Surrealist Manifesto:
The Declaration of January 27, 1925

With regard to a false interpretation of our enterprise, stupidly circulated among the public, We declare as follows to the entire braying literary, dramatic, philosophical, exegetical and even theological body of contemporary criticism:

  1. We have nothing to do with literature; But we are quite capable, when necessary, of making use of it like anyone else,
  2. Surrealism is not a new means or expression, or an easier one, nor even a metaphysic of poetry. It is a means of total liberation of the mind and of all that resembles it.
  3. We are determined to make a Revolution.
  4. We have joined the word surrealism to the word revolution solely to show the disinterested, detached, and even entirely desperate character of this revolution.
  5. We make no claim to change the mores of mankind, but we intend to show the fragility of thought, and on what shifting foundations, what caverns we have built our trembling houses.
  6. We hurl this formal warning to Society; Beware of your deviations and faux-pas, we shall not miss a single one.
  7. At each turn of its thought, Society will find us waiting.
  8. We are specialists in Revolt. There is no means of action which we are not capable, when necessary, of employing.
  9. We say in particular to the Western world: surrealism exists. And what is this new ism that is fastened to us? Surrealism is not a poetic form. It is a cry of the mind turning back on itself, and it is determined to break apart its fetters, even if it must be by material hammers!

Bureaus de Recherches Surréalistes,
15, Rue de Grenelle

Signed: Louis Aragon, Antonin Artaud, Jacques Baron, Joë Bousquet, J.-A. Boiffard, André Breton, Jean Carrive, René Crevel, Robert Desnos, Paul Élaurd, Max Ernst, et al.

Source: Maurice Nadeau, The History of Surrealism, Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1989, pp.240-41.

 

 

 

 

Surrealist Manifesto 1929

(excerpt)

Breton's 1929 Surrealist Manifesto states three central conditions:

1.      Whether we like it or not, there is enough there to satisfy several demands of the mind. All these images seem to attest to the fact that the mind is ripe for something more than the benign joys it allows itself in general. This is the only way it has of turning to its own advantage the ideal quantity of events with which it is entrusted. These images show it the extent of its ordinary dissipation and the drawbacks that it offers for it. In the final analysis , it is not such a bad thing for these images to upset the mind, for to upset the mind is to put it in the wrong. . . . But the mind which relishes them draws therefrom the conviction that it is on the right track; on its own, the mind is incapable of finding itself guilty of cavil; it has nothing to fear, since, moreover, it attempts to embrace everything.

2.      The mind which plunges into Surrealism relives with glowing excitement the best part of its childhood. For such a mind, it is similar to the certainty with which a person who is drowning reviews once more, in the space of less than a second, all the insurmountable moments of his life. . . . From childhood memories, and from a few others, there emanates a sentiment of being unintegrated, and then later of having gone astray, which I hold to be the most fertile that exists. It is perhaps childhood that comes closest to one's "real life". . . .

3.      I do not believe in the establishment of a conventional Surrealist pattern any time in the near future . . . Everything is valid when it comes to obtaining the desired suddenness from certain associations.