Chen malul's Reviews > The Magnetic Fields

The surrealist didn’t not invent automatic writing. They merely transform it into a new and exciting way of creating great art. They first met it in occult settings: at gathering dedicated to channeling spirits, where a spirit would allegedly enter a person who would then write down or speak without stop the messages from beyond.

To the Surrealists this technic was like a gold mine for entering a trance like states and invoking ideas, thoughts, and feeling from within one’s own subconscious. The first surrealist book ever written was composed using automatic writing.

André Breton and Philippe Soupault, the two of the three founders of the Surrealist movement wrote The Magnetic Fields during 9 hectic days, working 12 or more hours from dawn till after dusk. The result is astonishing.

The first line of the book was composed by Soupault, in a mental state he described as between sleep between wakefulness, a kind of voluntary hypnosis. The line was: The drops of waters cage us, again we are nothing but eternal animals”. Breton answered his friend with: “The story comes back to the stipend money guide, and the brilliant actors are preparing to enter the stage”.

The Magnetic Fields was published in 1920, three years before the founding of the Surrealist movement. When it was time for the young surrealists to leave the Dada and establish a new course for themselves, the young surrealist saw Automatic Writing as the per excellence surrealist technic. Breton gave clear instructions on how to use it.

In the Second Surrealist Manifesto he advises that:

"After you have settled yourself in a place as favorable as possible to the concentration of your mind upon itself, have writing materials brought to you. Put yourself in as passive, or receptive a state of mind as you can. Forget about your genius, your talents, and the talents of everyone else. Keep reminding yourself that literature is one of the saddest roads that leads to everything. Write quickly, without any preconceived subject, fast enough so that you will not remember what you're writing and be tempted to reread what you have written. The first sentence will come spontaneously, so compelling is the truth that with every passing second there is a sentence unknown to our consciousness which is only crying to be heard Go on as long as you like. Put your trust in the inexhaustible nature of the murmur."

When visual artists joined the movement, they invent automatic painting and automatic collaging. A wonderous example of an automatic painting is André Masson’s Automatic Drawing from 1924.

After a few years using the not so new technic became less and less exciting and Breton and others moved to other ways of connecting to the subconscious. But other, younger artists and writers continued to use Automatic Writing in new ways. The famous example is 'On the Road' by the bitnik writer Jack kerouac, who first outlined the book in his mind and only when he felt ready - wrote it all down in one sitting. Writing on a long scroll so as not to distract himself with flipping pages.

But probably the most famous example of automatic writing is the morning pages. An exercise in enhancing creativity invented by Julia Cameron and popularized in her best selling book, The Artist’s Way.

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