P.K. Page and Surrealism

Journal of Canadian Studies, Winter 2004 by Trehearne, Brian

RK. Page's poetry is often associated with Surrealism, but critical articulation of her Surrealism is minimal. The style and structure of much of her early poetry is arguably Surrealist, in its juxtapositive imagery, rapidity of association, parataxis, and intermittent effect of automatist composition. Her Surrealist mannerisms reflect a number of thematic concerns she shares with the French Surrealists, especially with Andre Breton: concern with psychic wholeness, reverence for the unconscious, fascination with dream and its representation, emancipatory but non-aligned politics, and sympathetic portrayal of the nature of and social responses to mental illness. Like many women artists of the mid-century, Page is both attracted to and disturbed by Surrealism's quest for an absolute liberation of the artistic unconscious. Her contacts with other women Surrealists, with the Montreal Automatistes, and with European Surrealism generally, invite further study.

Les oeuvres poetiques de P.K. Page sont souvent associees au surrealisme or, l'articulation critique de son surrealisme est infime. Le style et la structure d'une bonne partie de ses premieres creations pourrait etre jugee surrealiste, vu la juxtaposition de ses representations imaginaires, la rapidite des associations, les parataxes et l'effet intermittent de la composition automatiste. Sa maniere surrealiste illustre plusieurs thematiques qu'elle partage avec les surrealistes franccedil;ais et notamment Andre Breton : preoccupation a l'egard de la completude mentale, respect de l'inconscient, fascination pour le reve et sa representation, conviction en faveur de l'emancipation sans toutefois etre alignee politiquement et representation compatissante de la nature de la maladie mentale et des reactions sociales a son egard. A l'instar de nombre de femmes artistes des annees 1950, Page eprouve, a la fois une attraction et une aversion, a l'egard de la poursuite des surrealistes en quete de liberation absolue de l'inconscient artistique. Les details de ses relations avec d'autres femmes surrealistes, avec les Automatistes de Montreal et avec le surrealisme europeen en general, sont a approfondir.

And this is the domain of the strange, the Marvellous, and the fantastic, a domain scorned by people of certain inclinations. Here is the freed image, dazzling and beautiful, with a beauty that could not be more unexpected and overwhelming. Here are the poet, the painter, and the artist, presiding over the metamorphoses and the inversions of the world under the sign of hallucination and madness.... Here at last the world of nature and things makes direct contact with the human being who is again in the fullest sense spontaneous and natural. Here at last is the true communion and the true knowledge, chance mastered and recognized, the mystery now a friend and helpful.

- Suzanne Cesaire, "The Domain of the Marvellous" (1941)

P.K. Page's Surrealism would seem to be a given, to judge by the recurrence of the words "surreal" and "surrealist" in our attempts to characterize her unique style, or by her own continual use of the word "surrealist" to describe experiences, objects or scenes that strike her as incongruous and disturbing, like a glimpse of the distant skyscrapers of Sao Paulo from a remote rural beach in Brazil (Brazilian Journal 47).1 The matter is far from settled, however, since few such remarks make historically specific or nuanced reference to Surrealism as a movement in the arts, much less as a philosophy of political, social and imaginative life. I do not expect such rigour from the poet, but most Page critics who call some aspect of her work "surreal" - as do Jean Mallinson, Rosemary Sullivan, Kay Stockholder, John Orange and D.M.R. Bentley - really only mean to contextualize their appreciation of a particularly eccentric image or treatment of setting in the poetry.2 The recent surge of interest in Page's graphic works and paintings has included some remarks on her Surrealist thought-scapes, and this is certainly welcome. Critics of Page's poetry, however, on which her reputation rests, should also give Surrealism more substance as a provocative gloss, or wean themselves from allusion to it. While the articulation of Surrealist mannerisms in the poems would be a helpful starting point, some larger claims are possible. I hope to show in what follows that the fundamental Surrealist desire to reconcile or fuse the imaginative and unconscious world with the conscious and rational world is also the essential Page longing.3 I make no present claims for Surrealism's influence on Page, and in any case arguments of influence can blind us to critical differences between prior and later artists, which in this case are keenly interesting. Surrealist artists before Page mostly men - evinced a persisting humanist confidence in their right and power to collapse and fuse these "worlds" in iconoclastic art, whereas Page projects like many women artists engaging with Surrealism since the late 1930s - a skepticism about the ethical and aesthetic justifications of such transgression, in art particularly, but in the artistic psyche as well.