Le Merveilleux dans la prose surréaliste européenne (review)

This volume’s extensive bibliography, carefully organized into four main sections — ‘Théorie sur la littérature européenne et sur l’avant-garde’, ‘Le Surréalisme en Europe’, ‘Merveilleux et fantastique’, and ‘Les Récits surréalistes’ — and ten subsections, will not only be useful to the student or scholar of Surrealism, but bears witness to the sheer ambition of Tania Collani’s task and the extensive reading required to tackle the terms set out in the book’s title. Le Merveilleux dans la prose surréaliste européenne, in its objective to interrogate the marvellous, has indeed to cover a good deal of ground. The first of the volume’s five parts is devoted to an account of Surrealism’s trajectory over the period 1922 to 1940. If its starting point — Surrealism’s roots in France — is inevitably familiar, its geographical scope is less so. In considering the extent of Surrealism’s expansion into Alsace, Germany, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Spain, Italy, Greece, Belgium, and England, Collani acknowledges recent scholarship that is international in both production and approach. Having amply set her context, she tackles her principal theme — the marvellous — in a structured, thoroughly researched, and detailed way. Broadly, the next two parts address theories of the marvellous, and the final two draw on these findings to engage in detailed analyses of Surrealist narratives. There is, however, a consistent interweaving of theoretical and creative writings that reflects the activities and approaches of the Surrealists. Collani builds her arguments by firmly including, rather than excluding, a range of theorists and writers over time. She gives space, for example, to theories of the marvellous set out by Michel Leiris in Essai sur le merveilleux (1926) and by Pierre Mabille in Le Miroir du merveilleux (1940), drawing out their points of concurrence and, above all, of conflict. Equally, as part of her discussions of Surrealist narratives, Collani gives due note to Leonora Carrington’s writing, examining, for instance, not only its alternative visions of the marvellous but what it reveals about Surrealism’s evolution and expansion. Carrington is just one of many writers whose work is treated to detailed, original comment, and, in contrast to the more usual criticism levelled at works on Surrealism, Breton and Aragon can scarcely be said to dominate. If there is one point of disjunction about the volume, it is the Europeanness in the title. Where the first section promises so much internationalism, the main body predominantly reminds us of Surrealism’s Frenchness, especially in its theories. The book’s strengths, however, are many. Collani gives equal weight to questions of theory — not least the perennial Surrealist struggle between the individual and the collective — and to the aesthetics and themes of Surrealist writing. The volume thus offers both a thorough theoretical grounding on the marvellous, and exemplary models of close analyses, which are useful in their own right. As avant-garde writers knew so well, words are easily worn out. In the context of its ubiquitous application to Surrealism, le merveilleux risks becoming a stock term. In tackling it so comprehensively, Collani succeeds in making it new again.