For those of us who lived through it, Surrealism is an experience so well and so long assimilated that it is almost forgotten — a lock of hair and a faded rose pressed in the family Bible. But now, it is hard to realize, a generation is growing up which knew not André Breton, which never attended the wedding of an umbrella and an aardvark in a diving bell. We who were the history in the flesh forget that our juniors now need a history in the printed page.

Anna Balakian’s book on Surrealist poetry has much to recommend it as an introduction and succinct historical survey. There are chapters on the breakdown of Symbolism and the revolt against it; on Rimbaud, Lautréamont and “Maldoror,” and on Saint-Paul-Roux, who in various degrees and in different ways transcended Symbolism... For those to whom the whole epoch is today the adventure of another generation, this is an excellent introduction and a sympathetic study of some of the leading personalities.