Gaston Bachelard on Surrationalism
and a Revolution of Reason

Where then, lies the duty of surrationalism? It is to take over those formulas, well purged and economically ordered by the logicians, and recharge them psychologically, put them back into motion and into life . . . In teaching a revolution of reason, one would multiply the reasons for spiritual revolutions.

SOURCE: Bachelard, Gaston. “Surrationalism,” written circa 1935, translated by Julien Levy, in: Arsenal / Surrealist Subversion 4, ed. Franklin Rosemont (Chicago: Black Swan Press, 1989), pp. 112-114; quote on p. 113.

See also:

Bachelard, Gaston. “Surrationalism” (1936), in Surrealism, edited by Julien Levy, new introduction by Mark Polizzotti (New York: Da Capo Press, 1995), pp. 186-189 [as Appendix]. (Original publication: New York: Black Sun Press, 1936.)

Caws, Peter. Truth and Presence: Poetic Imagination and Mathematical Physics in Gaston Bachelard, in Yorick’s World: Science and the Knowing Subject (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), Chapter 22.

Ristić, Marko. “Bachelard en vacances: The Subject of Surrationalism and Its Functional Value,” Philosophy and Society, vol. 33, no. 3 (2022), pp. 621-631.

Siegel, Alisa. Room with a view: 60 years on, Gaston Bachelard’s ideas still ignite our imagination (March 07, 2022), CBC: “Ideas”: quotes, photos, & radio broadcast sound file (53:58) (on The Poetics of Space).

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