Umour vs. the debraining machine.

• Author: Burke, R.
• Position: Jacques Vache and the Roots of Surrealism, Including Vache's War Letters & Other Writings - Book review

Jacques Vache and the Roots of Surrealism, including Vache's War Letters & Other Writings. By Franklin Rosemont, Chicago: Charles H. Kerr Publishing Co., 2008, 396 pp. $20 paper. ISBN 978-0-88286-321-4 (0-88286-321-5)

The most revolutionary cultural, philosophical and political current to emerge from the early 20th century was surrealism. Frequently misrepresented by art historians as a mere "style" of art or as a defunct movement (though they never seem to agree on the date of its "death") surrealism was, and remains, a total assault on the entire reality principle of capitalist society. In Jacques Vache and the Roots of Surrealism Chicago Surrealist Group poet Franklin Rosemont provides us a glimpse into one of the most elusive and least documented phases of the origins of the movement.

Launched in 1924 with the publication of the first Manifesto of Surrealism by poet/theoretician Andre Breton, and influenced by the discoveries of Freud, surrealism sought to explore the depths of the unconscious mind and the world of dreams. The movement quickly gained the membership and support of some of the greatest artists of the 20th century. Rejecting most of the heritage of Western civilization, which had recently plunged into the carnage of the First World War, surrealism sought inspiration in so-called primitive and eastern cultures which were the victims of colonialism and imperialism.

A decidedly political side emerged when the surrealists declared themselves Marxists and joined the early French Communist Party. The rise of Stalinism quickly led to the exit of the surrealist group from the party and their joining with Trotsky's Left Opposition. After World War Two surrealism's political trajectory moved in the direction of anarchism, left Marxism, and the utopian socialism of Charles Fourier. When Franklin and Penelope Rosemont visited France in 1966 to meet with the Paris Surrealist Group, Breton expressed approval of the button worn by Penelope which declared, "I am an enemy of the state."

The subject of Jacques Vache and the Roots of Surrealism is the influence that Vache had upon Breton and the early surrealists. A medical student at the time, Breton was serving as a nurse in the French army when he met Vache in a military hospital where the latter was recovering from a leg would. A friendship quickly emerged which led to an exchange of letters, later published in 1919 as Vache's War Letters recognized today as one of the seminal surrealist...