Mad Love by André Breton

Mad Love Reviews

• 
  Vit Babenco

  The world is a theatre: a theatre of poetry, a theatre of arts, a theatre of love… The world is a theatre and life is a play…
  

  In the construction of the ideal play I was speaking of, it manages to have the final curtain fall upon an episode that is lost backstage, or is at least played out on this stage at an uncommon depth.

  
  Despite his reputation of the outstanding surrealist André Breton writes rather formally and at times, his notes are even somewhat arid.
  

  Life is slow, and man scarcely knows how to play it. The possibilities of finding the one being who could help him to play it, to give it its full sense, are lost in the chart of stars. Who is going with me, who is preceding me tonight once again?

  
  According to André Breton searching for one’s true love is like looking for Cinderella – having a certain set of female ideals man tries them, like a crystal shoe, on every woman he meets.
• 
  Luís

  This text is just as disjointed as Nadja, very literary, not always precise, and challenging to read. André Breton attaches importance to coincidences which he interprets as signs of decoding. He plays at being caught up in this game with reality. Does he believe it? Regardless, the result is poetic and speaks to us of love. This result is Breton's way of reconciling man and the world around him and loving him madly.
  I also liked this idea, as in Nadja, black-and-white illustrations for many artistic, pictorial, and even architectural references. Like a booster shot or to better understand the perception felt (the staggering scallop tower, the endless trickle of milk spurting from a glass breast).
• 
  Steven Godin

  
  "We must try to glide, not too quickly, between the two impossible tribunals facing each other: the first, of the lovers I shall have been, for example; the other, of these women I see, all in pale clothes. So the same river swirls, snatches, sheds its veil, and runs by, under the spell of the sweetness of the stones, the shadows, and the grasses. The water, mad for its swirls like a real mane of fire. To glide like water into pure sparkle-for that we would have to have lost the notion of time. But what defence is there against it; who will teach us to decant the joy of memory?"
  
  "You think you see evening dresses hanging in the air, dazzling in their pallor. In the depths of the day or the night, no matter which, its something like the immense vestibule of physical love as one would wish to make it without interruption. The curtains drawn, the bars twisted, the caressing feline eyes alone streaking the sky. Delirium of absolute presence. How could one not find oneself wishing to love like this, in the bosom of reconciled nature?"
  
  "I am looking for you. Even your voice has been taken away by the fog. The chill sends an emery board over my nails, ninety metres long. I desire you. I desire only you. I caress the white bears without reaching you. No other woman will ever have access to this room where you are a thousand, as I decompose all the gestures I have seen you make. Where are you? I am playing hide and seek with ghosts. But I will certainly end up finding you, and the whole world will be newly lit from our loving each other, because a chain of illuminations passes through us."
  
  "Dear Hazel of Squirrelnut, In the lovely springtime of 1952 you will be just sixteen, and perhaps you will be tempted to open this book, whose title, I like to think, will be wafted to you euphonically by the wind bending the hawthorns . . . All possible dreams, hopes, and illusions will dance, I hope, night and day, illuminated by your curls, and I shall doubtless be there no longer; I would have liked to be there just to see you."
• 
  Ben

  I've not read much of Andre Breton (Nadja, some excerpts from his Surrealist Manifesto and now L'amour fou), but I have to say this is where it's at. While the Manifesto and Nadja both contain some fine ideas and poetic writing, this is the apex of Breton's literary works (at least those that I've read thus far) and is probably his best-known work today.
  
  Some consider L'amour fou to be the final part of a trilogy, starting with Nadja and continuing with The Communicating Vessels. And Breton himself considered this work to be an amalgamism of the ideas presented in each of those earlier works, in which those brilliant, but rough ideas that he earlier formulated (e.g., convulsive beauty, objective chance, hearts of communication) are clarified, smoothed and polished (though perhaps not quite lucid; he was a Surrealist after all).
  
  The concept of L'amour fou was of great interest not only to Breton, but to the Surrealists collectively, represented in such works as Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights (which Buñuel adopted for the screen under the title Abismos de pasión). Buñuel describes this concept as a "love that destroys all" or as an impossible force that first unites two people and then makes impossible their ability to ever really unite as one. It is, as the translator of this work notes, a "testimony to the love of the irrational and the irrational of love." It is a love that defies rationality and that is revolutionary, a love that involves great risk and elements of chance. And the same could well be applied to describe the style and objectives of Breton and his fellow Surrealists, whether they be visual artists, writers or filmmakers.
  
  Drawing on Nietzsche, Hegel, Marx, Freud, Rimbaud, Baudelaire and the Marquis de Sade, and then shaking them all up and spinning them on their heads, Breton writes always with transformation and change on his mind, but also always trying to unfetter himself from the shackles of rationality which chained so many of those whom he admired. Perhaps in this sense he was closest to Rimbaud who called for a "disorganization" or "derangement of the senses." This is a chief example of not only Surrealist thought but of the Surrealist concept of automatic writing, which like mad love stems from the unconscious, where so much is left to chance but where, too, so much is at stake.
• 
  Teresa

  "Ainda hoje, apenas espero colher os frutos da minha disponibilidade, desta minha sede de ir ao encontro de tudo que, estou certo, me mantém em misteriosa comunicação com os outros seres disponíveis, como se algo houvesse que nos impelisse a uma súbita união. Gostaria que a minha vida não deixasse atrás de si outra coisa que não fosse o simples murmúrio de uma canção de quem está de atalaia, uma canção para enganar o tempo de espera. Independentemente do que possa ou não acontecer, a espera é que é, na realidade, magnífica."
  — André Breton (O Amor Louco)
  
  
  Imagino André Breton a fumar o seu cachimbo e a pensar sobre que assunto haveria de escrever. O amor é um bom tema; se for louco é ainda melhor. Continuo a imaginá-lo, de caneta na mão, a escrever frases bonitas sobre tudo o que lhe dá na gana (afinal o amor encaixa-se em tudo, e tudo nele) e a seleccionar fotografias para enfeitar o escrito.
  Imaginar-me a perceber o sentido deste ensaio é que não consigo. No entanto, imagino-me, um dia, a compreender André Breton. Já tentei ler Nadja duas vezes e não passei da primeira página. Vou esperar por outro tempo. "Independentemente do que possa ou não acontecer, a espera é que é, na realidade, magnífica." Porque é feita de esperança...
  — Teresa Proença (uma leitora persistente)
• 
  Peter Mathews

  While I admire the aesthetic of the French prose poem, I am not sure that it really works all that well in this instance. The point of comparison that Breton clearly wants to make, stylistically, is with Lautréamont's magnificent Les Chants de Maldoror, but his purpose is so completely at odds with that book that the attempt, for me, was ultimately unsuccessful.
  
  You see, Breton wants to make an aesthetic statement, a kind of poetic manifesto as to what beauty and love would be in the context of surrealism. Being a surrealist, he can't just write some essay or manifesto (although he does do that in
  Manifestoes of Surrealism), he has to self-reflexively put into practice the artistic principles that underlie his philosophy.
  
  I'm rather sympathetic to the surrealist cause, but I'm yet to be convinced entirely by Breton. He seems a little bit too much like a politician to me, someone who comes across as leveraging his position for fame and power and reputation. That doesn't make what he has to say in Mad Love wrong, exactly, but it does make me suspicious of its ulterior motives.
  
  What it comes down to is this: Breton is at his best when he speaks directly and simply. The book's most memorable lines - its concluding sentence, for instance, which everyone quotes, or some of his more lucid statements in the beginning about the nature of compulsive beauty - are how he should have written the whole book. The rambling parts about strolling through Paris with Giacometti or wandering through Tenerife are indeed poetic and, if you are in the right mood, lovely and lyrical, but my current mood is that I want meat, content, substance into which I can sink my teeth. From that perspective, Mad Love was a bone that simply did not contain enough meat to satisfy me.
• 
  Joel Ortiz-Quintanilla

  "I want you to be madly loved" that is what i got out of this book, breton's best, right next to the immaculate conception(sic) one i want you to be madly loved, is such an ending, the book, is surrealism, if you want automatic writing without reading the last 60 pages of ulysses, this is the book to read, and most people will not get it, becuase it is so out there, but there are instance, there are glimpes when i know what he is talking about, isn't this what surrealism was about, connecting with someone on a level other than words, in the mind, in subconcious, and love, what he says about love, is way greater than nadja, but i think, personally this is bretons best, and i live this book everyday, i want you to be madly loved.
• 
  Geoff Cain

  This is an important book for the Surrealist Movement. It is a strange amalgam of prose, philosophy, psychology, and poetry. I found this to be a difficult book to parse out what he was getting at in a few places. In others, the poetry is really gorgeous but that would probably depend on the translator as much as anything else. The last 10 pages of the book were really lovely. I read the book over the course of a week while commuting on the bus and it inspired a short story and definitely began to bleed over into my dreams. I am writing a novel that focuses a lot on art and identity and this was part of my research into that.
• 
  Thomé

  Ninguém está mais capacitado para escrever sobre o amor que um escritor surrealista. Esta afirmação é redundante, porque no fim de contas, trata-se do mesmo assunto.
• 
  Akis N.

  Η πιο σύντομη κριτική ever... Η αυτό είναι αριστούργημα, η εγώ είμαι τελείως ηλιθιος. Μπορεί να ισχύουν και τα δύο...
• 
  Vaggelis

  Η γλώσσα είναι κάτι ζωντανό. Ο Wittgenstein ανέφερε χαρακτηριστικά ότι "η γλώσσα είναι ο κόσμος".
  Οι λέξεις περιγράφουν περιστάσεις,αισθηματα και γνώση. Ότι υπάρχει ανήκει σε μια λέξη. Αν δεν υπάρχει λέξη για κάτι,δεν μπορεί κανείς να εγγυηθεί για την ύπαρξη του.
  Οι λέξεις όμως δεν οδηγούν απαραίτητα στο νόημα.
  Το νόημα είναι κάτι βαθιά προσωπικό για τόν καθένα. Εξαρτάται από τίς εμπειρίες ,τά πιστεύω ακόμα καί την αντίληψη τού καθενός.
  Ο Breton γνωρίζει ��όν έρωτα, γνωρίζει τον πόθο καί επειδή ακριβώς τόν γνωρίζει καλά ξέρει ότι στον έρωτα δεν έχει αξία να ψάχνεις τό νόημα λογικά.
  Χρησιμοποιώντας την τέχνη της εποχής του, συναντήσεις με φίλους του καί υπερεαλιστικες τεχνικές όπως την αυτόματη γραφή, δημιουργεί μία αυθεντικά ονειρική κατάσταση πού αναπαριστά την εμπειρία τού έρωτα και τού σεξουαλικού πάθους.
  Τόν Breton (όπως καί τό κίνημα του Υπερεαλισμου) ή τόν αγαπάς ή τόν μισείς με πάθος.
  Όι αναγνώστες πού πέφτουν στην δεύτερη κατηγορία κάνουν ένα βασικό παράπτωμα.
  Περιμένουν να βγεί κάποιο νόημα από το κείμενο, ενώ ο Breton αποσκοπεί στο να αποπροσανατολίσει και να κάνει τόν αναγνώστη νά χαθεί σε ένα πολύχρωμο όνειρο.
  Είναι λάθος κατά την άποψη μου νά απαιτούμε από τούς πάντες καί τά πάντα ένα"νόημα" πού νά μας αρέσει καί νά μας είναι αντιληπτό.
  Αυτό τό σπουδάζουν στην Νομική σχολή, και είναι χρήσιμο σίγουρα, αλλά δεν είναι τέχνη.
  Αυτό τό κείμενο είναι σαν τόν έρωτα.Βιωνεις χωρίς προσδοκίες. Δεν έχει σημασία να καταλάβεις κάτι, πρέπει απλά να νιώσεις χαμένος μέσα σε αυτό.
  
  ΚΑΛΗ ΧΡΌΝΙΑ!
  
  4/5
• 
  J.I.

  Both an exortation on love, and a celebration on the kind of mad love that one would expect from the title, as well as a thought, on love itself, on the nature of thought, on the existence of life and on the necessity of poetry, this book is something particularly wonderful and confounding.
  
  The confounding has to do with the surrealist poetry aspect. While this is the kind of surrealism that is grounded in reality and becomes a kind of a super reality (rather than the nonsense of ignorant people saying various nonsequitors and calling it surrealist), it still stretches, it demands incredible attention be paid to the structure, to the ways that things sit next to each other, to the concepts and the words that are being used in order to draw the line from what the are saying to what they would like to say. There are times when this makes a kind of wonderful, if slightly detached, sense, and other times when sense seems to elude the text (or the text to elude sense).
  
  But it is beautiful when it comes together. When we look at a spoon and see in it the slipper of cinderella, and with that a kind of promise of a match, of a romantic partner, and how it can defy expectations and appearances and seeming sense to be something much more perfect and beautiful than originally conceived.
  
  
• 
  Cátia Vieira

  André Breton, the father of the surrealist movement, wrote Mad Love (L'Amour Fou) in 1937.
  
  This book is very hard to describe. In a nutshell, it's a celebration of love and his lover, Jacqueline Lamba. In Breton's opinion, love is the most marvelous thing in the world and it should be felt intensely and transcendently. It should be a 'mad love'. When we love, we should become marvelous as well. Actually, this perspective of love and passion was shared by most surrealists. The last chapter is a letter dedicated to his daughter where he says: 'I want you to be madly loved'.
  
  In this book, you'll find poetry, essay-style and philosophy. It was an interesting read and the last chapter is incredibly beautiful but it wasn’t the right time for it. As I am spending my days reading essays, I was in the need of something else. Besides, I think surrealist literature calls for a certain mood. I am talking about myself, of course.
• 
  Carolyn

  I sit stooped over the pine as a wandering monastic, my pen carving furious and indelible currents into the crux of the sheath of paper that rests between the side of my curled palm and the wood. A warmth behind me as I am bathed in the glow of incandescence and the warmth of He enclosing my hand within his, the whole of the back of my hand encapsulated in the hard putty consistency of his form. Later, we will recall this synchrony of figures in the shuddering moment of respite when I know no longer the perimeters distinguishing my form from yours. We are both on the same note, this silence of silence. This sense of beauty has been attracting something called, among women, the Pure-Aria of romance... His laugh when I speak of 'toreros' ...
• 
  Richard

  If you've ever had the experience of "mad love," you cannot not read this book.
  
  At the same time, it combines poetry and philosophy and grasps the critical idea that "[there] never has been any forbidden fruit. Only temptation is divine" (p 93). Proustian in its emphasis on anticipation, this passage really suggests those moments when we are most alive, suddenly aware of all possibilities and the need of absolute focus.
  
  
• 
  Chase

  Ah it is fine, nothing too special in my view. Nadja is a much more interesting and brilliant work in my opinion. This work feels lacking and utterly dull at times, with little sparks of genius scattered throughout, it feels as if Breton has become old and dull here, with a lack of imagination and excitement, instead rather acting with a seemed stringent structure of thinking and wondering, rather than anything happening by chance or mystery.
• 
  Fanymoon

  El amor loco es aquel que, a pesar de:
  *Saber que todo está en su contra desde el principio.
  *Saber que saldrás lastimado o hay una alta probabilidad de ello.
  *Saber que no tiene sentido ese sentimiento.
  Te dejas llevar por el amor, lo dejas crecer y al final no te importa si pierdes o ganas, solo te importa lo que viviste.
• 
  Sean Stevens

  I did not feel pleasure reading this but instead did so merely to extract the ideas contained within. I wonder if the translation made it such a chore?
• 
  Alba Cantón

  El surrealismo, la sensibilidad, los paseos por Tenerife y los colores del Teide. El "te deseo que seas locamente amada" en la carta dedicada a su hija... Reflexiones y percepciones atemporales, siempre actuales.
• 
  Lee

  Singular phenomemon and experience: this book, in its native French, was INCOMPREHENSIBLE to me. After each chapter, I read an English translation of the equivalent part, which for some phantasmagorical reason cleared the text up a bit. Nonetheless, surrealist writing is so esoteric, especially Breton's complex syntax and his writings are filled with references from classic works and classic authors, without providing you any baggage of understanding whatsoever.
• 
  Amanda Keeton

  Mad love surrounds its reader in thick description demanding concentration on object and potential significance. Ultimately proving that perception stems directly from desire, the essay-style text cunningly presents "you see what you want to see."
• 
  L.

  This book is haunting and something that will forever be one of my favorites. Surrealism is not a religion, and not a courtroom idea of youth and elderly under today’s legal standards.
• 
  Pauline

  "je vous souhaite d'être follement aimée"
• 
  Myriam

  L’amour sera convulsif ou ne sera pas.
• 
  V. Míchkina

  "Os homens desesperam estupidamente do amor - eu próprio desesperei -, passam a vida escravizados pela ideia de que este se encontra sempre para trás, nunca à sua frente: os séculos passados, a mentira do esquecimento aos vinte anos. Suportam e, sobretudo, esforçam-se por admitir que o amor, com todo o seu cortejo de luzes, não é, exactamente, para eles mesmos, esse olhar sobre o mundo feito do olhar de todos os adivinhos. Lançam mãos de caludicantes e falaciosas recordações às quais chegam a atribuir, na origem, uma queda imemorial, e tudo isso para não se sentirem demasiado culpados. No entanto, naquela promessa que para cada um de nós toda a hora futura encerra, esconde-se o segredo da vida, segredo que um dia poderá, ocasionalmente, vir a revelar-se em qualquer outro ser".
  
  ***
  
  "A recriação, a recoloração perpétua do mundo num só e único ser, isso que só o amor é capaz de conseguir, ilumina, com os seus mil e um raios, o avanço do mundo. Sempre que um homem ama, nada o pode impedir de empenhar, juntamente com a sua, a sensibilidade de todos os outros homens. Para não desmerecer deles, é sua obrigação empenhá-la a sério".
  
  Excertos d'"O Amor Louco"
  André Breton
• 
  Héctor Aceves

  4.25/5
  
  En el azar encontraba Breton lo axial del arte y del amor, para él indisociables: «Un contacto que no lo ha sido para nosotros, un contacto involuntario con una sola rama de la sensitiva hace vibrar, tanto fuera como dentro de nosotros, todo el prado». No importa lo que se busque, sino lo que se encuentre inesperadamente: «Ocurre que aquí el placer siempre está en función de la desemejanza misma que existe entre el objeto deseado y el hallazgo». Y toda suerte de razón es inútil: «Una belleza así no podrá desprenderse sino del sentimiento punzante de la cosa revelada, de la certidumbre integral procurada por la irrupción de una solución que, a causa de su primera naturaleza, no podía llegarnos por las vías logicas ordinarias». Y qué belleza.
• 
  João Moura

  O amor está lá, sem dúvida, com a descrição do amor por aquela mulher lindíssima que viria a ser a sua esposa, e pela mensagem deixada à filha de 8 meses, escrita no final do livro, como se ela tivesse já 16 anos.
  Mas é mais a escrita ou a imaginação que é em si louca, com Breton a discorrer sobre tudo e mais alguma coisa, desde velharias da feira de usados, a escritores, artistas, memórias ou casas assombradas que vê pelo caminho.
  Um monólogo de frases longas e ideais múltiplas, coladas pela escrita poética e selvagem de Breton.
• 
  Delia

  “Resping scuza obișnuinței, a plictiselii. Dragostea reciprocă, așa cum o văd eu, este un dispozitiv de oglinzi ce-mi întorc, din miile de unghiuri pe care le poate atinge pentru mine necunoscutul, imaginea fidelă a celei pe care o iubesc, mereu surprinzătoare în a-mi ghici dorința și mereu mai strălucitoare de aurul vieții.
  
  [...]
  
  Ce soartă v-așteaptă, niciodată îndeajuns de frumoasă, ori cu totul altfel, eu nu pot să știu, dar vă veți bucura de viață, așteptând ca dragostea să vă dea totul.
  
  [...]
  
  Sărăcia aceasta... nu sunt îndârjit contra ei: am plătit prețul prin care mi-am răscumpărat o non-sclavie pe viață și mi-am achitat, o dată pentru totdeauna, dreptul de-a nu exprima alte idei decât pe ale mele.
  
  [...]
  
  Ceea ce am iubit, fie că a rămas cu mine, fie că nu, voi iubi întotdeauna.”
• 
  Mihai Cotea

  Deosebit de greoi la citire, sec și abscons.
  Îmi doream mult să-l citesc și voiam să fi început cu Nadja, dar n-am găsit-o pe nicăieri... acum, nu știu zău dacă să mai caut cartea. Iubesc suprarealismul, dar aici nu am găsit mai nimic de plăcut... din păcate.
  Oricât m-am chinuit,am abandonat înainte de p.50
• 
  Gloria Tulwan

  "Je vous souhaite d'être follement aimée."