Freedom of Love <a title="Freedom of Love" href="">Freedom of Love</a> This poem by André Breton disects the female body and compares the parts to very non-bodylike things. This made me think of Breton's speaker as someone who objectifies the woman he is with, much like Rochester does to Annette in <em>Wide Sargasso Sea</em>. Rochester objectifies Annette to pieces, but does so so much that he even finds it impossible to refer to her by her own name. He begins calling his objectified wife by the name Bertha, likely because he doesn't know what else to call her. Though Breton's poem is more sexualized than Rhys's novel, the ideas expressed appear to be quite similar. Both deal with the idea of identity and how that identity is related to the body. André Breton Edouard Rodti, translator French, translated to English poem Sheherazade, 1950 <a title="Sheherazade, 1950" href="">Sheherazade</a>, 1950 <p>Of the novels we read from the 20th Century in Europe, the most surrealist of them was <em>Wide Sargasso Sea</em> by Jean Rhys. This painting of Magritte's reminded me of the book because of how fragmented an identity can become. First, Annette is a piece of her mother, then a piece of the convent in which she resides, then a piece of her marriage, then a piece of Rochester's English manor. Annette, though telling her story through the words of Rhys, is constantly in fragments of her own identity. She is always missing something that makes her uniquely herself. </p> <p>Annette's mother was known for her undying beauty, which is also something addressed in Magritte's painting. Just as Annette was reduced to being a piece of something else, so was her mother. Her mother was only able to be viewed as an object, like this painting of Magritte's implies, which makes Annette's identity even mroe fragmented.</p> René Magritte Matteson Art 1950 oil on canvas Un Chien Andalou (Andalusian Dog) <a title="Un Chien Andalou" href="">Un Chien Andalou</a> (Andalusian Dog) This is a film written by Salvador Dali, a Catalan surrealist. I'm not going to attempt to explain what is going on in the <a title="IMDB's interpretation" href="">film</a>, as surrealism is left open to interpretation intentionally. To continue the theme here, though, this film relates to many of the books we read in this class because of the way it looks at the inner workings of the self. Most specifically, we can put this film next to Jean Rhys's <em>Wide Sargasso Sea</em>. Rhys's project in writing <em>Wide Sargasso Sea</em> was to give voice to the crazy lady in the attic, which meant that we as readers got to watch the slow descent into insanity from inside her mind. However, we are still, by virture of being readers of an interpretation of a person's mind, on the outside. The same can be said for Dali's film. For all we know, Dali was showing a slow descent into insanity by following the inner workings of this man's mind, but we are on the outside, and therefore understand nothing of the sort. This item had to be included in this timeline of surrealism to show that the concept of surrealism did not change throughout the movement, and that the statement surrealists made through visual art can also be seen in novels and other writings. Luis Buñuel, Salvador Dali This film was originally released in 1929 film silent, French horror, surrealism, art