Walter Benjamin and Surrealism

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Waiter Benjaminand surrealismThe story of a revolutionary spellMichael Lowy

'Fascination' is the only term that does justice to theintensity of the feelings Waiter Benjamin experiencedwhen he discovered surrealism in 1926-27. His veryefforts to escape the spell of the movement foundedby Andre Breton and his friends are an expression ofthe same fascination. As we know, it was this discovery that gave birth to the 'Paris Arcades' project.Writing to Adorno in 1935, Benjamin describes thegenesis of the Passagenwerk, which was to preoccupyhim for the last thirteen years of his life, in thefollowing terms: It opens with Aragon - the paysande Paris. Evenings, lying in bed, I could never readmore than two to three pages by him because myheart started to pound so hard that I had to put thebook down.' 1

Benjamin stayed in Paris during the summer of1926, and again in the summer of 1927, after his tripto Moscow. t was probably at this time that he becameacquainted with Aragon's book (which was publishedin 1926) and with other surrealist writings. Why theimmediate attraction and the inner turmoil? The insightful account given by Gershom Scholem, who visitedBenjamin in Paris in 1927, sheds some light on thereasons for what he calls his friend's 'burning interest'in the surrealists: he found in them a certain numberof things that had suddenly come to him over theprevious years'. In other words, he 'read those periodicals in which Aragon and Breton proclaimed thingsthat coincided somewhere with his own deepest experience'.2 We shall see later what those 'ideas' were.

We do not know if Benjamin met Breton or othersurrealists at this time: there is nothing in his correspondence to suggest that he did so. On the other hand,according to Scholem (in his Foreword to theCorrespondence , he did exchange letters - now 'lost'- with the author of the Surrealist Manifesto.3 A trace

of this dicovery can - up to a point - be seen in thebook Benjamin published at this time: One-way Street(1928). So much so that Ernst Bloch thought fit todescribe it as a model for a surrealistic way of thinking'4 - a statement which is both greatly exaggeratedand, in the last analysis, inaccurate.

Benjamin is in fact attempting to escape what hesaw as a dangerous fascination, and to bring out thedifferentia specifica of his own project. In his letter ofNovember 1928 to Scholem he explains that he felt theneed to 'distance this piece of work from an overostensible proximity to the surrealist movement.Understandable and well-founded as it may be, thatproximity could prove fatal to me . This did not,however, mean that he refused to take on board thephilosophical heritage of surrealism.

Gothic MarxismWhat does this 'understandable' and even 'wellfounded' 'proximity' consist of? Margaret Cohen srecent Profane Illumination suggests an interestinghypothesis by describing both Benjamin and AndreBreton as adepts of a 'Gothic Marxism' - as distinctfrom the dominant version, which has metaphysicalmaterialist tendencies and which is contaminated bythe evolutionist ideology of progress. It seems to me,however, that the author is on the wrong track whenshe describes the Marxism of both Benjamin and thesurrealists as a Marxist genealogy that is fascinated bythe irrational aspects of the social process; as agenealogy that tries to study how the irrationalpenetrates existing society, and dreams of using theirrational to bring about social change.s The conceptof the 'irrational' is absent from the writings of bothWaIter Benjamin and Breton; it relates to a rationalistworld-view inherited from the philosophy of the

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Enlightenment, which is the very thing both ourauthors are attempting to transcend (in the Hegeliansense of Aufhebung). The term Gothic Marxism , onthe other hand, s illuminating, provided that we understand the adjective in its romantic sense of afascination with enchantment and the marvellous, aswell as with the spellbound aspects of pre-moderncultures and societies. We find references to theEnglish Gothic novel of the eighteenth century andcertain German romantics of the nineteenth at the heartof the work of both Breton and Benjamin.

The Gothic Marxism common to both would appear,then, to be a historical materialism that is sensitive tothe magical dimension of past cultures, to the blackmoment of revolt, and to the illumination that rendsthe sky of revolutionary action like a bolt of lightning.Gothic should also be understood literally as a

positive reference to certain key moments in profanemedieval culture: it is no accident that both Breton andBenjamin should admire the courtly love of medievalProvence, which they both view as one of the purestmanifestations of illumination. I stress the profaneaspect because, for the surrealists, nothing was moreabominable than religion in general and the apostolicRoman Catholic religion in particular. Benjamin rightlystresses the importance of the bitter, passionate revoltagainst Catholicism in which Rimbaud, Lautreamontand Apollinaire brought Surrealism into the world .6

In order to understand the true nature of Benjamin sprofound affinity with the work of Breton, Aragon andtheir friends, we must look closely at Surrealism: TheLast Snapshot of the European Intelligents ia , which

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Benjamin published in the journal Literarische Weltin February 1929. Written in 1928, this extraordinarilyrich text is difficult, sometimes unfair, and oftenenigmatic, but it is always visionary and bejewelledwith strange images and allegories. It is not a piece ofliterary criticism in the normal sense of the term, but

a poetic, philosophical and political essay of primeimportance, and it is shot through with dazzling andsurprising profane illuminations . Without making anyclaims to exhaustivity, let us try to reconstruct someof its essential moments.

In Benjamin s view, surrealism is anything but thework of yet another clique of literati - he attributesthat view to the philistine experts he ironicallydescribes as know-all s .7 Surrealism is therefore notan artistic movement but an attempt to explore thesphere of poetry from within, thanks to a set ofmagical experiments Erfarungen) with revolutionaryimplications. More specifically, it is a visionarymovement which is both profoundly libertarian andin search of a possible convergence with communism.

It is precisely because it corresponds so closely tothe approach Benjamin had adopted over the previousten years that the surrealist approach inspired aburning interest . Inspired by an anarchist sensibility

- or a revolutionary-nihilist sensibility, to use one ofhis favourite terms - that has something in commonwith Sorel (see the 1928 Critique of V i o l e n c ~ 8 ) ,Benjamin discovered communism thanks to the beautyof Asja Lacis in Capri in 1923, and Marxist philosophythanks to a reading of Lukacs s History nd ClassConsciousness. Although he decided, after many hesit-

ations, not to join thecommunist movement, hestill remained a sort of closesympathizer sui generis. Asis clearly obvious from theMoscow Journal of 1926-

27, his lucidity and criticaldistance mark him out fromthe typical fellow traveller.And his critical distance nodoubt springs from therefreshingly libertariancurrent that continues toflow (sometimes underground) throughout hiswork.

The libertarian dimensionof surrealism also appears ina more direct fashion: SinceBakunin, Europe has lackeda radical concept of freedom.


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The Surrealists have one. 9 In the immense literaturedevoted to surrealism over the last seventy years, it israre to find such a significant formula, or one socapable of expressing, thanks to a few simple andtrenchant words, the unbreakable kernel of darknessin the movement founded by Andre Breton. Accordingto Benjamin, it was the hostility of the bourgeoisietoward every manifestation of radical intellectualfreedom that pushed surrealism to the left, towardsrevolution and, after the Rif war, towards communism. lO As we know, Breton and other surrealistsjoined the Parti Communiste Franc;ais in 1927.

The tendency towards politicization and growingcommitment does not, in Benjamin s view, mean thatsurrealism has to abandon its magical and libertarianqualities. On the contrary, it is those qualities thatallow it to play a unique and irreplaceable role in therevolutionary movement: to win the energies of intoxication for the revolution - this is the project aboutwhich surrealism circles in all its books and enterprises. This it may call its most particular task. f itis to accomplish this task, surrealism must, however,abandon its unilateral stance and accept an alliancewith communism:

For them it is not enough that, as we know, anecstatic component lives in every revolutionaryact. This component is identical with the anarchic.But to place the accent exclusively on it would beto subordinate the methodical and disciplinarypreparation for revolution entirely to a praxisoscillating between fitness exercises and celebrationin advance. 2new romanticism

What is this intoxication , this Rausch whose energiesBenjamin is so anxious to win for the revolution? InOne-Way Street, Benjamin refers to intoxication as anexpression of the magical relationship between theancients and the cosmos, but he implies that the experience Erfahrung) and the Rausch that once characterized that ritual relationship with the world disappear inmodern society.13 In the Literarische Welt article, heappears to rediscover that relationship, in a new form,in surrealism. 14

This argument runs through many of Benjamin swritings. The revolutionary utopia implies the rediscovery of an old, archaic or prehistoric experience:matriarchy (Bachofen), primitive communism, theclassless, stateless community, a primal harmony withnature, the paradise lost from which we were drivenby the storm of progress , or the earlier life in whichthe adorable springtime had yet to lose its scent(Baudelaire). In all these cases, Benjamin is not

recommending a return to the past but - in keepingwith the dialectic of revolutionary romanticism - adigression through the past and towards a new futurethat can integrate all the conquests modernity has madesince 1789. 5

This is equally true of the modern intoxication ofthe surrealists, which can in no sense be related to thearchaic intoxication of ancient times. Benjamin stressesthe distinction between lower or primitive forms ofintoxication - religious or drug-induced ecstasy - andthe higher form produced by surrealism at its bestmoments: a profane illumination, a materialist andanthropological inspiration . The notion is rich, butdifficult to define. This non-religious form ofErleuchtung can be found in both courtly love andanarchist revolt, in Nadja and in the mystery that ispresent at the heart of everyday life. A successor tothe philosophical realism of the Middle Ages whichBreton claims as his own in his Introduction audiscours sur le p u de rea lite, the profane illuminationof the surrealists lies in magical experiments withwords in which slogans, magical formulas [Zauberformel] and concepts intermingle. 16

Whilst our prosaic and limited capitalist/industrialmodern civilization - the world of the Spiesser andbourgeois philistines - is characterized, as Max Webersaw so lucidly, by the disenchantment of the world,the romantic world-view - and surrealism is the tailof the romantic comet (Breton) - is primarily inspiredby an ardent, and sometimes despairing, desire to reenchant the world. The difference between surrealismand the romanticism of the nineteenth century is, asBenjamin well realized, the profane, materialist andanthropological nature of surrealism s magicalformulas , the non-religious, and even deeply antireligious nature of its magical experiences , and the

p o s t ~ m y s t i c l vocation of its illuminations 17When he examines the surrealists illuminations,

Benjamin pays particular attention to their discoveryof the revolutionary energies that appear in the outmoded , in the first iron constructions, the first factorybuildings, the earliest photographs, the objects thathave begun to be extinct, grand pianos 18 What is therelation of these things to revolution ? Benjamin neverexplains. Is it a sign of the precariousness, the historicity or mortality of bourgeois structures, monumentsand institutions? Or is it an ironic and subversivecommentary on the bourgeoisie s pretentions to beingnew and modern ?19 The remainder of the paragraph

appears to take us in a different direction as it dealswith urban poverty and even the proletarian quartersof the great cities : no one before these visionaries

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and augurs perceived how destitution - not only socialbut architechtonic, the poverty of interiors, enslavedand enslaving objects - can be suddenly transformedinto revolutionary nihilism ,2 Paris itself, the mostdreamed-of of their objects , is also a source ofrevolutionary experience to the extent that only revoltcompletely exposes its Surrealist face 21 Benjamin sargument oscillates between these different approaches; they are not necessarily contradictory, butnor do they express a univocal criterion. Unless thatcriterion is the trick that consists in the substitutionof a political for a historical view of the past , or inother words in seeing a very object in terms of itsfuture - imminent-revolutionary abolition.

Benjamin does, however, criticize surrealism forbeing enmeshed in a number of pernicious romanticprejudices and for being an inadequate, undialecticalconception of the nature of intoxication 22 Thus, themost passionate investigation of the hashish trance willnot teach us half as much about thinking (which iseminently narcotic), as the profane illumination ofthinking about the hashish trance .23 The critic ism isall the stranger in that the surrealists - unlike Benjamin(see his Hashish in Marseilles 24) - were never veryinterested in experimenting with the use of drugs, andalways took more interest in De Quincey s Confessionso an English Opium-Eater than in the actual consumption of that soft narcotic.

Benjamin s essay abounds in profane illuminations,but none is more surprising or uncanny - in the senseof the German unheimlich - than the urgent appeal forthe organization of pessimism 25n organized pessimism

n Benjamin s view, nothing could be more derisoryand idiotic than the optimism of bourgeois parties andsocial democracy, whose political programme is nomore than a bad poem on springtime . Dismissingthis unprincipled, dilettantish opt imism , which isinspired by the ideology of linear progress, he sees inpessimism the effective point of convergence betweensurrealism and communism. t goes without sayingthat he is not referring to a contemplative and fatalisticfeeling, but to an active, practical and organizedpessimism that is totally dedicated to preventing, byall means possible, the advent of the worst.

What does the pessimism of the surrealists consistin? Benjamin refers to certain prophecies and toApollinaire and Aragon s premonitions of the atrocitiesto come: Publishing houses are stormed, books ofpoems thrown on the fire, poets lynched. 26 The impressive thing about this passage is not only the accurate

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premonition of an event that was indeed to occur sixyears later when the Nazis made bonfires of antiGerman books in 1934; we have only to insert thewords by Jewish (or anti-fascist) authors after booksof poems - but also and above all the expression usedby Benjamin (it does not appear in either Apollinaireor Aragon) to describe these atrocities: a progrom ofpoets . Is he talking about poets or Jews? Or are boththreatened by this disturbing future? As we shall seelater, this is not the only strange premonition to befound in this surprisingly rich text.

One wonders, on the other hand, what can be meantby the concept of pessimism, as applied to thecommunists; after all, their doctrine of 1928, whichcelebrates the triumphs of the building of socialism inthe USSR and the imminent collapse of capitalism, isa fine example of the optimistic illusion. Benjamin infact borrows the concept of the organization ofpessimism from an essay he describes as excellent ,namely Pierre Naville s La Revolution et lesintellectuels (1926). A close collaborator of thesurrealists (he was one of the editors of La Revolutionsurrealiste , Naville had recently opted for politicalcommitment to the communist movement and wantedhis friends to follow his example. He called upon themto abandon a negative and anarchistic attitude infavour of the disciplined action of class struggle ,and to commit themselves resolutely to the revolutionary path, the only revolutionary path: the Marxistpath . As we have seen, Benjamin adopts the samebroad attitude to the surrealists as Naville, but heremains much more open to the libertarian moment ofthe revolution.

According to Pierre Naville, pessimism is surreal ism s greatest virtue, both in terms of its currentreality and, even more, its future developments. n hisview, pessimism is rooted in the reasons that anyconscious man can find for not conforming, especiallymorally, with his contemporaries , and it constitutesthe source of Marx s revolutionary method . Pessimism is the only way to escape the incompetence and

disappointments of an era of compromise . Rejectingthe crude optimism of a Herbert Spencer - whom hecharitably describes as a monstrously shrunken brain- or an Anatole France, whose vile jokes he findsintolerable, he concludes: we must organize pessimism. The organization of pessimism is the onlyslogan that can save us from death.27

Needless to say, this impassioned apologia forpessimism was far from representative of the politicalculture of French communism at this time. Beforelong, Pierre Naville was expelled from the Party: the


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logic of his anti-optimism led him to jointhe ranks of the left (,Trotskyist )opposition, and he became one of itsmost important leaders. The positivereference to Naville and to Trotskyhimself in Benjamin s article - i tappears in the context of a critique of theconcept of proletarian art - at a timewhen the founder of the Red Army hadalready been expelled from the CPSUand exiled to Alma Ata, is a goodexample of his independence of mind.

According to Benjamin, the centralquestion posed by Navil le s book iswhere are the conditions for revolution?

In the changing of attitudes or of externalcirumstances? He joyfully notes thatSurrealism has come ever closer to the

Communist answer. And what is thatanswer? Pessimism all along the line.Absolutely. Mistrust in the fate of literature,mistrust in the fate of freedom, mistrust in thef te of European humanity, but three timesmistrust in all reconciliation: betweenclasses, between nations, betweenindividuals. And unlimited trust only inLO. Farben and the peaceful perfection of the airforce. 28

In this passage, which is a striking example ofprofane illumination, Benjamin goes far beyond bothN aville - even though he does adopt the same spirit ofdistrust and rejection of compromise - and the surrealists. His pessimistic-revolutionary vision allowshim to glimpse - intuitively but with a strange accuracy- the catastrophes that lay in store for Europe, capturedperfectly by the ironic unlimited trust . Even thoughhe was the greatest pessimist of them all, Benjaminobviously could not foresee the destruction that theLuftwaffe was to inflict on the cities and civilian population of Europe. Still less could he imagine that, barelyfifteen years later, LO. Farben would become famousfor manufacturing the Zyklon B gas that was used torationalize genocide, or that its factories would

employ hundreds of thousands of slave labourers. Andyet Benjamin was the only one of the Marxist thinkersor leaders of his day to foresee the monstruous disastersthat could be spawned by an industriallbourgeoissociety in crisis. f only because of this paragraph -which is inseparable from the rest of the article - thisessay of 1929 has a unique position in the critical orrevolutionary literature of the interwar years.

Jirf Kolar Ova potahy 1952

A revolution ry l rmThe article s conclusion is a fairly unconditional celebration of surrealism, viewed as the heir to Hebbel santhropological materialism , as well as to Oeorg

Buchner, Nietzsche and Rimbaud - a surprising collection of precursors. According to Benjamin, this newmaterialism is not the same as the materialism of Vogtand Bukharin, which he describes as metaphysical ;it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that he hadread Lukacs s crit ique of B ukharin s materialism,which had appeared in 1926. Precisely what does hemean by anthropological materialism ? Benjamin doesnot really explain, but he suggests that it means therealization that The body is a collectivity, too. It isonly when revolutionary tension becomes a bodilycollective innervation and a revolutionary dischargethat reality will transcend itself to the extentdemanded by the Communist Manifesto .29

What does the Communist Manifesto demand?Benjamin does not answer that question, but he doesadd a commentary that concludes his essay: For themoment, only the surrealists have understood itspresent command. They exchange, to a man, the playof human features for the face of an alarm clock that

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in each minute rings for sixty seconds. The assertionis astonishing in more than one sense: on the one hand,it seems, despite all the criticisms of their limitations,to describe the surrealists as the only group to havecome to terms with the demands of Marxism - and todisparage the role of other Marxist intellectuals(Bukharin?). On the other hand, far from being identified with Aragon s Vague des reves (cited at thebeginning of the essay as a typical example of theheroic phase of the movement in which its dialecticalkernel was still embedded in an opaque substance),the surrealist movement is directly associated with thedialectical image of the alarm clock and wakefulness.

What is the meaning of this enigmatic allegory ofan alarm clock that in each minute rings for sixtyseconds ? Benjamin is probably suggesting that theunique value of surrealism resides in its ability to seeevery second as the narrow door that allows the revolution to enter - to paraphrase a formula that he wouldnot use until much later. From beginning to end, theessay is about the revolution, and profane illuminationsare meaningful only in so far as they all refer to thatultimate and decisive vanishing point. 30

An analysis of the role of surrealism in thePassagenwerk would require a separate article. Letme simply draw attention to one aspect that is directlyrelated to the conclusion of the iterarische Weltarticle. The difference, or even the contradiction,between the surrealist approach and that of thePassagenwerk has often been described as a dichotomybetween dreaming and wakefulness. And the firstdrafts of the project do contain this assertion:

Differences between the tendencies of this piece ofwork and Aragon; whilst Aragon perseveres in therealm of dreams, my goal here is to find theconstellation of wakefulness [Erwachen). Whereasthere are still impressionist elements in Aragon -mythology - and whilst it is that impressionismthat is responsible for the book s many shapeless[gestaltlosen) philosophemes, my ambition is todissolve mythology into the space of history. Andthat can obviously only be done through theawakening [Erwekung) of an as-yet-unconsciousknowledge of the past. 3

Given that this text was written at much the same timeas the 1929 article, it is difficult to reconcile it withthe image of permanent wakefulness as the quintessence of surrealism. Unless, that is, we take theview - which seems the most likely hypothesis - thatthe criticisms are specifically directed at Aragon andperhaps the heroic stage of the movement, but notthe surrealism of the years 1927-28. Significantlyneither mythology , impressionism nor shapelessphilosophemes figure amongst the many criticisms

Benjamin addresses to Breton and his friends in theLiterarische Welt article.

What is more, we cannot reduce the position of thePassagenwerk to a static dichotomy between dreamingand wakefulness: Benjamin s ambition - l ike tha t ofBaudelaire and Andre Breton - is to create a newworld in which action will finally become dreaming ssister.

Translated by avid MaceyNotes

1 The Correspondence of WaIter Benjamin, 1910-1940,edited by Gershom Scholem and Theodor W Adorno,translated by M.R. and E.M. Jacobson, University ofChicago Press, Chicago and London, 1994, p 488.Benjamin published some passages from Aragon s bookin the journal Literarische Welt in 1929.

2 G Scholem, WaIter Benjamin: The Story of a Friendship,Faber & Faber, London, 1982, pp 134-5.3 Foreword to WaIter Benjamin, Correspondence, p xii4. Ernst Bloch, Heritage of Our Times, trans. Neville andStephen Plaice, Polity, Cambridge, 1991, p 334. For apertinent critique, see Michel Izard, WaIter Benjamin et

le surrealisme , Docsur 12, June 1990, p 3.5. See Margaret Cohen, WaIter Benjamin and the Paris of

Surrealist Revolution, University of California Press,Berkeley, 1993, pp 1-2.6 Waiter Benjamin, Surrealism: The Last Snapshot of theEuropean Intelligentsia , in One-Way Street and Other

Writings, New Left Books, London, 1979, p 227. ErnstBloch is no doubt a typical representative of GothicMarxism . He makes no secret of his admiration formedieval fairy tales and Gothic cathedrals - especialfy inearly works like his Geist der Utopie 1918-23).

7. Surrealism , p 225.8. In One-Way Street and Other Writings, pp 132-54.9. Surrealism , p 236.

10. Ibid., p 232.11. Ibid., p 236.12. Ibid. Benjamin also speaks of binding revolt torevolution .13 One-Way Street, pp 103-4.14. Cf Margaret Cohen s comments in her Profane Illumi

nation, pp 187-9.15. On the question of revolutionary romanticism, see RobertSayre and Michael Lowy, Revolte de melancolie: e

Romantisme a contre-courant de la modernite, Payot,Paris, 1992.16. Surrealism , p 232. Benjamin attributes - wrongly in myview - this type of magical experimentation to the wholeliterature of the avant-garde , including futurism (ibid.).And he complains - again, wrongly in my view - that thesurrealists inadequately profane conception ofillumination is illustrated by the episode dealing withMadame Sacco, the fortune-teller evoked by Breton inNadja. Annoyed by this humid backroom of spiritualism , Benjamin exclaims (,Surrealism , p 228): Whowould not wish to see these adoptive children of revolution most rigorously severed from all the goings-on inthe conventicles of down-at-heel dowagers, retired majorsand emigre profiteers. Like the other figures in Nadja, theimage of the fortune-teller is completely profane and hasno spiritualist meaning for Breton.


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17. An excellent definition of profane illumination -illustrated by the way the surrealists look at Paris - can befound in Richard Wolin, WaIter Benjamin: An Aestheticof Redemption, Columbia University Press, New York,1982, p. 132. Wolin explains that, like religiousillumination, profane illumination captures the energies ofspiritual intoxication in order to produce a revelation , avision or an intuition that transcends the prosaic state ofempirical reality; but it produces that vision withoutresorting to dogmas about the beyond. Benjamin clearlysaw the intoxicating, trance-like effect induced by thesurrealist romances in which the streets of Paris aretransformed into a phantasmagorical wonderland, in whichthe monotony of conventions is rent asunder by the powersof objective chance. Once we have walked through theseenchanted landscapes, we can never again experience lifewith our usual complacency and indolence.

18. Surrealism , p. 229.19. Cf. Rainer Rochl itz s pertinent remarks in his Le

Desenchantement de I art, Gallimard, Paris, 1992, p. 156:Surrealism demonstrated how the image could fulfil a

revolutionary function: by describing the acceleratedageing of modem forms as an incessant production of thearchaic that reveals the real meaning of contemporaneity.In the ruins of modernization, it revealed the urgent needfor a revolutionary upheaval.

20. Surrealism , p. 229.21. Ibid., p. 230.22. Ibid., pp. 237, 236.23. Ibid., p. 237. t seems to me that Rainer Rochlitz is

mistaken when (Le Desenchantement de l art, p. 154) heinterprets this passage as Benjamin s farewell tosurrealism: If reading and thinking are also forms ofillumination and intoxication ... there is no longer any

justification for surrealist irrationalism. Benjamin hopesto transport the surrealist experience on to alien terrain:that of effective action. No doubt rightly, Georges Bataillerejects this fusion: artist ic experience cannot beinstrumentalized for political action. As we saw earlier,the concept of irrationalism is absent from Benjamin sessay, and he displays no desire to reject the magica lexperiments of surrealism. What is more, Benjamin ssuggestion - winning the energies of intoxication for therevolution - is by no means a mere politicalinstrumentalization of art.

24. In One-Way Street and Other Writings, pp. 215-24.25. Surrealism , p. 237.26. Ibid., p. 233.27. Pierre Naville, La Revolution et les intellectuels,

Gallimard, Paris, 1965, pp. 76-77, 100-117.28. Surrealism , p. 238.29. Ibid., p. 239.30. Jacques Leenhardt has some very interesting remarks to

make about the relationship between reve and reveil inBenjamin, but it seems to me that he is mistaken when hesees the image of the alarm clock in Surrealism as theimage of a certain conception of rationalist thought lLeenhardt, Le passage c omme forme d experience:Benjamin face a Aragon , in H. Wisman, ed., WaiterBenjamin et Paris, CERF, Paris, 1986, p. 165). t neverentered Benjamin s head to define surreali sm as arationalist form of thought - the concept is as absent

from the article as its opposite - irrationalism . Thecharacteristic feature of the surrealist approach, and thatadopted by Benjamin in this essay, is that it is irreducibleto the classica l and static dichotomy betweenrationality and irrationality .

31. WaIter Benjamin, Passagenwerk, Vol. I SuhrkampVerlag, Frankfurt, 1980, pp. 571-2.

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Walter Benjamin and Surrealism

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