The Review of Contemporary Fiction

The Automatic Message by André Breton, Paul Eluard and Philippe Soupault
James Sallis

Untitled document

André Breton, Paul Eluard, Philippe Soupault. The Automatic Message. Trans. David Gascoyne, Antony Melville, Jon Graham. Introduction by Gascoyne and Melville. Atlas, 1997. 223 pp. Paper: $16.99.

An old maxim has God worrying over what happens when the last Frenchman’s gone: who will then be left to explain everything? André Breton, decrier of reason and logic, steward of mystery, champion of the unconscious, nourished that genius for explanation in himself. For half a century he turned out a stream of manifestos, letters and commentary, creating the very sea upon which he set sail, and kept on course against all odds, the good ship surrealism.

Surrealism’s formal history runs fifty years, too, 1919 to 1969. It was, like punk, both art and weapon, an assault at the barricades of the common-place, of stultification. Its role, and its influence, are immeasurable. But how many of us have actually read its texts? That date given above, 1919, derives from publication of Breton’s and Philippe Soupault’s “Les Champs magnétiques”—the book (Aragon said) “through which everything begins.”

The current volume pairs “The Magnetic Fields” with another seminal automatic text by Breton and Paul Eluard, “The Immaculate Conception.” Both evidence the chance encounters, quests, contradictions and surprise—as well as the profound reliance on image—that are surrealist trademarks. Breton’s “The Automatic Message,” offered as introduction, extolls the generative powers of phrases that come just before sleep, and of concepts of free association come across in his medical studies. Taking up the promise of liberation from Freudian psychiatry, Breton and his surrealist crewmen turned that promise towards a total liberation of the imagination. For Breton, as for Pushkin, poetry was always a form of action. Man must become ungoverned: bury all towers, cast off all bondage. He wished to change the whole of mankind, profoundly, from within each individual human being. [James Sallis]


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The Review of Contemporary Fiction The Automatic Message by André Breton, Paul Eluard and Philippe Soupault James Sallis Untitled document André Breton, Paul Eluard, Philippe Soupault. The Automatic Message. Trans. David Gascoyne, Antony Melville, Jon Graham. Introduction by Gascoyne and Melville. Atlas, 1997. 223 pp. Paper: $16.99. An old maxim has God worrying over what happens when the last Frenchman’s gone: who will then be left to explain everything? André Breton, decrier of reason and logic, steward of mystery, champion of the unconscious, nourished that genius for explanation in himself. For half a century he turned out a stream of manifestos, letters and commentary, creating the very sea upon which he set sail, and kept on course against all odds, the good ship surrealism. Surrealism’s formal history runs fifty years, too, 1919 to 1969. It was, like punk, both art and weapon, an assault at the barricades of the common-place, of stultification. Its role, and its influence, are immeasurable. But how many of us have actually read its texts? That date given above, 1919, derives from publication of Breton’s and Philippe Soupault’s “Les Champs magnétiques”—the book (Aragon said) “through which everything begins.” The current volume pairs “The Magnetic Fields” with another seminal automatic text by Breton and Paul Eluard, “The Immaculate Conception.” Both evidence the chance encounters, quests, contradictions and surprise—as well as the profound reliance on image—that are surrealist trademarks. Breton’s “The Automatic Message,” offered as introduction, extolls the generative powers of phrases that come just before sleep, and of concepts of free association come across in his medical studies. Taking up the promise of liberation from Freudian psychiatry, Breton and his surrealist crewmen turned that promise towards a total liberation of the imagination. For Breton, as for Pushkin, poetry was always a form of action. Man must become ungoverned: bury all towers, cast off all bondage. He wished to change the whole of mankind, profoundly, from within each individual human being. [James Sallis]

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