Beauty will be convulsive or will not be at all.

Host: The gallery was closing. The last of the visitors had gone, leaving only the echoes of footsteps, the faint hum of the lights, and the smell of oil paint and old stone. Shadows stretched long across the floor — quiet, elegant, watchful. The air was heavy with the residue of art and silence, the kind that asks for contemplation rather than applause.

At the far end of the hall stood a single painting — an abstract storm of color and violence, crimson slashing through grey, motion caught in collision. In front of it stood Jeeny, her reflection trembling faintly in the glass. Behind her, near the marble pillar, Jack leaned, arms crossed, cigarette unlit between his fingers.

Pinned on the wall beside the painting, in black serif letters, was a single, defiant line from the father of Surrealism himself:

“Beauty will be convulsive or will not be at all.” — André Breton

Jeeny: (quietly) “Convulsive beauty. It sounds violent — like something that shouldn’t be admired, only survived.”

Host: Her voice hung in the space, delicate but charged — the kind of voice that doesn’t just observe, but feels.

Jack: (smirking faintly) “That’s Breton for you. He didn’t believe in beauty that behaved. For him, art wasn’t decoration — it was disturbance.”

Jeeny: “Disturbance as honesty?”

Jack: “As revelation. He thought the beautiful should shake you — pull you apart before it puts you back together.”

Jeeny: “So beauty as an earthquake.”

Jack: “Exactly. The kind that collapses comfort and leaves truth standing in the rubble.”

Host: The lights hummed overhead, steady but soft, flickering slightly as though aware of their own impermanence.

Jeeny: (turning toward him) “You think that’s true — that beauty needs to convulse to exist?”

Jack: “I think still beauty is a lie. We’re trained to love symmetry, serenity, perfection — but none of that’s alive. Real beauty has pulse, imperfection, danger.”

Jeeny: “You make it sound like love.”

Jack: (grinning) “Same thing, isn’t it? Love’s just beauty with blood in it.”

Host: She laughed softly — not because it was funny, but because it was true enough to hurt.

Jeeny: “But isn’t there peace in beauty too? A sunset, a face, a song — not everything has to break you.”

Jack: “Maybe not break. But if it doesn’t move you, does it count? Breton’s point was — if beauty doesn’t make you tremble, it isn’t beauty. It’s wallpaper.”

Jeeny: (gazing back at the painting) “So we’ve been living with wallpaper, calling it art.”

Jack: “We’ve been living with comfort, calling it meaning.”

Host: The silence that followed trembled slightly, like the air between lightning and thunder — something about to arrive.

Jeeny: “You know, I used to think beauty was gentleness — that its purpose was to calm. But maybe it’s the opposite. Maybe beauty’s supposed to wake the parts of us that sleep too easily.”

Jack: “That’s what Surrealism tried to do — wake the dreamer inside the dream. Breton wanted beauty to be a shock, not a lullaby.”

Jeeny: “And yet, here we are, tranquilized by aesthetics.”

Jack: “Because safe beauty sells. Convulsive beauty demands surrender.”

Jeeny: “Surrender’s not fashionable.”

Jack: “Neither is truth.”

Host: She stepped closer to the painting, her face lit by the fractured light bouncing off the varnish — color trembling on skin, emotion trembling underneath.

Jeeny: “You think he meant convulsive literally? Like chaos, madness?”

Jack: “No. I think he meant revelation — the body recognizing what the mind can’t handle. The tremor that happens when the soul remembers it’s still alive.”

Jeeny: (softly) “So beauty that burns the numbness away.”

Jack: “Exactly. The kind that strips you to nerve and wonder.”

Host: The sound of rain began to tap against the glass ceiling above — soft at first, then harder, syncopated, like the world echoing their rhythm.

Jeeny: “I don’t know if I can live in that kind of beauty.”

Jack: “No one can. You just visit it — let it ruin you for a moment, then return to normal.”

Jeeny: “But doesn’t that make ordinary life unbearable?”

Jack: “Only if you’ve tasted something real.”

Jeeny: “Then maybe that’s the tragedy — that most people never tremble.”

Jack: “And those who do spend the rest of their lives trying to explain it away.”

Host: The rain thickened — a storm now — the sound of convulsion itself, drumming against the glass, vibrating through the hall until it merged with the tension between them.

Jeeny: “You know what’s terrifying about Breton’s idea?”

Jack: “What?”

Jeeny: “That it’s not just about art. It’s about living. If beauty must be convulsive, then so must we — every love, every loss, every moment that matters.”

Jack: “Because stillness is death.”

Jeeny: “And motion is meaning.”

Jack: (after a pause) “That’s the truth most people don’t want — that peace is overrated.”

Jeeny: “Maybe peace is just the pause between revolutions.”

Jack: (smiling faintly) “And beauty’s the spark that starts them.”

Host: The light flickered again. The rain softened. The gallery seemed to exhale, as if the storm — both outside and within — had passed.

Jeeny: “You know, I think Breton would have loved this storm.”

Jack: “Yeah. It’s beauty you can feel in your bones.”

Jeeny: “Convulsive.”

Jack: “Unavoidable.”

Host: She looked once more at the painting — now alive with the reflection of rain streaking down the glass ceiling above. In the shimmer, the reds seemed deeper, the greys more haunted, the composition more alive — as if the storm itself had finished the artist’s thought.

Jeeny: (whispering) “Maybe that’s what he meant. Beauty that doesn’t leave you still — it leaves you trembling, questioning, undone.”

Jack: “Because the purpose of art isn’t comfort — it’s resurrection.”

Jeeny: “And resurrection’s always violent.”

Jack: “But necessary.”

Host: The storm outside eased into drizzle. The world — raw, drenched, new — waited quietly beyond the glass.

And in that reverent hush, André Breton’s words burned like lightning in the dark, not as description but as command:

that beauty, to be real,
must disturb, awaken, convulse;
that perfection without pulse
is not beauty, but taxidermy;
and that the soul,
if it is to live at all,
must be willing to tremble.

The gallery lights dimmed.
The storm receded into silence.
And in that fragile, breathing stillness —
beneath the echo of color, thunder, and thought —
Jack and Jeeny stood before the painting,
shaken, human,
and utterly alive.