Surrealism was a revolutionary and transformative artistic movement. It permeated various arts such as painting and sculpture, but originally it was a literary movement. To get an idea of how this trend opened new horizons in literature, we have made a selection of short surrealist poems by the most important authors. Welcome to the world of the dreamlike.
What is surrealism?
The term surrealism was coined in 1917 by the French writer Guillaume Apollinaire, who defined two theatrical works (one of them his own) as "a kind of sur-realism," that is, above the real. However, these works could not be classified as surrealism in the sense we know it today. It was later, in 1924, when the writer André Breton and Philippe Soupault took up the term to define a new movement that was emerging in France after the end of World War I.
In the Surrealist Manifestos, Breton harshly criticized realism, a cultural movement he considered "hostile to all intellectual and moral expansion." On the contrary, he advocated for the development of surrealism and offered the following definition.
"Surrealism.n.m. Pure psychic automatism by which one tries to express verbally, in writing, or in any other way, the real functioning of thought. It is a dictation of thought, without the regulatory intervention of reason, unrelated to any aesthetic or moral concern."
In any case, this new way of going beyond reality through art quickly spread throughout Europe. These artists sought to capture the imaginary, the dreamlike, and the irrational, inspired in part by Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis theory. Surrealism delves into the human mind and its impulses, so it often doesn't respond to logic or order.
It is not always easy to understand, but we will try to get an idea through the authors of surrealism.
Who are the great poets of surrealism?
We can say that surrealism was a movement, at least in Hispanic culture, marked by the artistic trajectory of painters Salvador Dalí and Joan Miró. However, literature was also transformed, especially thanks to the work of masters of the pen like Julio Cortázar, Octavio Paz, or Braulio Arenas. Fortunately, it also influenced geniuses like Lorca.
In any case, the great exponents of surrealism must be sought in French literature. The poems of André Breton, Philippe Soupault, or Louis Aragon stand out.
What are surrealist poems like?
For surrealist artists, poetry is not the ultimate expression of beauty, much less a means to portray reality, but a language to express the inexpressible, to draw a landscape of what is in our mind but we can't understand. To better understand this idea, we review some characteristics of surrealism:
It goes beyond logic and considers that truth lies in the irrational.
It interprets dreams, visions, and fantastic myths.
It uses various techniques such as automatism (writing without the control of reason).
It abhors society's protocols and standards because they deprive the being of freedom.
It gives free rein to the expression of the most irrational impulses. Therefore, topics like sex are addressed without reservation.
15 short surrealist poems
Now that we have a clear and defined image of what surrealism is, we leave you with a selection of surrealist poems, small literary pieces that are worth their weight in gold.
1. No ha lugar (André Breton)
Art of the days art of the nights
The balance of wounds called Forgive
Red balance sensitive to the weight of a bird's flight
When the snow-necked Amazons with empty hands
Push their steam chariots over the meadows
I see that balance constantly maddened
I see the ibis of beautiful manners
Returning from the pond tied in my heart
The wheels of the dream enchant the splendid rails
That rise high above the shells of their dresses
And amazement jumps from here to there over the sea
See my dear dawn don't forget anything of my life
Take these roses climbing in the well of mirrors
Take the beats of all the eyelashes
Take even the threads that hold the steps of the puppets
and the drops of water
Art of the days art of the nights
I am at the window far from a city full of terror
Outside some men in top hats chase each other at
regular intervals
Similar to the rains I loved
When the weather was so good
"The Wrath of God" is the name of a cabaret I entered yesterday
It is written on the white facade with paler letters
But the sailor-women sliding behind the glass
Are too beautiful to be afraid
Here never the body always the murder without evidence
Never the sky always the silence
Never Freedom but for freedom
2. The Marquis de Sade (André Breton)
The Marquis de Sade has re-entered the erupting volcano
From where he had emerged
With his beautiful hands still adorned with fringes
His maiden eyes
And that permanent reasoning of every man for himself
So exclusively his
But from the phosphorescent salon illuminated by lamps of entrails
He has never ceased to issue the mysterious orders
That open a breach in the moral night
Through that breach I see
The great creaking shadows the old worn crust
That fade away
To allow me to love you
Like the first man loved the first woman
With all freedom
That freedom
For which fire itself has become man
For which the Marquis de Sade defied the centuries with his great abstract trees
And tragic acrobats
Clinging to the thread of the Virgin of desire
3. Straw silhouette (André Breton)
To Max Ernst
Give me some drowned jewels
Two nests
A ponytail and a mannequin head
Forgive me then
I have no time to breathe
I am a spell
The solar construction has held me here
Now I have nothing left but to let myself be killed
Ask for the board
Quickly the clenched fist above my head that begins to sound
A glass where a yellow eye opens
The feeling also opens
But the princesses cling to the pure air
I need pride
And some insipid drops
To reheat the pot of rusty flowers
At the foot of the stairs
Divine thought in the starry square of blue sky
The expression of the bathers is the death of the wolf
Take me as a friend
The friend of fires and ferrets
Looks at you deeply
Smooth your sorrows
My rosewood oar makes your hair sing
A palpable sound serves the beach
Black with the fury of the cuttlefish
And red with the sign
4. All paradise is not lost (André Breton)
The rock roosters pass inside the glass
They defend the dew with crest blows
Then the charming motto of the lightning
Descends on the flag of the ruins
The sand is nothing but a phosphorescent clock
That strikes midnight
By the arms of a forgotten woman
Without shelter spinning through the field
Standing in the celestial approaches and retreats
It is here
The blue and hard temples of the fifth bathe in the night
that traces my images
Hair hair
Evil gains strength very close
It will only use us
5. Your eyes (Octavio Paz)
Your eyes are the homeland of lightning and tears,
silence that speaks,
storms without wind, sea without waves,
caged birds, golden sleeping beasts,
topazes as impious as the truth,
autumn in a forest clearing where light sings on a tree's shoulder and all the leaves are birds,
beach that the morning finds constellated with eyes,
basket of fire fruits,
lie that feeds,
mirrors of this world, doors to the beyond,
calm pulse of the sea at noon,
absolute that blinks,
wasteland.
6. The bird (Octavio Paz)
A silence of air, light, and sky.
In the transparent silence
the day rested:
the transparency of space
was the transparency of silence.
The still light of the sky calmed
the growth of the grasses.
The earth's creatures, among the stones,
under the identical light, were stones.
Time was satisfied in the minute.
In the absorbed stillness
noon was consummated.
And a bird sang, a thin arrow.
Silver chest wounded the sky vibrated,
the leaves moved,
the grasses awoke...
And I felt that death was an arrow
that no one knows who shoots
and in a blink we die.
7. Recurrent ceremony (Julio Cortázar)
The totemic animal with its light claws,
the objects gathered by darkness under the bed,
the mysterious rhythm of your breathing, the shadow
that your sweat draws in the scent, the day already imminent.
Then I straighten up, still beaten by the waters of the dream,
I return from a continent half blind
where you were also but you were another,
and when I consult you with my mouth and fingers, I travel the horizon of your flanks
(sweetly you get angry, you want to keep sleeping, you call me brute and fool,
you struggle laughing, you don't let yourself be taken but it's too late, a fire
of skin and jet, the figures of the dream)
the totemic animal at the foot of the bonfire
with its light claws and musk wings.
And then we wake up and it's Sunday and February.
8. Battlefield (Rafael Alberti)
A silent heat is born in the groins,
like a silent foam murmur.
Its hard wicker the precious tulip
bends without water, alive and exhausted.
A restless,
urgent bellicose thought grows in the blood.
The exhausted flower lost in its rest
breaks its dream in the wet root.
The earth jumps and from its entrails loses
sap, poison, and green grove.
It beats, creaks, whips, pushes, bursts.
Life cleaves life in full life.
And although death wins the game,
everything is a joyful battlefield.
9. Ashes (Alejandra Pizarnik)
The night splintered with stars
looking at me hallucinated
the air throws hate
beautified its face
with music.
Soon we will leave
Arcane dream
ancestor of my smile
the world is emaciated
and there is a lock but no keys
and there is dread but no tears.
What will I do with myself?
Because I owe You what I am
But I have no tomorrow
Because I owe You...
The night suffers.
10. I have to say something I tell myself (Federico García Lorca)
Words that dissolve in the mouth
Wings that suddenly are coat racks
Where the scream falls a hand grows
Someone kills our name according to the book
Who tore the eyes from the statue?
Who placed this tongue around the
Cry?
I have something to say I tell myself
And I swell with birds outside
Lips that fall like mirrors Here
There inside the distances meet
This north or this south is an eye
I live around myself
I am here there between steps of flesh
In the open
With something to say I tell myself
11. To the mysterious one (Robert Desnos)
So much I have dreamed of you that you lose your reality.
Will there be time to reach that living body
and kiss on that mouth
the birth of the voice I want?
So much I have dreamed of you,
that my arms accustomed to crossing
over my chest, embrace your shadow,
and perhaps they no longer know how to adapt
to the contour of your body.
So much I have dreamed of you,
that surely I will no longer be able to wake up.
I sleep standing,
with my poor body offered
to all the appearances
of life and love, and you, you are the only one
that counts for me now.
It will be more difficult for me to touch your forehead
and your lips, than the first lips
and the first forehead I find.
And in the face of the real existence
of what obsesses me
for days and years
surely I will become a shadow.
So much I have dreamed of you,
so much I have talked and walked, that I lay down next to
your shadow and your ghost,
and therefore
12. Twilight (Philippe Soupault)
An elephant in its bathtub
and three children sleeping
singular singular story
story of sunset
13. Georgia (Philippe Soupault)
I don't sleep Georgia
I throw arrows in the night Georgia
I wait Georgia
I think Georgia
the fire is like snow Georgia
the night is my neighbor Georgia
I hear all the noises without exception Georgia
I see the smoke rising and fleeing Georgia
I walk wolf-like in the shadow Georgia
I run here is the street here are the neighborhoods Georgia
Here is a city always the same
and that I don't know Georgia
I hurry here is the wind Georgia
and the cold and the silence and the fear Georgia
I escape Georgia
I run Georgia
the clouds are low they are about to fall Georgia
I extend my arm Georgia
I don't close my eyes Georgia
I call Georgia
I shout Georgia
I call Georgia
I call you Georgia
maybe you will come Georgia
soon Georgia
Georgia Georgia Georgia
Georgia
I can't sleep Georgia
I wait Georgia
14. Mystic Carlitos (Louis Aragon)
The elevator always descended until it lost breath
And the stairs always climbed
This lady doesn't understand what is spoken
She is fake
I who was already dreaming of talking to her about love
Oh the clerk
So comical with his mustache and his eyebrows
Artificial
He screamed when I pulled them
How strange
What do I see That noble foreigner
Sir I am not a light woman
Uh the ugly one
Luckily we
Have pigskin suitcases
Indestructible
This one
Twenty dollars
And contains a thousand
Always the same system
No measure
No logic
Bad theme
15. Ce (Louis Aragon)
Everything will start in the CE,
the bridge I crossed.
A lost romance speaks
of the good wounded knight;
of a rose on the road
and a loosened tunic;
of a mysterious castle
and white swans in the moat,
and a meadow where dances
the hopeless bride.
Like an icy night,
the lay of glories in mourning.
They go with my thoughts
by the Loire the armaments;
and the overturned convoys
and poorly wiped tears.
Oh France, my beloved!
Oh my sweet abandoned!
how alone I left you
crossing the bridge of CE.
Bibliographic references
Breton, A., & Bosch, A. (1969). Manifiestos del surrealismo. Madrid: Guadarrama.
Bradley, F. (1999). Surrealism: Movements in Modern Art (Tate Gallery Series) (Vol. 4). Encuentro.