What are the surrealists negating?

Negation – form of rebellion/revolt
Not conforming to classical standards
Surrealism – 1924 – 1947
Surrealist art – not an imitation of the world as we see it, we are forced to use our imagination. Spontaneous techniques – automatic drawing – tension between non-figurative and intended.

Andre Breton – Manifeste du Surrealisme (1924)
Eulogy of madness – Nadja – negation of reason
Freud psychoanalysis (ego, superego, id) - omnipotence of dream – spontaneous, uncontrollable, lacking in sense, irrational, illogical.
Dream – everything that escapes normal logic but also desire, aspiration – utopia.
Breotns use of rhyme – create logical relationships, metaphors – associate 2 things for the reader to grasp the connection.

Surrealists rejected orthodox religions and saw them as destructive forces.
Surrealism plays on imagery, Breton – monistic vision – 1 basic reality, closer approximation to realist.
Keen on anti-art (Dadaism) paradoxal, ambiguity – ambiguity leads to subjectivity (point of view of subject)
Interested in irrational, surrealism rediscovering human subjective side of existence, wants to get close to what is within us that we don’t decide – the unconscious.
Against science and technology, logic and direct association with utilitarian goal.

Ambiguity of form in art and literature.
Divorce of objects from their counter part.
Intimate relationship between sex and death.

Nadja – not a novel but a autobiographical relation of a series of true events.
Nadja – almost mythical figure, she initiates the narrator in the strange and important world – surreality.
Opening – “Who am I?” – to discover who he is, he must separate himself from his subjective eye, separate his present self from who he was in the past, forget social norms.
Structure – 3 parts – introduction (strange things/events) dates – discussion of particular person – Nadja (extreme concentrates version of opening of book) and overall