Monk meets Lautréamont on the night train to freedom. It is
one of many chance encounters that reveal a deep affinity be-
tween black life and culture and surrealism. Neither man would
have identified himself as a surrealist, although Lautréamont,
along with another nineteenth-century French poet named
Arthur Rimbaud, are considered the spiritual fathers of surrealism
before the movement was declared after World War I. And yet
they embody the basic principles of surrealism, a living, mutable,
creative vision of a world where love, play, human dignity, an end
to poverty and want, and imagination are the pillars of freedom.
Freedom Dreams, Robin Kelley
