In 1968, "Choose life" was the slogan covering the walls of Paris. It was the title of a poem by André Breton. The surrealists' aim at the time was to “rekindle” life by means of love – the keystone of the surrealist revolution. To help us experience surreality, Breton us to fall madly in love, to reacquaint ourselves with our lost powers, to deepen our reality by resolving antinomies, to seek Marvels, to heed here and now the call of desire, to surrender to the “wind of possibility,” and to decipher the “petrifying coincidences” resulting from the “objective hazard.”
This book provides readers with a meticulous analysis of Breton's writings so as to shed light on the major role played by love in his vision of the world and of art. He constantly reminds us that, if we realize that dreams and wakefulness are two “communicating vessels” and that limitless poetry, freedom and imagination are within our reach, we owe that awareness to surrealism.

Anna Lo Giudice teaches French literature in Viterbe, France. She is an expert in avant-garde authors and Paul Valéry, about whom she has written many books and whose correspondence she has co-edited with André Fontainas.