In his "Second Manifeste du Surréalisme" (1929), André Breton writes that surrealism "n'attend encore rien que de la violence". This appeal to violence could be taken abstractly, but a more concrete image follows: "L’acte surréaliste le plus simple consiste, revolvers aux poings, à descendre dans la rue et à tirer au hasard, tant qu’on peut, dans la foule." While it might be possible to read even this image as a metaphor, it's quite hard to do so today, especially in the United States, when Breton's "most simple surrealist act" of shooting a gun into a crowd has not only become a regular event but even comes with manifestoes of its own. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 21 June 2022)
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