ABSTRACT
Humour here became a weapon, a means of revealing the absurdity and brutality of a society that had degenerated to the extent of initiating a brutal and murderous combat. Nevertheless, surrealist humour is rarely comforting and often inclines towards a shadowy realm that Breton would theorize as 'black humour'. This tactical dimension had already been established in surrealism's prehistory by Jacques Vache, Andre Breton's wartime friend, when he spoke not of humour but of humour, a form of humour that falls short of the usual definitions. For all of its philosophical pessimism, and notwithstanding the fatality into which their attitude led Vache, Cravan and Rigaut, surrealist humour is not morbid and rarely engages with the macabre. Humour works as a kind of reset button, a universal bullshit detector, bringing one back to philosophical pessimism and the need for revaluation. The sense of demoralization that black humour inevitably promotes has a positive force by the very means of its negation.
