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Three dreams

Manuscript

Author

Author André Breton
People cited Guillaume Apollinaire, Pablo Picasso

Description

Manuscript of three dreams by André Breton for the first issue of La révolution surréaliste, published on 15 December 1924.

Manuscript of three dreams intended for La révolution surréaliste. This is not the first dream story Breton published, since Clair de Terre had earlier contained five.

Dreams seem to have been an obsession in the first issue: the preface concludes on the dream’s necessity, while the surrealists were portrayed around the portrait of Germaine Berton, accompanied by Baudelaire's phrase: ‘Woman is the being who casts the greatest shadow or the greatest light onto our dreams.’ The young surrealists had made dreams and their study one of the doors to the unconscious, and one of the essential aspects of the group’s poetics. The text is given without explanation, unlike a scientific or psychoanalytical study, giving proof of their concern to leave the literary field.

Breton gives three dreams here: there isn’t much difference between this version and the text printed in the journal. In contrast, another manuscript entitled ‘A gathering at Picasso's house’, gives a first version of the third dream. Breton seems to have reworked this dream account for greater clarity and precision. Does this make the dream literature? Or does it bear witness to a desire for more effective expression? The text becomes more reflective, less narrative focused, and imbued with latent emotions. ‘The dialogue with four women from the brothel becomes an interview with ‘seven or eight young women’, in a ‘house that holds an important place in my life’ (although it is still described as a brothel). Breton deletes some short sentences (‘He is evasive’), and lengthens others, which become subtle psychological explanations (Picasso is thus ‘in the intermediate state between his current one and that of his soul after death’; Apollinaire's shadow is suddenly ‘dark and full of ulterior motives’; in the original version it judges his living past as ‘someone it loves, but doesn’t any longer’, while in LRS it only ‘feels a banal sympathy’). More surprising is the addition of a corpse, which reinforces the strangeness of the dream and a dead Apollinaire’s guilt. The new version is thus softened, given less narrative, is less provocative, and focuses on the implicit aspects of the dream. [André Breton website, 2022]

*This entry was translated from the French by Michael Richardson.

Bibliography

André Breton, ‘Three dreams’, La révolution surréaliste, issue 1, December 1924, pp. 3-5.

André Breton, ‘Trois rêves’, Œuvres complètes, volume I (Edited by Marguerite Bonnet with contributions from Philippe Bernier, Étienne-Alain Hubert and José Pierre), Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Paris, Gallimard, 1988, p. 887-90.

Place of origin