Introduction

By the end of the 1920s, life was turning sour for Breton. Financially, amorously, but, most of all, socially. He was at odds with many of his (by now former) friends. The Second Manifesto (1929) is pungent, with an angry undertone, and many surrealists from the early days ‒ Naville, Soupault, Desnos ‒ were publicly excommunicated in it. Some of those banished gathered around Georges Bataille and struck back at Breton with the pamphlet ‘Un Cadavre.’ The group Grand Jeu broke away for good. During the early years of the 1930s, things did not look up. Political trouble was also brewing. Despite the fact that Breton had given the second surrealist periodical the rather obvious name Le Surréalisme au Service de la Révolution, the French Communist Party (PCF) had made it clear that they were not interested in any surrealist revolution ‒ only communist party-line action was condoned, and the Party would not support the artistic freedom that Breton deemed essential. A decade earlier, Dada and Surrealism had been at the political forefront. Now, the surrealist revolution was being relegated to the side-lines of the political left, rather than the vanguard, just at a time when fascism was on the rise on the right. Aragon broke with the movement and with Breton to pursue his communist career. The addition of new blood to the Breton group ‒ notably, two Spaniards, Louis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí ‒ did nothing to lessen the tensions and internal political strife. Also Breton was not satisfied with Surrealism itself, a discontent that was first expressed in the Second Manifesto and continued in the early years of the 1930s. Automatism and the dream, central pursuits of Surrealism, were by no means as risqué as they had been in the early 1920s. The question Breton explored at length in ‘The Automatic Message’ (1933) is whether automatism could still be considered a successful approach, as I have discussed in the previous chapter. His dissatisfaction was also due to the increasing popularity and public profile of Surrealism. Surrealism was becoming gradually more known outside of its own circles, and less disputed too ‒ a development rather contrary to its supposed radical avant-garde nature. Slowly, but no less surely, the embourgeoisment of Surrealism was under way.