ABSTRACT
Humanity is characterised by its inexplicable need for the marvellous. The marvellous is the contradiction that appears in the real, writes Louis Aragon in Paris Peasant, whereas reality is the apparent absence of contradiction. The sensibility is not limited to surrealist works; according to Breton, the 'marvellous' is found readily in all kinds of fantastic literary forms, from Gothic novels and fairy tales to 'religious literature of every country' whereby 'nothing is impossible for him who dares try'. For the Martiniquan poet, the collective marvellous and the individual marvellous are not contradictory but culminate in different cultural forms: 'If fairy tales express the collective marvellous, poems represent the individual marvellous. The transformative power of the marvellous lies not within ritual enactment and to this extent does not correspond with the social role the sacred has played in historical societies.
