Art of days art of nights
The balance-scales of injuries called Pardon
Red scales sensitive to the weight of a wing
When the women riders with snowy collars and empty hands
Drive their chariots of mist over the meadows
Those scales forever quivering I see them
I see the ibis with delicate manners
That returns from the lake laced into my heart
The wheels of a lovely dream their splendid ruts
That rise high above on the sea-shells of their robes
And astonishment bounding wildly over the sea
Depart my darling dawn forget nothing of my life
Seize those roses that climb the wells of mirrors
Seize the tremors of every eye-lash
Seize everything down to the threads that sustain
The steps of rope-dancers and water-drops

Basic Set-Up:

This is the beginning of Breton's poem "No Proof."

There's so freaking much going on in these lines of Breton's poem that we can pretty much interpret it any way we want. On one level, these lines evoke loss. The speaker speaks about a "balance-scale of injuries," which suggests a world that is full of affliction and suffering.

There's also loss in separation. The dawn is "departing," and the speaker asks that it forgets "nothing of my life." This suggests the speaker's fear of being forgotten, of disappearing, or even dying. But despite this evocation of loss, there's also a determination in the speaker's words: "Seize the roses that climb the wells of mirrors/ Seize the tremors of every eye-lash/ Seize everything down to the threads that sustain/ The steps of rope-dancers and water-drops." The speaker wants to hold onto these details, which suggests that he wants to hold onto life, and to resist loss.

How do we know that this poem is written in automatic writing mode? For one thing, there's no punctuation. The words tumble out without interruption. There's something chaotic about the style: we jump from one image to the next, from one thought to the next, without a clear logical flow.

The style of the poem, in other words, exemplifies automatic writing. The poem presents us with a series of images and doesn't explain to us how we're to understand or interpret them. It's one hot mess… but it's also pretty dang provocative. What do you think—do you feel closer to the unconscious, the dream-like, and the real when you're reading automatic writing? Is it more authentic, or is it just more jumbled?