objections raised, reservations expressed, disagree-
ments voiced appear, from the surrealist point of view, to tell more about the
limitations of the reader than about the spirit of the text under criticism. And,
as Andre Breton was hardly the first to point out, it is the spirit that
quickeneth..

1 "Je ne crois pas au prochain 6tablissement d'un poncif surr6aliste. Les caractbres
communs a tous les textes du genre, parmi lesquels ceux que je viens de signaler et
beaucoup d'autres que seules pourraient nous livrer une analyse logique et une analyse
grammaticale serrie, ne s'opposent pas 'a une certaine 6volution de la prose surr6aliste
dans le temps. Venant apres quantit6 d'essais auxquels je me suis livr6 dans ce sens
depuis cinq ans et dont j'ai la faiblesse de juger la plupart extremement d6sordonnes,
les historiettes qui forment la suite de ce volume [i.e., Poisson soluble] m'en fournissent
une preuve flagrante. Je ne les tiens ? cause de cela, ni pour plus dignes, ni pour plus
indignes, de figurer aux yeux du lecteur les gains que l'apport surrealiste est susceptible

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 THE MANIFESTO OF SURREALISM

de faire realiser a sa conscience." Premier Manifeste du Surrialisme in Andre Breto

Manifestes du Surrealisme (Paris: Jean-Jacques Pauvert, editeur, n. d. [1962]), pp. 56-
2 "SURREALISME, n. m. Automatisme psychique pur par lequel on se propose
d'exprimer, soit verbalement, soit par ecrit, soit de toute autre maniere, le fonctionnement
reel de la pens6e. Dict6e de la pensee, en l'absence de tout contr6le exerc' par la raison,
en dehors de toute preoccupation esth6tique ou morale." (p. 40)
3 Benjamin P'ret, "La Pens6e est UNE et indivisible," VVV N. 4 (February
1944), p. 10. Translated as "Thought is ONE and indivisible," Free Unions libres
(1946), p. 3.
4 "Il semble, en effet, que Nerval possede a merveille l'esprit dont nous nous
r6clamons, Apollinaire n'ayant possede, par contre, que la lettre, encore imparfaite du
surr6alisme et s'6tant montr6 impuissant ' en donner un apergu thorique qui nous
retienne." (p. 39)
5 Champigny's analysis of the Manifeste du Surrdalisme, originally published in
PMLA, reappears in his Pour une Esthdtique de l'Essai (Paris: Lettres Modernes, 1967),
7-28.
6 "Le probleme de Faction sociale n'est, je tiens a y revenir et j'y insiste, qu'une
des formes d'un probleme plus g6neral que le surrealisme s'est mis en devoir de soulever
et qui est celui de l'expression humaine sous toutes ses formes. Qui dit expression dit,
pour commencer, langage. Il ne faut donc pas s'6tonner de voir le surr6alisme se situer
tout d'abord presque uniquement sur le plan du langage et, non plus, au retour de
quelque incursion que qe soit, y revenir comme pour le plaisir de s'y comporter en pays
conquis." (p. 183)
7 "Le langage a et6 donn6 ' l'homme pour qu'il en fasse un usage surr6aliste."
(p. 48)
8 "I1 faut absolument empecher le public d'entrer si l'on veut viter la confusion,"
we read in the Second Manifeste du Surrealisme, p. 211. Cf. "Je demande l'occultation
profonde, veritable du surrealisme" (p. 211).

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