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
men color sky
We all love conflagrations. When the sky changes color, it is a dead man's passing.
hands crowds pistols
The simplest Surrealist act consists of dashing down into the street, pistol in hand, and firing blindly, as fast as you can pull the trigger, into the crowd.
liberty danger dangerous
There is nothing with which it is so dangerous to take liberties as liberty itself.
real fantastic surrealism
What is admirable about the fantastic is that there is no longer anything fantastic: there is only the real.
photography writing blow
The invention of photography has dealt a mortal blow to the old modes of expression, in painting as well as in poetry, where automatic writing, which appeared at the end of the nineteenth century, is a true photography of thought. Since a blind instrument now assured artists of achieving the aim they had set themselves up to that time, they now aspired, not without recklessness, to break with the imitation of appearances.
death real believe
Everything tends to make us believe that there exists a certain point of the mind at which life and death, the real and the imagined, past and future, the communicable and the incommunicable, high and low, cease to be perceived as contradictions.
dream should objects
Objects seen in dreams should be manufactured and put on sale.
life feelings enlightenment
No one who has lived even for a fleeting moment for something other than life in its conventional sense and has experienced the exaltation that this feeling produces can then renounce his new freedom so easily.
expectations confusion challenges
The approval of the public is to be avoided like the plague. It is absolutely essential to keep the public from entering if one wishes to avoid confusion. I must add that the public must be kept panting in expectation at the gate by a system of challenges and provocations.
childhood mind burning
The mind which plunges into Surrealism, relives with burning excitement the best part of childhood.
heart poetry understanding
At the outset, it is only liking, not understanding, that matters. Gaps in understanding ... are not only important, they are perhaps even welcome, like clearings in the woods, the better to allow the heart's rays to stream out without obstacle. The unlit shadows should remain obscure, which is the very condition of enchantment.
character awareness
Trust in the inexhaustible character of the murmur.
making-love
Words make love with one another.
mirrors black firsts
It was in the black mirror of anarchism that surrealism first recognised itself.