Ces morts qui nous hantent. Rimbaud, Lautréamont et la naissance du Surréalisme: une histoire de revenants ?
SOME DEAD STILL HAUNT US. RIMBAUD, LAUTRÉAMONT AND THE BIRTH OF SURREALISM: A GHOST STORY?

Summary/Abstract: When asked whether he really believed that the Bible was written by the Holy Ghost, G. B. Shaw gave a curious answer: not only the Bible, he said, but all the books must be the work of the Holy Ghost – that would be the unconscious in modern “mythology,” as Borges indicates in his Art of Poetry. Surrealism is definitely such an instance of shifting from psychoanalysis to religion – or rather, of dwelling in between. Actually, André Breton mixed the art of poetry and that of therapy like a genuine “medicine-man,” According to his own testimony, his discovery of Rimbaud’s and Lautréamont’s poems went far beyond reading. Literature here seems to be a vehicle for a Shamanic-like initiation experience, where the spirits of the dead share their wisdom to the neophytes. It is an eternal return to a primordial poetic tradition. Holy or not, some books still hold a ghostly healing potential.

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