Essay Database

At the beginning of the war of 1870 the author of the Chants de Maldororand of Poésies, Isidore Ducasse, better known by the name of Comte de Lautréamont, whose thoughts had been of the very greatest help and encouragement to many surrealists, made the following remark; "At the hour in which I write, new tremors are running through the intellectual atmosphere; it is only a matter of having the courage to face them.'' …

…thought. Thought's dictation, in the absence of all control exercised by the reason and outside all aesthetic or moral preoccupations. Surrealism rests in the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of association neglected heretofore; in the omnipotence of the dream and in the disinterested play of thought. It tends definitely to do away with all other psychic mechanisms and to substitute itself for them in the solution of the principal problems of life.