Literature as an Open Window: Surrealism, Death, and Literary History

Whereas literary history is traditionally seen as a chronological succession of authors and movements, the surrealists were among the first to highlight that this conception does not apply to poetry. Insisting that surrealism depends neither on a historical period nor on specific individuals, they considered surrealism a phenomenon that transcends periodization. This atemporal aspect is nowhere more apparent than in surrealism’s engagement with medieval literature: from Breton’s examination of medieval alchemy and Aragon’s essays on Chrétien de Troyes, to Eluard’s medieval anthology, the Middle Ages are a continuous source of fascination for the surrealists. More than an object of interest, however, this kinship with medieval literature posits an alternative view of modernism, one not defined by chronological proximity to the present, but founded on a notion of atemporality that unifies and consolidates the preceding tradition. Whereas many approaches to surrealism to date focus on the movement’s chronology, on individual works, or on theories articulated by specific members (in most cases those by its principal theorist André Breton), a large number of studies fail to accentuate the uniquely surrealist characteristic that unites the literary works of various de facto surrealists with those of their predecessors. These ideas concerning non-linear time are theoretically embedded in the principles of surrealism itself, centered around a notion of death that is intricately wrapped up with surrealist writing practice as well as with the movement’s overall approach to life: abolishing any claims of authorship in favor of a poetic language independent of authorial control, surrealism proposes that it is precisely through the portal of the imagination—of poetic language—that one can enter literary history, and, conversely, that literary history can manifest itself in the present. It is in this sense that Breton writes: “Le surréalisme vous introduira dans la mort qui est une société sècrete.” Yet, this induction into death also contains a belief in overcoming death, suggesting an upheaval of the life-death dichotomy that, to the non-initiated, passes for reality. It is precisely under the aegis of death, then, that I conduct readings of medieval, 19th-century, and de facto surrealist texts, examining how surrealism challenges our traditional perception of literary history as linear and chronological. The first chapter delineates how a surrealist notion of death derives from an understanding of automatism. Departing from Breton’s definition of surrealism as psychic automatism in the first Manifeste, this chapter shows how this definition renders fluid the temporal boundaries assigned to the group. The second chapter looks at the way in which notions of death already marked surrealist thought even before the first Manifeste in 1924—especially in relation to the experiences of World War I and the suicide of Jacques Vaché, giving rise to a duality in Breton that would become the very reason for his practice of automatism. Through a close reading of Breton’s early text “La Confession dédaigneuse,” this chapter sets forth an analysis of Eros and Thanathos in relation to Freud’s views on trauma in Beyond the Pleasure Principle. The third chapter, in turn, explores the surrealist notion of death as a liminal state. Comparing the role of Desnos during the hypnotic sleep experiments to the figure of Lancelot in Chrétien de Troyes’s Le Chevalier de la charrette, this chapter depicts both Desnos and Lancelot as liminal figures bridging two previously separate realms of experience. Finally, the fourth chapter examines the transition from liminality to universality. Drawing on observations by Mircea Eliade concerning religious thought and the creation of myth, this chapter considers three sources in close relation with one another: Nerval’s Chimères, Breton’s Arcane 17, and the 14th-century Mélusine legends by Coudrette and Jehan d’Arras. Thus, drawing on literary and theoretical texts as well as on visual artwork, “Literature as an Open Window: Surrealism, Death, and Literary History,” demonstrates that surrealism’s truly avant-garde characteristic does not consist in a radical break with the past, but that it lies in rendering the literary past as alive as the present.

Advisor: Tlatli, Soraya