ABSTRACT
Mad love, amour fou, is the surrealist concept, or notion that has probably gained the greatest popular currency, when it is spoken about it is usually in ways that would not be recognized by the surrealists. Mad love is difficult to pin down and there are probably as many concepts of love in surrealism as there are surrealists. The word love, amour, is there qualified with an adjective, 'admirable', to lift it out of the associations rejected by the surrealists and to make it clear that it concerns the total attachment to another human being, body and soul, as well as to contrast it with 'sordid life'. Love for the surrealists would always be affective. Issues around the idea of the encounter were also central to the surrealist attitude and tended to interpose between the sexual relation and love. Love is hardly a Dadaist concern and it doesn't seem to have played a significant part in the gestation of surrealism.
