There are some different translations of Breton’s quote. One that transfers a slightly different meaning is
“I wish for you to be madly loved.”
Can you see the difference in the active and passive voice? One is a want, the other a subtle wish.
But there is yet another translation which is somewhat more extreme.
“I want you to be loved to the point of madness.”
Again, there is the active want of the narrator, and now we are evening talking about madness.
Of course, we all know that love at times can feel like madness but why would anyone who deeply loves wish any form of insanity onto the other?
Somehow, I found the answer in surrealism because only in a surreal world, the unsettling of reality becomes part of our emotions.
And after all, Andre Breton was a surrealist poet.
My own art is inspired by many of these traditional French surrealist artists, from painters like Salvador Dali to writers like Breton and Desnos. There is an entire world in surrealism that allows the imagination to flow wherever it desires.
”I have dreamed of you so much”
by Robert Desnos
I have dreamed of you so much
that you are no longer real.
Is there still time for me to reach your breathing body,
to kiss your mouth and make
your voice come alive again?
I have dreamed of you so much
that my arms, grown used to being crossed on my
chest as I hugged your shadow, would perhaps
not bend to the shape of your body.
For faced with the real form of what has haunted me
and governed me for so many
days and years, I would surely become a shadow.
O scales of feeling.
I have dreamed of you so much
that surely there is no more time for me to wake up.
I sleep on my feet prey to all the forms of life and love and you,
the only one who
counts for me today, I can no more touch your face
and lips than touch the lips and
face of some passerby.
I have dreamed of you so much,
have walked so much,
talked so much, slept so much
with your phantom, that perhaps the only thing
left for me is to become a phantom
among phantoms, a shadow a hundred
times more shadow than the shadow that
moves and goes on moving, brightly,
over the sundial of your life.