Leiris and the Alchemy of the Word

All the literary and ethnological works by Michel Leiris are an autobiographical experiment. Similarly to other representatives of the Surrealistic stand Leiris made creative use of the mechanics of the play on words, elevated above comic functions according to the Freudian thesis about the connection between a joke and the subconscious. In his version, however, this meant that for years he was engaged in creating his own lexicon of associations, an instrument of self-analysis, and a pursuit of the collective mythology concealed in the recesses of the language, and studies on the limits of speech as evidence of the submission or resistance of thought towards its rules.