Surrealist Metaphor: Frame Theory and Componential Analysis

Abstract

In his Second Manifesto of Surrealism of 1930, Breton stated that Arthur Rimbaud's expression, alchemy of the word (alchimie du verbe) should be taken literally. For the surrealists, this meant not only transforming language, but also changing reality through language. The catalyst for this transformation was to be the imagination, which, after the model of Rimbaud, was to be liberated by the long, immense, reasoned derangement of the senses. Only the mind trained in the surrealist mode of perception could learn to make the qualitative leap into the alchemist's age d'or in which the external world assumed the appearance of the poet's internal desire. Breton's theory of convulsive beauty in L'Amour fou underscores the paradox of the surrealist quest: the object, which becomes the focus for the poet's experience of convulsive beauty must fulfill three conditions: it must be discovered by chance (the magic of circumstances); it must answer in some veiled way to the poet's desire (so that he can, on reflection, understand its erotic attraction for him); it must combine contradictory attributes, for example, explosive/immobile, strength/fragility, animate/inanimate (Breton 1937:38-41). It is the third condition that is properly alchemical: the surrealist object in itself contains the transforming properties of metamorphosis, and is able to be one thing and another at the same time. Again, the inspiration is Rimbaud, who, in L'alchimie du verbe, spoke of the transformative powers of visual and verbal hallucination: