Examples of Surrealist Literature

The surreal literature It is the set of literary works that were produced at the beginning of the 20th century and that, with the invention of new procedures and techniques, They sought to reflect unconscious thought, since they established a free association between ideas and elements that did not have a relationship logic. For example:“The factories”, by André Breton and Philippe Soupault.

The objective of surrealism was to break with the literary and ideological tradition of the bourgeoisie, that is, with the artistic rules and with the rational representation of reality and society that were current at that time and that had been the pillars of realism and naturalism.

In addition, the surrealists considered that the truth of the human being does not come from reason, but from his unconscious, his desires, his dreams and his imagination. For this reason, these authors modified the notion of literary work by incorporating themes, forms and uses of language that represented the dream world and irrational thought.

Although in this movement were written novels and stories, the poetry had more predominance, because in this type of text creative freedom was better developed, the new techniques and literary images formed from illogical relations between ideas and concepts.

• See also: avant-garde poems

Origin and history of surrealism

The term "surrealism" was coined in 1917 by Guillaume Apollinaire, a French poet, to make reference to what is above or beyond realism, that is, the unconscious, the magical and the irrational.

However, surrealism emerged as a movement in 1920, since in that year André Breton and Philippe Soupault, two writers French, they began to experiment with new techniques, such as collective writing and composition under the state of hypnosis.

A few years later, in 1924, Breton took up Apollinaire's concept and published the surreal manifesto to define the general guidelines that would allow the creation of a completely new and different literature. As happened with the rest of the avant-garde, over time this movement spread to other arts and to other countries and continents.

In 1930 many of the surrealists proclaimed themselves communists, since their objective was not only to change literature, but also the world, life and the conception of the human being.

Finally, because of World War II, fascism and Nazism, most of the Surrealists left Europe and the movement dissolved.

Characteristics of surrealist literature

• influences. The main influences of surrealism are:

• Dadaism. It is the artistic current initiated by Tristan Tzara and its objective was to produce anti-poetry, that is, poetry that was illogical and difficult to understand.
• psychoanalysis. It is a psychological theory initiated by Sigmund Freud, who maintained that the psychic apparatus was composed of three systems, the conscious, the preconscious, and the unconscious. The surrealists took up this idea, because they believed that the true identity of the human being was in the unconscious. For this reason, in his works they wanted to reflect the functioning of this non-rational instance.

• Topics. The themes were free, but they sought to deal with shocking themes or that were related to myths, the unconscious, the illogical, the unknown, the irrational and the contradictory.
• Shape. The form was not previously determined, for this reason, in poetry the Free verse, that is, the one that does not have a number of syllables or a rhyme specific. In addition, generally, it was sought to juxtapose two words or ideas that did not have a logical connection.
• Language. According to the surrealist authors, everyday language did not serve to communicate reality, therefore, it was necessary to renew it so that it would express the absurdity, the imagination, the dreams and the irrationality of unconscious.
• Techniques. The techniques of surrealist literature were not exclusive, therefore, to compose a poetry more than one could be applied:

• psychic automatism. It consisted of writing using free association, that is, including all the thoughts that appeared in the mind spontaneously.
• Imagination. It consisted of creating a poetic image relating two elements that did not have a logical connection, that is, they could not be elaborated with rational thought.
• Use of dream material. It consisted of creating a poetic image with elements from dreams, since these are illogical and are formed in the unconscious.
• paranoid method. It consisted of writing in a state of delirium or hypnosis.
• Random. It consisted of writing using games or similar procedures to create random images. For example, the exquisite corpse was a method in which different authors participated in consecutive turns; each one wrote a part, but he could only see the last sentence or word that he had written down the previous one.
• lyrical exaltation. It consisted of writing expressing feelings in a hyperbolic way.
• Humor. It consisted of satirizing bourgeois values, parodying other literary texts or including jokes, Word games or phrases with double meaning or ambiguity.

Main authors and examples of surrealist literature

Andre Breton (1896-1966)

He was a French writer who took up the ideas of psychoanalysis and Dadaism to found Surrealism and who mainly produced poetry.

1. "Yves's house"

Yves Tanguy's house
Where you enter only at night

With the storm-lamp

Outside the transparent country
A fortune teller in his element

With the storm-lamp
With the sawmill so industrious that it is no longer seen

And the patterned fabric of the sky
-Come on, the supernatural to the ground

With the storm-lamp
With the sawmill so industrious that it is no longer seen
With all the stars in hell

Made of ties and platbands
crab color in the surf

With the storm-lamp
With the sawmill so industrious that it is no longer seen
With all the stars in hell
With the raving trams held back only by their cables

The chained space, the diminished time
Ariana in her room-chest

With the storm-lamp
With the sawmill so industrious that it is no longer seen
With all the stars in hell
With the raving trams held back only by their cables
With the endless manes of the Argonaut

The service is in charge of falenas
Who cover their eyes with cloth

With the storm-lamp
With the sawmill so industrious that it is no longer seen
With all the stars in hell
With the raving trams held back only by their cables
With the endless manes of the Argonaut
With the shining furniture of the desert

There it is killed there it is cured
And openly conspire

With the storm-lamp
With the sawmill so industrious that it is no longer seen
With all the stars in hell
With the raving trams held back only by their cables
With the endless manes of the Argonaut
With the shining furniture of the desert
With the signals that lovers exchange from afar

That is Yves Tanguy's house.

Philippe Soupault (1897-1990)

He was a French writer who was initially part of the Dada movement and later founded Surrealism with André Breton.

1. "Georgia"

I don't sleep Georgia
I shoot arrows into the night Georgia
hope georgia
I think Georgia
fire is like snow georgia
the night is my neighbor georgia
I hear every noise without exception Georgia
I see the smoke go up and run away Georgia
trail to wolf's pace in the shadow georgia
I run here is the street here are the neighborhoods Georgia
Here is a city always the same
and that I don't know Georgia
I hurry here is the Georgia wind
and the cold and the silence and the fear Georgia
i ran away georgia
I run Georgia
the clouds are low they are about to fall Georgia
I extend my arm Georgia
I don't close my eyes Georgia
I call Georgia
georgia scream
I call Georgia
I call you Georgia
maybe you come Georgia
Georgia soon
Georgia Georgia Georgia
Georgia
I can't sleep Georgia
hope georgia

Benjamin Peret (1899-1959)

He was a French writer who believed that reality could be intervened with poetry and who used humor and irony in most of his literary productions.

1. "White Nights"

Surpassed the camembert box
the little bumblebee is lost in the desert
where the ham almost starves
Run left and right
but to the right and left he sees only lime-blanched tomatoes
He looks up and sees a coat rack.
that makes fun of him
oh varnished coat rack polished by sea lobsters
have mercy on a little bumblebee that sticks out its tongue
because he can't shoot with the rifle on the socks
they would make an excellent dinner
Have mercy on a little bumblebee who plays the flute
to try to charm you
because he thought you were a snake
If you weren't a rattlesnake or a spectacled snake
the bumblebee would not have gnawed his flute
in his despair
and he would not have expected death
behind a tie
And death would not have come
like a glass rake
and death would not have picked it up
like a butt

Louis Aragon (1897-1982)

He was a French writer who considered that the world should be interpreted from a surreal perspective in order to discover the wonder of reality.

1. Fragment of "Broceliande"

2 

Prayer to make it rain that, on the edge of Brocélianda, is prayed once a year at the rim of the Bellenton fountain

Let the water from the sky stun
The dust of our hair 
And the drought that is grazing 
a burnt cattle 
That the water of the sky expels the anguish 
Whose weevils corrode 
The great heart of the wheat fields 
Say the water from the sky 
Say the water from heaven I want 
Waiting makes people nervous 
time time stretches 
And the night isn't dark enough 
and the dawn returns 
The horror of the clear day 
the world is an oven 
There the stone desires the footsteps of the moon
There the stone splits under the knee of the sun 
There the stone which heart in the terrible hand of the child 
Then what could I say about my unfortunate heart of man 
Times times are hard 
To which gods would I pray with you supplicants who are sweating 
under your fedoras
To what gods that were not deaf like our age-old incredulity 
They are the gods that guard the locks 
That facilitate the passage of the barges of misfortune when the boatmen call (...)

Paul Eluard (1895-1952)

He was a French writer who used the paranoid method to produce his texts and whose poems were mainly about love, loneliness and freedom.

1. "The mirror of a moment"

dispel the day,
He shows men images detached from appearance,
Take away from men the possibility of distraction,
It's hard as stone
the shapeless stone,
The stone of movement and sight,
And it has such a brilliance that all the armor and all the masks
they remain falsified
What the hand has taken does not even deign to take shape
hand in hand,
What has been understood no longer exists,
The bird has been confused with the wind,
Heaven with the truth of it,
The man with the reality of him.

Rene Char (1907-1988)

He was a French poet whose poems mixed elements of reality with imaginary and dreamlike elements.

1. Excerpt from "To the health of the serpent"

Yo
I sing the heat with the face of a newborn, the desperate heat.

II
It is up to the bread that man breaks to be the beauty of dawn.

II
He who trusts in the sunflower will not meditate inside the house. All the thoughts of love will be his thoughts.

IV.
In the turn of the swallow a storm is reported, a garden is prepared.

V
There will always be a drop of water to last longer than the sun without affecting the ascendant of the sun.

SAW
It produces what knowledge wants to keep secret, knowledge with its hundred passages.

VII
That which comes into the world in order not to disturb anything deserves neither consideration nor patience.

VIII
How long will this lack of man last, dying in the center of creation because creation has sent him away?

IX
Each house was a station. This is how the city repeated itself. All the inhabitants together only knew winter, despite their heated bodies, despite the day that did not go away.

X
In your essence you are constantly a poet, you are constantly at the zenith of your love, constantly eager for truth and justice. It is certainly a necessary evil that you cannot be assiduously in your conscience.

eleventh
You will make the soul that there is no better man than her.

twelfth
Look at the reckless image your country is submerged in, that pleasure that has eluded you for a long time.

XIII
Many are those who wait for the rock to lift them up, for the tip to cross them, to define themselves.

fourteenth
Thank the one who doesn't care about your remorse. You are his equal.

fifteenth
Tears despise his confidante. (…)

Cesar Moro (1903-1956)

He was a Peruvian writer and painter who traveled to France to join the Surrealist movement and whose poems are mainly about love, madness and freedom.

1. "Still early"

Mountain is underlined the other words have water
So ephemeris grandfather bed goodness
It is necessary to indicate the eyes of chair
sleeping stalks
the blood of meditating
The final position of the applicant
When barking at the upright winds
lies with his whole body
Pale window propped up on tithes of the abyss

Covering the sky with sequins was not
The matter agreed
Had shadows wounded to the heart
growing by its season
in amber cage
Vivacities that freeze in dreams

there I go out

Juan Sanchez Pelaez (1922-2003)

He was a Venezuelan writer and was part of La Mandrágora, a group of surrealist poets from Chile whose main objective was to relate poetry to the unconscious.

1. Fragment of "For which cause or nostalgia"

VII

The snow has made its way
has hastened the outcome
so that we feel comfortable
and dazzle us

we work how many whole days
on the back
of big animals
and arrived
in the uncertain afternoon
the little man with autumn stoop
the grumpy lady with strange hair

with forks
steps back
withdrawals
skirmishes

seconding our actions

golden
sharp

hanging around in the back room of the heart
here it is. (…)

Nicanor Parra (1914-2018)

He was a Chilean writer and professor and considered that humor was a central procedure in literary creation and that poetry should incorporate procedures from other arts.

1. "Warning"

I do not allow anyone to tell me
That does not understand the antipoems
Everyone must laugh out loud.

For that I break my head
To reach the soul of the reader.

Stop asking questions.
On deathbed
Each one scratches with their nails.

Also one thing:
I have no problem
In getting into an eleven-vara shirt.

Octavio Paz (1914-1998)

He was a Mexican writer and diplomat and stood out for renewing the language in Spanish-American poetry and for writing essays on surrealism.

1. "Mall"

The sun between the foliage
and the wind everywhere
vegetable flame sculpts you,
yes green under the golds
among golden greenery
Constructed of reflections:
light carved by shadows,
shadow undone in the light.

Interactive test to practice

Follow with:

• Dada poems
• Literature of realism
• modernism literature
• magical realism literature
• baroque literature

References

• Goic, C. (1977). Surrealism and Latin American literature. Chilean Magazine of Literature, 8, 5–34. Available in: jstor
• Mantecón flames, J. m. (2002). Histories of Surrealism: a state of the art. Art Bulletin, 23, 439-458. Available in: dialnet
• Pellegrini, A. (1961). Anthology of French-language surrealist poetry. General Manufacturing Company Publishing.
• Rest, J. (1991). modern literature concepts. CEAL.