The Surrealist Manifesto was written by the French writer André Breton and published in 1924. This document defines Surrealism as: The term writer can apply to anyone who creates a written work, but the word more usually designates those who write creatively or professionally, or those who have written in many different forms. ... André Breton (February 18, 1896 – September 28, 1966) was a French writer, poet, and surrealist theorist. ... 1924 (MCMXXIV) was a leap year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ... Psalm 69, egg tempera and oil on wood by Ernst Fuchs Surrealism[1] is a movement stating that the liberation of our mind, and subsequently the liberation of the individual self and society, can be achieved by exercising the imaginative faculties of the unconscious mind to the attainment of a...

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 the 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 the tenets of Surrealism can be applied in any circumstance of life, and is not merely restricted to the artistic realm. The importance of the dream as a reservoir of Surrealist inspiration is also highlighted. Automatism is the practice or theory of the spontaneous production of words (speech or writing), drawing, painting or other creative production, or behavior in general, without conscious self-control or self-censorship. ... Reason is a term used in philosophy and other human sciences to refer to the faculty of the human mind that creates and operates with abstract concepts. ... Psalm 69, egg tempera and oil on wood by Ernst Fuchs Surrealism[1] is a movement stating that the liberation of our mind, and subsequently the liberation of the individual self and society, can be achieved by exercising the imaginative faculties of the unconscious mind to the attainment of a... Psalm 69, egg tempera and oil on wood by Ernst Fuchs Surrealism[1] is a movement stating that the liberation of our mind, and subsequently the liberation of the individual self and society, can be achieved by exercising the imaginative faculties of the unconscious mind to the attainment of a...

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 brought together to create a new, uncanny union. Hypnogogia, also spelled Hypnagogia, is the name of an experience a person can go through when falling asleep. ... Psalm 69, egg tempera and oil on wood by Ernst Fuchs Surrealism[1] is a movement stating that the liberation of our mind, and subsequently the liberation of the individual self and society, can be achieved by exercising the imaginative faculties of the unconscious mind to the attainment of a...

The manifesto also refers to the numerous precursors of Surrealism that embodied the Surrealist spirit prior to his composing the manifesto, including such luminaries as the Marquis de Sade, Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud, Lautréamont, Raymond Roussel, and even back as far as Dante. Portrait of the Marquis de Sade by Charles-Amédée-Philippe van Loo (c. ... Charles Baudelaire, photograph taken by Nadar. ... Arthur Rimbaud at seventeen Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud (October 20, 1854 – November 10, 1891) was a French poet, born in Charleville. ... Comte de Lautréamont is a pseudonym for Isidore Lucien Ducasse (Montevideo, Uruguay, April 4, 1846 - Paris, November 24, 1870), a French poet and writer. ... Raymond Roussel (Paris, January 20, 1877–Palermo, July 14, 1933) was a French poet, novelist, playwright, musician, chess enthusiast, neurasthenic, homosexual, drug addict, and probable suicide. ... Dante in a fresco series of famous men by Andrea del Castagno, ca. ...

The works of several of his contemporaries in developing the Surrealist style in poetry are also quoted, including texts by Philippe Soupault, Paul Eluard, Robert Desnos and Louis Aragon, among others. Philippe Soupault (August 2, 1897 – March 12, 1990) was a French writer and poet, novelist, critic, and political activist. ... Paul Éluard was the nom de plume of Eugène Grindel (December 14, 1895 - November 18, 1952), a French poet. ... Robert Desnos (July 4, 1900 - June 8, 1945) was a French surrealist poet. ... Louis Aragon (October 3, 1897 - December 24, 1982), French historian, poet and novelist. ...

The manifesto was written with a great deal of absurdist humor, demonstrating the influence of the Dada movement which immediately preceded it in France, and in which Breton was also a key player. Absurdism is a philosophy, usually translated into different art forms, that holds that any attempt to understand the universe will fail. ... DaDa is an album by Alice Cooper, released in 1983 (see 1983 in music). ...

The text concludes by asserting that Surrealist activity follows no set plan or conventional pattern, and that Surrealists are ultimately nonconformists. Surrealism is an artistic movement and an aesthetic philosophy that aims for the liberation of the mind by emphasizing the critical and imaginative powers of the subconscious. ... A nonconformist is an English or Welsh Protestant of any non-Anglican denomination, chiefly advocating religious liberty. ...

Quotations

• I could spend my whole life prying loose the secrets of the insane. These people are honest to a fault, and their naiveté has no peer but my own.
• We are still living under the reign of logic: this, of course, is what I have been driving at. But in this day and age logical methods are applicable only to solving problems of secondary interest.
• Let us not mince words: the marvelous is always beautiful, anything marvelous is beautiful, in fact only the marvelous is beautiful.
• Surrealism will usher you into death, which is a secret society. It will glove your hand, burying therein the profound M with which the word Memory begins.
• Surrealism does not allow those who devote themselves to it to forsake it whenever they like. There is every reason to believe that it acts on the mind very much as drugs do; like drugs, it creates a certain state of need and can push man to frightful revolts.
• In this realm as in any other, I believe in the pure Surrealist joy of the man who, forewarned that all others before him have failed, refuses to admit defeat, sets off from whatever point he chooses, along any other path save a reasonable one, and arrives wherever he can.
• It is living and ceasing to live which are imaginary solutions. Existence is elsewhere.

See also

• Art manifesto

The Art manifesto has been a recurrent feature associated with the avant-garde in Modernism. ...

External link

• Andre Breton's Surrealist Manifesto

• The Manifesto of Surrealism (1924)