MICHEL CARASSOU
Abstract: Surrealism was born at the end of 1924, defining itself in the First Manifesto from the practice of automatic writing. Among criticisms against Surrealism, the more judicious have been produced by two Romanian expatriates in Paris: Tristan Tzara and Benjamin Fondane. For Tzara, one of the inventors of Dada, automatic writing is not very different from the Dadaist spontaneity. Fondane regards Surrealism as a return of the reason in the poetical field where it may control the verbal flood. During the following years, the two Romanian poets take divergent ways. Turned a communist, Tristan Tzara becomes more involved in the surrealist movement after the publication of the Second Manifesto (but he will break away five years later). Meanwhile Fondane, who has become Leon Shestov’ disciple, develops his critique of the movement: through the fields of politics and aesthetics, Surrealism subjects poetry to reason.
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