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Debattista explores the links between Surrealism and the remembrance of childhood through an anthology created by Romanian poet Iordan Chimet as well as considering the censorship restrictions imposed by the communist ideology of the times.
In this article, I examine the attempt made by the late Romanian poet Iordan Chimet to superimpose the Surrealist universe, spanned by three fundamental axes: the power of associations, the omnipotence of dream, and the disinterested play of thought over the universe of childhood and innocence. The result was a collection of poetry and art, rendering in one book the Surrealist view of childhood. Over its fifty years of formal existence, the Surrealist movement evolved continuously as attested by two manifestoes and the prolegomena or preface to a third. Indeed, in the First Manifesto of Surrealism, André Breton states "The mind which plunges into Surrealism relives with glowing excitement the best part of its childhood. [. . .] From childhood memories, and from a few others, there emanates a sentiment of being unintegrated, and then later of having gone astray, which I hold is the most fertile that exists."1
This and other allusions to childhood made by virtually all Surrealist writers and artists are referred to as "the fundamental myth"- namely that "childhood is nourished by phantasms that Surrealism will aspire to regenerate."2 The surrealist quest for the preverbal, i.e. authentic thought, overlays with the equally surrealist quest for recovering the lost "vert paradis enfantin" ("green paradise of childhood").
The Twelve Months of Dreaming
As editor of the marvelous book, Cele douâsprezece luni ale visului Antologia inocentei (The Twelve Months of Dreaming: An Anthology of 'Innocence)3 ', Chimet explored the genuinely poetic idea of assembling an anthology of texts and illustrations that resuscitated the "phantasms of childhood." On the map of innocence drawn by the cartographer-poet are inscribed the names of writers, poets, and visual artists who, though not actually (or totally) committed to the Surrealist movement, relived artistically the best part of their childhoods. Elusive like all phantasms, those of childhood are playfully classified in this book, each chapter corresponding to a month of reverie. They are:
The Twelve Months of Dreaming
January- Children's Games
February - Poets' Games
March - Adventure
April - Animals
May - The...