Sleep, Idleness, and the Passages between Surrealism and the Readymade

Abstract

Sleep, Idleness, and the Passages between Surrealism and the ReadymadeThe Lining of SleepIn his "Manifesto of Surrealism," published in 1924, André Breton posed the question whether the apparent intermittence of the thoughts of dreamconsciousness might not be equally true of waking consciousness, or whether, indeed, waking-consciousness should not be considered a "phenomenon of interference" that keeps us from properly apprehending the continuity of thought conducted in the condition of sleep.He writes:When will we have sleeping logicians, sleeping philosophers?I would like to sleep, in order to surrender myself to the dreamers, the way I surrender myself to those who read me with eyes wide open: in order to stop imposing, in this realm, the conscious rhythm of my thought.Perhaps my dream last night follows that of the night before, and will be continued the next night, with an exemplary strictness.It's quite possible, as the saying goes.And since it has not been proved in the slightest that, in doing so, the "reality" with which I am kept busy continues to exist in the state of dream, that it does not sink back down into the immemorial, why should I not grant to dreams what I occasionally refuse reality, that is, this value of certainty in itself which, in its own time, is not open to my repudiation? 1 Breton not only lends sleep and its attendant states of consciousness (including, but not exclusively, that of the dream) a degree of "reality" that might ordinarily be denied it, but also modality.He moves from the "possible" to a "certainty" that would be grounded were he able to grasp thought's continuity in sleep and dream.