"In May 1924... Louis Aragon, André Breton, Max Morise and Roger Vitrax
organized a
dreambulation in open
country in the center of
France. The group
decided to set forth from
Paris, going to Blois, a small
town selected
randomly on the
map, by
train and then continuing on
foot as far as Romorantin. Breton recalled this "quartet dreambulation,"
conversing and
walking for many consecutive
days, as an "
exploration between waking life and
dream life." After
returning from the trip he wrote the introduction to
Poisson soluble, which was to become the
first Surrealist
Manifesto, in which we find the first definition of the term Surrealism: "pure psychic automatism which one aims at expressing, whether verbally or in
writing, or in any
other way, the real functioning of
thought." The trip, undertaken without aim or destination, had been transformed into a form of
automatic writing in real space, a
literary/
rural roaming
imprinted directly on the
map of a mental
territory."
Francesco Careri,
Walkscapes: Walking as an Aesthetic Practice, Barcelona; Gustavo Gili, 2002, page 79.
