31 
without it being possible to discover in them a previous deter 
mination. These phrases, remarkably pictured and with a syn 
tax perfectly correct, have appeared to me to be poetic elements 
of the first order. At first I was content merely to hold them, 
but later Soupault and I tried to create in ourselves the state in 
which they could be produced.” 
From the application of this discovery comes a curious book 
by Breton and Soupault, “Les Champs Magnetiques.” Having 
no right to choose some sentences rather than others, I quote at 
random:—“We have been compelled to visit cheap factories of 
dreams and shops filled with obscure dramas. There was a mag 
nificent cinema where the roles were taken by old friends. We 
lost sight of them and always found them again in the same 
place. They gave us rotten dainties and we told them our vague 
joys. Their eyes fixed upon us, they spoke; can one really re 
member those ignoble words, their lulling songs? We have 
given them our heart which was only a pale song.” 
I am often tempted to speak of humanism, of knowledge of 
others and of ourselves, a mania for which I ask pardon; truly 
lines like these make us feel more, tell us more of certain person 
alities than any novel, even the most advanced. Professor Freud 
by the psychoanalytic method tries to uncover that which we 
force back into our unconscious. Superrealism claims to open 
wide the doors; and because it really does open them, there is no 
constraint; these mysterious words arise without affected roman 
ticism, without calculated pose. They have multiple reflections 
and it is difficult not to be carried away by their spontaneous and 
free current. I mean that superrealism, product of an absolute 
intellectual emancipation, distinguishes whomsoever has the 
courage of wishing to profit by it. This discipline (discipline, 
I could remark, parodying Tzara, because the absence of disci 
pline is but another discipline) is that of the superman whom 
Nietzche in spite of his wish did not succeed in finding; its 
grandeur can not be denied; far removed from grandiloquence, 
it permits all the elements of the superreal individual to sing 
each its own song. Philippe Soupault, for example, loves gay- 
ety, wishes to amuse himself by the way—