The Language of Surrealism

204 Pages·2020·1.392 MB·

by  Peter Stockwell

Language, Style and Literature
Language, Style and Literature is a new series of books in literary stylistics. The series offers
rigorous and informative treatments of particular writers, genres and literary periods and
provides in-depth examination of their key stylistic tropes. Every volume in the series is
intended to serve as a key reference point for undergraduate and post-graduate students
and as an investigative resource for more experienced researchers. The last twenty years
have witnessed a huge transformation in the analytic tools and methods of modern sty-
listics. By harnessing the talent of a growing body of researchers in the field, this series of
books seeks both to capture these developments and transformations and to establish and
elaborate new analytic models and paradigms.
Series Editors:
Dr Rocío Montoro, University of Granada, Spain
Professor Paul Simpson, University of Liverpool, UK
Advisory board:
Dr Joe Bray, University of Sheffield, UK
Professor Beatrix Busse, Heidelberg University, Germany
Professor Don Hardy, University of Nevada, USA
Associate Professor Jennifer Riddle-Harding, Washington and Jefferson College, USA
Associate Professor Chantelle Warner, University of Arizona, USA
Visit https://he.palgrave.com/companion/Language-Style-And-Literature/ to see other
published and forthcoming titles in this series.
T h e L a n g u a g e o f
S u r r e a l i s m
Peter Stockwell
Series Editors
Rocío Montoro and Paul Simpson
© Peter Stockwell 2017
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
publication may be made without written permission.
No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted
save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence
permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency,
Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS.
Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this
work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2017 by
PALGRAVE
Palgrave in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of 4 Crinan Street,
London, N1 9XW.
Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Palgrave is a global imprint of the above companies and is represented
throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN 978–1–137–39221–3 hardback
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully
managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing
processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the
country of origin.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
This one’s for Edith
C o n t e n t s
Surrealist texts substantially analysed in the course of this book ix
Series Editors’ Note xi
Acknowledgements xii
Part I Delineating Surrealism 1
1 Origins and Histories 3
Finding the edges of surrealism 3
Emergence and diffusion 6
Surrealism in the post-war period 6
Surrealism between the wars 9
Dada and presurrealism 11
Key features of surrealism addressed in this book 15
2 Lives and Minds 19
Biography, history, culture 19
Writers of high surrealism 25
The pre-surrealists 26
The surrealists around Paris 27
British surrealists 29
Mind-modelling a surrealist 30
3 L anguage in Surrealist Thought 35
Language and linguistics 35
Consciousness and the unconscious 39
Meaning and communication 44
Part II Writing Surrealism 49
4 Automaticity 51
Origins of automatic writing 51
The first experiment: The Magnetic Fields 56
Refined automatism: from Mourning for Mourning to Soluble Fish 63
5 Dissonance 71
From sound to sense 71
The semantics of paranoia 75
Dissonance and consonance 84
6 Collage 90
Collage and its adaptations 90
Creative and destructive dialectics 94
vii
viii Contents
Collaging authorial intention 102
Accidents and emergences: objective chance 108
Part III Reading Surrealism 113
7 Coherence 115
The paranoiac-critical method 115
Surrealist narrative 119
The surreal landscape 127
8 Ambience 133
Atmospherics of dream 133
Surrealist tonalities 139
The surreal image 144
9 Immersion 149
Metaphorism and literalism 149
Sustaining defamiliarisation 153
Surrealist immersion 159
Part IV Diffusing Surrealism 167
10 Surrealisms 169
Ideology and technique 169
Portability of style 174
Diffusion and significance 178
References 182
Index 193
Surrealist texts substantially analysed in the
course of this book
‘Phonetic poem’ Hugo Ball Ch.1
‘Closing time’ Emmy Bridgwater Ch.2
Automatic sentences Robert Desnos Ch.4
The Magnetic Fields Breton, Eluard, Soupault Ch.4
‘The cold throats’ Robert Desnos Ch.4
Mourning for Mourning Robert Desnos Ch.4
Soluble Fish André Breton Ch.4
‘And the seventh dream is the dream of David Gascoyne Ch.5
Isis’
‘It doesn’t look like a finger’ Hugh Sykes Davies Ch.5
‘The meeting of two smiles’ Paul Eluard and Max Ernst Ch.6
The Making of Americans Gertrude Stein Ch.6
‘Dada manifesto on feeble love and Tristan Tzara Ch.6
bitter love’
Cutups Various Ch.6
‘Do not go gentle into that good night’ Dylan Thomas Ch.6
‘A woman who was beautiful’ Alice Paalen Ch.6
‘Exquisite corpse’ poems Various Ch.6
‘International chainpoem’ Assembled by Charles Henri Ford Ch.6
‘Chainpoem of the New Apocalypse’ Various Ch.6
Fountain Marcel Duchamp Ch.6
Lobster Telephone Salvador Dalí Ch.6
‘Séance’ Edouard Roditi Ch.7
‘I walk at dawn across the hollow hills’ Ruthven Todd Ch.7
‘1830’ René Crevel Ch.7
Nadja André Breton Ch.7
‘The metamorphosis of Narcissus’ Salvador Dalí Ch.7
Petron Hugh Sykes Davies Ch.8
Paris Peasant Louis Aragon Ch.8
‘What the workman says is never to the Paul Eluard Ch.8
point’
‘Blue bugs in liquid silk’ Philip O’Connor Ch.8
Mad Love André Breton Ch.9
ix
x Surrealist texts analysed
‘The Cage’ David Gascoyne Ch.9
‘Sleep’ Bravig Imbs Ch.9
‘Painting-Poem (Le corps de ma brune)’ Joan Miró Ch.9
‘Yves Tanguy’ David Gascoyne Ch.9
‘Parallax’ Nancy Cunard Ch.9
S e r i e s E d i t o r s ’ N o t e
Language, Style and Literature is a series of books in literary stylistics, where stylistics
is understood as a form of literary study that is embedded in, and conducted through,
contemporary models of language and linguistics. The books in the series focus either
on the language of a major author or on a major literary development. What the various
volumes share is an interest in rigorous and informative treatments of particular writers,
genres or literary periods as well as in the key linguistic-stylistic tropes that mark distinct
periods in literary history.
In many respects, The Language of Surrealism is an excellent curtain-raiser to this
new series. Stockwell’s survey of the Surrealist movement is methodical, eclectic and
extremely well-researched – making it an essential resource for those interested in the
development of this art form into, and through, late Modernity. Very much the embodi-
ment of the spirit of the series, The Language of Surrealism employs a range of l inguistic
and cognitive-poetic models in its exploration of both the verbal and pictorial forms
of surrealist art. Stockwell also deals deftly with the ‘multi-modal’ features of surreal-
ist expression, and while his central focus on language and stylistic composition is sus-
tained throughout, he never loses sight both of the artistic milieu and of the historical
context in which surrealist art was shaped and disseminated. Another key feature of the
book is the way it aligns its own approach (where appropriate) with those of literary
and art critics, and sometimes with the surrealist artists themselves. Rather than criticise
these writers for their perhaps overly impressionistic approach to textual understand-
ing, Stockwell works hard to synthesise his own cognitive-poetic approach with theirs,
most notably in his explication of core surrealist techniques such as automaticity, dis-
sonance and collage.
Lucid and accessible, Peter Stockwell’s book is an authoritative and ground-breaking
study. It is moreover an excellent exemplar of the stylistic method at work, not least
because of the way in which it extends the boundaries of the discipline, opening up the
field to new scholars and researchers. In sum, we are convinced that The Language of
Surrealism will become a key resource in contemporary literary stylistics as well as in
critical and creative explorations of surrealist art.
Liverpool and Granada
July 2016
Dr Rocío Montoro and Professor Paul Simpson
xi