Sunflower

There are references to flowers throughout Mad Love but the most important flower is the sunflower. First mentioned in Section 4, the sunflower appears as both a plant and as poems. Quoting a snippet from a poem "In Paris the Tour Saint-Jacques swaying / Like a sunflower," the flower is linked to the tour that Breton and Lamba pass by (pg. 47.) The tower is a common phallic symbol but despite the sunflower's height, it does not seem to be coded as a male object in Mad Love. Rather the sunflower is seen as feminine. "Are you, at last, this woman?" Breton writes, "is it only today you were to come? While, as if in dream, with still other flowerbeds before us, you lean long over these flowers enveloped in shadow as if less to breathe in their perfume than to snatch their secret from them" (pg. 51.) Speaking presumably to Lamba...