Surrealism and Revolution: René Dépestre and the Generation of 1946

Abstract

In 1931 the quarrel between Louis Aragon and André Breton which divided the Surrealists, brought to light the contradictions contained in the Surrealist ideal of fusing poetry and revolution and did much to undermine the influence of this movement in Europe. Those who saw themselves as ’orthodox’ Surrealists opted for the creative anarchy of révolution permanente and followed the ‘pure’ poetic experimentation of Breton and Dali. Those who saw poetic revolution in terms of political engagement followed Aragon’s example. Surrealism in Europe would never recover from this schism. The crises of the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War only served to vindicate Aragon’s belief that the artist had an immediate public responsibility to commit himself politically. Sartre’s Qu’est-ce que la littérature seems to consolidate Aragon’s position by voicing reservations as to the limitations of the poetic act. Dévoiler le monde is the motto for the écrivain engagé but poets ‘refuse to use language. Now as it is in and through language conceived as a certain kind of tool that that the search for truth operates, one cannot imagine that they aim to detect the truth or to expose it.’¹

It is when the black proletariat … has access to the right to eat and the world of the imagination, a Caribbean poetry will exist only then. Etienne Léro, Légitime Défense, 1932

Not once during those hard years of Vichy domination did the ideal of freedom grow dim here and it is to surrealism that we owe this … Surrealism, taut cord of our hope. Suzanne

Césaire, Tropiques, Oct. 1943

A harsh style, full of images, for the image is the drawbridge which allows unconscious energies to be scattered on the surrounding meadows. It is full of colour too, bronzed, sunbaked and violent. Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 1961

The moon is a drunkard Purity a legend The sea is only a trap The sky a lie Love has crossed over to the enemy camp Enough talk Let us create a new world with our own resources. René Dépestre, Gerbe de sang, 1946