Abstract
On this 100th year of Surrealism, launched simultaneously in Paris with André Breton’s Manifesto of Surrealism and the journal he directed, The Surrealist Revolution in the final month of 1924, it is worth revisiting a preceding dictum he made in his adieu to Dada, in the periodical, Littérature in 1922, to “Leave everything…Leave the substance for the shadow” and “set out on the road.” The quest, an established genre in literature that is often linked to a journey both physical and spiritual or metaphysical, is given an array of new destinations and metaphoric means of travel in Surrealism, which increases the exchange between contrary realities and relies on alchemy to provide the keys to unlocking what Breton termed, “the gold of time,” his epitaph, inscribed on his tombstone and taken from his essay, “Discourse on The Paucity of Reality (1924). In this paper, I focus on journeys, framed as hermetic quests in the work of André Breton and the English painter and writer, Ithell Colquhoun, highlighting the paradox between Surrealism’s adherence to materialism, on the one hand, and its attack on realism, on the other. How do they expand or revitalize the established genre of the quest and establish a new understanding of the physical world, severed from what one commonly accepts as reality? Works to be explored are Breton’s Nadja, Martinique, Charmer of Snakes, and Arcane 17; and Ithell Colquhoun’s The Crying of the Wind, The Living Stones, as well as her paintings.
Presenters
Barbara LekatsasProfessor of Comparative Literature, Comparative Literature, Languages & Linguistics, Hofstra University, New York, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Travel Literature, Surrealism, Andre Breton, Ithell Colquhoun, Alchemy, Quest Genre
