In terms of finding a wild, uninhibited introduction to the radical and mindspinning worlds of Breton and friends I can assure you that this is a challenging but rewarding read. However, take note that those who feel prose must have structure and communicate linear thought, please leave your textbook at the door. This is work that burrows deep into the subconcious and festers like a tick.

If you are even remotely interested in fantasy that is more than just a bunch of wizards and dragons and cliches, then read this book if you can find it. It combines Surrealism, revolution, the power of dreams... The main character must find himself, realize who he is and what he wants out of life, while his friend, the historical father of Surrealism Andre Breton, tries to influence his writing and personality. But he has met a strange woman from the future, and followers her to the Paris Revolution of 1968, and eventually to the revolution to end all revolutions. A great mixture of historical characters and fictional characters. The writing is consise and beautiful, saying just enough for the imagery to come alive.

Toiled over by Zavatsky and Rogow, this book provides the reader a peek into the window of the surreal. The images that Breton creates are brilliant and pulsating, and completely accessible. At times I laughed out loud, other times I wanted to cry, Breton was speaking so close to my heart and mind. I highly recommend it especially on trains and planes.

Andre Breton's Mad Love is truly a work of art.Written in a surrealist manner it celebrates love and lovers. It finds beauty in such ordinary things such as iron masks, spoons, and trees. Never has there been another book that promotes romanticism such as this. Bravo Breton! You have made me proud to be a person in a monogomous relationship. It is a true celebration of the heart and of the soul.

This beautifully produced book is certain to become a collectors item and represents a good investment not only for book collectors but for anyone who really cares about literature.This represents Breton at his most accessible and personal and is a delight from start to finish. it is published in paris by the only independent literary publisher following in the tradition of the lost generation; another reason to support this book. Only a handful of copies made it for sale in the USA and Breton has no better interpreter than Polizzotti.

Most of these poems are purely surrealistic, and some others include political and social statements or hints, the "Ode to Fourier" being the most important of these ones. Charles Fourier, a Frenchman from the XIX century, was the creator of "Utopic socialism", which viewed Socialism's mission as the building of a completely new civilization, and not the reform of the existing ones. Breton and most of the Surrealistic movement were politically opinionated, and supporters of Communist parties and Communism in general (although they never lived in a Communist society; much on the contrary, they enjoyed very much the advantages and comfort of the West, always indulgent with its hypocritical intellectuals).

But, beyond his political opinions, Breton was an extremely important poet and, I would say, a very enjoyable one. That is, if you enjoy poetry for the sake of poetry. In his purely poetical poems, you won't find clear or straightforward messages: it's just the flow of thought and feeling being automatically translated into the paper. The best ones are: "Fata Morgana", "Pleine Marge", "Les Etats Generales", and "Oubliés". These poems are not easy to read, but they are extremely creative in the best sense of the term. Onirical images, impossible, absurd, with passages and sentences of an incredible and totally unexpected beauty. I think that the best form to read them is to indulge in the wording and following it right through the end. You may reread later to better appreciate the images.

This book is about the intersection between art and revolutionary politics.In the 1930s the leading figures of the surrealist movement and a few other artists and writers tried to cut out some political space for artists who supported a revolutionary overturn of the system that birthed fascism and world war - capitalism .The same "globalized" capitalism that exists today, and which is marching toward fascism and world war all over again. In the 1930s, there was another challenge for would-be revolutionary artists : the obstacle of the mass
"Communist" parties which betrayed them and workers and farmers around the world in the interests of the "Soviet" bureaucrats headed by Stalin, which same bureaucracy stifled and suffocated all art and creativity inside the USSR.The struggle of those artists, led by Andre Breton and Diego Rivera, and their direct collaboration with the Russian revolutionary leader in exile Leon Trotsky, has rich lessons for those artists of all kinds who are already beginning to reject and revolt against the "globalized" capitalism of today. As well as those who will do so tommorow.

This book will give you a good understanding of the surrealist movement. You will read the artists' writings not only on this subject, but also their views on the important political questions of the day which they understood were tied to cultural questions. A photo display in the book gives you a sampling of surrealist works. There is also an excellent glossary of names that reveals the evolution of the surrealists in later years. You gain an appreciation for the international breadth of the movement. 'What is Surrealism?' is not just for art history students. Anyone wishing to gain a deeper understanding of the relationship between art and politics will be fascinated by collection of articles in this book.

Well, what a shock. A totally human, big, fat tome on an art form that I've never enjoyed. Makes understandable and useful for one's own life the surrealists' aim of dissolving the alienating barriers between thought and action, dream and consciousness, art and life. Their appreciation of Freud; their collaboration with communists, with Leon Trotsky; their rejection of fatherland, religion, family - all flowing from their determination to be part of the birth of a new world in which there would be no poets because all would make poetry. Fascinating section of documents including a brief homage to Hopi art, denunciation of Salvador Dali for being pro-fascist, support to the Algerian independence fight. Still don't enjoy the surrealists' work. But do enjoy them now.

Nadja is one of Breton's best works in the way that it portrays the male/female relationship within the surrealist movement. Nadja is both a source of entertainment and enlightenment for Breton, though I saw her more as another way of objectifying the female figure in surrealist work. I loved the description and concentration on Nadja's character. On the other hand, the first several chapters of the book are almost cumbersome to all who want to get into the 'meat' of the text (I found them interesting, but some of my colleagues didn't). One thing that I must say about this work is that I don't believe that it functions as a love story, though many people that review the text feel that it does. Instead, I see it more as an interesting snapshot of relationship issues (in a surreal light) but not necessarily love issues. Another masterful work by the leader of surrealism.

as soon as people see breton's name on a book, they immediately feel indignation and privately exclaim, "the dictator of surrealism!" what they don't seem to realize is that, despite being a flawed and somewhat ambivalent man, he probably had more passion in his pinky than they do in their entire body. "nadja" is simply one more delightful proof of breton's genius and his infallible flair for the surreal, the mysterious, the mystical, and everything that is profoundly divergent. in this tale of intrigue and obsession he travels the streets of paris with a ghostly, clearly insane young woman who calls herself nadja, which is the russian word for hope. the most captivating parts of the novel are the bizarre and surreal conversations he has with her. even though he found her incredibly fascinating and almost an ethereal enigma, things start to turn sour between them and breton grows bored with her. at the end of the novel, nadja is put into an asylum after the police are called because of her incessant screaming and apparently incoherent behavior, some of which suggested that she was living in a world of hallucinations and irrational fears. we do know that nadja was a real woman and not by means some fictitious creation of breton's, and we also know that she came to a somewhat unfortunate end. it may be true that breton's behavior and attitude of indifference and deliberate ignorance about her truly wretched fate (she died of cancer, insane and completely alone) is indeed nothing to admire, but those who put too much emphasis on this admittedly accurate fact forget that while he may in a sense have betrayed her, he also made a truly admirable effort to make the world see nadja and those like her as no one has seen them before, and immortalized her in a book that is absolutely unforgettable and breathtakingly beautiful. breton was a profoundly hopeful and truly revolutionary figure who exhorted humanity, even while the second world war raged and reaped it's devastating results universally on all of mankind, to recognize the miraculous and wondrous nature of our very existence, however 'absurd' or meaningless some felt it to be after the horrendous events of the twentieth century. it is true that he occasionally goes over the top with his optimism, but his iron will and determination to fight 'miserabilism', the philosophical justification of human misery, at all costs can only call forth our admiration. his exaltation of the imagination as the highest of human faculties and the sole organ of man that will allow him to attain felicity seems to be verified by direct, concrete experience of life. as we grow older and we come to realize that sensual pleasure is a big part of life but essentially empty and hollow, our inner lives (hopefully) become more vivid and we end up spending more and more time there. breton knows this and wants us to cultivate it to the highest degree possible. don't be fooled by the 'anti breton' rhetoric and take a dismissive attitude toward him, because you'll be missing out on some of the most fascinating books (to my mind) ever written.

Nadja has far more to offer than just a simple love story. Superficially it is an account of Breton's wandering through the streets of 1920s Paris with his eponymous mad heroine. Paris becomes a magical, fluid reality, peopled with sphinxes and shaped by extraordinary events and coincidences. But dig deeper and you will find a rewarding, if sometimes complex, commentary on time, space, memory and the city. Bearing in mind Breton's interest in psychoanalysis and Marxist revolution (in Nadja he even tells us of his purchase of Trotsky's latest work from the Humanite bookstore), the novel may be read as a conscious subversion of bourgeois conventions. Everything in Nadja, from the narrative to the intriguing photographs supplied by various surrealist photographers such as J.A. Boiffard, intervenes to challenge and disrupt conventional reality and the status quo. It seems to me that Nadja is all about the creation of alternative realities, a sur-reality. Some would call this Breton's form of escapism from the harsh realities of post-world-war Paris in the era of high capitalism, but Breton's surreal Paris always carries the promise of revolution and change. Nadja is a work that can be enjoyed on so many levels, and is definitely worth re-reading.

Though this edition is revised, a newer collection would be more practical since the advent of post-modern thinking with the likes of Pynchon, Barth, Barthelme, Gaddis, Hawkes, and Heller heading the movement.

This collection is bogged down by Breton's psychoanalytic readings in the author introductions and his grasping for authors and passages to lengthen the page count in order to have a sizable book.

Yet there are names which have long since been forgotten which, due to this collection, are sustained and might later be an aide in their reevaluation.

Highlights include: Grabbe, Allais, Baudelaire, L'Isle-Adam, Cros, Huysmans, Jarry, Rigaut.

This book is only for those who are studying the field and will be a bitter disappointment for anyone else, esp. people looking for a humor collection per se.

breton's eulogy of surrealist revolt is basically incarnated in this book, which is a collection of insane and eccentric (particularly lacenaire, murderer and poet) figures who, through absurd humor and surrealistic flights of the fantastic, cast serious (sometimes dangerous) doubts on the validity of the Reality Principle. The best in this collection is perhaps Benjamin Peret, the most uncompromising surrealist of them all. His work is completely recalcitrant to mundane reality, forcing it to become magical and, of course, surreal. Admittedly, some of these writers are difficult to penetrate, but the effort is certainly worth it. Jarry especially.

I want to vomit right now. Good.