from Surrealist Women, reprinted from the December 1929 issue of la Revolution surrealiste.

Questions:
I. What sort of hope do you place in love?

II. How do you envisage the passage from the "idea of love" to the "act of loving"? Would you, willingly or not, sacrifice your freedom for it? Have you done so? Would you agree to sacrifice a cause which you had hitherto considered yourself obliged to defend, if it appeared necessary to do so in order to remain true to love? Would you be willing to forego becoming what you could have become if such was the process of your complete abandonment to the certainty of loving? How would you judge a man who went so far as to betray his convictions to please the woman he loved? Can such a condition be demanded? Can it be obtained?

III. Would you grant yourself the right to deprive yourself for a certain time of the presence of the one you love, knowing how much absensce can inflame love, yet recognizing the mediocrity of such a calculation?

IV. Do you believe in the victory of admirable love over sordid life, or in the victory of sordid life over admirable love?

My Own First-Thought Answers:
I. I place no hope in the noun called love. In the verb, all the hope I have.

II. How does this all fit into one category?

The passage must be like death: that light, the tightening ring, lingering pain and drifting awareness of time before: images, objects, folly. Within the margin of all passages, but this one in particular, Scylla gnashes at the idea, while Charybdis sucks every act back to her one center. A combination of spiral and the bird's eye path.

I would never sacrifice freedom for it. Ever. I have. To love as an act requires freedom. Which is why obligation or demand are mere mockings up front. If it were my own cause however, and no obligation, again: never.

Every movement is an act of abandoning what you could have become. Silly question.

And... we betray our convictions over and over again, betray ourselves, our words, our objects of love, the ground... on almost a daily basis. I wouldn't want to judge these men (or women); such is grace. But I might judge an act of love that betrays an act of love; perhaps because it betrays its reality. Yet, who ever knows what is obtained?

III. I hate to admit: I'm too passionate (impetuous) for calculation. Perhaps a failure of my logic, rather than any reflection, whether reverse or direct, of mediocrity.

IV. The only admirable love is the one that defies the sordid. The only sordid life is the one that betrays the act of love (admirable). I do not need faith to "believe" in either; haven't we all seen both? As for victory, lets leave that to war and games.


P.S. What betrayal or love do you suppose provoked the appearance of these questions in the last issue of a surrealist journal?