André Breton (1896–1966)

Abstract

If You Please (1920), written by Andre Breton and his poet-novelist friend Philippe Soupault (1897—), is one of the earliest examples of automatic writing in theatre. This technique is defined by Breton as follows: ‘Pure psychic automatism by means of which it is hoped to express, either verbally or in writing, or in another manner, the real functioning of thought. Dictation of thought, in the absence of all control exercised by reason, outside of all aesthetic and moral preoccupation.’1 By freeing the unconscious of all restraints imposed upon it by society — the arbiter of logic, aesthetics, and ethics — consciousness is bypassed; words and images flow freely into the manifest world. Although not everything emerging from the subliminal world is worthy of inclusion in a play or poem, Breton considered it an ever-productive, virtually infallible source of riches and suggested that if the writer were not satisfied with the word, clause, sentence, or visualisation first transcribed, surely the next sequences would be of higher quality.2