ABSTRACT
Surrealism is the most striking and fascinating example of a Romantic current in the twentieth century. The surrealists were not influenced by Romanticism, as an empty vessel that is filled with a cultural content. Breton and his friends had never hidden their profound attachment to the Romantic tradition of the nineteenth century, whether German, English or French. Surrealists were interested in German Romantic philosophers, such as Schelling. The German poet believed that all living creatures, vegetal, animal or human, share a common substance, which for him, as for Heraclitus, is fire. The surrealists seemed to share this viewpoint: in the Shortened Dictionary of Surrealism, in the entry for 'Flame', one finds the following quote: 'The tree cannot become but a flourishing flame, the human being a speaking flame, the animal a walking flame'. Remembering the very beginnings of the surrealist movement, Breton observed, at that time, surrealist refusal was total, absolutely unable to let it be channelled into political arena.
