SOURCE: "Metaphor and Metamorphosis in André Breton's Poetics," in French Studies, Vol. XIX, No. 1, 1965, pp. 34-41.

Balakian is an author and educator who has contributed many articles and reviews to language and literature journals. She has also published several book-length studies on Surrealism and Breton, including Breton: Magus of Surrealism (1971). In the excerpt below, Balakian explores Breton's poetical representation of the hermetic belief in metamorphosis and differentiates it from the theory of transcendentalism, two ideas that she feels are "too often and too carelessly… linked as part of a continuous chain in the history of poetics."

One of the major tenets of hermetism is metamorphosis. The occult art of the alchemist consists of transforming one type of material into another, and by extension one form of existence into the next. When Rimbaud talked of the alchemy of 'le Verbe' he saw in the power of words an effective...