ABSTRACT
André Breton, the founder of the surrealist movement, first defined surrealism in 1924 in his first 'Manifeste du surréalisme'. However, Breton continued to modify his definition throughout the ensuing decades, and an appreciation of the resulting diversity of the surrealist movement is essential background to a consideration of the relationship between Paul Celan's oeuvre and the surrealist aesthetic. This chapter begins by outlining the development of the surrealist aesthetic, from the so-called intuitive phase, in which the powers of the Unconscious were privileged, to what is known as the reasoning phase, when reason and material reality came to the fore. The particular elements of the surrealist movement that are significant for Paul Celan's engagement with that aesthetic are highlighted. This survey of critical assessments of the relationship between Celan's oeuvre and surrealism has shown that Celan scholars have relied almost exclusively on a restrictive understanding of the surrealist aesthetic, generally based on the dogmatic surrealist theory of the early 1920s.
