Immersion

Abstract

In much of the foregoing discussion of surrealist poetics, I have repeatedly asserted the requirement that surrealism must be taken seriously. In other words, and without denying that there is much that is deliberately pointless and humorous for its own sake in surrealist activity, the political commitment of the original context calls at least for a serious readerly stance. Furthermore, it seems to me that much surrealist writing gains in power if it is not trivialised or diminished by being boxed up as being merely poetic, ornamental, metaphorical, fantastical, or escapist. Central to this readerly prescription is the way in which metaphor is treated in surrealism. Many of the examples of surrealist writing discussed up to this point can be read in ways which render the surreal images as metaphors – and these metaphorical meanings can be generalised back to the everyday world of the reader: surrealism is metaphorised. So, for example, the metamorphosis of Narcissus (from Chapter 7) can be read, not as a literal transformation as in the imaginary poetic world, but as a metaphor for transformation itself back in the prosaic world of the reader. The apocalyptic images in the chainpoems in Chapter 6 can be thematised as metaphors for a revolution either in politics or personal identity or both.