The poetry and transgression that was so much of surrealism’s anarchic force has been recruited into mainstream culture. It has been made commonplace by television and magazine merchandising, by computer games and Internet visuals, by film and MTV, by the fashion shoot. Every day the eye is subject to a thousand tiny shocks as a thousand industries compete for the eye-kick, the visual hook that will lock the consumer into product for that crucial second where the tiny — or not so tiny — leap of the imagination is made. And what does it better than sex? We’ve been educated out of the shock of surrealism, and as for the sexual frisson so central to this art movement, it sometimes seems that there isn’t a lot left to surface. Unless it runs to the very dark.

Which brings us to “Desire Unbound.” It is a wonderful, bulging compendium and, as the title suggests, the focus is on the sexual response. The surrealists saw desire as the hidden voice, the key to the true nature of the inner self. This brilliantly curated exhibition now open at London’s Tate Modern through December (and traveling to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York Feb. 6 to May 12, 2002) offers a kind of essay on the unfolding nature of the artists’ preoccupations with desire.

But in that there is a problem. A series of chambers, differently mooded with subtle lighting, suggest different states so that the visitor walks through a mentalistic universe. The entrance contains a spectacular hanging of that great icon of the movement, “Men Shall Know Nothing of This” by Max Ernst. The work is suspended uniquely in a black light chamber, the visitor kept at a distance, peering in, while a heartbeat throbs violently. It promises the excitement of a dream to follow, but it doesn’t quite deliver. Each chamber carries an enticing label such as “The Bride Stripped Bare,” “The Accommodations of Desire and Her Throat Cut,” and the exhibits are conceptually grouped. But sometimes it’s a bit of a stretch to go with the concept.

It’s a rationalization of swinging emotional states: clever stuff, but strangely at odds with the search for the unconscious impulses and weird poetic crossovers that surrealism is all about. Maybe the designers of the exhibition were straining a little too hard here, not entirely trusting the art to do its job. In some ways the exhibition is more rewarding if you forget about the conceptual grouping and wander the moody halls making your own connections. The overintellectualization of surrealism can be a bromide. A dream interpreted is a deflated dream.

The designers have worked hard on trying to create a distortion. In the chamber called “Before the Mirror” there are two translucent mirror doorways. Curator Jennifer Mundy describes their function. “People will come in and out of focus in the mirrors because of the way the light is arranged, and that’s a metaphor for desire: You want to see but you can’t see. Desire involves not getting what you want as much as achieving the object of your desire. This is an example of the ways we have tried to address the irrational.”

Through the distortions one can find clarity of purpose. It’s great to see in this comprehensive assembly work absolutely seminal to the surrealists, like Giorgio de Chirico’s mysterious painting “The Child’s Brain.” The story goes that Andre Breton saw this painting in a gallery window from a bus. So struck was he that he got off the bus to go and inspect it, and later bought it, displaying it prominently in his apartment for most of his life. It certainly is a painting that exudes a sense of repressed sexuality and withheld paternal love, and gloriously admits to so many interpretations that it defies reduction. The exhibition is crowded with gems.

There are many of surrealism’s greatest hits here, along with a lot more obscure material, and a considerable collection of pamphlets, publications, poetry and photographs connected with the movement. There is a copy of Robert Desnos’ booklet “La Liberte ou L’amour,” published in 1927 and, of course, censored. It stands open at his discourse on the Sperm Drinker’s Club. A translation from the French reads: “The Sperm Drinker’s Club is a vast organisation. Women are paid by it to masturbate the handsomest men throughout the world. A special brigade is dedicated to the quest for the female liqueur … Each harvest is stored in a small phial made of crystal, glass or silver, meticulously labelled and despatched with the utmost care to Paris. The founders of the club, top occultists, met for the first time at the beginning of the Restoration (1815). And since then passed down from father to son the society has continued with the dual aegis of love and liberty.”

There they go again, those top occultists.

Salvador Dali is well represented here — perhaps overly represented because the Tate owns so many of his famous works. Some of the pieces have been shoehorned into the concept, and he is one of the surrealists I least associate with Eros in the forces he conjures. For example, his “The Accommodations of Desires,” from which one of the conceptual chambers takes its title, seems, like much of his work, to be figured around neurosis, disgust and emotions of anti-desire. But Matisse, Man Ray and Delvaux and all the usual suspects are gathered for the party, photographed in full brigade turnout, with and without the husbands and wives they seemed to share in pursuit of the primal force generating surrealist art. You can even play the game of detecting “who went insane after sleeping with whom” in the hope of tracking down the original spirochete of madness if that sort of thing interests you.

The exhibition breaks exciting ground in the final two chambers, particularly with the work of some of the later and rather less-feted women practitioners. Surrealism was fond of casting women as muse creatures, as enigmatic child-women or alluring bird figures. Yet from the mid 1930s a new generation of women artists were attracted to the movement, and the self-representations move from the sexually passive to the active, to shamanistic and transformative, event threatening forms.

Dorothea Tanning’s “Birthday” is a self-portrait in which she appears bare-breasted, almost Amazonian, a scary enchantress with a skirt of swirling naked torsos and a demonic familiar spirit at her feet. Leonora Carrington’s “Cat Woman” sexualizes ancient Egyptian statuary. Eileen Agar’s blindfolded head “Angel of Anarchy” evokes a similar spooky power, as does work by Toyen and Frida Kahlo. It is clear that these women artists were working with very different elements, emotionally. (In fact Kahlo was contemptuous of the male-dominated movement.) Certainly the formulas for depicting desire are darker, and somehow more visceral.

Jennifer Mundy talks of “a sense of imminence” of this period, in which something new entered the movement. “From the 1940s,” she says, “the movement was very much connected to ideas of magic. Though many of the surrealists were uncomfortable with this turn as they felt it offered no answer to questions of Stalinism, of communism, of the atomic bomb. Though Breton himself said in 1944 that it was time to value women’s ideas over those of men, which he described as bankrupt.”

These works command a shudder of recognition that has somehow deserted many of the other, more famous, pieces, which are perhaps worn out by familiarity. Jennifer Mundy gently disagrees. “Even those who know the images well through reproductions will be drawn by the tactile, physical qualities of the exhibits. And the themed nature of the exhibition will itself have disruptive qualities.”

She goes further. “The aim of surrealism was never to be provocative for the sake of provocation only. It was to disrupt people’s way of thinking about the world and I think that challenge still poses questions for us today.”

The key to understanding the surrealists, and this exhibition, lies in the way that the surrealists saw desire as being the thing that made the imagination tick. Perhaps this is why there is a relationship between eroticism and the act of thinking itself. The imagination is not unchained at all: It is chained by desire.

The air of the visitors to the Tate while I was there was oddly muted, casual even. I did not detect the frisson, the sense of transgression one might associate with an exhibition like this. Certainly the surrealists cannot be viewed as thoroughly modern. Their preoccupations might even be said to be romantically heterosexual in character and do not confront darker matters of desire surfaced over the course of the last century — such as rape, prostitution and pedophilia.

Perhaps it is no longer possible to witness a public expression of sudden insight into the dark movements of desire in the human psyche. When a barrage of aggressive modern media has made public so much sexual content it is perhaps not surprising. Even the merchandising in the hall outside the exhibition offers a Dali Lobster Telephone Book and a surreal PVC shopping bag. Repression in the human psyche is tightly bundled. When it has been pulled out of the sprung package so often it is perhaps difficult to push it back in the box.

After all, the furry cup is on permanent exhibition in New York.

Nevertheless, this exhibition is unmissable. The sense of a movement sideways since the inception of the surrealist movement is unmissable, too: Still we strain at the bonds.

Now, I’m not saying that Andrew Motion, England’s poet laureate, slept with his creative writing pupil Laura Fish, or she with him. As a matter of fact, what actually happened between these two people is a subject about which a really titanic struggle for the narrative is going on. For one thing, there are more than just two combatants; while it’s starting to look like Motion’s recent indiscretions with his student at the University of East Anglia are a story after all about not very much, it’s also clear that the British press have a competing interest and would like to shape a more salacious tale for their readers.

Traditionally, the post of England’s laureate goes to the cuddly poets, the relentlessly establishment Oxford and Cambridge types who mind their pens and quips when the queen is around. The laureate before the present incumbent, Andrew Motion, was Ted Hughes, an appointment that surprised everyone because Hughes was a caveman, and some sort of shaman to boot. When Hughes died, it was back to the cuddly, the safe, the reliable; and the eminently polite chap got the job. But oh dear. A sex scandal. Well, nearly a sex scandal. All right, a scandal about sex but with no sex. Certainly no Blue Dress. Please.

Motion teaches creative writing at the University of East Anglia, on an M.A. course until recently considered to be the finest in the country. He stands accused of harassment by Fish. He in turn says that Fish has been slandering him to the press, and counterclaims harassment by her. The case bubbled as the university tried to establish who did what and to whom. Meanwhile, Motion continued to give his tutorials to Laura Fish, watched over by the dear old dean of the university. Well, God bless the dean. I’ll bet you could strike a match on that atmosphere as the two politely disagree on the effectiveness or otherwise of a subordinate clause.

Neither Motion nor Fish denies that they exchanged some 40 intimate e-mails in the course of just a few weeks. Neither party denied that tutorials were concluded with a “kiss and a hug.” Also not denied was that Motion, married with three children, visited the student at her apartment. It seems that this flirtation went on for some considerable time, and to the apparent satisfaction of both parties.

Andrew Motion is not a poet in the Byronic cast. He is not dashing (except when seen hurrying away from the UEA — until recently, the only complaint about him was that he was infrequently there) and neither is “passionate” an epithet that might attach to him. On the contrary, there is about him something of the manicured and tinctured mannequin. He has a fussy — some have said foppish — obsession with grooming and exquisite designer clothes. He also speaks in an extraordinarily strangled accent, as if the snobbish and anachronistic values of Oxford gentility have only been half-swallowed. His verse is clipped, precise, brilliant and curiously antiseptic.

And the tender young mind he was alleged to have preyed upon? Laura Fish is a 37-year-old single mother. She is also the author of a published novel, and is currently studying for an M.A. at the university. Motion interviewed and accepted her into the course after being impressed by her book. She has been a teacher of writing herself, and still is.

Of course, it makes no difference how old, experienced or well-versed someone is, or whether they have a daily manicure. Harassment is harassment and the offense needs to be treated seriously. If offense it is. There is no suggestion that Motion threatened to fail Fish or adjusted grades or committed any of the other forms of moral turpitude associated with philandering professors. The exchange of “personal” e-mails had always been a two-way thing. Jan Dalley, Motion’s American wife and herself a respected writer, claimed that Fish had a “crush” on the poet and had telephoned their London home several times.

Because of the power dynamic involved, there are damned good arguments for not allowing college professors to have relationships with their students. Like lawyers and their clients or shrinks with their patients. Like agents with their starlets or editors with their writers. Like factory supervisors with their underlings or the assistant quality control manager with the subassistant quality control manager. But if we’re going to prosecute such behavior even in those cases where everyone agrees that the flirtation was mutual and authority wasn’t abused, then we’re going to need several thousand more lawyers in the land.

So what the hell was this all about? Why can’t the dear old dean be allowed to get on with his job? Well, he can now, because after a full inquiry, everyone has been exonerated. No wrongdoing of any kind found anywhere. Thank goodness.

Except that, in the process of admitting evidence, Laura Fish had a fine character reference drawn up for her by Douglas Dunn, a Scottish poet of considerable repute, an erstwhile colleague of Motion’s and — some would say — a professional rival. Motion wrote an angry letter to Dunn, hinting at Fish’s shortcomings. Dunn in turn showed it to Fish. Gosh, the press even got to hear about it. Now Fish is seeking further redress, accusing Motion of trying to ruin her reputation and endangering her chances of employment. More litigation.

Perhaps writers should never be allowed to get together in a workplace context. It’s not like studying computer science, after all. The emotions are at large, and are shared and are questioned. There is a vulnerability. Jan Dalley, a shining light in this sorry affair, has said that crushes are bound to happen in writing groups because “they talk about emotions.”

British novelist Anna Davies, who also teaches an M.A. writing course, says, “Contrary to popular belief, writers do not typically lead glamorous lives. The writer spends most of his or her time in a tiny room, trying to force words out on to a blank page or screen. It is a lonely and frequently boring existence, and sometimes you wonder if anyone is actually out there listening to you. Think how wonderful it is, then, to emerge into a room full of people who think you are something special.” Pity, then, the sap who does this for a living. And forgive him or her who thinks, when someone takes an interest, that they are living out that epic Russian drama.

Legislation against harassment has been a hard-won victory, because women in the workplace do need protection against sexual predators. But most people know the dividing line between flirting that is fun and attention that is unwelcome. Harassment legislation exists for those cases where predators persist beyond the word “no.” But after which personal e-mail does the conversation become “unwelcome”? The 40th? After how many hugs and kisses? If Fish told Motion to stop and he persisted — which doesn’t seem to be the case — then her complaint would have some grounds, but the guy is a poet, not a psychic. The mechanisms set up to protect people from workplace harassment were never created to deal with romance gone sour.

This appears to be a story of crushes and cold feet, with both people in the wrong. No one knows how it became an issue of harassment. But, with the machinery for handling genuine harassment cases in place, the university has to endure the unfolding of this nondrama as the stupidity and childishness of two “mature” writers becomes a public comedy. This is the highbrow version of running to the tabloids, a litigious rendition of kiss-and-tell. But what is most outrageous is that the dean of a university, instead of getting on with his important job, has to spend hours umpiring the cooling of an affair that never even really got going.

This isn’t the business of the dean. This is just the trailing, messy stuff of life. Perhaps it would have been better if something had happened. Closure might have come with a few bitter tears on one side or the other, instead of this endless poison dribble of litigation, feuds and press leaks. Of course, the proper, grown-up place for these writers to deal with what did or didn’t happen is on the page. With full-throttle vitriol and extreme prejudice if necessary, but neatly paragraphed and with no ineffective use of the subordinate clause.

Freud’s celebrated conclusion was that everyone who writes does so in search of “fame, fortune and the love of women.” Well, now they’ve both got the fame. Fish, who is writing a book on harassment, may even get the fortune out of all this. As for the love of women, you would have to ask Jan Dalley what she thinks of the pair of them.

Now Lucy’s family — particularly Lucy’s sister Marian Partington — has gone on record saying that Amis barely knew Lucy. They claim that Amis has capitalized on his slender relationship with his cousin in order to peddle “Experience.” Marian says, “The story of Lucy is being used to sell this book.”

The Sunday Times of London recently took up Marian’s cry. Being pilloried in the press is nothing new for Amis — the British media has been air-guitaring a “greedy Martin” riff ever since he once had the temerity to hold out for a good publishing deal. He has even been accused of making money out of Auschwitz with his Holocaust novel, “Time’s Arrow.” But the complaint this time is that the tragedy of Lucy’s killing has been annexed into Amisworld, and the family is resisting his version of the truth.

Marian has contacted Amis and his publisher to complain about inaccuracies and “betrayals,” but what seems to have upset her most is the sense in which Lucy’s life has been made over by a famous author’s inauthentic account. This work, she claims, is presented as straightforward autobiography when fictional speculation often usurps the facts of the case.

Amis is dismayed. Of Marian he says that he is “distressed that she’s distressed. But I’m writing about my life and Lucy is a part of my life.” But there’s the rub: How much was Lucy a part of Martin Amis’ life?

Not much at all, according to Marian, and Amis admits to meeting Lucy on only a few occasions before her disappearance in 1973 (when Amis was 24). Yet so strongly does Lucy feature in “Experience” — in tender portraits of the two suggestive of endless country-garden English summers as childhood friends — that it’s shocking to hear claims that Amis knew the family only remotely.

Let it be said: Martin Amis has never been served well by the critics and the literary establishment in Britain. As for the tabloids, they lick their lips and their hatchets when this stuff goes down. The pyrotechnic brilliance of his style is envied and his wintry reserve is resented. But one thing generally agreed upon even by admirers is that his work is a compassion-free zone. The fashionable cynicism and frigid irony of the ’80s, during which he made his mark, are out of vogue now. He knows this.

One reads “Experience” with mounting excitement because Amis seems at last to have discovered this missing element. The memoir contains some of his best writing to date — except for this vexed subject of Lucy, where there is a dose of too much lyricism, a splash of too much manufactured sentiment.

Anyone familiar with Amis’ fiction can puzzle out the reason for this undue emphasis on Lucy, and for the artificiality of the passages about her. Amis the novelist has always had a favorite trope. His novels invariably contain working-class monsters who prey, drooling and slavering in (usually) Cockney accents, upon the innocent or naive middle classes. Amis is at his funniest and most coruscating when he makes us giggle at the dialogue, the phonetics and even the violence of these characters. Amis fils is a chip off the old block in treating anyone who speaks in accents other than BBC English (working-class Brits, country yokels, Americans) as “unbelievable,” training on them the same kind of entertained astonishment with which one might regard a chimpanzee dressed in a fez and embroidered waistcoat. He never finds a similar humor in the clipped vowels and paralyzed rhythms of British middle-class speech, and darkness always seethes, vaporous and malign, from the uneducated side of the track.

“I am a novelist,” Amis heralds at the outset of the memoir, “trained to use experience for other ends. Why should I tell the story of my life?” He pushes this further, promising “to speak, for once, without artifice.” Yet it is in turning Lucy’s story into a bit of artifice that the memoir gets stuck. Lucy is emblematic. Lucy becomes an instrument in his favorite device. The horror and the grief suffered over her fate are dissolved and reconfigured to serve the purposes of the trained novelist.

Amis tirelessly repeats that the name Lucy means “light,” that Lucy wrote poetry and studied medieval literature. An unbending ray of light, he tells us, Lucy walked into darkness, the darkness he has so often located in the predatory hearts of the working class. He juxtaposes an articulate juvenile poem of Lucy’s against a comically misspelled and Neolithic missive that the hideous West scratched out in his prison cell. When Amis learned about Lucy, he must have seen — in horrible and giant relief — confirmation of his view of the social order. His old class horror had been written in blood and light.

Amis genuinely weeps for Lucy, there’s no doubt. But he does so only because while she’s close enough to count, she’s distant enough for safety. He numbers her among his “missing,” which include his father and his long-absent daughter. At the same time he betrays no emotion at witnessing his parents’ separation, or over his own divorce; and while he squeezes out a tear when it comes to his separation from his sons after that divorce, his emotional tepidness over his “lost daughter” is — considering how much he makes of his attachment to the distant Lucy — the oddest omission of all.

For any man, meeting his grown daughter for the first time at 46 must be a scorching experience. But while Amis engages in a dignified lamentation and the construction (to say invention would be unfair) of an intense emotional response to the ultimately unknown details of Lucy’s last days, he tells us little of his feelings about the daughter with whom he is reconciled. We’re offered only the cold facts of the date and place of reunion. And yet Amis insists that his daughter’s absence has unconsciously haunted his every novel.

I don’t believe Amis ever considered that the notoriety of the Fred West case would help move copies of “Experience.” Amis is probably above all that. But in writing the book, he let the novelist take over when the memoirist should have been in charge. The underclass monster, West, and his innocent victim, Lucy, were too much like characters he could have invented himself.

Sure, “Experience” shows an evolution in Amis’ work, and a great tenderness in the portrait of Kingsley, even from a distance, as well as hurt and betrayal over his rift with writer Julian Barnes. But where “Experience” doesn’t deliver on its autobiographical promise is in its avoidance of the lesser horrors and humor of everyday defeats: the divorces, the responsibilities to your kids, the unspectacular and unsensational events.

Perhaps Martin Amis stands accused of doing no more than what all novelists do, and if “Experience” were a novel then there would be no significant charge to answer. Meanwhile, poor Lucy’s fate rightly belongs to another family’s experience, and in someone else’s memoir.