Constructed out of the seamless collage of elements of nineteenth century prints from catalogues and illustratations of popular fiction, especially crime fiction, the pages of Max Ernst's Une Semaine de bonte: a Surrealistic Novel in Collage (1934) (French title: Une Semaine de bonte: Les septs elements capitaux) establish complex scenes within a highly poetic narrative sequence.

My talk will explore the very role of sequence and order in structuring the representation of desire in this work.

I will consider the function of the literary citations and chapter headings in creating a word-image relationship of note in what is otherwise a non-verbal work.

I will look at Ernst's process of figuration and symbolic characterization, particularly as it treats gender and subjectivity as visual forces.

Violence and desire become mutually defining, perhaps forming an emphatic trope, but one that also speaks to a theory of desire.

So the larger issue of how surrealism reconfigures desire remains vital for this talk, but my more immediate concern is with the particularities of the way Ernst's rearrangements redirect both violence and its suspension.

Focusing on the notion of minimal change, as well as on the final minimalist images of chapter one and of the visual poems, I will look at strategies of release and transformation.