Perruche, Mariane

A Fanciful Cogito in the Breton Dream - 2009.


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Since Descartes, the dreaming experience can be associated with the search of truth. In a sequence of five dreams, André Breton continues his thoughts about literature and writers : there is no more difference between dream and theory. As he is looking for his place as a surrealistic poet, he finds it throughout his dreaming whose strength comes from the enlightning of de Chirico’s painting Le cerveau de l’enfant. The picture and dreams explore the same enigma, the unconscious. Though he is highly influenced by the Freudian theory, Breton doesn’t interpret his dream, and lets the light come out from the dream itself. What idea of the unconscious can be drawn from this intense and even maybe clairvoyant experience of dreaming ?