What do you think?
Rate this book
Aurora
Leiris - associate of the Surrealists, then later, Bataille, Sartre, groundbreaking anthropologist - wrote this single novel which he published more than a decade after its composition, and his own description of it cannot be Despite the "black" or "frenetic" style of its blustering prose, what I like about this work is the appetite it expresses for an unattainable purity, the faith it places in the untamed imagination, the horror it manifests with regard to any kind of fixity - in fact, the way almost every page of it refuses to accept that human condition in the face of which there are some who will never cease resistance, however reasonably society might one day be ordered.
174 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1946
7 people are currently reading
448 people want to read
About the author
Michel Leiris
156 books96 followersBorn in Paris in 1901, Michel Leiris was a French surrealist writer and ethnographer. In the 1920s he became a member of the surrealist movement and contributed to La révolution surréaliste. In those years, he wrote a surrealist novel: Aurora.
After his exit from the surrealist group, he teamed up with Georges Bataille in the magazine Documents.
After his exit from the surrealist group, he teamed up with Georges Bataille in the magazine Documents.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
August 19, 2023
Best sleeping pill, for now!
Not because it's boring, but because there are so many details, so many actions. It's just like my dreams: unconnected things that somehow are connected.
You have to be so present in there, to give all your energy to keep up with the words so this gives you that sweet state of falling to the sleep world.
It's my first surreal book and came after finishing the Harry Potter books, so it was a bit challenging, to be fair.
I liked a lot the words, the style which Michel Leiris used to connect the words in phrases.
But I am in that state where you ask yourself: did I like that, or did I not understand one single thing. I read it not in my best condition, so maybe I'll put it among the books that need a second reading for better understanding and for my own peace of mind.
Not because it's boring, but because there are so many details, so many actions. It's just like my dreams: unconnected things that somehow are connected.
You have to be so present in there, to give all your energy to keep up with the words so this gives you that sweet state of falling to the sleep world.
It's my first surreal book and came after finishing the Harry Potter books, so it was a bit challenging, to be fair.
I liked a lot the words, the style which Michel Leiris used to connect the words in phrases.
But I am in that state where you ask yourself: did I like that, or did I not understand one single thing. I read it not in my best condition, so maybe I'll put it among the books that need a second reading for better understanding and for my own peace of mind.
May 25, 2017
1/5, notă maximă!!!
August 18, 2020
It was ok, the author was definitely talented, but it's not really my cup of tea. I may be biased because before reading Aurora I had just finished reading Manhood: A Journey from Childhood into the Fierce Order of Virility which made me feel pretty put off by the author. A shame, since I really wanted to like him because he's a fellow anthropologist :)).
Then again, some images are very immersive and well-written, so don't shy away from it if you like stream-of-consciousness-style novels and essays where nothing really happens but the delirium described is powerful and suggestive.
Then again, some images are very immersive and well-written, so don't shy away from it if you like stream-of-consciousness-style novels and essays where nothing really happens but the delirium described is powerful and suggestive.
April 4, 2019
3.5/5. It's like Maldoror but not as good. Still, there is a lot of very good and interesting imagery and excellent prose. There is also mind-bending, almost impossibly oneiric imagery...maybe this is my fault, because most of it involved geometry. Example:
"On the column's light-coloured screen the vertical black lines danced about and intermingled like shadows projected on to the ground by the bars of railings when two runners carrying lamps rush towards each other and pass, both having followed a straight line parallel to the railings but in opposite directions."
This doesn't make sense in context either - it's surrealism, it won't make "sense" - but I had a hard time fathoming what was even going on, and Leiris isn't as good a writer as Lautreamont to make those moments good *because* they're unfathomable. As a result, Aurora is meandering and pretty much pointless (like Maldoror to a large extent) but doesn't really have anything to offer than the sexualization of geometry (this part is good) and various motifs of climates and seasons. If possible, read this before Maldoror...I could see myself liking it a lot more in that way.
The bad parts felt like Locus Solus (a book I hate sorry) that I had to push through. Certain parts felt like I was inside of a Max Ernst painting which is as disorienting and as terrifying as it sounds.
"On the column's light-coloured screen the vertical black lines danced about and intermingled like shadows projected on to the ground by the bars of railings when two runners carrying lamps rush towards each other and pass, both having followed a straight line parallel to the railings but in opposite directions."
This doesn't make sense in context either - it's surrealism, it won't make "sense" - but I had a hard time fathoming what was even going on, and Leiris isn't as good a writer as Lautreamont to make those moments good *because* they're unfathomable. As a result, Aurora is meandering and pretty much pointless (like Maldoror to a large extent) but doesn't really have anything to offer than the sexualization of geometry (this part is good) and various motifs of climates and seasons. If possible, read this before Maldoror...I could see myself liking it a lot more in that way.
The bad parts felt like Locus Solus (a book I hate sorry) that I had to push through. Certain parts felt like I was inside of a Max Ernst painting which is as disorienting and as terrifying as it sounds.
May 28, 2017
„...nerăbdător cum eram ca tot acest delir să ia sfârșit odată.”
Exact gândul meu pe parcursul întregii lecturi.
Exact gândul meu pe parcursul întregii lecturi.
October 17, 2021
I named my “departed” eternally beloved daughter after this book.
August 23, 2007
This Is Leiris' only novel. He was a founding member of the French surrealists as well as an associate of Bataille. This book reads like automatic writing, though I'm almost certain that it is not. Aurora seems heavily influenced by "Maldoror" by Lautramont and "Aurelia" by Gerard De Nerval, but is not in the same league as either of these proto-surrealist masterpieces.
October 22, 2023
This guy was high.
July 1, 2023
Well that was a journey.
A couple times while reading my left brain seemed to just shut down, as if it knew it wasn't needed. It provided a pleasant mental relaxation type of feeling.
Here's an excerpt if you want to test it out for yourself:
"Sipping the liquid grain of his whiskey, the man reflected upon his past (which he invented perhaps) and his memories swayed back and forth like ears of corn. He vaguely remembered having been born in a coastal town, and that it was to the waves' dried salt that he owed his stone-like appearance when, having plunged into their watery chaos, he would lie beneath the sun whose vertical rays caused faint white pyramids of salt crystal to appear here and there on his body, encasing it in armour such as his skeleton might have formed had it suddenly become external. It was this white garment of mourning which he still wore, the white mourning of surgical gowns so much more significant than black, since white is the colour of obliteration whereas black, far from being the colour of emptiness and nothingness, is much more the active shade which makes the deep and therefore dark substance of all things stand out, from the flight of despair whose magical blackness animates the blank parchment of the soul, to the supposedly sinister flight of the raven, whose croakings and cadaverous meals are but the joyful signs of physical metamorphoses, black as congealed blood or charred wood, but much less lugubrious than the deathly restfulness of white. Yet this desert whiteness did not rule out all subsequent possibilities, when it too would coagulate to form directions in blood and when it too would know the three congruences of putrefaction."
A couple times while reading my left brain seemed to just shut down, as if it knew it wasn't needed. It provided a pleasant mental relaxation type of feeling.
Here's an excerpt if you want to test it out for yourself:
"Sipping the liquid grain of his whiskey, the man reflected upon his past (which he invented perhaps) and his memories swayed back and forth like ears of corn. He vaguely remembered having been born in a coastal town, and that it was to the waves' dried salt that he owed his stone-like appearance when, having plunged into their watery chaos, he would lie beneath the sun whose vertical rays caused faint white pyramids of salt crystal to appear here and there on his body, encasing it in armour such as his skeleton might have formed had it suddenly become external. It was this white garment of mourning which he still wore, the white mourning of surgical gowns so much more significant than black, since white is the colour of obliteration whereas black, far from being the colour of emptiness and nothingness, is much more the active shade which makes the deep and therefore dark substance of all things stand out, from the flight of despair whose magical blackness animates the blank parchment of the soul, to the supposedly sinister flight of the raven, whose croakings and cadaverous meals are but the joyful signs of physical metamorphoses, black as congealed blood or charred wood, but much less lugubrious than the deathly restfulness of white. Yet this desert whiteness did not rule out all subsequent possibilities, when it too would coagulate to form directions in blood and when it too would know the three congruences of putrefaction."
December 11, 2020
wow i hated this misogynistic piece of shit!!!!!!
Read
July 31, 2009I was reading this while over someone's house, but never finished it. It was engrossing, but I'll have to wait until I can get my hands on another copy one day.
February 16, 2009
Perhaps the greatest Surrealist novel of the movement. Look out Dali, you've got nothing on Leiris!
February 22, 2015
What... the fuck... was that?
May 17, 2022
3.75
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews