Manifestoes of Surrealism

Manifestoes of Surrealism is a collection of written works by André Breton, who is often credited as the leader of the Surrealists, especially in the movement's early years. The book opens with the first "Manifesto of Surrealism," written in 1924, which outlined the philosophical underpinnings of the movement and Breton's reasons for believing the broader world should be introduced to it. The manifesto also works as a guidebook that explains the process of automatic writing, for which Breton would become known. Breton republished the document in 1929, and the preface for this second edition acts as the introduction for the collection.

One year after writing the first "Manifesto of Surrealism," Breton wrote “Soluble Fish," a novel produced by automatic writing. The work is included as the third chapter of Manifestoes of Surrealism. Automatic writing and the broader idea of psychic automatism, the core tenets of Breton’s approach to Surrealism, were outlined in the first manifesto. The practices were inspired by Breton’s interest in the subconscious and dreams and his belief that overthinking while creating art would produce boring, meaningless work. The result of the application of these practices, “Soluble Fish” is a mostly unstructured, stream-of-consciousness

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