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Letter to Pierre Morhange, Paris, October 11, 1924.
Sir,
We warn you for the last time : if you write the word "Surrealism"
spontaneously without letting us know, you shall be cruelly chastised by
about fifteen of us ! This is our last warning.

-Du Bureau de Recherches surréalistes.

Surrealism was a movement in literature and the fine arts, founded by the French poet and critic Andre Breton. Breton published the Surrealist Manifesto in Paris in 1924
which defined a new form of expression known as surrealism. Surrealism grew directly out of the movement known as Dadaism, an earlier art and literary movement reflecting
nihilistic protest against all aspects of Western culture. Like Dadaism, surrealism emphasized the role of the unconscious in creative activity. The significance of surrealism, according to Breton, was the manifestation of the psychic unconscious in a serious manner. (Manifestoes of Surrealism Breton)
Surrealism represented a reaction against what artists viewed as the destruction wrought by the "rationalism." Surrealists believed that "rationalism" had guided European culture and politics in the past, politics that resulted in the horrors of World War I. Surrealism was a means of reuniting conscious and unconscious realms of experience so completely that the world of dream and fantasy would be joined to the everyday rational world in "an absolute reality, a surreality." (History of Surrealism
Maurice Nadeau)
Breton was heavily influenced by theories adapted from Sigmund Freud. He saw the unconscious as the wellspring of the imagination. Breton determined that the unconscious was the true source of the artists inspiration. Through this he defined genius in terms of accessibility to this normally untapped realm, which, he believed, could be attained by poets and painters alike. "Surrealism declares that it is able, by its own means, to uproot thought from an increasingly cruel state of thralldom, to steer it back onto the path of total comprehension, return it to its original purity." (Manifestoes of Surrealism Breton)
Since its conception, the surrealist movement had been redefining itself as various artists explored the new medium. Surrealism retained a sharpness that both shocked and inspired its many critics. Such statements as "The simplest Surrealist act consists of dashing down into the street, pistol in hand, and firing blindly, as fast as you can pull the trigger, into the crow" (Manifestoes of Surrealism Breton). Surrealist painter, Salvador Dalí also made such extreme gestures as walking into a restaurant wearing only plastic cooking wrap in the name of art. However, later in the movement Surrealism took on a less abrasive image. Breton then stated, "(Surrealism) declares that it is able, by its own means, to uproot thought from an increasingly cruel state of thralldom, to steer it back onto the path of total comprehension, return it to its original purity."" (Manifestoes of Surrealism Breton)
In painting and sculpture surrealism is now one of the leading influences of the 20th century. It claimed as its ancestors in the graphic arts such painters as the Italian Paolo Uccello, the British poet and artist William Blake, and the Frenchman Odilon Redon. In this century it also admired, and included in its exhibitions, works by the Italian Giorgio de Chirico, the Russian Marc Chagall, the Swiss Paul Klee, the French artists Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia, and the Spaniard Pablo Picasso, none of whom was ever a member of the surrealist group. (http://www.ee.pdx.edu/~igal/visocomm/surreali.html)
From 1924 the German Max Ernst, the Frenchman Jean Arp, and the American painter and photographer Man Ray were among its members. They were joined for a short time about 1925 by the Frenchman André Masson and the Spaniard Joan Miro, who
remained members for some time but were too individualistic as painters to submit to the strong leadership of André Breton, who exercised final authority over the movement. Later members of the group included the French-American Yves Tanguy, the Belgian Rene Magritte, and the Swiss Alberto Giacometti. The Catalan painter Salvador Dali joined the surrealist movement in 1930 but was later denounced by most surrealists because he was held to be more interested in commercializing his art than in surrealist ideas. Although for a time he was the most talked-about member of the group, his work was so idiosyncratic as to be only partially typical of surrealism. (http://www.cusimano.com/artist/surreal/intro.htm)
Surrealist painting exhibits great variety of content and technique. That of Dalí, for example, consists of more or less a direct and photographic transcription of dreams, deriving its inspiration from the earlier dreamlike paintings of de Chirico. Arp's sculptures are large, smooth, abstract forms, and Miró, a formal member of the group for a short time only, employed, as a rule, fantastic shapes, which included deliberate adaptations of children's art and which also had something in common with the designs used by the native Catalan artists to decorate pottery.
The major Surrealist painters were Jean Arp, Max Ernst, André Masson, René Magritte, Yves Tanguy, Salvador Dalí, Pierre Roy, Paul Delvaux, and Joan Miró.
With its emphasis on content and free form, Surrealism provided a major alternative to the contemporary, highly formalistic Cubist movement and was largely responsible for perpetuating in modern painting the traditional emphasis on content.
This purely psychic automatism was modified later by the conscious use, especially in painting, of symbols derived from Freudian psychology. In Salvadore Dali's painting "Metamorphasis of Narcissus." Dali employed a directed approach to express a Freudian concept. Like their forerunners, the Dadaists, the surrealists broke accepted rules of work and personal conduct in order to liberate their sense of inner truth. The movement spread all over the world and flourished in America during World War II (1939-1945), when André Breton was living in New York City. (http://www.cusimano.com/artist/surreal/intro.htm)
In literature, surrealism took on a different form. Comte de Lautréamont, author of the lengthy and complicated work Les chants de Maldoror (1868-1870) was the forbearer of literary surrealism. Besides Breton, many of the most distinguished French writers of the early 20th century were at one time connected with the movement; these include Paul Eluard, Louis Aragon, René Crevel, and Philippe Soupault. Younger writers such as Raymond Queneau were also influenced by its points of view. (http://www.ee.pdx.edu/~igal/visocomm/surreali.html)
Pure surrealist writers used automatism as a literary form-that is, they wrote whatever words came into their conscious mind and regarded these words as inviolable. They did not alter what they wrote, as that would constitute an interference with the pure act of creation. The authors felt that this free flow of thought would establish a rapport with the subconscious mind of their readers. A typical short example of surrealist writing is the proverb by Paul Éluard that states "Elephants are contagious." (History of Surrealism
Maurice Nadeau)
Some surrealist literature employed a more structured and constructed method, such as that of Maurice Blanchot. An example of this style of surrealist writing is

"These pages can end here, and nothing that follows what I have just
written will make me add anything to it or take anything away from it.
This remains, this will remain until the very end. Whoever would
obliterate it from me, in exchange for that end which I am searching for
in vain, would himself become the beginning of my own story, and he
would be my victim. In darkness, he would see me: my word would be his
silence, and he would think he was holding sway over the world, but that
sovereignty would still be mine, his nothingness mine, and he too would
know that there is no end for a man who wants to end alone.
This should therefore be impressed upon anyone who might read these
pages thinking they are infused with the thought of unhappiness. And
what is more, let him try to imagine the hand that is writing them: if
he saw it, then perhaps reading would become a serious task for him."
(Death Sentence translated by Lydia Davis (Station Hill, 1978) Maurice Blanchot)

Other surrealist authors expressed their work as a didactic stream of consciousness. "And ever since I have had a great desire to show forbearance to scientific musing, however unbecoming, in the final analysis, from every point of view. Radio? Fine. Syphilis? If you like. Photography? I don't see any reason why not. The cinema? Three cheers for darkened years. War? Gave us a good laugh. The telephone? Hello. Youth? Charming white hair. Try to make me say thank you: "Thank you." Thank you." (The Autobiography of Surrealism, Marcel Jean)
Surrealist literature such as this, directly influenced the works of Ralph Ellison in the Invisible Man. On page nine the Invisible Man smokes a reefer at the jazz club, and embarks on a surrealist discourse in the stream of consciousness. He writes:

"Brothers and sisters, my text this morning is the 'Blackness of Blackness'"
And a congregation of voices answered: "That blackness is most black brother, most black.."
"In the beginning..."
"At the very start." they cried.
"...there was blackness..."
"Preach it..."
"...and the sun..."
"The sun, Lawd..."
"...was a bloody red..."
"Red..."
"Now black is..." the preacher shouted.
"Bloody..."

In this passage Ellison has seamlessly integrated his unconscious expression in the context of a drug experience at a jazz club. This passage has the musical structure of African-American gospel. In writing Invisible Man Ellison drew on a wide range of experience, which he layered into a complex and autobiographical novel. The novel required seven years of Ellison's life, in which he employed various literary techniques. For Ellison, Surrealism was a direct manifestation of his most primal associations- blood red, the sun, and blackness. While this might not follow a rational or logical flow, the reader can clearly understand Ellison's pain, suffering and isolationism in his Surrealist excerpts. It is through Ellison's bold integration of Surrealism, the Blues, Existentialism and Naturalism, that Ellison is able to fully express himself as the Invisible Man.

Bibliography

Breton, André. Manifestoes of Surrealism, (English Translation by Richard Seaver and Helen Lane) Ann Arbor Paperbacks, University of Michigan Press, 1972.

Nadeau, Maurice. History of Surrealism, (Translation from French: Richard Howard) The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA, 1989.

http://www.ee.pdx.edu/~igal/visocomm/surreali.html

http://ivory.lm.com/~kalin/blanchot.html

http://www.argyro.net/~revsur/acc111.htm#anglais

http://home1.swipnet.se/~w-16205/gallery/sd/index.htm

http://www.nol.net/~nil/dali.html

http://attila.stevens-tech.edu/~mjara/dali/salvador.html