Communicating Vessels

For about a decade, the writings of André Breton (1896-1966) have become increasingly translated into English from the original French. It is clear his ideas hold relevance for a wide audience among English speakers of the 21st century. As with his view of dreams, Communicating Vessels (1932) is layered upon layers of interwoven levels of reality. Talk of dreams becomes descriptions of surrealistic paintings, which in turn transform into the revolution. Beginning his focus on the nature of dreams, he briefly treats continental dream analysts of the 19th and early 20th century, some of who are relatively obscure to us today. In this study, he inevitably speaks of the most influential of these thinkers, Freud, saying, while the doctor analyses the sexual symbols of numerous subjects in his The Interpretation of Dreams, he omits such details in the analysis of his own dreams. Breton sets about to correct this by example in Communicating Vessels. For his efforts, Breton drew the attention of Freud himself, whose letters to the author, Breton included in his appendix to Communicating Vessels. These letters are translated by Breton from German into French and we can only trust the reliability of his pen. While collegial in tone, Freud takes exception to a remark Breton makes concerning an alleged bibliographical omission in The Interpretation of Dreams, claiming the oversight was the fault of a later editor. While apparently unconcerned about the larger charge of intentionally omitting the content of his own dreams, Freud is clearly concerned about the bibliographical data. The following day, he writes to Breton again further clarifying the details of that problem. More interesting from the standpoint of the reader of Breton is Freud's comment in one letter, "Although I have received many testimonies of the interest that you and your friends show for my research, I am not able to clarify for myself what surrealism is and what it wants. Perhaps I am not destined to understand it, I who am so distant from art" (150). Breton's translators feel Freud's tone throughout is diminutive, beginning the correspondence, "Rest assured that I shall read carefully your little book" (149). If so, there may be a concealed massage in Freud's professed inability to understand surrealism. Freud may be saying: you artists claim to represent ideas from my work but 1) you do not; 2) my work is far superior to the frivolous concerns of artists; and 3) the positions of power are established in the fact that you know my works but I don't know yours. If, on the other hand, we take Freud's statement at face value, are we to believe he cannot understand the dreamlike confusion portrayed in such works as The Great Masturbator by Salvador Dali, a plate of which Breton includes in Communicating Vessels? To understand what surrealism is and what it wants beyond representing dream-thoughts, one needs only to read through Communicating Vessels. While Dali and others furnished the pa