SOURCE: “René Crevel: Surrealism and the Individual,” in Yale French Studies, Vol. 31, May, 1964, pp. 74–86.

In the following essay, Carre examines Crevel's role in the evolution of surrealism and discusses his philosophical and literary legacy.

“The greatest masterpiece,” Jean Cocteau once remarked, “is never more than an alphabet in disorder.” For once, his Surrealist enemies might want to agree with him. When, after the thunder of the great war had been stilled, Breton and his friends assumed the task of building up, from its basic notions, the new consciousness of our society, their hope was precisely that of finding a way of arranging the alphabet so new, so striking, and so binding in its force that it would suppress any memory of the old system of verbal expression. Instead it would nurture into the reborn world an outburst of feelings, perceptions, and thoughts, infinitely richer and more luminous than...