Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Poetry and Art

SABCL - Volume 27

Part 2. On His Own and Others’ Poetry
Section 2. On Poets and Poetry
Twentieth-Century Poetry

Surrealism [1]

What the deuce is this Surrealism? I gather Baudelaire was its father, and Mallarmé his son.

Surrealism is a new phrase invented only the other day and I am not really sure what it conveys. According to some it is a dream poetry making a deeper truth, a deeper reality than the surface reality. I don’t know if this is the whole theory or only one side or phase of the practice. Baudelaire as a surrealist is a novel idea, nobody ever called him that before. Mallarmé, Verlaine and others used to be classed as impressionist poets: sometimes as symbolists. But now the surrealists seem to claim descent from these poets.

12 February 1937