The Unconscious in Surrealism
The Unconscious in Surrealism
Ahh… the spooky, spooky unconscious. That deep, dark place beneath our conscious minds, where all that stuff from our childhood is buried, as well as all our fears and neuroses. The Surrealists were very interested in the unconscious mind for a couple of reasons. First of all, they were interested in it because the unconscious is the source of the irrational (and the Surrealists loved the irrational). Second of all, the unconscious is also a source of creativity.
As a group of writers, the Surrealists were interested in digging beneath the layers of our conscious experience just as they were interested in digging beneath the layers of our rational experience. They believed that the unconscious mind is central to our identity. In order to truly understand who we are, we need to understand what's going on in that dark place in our mind. And it's for this reason that their writing often evokes the unconscious.
Chew On This
In Robert Desnos' "Under Cover of Night," there's a shadow at the window. Could that shadow be our unconscious self?
In Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis, Gregor Samsa wakes up to find that he's turned into a bug. Could his transformation be motivated by unconscious drives? Perhaps.