Can ancient Greek philosophy illuminate the avant-garde aesthetics of modernity? Is it possible to approach the intricate thought of some of the most prominent representatives of the European avant-garde, such as André Masson, André Breton, Georges Bataille or Salvador Dalí, through the lens of Presocratic philosophy? The volume under review, edited and co-authored by the classical studies and comparative anthropology expert Dimitrios Yatromanolakis, provides a brilliant and provocative cross-disciplinary perspective on the history of the European avant-garde in the first half of the 20th century and contributes to the exploration of a terra incognita, which Yatromanolakis calls the ‘archaic ontological past’.

In the volume’s preface, Yatromanolakis explicitly refers to Gilles Deleuze’s notion of the ‘ontological past’ as the ‘co-existence of temporal modalities in a synthesis in which “the past does not cease to be” and the present unfolds as concurrent past’ (17). The temporal categories that shaped the discourse of modernity, emphasizing both the ‘significance of constant novelty’ and the potential ‘connections between temporally or spatially distant patterns of thought and mechanisms of mythmaking’ (18; see also D. Yatromanolakis, Greek Mythologies: Antiquity and Surrealism (Cambridge MA, 2012), 52), are central to the interests of Yatromanolakis and his collaborators. Yatromanolakis asserts that Presocratic thought, especially that of Herakleitos and Empedokles, was crucial for leading representatives of the European avant-garde in shaping their own ‘ontological past’. Herakleitean philosophy offered a versatile interpretative framework that allowed 20th-century thinkers to address the challenges and disillusionments posed by positivist, post-Enlightenment rationalism.

The European avant-garde engaged with classical antiquity in two distinct ways, according to Yatromanolakis. While its representatives critiqued the idealized portrayal of classical antiquity that had dominated European thought since the mid-18th century, they also embraced the ‘subversive potential’ of Greek mythology, especially as interpreted by leading avant-garde artists and intellectuals. The idealized vision of ancient Greece represented for them a static and barren reality, while the mythological perspective provided a far more dynamic and multifaceted approach to understanding the world. The volume offers a genuinely innovative and comprehensive analysis of how avant-garde representatives redefined Greek antiquity, challenging nearly two centuries of idealized, logocentric reconstruction. Despite their individual differences, avant-garde thinkers and artists such as Georges Bataille, André Masson, André Breton and Salvador Dalí viewed Herakleitean thought as a crucial element in the synthesis of opposing categories and in the continuous change and transformation of the world. This perspective was intricately intertwined with their own theoretical, artistic and anthropological explorations.

The first extensive chapter of the volume, authored by Yatromanolakis, systematically reveals Herakleitos as the intellectual counterpart of André Masson’s artistic genius, exploring how the artist engages with Herakleitean thought while highlighting how myth, philosophical thought and temporality shape Masson’s theasis (a comprehensive, integrative mode of understanding in which perception, philosophical reflection, historical consciousness and mythic imagination coalesce into a unified apprehension of reality) and, ultimately, define his artistic mythogenetic process. In the second chapter, Wolfgang Asholt systematically investigates André Breton’s surrealist aesthetics and poetics, drawing on Breton’s novel Nadja (1928) to explore the genealogy of the author’s thought. He traces its origins to Herakleitos and reveals how it is significantly shaped by the ideas of Berkeley, Hegel and Marx. Following this chapter, Astrid Ruffa offers a comparative analysis of the ideological influences of Herakleitos on Breton and Dalí. She examines how Dalí reinterprets Breton’s Herakleitos to present his own vision of Herakleitean thought, which is rooted in the origins and extends through the evolution of the paranoid-critical method (méthode paranoïaque-critique). The book concludes with a fourth chapter, in which Neil Cox examines the collaborative projects of Georges Bataille and André Masson, focusing on the Herakleitean potential within their works. His study unfolds through the argument that this very potential is largely mediated through the reinterpretations of Herakleitean thought by Sade and Nietzsche.

With each chapter perspectives shift, transforming the reader’s view. The book prompts a rethinking of European avant-garde thought, encouraging readers to reconnect the ideological, intellectual, poetological and aesthetic dots: a process that reveals a new image of European modernity, incontestably reshaped by the ‘subversive ideological potential’ (21) of Presocratic thought.