Reading Order
Les Vases communicants Reading Order
Les Vases communicants (The Communicating Vessels, 1932) by André Breton is the theoretical prose work that explores the relationship between dreams and waking reality — its central claim, borrowed from the title's metaphor, is that dreams and waking life are like two vessels connected at the bottom: they are not separate but continuous, and what flows in one affects the other. Written at one of the most difficult periods of Breton's life (he was briefly married to Suzanne Muzard, deeply in debt, living in a single room, increasingly politically isolated), the book is both a theoretical argument and an autobiographical document — alternating between analyses of specific dreams and accounts of the waking events that surrounded them, arguing that the boundary between sleeping and waking is artificial and that the Surrealist program is to dissolve it. Les Vases communicants is also Breton's most explicit engagement with Marxism — he attempts to reconcile Freud and Marx, arguing that the liberation of the unconscious (Surrealist dream work) and the material liberation of the working class (Marxist revolution) are complementary aspects of a single project.
Where to start
Begin with the first chapter (the analysis of the first dream) and the theoretical framing that Breton provides — the metaphor of communicating vessels, the argument about the relationship between dreams and waking reality. Then follow the alternation between dream analysis and autobiographical account, which gives the book its distinctive texture. The conclusion, where Breton attempts to reconcile Freud and Marx, is the most abstract but also the most ambitious.
Complete Les Vases communicants Book List
- 1Buy
Les Vases communicants (1932)
André Breton·1932·In the Gallimard/Folio edition; in English: Communicating Vessels, translated by Mary Ann Caws and Geoffrey T. Harris (University of Nebraska Press, 1990) — a scholarly bilingual edition. - 2Buy
L'Amour fou (1937)
André Breton·1937·The companion theoretical prose work — where Les Vases communicants focuses on the dream/waking relationship, L'Amour fou focuses on objective chance and love; together they constitute the mature theoretical statement of Breton's Surrealism. - 3Buy
Nadja (1928)
André Breton·1928·The earlier autobiographical prose — reading the three works (Nadja, Vases communicants, L'Amour fou) in order gives the full arc of Breton's theoretical-autobiographical prose through the 1920s and 1930s. - 4Buy
Die Traumdeutung
Sigmund Freud·1900·Freud's Interpretation of Dreams (1900) — the theoretical source that Breton is both using and arguing with throughout Les Vases communicants; the dream analyses in Breton's book are explicitly conducted in dialogue with Freudian method. - 5Buy
Manifeste du surréalisme (1924)
André Breton·1924·The theoretical foundation that Les Vases communicants is extending — the Manifesto's initial claim about the unconscious is developed into a much more detailed account of how dreams and waking life interact.
Les Vases communicants — Frequently Asked Questions
What does the title 'communicating vessels' refer to?
The communicating vessels (vases communicants) are a concept from physics: two containers connected at the bottom by a tube, so that liquid in one vessel rises or falls until it reaches the same level as liquid in the other. Breton uses the metaphor to describe the relationship between dream and waking reality: they are not separate but connected at the bottom, and what happens in one affects what happens in the other. The aim of the book is to demonstrate that the boundary between sleeping and waking is artificial and that the Surrealist project is to abolish it — to create a mental life in which dream and reality are continuous rather than separated.
How does Breton attempt to reconcile Freud and Marx?
Breton's attempted reconciliation of Freud and Marx runs through Les Vases communicants: he argues that the liberation of the unconscious from repression (Freud's project) and the material liberation of the working class from capitalist exploitation (Marx's project) are not contradictory but complementary. Both aim at a kind of totality — Freud wants to give the individual access to the full range of their psychic life; Marx wants to give the working class access to the full range of human material production. Breton's argument is that the Surrealist project (liberating the unconscious through dreams and automatic writing) is a necessary complement to the political project (liberating the material conditions of life through revolution). The reconciliation is more rhetorical than theoretical — most readers have found it forced.
What specific dreams does Breton analyze in Les Vases communicants?
Breton analyzes several specific dreams in detail, always connecting them to the waking events that preceded and followed them. The most important are: the dream in chapter 1 (a series of violent and erotic images that Breton traces to specific anxieties about his relationship with Suzanne Muzard and his financial situation); the 'tram dream' (which Breton reads as expressing desire for escape from Paris); and the dreams about his apartment and its objects. The method is explicitly Freudian — following the chain of associations from the dream image to the unconscious wishes that produced it — but Breton modifies Freud by refusing to stop at wish-fulfillment and by connecting the dreams to waking events in both directions (dreams illuminating waking life, waking life appearing in dreams).
What was Breton's situation when he wrote Les Vases communicants?
Breton wrote Les Vases communicants in 1931-32 during one of the most difficult periods of his life: he was briefly married to Suzanne Muzard (who had been his great love affair and who had previously been with his friend Emmanuel Berl); he was in severe financial difficulties; he was living in a single room on the rue Fontaine; and the political situation was becoming increasingly fraught as the Depression deepened and the Communist Party demanded that Surrealists subordinate their aesthetic program to the party line. The book's alternation between theoretical argument and autobiographical confession directly reflects these pressures.
How do Les Vases communicants relate to contemporary dream research?
Breton's central claim — that dreams and waking life are continuous rather than separate, that the boundary between them is artificial — has been partially supported by subsequent neuroscience. Contemporary sleep research has shown that dream content is substantially determined by recent waking experience (the 'day residue' that Freud identified), and that the emotional processing in dreams affects waking emotional responses. Breton's more specific claims (that the unconscious can prophesy future events, that objective chance operates between dream and waking) have not been confirmed, but the basic insight that dreams are not separate from waking life but continuous with it is broadly accepted by contemporary researchers.
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