Manifestoes of Surrealism

Exploring the basis of reality was a core purpose of the Surrealist Movement, especially the group that followed Breton after his first manifesto. The manifesto explains in explicit detail why dreams should be considered as real as waking life and that subconscious thoughts and desires are at least as important as those found in the conscious mind. Breton believes that modern society focuses excessively on consciousness and logic, thereby relegating the subconscious to something outside—and less important than—reality. He is especially concerned about this trend’s influence on art and writing. He criticizes novelists in particular, even such well-regarded writers as Dostoevsky. This is especially apparent in the first manifesto; he quotes passages from modern novels that he views as bland examples of scene-setting with boring characterization, arguing that this type of writing leaves the novel with no more literary merit than a catalog of home goods or a newspaper. He critiques the pragmatic focus of novels that are written to be widely and blandly relatable; their goal is to appeal to a broad audience and, thus, sell a high number of copies. Breton and his followers are immensely worried about the death of creativity, both in art and in the broader world.

Through Surrealism, Breton hopes to change this trend. He and his followers aim to fuse the subconscious and the conscious into a new type of holistic reality: “I believe in the future resolution of these two states, dream and reality, which are seemingly so contradictory, into a kind of absolute reality, a surreality, if one may so speak” (14). Breton makes it clear that he does not actually hope to achieve such a synthesis, but he believes that the effort itself is valuable. In his view, Surrealism will succeed in reawakening a sense of the marvelous among its practitioners; thus, it will improve art even if it doesn’t change the world.

In some ways, Breton appears to hold the subconscious in higher regard than conscious reality. He writes that an individual's consciousness is created primarily by outside influence and is, therefore, more a reflection of the outside world than a product of the brain in which it resides. Conscious thought is also prone to mistakes and self-doubt. Meanwhile, Breton’s Surrealists believe the subconscious offers a much purer window into the human mind itself. Dreams, he writes, seem consistent and organized to the dreamer while the dream is happening. Dreams allow people to escape from the constructs of the waking world, such as time and logic, which the Surrealists see as culturally imposed. By accepting dreams as part of real life and embracing their illogical magic, Breton and his Surrealist followers believe that humanity can escape the bland, accepted reality of the waking world.