BALAKIAN - From Poisson Soluble to Constellations, Breton's Trajectory for Surrealism

8/4/2019 BALAKIAN - From Poisson Soluble to Constellations, Breton's Trajectory for Surrealism

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From Poisson Soluble to Constellations: Breton's Trajectory for Surrealism

Author(s): Anna BalakianSource: Twentieth Century Literature, Vol. 21, No. 1, Essays on Surrealism (Feb., 1975), pp. 48-58Published by: Hofstra UniversityStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/440528

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F r o mP o i s s o n S o l u b l e t o Constellations:

Breton's Trajectoryf o r Surrealism

ANNA BALAKIAN

It is true that among the many conditions of life and the arts, in whichsurrealismsought to make reforms, the social and political ones received atfirstthe most publicity;but they were also preciselythe areasin which results,assessed with the distance in time, remained academicrather than real. Fiftyyears after the First Manifesto the concordanceof action with the dreamstillremains in the category of a theoretical ideal. Liberty from the chains ofeconomic servitudehas not reached the standardof surrealistaspiration, (sur-realism has not broughtreleasefrom the nine to five work day); the primitive,unbridledeye has not been recuperated;quite to the contrary, he forces of amechanizedsociety, working in direct opposition to the desires of surrealism,have attained far greatercontrol of the humaneye than was dreamedpossiblein 1924. The forces of advertisementand the adagesof a still rigid educationalsystem make us see what they want us to see. The Promethean ndividualismthat Andre Breton and his colleaguesclaimed, not only for themselves but asthe common birthrightof everyman, s light years away from the conformistsocietywhich encroachesmore and more on the humanspirit.But let me hasten to add that this pessimisticpreamble is not meant tolead to the declaration hat surrealism ailed in its purposeand impact.Thereis one essentialarea in which Andre Breton'smanifestosucceededand provedindeed to be that Porte Albinos (The White Gateway) which he conceived inthe companion piece to the Manifesto, entitled Poisson soluble. Those whocatch surrealism'sprincipal message can proceed to the region of Absolutespring and take away from God, as Breton suggested, that which they hadsurrenderedo God.Not the revolver,not the dream,not even love, but language48


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BRETON'SSURREALISTTRAJECTORYwas to be in his own intellectualand humandevelopmentthe constantamongthe variables, he Porte Albinos of freedomand the structureof his reality.Inthe FirstManifestohe had madethis significantstatement:"Language as beengiven to man that he may make surrealistuse of it." And after dismissingin afew brief lines the common commerceof language,he ponderedon its meta-morphic reality: "To listen to oneself, to read oneself, have no other effectthan to suspend the occult, that admirable recourse."If we analyze thissentence, we find several interesting factors in it. Whereas a few sentencesearlierhe had referred o the commercialnotion of languagewith active formsof the verb: to speak, to write,--here he uses the reflexive in its passiveconnotation and implying a critical supervision which he rejects. The onewho writes must be the objectiverecorderof the data but must restrainhimselffrom correction;and verbalism s viewed not as a form of communicationbe-tween two or more human beings but rather as an activity which we mightcharacterize s recorderand amplifier, eaving the activatorof the phenomenonin a state of attentivenessand self-enlightenment.Psychiatrists,from whom Breton learned the procedure, subject theirpatients to this kind of betrayalthrough language in an effort to unravel andreleasethose inhibitions that cause traumaticbehavior.Breton used the devicefor exactly the opposite purpose: to uncover what, in the non-pathologicalindividual,could lead from constrictionto liberty: liberty for unprogrammedactivity, liberty of the mind to take a more total advantageof its vision ofthe common habitat. The informationgleaned from the verbal register wasnot meant to serve as an index of existing alienation but was ratherto becomea clue to latent power, which accordingto Breton was identifiablewith love,which in turn was identifiablewith conjunction not only in terms of themale-femaleprinciple but of human relation with the three kingdoms of thenaturalworld: the animal,plant, and mineral.In Poisson soluble he had giventhis primal definition of "amour":"C'estqu'il s'agit de vivre oi' la vie estcapablede provoquer a convulsion... L'amour era.Nous reduirons 'art a saplus simple expression qui est l'amour."l In illustrating this principle, ex-amples such as the following abounded in Poisson soluble: "Dans sa chairtransparentese conjuguent la ros&edu soir et la sueur des astres."2In adocument of the same vintage, "LesMots sans rides,"he made the statementthat became an adage: "jeux de mots, quand ce sont nos plus suiresraisonsd'etrequi sont en jeu.Lesmots du reste ont fini de jouer.Lesmots font l'amour."3"Wordsmakelove": it is, I believe, in this global sense that the word "amour"must be takenwith all that the word connotes of involuntaryattraction,union,recognitionandecstasyas a releaseof creativeenergy.This motivatingprincipleof word unions was the apexof Breton'spoetry.However, the principle needs to be examined more closely in terms of

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TWENTIETH CENTURY LITERATUREwhat it became. If Breton's concept of the surrealist use of language hadstopped there, we would be finding in his creative writings nothing morepervasivethan automaticword play. In truth,I may observe,not in the senseof criticism but as a simple statement of fact, that for many of Breton'sfollowers this recording, receiving, and transcribingcharacterof automaticlanguage sufficed;with this device they createdastonishingverbal structures,word gamesnow widely identifiedas surrealistpoetry.Overtlycomical,sympto-matic of release from moral censure,a reservoirof irony pouring out socialcensure, hesewritingscan be designatedas "absurd"ecauseof the non-sequiturcharacter f the images they unfurl or shoot into space.In emphasizing he involuntary haracter f the encounterof nonsequentialword groups and of the images they conjure,Breton did not agree with hiselder colleague Pierre Reverdy that this was an active, voluntary exercise onthe partof poets.He cameto see in this kind of rapprochement ot a consciouslyinventive processbut a self-instructiveone, a training device rather than oneof artistic expression.In other words, the poet did not bring these words orimages together; rather, he observed them gravitate toward each other bymakinghimselfopen-mindedor dreamproneso that he would not impedetheircourse and not interprettheir collision in terms of meanings that have beeninculcatedin him by his culture.In rejecting the principle of active verbal associations,Breton appearsto be rejecting the notion of what he called "elliptic"art, what Mallarmehad so well practiced in the latter part of his career, particularlyin thoseobscure sonnets. If we were to make a concrete analogy,we might say thatthe surrealistpoet, as Breton understoodthe term in the early stage of hiscareer, s not a manipulator f a power plant,who at will turns on the switchandgenerateslight but an observerof the verbal lights generated:II en va des images surrealistescomme de ces images de l'opium quel'homme n'evoque plus, mais qui s'offrent a lui, spontanement,des-potiquement.II ne peut pas les congedier;car la volonte n'a plus deforce et ne gouverne plus les facultes.4Thus he describes n the firstpart of the First Manifestothe passive characterof a man in the face of the convulsive characterof words. In the next pagehe describes he state of surrealism reated hroughthe practiceof languagewitha galaxyof images-the word "image" eplacingthat of "light"; he movementof the image creates in the observera vertigo comparable o the effect of apharmaceuticalstimulant; it takes over as the sole compass of the mind.Two elements of this part of the discussion are interesting and significantin terms of the evolution of Breton'sown art. He states that the purpose ofhis discovery s not to guardjealouslyfor himself a divine and unique secret,but to put it, as he says, at the disposal of everyone. In other words, if we50


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BRETON'SSURREALISTTRAJECTORYdefine this unfurling of disconnectedimages as surrealistpoetry, they wouldhave meaning only to the perpetrator; he object would be meaningful onlyto its subject, and what Breton would have communicated to his readerswould not be the result of his own self-probebut the methodology by whicheach could do the same and all become surrealistpoets. It would appear,then,that Breton was going counter to Mallarme,not only in his rejectionof ellipticpoetrybut also in the rejectionof the notion that poetry is a lonely and elitistmeans of communication for the happy few. Language would not be theexpressionof one man's expansionof consciousnessbut a clarificationof oneof the channels of the expansion.Psychic languageis then a creation.Breton'sfaith in the validityof this process s sustainedby his conviction that automaticlanguageis equallyavailableto all, the common treasure,commonly corrupted;all men, equally deprived of spontaneouslanguage by the curbs society hasput on theirimagination, each, n Breton'sview, a negativeequalityfrom whichhe presumes hem to be recuperable or a collective dream of life in high gear.The finalpartof this passageof the Mlanifesto elating to languagerefersto the eventual result of the practiceof surrealist anguageon the poet in hisrole as self monitor.Se bornantd'aborda les subir, il s'aper5oitbientot qu'elles flattent saraison, augmentent d'autantsa connaissance.II prend conscience desetendues illimitees ou se manifestentses desirs, ouile pour et le contrese reduisentsanscesse,oiuson obscuritene le trahitpas. II va, porte parces images qui le ravissent,qui lui laissenta peine le tempsde souffler urle feu de ses doigts. C'est la plus belle des nuits, la nuit des eclairs:le jour, aupresd'elle est la nuit.5In the process of self-instruction,he foresees progress from the passive roleimplied by the verb "subir"o that of an active role inherentin the verb "va."Endowed with the knowledge of his own prowess he goes. Notice the word"va"used in isolation here, in the same indefinite and total way that VictorHugo used "va"to characterizeHernani. Many years later, Breton was togive a variation of this sentence in his poem, Les Etats-Generaux,n self-characterization. Je suis celui qui va." In the First Manifesto the power oflight first illuminates his own cognizanceof the scope of the humanself, thensets him ablaze in Promethean splendor. But, mark that the "feu de sesdoigts" does not imply the use of exterior implements like a torch. Thepowerhousehas become the self, and the ignition is self-contained.He becomesignitedmatter.The vision is consumed n "lanuit des eclairs,"whose luminosityis such that in contrastday is as night.How did the initial monitoring of the surrealistlanguage lead Bretonfrom the practiceof automaticwriting to the strategic nvasionof the unlimitedspaces of desire and illumination?It was not a rapid process but one which

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TWENTIETH CENTURY LITERATUREtook him from 1924 to 1959, at which time he published Constellations,hisfinalpoetic work,which shamefullyremainedunavailable o the literarypublicand even to the critic-scholaruntil it was collected in Gallimard'spaperback,Signe ascendant n 1968.The linguistic evolution of Breton'spoetic writings would make a volume,a very importantvolume, in itself. I hope that it may become one soon in thehands of some linguistically knowledgeableand poetically sensitive scholar. Ihave myself shown elsewhere the broadlines of his progressivechange in theutilization of language.For this particularoccasion,I shall limit myself to thesupportof a certainpoint of view on the basis of an examinationof that finalwork-a point not sufficiently ecognizedby scholarsof surrealismand certainlynot by the generalpublic,and stunninglyrevealedby this last work which stillremainspracticallyunreadand unexamined.The hypothesisI want to stateandtry to support is that Breton's surrealismwas not a static posture but that itunderwentverysignificantevolution,similar to the phenomenonwhich occurredin Mallarme,who after having served as spokesman and pathblazerto thesymbolists,had proceeded on his own astral course, leaving far behind thecoterie he had helped to fashion.In the case of Breton, the general attitude is that his relationshipwithfellow surrealists was periodicallymarred by the defections from the rankswhereas he stood unflinchingly and stubbornly by his initial creed. But ifwe scrutinize the progress of his poetic diction and linger a while on hisfinal work, we realize that the more significant point of conflict was the factthat Breton'ssurrealismevolved,developed,and went beyond the tenets of theFirstManifesto,whereasmany of his followers learned the lesson of automaticwriting and the juxtapositionof distantrealities,and whetheras card carryingsurrealistsor liberated ones, practiced surrealist language in its initial andpristineform.Breton abandonedthe passive form of surrealist anguage fairly early inhis career; the fact was consciously acknowledgedby Breton; according tohis second wife, Jacqueline,by the time he wrote L'Air de l'eau in 1934 hehad alreadyabandoned"automaticwriting." (If we need outside evidence tosupportwhat is self-revelatoryn the poems themselves!) It is obvious that inPoisson soluble, which is a much more thoroughwork of automatic anguagethan Les Champsmagnetiques,and is the companionand illustrativepiece ofthe Manifesto,Breton is his own monitor as he transcribes he psychicrhythmof his flow of language;but by the time he is writing the long poems of theWar years, he is producing intricately structuredworks. The unleashing ofverbal energy in the course of the forty years of practice culminates in theseries of prose poems, Constellations,first printed in an edition of only350 copies.52


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BRETON'S SURREALISTTRAJECTORYAfter writing free verse for more than thirty years, Breton arrives inConstellations to the prose stanza, reminiscent not of Baudelaire's poems in

prose, nor of Reverdy's, but of Rimbaud's Les Illuminations in its compactnessand concrete ellipsis. As he says himself: "Plus entre les mots la moindre brise."Internal evidence shows that he had Rimbaud in mind. He echoes Rimbaud's"le sang coula," of "Apres le deluge," continues the garland-decked festivitiesand the natural but antediluvian settings of his earthscapes illuminated byastral spectrums. He also creates a long series of variations on the image ofnature as a burning caldron conjured up at the end of Rimbaud's firstillumination, "Apres le deluge."The immediate inspiration of Constellations was the series of gouaches ofMir6 which date from the 1940's. But the structured ellipsis of Breton'sword paintings bears a direct connection to Mallarme's Un coup de des jamaisn'abolira le hasard. In Mallarme's poem, "Constellation" is a single word, centralin the void where the poet's will meanders and confronts the absurdities ofchance. Un Coup de des is a sad masterpiece, a one man's journey in a cosmoswhose rules are outside of his dominion, where his will and the whims ofobjective chance are pitted in uneven battle, and the struggle culminates in thepoet's disastrous awareness of his losing score. As we shall see, Breton's Constella-tions is a cosmic venture in which man joins nature through his manipulation oflanguage which extends the receptivity of his five senses and achieves, overand above the verbal synaesthesia, an ontological one as well.When Mallarme died, they found on his work table reams of mathematicalformulas. It is interesting to note that Breton also, in this last stage of hispoetic activity, refers to mathematics. He had always been fascinated by thelaw of probability. Here in his last poems we find a mathematical series. Weare in the realm of numbers, and numbers are the tools both of organizationand of chance.

Breton is no longer a simple monitor here. He sets out to structure theforces of chance and thereby returns to the poetic ellipsis from which he hadoriginally sought release. But if indeed there occurs at the end of his career aconciliation between the forces of the unconscious and the conscious in termsof the poetic act, and if the general appearance of these poems reminds oneof the deliberate crytographic writing of Mallarme, the vision derived fromsimilar poetic mechanics is of an entirely different character.Breton tells us that the twenty-two units of Miro's painting progress as amathematical series, deliberate yet drawing from the resources of chance.He calls it "une succession delibere d'oeuvres," the result, as he sees it, of asuccessful combination of dexterity and chance (adresse et hasard). GerardLegrand, in whose anthology of the works of Breton I first found Constellations,6suggests that the same structure is paralleled in the prose poems of Breton.

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TWENTIETH CENTURY LITERATUREHe is absolutely right. In fact, the two words Breton uses to characterizeMir6's feat, "adresse et hasard,"could be used to define his own verbalcomposition.What these poems show, in fact, as they multiply and elaboratecertainfundamental mages in mathematicalprogression, s that Breton is one of themost prominent naturepoets of the twentieth century.But as a nature poet,he does not describe ts manifestations,but rather,what he has come to believeto be the central mechanism of nature: the phenomenon of metamorphosis,reflectedin human nature in the functioning of love.We observe that Breton's vision of naturerelies neither on the patheticfallacyof the Romanticistsnor does it representthe objectivityand imperson-ality of naturallaws, senseless in their relation to human intentions. Bretondoes not try to draw nature into his own private orbit, neither does he lethimself fall adrift in nature'sscheme as an uncomprehending,alien element.He expectedno solace from God, no confidentiality rom nature,no exit fromthe human condition. Rather, he enters into the universal pattern whosemetamorphic form and activity he has grasped and can convey through amode unique to the human species: language. By the use of language toparallel naturalmetamorphoses,he arrives at a more profound sense of theconvulsive nature of all existence. Although the alchemistic language was adevice he explored in his earliest writings, resplendently n Poisson soluble,the structureduse of this device reached its apogee in Constellations.Whereas structuralist riticism has been trying to show in literaryworkssubconsciousorganizationcontradictoryo the rational ntentionsof the authorsin question, in Breton's ast set of poems we have the case of a poet superblyversed in the psychic, syntacticand connotative functioning of language,whoputs this knowledge at the service of poetry. In his deliberatelystructuredlanguage, channelling the powers of the unconscious,he draws his lexiconfrom threebroadly eparatereservoirs: he specialized anguageof bio-botanicalterminology (words that have never before appeared in poetic context!),the demotic speech of daily usage, and the visionary language to which hispredecessors,Rimbaudand Mallarme,had accustomedhim.As you read these compact poems you have to work for the meaningsthey contain rather than convey. It is not a question of de-coding but ofgrasping the multitudinous digits of the code. Poetry becomes a scientificoccupationboth for the writer and the reader.You receive multiple meaningssimultaneously ot in the graphiccombinationof linearandverticalannotations,as theywere induced n Mallarme'sUn Coupde des, (i.e. throughsuperpositionsand juxtapositions), but rather in the manner of the ancient rebus of theCabala and of latterdayalchemists from whom Breton derived his model:the one in the other image, "l'un dans l'autre,"contained and containing,54


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BRETON'SSURREALISTTRAJECTORYwhich Breton found primordiallyand essentiallycharacteristicof the natureof the universe and of the humans within it. This use of the rebus imagehad often been manifested in Breton's poetry by the substitution of thepreposition "de" for "dans."The most spectacularexample of a total poemconstructed n this fashion is of courseL'Unionlibre where the beautyof thewoman and her power over him are not simply likened to manifestationsofnaturalscapes but actuallycontainedin them.In Constellationsone of the more obvious thematic recurrencesof theone in the other image is that of the embracesuggested by the evocation ofa seriesof imagesof clinging plantssuch as the vine, the clematis,the madder.At the heartof clustersof images they suggest the interdependenceof thingsand beings. The word-imagesare graphicallysimple, presented on a purelynon-connotativebasis;any connotationthat the readerwill derive is subjectiveand of course arbitrary.But the subtle recurrencesof such images, unheededthe first time perhaps, rememberedthe second, soon loom as patterns evenas in a musical composition,and they create a magnetic field of connotationsfor the reader.Another rich source of words of multiple containing and containedconnotationsare the homonymsand words used in more than one sense orcontext. Of this group we find in Constellations n key positions words likeheraut,navette,gland, palette, braise,calice: they serve indeed, in the functionhe had attributedto language in the First Manifesto, as "springboardso themind," leaving each reader to tide over from one possible meaning to thenext, all catalyzed by the single word unit. Many of these have depositorymeaning, like palette, coffret, calice, botes. The most important perhaps ofthese depository words is "fossile,"that container and transformerof theanimal and vegetable world into the mineral, the supreme and durable con-tainer. In fact, the integral connection of all things and beings, workingthrough the combined forces of creation and destruction toward the basicunity of the two processes, s centrallyascertainedby the image of fossil, veryprominently featured in these word tapestries.They elaborateon the moreexplanatoryexpressionof the same image, seen earlier in Arcane 17. Therethe stunning image of the monolith,Perce Rock, was contemplated n its dualrepresentationof division and consolidationas a fossiliferous containerof theorganicrealityof the earth.As anyone who has read Breton's poetry in continuity is aware, lightand fire images were recurrentand resplendentin his poems from the verybeginning. What happens to these in the final counting of the numbers?They are combined and contained in the most unlikely places, and carryonthe patternof the container and the contained.Light through water, throughice, througha leaf, from enclosedtrees. Most often what emerges is the light

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TWENTIETH CENTURY LITERATUREcreated through fire. But the phenomenon of fire is not conveyed throughthe usual processof combustion; instead,it is revealed in its inherentaspects,in the state of what the alchemists would call "ignited nature."This ignitedmatteremergesin Constellations n the form of igneous rocks, feldspar, ncan-descent thorns, and in the incarcerationof the color red in lead, in water,in land, and in wood. Fire and water are also involved in another set ofimages that convey fertility and all that the fertilizing process involves innature and in terms of decompositionand recomposition.Along with the containing and contained images, we also have theconnecting ones, involving principally birds and women. An obvious one,alreadyfamiliar in Breton's poetry, is the egret (aigrette), here carryinganacorn. In the case of the woman images, the love process is closely relatedto the establishmentof intimate connection with the whole range of proto-plasmic existence, an elaboration of the earlier poems. Woman plays a roleanalogousto the encirclingvine, the rainbow,the bird carryingseed.In Constellationswords not only make love but Breton makes love withthem: he penetrates language and through language establishesa deep andintimate relationship with the physical world. Far from being automatic,poetry thus becomes a very studied and learned activity in which the poetas molder of language seizes on the propitious, aleatory associationsof hismind, tests them against nature's aws, cultivates them by directing and con-structingaroundthem. It is not by chance that the dominant images of thesetwenty-two tapestriesare "navette,"and words relating to weaving. We areinvolved with the poet in a back and forth activity and in a virtuallymanuallinking of threads.We are introduced nto the throes of processand throughprocesswe venturetowardthe secretsof life itself.Each object designated has more than one function, and it is alwaysin a state of change. We proceed in the evolution of Breton's poetry frommetaphor to metonymy where the part suggests the whole, the microcosmevokes the macrocosm. f in the case of William Blake a universe is mirroredin the grain of sand, in Breton'scosmography t is contained in a far widerrange of animal, mineral, vegetable entities, constantly woven together orengaged in dialogue with each other, the sand with the vine, the morningstarwith the shepherd.What is the role of the poet in the contemplationof all these phenomenaand conditionsof living reality?He is identifiedwith homely,humble workersinvolved in manual abor: the cobbler, he silk-weaver, he miller,the juggler-all workers,they can relate to the work of the poet in the sense in whichRimbaud classified the poet as a worker, among what he called "horriblestravailleurs,"n his Lettredu voyant.But Breton is also evoking a series of creatorsof magic. Back in Poisson56


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BRETON'SSURREALISTTRAJECTORYsoluble he had envisaged himself with a five-leaf clover on his left shoulder.Here the magical gamut includes the dexterityof children playing games, thewonders of fairy tale prestidigitators uch as Oberon, all building up to themost miraculoushand of all, that of the artist: Mir6's presence first of all,whom Bretonlong considered he purestsurrealistof all the artistswho joinedhim, and then on from the hand that drawsto the hand that writes.Toward theend of this series of what we might call myth capsules, in no. 18, entitled"L'Oiseaumigrateur,"he is obviously again identifying the poet: "le petithomme nu, qui tient la cle des rebus, est toujoursassis sur sa pierre."But the identificationof the poet is a double one. If on the one handhe is groupedwith dexterousartisans,epitomized in the patient and sedentaryweaver,on the other hand we have another set of images, those of people inmovement:the migrantandthe vagabond, he shepherd, he pilgrim progressinglike a latter-dayTheseus through a labyrinth. We had already met Bretonearlier in his work in the labyrinthimage; what is evolutionaryhere is thatthe labyrinth has become vertical. If in Poisson soluble we remember theyoung poet as a masked man, holding the keys of the mystery of life, herewe see him alighting from the labyrinth-as he had promised he would-and shooting for the stars.The steps of his progress are transcribed n his language. He has dug(je creuse,je moule, je l'abime, je vrille); he has woven; he has proceededfrom the street maze to the padlockedwoods; his forces have burst out oftheir limits (with verbs like sublimer,evaser,extravaser) pushed up throughspirals until no. 12 which is entitled "le 13 l'chelle a fr61l le firmament."He proceeds toward the rainbow in no. 15, toward the universal attractionwhich he recognizesas the quality of space in no. 20, and in the final piece,entitled "Le Passage de l'oiseau divin" he alludes to the flight of the but-terfly, escaping even as it dies. In fact, here the upward movement joinsanother series of images that have been graduallybuilding up to make animpact on our consciousness,a series which unlike the others here mentioned,was not previously predominantin Breton's normal referential system: thatof music. In Poisson soluble we had had a suggestion of the music of theearth;here we build up to the music of the spheres.Poetic composition findsits closest ally in harmonic composition. References to musical instrumentsand musical function recur from one piece to the next, too numerous toenumeratehere, but leading to an embracebetween the creationof the handand of the ear in that deeper unity of the creative power, of which they areseemingly different but intrinsically concerted manifestations, each in itsway fueling the projectileof human desire.The trajectory hat Breton traced from 1924 to 1959 is a voyage frombirth in waterto absorption nto the cosmos.

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TWENTIETH CENTURY LITERATUREWe may conclude that the Manifesto was indeed a very revolutionarydocument,not in termsof the limited meaningof politicaland socialrevolution,but as a broad recuperationand alignment of the attributes that constitutethe commontreasure. n retrospecthe appearsas a moment in history, offeringan alternatechoice to the sense of the absurdwhich was the more commonreaction that was to accompany man's awareness of the cracking of the

anthropocentricuniverse. In its global nature Breton's was rebellion withoutalienation. If, as we examined the progressof his poetic craft, we discernedpowers of poetic constructionmore sophisticatedthan even Mallarme's,weknow full well that in his own mind his art had a secondaryimportancetohis comportmentas a human being. Beyond the literary destiny of his poetrywas the significance of the new ontological posture it proposed. He usedlanguageas a staffand an aurato proclaimand to illustratehis efforts towarda redefinitionof humandestiny.1 AndreBreton,Manifestesdu Surrealisme, aris:Jean-Jacques auvert,1962, p. 82.2 Ibid., p. 68.3 Andre Breton,Les Pas perdus,Paris: Gallimard, 1924, p. 171.4 Ibid., p. 51.5 Ibid.,p. 53.6 AndreBreton,Poesieet autre,editedby GerardLegrand, aris:Le Club dumeilleurivre,1960: no pagenumbersn sectioncontainingConstellations.

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Documents

BALAKIAN - From Poisson Soluble to Constellations, Breton's Trajectory for Surrealism