Dream-like Narration and Imagery in David Gascoyne’s Surrealist Poetry: “And the Seventh Dream is the Dream of Isis”

The centenary year of 2024 marked a milestone for Surrealism, one of the 20th century’s most influential movements, initiated by André Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto in 1924. David Gascoyne’s “And the Seventh Dream is the Dream of Isis” (1933) is considered the first surrealist poem in English. It employs dream-like narration and imagery to reflect Surrealist ideas. The use of dream-like motifs, and the juxtaposition of the real and unreal, the arcane and modern, the religious and obscene, and the natural and bewildering, creates a surrealist effect in the poem. Its disjointed imagery blurs the boundaries between dream and reality while reflecting the devastating effects of World War I and the epidemics prevalent at that time on individuals and society. In this way, Gascoyne aims to awaken the modern individual’s unconscious, emphasising the impact of this movement that emerged between the World Wars. Gascoyne positions the surrealist poet as a visionary capable of uncovering hidden truths within the depths of the unconscious and invites the reader to explore it. The poem also incorporates female representations, such as mother, priestess, queen, virgin, and Isis, the Egyptian goddess, to portray the feminine unconscious. This article argues that the unconscious, embodied by the feminine, is both destructive and transformative. Drawing on the theories of Breton and Freud and through mythological and feminist analyses, this study explores how Gascoyne’s narrator constructs a disorienting yet deeply symbolic surrealist narrative. Thus, it aims to revitalize the surrealist movement, and underscore its lasting impact, both on its 101st anniversary and beyond.