La Révolution Surréaliste 1925
Source: La Révolution Surréaliste, year 1, no. 3, April 15, 1925;
Translated: for marxists.org by Mitchell Abidor;
CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2012.
I am in London, on one of the most wretched streets of the city. I'm walking quickly, asking myself how you say “urinal’ in slang. I pass in front of a train station that seems to me to be that on Brompton Road. On the street a woman sings in French, “C’est jeune.”
I then cross a bridge over the Thames, which has become exceedingly small and yet upon which navigate a number of ships of great tonnage. Some Martiniquais sailors hoist a boat onto the bridge. The activity is extraordinary. I then find myself with three friends, J.B.P., L.P., and V.T. The latter, claiming he’s not sufficiently broke, gives each of us a five franc bill and a twenty centime coin. We pass in front of a store where oriental antiquities and Negro fetishes are on display. J.B.P. makes magnetic passes before the display window, saying: “There is no tertiary epoch.” We then find ourselves at the Batignolles fair which is, incidentally, on the Avenue de Clichy. We want to enter an anatomical museum, but the crowd is so large that we can’t see anything. I want to purchase candy, but what I took for eucalyptus lozenges are crystals of a recently discovered metal. At that moment P. reproaches me for not writing to him, and I immediately find myself alone on a street where the traffic jam is terrible. The crowd shouts, “It’s the priests who are blocking the streets.” However, I don’t see any. I try in vain to cross the street. A woman takes my arm and says, “Hypercomplex matrix.”