André Breton photo

André Breton

After World War I, French poet and literary theorist André Breton began to link at first with Dadaism but broke with that movement to write the first manifesto of surrealism in 1924.

People best know this theorist as the principal founder. His writings include the

Surrealist Manifesto

(Manifeste du surréalisme), in which he defined this "pure psychic automatism."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3...


“The sexual eagle exults he will gild the earth once morehis descending winghis ascending wing sways imperceptibly the sleeves of the peppermintand all the water's adorable undressDays are counted so clearlythat the mirror has yielded to a froth of frondsof the sky i see but one starnow around us there is only the milk describing its dizzy ellipsisfrom which sometimes soft intuition with pupils of eyed agaterises to poke its umbrella tip in the mud of the electric lightthen great reaches cast anchor stretch out in the depths of my closed eyesicebergs radiating the customs of all the worlds yet to comebron from a fragment of you fragment unkown and iced on the wingyour existence the giant bouquet escaping fr4om my armsis badly tied it didgs out walls unrolls the stairs of housesloses its leaves in the show windows of the streetto gether the news i am always leaving to gather the newsthe newspaper is glass today and if letters no longer arriveit's that the train has been consumedthe great incision of the emerald which gaave birth to the foliageis scarred for always the sawdust of blinding snowand the quarries of flesh are sounding along on the first shelfreversed on this shelfi take the impression of death and lifeto the liquid air”
André Breton
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“The important thing is that man is lost in time, in the moment that immediately precedes him - which only attests, by reflection, to the fact that he is lost in the moment that follows”
André Breton
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“May night continue to fall upon the orchestra”
André Breton
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“They rarely discovered a star red as a distant crime or a star-fish.”
André Breton
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“The clouds were disappearing rapidly, leaving the stars to die. The night dried up.”
André Breton
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“How small these rescued tides appear! Earthly delights flow in torrents. Each object offers paradise.”
André Breton
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“We all love conflagrations. When the sky changes color, it is a dead man's passing.”
André Breton
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“Words make love with one another.”
André Breton
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“There isBy my leaning over the precipiceOf your presence and your absence in hopeless fusionMy finding the secretOf loving youAlways for the first time”
André Breton
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“Partir pour le pôle intérieur de soi-même.”
André Breton
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“Beauty is like a train that ceaselessly roars out of the Gare de Lyon and which I know will never leave, which has not left. It consists of jolts and shocks, many of which do not have much importance, but which we know are destined to produce one Shock, which does...The human heart, beautiful as a seismograph...Beauty will be CONVULSIVE or will not be at all.”
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“A game: say something. Close your eyes and say something. Anything, a number, a name. Like this (she closes her eyes): Two, two what? Two women. What do they look like? Wearing black. Where are they? In a park. . . . And then, what are they doing? Try it, it's so easy, why don't you want to play? You know, that's how I talk to myself when I'm alone, I tell myself all kinds of stories. And not only silly stories: actually, I live this way altogether.”
André Breton
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“...with the end of my breath, which is the beginning of yours.”
André Breton
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“Let us not mince words.. the marvelous is always beautiful, anything marvelous is beautiful, in fact only the marvelous is beautiful.”
André Breton
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“L'union libre [Freedom of Love]" My wife with the hair of a wood fireWith the thoughts of heat lightningWith the waist of an hourglassWith the waist of an otter in the teeth of a tigerMy wife with the lips of a cockade and of a bunch of stars of the last magnitudeWith the teeth of tracks of white mice on the white earthWith the tongue of rubbed amber and glassMy wife with the tongue of a stabbed hostWith the tongue of a doll that opens and closes its eyesWith the tongue of an unbelievable stoneMy wife with the eyelashes of strokes of a child's writingWith brows of the edge of a swallow's nestMy wife with the brow of slates of a hothouse roofAnd of steam on the panesMy wife with shoulders of champagneAnd of a fountain with dolphin-heads beneath the iceMy wife with wrists of matchesMy wife with fingers of luck and ace of heartsWith fingers of mown hayMy wife with armpits of marten and of beechnutAnd of Midsummer NightOf privet and of an angelfish nestWith arms of seafoam and of riverlocksAnd of a mingling of the wheat and the millMy wife with legs of flaresWith the movements of clockwork and despairMy wife with calves of eldertree pithMy wife with feet of initialsWith feet of rings of keys and Java sparrows drinkingMy wife with a neck of unpearled barleyMy wife with a throat of the valley of goldOf a tryst in the very bed of the torrentWith breasts of nightMy wife with breasts of a marine molehillMy wife with breasts of the ruby's crucibleWith breasts of the rose's spectre beneath the dewMy wife with the belly of an unfolding of the fan of daysWith the belly of a gigantic clawMy wife with the back of a bird fleeing verticallyWith a back of quicksilverWith a back of lightWith a nape of rolled stone and wet chalkAnd of the drop of a glass where one has just been drinkingMy wife with hips of a skiffWith hips of a chandelier and of arrow-feathersAnd of shafts of white peacock plumesOf an insensible pendulumMy wife with buttocks of sandstone and asbestosMy wife with buttocks of swans' backsMy wife with buttocks of springWith the sex of an irisMy wife with the sex of a mining-placer and of a platypusMy wife with a sex of seaweed and ancient sweetmeatMy wife with a sex of mirrorMy wife with eyes full of tearsWith eyes of purple panoply and of a magnetic needleMy wife with savanna eyesMy wife with eyes of water to he drunk in prisonMy wife with eyes of wood always under the axeMy wife with eyes of water-level of level of air earth and fire”
André Breton
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“Un mot et tout est perdu, un mot et tout est sauvé.”
André Breton
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“Tell me whom you haunt and I’ll tell you who you are.”
André Breton
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“I love you on the surface of seasRed like the egg when it is green”
André Breton
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