Simic on Surrealism

A relevant quote from Charles Simic's essay, "Negative Capability and its Children."

"Surrealism suspects language and its representational powers. In its view, there’s no intimacy between language and the world; the old equation, word equals object, is simply a function of habit. In addition, there’s the problem of simultaneity of experience versus the linear requirements of grammar. Grammar moves in time. Only figurative language can hope to grasp the simultaneity of experience. Therefore, it’s the connotative and not the denotative aspect of language that is of interest, the spark that sets off the figurative chain reaction and transcends the tyranny of the particular."