The following transcribed - – from “Glossaire” in La Revolution Surrealiste 1925-26. Author’s initials M.L.- – - into Wooden Notebook; various dates in 2007.
A monstrous aberration leads men to believe that language was born to facilitate their mutual relations. To this utilitarian end they compile dictionaries, where words are catalogued, and endowed with a well defined meaning (so they think) based on custom and etymology. But etymology is a perfectly vain science, giving no information at all about the real meaning of a word, that is, its particular personal signification that everyone must assign to it according to the convenience of his mind. As for custom, it is superfluous to mention that it is the lowest criterion to which we may refer. The usual meaning and the etymological meaning of a word cannot teach us anything about ourselves, since they represent the collective fraction of the language, which has been made for everybody and not for each of us. By dissecting words we love, without the wish to follow etymology or accepted signification, we discover their most hidden virtues and the secret associated sounds, shapes and ideas. The language changes into oracle and we have here a thread (however tenuous it be) to guide us inside the Babel of our mind.
