Cinepoetry Quotes

“...Paul Dermée. In the inaugural issue of L’Esprit Nouveau in October 1920, Dermée published “Découverte du lyrisme” (Discovery of lyricism), a piece connecting lyricism, automatism, dream, Freud, cinema, and surrealism:

 "This background activity that became autonomous and functions blindly without the use of conscious will, this is what we call “automatism” [automatisme].

"We dream, kaleidoscope of images, sensations and emotions function. The film unfolds, varied and captivating [captivant] and the whole richness of inner life traverses consciousness as a broad current: our soul fills up with a spontaneous melody, it is the lyrical flux that sings!

"As for images, they must be handled with great care, by preventing them from giving objects an existence in the exterior world. For nothing must make the reader come out of his deep self. Thus no images realizable through plastic means: only their surrealism [surréalisme].”
― Christophe Wall-Romana, Cinepoetry: Imaginary Cinemas in French Poetry

“During the 1924 controversy over ownership of the word “surrealism,” Breton’s most vocal opponents were Ivan Goll and Paul Dermée who, like Epstein, defined surrealism via cinema.”
― Christophe Wall-Romana, Cinepoetry: Imaginary Cinemas in French Poetry

“The bus was going at a vertiginous speed. Night fell. Through the fogged-up windows the riders thrown against one another, as the bus shook along, saw fantastic landscapes unfold looking nothing like those of Parisian boulevards.…When Pearl White woke up, the bus had as if run aground on a deserted field. Thousands of empty cans were the only presence in these in-decipherable lands."

[From, Homme sans tête]”
― Pierre Drieu la Rochelle, Romans, récits, nouvelles