Surrealism and the Occult: Occultism and Western Esotericism in the Work and Movement of André Breton
Language: English
Pages: 278
ISBN: 9089646361
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Alchemy: Science of the Cosmos, Science of the Soul
The Star in the West: A Critical Essay Upon the Works of Aleister Crowley
House of Darkness House of Light: The True Story, Volume 2
Christian theosophy and Illuminism, for instance.114 Reception, appropriation and invention of tradition are recurring processes in this construct that is esotericism, from the Renaissance reception of neo-platonic ideas, as well as scholastic and Islamic thought and Gnosticism, to the historically related currents in turn developing out of that. Scholarship usually extends ‘Western esotericism’ into modernity and even the present day, meaning that movements such as Spiritualism, modern.
Names can, in fact, be found meaningful within that context and ‘Erutarettil,’ therefore, does highlight another possible avenue for the surrealists to encounter occult ideas: Romanticism and Symbolism. Surrealist heroes such as Rimbaud, Nerval, Hugo and Baudelaire, among others, were interested in the occult currents and movements of their time, incorporating elements of it in their work in one form or other. 30 Their works served the surrealists as a continuing source of inspiration, and it.
Volumes to the topic just after the war.45 In Apertures, 18 Surrealism and the Occult the 1947 addition to his Arcanum 17, as in the later Conversations, Breton listed further sources: Nerval, poète alchimique by G. LeBreton, Jean Richer’s studies on Nerval and occultism, Albert Béguin’s book on Nerval and his article ‘Poetry and Occultism’, and studies by George Blin on Baudelaire and Jacques Gengoux on Rimbaud, both elaborating on the occult in their respective poetry.46 During the 1940s.
May point to androgyny. The altar as a whole, dedicated as it is to the Bird Superior, pays homage to Ernst, another surrealist who had come to consider himself a magician in the early 1940s.52 On the altar stood a hawk-like sculpture holding a woman in its claws: bird-man catches, and possibly consumes, Woman. Also, a statue of the virgin and child, referring to Virgo, perhaps symbolising Woman’s nurturing powers as well,53 but certainly also a nod to one of Ernst’s more (in)famous early.
Occultism. Initiation ‘by means of poetry and art’ is ‘an initiation to which the latest research on Hugo, Nerval, Rimbaud and others [studies of Viatte et al.] gives us sound reason to adapt the patterns inherited from the esoteric tradition.’73 It becomes clear that Breton did plan the initiation of his show to be an initiation in an esoteric sense too. He chose the occult patterning device he had become most familiar with, the tarot, for the most prominent position. Throughout the relevant.