麻豆社

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss surrealism. 鈥楽i vous aimez L鈥檃mour, vous aimerez Surrealisme!鈥�. If you like Love, you鈥檒l love Surrealism! Thus was the launch of the surrealist manifesto publicised in Paris in 1924. In that document the formerly Dadaist poet Andr茅 Breton defined his new movement, 鈥淪urrealism is pure psychic automatism, by which it is intended to express鈥�the real process of thought. It is the dictation of thought, free from any control by reason and of any aesthetic or moral preoccupation鈥�.Surrealism is about sex, the unconscious, repression and desire and seems to carry more than a distant echo of the Doctor from Vienna. How much was their notion of 鈥榩ure thought鈥� influenced by the writings of Sigmund Freud and the new technique of psychoanalysis being developed at the time? Did the surrealists manage to release the secrets and wonders of the human psyche, or was their wild foray into melting clocks, floating euphoniums and automatic writing simply a wasted journey into nonsense?With Dawn Adiss, Professor of Art History and Theory at the University of Essex; Malcolm Bowie, Marshal Foch Professor of French Literature at Oxford University and a fellow of All Souls College; the psychoanalyst Darian Leader