THE POLITICS OF SURREALISM <i> by Helena Lewis (Paragon House: $25.95, cloth; $12.95 paper)</i>

Surrealism was either welcomed into America in the 1920s as a triumph of our liberating subconscious over our oppressive rationality or rejected for finding merit in nihilistic activities such as “automatic writing,” which the Dadaists were smart enough to recognize as meaningless. Both supporters and opponents in the States, however, ignored Surrealism’s ideological and political roots--the only intellectuals in the West to do so. The snub was partially due, of course, to the surrealists’ early affiliation with the Soviets. But this solidarity was ephemeral, argues Helena Lewis, for Surrealist leaders discovered early on that their supreme goal--the total liberation of the mind from all forms of oppression--was impossible to achieve within the totalitarian state. As Leon Trotsky himself pointed out, “One cannot without revulsion and horror read the poems and novels or view the paintings and sculptures in which bureaucrats armed with pen, brush or chisel, supervised by bureaucrats armed with revolvers, glorify ‘the great leaders of genius.”’ Lewis’ purpose in these pages, though not explicitly stated, seems not only to win some respect in America for surrealism’s ideology, but to show that this ideology is not incompatible with our own. She does so with considerable grace and lucidity.