The History of Surrealism

by Maurice Nadeau

The History of Surrealism traces the origin and rise of this movement through the Twenties and Thirties, when surrealism was iconoclastic and revolutionary in nature and affected the cultural thinking in France and throughout the world. Though they had philosophic intent the surrealists were not philosophers but primarily poets assaulting worn out tenets and ideas, challenging their own language, and trying to penetrate reality with intensified perceptions so as to gain a better understanding of the world around them. Among the leading spokesmen of the group were Andre Breton, Jaques Vache, Louis Aragon, Jean Cocteau, Paul Eluard - figures who have all since become part of history.

Genres: Art, History, Nonfiction, Art History, Poetry, France

352 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1945

Reviews

[Leif · Rating 4 out of 5]

Absolutely essential for any contemporary discourse on Surrealism! Nadeau's now-classic study champions the often repressed reminder that Surrealism was neither an aesthetic school nor a style of art but a political approach to culture and society. Written in a period when Surrealism still seemed touchable, if dead, but not "failed," Nadeau's study offers much to contextualize and also, strangely, humanize the many figures whose work and words constitute the body of the European Surrealist tradition. The timing comes with caveats: Nadeau's championship of the movement neglects to critically evaluate concerns that modern readers rightfully demand: gender and sex are severely undertheorized, for example. But Nadeau is very tough on the Surrealists in the categories which they themselves articulated as their concerns, which is an incredibly important and today often ignored critical role. You could say that he keeps them honest to their claims, if those words didn't constitute a horrifically bourgeois morality that all would disavow. Instead, let's say that he looks for patterns of consistency and change in order to match behaviour against manifesto. Highly recommended for anyone interested in Surrealism OR the political exchange of art and society in European radical traditions.

[Alex Obrigewitsch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Surrealism is not a thing of the past, a relic commited to the asylum of the museum (which, in conjunction with the Hegelian thesis concerning art, and a point which I shall return to below, Surrealism is not an art movement, a mere moment in the history of the arts). As I have written before, elsewhere, surrealism remains in a sense still before us, yet to come. Surrealism is oriented towards opening up the possibility for the coming of futurity itself.

Attendant to this is the other point which Breton continually stressed, and which Nadeau does well to repeat as a refrain throughout his history - that Surrealism is a movement of thought, and not of art or literature. Literature and the arts are means, and not the end, of the surrealist enterprise. For the end is the derangement of thought (to rephrase Rimbaud), which is to say to maddeningly expose thought to what it cannot (re)cognize and appropriate. This incites the collapse of conscious reality in its distinction from the dream or the unconscious affectation - it opens up the rupture of creative and destructive forces which are as though the absent origin (the originary absence) from whence thought springs.

Nadeau's work, then, contextualizes the scene in which this originary rupture, this perpetual, disclosive disturbance, was first thematized and explored in an active manner. Surrealism, as a movement, sought a revolution in life and in thought. Unfortunately, the difficulty of this transformation was never taken up, and the movement languished, lapsing into what is paradoxically taken to be its highest point and producing its most popular adherents (Dali, for example - who betrays the revolutionary commitment to transformative thought and disturbance by succumbing to the capitalist avidity for wealth and fame). Perhaps, in one of the obscure twists of fate, Surrealism had to die as a movement so as to set loose the disruptive forces that threatened to become subsumed and appropriated by the world-sustaining and staticizing forces that manifest themselves through capitalism and society. Dying, so as to renew itself, purifying itself as contaminative agent of contagion, as epidemic perversion, in order to spread its influence and its effect.

Surrealism remains ever before us, awaiting and inciting a release from repression so as to shatter the ego, the self, and rebaptise experience and thought in the subversive name of neutral anonymity.

[Ioannis Savvas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ένα από τα καλύτερα βιβλία εκλαϊκευμένης γλωσσολογίας που κυκλοφορεί στα ελληνικά. Απλό, περιεκτικό, τεκμηριωμένο, διαφωτιστικό, αντικειμενικό, όμορφο. Μικρά κεφάλαια, συνοπτικά και προσεγμένα. Διαβάζεται με ανοιχτό μυαλό, αλλιώς βλάπτει σοβαρά τους κολλημένους εγκεφάλους.

[moi, k.y.a.]

tam hangi alanda çalışmak istediğime karar veriyorum, yeni bir şey keşfediyorum. maymun iştahlı olmak çok zor, şimdi de sürrealizme yükseliyorum?

[emmalee · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book is so important to me. surrealism is not just an art movement, it's an ontology. andre breton kiss your brain!! you changed my life

[Bookfreak · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ενδιαφέρουσα, ευχάριστη και περιεκτική εισαγωγή στη γλωσσολογία και τα διάφορα θέματα που ανακύπτουν σχετικά με αυτή στην ελληνική πραγματικότητα. Στα συν η ενασχόληση με διάφορες πτυχές του θέματος αλλά και η υπογράμμιση των πολιτικών και κοινωνικών παραγόντων που καθορίζουν την αντίληψη μας περί γλώσσας. Προσεγμένη και η αισθητική της έκδοσης από ΠΕΚ.

[Peter Mathews · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maurice Nadeau's The History of Surrealism was first published in 1944. That date is important, because it makes this book distant enough in time from the surrealist movement to be able to look back on it, while also being close enough in time to be able to engage personally with its key protagonists.

You can tell that Nadeau is inspired by his subject: his prose often goes off into flights of lyrical fantasy that resembles the best efforts of Aragon or Breton. Yet he always, as a scholar, keeps his feet firmly on the ground. Surrealism was a radical movement for freedom, he shows, while at the same time relating the numerous attempts to police its boundaries.

Nadeau's book is mainly structured around a different dichotomy, however. For him, the true dilemma of the surrealists lay between their radical ambition of changing not just literature or art, but life itself. How could this be achieved? In some respects, the celebrated achievements in art are a reflection of surrealism's practical failure, a retreat into areas that, unlike economics or politics, could be controlled as an avenue for their vision.

As the 1920s unfolded, Nadeau shows how the surrealists increasingly became split between "cultural" surrealism and "political" surrealism, illustrated by two key moments. The first is in 1925-26, in which Pierre Naville argues that dialectical materialism is the only way for surrealism to put its vision into practice. The second is in 1930, when Aragon goes to Russia and comes back a committed Communist. Although Breton tries masterfully to keep the two poles together, argues Nadeau, surrealism was always doomed to split apart along these lines.

There are, of course, many other treasures and insights in Nadeau's book that are worth exploring: the connection between surrealism and dada is particularly illuminating, for example. The History of Surrealism is surely a classic, an important piece of historical scholarship that feels as relevant to today's world as ever.

[LordSlaw · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nadeau's The History Of Surrealism is a fascinating read even if, admittedly, it is a bit over my head at times. This points to limitations in the reader, not the text. My biggest takeaway is that Surrealism was intended not to be an artistic movement, which is what I had always thought and assumed it to be, but a revolutionary and philosophical one, a means and and effort to transform modes of human thought, the thinking processes and modes of perception that allowed, that resulted in, the vast slaughter and butchery of first World War. Artistic expression, of course, was used as a means to express these endeavors.

Evolving out of its precursor Dada movement, Surrealism, as Nadeau shows, was far from a unified front of like-minded individuals. He shows the internal dissensions and struggles that the group endured, among them a debate regarding individual versus collective effort, and also a debate about how much, if any, responsibility an artist, a poet, might have for any actions undertaken by an individual partaking in that art.

There is much meat in this book, a fascinating chronicle of one of the many facets of human endeavor.

[Giovanni García-Fenech · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very comprehensive history of the movement largely based on the group's documents: manifestos, edicts, articles, and speeches. Unfortunately that means that the individual participants remain sketchy (Breton coming across the clearest) and there's next to nothing about the art. Still, an impressive feat, particularly since it came out in France in 1945, not the most amenable era for scholarly research.

[Sebastián · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pues es una buena historiografía, la traducción parece ser buena y en general contextualiza muy bien el movimiento; lo más valioso que tiene son las citas al pie porque resultan ser una gran bibliografía a futuro para profundizar.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is a good history, though I was not gushing over the writing exactly, which might be an issue with translating it

[Aurélie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Très complet et intéressant

[Natascha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dieses Werk bringt nicht nur die Geschichte der Surrealisten näher, es zeigt auch deren Verzweiflung, Wut und Inspiration auf.

[Christos Bouras · Rating 5 out of 5]

Στην ζωή μας ως αναγνώστες, τα συναπαντήματα με τα βιβλία γίνονται με διάφορους τρόπους (τυχαία, μετά από πρόταση φίλων, από κριτικές, σαν δώρο, στο ξεφύλλισμα στο βιβλιοπωλείο κλπ). Όλα τα χρόνια μου ως αναγνώστης έχω συναπαντήσει βιβλία με όλους τους δυνατούς τρόπους.
Το συγκεκριμένο βιβλίο υπήρξε το αποτέλεσμα μίας κουβέντας με θέμα το χαμηλό επίπεδο της ελληνικής γλώσσας που μιλούν οι νεοέλληνες. Στην εν λόγω κουβέντα υποστήριξα την αναγκαία ρύθμιση των γλωσσικών ζητημάτων σε περιόδους, όπως η τρέχουσα, όπου η γλώσσα περιορίζεται σε λίγες χιλιάδες λέξεις ενώ βομβαρδίζεται με την εισαγωγική αγγλικών και την κυριαρχία των greeklish. Οι συνομιλητές μου αντιπαρήλθαν στην επιχειρηματολογία μου και επέμειναν ότι η γλώσσα είναι "ζων οργανισμός" και ως εκ τούτου δεν δύναται να ρυθμιστεί. Ο ένας από τους συνομιλητές μου και καλός αναγνώστης Nikos. M (https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/4...) το προχώρησε πιο πέρα και την επόμενη μέρα μου έφερε δώρο το εν λόγω πόνημα το οποίο είχε διαβάσει στο παρελθόν και τους είχε κάνει εντύπωση.
Και....
Οφείλω να ομολογήσω ότι ενθουσιάστηκα. Το βιβλίο του Παναγιωτίδη διαβάζεται εύκολα ακόμα και στα πιο δύσκολα γλωσσολογικά τμήματα του. Και προσπαθεί να απαντήσει σε πολλά: την γλωσσική πενία, τις δάνειες λέξεις, τις κατά καιρούς ρυθμίσεις αλλά και την ζωντάνια της γλώσσας μας.
Το μόνο που με στεναχώρησε είναι ότι στα τεχνικά θέματα μου προκάλεσε αναμνήσεις από την καταναγκαστικού τύπου εκμάθηση της σύνταξης της γλώσσας μας μέσα από το χαμηλού επιπέδου εκπαιδευτικό σύστημα στο οποίο μαθήτευσα.
Το προτείνω ανεπιφύλακτα και θέλω να επισημάνω την πολύ καλή επιλογή έργων, μεταφραστική και σχεδιαστική δουλειά της σειράς Προοπτικές των Πανεπιστημιακών Εκδόσεων Κρήτης.

[Katelis Viglas · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best historical introduction in the movement of Surrealism. Follows closely its evolution, the relation between its members, the ideological changes through the years, the dialectic developed in relation to society. Gives special emphasis to the outstanding surrealists, without neglecting the contribution of the less known among them. The surrealistic revolution was not, as it is well known, only a revolution in Art, but in life as well. Art and life, connected, each influences the other. Amour fout, objective chance, black humor, ecriture automatique are main aspects and dynamics of the movement. The desire, according to Nadeau, is finaly the most powerful motive in life; the objectification of which must be our main task.