“Le cadavre exquis boira le vin nouveau”

These  were  the  words  written in Paris on a  piece of paper  in 1925 at the 54 rue du Chateau.  A  cartel of renegade thinkers gathered nearly nightly with the shared  and  expressed objective of liberating  the  subconscious  for the good of all humanity and experiencing as much   pleasure as possible along the journey.  They succeeded.  The  phrase  translates  to “The exquisite corpse will drink the new wine” and appeared with a number of other phrases generated by the process of Spontaneous Automatism by a group of creative thinkers who were thinking together.  A Surrealist tool of conscious and subconsciousness unification was born and named; she is now entering societal puberty.

The  practitioners  of  Surrealism believed that since  the  Exquisite Corpse  poems represented a work of art that required more than one mind, they had  discovered a way  of fully  tapping into and liberating  the  mind’s ‘relativistic and creative capacity’ while  holding the rational intellect in abeyance.  In the final analysis, Sigmund Freud and Jaques Lacan, two of the most influential thinkers in the history of western civilization, would confirm this as fact.  Museums  all over the world  have on display examples of their  creative triumph, while history has many illustrations of the abeyance being unleashed.

 

A few phrases selected by Andre’ Breton in 1948 that verbally illustrate the power and potential of the subconscious.

The completely black light lays down day and night the powerless suspension to do any good.

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The anaemic young girl got the waxed mannequins turned red.

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Monsieur Poincaré, if you want, kisses on the mouth, with a peacock feather,

in an ardour I never saw before, the late Monsieur de Borniol.

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The made-up shrimp hardly enlightens some double kisses.

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Rue Mouffetard, love-shivering, amuses the chimera who shoots at us.

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The very moved Pathos, thanks singing the bullet of chopped vetiver between Line and Prâline.

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Caraco is a beautiful whore: lazy as a doormouse and glass-gloved for doing nothing,

she strings pearls with the turkeys of the farce.

 

Surrealist Poems Excerpted From: “Le Cadavre Exquis: Son Exaltation”

Catalogue: La Dragonne, Galerie Nina Dausset, Paris, 

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