University of Texas Press, 1998 eISBN: 978-0-292-75849-0 | Cloth: 978-0-292-77087-4 | Paper: 978-0-292-77088-1 Library of Congress Classification NX456.5.S8S92 1998 Dewey Decimal Classification 700.41163082
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC
ABOUT THIS BOOK
Beginning in Paris in the 1920s, women poets, essayists, painters, and artists in other media have actively collaborated in defining and refining surrealism's basic project—achieving a higher, open, and dynamic consciousness, from which no aspect of the real or the imaginary is rejected. Indeed, few artistic or social movements can boast as many women forebears, founders, and participants—perhaps only feminism itself. Yet outside the movement, women's contributions to surrealism have been largely ignored or simply unknown.
This anthology, the first of its kind in any language, displays the range and significance of women's contributions to surrealism. Letting surrealist women speak for themselves, Penelope Rosemont has assembled nearly three hundred texts by ninety-six women from twenty-eight countries. She opens the book with a succinct summary of surrealism's basic aims and principles, followed by a discussion of the place of gender in the movement's origins. She then organizes the book into historical periods ranging from the 1920s to the present, with introductions that describe trends in the movement during each period. Rosemont also prefaces each surrealist's work with a brief biographical statement.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Affiliated with the Surrealist Group in Paris in the 1960s, Penelope Rosemont is a Chicago poet and painter.
REVIEWS
This is a very fine volume; it is inclusive, superbly researched, and the introductions are clearly written. . . . It should become a standard text of surrealism.
— Stephen Eric Bronner, Professor of Political Science and Comparative Literature, Rutgers University
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: All My Names Know Your Leap: Surrealist Women and Their Challenge
Notes on Individuals Frequently Cited in This Anthology
1. The First Women Surrealists, 1924-1929
Introduction: The Women of La Révolution surréaliste
Renée Gauthier
Dream: I Am in a Field...
Simone Kahn
Surrealist Text: This Took Place in the Springtime...
The Exquisite Corpses
Denise Levy
Surrealist Text: I Went into a Green Song...
Surrealist Text: Ivory Blue and Shady Satin...
Nancy Cunard
Surrealist Manifestation at the Diaghilev Ballet
The Beginnings of the Surrealist Revolution
Surrealism, Ethnography, and Revolution
Nadja
The Blue Wind
Fanny Beznos
I Go, the Wind Pushing Me Along
Purity! Purity! Purity!
Suzanne Muzard
On Love: Reply to an Inquiry
My Passage in Surrealism
Valentine Penrose
When It Comes to Love: Response to an Inquiry
Suzanne Muzard, Elsie Houston, and Jeannette Ducrocq Tanguy
Surrealist Games
2. In the Service of Revolution, 1930-1939
Introduction: Women and Surrealism in the Thirties
Claude Cabun
Captive Balloon
The Invisible Adventure
Poetry Keeps Its Secret
Surrealism and Working-Class Emancipation
From life I still expect that overwhelming experience
Beware Domestic Objects!
Nancy Cunard
How Come, White Man?
The Scottsboro Case
A Trip to Harlem
Simone Yoyotte
Pale Blue Line in a Forced Episode
Half-Season
Greta Knutson
Foreign Land
Lise Deharme
The Empty Cage
The Little Girl of the Black Forest
Denise Bellon, Gala Dalí, Nusch Eluard, Yolande Oliviero
Experimental Research: On the Irrational Knowledge of the Object: The Crystal Ball of the Seers
Maruja Mallo
Surrealism as Manifest in My Work
Meret Oppenheim
Where Is the Wagon Going?
If You Say the Right Word, I Can Sing...
Anyone That Sees Her White Fingers...
Jacqueline Lamba
A Revolutionary Approach to Life and the World
Gisèle Prassinos
Arrogant Hair
The Ghost of Chateaubriand
Toyen
A Community of Ethical Views
Alice Rahon
Four Poems from On the Bare Ground
Despair
Hourglass Lying Down
Valentine Penrose
There Is the Fire
The Datura the Serpent
To a Woman to a Path
Sheila Legge
I Have Done My Best For You
Eileen Agar
Am I a Surrealist?
Mary Low
Women and the Spanish Revolution
Marcelle Ferry
You Came down from the Mountains...
When He Went Away...
The One Seated on the Stones of Cheops...
Frenzy, Sweet Little Child, You Sleep...
Leonora Carrington
The Sand Camel
Grace Pailthorpe
What We Put in Prison
The Scientific Aspect of Surrealism
Surrealist Art
On the Importance of Fantasy Life
Hélène Vanel
Poetry and Dance
Ithell Colquhoun
What Do I Need to Paint a Picture?
Jeanne Megnen
The Noise Will Start Tomorrow
3. Neither Your War Nor Your Peace: The Surrealist International, 1940-1945
Introduction: Women in the Surrealist Diaspora: First Principles and New Beginnings
Suzanne Césaire
André Breton, Poet
Discontent of a Civilization
1943: Surrealism and Us
The Domain of the Marvelous
Mary Low
Perchance to Dream
Women and Love through Private Property
Frida Kahlo
I Paint My Own Reality
From Her Journal
Lucie Thésée
Beautiful as...
The Buckets in My Head...
Where Will the Earth Fall?
Leonora Carrington
Down Below
Régine Raufast
Photography and Image
Laurence Iché
Scissors Strokes by the Clock...
I Prefer Your Uneasiness Like a Dark Lantern...
Unpublished Correspondence
The Philosophers' Stone
Gertrude Pape
The Lake
Eardrops from Babylon
Susy Hare
Complaint for a Sorcerer
Sonia Sekula
Womb
Meret Oppenheim
Round the World with the Rumpus God....
Ithell Colquhoun
"Everything Found on Land Is Found in the Sea"
Water-Stone of the Wise
Emmy Bridgwater
On the Line
Back to the First Bar
The Journey
The Birds
Edith Rimmington
The Growth at the Break
The Sea-Gull
Alice Rahon
Pointed Out Like the Stars...
Little Epidermis
Sublimated Mercury
The Appellants
Ferns in a Hollow of Absence...
The Sleeping Woman
Eva Sulzer
Butterfly Dreams
Amerindian Art
Jacqueline Johnson
The Paintings of Alice Rahon Paalen
The Earth
Ida Kar
I Chose Photography
Ikbal El Alailly
Introduction to Vertu de l'Allemagne [The Virtue of Germany]
4. Surrealism versus the Cold War, 1946-1959
Introduction: Regroupment and Occultation: Women in the Surrealist Underground in the 1950s
Thérèse Renaud
I Lay My Head
Françoise Sullivan
Dance and Automatism
Iréne Hamoir
Pearl
Aria
The Procession
Emmy Bridgwater, Ithell Colquhoun, Iréne Hamoir, and Edith Rimmington
Surrealist Inquiry: What Do You Hate Most?
Lise Deharme
I Didn't Know Gertrude Stein
Maria Martins
I Am the Tropical Night's High Noon
Art, Liberation, and Peace
Helen Phillips
The Image: Recognition of a Moment
Vera Hérold
The Big L
Gisèle Prassinos
Peppermint Tower in Praise of Greedy Little Girls
Ithell Colquhoun
The Mantic Stain: Surrealism and Automatism
Dorothea Tanning
Legend
Nora Mitrani
Scandal with a Secret Face
"Blacker Than Black. . ."
About Cats and Magnolias
Poetry, Freedom of Being
On Slaves, Suffragettes, and the Whip
Concupiscence and Scandal: Definitions from the Succinct Lexicon of Eroticism
Valentine Penrose
I Dream
Beautiful or Ugly It Doesn't Matter
Jacqueline Johnson
Taking a Sight 1951
Alice Rahon
Painter and Magician
Jacqueline Senard
Reason and Safety Factors
Cat=Clover
Polar
Elisa Breton
One in the Other
Elisa Breton, Anne Segbers, and Toyen
Surrealist Inquiry: Would You Open the Door?
Joyce Mansour
Into the Red Velvet
Lovely Monster
Practical Advice for Waiting
To Come, Possession, Prick Tease: Definitions from the Succinct Lexicon of Eroticism
Meret Oppenheim
Automatism at a Crossroads
I Have to Write Down the Black Words
Judit Reigl
Points of Departure for a New Revolt
Isabel Meyrelles
Night Words
Anneliese Hager
Of the Poison of Dreams
The Blue Spell
Automatic Dream
Drahomira Vandas
Light Throws Shadows
An Egg Hatches Out a Flame
Rain Man
Olga Orozco
Twilight (Between Dog and Wolf)
Blanca Varela
Dance Card
Marianne van Hirtum
In Those Rooms...
Abandon, Meeting, Orgasm, Seduce, Vice: Definitions from the Succinct Lexicon of Eroticism
Leonora Carrington
Comments on The Temptation of St. Anthony
On Magic Art: A Conversation, 1996
Kay Sage
Painter and Writer
An Observation
The Window
Chinoiserie
Fragrance
Mimi Parent
Depraved Person, License, Masturbation, Voyeur: Definitions from the Succinct Lexicon of Eroticism
Sonia Sekula
Notes from a Journal: The Occurrence of Meeting a Face Contra a Face
Remedios Varo
A Recipe: How to Produce Erotic Dreams
5. The Making of "May '68" and Its Sequels
Introduction: Women in the Surrealist Resurgence of the 1960s and 1970s
Nora Mitrani
In Defense of Surrealism
Nelly Kaplan
Memoirs of a Lady Sheet Diviner
At the Women Warriors' Table
Enough or Still More
All Creation Is Androgynous: An Interview
Nicole Espagnol
Female Socket
Heartstopping
The Conclusion Is Not Drawn
The Wind Turns
Annie Le Brun
Introduction to Drop Everything!
Giovanna
Where Are We in Relation to Surrealism?
Baking Chocolate and Dialectics
What Do I Know...
Therapy
Monique Charbonel
It's a Wonder
Unica Zürn
Lying in Ambush
Elisabeth Lenk
Surrealism: A Liberating and Catalyzing Element in Germany Today
Automatic Text for Anne Ethuin
Penelope Rosemont
Passage
Candle
Rising Asleep
Joyce Mansour
A Mango
Night in the Shape of a Bison
Ten to One to No
Wild Glee from Elsewhere
Absolute Divergence: The International Surrealist Exhibition, 1965-1966
Mimi Parent
Are You a Surrealist?
Marianne van Hirtum
The Future of Surrealism: Response to an Inquiry
While We Spend Our Lives Ironing...
And I Shall Be the Mouth of Copper...
The Naked Truth
Vampiro Nox
Surrealism: Rising Sign
Anne Ethuin
Legend
Isabel Meyrelles
I Will Tell You During the Walk...
Tyger, Tyger
Luiza Neto Jorge
Another Genealogy
"Monument to Birds" (Max Ernst)
Fable
The Force of Gravity
Sphericity: Ferocity
Alejandra Pizarnik
Caroline von Günderode
In a Copy of Les Chants de Maldoror
Leila Ferraz
Secrets of Surrealist Magic Art
My Love, I Speak to You of a Love
Rikki Ducornet
My Special Madness
Necromancy
Dark Star, Black Star
Machete
Clean
Nancy Joyce Peters
To the Death of Mirrors
General Strike
Nelly Kaplan's Néa: Woman and Eroticism in Film
Alice Farley
Notes toward a Surrealist Dance
Jayne Cortez
Consultation
Feathers
In the Line of Duty
Make Ifa
Say It
Haifa Zangana
Can We Disturb These Living Coffins?
A Symbol of Sin and Evil Thoughts: Introduction to Ibn Hazm Al-Andalusi
Hilary Booth
Their Games and Ours: A Note on Time-Travelers' Potlatch
University of Texas Press, 1998 eISBN: 978-0-292-75849-0 Cloth: 978-0-292-77087-4 Paper: 978-0-292-77088-1
Beginning in Paris in the 1920s, women poets, essayists, painters, and artists in other media have actively collaborated in defining and refining surrealism's basic project—achieving a higher, open, and dynamic consciousness, from which no aspect of the real or the imaginary is rejected. Indeed, few artistic or social movements can boast as many women forebears, founders, and participants—perhaps only feminism itself. Yet outside the movement, women's contributions to surrealism have been largely ignored or simply unknown.
This anthology, the first of its kind in any language, displays the range and significance of women's contributions to surrealism. Letting surrealist women speak for themselves, Penelope Rosemont has assembled nearly three hundred texts by ninety-six women from twenty-eight countries. She opens the book with a succinct summary of surrealism's basic aims and principles, followed by a discussion of the place of gender in the movement's origins. She then organizes the book into historical periods ranging from the 1920s to the present, with introductions that describe trends in the movement during each period. Rosemont also prefaces each surrealist's work with a brief biographical statement.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Affiliated with the Surrealist Group in Paris in the 1960s, Penelope Rosemont is a Chicago poet and painter.
REVIEWS
This is a very fine volume; it is inclusive, superbly researched, and the introductions are clearly written. . . . It should become a standard text of surrealism.
— Stephen Eric Bronner, Professor of Political Science and Comparative Literature, Rutgers University
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: All My Names Know Your Leap: Surrealist Women and Their Challenge
Notes on Individuals Frequently Cited in This Anthology
1. The First Women Surrealists, 1924-1929
Introduction: The Women of La Révolution surréaliste
Renée Gauthier
Dream: I Am in a Field...
Simone Kahn
Surrealist Text: This Took Place in the Springtime...
The Exquisite Corpses
Denise Levy
Surrealist Text: I Went into a Green Song...
Surrealist Text: Ivory Blue and Shady Satin...
Nancy Cunard
Surrealist Manifestation at the Diaghilev Ballet
The Beginnings of the Surrealist Revolution
Surrealism, Ethnography, and Revolution
Nadja
The Blue Wind
Fanny Beznos
I Go, the Wind Pushing Me Along
Purity! Purity! Purity!
Suzanne Muzard
On Love: Reply to an Inquiry
My Passage in Surrealism
Valentine Penrose
When It Comes to Love: Response to an Inquiry
Suzanne Muzard, Elsie Houston, and Jeannette Ducrocq Tanguy
Surrealist Games
2. In the Service of Revolution, 1930-1939
Introduction: Women and Surrealism in the Thirties
Claude Cabun
Captive Balloon
The Invisible Adventure
Poetry Keeps Its Secret
Surrealism and Working-Class Emancipation
From life I still expect that overwhelming experience
Beware Domestic Objects!
Nancy Cunard
How Come, White Man?
The Scottsboro Case
A Trip to Harlem
Simone Yoyotte
Pale Blue Line in a Forced Episode
Half-Season
Greta Knutson
Foreign Land
Lise Deharme
The Empty Cage
The Little Girl of the Black Forest
Denise Bellon, Gala Dalí, Nusch Eluard, Yolande Oliviero
Experimental Research: On the Irrational Knowledge of the Object: The Crystal Ball of the Seers
Maruja Mallo
Surrealism as Manifest in My Work
Meret Oppenheim
Where Is the Wagon Going?
If You Say the Right Word, I Can Sing...
Anyone That Sees Her White Fingers...
Jacqueline Lamba
A Revolutionary Approach to Life and the World
Gisèle Prassinos
Arrogant Hair
The Ghost of Chateaubriand
Toyen
A Community of Ethical Views
Alice Rahon
Four Poems from On the Bare Ground
Despair
Hourglass Lying Down
Valentine Penrose
There Is the Fire
The Datura the Serpent
To a Woman to a Path
Sheila Legge
I Have Done My Best For You
Eileen Agar
Am I a Surrealist?
Mary Low
Women and the Spanish Revolution
Marcelle Ferry
You Came down from the Mountains...
When He Went Away...
The One Seated on the Stones of Cheops...
Frenzy, Sweet Little Child, You Sleep...
Leonora Carrington
The Sand Camel
Grace Pailthorpe
What We Put in Prison
The Scientific Aspect of Surrealism
Surrealist Art
On the Importance of Fantasy Life
Hélène Vanel
Poetry and Dance
Ithell Colquhoun
What Do I Need to Paint a Picture?
Jeanne Megnen
The Noise Will Start Tomorrow
3. Neither Your War Nor Your Peace: The Surrealist International, 1940-1945
Introduction: Women in the Surrealist Diaspora: First Principles and New Beginnings
Suzanne Césaire
André Breton, Poet
Discontent of a Civilization
1943: Surrealism and Us
The Domain of the Marvelous
Mary Low
Perchance to Dream
Women and Love through Private Property
Frida Kahlo
I Paint My Own Reality
From Her Journal
Lucie Thésée
Beautiful as...
The Buckets in My Head...
Where Will the Earth Fall?
Leonora Carrington
Down Below
Régine Raufast
Photography and Image
Laurence Iché
Scissors Strokes by the Clock...
I Prefer Your Uneasiness Like a Dark Lantern...
Unpublished Correspondence
The Philosophers' Stone
Gertrude Pape
The Lake
Eardrops from Babylon
Susy Hare
Complaint for a Sorcerer
Sonia Sekula
Womb
Meret Oppenheim
Round the World with the Rumpus God....
Ithell Colquhoun
"Everything Found on Land Is Found in the Sea"
Water-Stone of the Wise
Emmy Bridgwater
On the Line
Back to the First Bar
The Journey
The Birds
Edith Rimmington
The Growth at the Break
The Sea-Gull
Alice Rahon
Pointed Out Like the Stars...
Little Epidermis
Sublimated Mercury
The Appellants
Ferns in a Hollow of Absence...
The Sleeping Woman
Eva Sulzer
Butterfly Dreams
Amerindian Art
Jacqueline Johnson
The Paintings of Alice Rahon Paalen
The Earth
Ida Kar
I Chose Photography
Ikbal El Alailly
Introduction to Vertu de l'Allemagne [The Virtue of Germany]
4. Surrealism versus the Cold War, 1946-1959
Introduction: Regroupment and Occultation: Women in the Surrealist Underground in the 1950s
Thérèse Renaud
I Lay My Head
Françoise Sullivan
Dance and Automatism
Iréne Hamoir
Pearl
Aria
The Procession
Emmy Bridgwater, Ithell Colquhoun, Iréne Hamoir, and Edith Rimmington
Surrealist Inquiry: What Do You Hate Most?
Lise Deharme
I Didn't Know Gertrude Stein
Maria Martins
I Am the Tropical Night's High Noon
Art, Liberation, and Peace
Helen Phillips
The Image: Recognition of a Moment
Vera Hérold
The Big L
Gisèle Prassinos
Peppermint Tower in Praise of Greedy Little Girls
Ithell Colquhoun
The Mantic Stain: Surrealism and Automatism
Dorothea Tanning
Legend
Nora Mitrani
Scandal with a Secret Face
"Blacker Than Black. . ."
About Cats and Magnolias
Poetry, Freedom of Being
On Slaves, Suffragettes, and the Whip
Concupiscence and Scandal: Definitions from the Succinct Lexicon of Eroticism
Valentine Penrose
I Dream
Beautiful or Ugly It Doesn't Matter
Jacqueline Johnson
Taking a Sight 1951
Alice Rahon
Painter and Magician
Jacqueline Senard
Reason and Safety Factors
Cat=Clover
Polar
Elisa Breton
One in the Other
Elisa Breton, Anne Segbers, and Toyen
Surrealist Inquiry: Would You Open the Door?
Joyce Mansour
Into the Red Velvet
Lovely Monster
Practical Advice for Waiting
To Come, Possession, Prick Tease: Definitions from the Succinct Lexicon of Eroticism
Meret Oppenheim
Automatism at a Crossroads
I Have to Write Down the Black Words
Judit Reigl
Points of Departure for a New Revolt
Isabel Meyrelles
Night Words
Anneliese Hager
Of the Poison of Dreams
The Blue Spell
Automatic Dream
Drahomira Vandas
Light Throws Shadows
An Egg Hatches Out a Flame
Rain Man
Olga Orozco
Twilight (Between Dog and Wolf)
Blanca Varela
Dance Card
Marianne van Hirtum
In Those Rooms...
Abandon, Meeting, Orgasm, Seduce, Vice: Definitions from the Succinct Lexicon of Eroticism
Leonora Carrington
Comments on The Temptation of St. Anthony
On Magic Art: A Conversation, 1996
Kay Sage
Painter and Writer
An Observation
The Window
Chinoiserie
Fragrance
Mimi Parent
Depraved Person, License, Masturbation, Voyeur: Definitions from the Succinct Lexicon of Eroticism
Sonia Sekula
Notes from a Journal: The Occurrence of Meeting a Face Contra a Face
Remedios Varo
A Recipe: How to Produce Erotic Dreams
5. The Making of "May '68" and Its Sequels
Introduction: Women in the Surrealist Resurgence of the 1960s and 1970s
Nora Mitrani
In Defense of Surrealism
Nelly Kaplan
Memoirs of a Lady Sheet Diviner
At the Women Warriors' Table
Enough or Still More
All Creation Is Androgynous: An Interview
Nicole Espagnol
Female Socket
Heartstopping
The Conclusion Is Not Drawn
The Wind Turns
Annie Le Brun
Introduction to Drop Everything!
Giovanna
Where Are We in Relation to Surrealism?
Baking Chocolate and Dialectics
What Do I Know...
Therapy
Monique Charbonel
It's a Wonder
Unica Zürn
Lying in Ambush
Elisabeth Lenk
Surrealism: A Liberating and Catalyzing Element in Germany Today
Automatic Text for Anne Ethuin
Penelope Rosemont
Passage
Candle
Rising Asleep
Joyce Mansour
A Mango
Night in the Shape of a Bison
Ten to One to No
Wild Glee from Elsewhere
Absolute Divergence: The International Surrealist Exhibition, 1965-1966
Mimi Parent
Are You a Surrealist?
Marianne van Hirtum
The Future of Surrealism: Response to an Inquiry
While We Spend Our Lives Ironing...
And I Shall Be the Mouth of Copper...
The Naked Truth
Vampiro Nox
Surrealism: Rising Sign
Anne Ethuin
Legend
Isabel Meyrelles
I Will Tell You During the Walk...
Tyger, Tyger
Luiza Neto Jorge
Another Genealogy
"Monument to Birds" (Max Ernst)
Fable
The Force of Gravity
Sphericity: Ferocity
Alejandra Pizarnik
Caroline von Günderode
In a Copy of Les Chants de Maldoror
Leila Ferraz
Secrets of Surrealist Magic Art
My Love, I Speak to You of a Love
Rikki Ducornet
My Special Madness
Necromancy
Dark Star, Black Star
Machete
Clean
Nancy Joyce Peters
To the Death of Mirrors
General Strike
Nelly Kaplan's Néa: Woman and Eroticism in Film
Alice Farley
Notes toward a Surrealist Dance
Jayne Cortez
Consultation
Feathers
In the Line of Duty
Make Ifa
Say It
Haifa Zangana
Can We Disturb These Living Coffins?
A Symbol of Sin and Evil Thoughts: Introduction to Ibn Hazm Al-Andalusi
Hilary Booth
Their Games and Ours: A Note on Time-Travelers' Potlatch