Surrealism

SURREALISM. - French literary and artistic movement. The term "surrealist" appears for the first time as the subtitle of a play by G. Apollinaire, Les mamelles de Tirésias (1918).

The Manifesto of the new movement, which immediately followed the ephemeral one entitled "Dada," was launched by André Breton in 1924. A first definition may be that of Breton himself: "Psychic automatism through which one proposes to express, whether verbally, in writing, or in any other way, the real functioning of thought. Dictation of thought, in the absence of any control, outside of any aesthetic or moral concern." But the literary group that arose around Breton, Soupault, Aragon, Eluard claims antecedents and precursors in every literature and in every century, and extends to the figurative arts and to music, and finally to every attitude of thought, wherever a free imagination or a philosophical inquiry devoid of controls and limitations is to be found. In particular, Surrealism draws close to psychoanalysis and to every most advanced attempt at verbal invention, whether in poetry or in the novel. Around 1940, the movement had run its course, and nothing remains of it but the consequences of dubious taste in every art.

Giacinto Spagnoletti