SOURCE: The Surrealist Revolution in France, University of Michigan Press, 1969, pp. 43–7.

In the following excerpt, Gershman argues that Péret stands out among the early surrealists in his attempts to fuse the Surrealist principal of “automatic writing” with elements of the Gothic novel.

Only Péret, of the early surrealists, […] attempted a synthesis of the technique of automatism, carefully controlled so as to give the desired end result, with the content of the Gothic novel: a combination of deliberate sensory and logical confusion with a matching subject. All this in an impeccable syntax.¹

—Die, deaf horn! —Die, eel soap! —Die, head paper! —Die, flighty elephant! 

Such were the cries which echoed inside the tin tube where two virgins and their shadow were sleeping. With arms raised to heaven, they begged the arsonists to spare the roots of the beech tree which had given birth to them. The younger...