It was to be expected that this book would change, and to the extent that it questioned our
terrestrial existence by charging it nonetheless with everything that it comprises on this or
that side of the limits we are in the habit of assigning to it, that its fate would be closely bound
up with my own, which is, for example, to have written and not to have written books. Those
attributed to me do not seem to me to exercise any greater influence on me than many
others, and no doubt I am no longer as fully familiar with them as it is possible to be …

2 others the futile task of curing patients. He was wholly consumed by and devoted to that
sacred fever. Surrealism, such as I conceive of it, asserts our complete nonconformism
clearly enough so that there can be no question of translating it, at the trial of the real world,
as evidence for the defense. It could, on the contrary, only serve to justify the complete state
of distraction which we hope to achieve here below. Kant's absentmindedness regarding
women, Pasteur's absentmindedness about “grapes,” Curie's absentmindedness with …