Breton’s surrealist mythology of unique eternal love actually masks a plurality of beloved women.

Evidence

For all poets-or almost all-woman embodies nature; but for Breton, she not only expresses it: she delivers it. Because nature does not speak in a clear language, its mysteries have to be penetrated in order to grasp its truth, which is the same thing as its beauty: poetry is not simply the reflection of it but rather its key; and woman here cannot be differentiated from poetry. That is why she is the indispensable mediator without whom the whole earth would be silenced: “Nature is likely to light up and to fade out, to serve and not to serve me, only to the extent that I feel the rise and the fall of the fire of a hearth which is love, the only love, that for a single being … — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 599 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Breton fused woman, nature, and poetry into a single mediating totality — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 599

Broader Connections

• Breton fused woman, nature, and poetry into a single mediating totality #complicates (0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 599