The Poetics Of Dreams And Fire

Based on the case study of Louis Aragon,this paper presents a trans-disciplinary history of ideas about the formation,development and split of the Paris Dada-Surrealist movement between 1919 and 1932.I set the 1924 as the first key year,analysing the intellectual and sensible impact of Aragon’s contribution to the formation of a "poetics of dreams" in the transition from Dada to Surrealism.1931 is the second key year,as I will discuss Aragon’s participation in the anti-colonial exhibition,La Vérité sur les colonies,a revolutionary intellectual debate over the prosecution of his poem Front Rouge,and his departure from the group he had founded,and then analyse Surrealism’s conceptual changes as it moved towards Communism,and the ideas about the "poetics of fire" which Aragon had turned to.I will discuss the core concepts of Surrealist thought on the three levels of action,thought and style,based on but also aufheben the nihilistic negation of modernity,which never ignores reality,but is not concerned with reality alone,seeking to reconcile reality and unreality,also action,discourse and thought(dreams).The "poetics of dreams" is derived from the practice of automatic writing,in the same way as the dream-working mechanism explained by psychoanalysis,and aims to tap into the potential of both the individual and the collective unconscious,to reorganise life through art and to launch a spiritual revolution through poetic activities.The "poetics of fire" inherits the revolutionary language of the historical vanguard,using everyday life and the common people as a source of inspiration,guided by dialectical materialism,to reflect positively on the struggles taking place in the real world.Through the transition from the "poetics of dreams" to the "poetics of fire",this paper reveals the revolutionary implications of Aragon’s example for the early Surrealist movement: through the quest for the unknown,Art transcends the individual and moves towards the universal,prompting the author to become a creative producer,to achieve the quest of understanding and transforming the world.I also point out the limitations of their approach,essentially resulting from the difficulty of maintaining a balance between poetic and rational thinking in the long term,and the dilemma inherent in the dichotomy between artistic and revolutionary values.This paper attempts to show that the shift from "poetics of dreams" to "poetics of fire" was by no means a historical event by chance,but rather the result of Aragon’s continuous practice of the first poetics,his constant self-denial and self-renewal in the pursuit of the unknown on the level of life style and artistic language style,and his active involvement in the anti-nationalist,anti-imperialist and anti-colonial struggles in the real world.This shift reflects the values of a new author who,at the risk of interrupting his so-called "artistic career",chooses to détourner himself from the path of the revolution of everyday life to the path of the communist revolution,placing himself in a new intellectual camp that celebrates "the author as producer",thus transforming himself from a spiritual revolutionary to a real participant in the social revolution.