L’envers du décor

The paper deals with André Breton’s reevaluations of magic in the context of his radical views on liberty and ethical autonomy. While the tensions between magic and religion within Occidental history have often been resolved by the proscription of magic or by its subordination to the supernatural ends of revelation, André Breton regards magic as an instrument of revendication of human capacities that have remained forgotten or unknown as a consequence of their usurpation and alienation by established religion. Thus, in Breton’s surrealist conception of magic, transcendence is denied in the name of a plenitude to be realised within the immanent life of man and by means of exclusively human powers. The following paragraphs articulate the development of the subject matter: 1) André Breton’s libertarian ontology; 2) neither God nor Satan; 3) the end of Christianity and the «new human age»; 4) the philosophical heritage of the nineteenth century; 5) the apertures of experience; 6) the occultist presence and the Abbé Constant 7) Marx, Rimbaud and surrealism’s proper dimension; 8) the alchemy of the verb: between desire and transformation; 9) surreality and history; 10) critique of religion and demythologized magic.