Carre-Crevel - Surrealism and the Individual

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Transcript of Carre-Crevel - Surrealism and the Individual

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    MARIE-ROSE CARRE

    Rene Crevel:Surrealism and the Individual

    "The greatest masterpiece," Jean Cocteau once remarked, "is nevermore than an alphabet in disorder." For once, his Surrealist enemiesmight want to agree with him. When, after the thunder of the greatwar had been stilled, Breton and his friends assumed the task ofbuilding up, from its basic notions, the new conscio1,1sness of oursociety, their hope was precisely that of finding a way of arrangingthe alphabet so new, so striking, and so binding in its force that itwould suppress any memory of the old system of verbal expression.Instead it would nurture into the reborn world an outburst of feelings, perceptions, and thoughts, infinitely richer and more luminousthan what could be expressed within the limits of Cartesian andChristian systems of reason then imposed on modern man, thevictim of his civilization. "Europe is crystallizing; it is being mummified by the wrappings of its frontiers, its factories, its tribunals,its universities. Spirit is frozen and cracking under the mineral plankswhich press up against it." This was the cry the Surrealist group of1925 sent out to the "Recteurs des Universites europeennes ." In thesame year, turning to the "Ecoles du Bouddha," they hailed thespiritual freedom which they imagined resplendent in the Orient :"There the soul finds the absolute word, the fresh phrase, the interiorlandscape . . . create new dwelling places for us."In the consciousness of European youth at this time, the vocabulary transmitted by generations of writers, all of them suspect, hadsuddenly lost its inner strength and collapsed into ridiculous intestinal rumblings. In his attack on Anatole France-Un Cadavre-,Breton had sounded the trumpet: "Loti, Barres, and France-markwith a red letter the year that laid low these three sinister men: theidiot, the traitor, and the bloodhound." With such representatives theold order of the well-to-do bourgeoisie was bankrupt, despite whatsome people insisted on calling a military victory. Why should thewords that explained, justified, honored, and exalted this order andits concomitant horrors survive? "The modern age is at an end. Thestereotyped gestures, acts, and lies of Europe have completed thecycle of disgust." This text of 1925, published under the title La Rev-olution Surrealiste was signed by fifty-one young men. Since then,their anger has not stopped ringing and tormenting the conscience of

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    FROM: Yale French Studies 31 (1964), 74-86.

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