Excerpts from Surrealism and Us

1943, Suzanne Cesaire http://www.blythe.org/nytransfer-subs/2000rc/%5BBRC-NEWS%5D_A_Poetics_of_Anticolonialism

Surrealism lives! And it is young, ardent, and revolutionary. In 1943 Surreallism surely remains, as always, an activity whos aim is to explore and express systematically--and thus neutralize--the forbidden zones of the human mind, an activity which desperately tries to give humankind the means of reducing the old antimonies, those "true alembics" of suffering," and the only force enabling us to recover "this unique, original faculty, traces of which are retained by the primitive and the child, and which lifts the curse of the insurmountable barrier between inner and outer worlds."

What does Breton ask of the most clearsighted spirits of out time? Nothing less than the courage to embark on an adventure which--who knows?--may well prove fatal, but from one which can hope--and that is essential--to attain total conquest of mind.

Our surrealism will supply this rising people with a punch from its very depths. Our surrealism will enable us to finally transcend the sordid antinomies of the present: whites/Blacks, Europeans/Africans, civilized/savages--at last rediscovering the magic power of the mahoulis, drawn directly from living sources. Colonial idiocy will be purified in the welder's blue flame. We shall recover our value as metal, our cutting edge of steel, our unprecedented communions.

Surrealism, tightrope of our hope.