Andre Breton
Andre Breton
André Bretonwas a French writer, poet, anarchist and anti-fascist. He is known best as the founder of Surrealism. His writings include the first Surrealist Manifestoof 1924, in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism"...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionNon-Fiction Author
Date of Birth19 February 1896
CountryFrance
roles ends symbolic
It will in the end, be admitted that everything, in effect is an image and that the least object which has no symbolic role assigned to it is capable of standing for absolutely anything.
ideas arbitrary granted
When will the arbitrary be granted the place it deserves in the formation of works and ideas?
believe men drug
Surrealism does not allow those who devote themselves to it to forsake it whenever they like. There is every reason to believe that it acts on the mind very much as drugs do; like drugs, it creates a certain state of need and can push man to frightful revolts.
looks firsts impossible
It is impossible for me to envisage a picture as being other than a window, and why my first concern is then to know what it looks out on.
wise art nature
Of all those arts in which the wise excel, Nature's chief masterpiece is writing well.
fate finding-yourself trying
Perhaps I am doomed to retrace my steps under the illusion that I am exploring, doomed to try and learn what I should simply recognize, learning a mere fraction of what I have forgotten.
betrayal mean justice
To reduce the imagination to a state of slavery --even though it would mean the elimination of what is commonly called happiness --is to betray all sense of absolute justice within oneself. Imagination alone offers me some intimation of what can be.
beautiful facts obscure
The pure playfulness of certain wholly whimsical portions of (Charles) Cros’s work should not obscure the fact that at the center of some of his most beautiful poems a revolver is leveled straight at us.
literature reminding-yourself reminding
Keep reminding yourself that literature is one of the saddest roads that leads to everything.
believe men joy
I believe in the pure Surrealist joy of the man who, forewarned that all others before him have failed, refused to admit defeat, sets off from watever point he chooses, along any other pat save a reasonable one, and arrives wherever he can.
loving-you secret firsts
There is By my leaning over the precipice Of your presence and your absence in hopeless fusion My finding the secret Of loving you Always for the first time
beauty
Beauty will be convulsive or will not be at all.
gun crowds surrealist
The purest surrealist act is walking into a crowd with a loaded gun and firing into it randomly
children mind adults
The mind, placed before any kind of difficulty, can find an ideal outlet in the absurd. Accommodation to the absurd readmits adults to the mysterious realm inhabited by children.