Why Magical Realism, pt 1: My Faith in Surrealism
I like the Surrealist aesthetic. A lot.
Local painters Emily Trovillion, Santiago Perez and Brandon Maldonado light my fire quite nicely. Among literary surrealists, the shoutouts could go on, but for demonstration, I’ll point at James Tate, Neruda’s early work, Shira Erlichman, Morris Stegosaurus, Benjamin Péret, Kenneth Patchen, and Breton.
But to say one has a faith in something means a reach deeper than aesthetics. I believe Surrealism can be a language of human contact. I’ve heard it said its purpose is to shock its audience awake. I’ve also heard the goal of the craft is to “surprise honestly.” In this way, I contend Surrealism is a literary1 approximation of a psychedelic experience. Not a description of the experience: an embodiment of it. A document that behaves unconsciously, and draws the reader/audience into its logic.
I also believe Surrealism can be used to speak across boundaries. As dreams are informed by countless social, cultural, economic (etc) reference points, as is Surrealist work.2 Which makes engaging with Surrealist art from another culture or time like inhabiting someone else’s dream. Intimate, sub-narrative, maybe even dangerous.
Let’s talk about sub-narrative a little more. Reader Coriana a few months back suggested I read an essay by Ursula Le Guin about narrative. Le Guin’s argument simplifies to this: narrative links images, thus aiding sanity. We receive images (in the literary sense) of our world, and without a story tying them together, they can be confounding at best, terrifying at worst. In one respect you could call narrative memory, but that’s (deliciously) dangerously inaccurate – narratives are invented all the time, with no semblance to remembered events. Let’s say that memory is a function of narrative.
When a poem comes to us in images, either without binding or held together with dream-logic, it’s… well, magical. The first Surrealists envisioned their genre as much as a statement of accessing Truth as a political engine, to thumb their noses at the upper-crust Romantics.3 Imagine what we could do with it as a tool for connecting people. An admission that traditional language is too rooted in our daily structures to break through, to make Sense to us.
Trouble is, Surrealism goes so far into that automatic world that it’s hard to maintain the connection. The string we unwind from the front door is fragile and far from long enough, or we can’t survive without rations. You can’t both enjoy an extended stay in the dream world and pay your bills. I read a poem that makes me want to renounce currency, move into the desert, and live on cactus and rattlesnakes for the rest of my days. …and I don’t move. Surrealism relegates itself to special places in our lives: a secret admission shared between lovers, a book we can’t stop writing.
All of which brings me to Magical Realism. It’s an inadequate term, and I’m not that fond of it, but it works. I believe Magical Realism is the square root of Surrealism. If we think of Surrealism as the negative numberline, I believe Magical Realism is the Imaginary numberline. It intersects the other two, and fuses them. And of course it was the South Americans who gave it to us, Borges, Márquez and the bunch. Leave it to those Sudamericanos to sublimate the invention of the Europeans. To locate and tap its endlessly sustainable soul.
Where’s all this going? Tune in soon for the exciting, dramatic and heart-pounding conclusion!
1 Literary for my purposes. Obviously, Surrealism has a lot of homes in a lot of genres.
2 As we don’t control the content of our dreams, and therefore can’t apologize for them, we do in our art, and are therefore accountable to it.
3 Nevermind Breton’s exclusive clubhouse mentality. That’s not the point.
Images:
1. Emily Travillion, Lilith
2. Jerry Uelsmann, Untitled 1
3. Brandon Maldonado, Circle of Life
I’m enjoying the mathematical metaphors you are using here to talk about the relationship of surrealism to magical realism. So, then, “surrealism can be a language of human contact” but goes so far into the automatic that the connection is sometimes lost. Hmm. I like this: “I’ve heard it said its purpose is to shock its audience awake. I’ve also heard the goal of the craft is to ‘surprise honestly.’” That shock, that connection – that is the experience I want from a poem. What I’m wondering about, as I’m thinking of all this: how does surrealism – or a surrealist moment in a poem – differ from a surprising metaphor? Is all surrealism metaphoric? – the lovely house with tree roots in the illustration has that quality, certainly, but maybe that’s because I can so easily make meaning, make sense, of it, while my appreciation of a more shocking or outré’ image might come from the fact that I don’t know what the hell it means, but it sure startles and is perhaps funny or just appealingly weird (and maybe some part of me sort of understands, but the work of meaning making is below/outside/underneath my rational, conscious capacities). These are good questions for me to have in my head.I appreciate this – and look forward to Part 2 – because I’ve been lucky enough to have been learning a bit about surrealism in writing – I’ve experienced recently two extremely generative workshops on the topic, one by Zach Kluckman, one by Ken Gurney. Plus, I’ve been enjoying the practicing poets in ABQ enacting surrealism – lots of inspiration and examples.Speaking of examples, I’m hoping for some in Part 2 or later – and the contextualizing/discussion of them (the using them to make meaning). They’ll both ground my understanding and perhaps confuse me fruitfully. Thanks for this!Patricia Gillikin
Hey Patricia!I’ve wondered the same, about all ‘honestly surprising’ metaphors. I think, like all movements, Surrealism was a formalization or codification of previous known wisdom. If we’re being generous, we could even call it an expansion of it.For examples, I suggest you check out some of the poets linked at the top of the post. I hesitate to get too into examples, as I don’t want these posts to go on interminably, but in this case I see your point. Examples to come in Part 2.
Adam, Like you, I am interested in surrealism, but in my case probably going back to gaping at Dali as a child in library books. Like Patricia, I await Part 2, and what you will bring up, however briefly, as examples. I am on with all the people you cite at the beginning of the post, except James Tate, whom I know gets cited as a surrealist – doesn’t work for me, though I like him and his work. I did have a very surrealist experience with him, though, back on Thursday, March 1st, 1973, during the occupation of Wounded Knee, when he was reading here, I mean surreal in the “this can’t be happening” sense.At the afterparty we learned that the major Native American Activist at UNM had been gunned down while trying to kidnap the horrible corrupt mayor of Gallup, who had just been named as a UNM regent. A lot of marijuana, I think maybe half of the people understood the import of what was happening. The next morning I was designated to pick up JT at his motel for breakfast, and he answered the door, um, scantily clad, I had a three-year-old in tow..He was apologetic and gracious. Enough.Thanks for your blog; I always learn something.