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JANUARY. 1'170

75,
Revolution
RADICAL AMERICA, an American New Left.»umal publis1Jed ten Urnes
per year, at 1237 Spaigbt St., Madlson, Wis. 53703.

Subscription rates: $5/year, $10/year for sub with pampblets. SupporUng

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TABLE OP CONTENTS.

Cover drawing by TOYEN

1 Franklin ROSEMONT: Introduction to 1970
4 Antonin ARTAUD: Letter to the Chancellors or Eu:rcpean UnlYerslties
5 Andrf BRETON: Preface to the International Surreal\st Exhibition
7 Excerpts from an Interview with Andre BRETON (]940)
12 Andri BRETON & Jean SCHUSTER: Art Poetique
16 Rene CREVEL: The Perlod of Sleeping Fits
22 Zavis KALANDRA: Excerpts trom a Review of
The CommunicatingVessels
24 Nicolas CALAS: Hearths of Arson (excerpt)
27 Vincent BOUNOURE: Surrealism and the Savage Heart
33 Jose PIERRE: Gardeners' Despair' or Surrealism & Painting
SJnce 1950
37 Claude COURTOT: Introduction to the Reading of Benjamin P6ret
39 Benjamin PERET: The Gallant Sheep (Chapter 4)
40 Penelope ROSEMONT: The Hermetic Windows of Joseph Cornell
44 Robert BENAYOUN: Where Nothing Happen s
50 Franklin ROSEMONT: The Seismograph of SUbversion -
Notes on Some American Precursors
65 T-Bone SUM: Electrlclty
67 Paul GARON:' The- DevU's Son-in-Law
10 Robert Allerton PARKER: Such Pulp as Dreams Are Made On-
H. P. Lovecraft & Clark Ashton Smith
19 Leonora CARRINGTON: 1be Neutral Man
83 Gheraslm LUCA & TJtOSf: Dialectic or Dialectic (excerpts)
85 Pierre MABILLE: SurreaUsm - A New Senslblllty
87 We Don't EAR It That Way (tract. 1960)
88 Laurens VANCREVEL: 'I'he Invisible Ray (excerpts)
89 The Platform of Prague (manifesto, 1968) (excerpts)
93 Notes on Contributors
I
,POEMS by Aime CESAIRE, Schlechter DUVALL, Samuel GREENBERG,
Ted JOANS, �rard LEGRAND, Etienne LERO, Clement MAGWmE­
SAINT-AUDEt Joy<!e MANSOUR. €, L. T,MESENS. Franklin ROSEMONT,
Penelope ROSEMONT, Je'an-Claude SILBERMANN

ILLUSTRATIONS by Victor BRAUNER, Jorge CAMACHO. Adrien DAX,

Schlechter DUVALL, Rube GOLDBERG,Arshile GORKY, E.F',GRANEll.,
George HERRIMAN, WUredo J:-AM, Winsor McKAY, Conroy MADOOX,
Eric MATHESON, J.-H. MOESMAN, Mimi PARENT, Franklin ROSEMONT,
Penelope ROSEMONT,Jean-Claude SlLBERMANN, Max-WaIter SVANBERG,
TOYEN
 IDI..odaclioD 10 1970
Forty-five years after the appearance of the first Surrealist Manifesto,
the revolutionary aims and principles of surrealism remain almost
completely misunderstood in the English-speaking world. It would require
easily a thousand pages to merely catalogue, as succinctly as possible,
the distortions, mis-statements, obfuscations, derisions and lies directed
against the surrealist movement since 1924. Again and again we are told,
for example, that surrealism is only an artistic and likrary movement;
or that it is exclusively French; or that it somehow "disappeared"
as a movement during the second World War. Critics of the most varied
and seemingly incompatible persuasions have formed a veritable holy
alliance to exorcise the surrealist spectre, openly avowing their common
unrelenting opposition to this essentially new and disquieting menace.

But surrealism knows well the reasons why it must be attacked.

The bourgeois protagonists of "art-for-art's-sake" (including its recent
incarnations under the names Pop, Op, Minimal Art, etc.) despise the
surrealist movement because of its solidarity with the cause of proletarian
revolution, its adherence to the principles of marxism-leninism. Thus too
the priest Montague Summers, who tries to convince us that "God is the
only Reality," is insulted by the "intimacy between surrealism and
• • •

communism," and judges surrealism guilty of ·crass materialism,"

of being "unmystical" and ·unromantic," and of denying the supernatural.
Sartre and Camus, while climbing the ladder of literary and philosophical
success, also found it auspicious to fulminate against the surrealist
insurrection: their invertebrate polemics against Andre Breton are
classics of incomprehension and calumniation. Stalinists, for their part,
pretend to see in surrealism only decadence, "idealism" and even
mysticism, doubtless because the surrealists have never succumbed to
the bureaucratic superfidality of so-called ·socialist" realism. The liberal
humanist Herbert Muller absurdly reduces surrealism to a "glorification
of the irrational, the unconscious," and accordingly manages to read into it
similarities with-of all things-fascism. Renegades from surrealism
such as S. Dali (better known as Avida Dollars), P. Waldberg, Marcel Jean
and J.-J. Lebel also add their mediocre resources to this rampant idiocy.
Finally, even Theodor W. Adorno, whose indisputable intellectual
qualifications would have led us to expect greater accuracy in this regard,
permitted himself to write that "it is doubtful if any of the surrealists ever
read Hegel"-a statement which, considering the obvious and immense
influence the author of the Phenomenology and the Logic began to exert
on the surrealists as early as the late 1920s, must be counted as plainly
and demonstrably false. (The example of Adorno suffices to indicate how
the consensus of confusion is reinforced and perpetuated by the casual
errors and misinformed ignorance of genuinely intelligent thinkers.)

Surrealism itself arises here and now to challenge and destroy the lying
insinuations leveled against it, as well as to combat the overwhelming lack
of reliable information which has hitherto confined the subject to a few
academic specialists and columnists for the Sunday supplements. This
surrealist intervention, raising its voice in the English language, intends
to correct the stultifying processivii uf !!Iisconceptions not only by
elementary critical techniques of clarification and poit:':'!!"; hilt llhovj3 llll
1
by exemplary manifestations of the ineluctable spirit of surrealist
adventure, discovery and revelation.

Let us make clear at the very beginning that it is the fundamental aim
of the surrealist movement to diminish and ultimately to dispose of
completely the appalling contradictions between dream and waking life,
desire and reality, the unconscious and the conscious; to "'transform the
world- (in the words of Marx), to ·change life- (in the words of Rimbaud),
to create a society of freedom and exaltation, of ·poetry made by all,­
according to Lautreamont's unparalleled watchword. Let us also make
clear, to dispel in advance certain misunderstandings, that surrealism
fully recognizes that the liberation of the mind requires thoroughgoing
social liberation (that is, the emancipation of the working class) and
consequently situates itself unhesitatingly -m the service of the
Revolution. •

Doubtless, however, many serious revolutionaries will approach this

surrealist compilation with considerable misgivings, expecting to find here
nothing more than a new fashion following in the dismal wake of
existentialism, happenings, psychedelics, ·post-scarcity- anarchism,
McLuhanism, rock 'n' roll mysticism, pop astrology and other essentially
theological distractions of a hysterical middle class entering a new period
of capitalist crisis. A radical activist might well ask what it is, precisely,
that surrealism brings to the revolutionary movement; in what way, with
what weapons, does it strengthen the cause of proletarian emancipation?
Such questions are, in themselves, entirely legitimate. But they are too
often asked of us with an attitude of egocentric arrogance which only too
clearly reveals �n underlying bad faith. Let me emphasize, meanwhile,
that we do not claim for ourselves any ·artistic- privileges: we contribute
to the best of our abilities to current political struggles and are prepared
at any and all times to act decisively on the side of the proletariat, even
to take up arms, to serve in the Red Army in order to destroy once and
for all the loathesome reign of the bourgeoisie. But as surrealists our
essential contribution to the revolutionary cause lies elsewhere, and it
would constitute for us an act of intellectual and moral evasion to pretend
otherwise.

The reader will find in the following pages, and in our other and
forthcoming publications, sufficient evidence of this surrealist contribution.
But this traces, above all, only the initial steps of the surrealist project.
In the long run, especially here in the United States, surrealism has the
power to decisively dethrone and guillotine the ignoble traditions of
positivism-pragmatism-rationalism-humanism which for a century and
a half, at least, have stifled the development of revolutionary thought in this
country. Rest assured that we will perform this ideological regicide with
a smile upon our lips, in homage to Saint-Just, to Nat Turner, to Lenin,
to Durruti, to Che Guevara, to their admirable, inestimable severity which
is also the severity of the true practice of poetry.

The texts collected herein are not presented with the customary
anthological justifications. Least of all should one expect to find here
a complete exposition of the surrealist point of view, or any sort of
"'finished- compilation: surrealist dynamism automatically precludes such
2
pretensions. There is occasion to insist, in fact, on the essentially
prefatory (as opposed to conclusive) character of the following material.
Surrealism is a movement defiantly not shut up in tight definition. These
pages bring together a wide selection of theoretical, critical, poetic and
pictorial manifestations of surrealism, mostly dating from the post-war
period (and many of the texts appearing here translated for the first time),
to serve not only as an antidote to the academic and journalistic propaganda
against surrealism, but primarily as an introduction, an initiation, to
certain fundamental surrealist principles and preoccupativns, as well as
to its methods of intervention in various domains of inquiry.

The prefatory character of this compilation will soon reveal itself in

another and more immediate sense, for the present preliminary act of
clarification is intended above all to clear the ground for a specifically
surrealist journal in the English language. In closest collaboration and
solidarity with the international surrealist movement (with comrades in
France, Holland, Czechoslovakia, Cuba, Belgium, Portugal, Brazil,
Argentina, England, etc.) this journal, to be called ARSENAL:
SURREALIST SUBVERSION-the first issue of which is now in preparation
-will demonstrate with ruthless incandescence that surrealists today,
more than ever, assume the position of ·specialists in revolt."

For the cause of freedom remains the brightest star in the eye of man,
source of our most ardent hope and focus of the realization of our most
splendorous and inexhaustible dreams. Armed with its impassioned
dialectic, with Maldoror's six-bladed American knife, surrealism spares
no effort in its perpetual unfettering of the human imagination, releasing
the most far-reaching and daring forces of inspiration into the theory and
practice of total revolution.

Franklin ROSEMONT

ARSENAL
surrealist subversion
for further information write:
ARSENAL c/o Rosemont
1858 north Howe Street
Chicago, Illinois 60614

SURREALISM IN THE SERVICE OF THE REVOLUTION IN 1970

3
 LETTER
to the Chancellors of European Universities

GenUemen:

In ,. narrow tank which you call "Thought· the rays of the mind rot like
old stralfJ.

EffOUIth plays on woms, syntactic dodges, formula-juggling; now there is

,. great Law of the Heart to find, the Law which is not a Law (a prison)
but a guide for the mind lost in its own labyrinth. Further away than science
will ever reach, there where the arrows of reason break against the clouds,
this labyrinth exists, a central point where all the forces of being and the
ultimate nerves of SPirit converge. In this maze of moving and always changing
walls, outside all known forms of thought, our mind stirs, watching for its most
secret and spontaneous movements-those with the character of a revel4l&n,
an air of havifI6 come from elsewhere, of having fallen from the sky.

But the race of brophets is extinct. Europe crystallizes, slowly mummifies

herself beneath the wrappings of her frontiers, her factories, her courts of
justice, her universities. The frozen SPirit cracks between the mineral staves
which close upon it. The fault lies with your mouldy systems, your logic of
two plus two equnls four; the fault lies with you, Chancellors, caught in the net
of syllogisms. You manufacture engineers, mogistrates, doctors who do not
know the true mystery of the body or the cosmic laws of existence; false
scholars blind in ,. other world, philosophers who p re tend to reconstruct the
mind. The least act of spontcneous creation is a more comblex and revelatory
world than any metabhyalcs.

So leave us alone, Gentlemen, you are only usurpers. By what right do you
claim to canalize human intelligence and awam spiritual certificates of merit?

You know nothing of ,. SPirit, you ignore its "",at secret and essential
ramifications, those fossil imprints so close to our own origins, those tracts
which occasionally we are able to discover deep in the most unexplored lodes
of our minds.

In ,. name of your own logic we say to you: Life stinks, Gentlemen. Look at
your {aces for a moment, consider your products. Through the sieve of your
diplomas is passing a whole generation of gaunt and bewildered youth. You are
,. plague of a world, Gentlemen, and so much the better for that world, but
let it consider itself a little less at the head of humonity.

Antonin ARTAUD

(Originally PUblished in La Revolution Surrealiste, No.3, April 1925)

4
 PREFACE
TO THE

:International
Sur realist
Exhibition

London, 1936
E KNOW the fundamental criticism brought by Marx and Engels against
18th century materialism; first, the conception of the early materialists
was 'mechanistic'; second, it was metaphysical (on account of the anti­
dialectical nature of their philosophy); third, it did not entirely exclude
idealism, the latter subsisting in a 'higher' form in the domain of social
science (owing to lack of acquaintance with historical materialism). On all
other points, of course, Marx and Engels were in unequivocal a greement
with the early materialists.

Similarly, surrealism finds no difficulty in its own domain in distin­

guishing the boundaries that limited not only the means of expression of
realist writers and artists but also their thought; in justifying the historic
necessity of eliminating these boundaries; or in making it clear that this
undertaking can give rise to no divergencies between it and the old realism
with regard to the recognition of the real, the affirmation of the all-power ­
fulness o f the real. COntrary to the insinuation o f certain o f its detractors,
it is easy, as will be seen, to demonstrate that, of all the specifically in­
tellectual movements up till now, it is the only one to be forearmed against
the whims of idealist fantasy, the only one to have taken premeditated ac­
tion, in art, against 'fideism ' (1)
•

It will be seen that all attempts to make the above two lines of thought
contradict one another must fail miserably.

In the modern period, painting, for instance, was until recently pre­
occupied almost exclusively with expressing the manifest relationships which
exist between exterior perception and the ego. The expression of this re­
lationship became more and more deceptive and insufficient in proportion
as it became less possible for it to attempt to enlarge and deepen man's
'Perception-consciousness' system, whose most interesting artistic possi­
bilities it had long eXhausted, leaving only that extravagant attention to ex­
terior details of which the work of any of the great 'realist' painters bears
the mark. By mechanising the plastic method of representation of the ex­
treme, photography dealt a final blow to all this. painting was forced to beat
a retreat and to retrench itself behind the necessity of expressing internal
perception visually. I cannot insist too much on the fact that this place of
exile was the only one left to it.
5
 The only domain that the artist could exploit became that of purely
mental representation, in so far as it extends beyond that of real percep­
tion, without therefore becoming one with the domain of hallucination. But
here it should be recognised that the two domains are by no means clearly
separated, and that all attempts at delimitation are open to dispute. What
is important is that mental representation (in the object's physical absence)
provides, as Freud has said, 'sensations related to processes taking place
on different levels of the mental personality, even the most profound.' The
necessarily more and more systematic exploration of these sensations in
art is working towards the abolition of the ego in the id, and is thereupon
forced to make the pleasure principle predominate over the reality prin­
ciple. It tends to give ever greater freedom to instinctive impulses, and to
break down the barrier raised before civilised man, a barrier which the
primitive and the child ignore. The social importance of such an attitude,
if one takes account of the general disturbance of the sensibility that it
entails (shifting of considerable psychic burdens on to the constituenteie­
ments of the perception -consciousness system), on the one hand, and of
the impossibility of going back to the former positon on the other, is in­
calculable.

Is that to say that the reality of the exterior world has become subject
to caution for the artist constrained to draw the elements of his work from
internal perception? TO maintain that this was so would be witness either
to a great poverty of thought or to extremely bad faith. In the mental do­
main just as in the physical domain, it is quite Clear that there could be no
question of 'spontaneous generation'. Surrealist painters could not bring
even the most apparently free of their creations to light were it not for the
'Visual remains' of external perception. It is only by regrouping these dis­
organised elements that they are able to reclaim' both their indvidual and
their collective rights at once. The geniUS of these painters will eventually
appear to rest not so much on the always relative novelty of their subject­
matter, as on the more or less great initiative they display when it is a
question of making use of this SUbject-matter.

So it is that the whole technical effort of surrealism, from its origins

until to-day, has consisted in multiplying the ways of reaching the most
profound levels of the mental personality.

pre-determination of the end to be attained, if this end is of the order

of knowledge, and the rational adaptation of means towards this end, are
enough to defend surrealism against all accusations of mysticism. We say
that the art of imitation (of places, scenes, exterior objects) has had its day,

(dra"ing by conroy MADDOX)

and that the artistic problem consists to-day in bringing a more and more
objective precision to bear upon mental representation, by means of the vol­
untary exercise of the imagination and memory (it being understood that
the involuntary acquisition of the material on which mental representation
has to draw is solely due to exterior perception). The greatest benefit that
surrealism has derived from this kind of operation up till now has been
that of having succeeded in reconciling dialectically these two terms which
are so violently contradictory for adult man: perception, representation;
and in bridging the gap that separates them. Surrealist p::..inting and con­
struction of objects from now on permit the organisation of perceptions of
an objective tendency. This tendency causes these perceptions to present a
profoundly disturbing and revolutionary character in that they imperiously
call forth, from exterior reality, something to correspond tv them. One
can predict that to a very large extent this something will ex�t.

Andre BRETON

(translated by David Gascoyne)

(1) 'Fideism: doctrine substituting faith for science or, by extenSion, at­
tributing a certain importance to faith.' -- Lenin

I: NTE B VI: E "W'

W'i th

�ndre GBreton
IN VIEW OF THE EVENTS WHICH ARE TAKING PLACE TODAY, WHAT
CHANGES DO YOU THINK WILL OCCUR IN ART?

A new spirit will be born from the present war. We must not forget that
the tree of 1870 bore The Hunting of the Snark, Les Chants de Maldoror,
Une Saison en Enfer, Ecce Homo. The tree of 1914 brought to their cul­
minating points the work of Chirico, Picasso, Duchamp, Apollinaire, Ray­
mond Roussel, as well as the work of Freud which will influence the entire
modern movement on an international scale. Doubtless it is still too early
to judge that which is living and rich in promise on the 1940 tree, as well
as that which is dead in back of it. It is certain that whatever perSists,
u nder the present circumstances, in growing as if noUling were happening,
stands self-condemned. I particularly suspect everything that decks itself
more and more heavily with jewels: I strongly fear that this is but arti­
ficially upheld, and fascinates only in the manner of embalmed corpses.
The time has come for a general reconnaissance on the vastest plane; I
believe that in art such a reconnaissance ought not be embarrassed by any
a priori systematic view, nor by any technical prejudices. The 'new intel­
lectual tremors' (Lautreamont) are all that count. As always in such peri­
ods When, SOcially, human life is almost worthless, I think we must learn
7
to read w!th, and look through, the eyes of Eros -- Eros who, in time to
come, will have the task of re-establishing that equilibrium briefly broken
for the benefit of death. Nothing seems to me to face this trial better than
two pictures, chosen as far apart as possible, and outside of surrealism:
'New york Movie' by Edward Hopper, and Hirschfield's Nude ('At the Win­
dow'). The very beautiful young woman, lost in a dream beyond the con­
founding things happening to others, the heavy rriythical column, the three
lights of 'New york Movie' seem charged with a symbolic significance
which seeks a way out of the curtained stairway. It is remarkable that it
should also be between curtains, the one lifted, the other raised by itself,
that Hirschfield's nude appears in that unique light of a magician's act
which has been so well captured by this artist (the first great mediumistic
painter). The opening of the curtains, where the figure is placed, is in the
form of a perfect Greek vase, whose 'Paranoiac' power is much more dis­
quieting than that of the current vogue borrowed from children's puzzle­
pictures; Find the Hunter (or Voltaire). I imagine that a half-drawn curtain
meant a great deal in the attraction which, of Chirico's pictures, the most
1914 had for me, 'La Cerveau de PEnfant' ('The Child's Brain'). (When I
caught sight of it in a window of the Rue de la BOetie, an irresistable im­
pulse forced me to get off the bus and return to gaze at it.) It seems to me
that in times of grave exterior criSis, this curtain, visible or not, express­
ing the necessity of paSSing from one epoch to another, ought to make itself
felt in some way in every work capable of faCing the perspective of tomor­
row.

WHAT IS THE P RESENT ORIENTATION OF SURREALISM?

The answer to this would be to know how the struggle under way in
Europe is capable of influencing my activity and that of my friends. Once
more this struggle involves such emotional charges and is called upon to
have such decisive consequences on several planes that there is no intel­
lectual step which will not find itself modified - contradicted, weakened,
verified, reinforced - more or less radically. Surrealism, as you know,
has always endeavored to answer to two sorts of preoccupations: the first
of these proceeding from the eternal (the mind grappling with the human
condition), the other proceeding from the actual (the mind witness of its
own movement: for this movement to have any value we hold that in reality
as in dream the mind should go beyond the 'manifest content' of events to
arrive at the consciousness of their 'latent content'). These tendencies na­
turally carry me, as I believe all holders of previously defined attitudes
should be carried, to state preCisely, in view of the general crisis at which
We aSSist, what is ending in surrealism, what is continuing, and what is
beginning.

WHAT IS ENDING: is the illusion of independence, I will even say of

the transcendance, of the work of art. In spite of precautions taken at the
beginning of surrealism, and the reiterated warnings that followed, this
deviation has not been completely avoided: it shows itself in egocentrism
(the poet, the artist begins to overestimate his own gifts, scorning the pre­
cept of Lautreamont: 'poetry must be made by all. Not by one,' which re­
mains one of the fundamental tenets of surrealism; it brings with it indif­
ferentism (he sets himself above the melee, believes himself entitled to an
Olympian attitude) and is generally ratified by stagnation (he swiftly ex­
hausts his individual resources, is capable only of sapless variations on

•
a ijJreadbare theme). We see today where this has led Eluard: coilaboration
in La Nouvelle Revue Francaise of P aris (a new series sponsored by the
Germans) with a poem that is very careful to appeal to all tastes, little
else than a vain language of fruits and flowers which would not be out of
place in an old number of Keepsake; and Avida Dollars in New York, hunting
sensational publicity to illustrate the pitiful rapport of a badly made wo­
man's foot and a worn-out shoe, the beginning of his 'classical period'. It
is clear that neither the one nor the other, even though they perSist in ad­
vertising it, has anything more in common with surrealism.

WHAT IS CONTINUING: is surrealist activity in the three paths in

which it was most deeply engaged before this war, and which is the recent
period the criticial works of my friends Nicolas calas in New York and
Georges Henein in cairo have set forth quite clearly: the estrangement of
sensation, in full accord with the precept of Rimbaud, to make oneself a
<seer' by the careful derangement of all the senses; the deep exploration
j
of objective chance, cente� o conciliation for natural necessity and human
necessity -- point of revelation, pivot of freedom; the prospecting of black
humor, extreme means for the 'ego' to surmount the traumas of the ex­
terior world and above all to show that for the great illnesses of the 'ego',
great remedies, in the Freudian sense, can come only from the 'id'. My
personal contribution to surrealist work, thus defined, will consist in the
imminent publication of an Anthologie de l'Humeur Noir from SWift to the
present day, refused in France by the censor. I also propose to publish a
poem, Fata Morgana, written last winter in Marseilles and refused by the
same censor. This poem fixes my poSition, more unyielding than ever, of·
resistance to the maschistic undertakings which tend in France to restrain
poetic liberty or immolate it on the same altar as the others. This kind of
undertaking is, precisely, a recent manifesto of Aragon on the pretended
necessity of returning poetry to fixed forms and 'rich' 0) rhymes. What
continues and what must be maintained is the great modern tradition in­
herited from Baudelaire:

'To plunge to the bottom of the abyss,

Hell or Heaven, no matter;
TO the bottom of the unknown
To find the New!'

In the French language this conception is upheld and illustrated by

Benjamin P�ret, pierre Mabille, Nicolas calas, Julien Gracq, E. L. T.
Mesens, Rene Char, Alice paalen, Valentine penrose, Aime cesaire, Rene
Menil, J.-B. Brunius, Maurice Blanchard. It is this conception in painting
which, in the latest period, renders more and more necessary and dazzling
with truth and life the productions of Max Ernst, Andre Masson, yves
Tanguy, Rene Magritte, Wolfgang Paalen, Kurt Seligmann, Victor Brauner,
Leonora carrington, Kay Sage, S. W. Hayter; and which leads us to expect
the best from the researches of Oscar Dominguez, Wifredo Lam, Matta
Echaurren, Gordon OnslOW-Ford, Esteban Frances, Joseph cornell, David
Hare. COllective activity, such as has always been practiced in'surrealism,
will appear soon again in a card game, for which a model was devised in
Marseilles at the beginning of 1941, with another in preparation in New
York. This game, of which the significations and figures were debated
among us at some length, interests me not only because, in such a troubled
time, it proposes to throw an ideological bridge between two worlds, but
also because, aside from the very different contingencies which witnessed
9
its elaboration, it shows plainly the unity of aspiration that exists between
surrealism here and over there.

WHAT IS BEGINNING: everything which, with surrealism, is able to

satisfy the ambition to bring the most audacious solutions to problems
posited by current events. These events and the commentaries to which they
give rise, as well as the notable poverty of perspective which one gets
from them all, prescribe the overthrow of ways of thought which have been
honored for centuries. I affirm that not a single one of them is capable of
giving a satisfactory account of the things happening today on a world scale.
The generally awaited verdict is that of a superiority of arms, pure and
simple; it is enough to say that it is unthinkable because unpredictable -­
as if communications between the exterior world and the interior world
had been cut. In thumbing through the works of those who pretend to profit
from France's defeat, I am struck by the brevity, not to say sterility, of
their views. Conquerors and conquered appear to me headed for the same
abyss if they do not instruct themselves before it Is too late in the process
which set them one against the other: in the course of such a process, the
exhaustion of the economic causes of the conflict will but emphasize, �
effect, the common misery of our contemporaries, which in the last analy­
sis is doubtless of an ideological order: it is rationalism, a closed ra­
tionalism which is killing the world; physical violence is unconsciously
accepted, justified as the issue of mental passivity: in this game the least
permeable thoughts - Cartesian for instance - are those which turn out to
be the quickest overthrown. This is so true, the 'giving up' so general,
despair so great, that many ask - I am assured that in this sense a strong
current exists in America - if the salvation of man does not demand his
'disintellectual1zation' for the sake of a revaluation of his prime instincts.
It is certain that as far as faith, honor and ideals are concerned, one sees
everywhere today the survival of the sign of the Signified thing. Faith,
ideals, honor ask to be established on new bases: in the meantime all the
rags which don't even cling to the body any more ought to be shaken off.
In this respect surrealism will never find a more favorable period for its
program, in the diving-bell of automatism, the conquest of the irrational,
the patient comings and goings in the labyrinth of the calculus of probabili­
ties, are still far from having been brought to an end. The present circum­
stances remove all utopian aspects and give them a vital interest, of the
same importance as laboratory researches. These activities are not in
any way restricted and the practical object of surrealism is, on the con­
trary, to multiply them. Today I see two fields laid out which it will be im­
possible to avoid without compromiSing the security of its advance: it
seems to me urgent that surrealism confront the results on the one hand
with the Gestalt theory, according to which, in particular, all distinction
between sensible functions must be rejected; and on the other hand with those
of the Theory of Chance of Revel, according to which everything conceiv­
able is pOSSible, everYthing possible tends to be manifested (everything
possible tends to be repeated an equal number of times), in such a way that
everything representable tends to be manifested. I am sure that this col­
lation promises many discoveries and many neW certainties.

DO YOU THINK THAT A THIRD MANIFESTO OF SURREALISM IS IN

ORDER?
Absolutely.

(excerpts from an interview published in VIEW magazine, Den�mber 1940)

10
 GJIOMAGE
to
S a i nt-Pol-Rou x

collage by F. R.
 ofI.rt CPoetique
The Egyptian spirit enumerates its Wlcommitte\i sins before Osiris in or­
der to prove that it deserves eternal blessedness; but the poet has no need
to exculpate himself before any judge.

have daz zled even prigs and unbelievers without abusing the marvels in­
herent in my art.

II

have scorned meter, rhyme; I have polished words. 'Music be gone!' A

plague on discourse!

III

I have discarded clarity as worthless. Working in darkness, I have discovered

lightning. I have disconcerted. I have sounded the mute; have confronted
monsters and miracles; have burned everything that exasperates the im­
poverished and the good soul.

IV

Man's dreams, his deliriums, have reached their culmination in my poems.

It has not been for me to make them state their name; protiform, they have
several directions. I have respected their disorder.lhave given free course
to their flight. My words testify to their perpetual metamorphosis.

have exalted the feelings that one tests blindly and would destroy in the
desire to identify. Thanks to me everyone now opens his eyes to them. He
experiences them in a new intimacy. His soul is more at ease when that
which he had held too tightly escapes him.

VI

have not imitated those who acquiesce to the desires of the masses or the
powerful. I have established for myself, my rules, my principles, and my
tastes, and I have overstated their difference, comparing myself in this with
great poets, and through them, with all men. I have thought that there was
neither a better nor more expedient way to point out my Sincerity and my
final dependence.

VII

have proposed to be inimitable. I have demonstrated my mastery; I have

not hidden my boldness. I have rejected the commonly accepted disciplines.
I have invented others for my own use. If anyone can imitate me (in being
inimitable) it is simply my reward.
12
 vm

I have never had the burden of proof. poetry is not a business: impatience
and pride guard its cradle. I have avoided platitudes and obviousness. One
forces locks, not images. I have never needed to proclaim myself magus
and prophet.

IX

I have never feigned the indifference, the good sense and the wisdom of
nations. I have noted with satisfaction that my transports have separated
m� from the flock of panurge.

Work? pain? Unknown. I have recalled that for water it was an easy, un­
questionable course from rain to the spring. I have presented myself as
a spring, producing pure water naturally. Verses rushed forth from the
very first.

XI

With every word, my verses remind that they are a negation of prose. ('It
is oracle that I speak.') Each vain effort to reduce their enigma, to avoid
their trap, demands a new reading. One cannot penetrate their secret. In
wanting it so desperately, one renders their beauty all the more unfathom­
able.

XII

Poetry escapes the banality, the servil1ty and the fut1lity of prose, that which
is inappreciable. 1 bave held all the dramas of love in a soap bubble. My
verses immediately astound. Everything about them distinguishes them
from ordinary language, and the spirit marvels that the ambiguous word,
the long and uneasy syllable, leads it, trembling, into the woods.

XIII

To someone else belongs the care of feeding the soul with staple foods,
whichl though indispensible to his stagnant mediocrity, are not rare. I
have wanted· to force upon him strange and luxurious dishes from the antf­
podes or the abyss.

XIV

I have seen neither majesty in a king nor ministry in a priest. I have at­
tracted attention to the mockery of sceptre, the slime of the sandal. I have
attacked things broadside.

xv

I have not observed the same disrespect in the workshop of the artisan.
But I have praised neither his labor nor his work. I have picked up a wood
shaving to praise the curve, the color and the quality. Dialectic calls for
such priorities.
13
 XVI

Imagination is neither right nor wrong. One does not invent in a void. I have
resorted to chance and to magic potions. I have disdained reason and ex­
perience. I have changed, if only to have Eolicited from them their com­
manding way, the meanings of words. Words leave me, nevertheless, rich­
er than they found me. They have enhanced my powers by confrontations
which are retained in the mind.

XVII

I have been rash enough to boast of my audacity and to recommend it as a

y
principle. My imprudences have alwa s "been happyj I admit this with pride.
I have relied, above all, on the gifts of fate, always challenging them to
accentuate the power of my imagination and the generosity of my heart.
I have accepted them with pridej rejoicing once more that they should be
mine.

xvrn

I have expressed that which was considered, before me, to be inexpressible.

XIX

have divulged that which was reputed to be unknowable. I have revered the
least fashionable sCience, knowing the impossible, every complex thing that
a person considers from birth to death. But, meeting it in my verses, one
1s struck by evidence that unchains in him the laughter of hashish.

XX

I have a pure heart. I have scandalized all the imbeciles, except those who
sleep the sleep of the just.

XXI

Those who like my verses should say them when they are alone and their
door opens in the night. Those who like my verses and who love, no longer
have any need of saying them.

XXII

I have given to each truth its well.

xxm

This path has freely chosen me. The idea of success or failure is at the
end of my foot.
Andre BRETON and Jean SCHUSTER

1959

(translated by Louise Hudson)

14
 drawing by Jorge CAMACHO

15
 The Period of'
SLEEPJ: NG FJ:TS
(The following text, reprinted from the Surrealist Number of THIS
QUARTER of 1932, remains one of the clearest appraisals of the origins
and earliest phase of surrealist activity, viewed in the light of its
subsequent development. The concluding discussion attacks those who, like
Desnos and others, wished to confine surrealism to the terrain cleared by
its first experiments, and who avoided the question of revolution and thus
threatened to reduce the surrealist revolt to mere literature.)

E 'Know that poetry is found wherever

the stupidly jeering smile of duck­
faced man is not.'
LAUTREAMONT

o MANY voices calculated even when the speakers smiled

had disgusted my ears with hearing. Over the too quotidian cobbles, my
feet were dragging weighted miles lined with a shadow which yet had no
thickness. All the trees were in gallow's wood, and they were innumerable
in the forest of repression, with its leaden fOliage so thick that from dawn
to dusk and from dusk to dawn one did not dare to imagine that some day,
beyond the horizon and beyond habit, there would burst a sun all sulfur and
love. The leaves were repeating the druidical ineptitudes of oaks, the Medi­
terranean hypocrisy of olive trees, the fatal bitterness of box, the icy puri­
tanism of WillO WS, and the dirty innuendos whispered by the poplars of the
Third Republic. All the tree-trunks were divided into an infinity of branches
sinuous and insinuating, which proffered their muffling ability to strangle
quickly, if not the too reckless creatures, certainly the words in their
throats. Shipwrecks right inland. Old men were nodding their heads, assured
that none would dare to retort to their cloying smiles by refusing to clutch
at the wrecks of dogmas, the buoys of classical education, or the floating
roots of prejudices.

NOw, the period of sleeping-fits remains for me above all as the re­
fusal of an obstinate heart, obstinate in be ating, even in the void of a breast
which all the ants of dissatisfaction had begun to attack and to eat away to
the point of its caving in.

yes, I had passed my fifteenth birthday, my twentieth birthday. That

was natural, and it was natural too that my forehead on fire should have
yearned for its wreath of cool hands.

Before, as during, as after, the \Var, the atmosphere of France had

unremittingly been that with which skeptical heads and empty heads are
made.

In the days of my childhood, immediately after the first secret r.ead­

ings of books, unmistakable realism had sought to constrain me to see the
world as all puffiness and sclerosis. In practice, a sordid materialism ex­
pressed official idealism. When I was taking philosophy at the lycee, Kant
.
16
appeared to me, in the icy halo of his intangible noumena, as an avenger
and all the more and all the better did he so appear, that the war-like op­
portunism of the time was unceasingly seeking reasons for having no rea­
sons. A few years later it was Chirico's pictures which, through the case­
ments made by their frames, opened up a whole series of avenues to my
dreams. In the heart of the metaphysical city, in the shadows of statues,
artichoke pillows invited to sleep, While, as I read Lautreamont, paris
ceased to be the capital of France and rose again to life out of its stones.
The Seine ••• the rue Vivienne••• The light in the 11e de France, which com­
monplace people find so agreeable, was to me no longer even a scrap of
paper. The lead of the skies, the lead of skulls, was lit, crowned, torn,
illuminated by a revealing thunderbolt. And even now, after years and years,
to enable me to touch that ever fiery time, there must be the May storm
so quickening the pulse as to make one fancy that, born of the wrists, sub­
terranean rows of little birds are blooming in heavy flowers of gray matter
under the sounds of one's palm.

I wish I could write these recollections in letters of phosophorus. If I

am writing them at all, it is because just now, in the Avenue de 1'0pera,
the sunset had suffused the faces with enough sulfur to turn them yellOW,
an unbearable yellow, while at the same instant there became blue, an in­
tolerable blue, the bowler hat, originally black, of a quaint little stroller.

Thus I am able to recall that Desnos has eyes sticking out of his face.
I am able to recall his two oysters in their shell-lids as they used to re­
flect in all their glaucous and raucous passivity the motion of the sea. At
the edge, the start, of this sea, there had been a beach, of sand by day and
of skin by night. On the land side of the beach, in an orchard with too many
flowers, a girl had thrown herself down and asked me to give a whole after­
noon to crushing geraniums between her breasts.

In the evening, she had invited me to her mother's, her mother being
chock-full of theosophy and occult sciences. In the dining-room of the little
house, there was also an old woman who, because she could scratch her
nose with her chin, had called herself Madame Dante. In between a couple
of vaticinations, this self-styled descendant of the famous Alighieri would
in winter collect ivy in the Parc Monceau with which to deck her head-bands.
In summer she made herself a scourge on the Normandy coast.

The girl with the geranium breasts, her mother, Madame Dante and I
sat down all four of us to join hands round a heavy table. Madame Dante
had announced that there would be incarnations. My head was content to
drop forward onto the wood. I was asleep! The mother of the girl with gerani­
um breasts hastened to waken me. Highly proud of her curative powers, she
suggested that, for quite unsatisfactory spiritualist ends, she should initiate
me, but this was in any case impossible, since my military service, which
I was then undergoing, required my return to paris the very next day, and
there I spoke to Breton of the adventure. He, Desnos, Eluard, peret and a
few others made it happen again at several gatherings, which have been
described in Les pas perdu (Breton).

In the course of the study entitled 'Enter the Mediums' which he has
specifically devoted to this phase of surrealist activity, Breton seeks to
make the phase clearer by recalling how 'in 1919, I had come to give my
attention to the more or less incomplete sentences which on the approach
17
of sleep, when one is quite alone,the mind is able to perceive, although it
is impossible to say they have been predetermined.'

Earlier Breton had noted that 'this word' (surrealism) 'Which we have
not invented and which we could so easily have left in the vaguest of critical
vocabularies, is employed by us with a precise meaning. We have agreed
to refer by it to a certain psychic automatism which corresponds fairly
well to the dream -state, a state of which it is by this time very difficult
to fix the limits.'

It is indeed as futile to fix the limits of one's states for the period of
sleeping -fits as for any other time. 'From Sleep to Simulation' --- such
even were the words which I had intended to entitle these recollections and
simultaneously to embrace the series of experiments which went on until
Dali's recent considerations of paranoia (The Visible Woman) and the es­
says on simulation of mental disease (The Immaculate 'conception by Bre­
ton and Eluard).

* * *

In Nadja, Breton asked that 'one of those who attended these countless
seances should take the trouble to recall them impartially, describe them
precisely, and set them in their proper context.'

Accordingly, although my recollections must not in any way be inter­

preted as post-confessions; although I have not the slightest concealed
intention or wish to discredit this or that genuineness, and do not even raise
the matter of sincerity, for the good and simple reason that it cannot in
this case be raised, owing precisely to the difficulties of fixing limits to
our states and also to the difficulty of establishing who was responsible and
who took this or that share in what was essentially a collective undertaking,
I am trying to remember•••• And I remember how before one of these se­
ances a sentence came readymade to the ears of my waking consciousness:
'Mme. de Lamballe's dresses are being put up for auction.'

I cannot bring myself to suspect that in the way this sentence persisted
there merely lurked boyhood recollections of the waxworks in the Musee
Grevin, of the disturbed marveling in which I had once been plunged by the
representation of scenes such as, precisely, on turning the corner of a cor­
ridor, that of Madame de Lamballe's freshly severed head being pre­
sented to Marie Antoinette.

One evening hands are being held round a table at Eluard's. I want to
fall asleep before Desnos. I am afraid I shan't succeed. So then, in order
to do something, I utter the sentence of which I have failed to rid myself
the whole day long. The words are weighted, they bear me away. My head
bangs on the wood. I no longer exist. On waking, I am told what I have
said. As my talk has not been so bad, I am delighted to learn what it has
been from the lips of those who have listened to me, but only because I thus
score over Desnos, my mediumistic competitor. Otherwise I should not
care. I derive from each of these seances an exhausting satisfaction. At
night my sleep is hollow. My wakings are not up to much. I have no sexual
life all the while I am present at and joining in these seances. I don't want
one. I don't even think of having one.

18
 Despite the way in which Desnos and I very quickly came to suspect
each other, our suspicion changing into an enmity which I thought might
lead Desnos to scratch out my eyes, for instance, just as, for that maUer,
I myself had given him a push which made him knock his head against a
"
mantelpiece -- when I meet Desnos on occasions other than those of the
seances, these of course are the only thing we can talk about.

When I cannot stand any more, when I realize that I a�n going to lose
my life or at least my head if I go on, I decide as a diversion to have an
operation for appendicitis, though not without first having done my best SO
that Desnos (certainly delighted to have the field to himself) may get more
strongly addicted and so go mad.

I have never stopped sighing for that time. As a sign of what I must
have said, of what I did not hear myself say, I have more and more hated
the sound of my voice. But when last week I was led to write these pages,
the reading of an old number of Litterature containing the only one of my
talks of that time which has been preserved, gave me a discomfort strangely
spanning the whole intervening decade .

I recalled by way o f confirmation this proverb which I had made up for

my sole use : 'An apple tree does not eat its apples ••• An apple tree does
not eat its apples •••' And yet what shall the SOlitary me ditation tree, like
other trees , bread, butter or cheese trees, do with its fruit? No meadow
spreads out at its feet the carpet of its obligingness and the earth which re­
fuses to take part in today's fits of hunger will not, tomor row either, re­
ceive the ripe fruit then perhaps ready to droP.

COncerning Desnos, concerning the dilemma which his case st:lll is, to
clear it up one needs only to quote these two passages from Breton:

'I can still see Robert Desnos as he was in the days which those
among us who have known them call the period of sleeping-fits . Then
he would sleep, but he would also write , he would also speak. It is an
evening in my studio above the sky. "COme in, come in to the Chat
Noir- is being shouted outside. And Desnos goes on seeing what I see
only as, little by little, he shows it to me. He adopts the pe rsonality of
the most singular man alive as well as the most elusive , the most de ­
ceptive : Marcel Duchamp. Desnos has never seen him in real life .
What in Duchamp seemed most inimitable through some mysterious
cplays on words- (Rrose Selavy) recurs in Desnos in all its purity and
suddenly assumes an extraordinary resonance .' (Nadja)

'Since then, Desnos, ill served in this respect by those same powers
which for a while had supported him, and about which he seems still un­
aware that they were forces of darkness, unfortunately took it into his
head to act on the plane of reality where he was no more or less than
a man poorer and more alone than the next.' (Second Manifesto of
Surrealism)

And this was due , as Breton obse rves, to a lack of education, a lack
of the philosophic spirit.

Through having for so long fixed the limits of states, the old analytical
idolatry made it impossible to pass from one to another. A certain dualism
1 9
which they failed to overcome -- that is what threw out of surrealism not
only Desnos but so many others, for, being dialectical in essence, surreal­
ism intends to sacrifice neither dreaming to action nor action to dreaming,
but instead to foster their synthesis.

Thought, even when least congealed, tends to be limited by the words

expressing it, by the writing of which the down and the up strokes are the
beats of consciousness itself.

An egg-shell hardens as soon as it is exposed to the air. This sclerosis

it is attempted to pass off as something solid and definite must be per­
petually condemned .

TO draw frontiers between the different psychic states is no more

justifiable than to draw them between geographical states. It is for surreal ­
ism to attack both, to condemn every kind of patriotism, even the patriotism
of the unconscious.
Rene CREVEL

This Evening
The point of your eyes
On the tip of your breasts
Your eyes in my breast
And your breasts in my mind
At the hour when nothing in the mirror lies in wait
I'll leave on the long road where nothing more can delay me

The houses are wrinkled like ancient whores

And the trees are hungry
It's for that, they search

Your jackal is eating my bed ouin

And the Bohemian girl is falling asleep
Dreaming of an unheard musi�

You speak softly

Yes you are speaking softly
NO
As for me, I am singing at the top of my lungs
In order to derail the trains

There will be no more of tomorrow .

E . L. T. MESENS

(translated by Cheryl Seaman)

20
 HOSANNAH
In six hundred thousand years

The hunting-s pear like a wUd beast the caduceus bewildered

By the whirlwind of two satiny serpents issuing from the cavern of foam
on a fluttering petticoat
Will not recognize the maternal tomb
Nor find the god who does not exist

In six hundred thousand years when this flesh

That is mine and that marries yours at this moment
Will be no more than a bit of sand on an empty beach
And when the beach will be only a light dazzled
In the Ocean, confused with an unlit planet
And when the planet will disperse at the brea th of a comet never calculated
Perhaps to be reborn
In atoms of a sky that will have no name

Hosannah for this disaster that I cannot imagine

Hosannah for this star bl ue as a skull
For the ice floes and basalt rocks that will be overwhelmed
And for the beach where this bit of sand will have rolled
Hosannah in advance for this sand
That exchanges our two bodies against their weight in gold
In the only hourglass of the sun to despair
Hosannah
For this blinding second that is already devoured
Hosannah for the page, crumbling where our two names make only
an intertwining
My love for your flesh and our own
Hosannah in six hundred thousand years
There will remain Nothing of this glory and nothing of another

Gerard LEGRAND

translated by C. Seaman

21
 Excerpts Jrom a Review oj Andre Breton'8

Communicating Vessels
HE CRITICS of Les Vases communicants (The Communicating Vesse ls)
have focused on its detail s , seizing on certain of Breton's formulations
that appeared to them redolent of idealism, and consequently they have
not known how to rid themselves of certain precon ceptions which at times
have led them to make really ridiculous errors, and which pre cluded any
deeper understanding of Les Vases communicants. How then would they
be able to comprehend that this marvelous poetic book of surrealism is
also at the same time a s cientific act that reveals to us the proper pre­
sentation of the proble m , and whose central importance for the progres­
s ive edification of the system of marxist -leninist s cience should be evi­
dent to true marxists •

... it is necessary for us to conceive of existence in its concrete to­

tality; and it is within this same concrete totality that we must study con ­
s ciousness. Andre Breton is a thousand times right when he says : 'How
can one believe he is even able to see , to hear, to touch, if he refuses to
consider these innumerable possibilities, which, for most men, cease to
be offered at the first rolling of the milkman's truck!'

In other words, dreams are also part of the human consciousness, the
nocturnal dream 'Of normal men' as well as the awakened dream of poets.
Breton emphasizes that all the elements of the dream stem uniquely from
reality, that in the dream there is no trace of perfumes 'from another
world' ; although this statement may be absolutely Obvious, all the same,
it is very reassuring for us to see the author's focus on it; he thus contra­
dicts in advance those who reproach him with 'idealism'.

Also, it's just on this point that Breton contributes so much. He is

convinced, and justly so, that 'nothing, in this respect, would be more ne­
cessary than to carry on a profound examination of the process of the
formation of images in dream s , contributing to it knowledge gained else ­
Where, from poetic elaboration.'

Certainly, the marxist critics who conde mn surrealism and refuse

its ripest fruit (that is , Breton's Vases comunicants) would do so with
good reason, despite all that , is incomprehensible in their attitude , and des ­
pite their errors which we have al ready mentioned, if i n his study Andr e
Breton were showing us the human individual in his <eternal' subjectivity,
thus separating him from the individual subordinated to the conditions of
the historical and social orders in the perpetual process of social change .
But Breton never committed this error. Les Vases communicants mani­
fests the contrary ; and to be convinced of this it suffices merely to disen­
gage the fundamental thesis that grants the book its scientific validity. Why
doesn't anyone want to see that it's the re, th8 t one must seek the meaning
of his victory over 'the depressing idea of the ineparable divorce of action
and drea m ' ?
Zavls KALANDRA
translatio n : Cheryl Seaman ( 193 5)
22
· 'J'he · Enigma oj France, ParTiah oj p'ari" France

Under the cold bed I saw

heavy masses of shadows and many people of all races

ready to fall on the sleeping knife and the snoring plate

Happy as I shall be to s ee this uncanny sight

The ocean-like landscape that no one dareS to tread on

only the giant from Macy's dares to leave imp rints in its surface

Under the hot frosted bed I saw

a mangled trumpet that Dizz never blew and never wished to

the sound of a crushed baby filled the ears of all horses and toothpicks
happy as I shall be to see this and to even listen to this uncanny happening

'Understanding the rights of an artist is for God and not for man'
said the fleur -de-lis to the floating image

Under the fleshy filled bed I saw

all the important dreams capes and many multi-color.ed people

they were all awaiting my signal to pla ce the crown

upon the head of the queen of all dreams his
dreams their dreams my dreams they were awaiting
and happy to assist in such a ceremony

·
the stones were no longer hard they were soft as cam embert cheese and
even the image that defied all explanation became almost eXPlicable

Under the e mpty glass bed I saw

the queen rise into the air with her magic Celtic scandals

her knees were close together and they were no

longer knees but were a pair of amphibious nuns
saying a prayer for mercy on the apache that
blew the tradema rks of F rance away and were now awaiting their sentence

Queen F rances de Parrish with hands gracefully folded smiled and said
'Blessed is the tin can that doeth no ha rm to the
bare foot that troddeth upon it'
under the bloody lung filled bed I had seen
'
Under the bloody toothPick I had tasted
under the bloody bass drum I had listened
Under the sugar -coated maggot I had crawled for a
better view of the dreams cape which the corona ­
tion played to the important role in your soul his
soul their soul and even the shOe soul

cosmic rays have penetrated

Ted JOANS
23
HE A RTH S o£ ARS ON
(excerpt)

fe) TWEEN beauty and the beauty of nature man has erected an impenetra­
ble barrier. The beauty of nature, as Rousseau and Amiel conceived it,
is a 'state of mind' which is no more than a decor in which is unraveled
the play of mental interests -- .the ambition of art is to reveal nature to
us,' says Bergson. The beauty of nature leads finally, for others, to a vague
feeling of the picturesque. The critic on the other hand, who will not aban­
don the study of a pi cture until he has examined all its elements, will hold
his tongue: he will stay perhaps in ecstasy before the 'mystery of nature'
and will understand it only in repeating Wilde'S drift that nature imitates
art.

But there isn't only nature ; a whole world of forms, products of a curi­
ous chance, surrounds us constantly. How does it happen to pass for the most
part unperceived? Why -- is it quite valueless?

The interest of men has not always been concentrated so exclusively

on human works. In a prescientific epoch when the world of forms was en­
dowed with mysterious powe rs, the interest of phenomena which passed
then for supe rnatural - and the world was full of the supernatural - reacted
on the affectivity with a force which in the adult state we no longer feel.
The loss of the supernatural has s eparated us from the world of forms of
non-human causality. Between the supernatural and man there used to exist
a bond, an identity, which stimulated the affectivity. One took the movement,
thunderbolt or eclipse for the s ign of a desire speaking to another desire,
our own; one lived intimately with the divine. There was not, then, an in­
human world, but only a superhuman one, and between the two a pure differ­
ence of degree. Science has come to overthrow these conceptions ; the
superhuman has unconsciously been transformed into the inhuman. The
known, because the knowable has been limited, has enlarged the unknown.
Against the inhuman and to protect himself from the unknown, man invented
humanis m , the measure of human limitation. Thus to Socratic philosophy
was added an affective attitude which completed it.

The unknown and inhuman world was forgotten, all contact with it lost.
In the presence of the unknown man adopted an agnostic attitude. Positivism,
Which embodies this tendency, is not only scientific, but aesthetic as well.
Man has not only ceased to recognize the unknown, he no longer feels it;
he has repulsed it. Without contact, the unknown cannot beco m e recogniz­
able ; without affectivity, no contact is possible . But the bankruptcy of scien­
tific agnosticism cannot but involve the bankruptcy of an agnostic aesthetic.
The sole social justification of positivism is the timid, petty-bourgeois atti­
tude. Positivism is a petty -bourgeois s c ience fabricated by little fellows of
the gpence r-Durkheim -Guyau-Alain type. The petty-bourgeois is afraid of
the unknown; he writes limitations in his intellectual and financial ledger.
The petty -bourgeois never overspends his little income ; he does not think
beyond his own little life ; he does not often leave his own neighborhood; he
24
marries the daughte r of his parents' friends what he calls 'someone
suitable ' ; he chooses to send his child to the school where he went; he
associates with childhood friends. Everything is arranged to avoid the un­
known; the congressman for whom he votes is a safe one ; he reads the I!i­
bune or the Sun ; his favorite authors speak of his world; the critic is his
intellectual prese rvative : in telling him what he ought to read, what he ought
to see, the critic above all prevents him from seeing or reading something
else -- the unknown!

The known fo rms , the familiar neighborhoods , the plants of domesticat­

ed exoticis m , palms or another variety of palms, landscapes, still -lifes and
nudes, and the fortnight in the mountains or at a familiar beach. The known
for m s, the forms created by a known being, 'our dear friend ;v1an'. Every
man is not a man, the worker is not always a man, the madman is not a
man, and eve ryone is mad who goes too much or too little to mass or to the
whorehouse. The work of the madman, the products of delirium, are un ­
worthy of our interest, they are not the work of men. There is not only the
Catholic Church raising an index fin ge r ; the academies, the universities
are created not to stimulate but to police the intellect. There are profes ­
sors , more boring than the Glossatores of Bologna , who have invented the
frightful theory of artistic intuition. Eve ryone isn't an artist who wants to
be ! Only he who has intuition , the divine gift, can take his seat at Parnassus !
And happily there are people who have discovered the gift -- it is the in ­
tuition of artistic intuition! These will tell us who is an artist, who should
be awarded the P rix de Rome , the Pulitzer p rize, investitures which the
clerical crew of the universities award to those whom it feels, with o r
without intUition, sufficiently worthy and sufficiently safe t o share their
order, which is only the order of That's All, written in black letters on po­
lice stations. How can a madman have artistic intuition? The madman is
mad, the madman is for the Immortals what the Jew is fo r Hitler, the Trot­
skyist for Stalin, the Negro for Ford.
Nicolas CALAS

Annunciat ion to Andre Breton

F rom new bloods of mokaUne ringing to the meat

caught on the branches of the vegetal sun: they wait their turn

A movement of palms sketches the future body of portresses

with harvest yellow breasts budding from all revealed hearts

The contest of the torch descending to the farthest pOint makes

of the city's weakness a friendly rose -window moored
by young liana vines to the true sun of true fire of earth true :
annu n Ciation.

F or the annunciation of the portresses of mokatine palms moored

to the sun of the torches' contest -- green eye r inged with
yellow oxyde laden with m oons eye of moon laden with torches -­

eye of torches twist the cautious manure of the knots undone

Aime CE SAIRE

translation : C. Seaman
 SU RREALISM
& the
SA VAGE HEAR T
TORMS of romanticism had proved inadequate and so had its effu­
ions : even while it was slamming the doors of the 'salons' where it had
eigned supreme only by embracing their less perverse but more richly
endowed charms, art was bent on patiently satisfying the vanities of aesthetes,
on catering to the needs of disenchantments born of a leisure fit for dogs.
Art was a language . A painting's or a s culpture's sole mission was to evoke.
Thus did high society's hedonism find thorns of satin for its faded roses;
came nightfall, and the gravity of stock exchange speculations yielded to
the concerted futility of images. A rudimentary television authorized the
enjoyment of the self, and, although the spectator failed to objectify this
e njoyment, it gave him, by virtue of its objective.origin, a high opinion
of his sensitive faculties as well as of his quickwittedness.

When Guillaume Apollinaire undertook to make each of his poems a

'P0em -occurrence' (poeme -evenement) in relation to which all the means
of poetry had to be thoroughly reVised, the occurrence -- there were, of
course, certain antecedents, but these suddenly appeared under a new
light -- corrected the angle of sight m uch too opportunely not to feed very
soon the mill of surrealist speculations . Thus, the concepts of work and
skill were deprived of the value theretofore attached to them, value that
should be set on the spiritual process only, of which the work of art is at
the same time the product and the cause. At the very inception of the dis ­
pute which was to drag on for a quarter of a century between figurative and
abstract arts , surrealism was able to dismiss both parties unsuited : on the
one hand, the effusive painters of conventionalized forms, on the other, the
craftsmen of a language by means of which they hoped to solve the antimony
between the individual and the universal. In sharp contrast with the artists
who entrusted their 'message' to a sad quantity of adeqwo.te words , other
artists - who did not consider themselves as such -were bent on using
words and shapes in an attempt to mOdify, if only for a moment, their rela ­
tions to the Iilliverse. We know that painterlJ and poets were among the first
ones to jump over the fence on which the specialist had always kept close
guard, intent as he was on preserving from sight the objects that belonged
to the paraphernalia of ethnology, and that would henceforth pertain to the
'Primitive arts'. Despite a certain lack of discrimination inevitably caused
by the scarcity of these objects and by the fact that they had no birth cer­
tificates, the CUbists were to electively discern in the African art an echo
of their stylistic concern; surrealism alone, however, was destined to p ro ­
ject deep into the night that it was exploring the fiery lights o f a most cruel
sun, reflected by the sculptures of the Americas and the Pacific Islands .

We must admit, indeed, from the very moment they were considered
as objects of art, these products of primitive cultures lost many of their
27
 magic powers. African sculptures espe cially suffered
this misfortune, some of them with a certain amount
of complacency : the play of light on ivory, the pa­
tient stylisation o f the mass - even where the object
was a ritual sculpture - proved the existence of a
certain concern for form that the cubists were quick
in detecting. No wonder, therefore, that Breton and
Eluard who, very early, were fascinated by the savage
arts, preferred to ga�r objects which had been
spared this coarse seduction. From the pacific is­
lands came objects that the mirages of art for art's
sake could decidedly not set off to advantage. Better
still, they were made of deadly smiles and cries of
birds. The world into which they were born could
easily pass for a nightmare thronged with nightblue
feathers. It was there that the entire fauna of the
Australian Great Barrier Reef had left its shimmer­
ing lights, its creaking sounds , its whirlwinds. To­
wards the extreme North, a glittering laugh reigned
supreme, borrowed from 'the ten months of the red
night', while, in the Indian cosmology, the 'black
gods' of the pre -colvmbian mythology lived on, as
powerful as always.

However, it was not enough that aesthetic criterta

be routed. As soon as they became more familiar, the
s culptures grouped themselves according to the isles
from which they originated, and became linked with
traditional types that illustrated a very specific con­
ception of human life and of the world. We know that,
through the refinements of polished wood, the African
statuettes illustrated an animist conception Which tries
to preserve a certain order of the world in all the ac­
tivities it undertakes. The static nature of such a con­
ception directly belonged to a civilization of peasants,
primarily concerned with the fecundity of nature which
hostile forces could always jeopardize if one was not
careful. Although there were many exceptions in Africa
to this widely spread conception of the world (fetishes
with iron nails, tellems, dance masks ofthe Ba -Djok) -
and among these, the surrealists were particularly at ­
tracted by the sculptures of the :saga - what was at
stake i n Oceania and the Americas was an altcgether
different dimension of the mind which had madly ven­
tured into the jungles of dreams ruled by scarlet birds.

From one shore of the pacific to the other, from

the Indian Archipelago to Araucania, including Mela­
MIMBRES, nesia, Australia, British COlumbia and the F ueblo
Indians - with the exception of a few polynesian is­
NEW MExIco.
lands where probably a late autocratism of some
POTTElly DEsIGNS sort had deeply modified the indigenous society - the
same form of apprehension of the world manifests

21
itself: a universe as impassioned as can be, usually
composed of two complementary halves , a unive rse
conceived as an androgyne, not a primordial andro ­
gyne as in the speculations of ancient Mediterranean
civilization, but a still present and active androgyne,
whose every essential gesture is a love drama. The
state of interpenetration of the world in which man
lives and of his personal idea of the world is such
that this very pattern is apparent in the organization
of society; sometimes it is more geometric, as is
the case among the Navajo Indians whose sand de­
Signs are the compass dial of a sacred space, and
sometimes more openly sexualized, as in Australia
or Melanesia. Nothing less than that was needed in
order to color with the hues of the marvelous the
works which so manifestly expressed this high state .
of consciousness. Perhaps surrealism would not have
become what it is had it not developed in the shade
of the malangas through whose branches the night
breeze stole among networks of lianas and snakes.
Some oceans , deep within the dark night of man,
had been explored by the pirogues with a human head
or by the wooden sharks within which the people of
the Solomon Islands would place the skulls' of their
dead. Here, we are made conscious of the deficien­
cies of our senses: it seems that, on the whole,
Freud was the only one to tell us how pregnant with
meaning appearances could be. For a long time,
poets had intuitively guessed it; we were warned:
the <pagan blood' is 'coming back!' (Rimbaud).Never
were the totemist peoples afflicted with this near­
sightedness which makes us see in appearances the
only reality compatible with technical use. For them,
as is the case in critical-paranoiac activities, there
is no reality that is not ready to slip towards another
and more revealing one. Perhaps it is given to sculp­
ture to bring us some confirmation of this. But,
whether the aim is ritual or not, what matters most
is to witness this very objectification of a certain
daily behavior which has never ceased being that of
surrealism . For, as it has been said, 'Words make
love' (Breton) and, consequently, the very forms of
the world are making love.

If appearances are not as s imple as they seem,

this could be due to a unique kind of distraction which
for us, here, gives access to everyday magic; where­
as, on the pacific shores, it is subjected to the as ­
sault of the dead who come back inside the body of
a pink lizard. Let there be no misunderstanding: won ­
der is attained only at the very end, afte r staggering
encounters at every turn of the path, inhabited by drawing by
tree trunks. In the armpits of each branch, portholes
look and see. The elders, who have left the village, Wifredo LA M
roam by turns in the forest; they wear all their orna-
29
ments, the ornament for the day sea -slugs are extolled, the ornament for
the dance of the shark and the ornament for war, which cuts off the hearts
of women. Actually, it is not essential to make clear whether the injunc­
tions of the dream, fiercely discussed with the spirits, concern the way
in which the Clan should perform their major actions or only the erection
of a ritual sculpture , when this sculpture assumes the dimensions of a
public event. In this respect, had surrealism claimed that it could trans ­
pose, 'by means of a deceptive three -dimensional representation of dream
images,' the Oceanian s culptors' intentions , then we have to admit that it
would have painfully felt the limitations which transformed Dali's own in­
tentions into an indidivual venture, the necessity of which his friends alone
could perceive at the time when it took place. Although it is less discreet,
however, the figurative representation resorted to by the sculptors living
on the pacific shores is nonetheless confronted with a public judgment through
which its essential characteristics are compared with those of a legendary
teaching. It is through this judgment that the fidelity to a style is preserved
in an art which remains traditional. The extreme freedom that exists (visi­
bly) within these stylistic domains tends, more than anything else, to make
them appear as the rules of a grammar of forms, this grammar alone being
fit to account for the idioms of each people. When Dali defined this concep­
tion for himself (and although he was probably little aware of the existence
of the sculptures found in British COlumbia and Melanesia) he was less than
anyone else free from the bonds of such an idiom , since it is known that he
borrowed from the European painters of the 17th century one of the recipes
through which our eye has been accustomed to be deceived. What may, at
that time, have been felt as a revelation, was lighted from within by an aurora
borealis that borrowed from dreams its gestures of violence and its mother­
of-pearl humor.

On the 'trajectory of dreams', the spectres of the wolf and the frog give
each other a leg up the great tote ms of the Western COast, in the same
way as they climb up the 'exquisite corpses' (cadavres exquis)* of sur­
realism. Surrealism has replaced mythology with psychic automatism. By
bringing together remote species - provided they were legitimate - it
hoped to give life to a spirit more igneous than its isolated components.
We know that in Australia, New Britain and in all other areas where the
great totems prevailed, this practice of surrealist alchemy constituted,
under more obscure names, the very pattern of life , adorned with bleeding
flowers and bird-of-paradise feathers. In order to prove, by way of exam ­
ple, the fecundity of this method - and this long before ROheim's and Win­
thuis' works were known - the First Surrealist Manifesto proclaimed:
'Surrealism will usher you into Death which is a secret society', words
that might have been uttered by a high-ranking initiate of the New Hebrides
several times deceased through the intercession of the bolt of lightning
which flashes between lovers. This death , multiplied through the succes­
sive initiations of native 'secret societies' - the secret concerns only the
ritual and its psychic results - was proved in Australia (more forcefully
than anywhere else) to have destroyed the natural conditions of a young
man and to have reconstituted him in the shape of a living lingam, after a
death which was all the more gory for being symbolic. A vertiginous bold­
ness is needed to carry the revolt against empirical existence to such a
degree of fury; the transformation cannot be distinguished from a ritual
in which the · great officiating priests are spirits clad in painte d wooden
garments . In the network of their embroideries one can decipher the ma­
jor nuptials of which the young initiate becomes the image. The use thus
30
made of the object is the latter's only justification. Whereas it regains in
dramatic powers much more than what it lost in seduction to shopwindows'
wares, the condition of life here make it so that the object's efficiency is
lim ited either to its author or to a narrow group of people. And the audience
which recently attended the 'EXecution of the Marquis de Sade's Will' by
Jean Benoit gives the most optimistic idea of such a group.

The only reality is that of the operation, of the process. The 'magical
art of surrealism' may have periodically felt the need to T'ut its strength
to a test, to brace up its revolt by plunging into the spirit of the peoples
who were immune from the usual compromises with hell. What, in Freudian
term inology, is called the sublimination of instinct is still named initiation
among the Tarahumaras , from whom Artaud received it; among th� Brazilian
Indians, with whom Benjamin Peret visited; among the Eskimo Shamans
whose trances Victor Brauner seems to reproduce. Automatism undergoes
its own death before donning the mask which ensures its victory over the
CSaturnian p rinces'. For a second, the Jackdaw will carry you on its wing
with an aventurine stone.

Vincent BOUNOURE

(translated ' by ClaUde Tarnaud)

* 'Exquisite corpse', a game of paper -folding invented by surrealists, which

involves the composition of phrases or drawings by several people, without
any of the participants having any idea of the preceding contribution or con­
tributions . The name is derived from the first sentence obtained in this
manner: 'The exquisite -- corpse -- Shall drink -- the young -- wine .'

The Ten Dimensions of Eros

DIMENSION I
Warning: Do not PM Y for her

J
because she is MATTERI

Therefore : Pick up her bloody hour clock

under the eyelashes of her toes,
Make the falcon drip from her icy
tongue,
See and enjoy her vertical spring

DIMENSION n
Warning: Do not feel GUILTY when
she arouses you, because she is
instant LOVE I

Therefore : Suck het hairy thumb, which your

eye cannot see,
Allow the snake to talk to her
Belly,
See and enjoy her waves become a
mother elephant
(excerpts) Schlechter DUVALL
31
drawing by J . -H . MOESMAN

32
 or,

Surrealism and Paintilg Since 1950

r
p reface to the INTE RNATIONAL SURREALIST EXHIBITION , 1961)

R THE DESPAIR of gardeners and the perplexity of botanists , na ­

ture has foreseen this singular p lant which, trampled under foot,
tt bruised, crushed, denied, springs up again as early as the following
t
day and continues to grow as though nothing had happened. So with sur­
realism, that quitch grass, of which good souls had really thought, mistak-
ing their desires for reality, to extirpate the malignant weed from the
fields of poetry, of art and of revolutionary thought, and which nevertheless
perSists, to their great rage and discomfiture , not only in surviving, but
in prospering.

Let it s uffice to recall the opening in pariS, in December 1959, of

an International Surrealist Exhibition, relayed in NOvember 1960 by that of
New York, and that, at the time of my writing, a new surrealist magazine :
La Breche ('The Breach'), will soon be seeing the light of day : it will be
agreed that the signs of a continuity are indisputable •••

To be sure , one then comes up against other arguments , which can be

b rought down to thre e : 'Yes, surrealism was of impo rtance in 192 5 ; it is
no longer so today;' 'Surrealism is always the same thing, ' o r again:
'Today's surrealism isn't that of 192 5 ; it is no longer true surrealis m .'
Condemned in the name of its historical si gnificance , of the permanence
of its 'force -ideas ', or even of its evo lution, there is nothing left to sur­
realis m , as in the past, but to confound its detractors in the dust raised
by its forward march. Such is the foremost reason for this exhibition in
Milan, the exceptional character of which I will emphasize later on.

I should like to say beforehand that I have not lost sight of the fact
that this manifestation is being proposed to the public of one of the na­
tions least well informed as to what s urrealism is. In the years preceding
the last world war, during which surrealism knew a very wide international
diffus ion, Italy, like Germany, and for the same reasons, opposed to it on
the ideological level, an impenetrable rampart, breached by only a few
lone painters : MARTINI in Italy, ENDE and O E LZE in Germany. The war
over and artistic exchanges having resumed the ir normal course , works
that we re tremendously indebted to s urrealism and to automatis m , which
Andre Breton promoted as early as 1924 as being the mainspring of poetic
and artistic creation, appeared everywhere. But, save for a few very rare
exceptions (pollock and Tobey in particular), this debt was passed over
in silence. For the past fifteen years, almost all the galleries and modern
art museums throughout the world have been over run with 'ersatz' and
'by-products' of surrealism. 'E rsatz' as are plastic panther skins compared
to the s kins of real panthe rs (thus with Leonor Fini, carzou, couta ud,
33
Labisse, Lepri, Tchelitchew )j 'by-products' as straw is to wheat (thus
•••

with a good number of lyric abstractionists who built their entire repu­
tation on one of the manifold receipts used by Miro, Ernst, Matta, Arp,
Masson, etc.).

That painters' self-esteem should often prevent them from confessing

to such a filiation, which has a somewhat sulphurous mustiness, can be
readily conceived. The more so as surrealism cannot be defined by the
means used, but by a revolutionary conception of existence extending to
moral comportment as well as to creative comportment. On this level,
the gilded irresponSibility cultivated by certain young men can no more be
mistaken for surrealism than the academic quackery of Mr. Jean cacteau.
We cannot be too careful in warning the Italian public against the confusional
and publicity-seeking agitation of such vulgar success hunters who, unable
(with good reason) to make a name for themselves by their own painting,
are bent on remedying this situation by mobiliZing, like budding movie stars
whose charms they lack, the swarm of wasps of reporters of all sorts
about their would-be 'surrealist activity'. The phenomenon is not new, and
the precedents (Dali, Hantai) have taught us that these fits of notoriety usu­
ally end up in the maganimous bosom of the Holy Roman and Apostolic
cathOlic Church : that the latter is preparingto shortly kill the fatted calf
•••

As to the continuity of which we spoke, we are brought to question our­

selves on its nature: has there or has there not been an 'academisation' of
s urrealist painting? In the midst of the latter does imitation or repetition
of the past outweigh invention? can this painting, in fine, claim to play a
part as it has done in the past?

TO these redoubtable questions, the present exhibition gives a most

frank answer. For the first time, in fact, it does not hamper itself with
any retrospective ambition, uses no great artists of worldwide reknown as
a lightning rod, and refuses also to claim the sponsorship of painters whose
sympathy for surrealism is well known. This surrealist exhibition - and it
is in this that is originality lies - groups only works painted by surrealists
in the proper sense of the term : those who have given their actual intel­
lectual and moral adhesion to surrealism, or those who, recognized by sur­
realism as being answerable to its own concerns, have approved this recog­
nition.

On the other hand - and but for a single exception, to which I shall
return - this exhibition is intentionally limited to works painted in the past
de cade j therefore it is indeed the present state of surrealist painting that
is in question. I hasten to add that this is not to be interpreted as a gesture
of distrust towards such or such fascinating 'star': I am thinking in par­
ticular of Joan Miro, who remains to my mind the greatest surrealist
painter, and even the greatest painter alive at the present time. It is rather
out of a requirement for Sincerity and a certain taste for the hazardous
that we have desired these painters, for the most part young or unknown,
not to appear to be overshadowed by their glorious elders. I am pleased to
think besides that a manifestation of this kind definitely strikes with decay,
at least with regard to the last part, a heavy work devoted to surrealist
painting, the person responsible for which modestly felt that surrealism
had been unable to s urvive his own departure , some ten years ago * ••••

34
---

A few surrealist painters already known before the war happen nevet' ­
theless to be represented. Such is the case, first of all, for paalen and
Toyen, whose researches, during the recent period, have been carried out
in very close contact with the innermost preoccupations of the surrealist
group, and by a formal renewal which holds to our mind the value of an ex ­
ample. As to E. F. Granell, we are not misguided enough to forget that he
was long in Central America, as he is today in New york, the most quali­
fied representative of surrealism. During the same period, Meret Oppen ­
heim went happily from the 'Objects' which made h e r celebrity, t o painting
and sculpture ; the poet E. L. T. Mesens discovered a second nature to him­
self in 'collage'. By their Side, those who have come to surrealism in the
course of the past few years: Jean Benoit, Adrien Dax, Yves Elleouet, Robert
Lagarde, Mimi Parent. Othe rs, still younger, appear in their turn, such as
GUy Bodson ••••

Lastly, there are those who, discovered and enthusiastically welcomed

by the surrealists , have accepted seeing the mse lves considered as one of
the m : yves Laloy, Le Marechal, Molinier, Rozsda, Max-Walter Svanberg,
F riedrich Schroder -8onnenstern.

A special m ention must be made of the case of J. H. Moesman, whose

works presented here are prior to the period unde r consideration. Dis ­
covered quite rece ntly, thanks to our friends of the ' Bureau de recherches
surrealistes' in Amsterdam, this solitary a rtist - whose profound adhesion
to surrealism is indisputable - has never exhibited his work: there is no­
thing surprising in the space made for him here.

This enume ration completed, the fact remains that, no more than pre ­
vious surrealist eXhibitions, does this one aim at a superficial formal
homogeneousness. Surrealis m , if it has ascribed itself eXacting and im ­
pe rious objectives, is too aware of the worth of individual 'sight' to ever
have subjected this latter to a command vision. For the past forty years,
each true surrealist painter has been a new 'Sight' -- and I lack space for
giving way to an exhaustive enume ration. Whether or not a subterraneous
identity innerves this most varied forest, I leave it up to the 'cisalpine'
public and art criticism to find out ••••

May I be allowed to part one moment, of the fan thus shaped, the two
butterfly wings, just as brilliant but dissimilar, whose junction cannot fail
to captivate and disconcert. On the enameling of the first, one finds brought
together all that stems from a kind of <magic figuration', where ceaselessly
the triviality of the everyday is contested for the benefit of an enjOining to
'see better and dream better' that does not suffer mediocrity. Moesman
appears to be governed by the m irage in which privileged obsessions are
reflected; Mimi Parent considers a universe wholly filtered by frost crystals,
in which the crystallization becomes enchantment; Molinier enmeshes de ­
sire, the more naked for being rouged, in his nets; Toyen lives in the in ­
timacy of spectres, and, in their company, passes through the wall of ap ­
pearances; Le Marechal, prophet and town-planner of the Babylon to be,
enjoys our misery of mechanized insects ; Svanberg metamorphoses Woman
into a puzzle of scents, bird calls and caresses; Sonnenstern illuminates,
by his aggressive parables, of a lofty humor, the dull 'commedia dell'arte'
of human concerns. Here each artist controls a territory that is his own,
and brings his stone to this palace of the marvelous that no Facteur Cheval
will ever complete •••
35
 The other wing assembles those for whom it is less the sensible re­
membrances of mankind and of his scenery - be they questioned anew -
that count, as the giddiness imparted by the materials and the very instru­
ments of this new 'mancy' : automatism . One would speak of 'action-painting'
if, in the cases where this appellation is used today, the action involved,
precisely, were - as is the case for our friends - 'the sister of dream'.
The authority of paalen in the moving fascination of the works of his last
years, rejoins Kandinsky's decisive explosion in 19 1 1 : but Paalen's 'secret'
is still more secret than that of the great Russian painter. Elleouet has
suddenly burst into flame in the midst of the Breton heath : the 'korrigans' ,
those elves o f the celtic soil, doubtless got the best of i t i n order that he
migh t build them a house of wind. Adrien Dax, a tireless expei.'imenter,
achieves the hard to believe synthesis of 'Art Nouveau', of Tanguy , of Matta,
about a bestiary where dragonflies are coupled with comets. Lastly, shall
I acknowledge that since Gorky , perhaps , no one has seemed to me to at­
tain such a height of melodic sensitivity of stroke as Robe rt Lagarde? I
know of nothing at the present time so unadorned and satisfying to s uch a
degree to the eye and to the m ind.

In the spreading of the two wings , one can distinguish, like the ful­
crum of a balance , these antennae of a power difficult to evaluate : the
paintings of Laloy, thanks to whom geometrical figures become a procedure
for secondsight, a shocking thing for those gentlemen 'constructe rs' Mag­
nelli, Mortensen, Dewasne, etc.

From this entomological description, a few ascertainments seem to

me to spring up naturally. That in the first place, save for a few re lation ­
ships -- but there again the diffe rences are more striking than the re ­
semblances -- the painters here represented are not 'disciples' of their
elders : no Off-shoot of Miro, Tanguy, Brauner, Matta or Max Ernst ....

It would seem that pictorial surrealism succeeds - a token of its sur­

vival and renewal - in freeing itself from its own influence, I mean that of
the great painters it has already carried in its womb. Faalen, for exam ­
ple, meets Kandinsky, yves Elleouet acknowledges being sensible to polta­
kof and Lapicque above all, Toyen was indisputably marked by the brief
flare -up of ,tachisme', etc •••• In sum, whereas the excitements once unde r ­
gone b y surrealist painters h a d a specifically surrealist o rigin (admiration
for ChiriCO, certain aspects of Picasso's work, then Tanguy and finally
Matta), today it is the entire field of modern art that is p roving itself capa ­
ble of reincarnation, of reinvestment in surrealism -- as if therein it had
finally found its jus tification for existence.

Another asce rtainment, a corollary of the preceding one, asserts it­

self: the fan of surrealist painting COvers today the whole of modern pic ­
torial forms of expression, from fabulous imagery, in .trompe l'oeil' or
not, to geometrical composition, through 'lyric' abstraction and calligra ­
phism. One last remark will serve me as a conclusion : this exhibition defi ­
nitely frees itself from any homage to the ashes of Dada, of which sur­
realism has always been a vehement negation and to which it owes, quite
to the contrary, not the slightest 'acknowledgement'.

Milan, Italy Jose PIERRE

* The reference is to Marcel Jean --ed.

36
 "The Annunciation,· drawing by Martha ZUlK

INTRODUCTION to the READING of

GBenj a m i n Gper e t
j'T THIS
Peret ;
juncture,
this poet
the posterity which we constitute is in great debt to
is far from having the place he deserves, one of the
foremost. I have always appreciated the fact that they have never r e ­
done, nor replaced on their pedestals, the statues which the Ge rmans car­
ried off during the occupation of Paris. These empty pedestals provide the
hope that everything has not been definitively lost and that the liberty to
choose for itself other guides of the spirit exists for humanity at every m o ­
ment. Peret will incontestably b e o n e of these examples. y o u aren't con­
vinced? Then do you want to wager with me? I' m not worth anything the re :
I'm s ure to win!

Benjamin peret. Drop this name in a conversation. you will have two
reactions on faces : in both cases a pout, being accompanied in some - the
most numerous - by a questioning raising of the eyebrows , those who hear
this name for the first time; for the others , by a frown, those to whom 'that
certainly suggests something, but what exactly? •. in any case, one hasn't
read anything by the author in question.' These last are not slow in reme m ­
bering that they have seen this signature at the bottom of various surreal­
ist brochures, next to those of Breton and of so many others, 'Whose names
change very frequently besides' (here, a suspicion of gentle irony •••) .
37
 Indeed, for many Peret means only a name, a sort of s upernumerary
disembodied from surrealism. you will search in vain for a line of his or
even about him in literature textboQks, when he is even mentioned, of
course ... (it's true that insanity is inherent in these kinds of books and their
authors).

And yet what a beautiful subject, even for the most idiotic weekly critic,
even for the most limited academic, always occupied in clogging up the 111-
- timed streamings of poetry. For Benjamin peret is a golden instance !
'BOrn in 1899, died in 1959, 60 straightforward years, easy to remember!
Litterature was founded in 1919; peret arrives in paris in 1920; from that
time, during almost 40 years, peret will show proof of 'ABSOLUTE SUR­
REALISM!'* The only one who, s ince the first appearance of the surrealist
movement, remained faithful to the ways of Andre Breton without lapses,
with a valiance which ceded only to death. The only one, with Breton, whose
work stems only and entirely from s urrealism (the poems previous to
1920 were destroyed by P e ret) . This unique title to fame would already be
sufficient for P eret to be considered with some attention, even by those
who, occupying without contention the upper places in the pile of idiots, talk
copiously about the 'Pope of s urrealis m ' , since, as they say (and it's true,
but the misfortune for . them is that they don't know a thing about the pro­
found motives which dictated them) surrealism is a long succession of
shattering exclusions .

It is impossible to speak p roperly about surrealism while ignoring

peret who was its purest 'defender and illustrator'. Subjective judgment?
Then we'd share it with numerous young surrealists of the post-war period
who see in Peret the equal of Breton. We'd also share it with men who
are more qualified than you and I to judge poetry, and who are called
Breton, Aragon and Eluard. His friends, you will say. undoubtedly: but be ­
sides the fact that they had very sure taste , they did not bestow - far from
it! - similar praises to all those who, at one moment or another , partici­
pated in the activity of the surrealist group. Moreover, one can affirm that
these poets envied (in the best sense of the term, naturally) Peret's excep­
tional gifts, which implies that he brought something which belonged only
to him.

* * * * *

It is to Peret's credit that he restores to daylight that which slumbers

in everyone's heart, and that he returns this forgotten treasure to modern
man whom History has maimed. It is Peret's originality to adopt for this
the genre which o rdinarily captivates childhood - this hypothetical paradise
which a perpetual nostalgia confirms and invites to recoup - the form of
the tale, but modifying it totally: henceforth it is no longer a question of
a story for Children, written, like all the others , by an adult, but a story
for adults, sprung forth from the dream of an authentic poet who, like one
of the personages of La brebis galante (The Gallant Sheep), can exclaim:
'I bring the original color with me.'

Claude COURTOT
translated: Almuth Palinkas

* expression used by Breton in the first Surrealist Manifesto (1924)

38
 The Gallaat Sheep
�'EY (excerpt)

J
w,tho"' mooo, wbt ha" Y"" 'I<m' with my foot and th, mmain,
hat were agitating convulsively under the thrust of their passions?

It was a beautiful day when the sea withdrew to let pass a white auto ­
mobile in which slept a skin covered with lice. The automobile ran at a
speed one could calculate while cutting an apple in quarters. It was equal
to the trail of salt that the automobile left behind. White automobile , you
grow in the distance. You occupy the whole visual field that my eyes can run
during an entire year and your chauffeur , whose desire to not establish con ­
tact between the sea and your wheels I have not seen till now, salutes me.
He is tall. He has an eye between his legs. His head oscillates on his should­
ers like the balance of a pendulum. The nee dle marks 5 o'clock on the sur ­
face of the sea. Suddenly, the auto stops and the man at the head of the pen­
dulUm rushes up to meet me. He has steps of light and gestures of precau­
tion. Everything in him is physical and blue , as far as his respiration, which
diffuses around him a sky of spring mornings, making the swallows hesitate
to leave the country. He is now four yards in front of me. His legs are
spread apart and he sucks up the sun avidly.

'It's Science ,' he murmurs. And the shadow of the Shepherd issues
from the depths of his pants. For a long time, it follows a fly that has taken
off at the mention of science.

The man rises. The sun's needle projects its shadow on his face in
the form of a shoe sole covered with nails. I recognize Nestor who hourly
dances waltzes under the sun. The sun im itates him and the shadows fol ­
low the movement. Go , then, after what entrusts you to the sun-dial. Nes ­
tor looks at me and recognizes that I am his friend. He tells me his hopes
and his grief that are like the algae of mirrors :

'I am alone, it is true, but to well -born souls the cross does not count
upon the number of diamonds. One day I was in a barn with straw and
eows. The cows ate the straw and vice versa; altl.ough that must seem
strange to you. And yet what happened to me next is perhaps even s! ranger
yet. I was looking with the delight suitable to this sort of spectacle, the
cows eating the straw, when the roof split, the whole length of the barn.
A white sheet passed through the opening and flapped at a breath of wind
that I did not feel at all. Then, slowly, it descended to the ground. The
ground, in turn, opened. And I saw, following a rigorously perpendicular
line, a little red fish descend from the roof by gliding along the sheet, and
bury �tself in the earth. It was followed by a second, then a third. F inally
the number grew as rapidly as their dimension and the rarefaction of the
air in the upper strata of the atmosphere permitted. The wind swelled and
the barn s lipped away from the earth. When I say slipped away••• it took
off, or rather they fled, for the barn was divided in two. One half left with
the straw and the other with the cows and each in a diffe rent direction,
coming to an end in the same place : the mountain of rabbit skins.'

Benjamin PERE T
39
 the hermetic windows of
GjOSEPH CORNELL
j!J EPH CORNELL, who was born in 1904 and lives in Flushing, New
York, is one of the few native Americans who have been associated
with the surrealist movement. He was attracted to surrealism at the
age of twenty-six when he discoverf!d Max E rnst's album of collages, �
Femme 100 Tetes. Examples of cornell's work were included in a Sur­
realist Exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery in 1932. He has never ven­
tured from the U.S. except in his imagination, nor has he become par­
ticularly well known here. He participated in several surrealist exhibitions
and, in the '4Os, collaborated on the publication of the surrealist-oriented
VIEW magazine in which several of his collages, pictures of his boxes,
and several of his texts may be found. (l)

One of my favorite of his works - a little collage of ship, rose and

spider-web (2) - draws together and expresses very s ubtly both cultural
and dream symbols that are very compelling. It seems almost possible to
grasp it immediately and yet it lingers mysteriously in one's thoughts -­
like a dream which one is sure is filled with hidden meanings. Ships have
always been considered feminine. This vessel displays her sails proudly
like a beautiful and independent woman; nested at her stern is a huge
rose in all the beauty and maturity of its bloom, lending its symbol of
female sexuality to that of the ship: inside the rose is stretched a spider's
web, the pattern of which perfectly reflects the pattern of the ship's rig­
ging, implying that the petals of the rose can be controlled by the spider's
web as precisely as the sails of the ship can be controlled by the rigging.
But the web is not empty: in its center dwells a spider who controls the
web and sets it out for its own purpose, for the satisfaction of its deSires,
even as the flower sets out its petals, and the ship sets out its sails.

The small boat behind the ship could very well be a child who fol­
lows his mother whom he both respects and desires. The ship itself, a
woman essentially desirable and beautiful, is also purposeful and intel­
ligent - - a ship with the gracefulness and stillness of a dream.

cornell is best known for his object-boxes of which he has made hun­
dreds. The 'Soap Bubble Set' (3), one of his earliest boxes (1936) is domi­
nated by a large chart of the moon labeled in French. Before the moon,
on a low shelf, is placed a white clay bubble pipe ; below this are three
circular mirrors. To the right on a high pedestal is a child's head of white
china; to the left is a goblet in which an egg is suspended. Near the top of
the box four rounded containers are suspended: on the left one is a col­
lage of an astrolOgical horse and rider, Saturn replacing the horse's
head. On the right Saturn rises above the ruins of an ancient city.

In this particular box cornell's work is remarkably analogous with the

imagery of alchemy. Alchemy itself, to preserve its secrecy, used a cloak
of analogy involving traditional symbols. Thus the Magnum Opus is often
40
represented as the head of a child or, to follow its reflection on the other
side of Cornell's box, the 'egg of the philosophers', mea.ning either cruci ­
ble or retort but also symbolizing 'the perfection of their work, the round­
ness of the universe, eternity. The egg has also been called the " stone which
causes the moon to turn".'(4) In the 'Garden of Earthly Delights' by Hierony­
mus BOsch the egg is carried aloft in the parade about the Fountain of
Life (its position is the exact center of the central panel). In Brueghel a
broken or cracked egg represented corruptness, and the cracked and broken
head the corruptness of the state. ( 'All the king's horses and all the king's
men couldn't put Humpty Dumpty together again.') The child's face is itself
an egg: one finds there the beginning of an adult and hope for the transfor ­
mation of the world.

The four containers suspended above the shelf can be seen to repre ­
sent the four elements of the alchemists (fire, water , earth, air); the three
mirrors on the floor of the box, the three alchemical realms (animal,
vegetable, mineral) or perhaps the three planes of being (corporeal, sub­
tile , spiritual). Alchemically, lead is represented by Saturn, a winged horse
(the volatile principle) and the ancient city perhaps becomes the ancient art.

The glass goblet is a recurring element in Cornell's boxes : one thinks

of china cabinets and the mothers who cherished, polished and protected
them. ( But why should cups have stems? Are they imitating flowers?) The
moon in this box seems to be the Magnus Opus of the Child, his great al­
chemical triumph which has been created from the goblet and egg by means
of the bubble pipe. The moon and bubbles participate in the same lwni ­
nousness and evoke the same fancy. Is it possible that soap bubbles which
escape and drift very high become moons?

cornell's boXes hearken to that magical time in childhood when thought

was the same as deed, when one suffered the pangs of conscience for dan ­
gerous thoughts against one's parents, when one carefully avoided the cracks
of sidewalks, occasionally running all the way home just to be sure that
one's mother was safe. It was this period of life, or perhaps earlier, that

drawing by Jorge CAMACHO

41
I remember being fascinated by the jars on my mother's dressing table.
One of COrnell's boxes, 'L'Egypte de Mlle. Cleo de Merode : cours Ele­
mentaire de l'Histoire Naturelle' (5) evokes the same feelings. It is filled
with lovely jars containing fascinating specimens. Once, playing by my­
self, I carefully inspected all the jars and bOttles on my mother's table,
picking them up one after another, reading their labels and examining their
contents. At this time I recall that I came upon one which made my heart
beat faster with wonder and fear, for the label read quite clearly - there
was no mistaking it - VANISHING CREAM, There was not a doubt in my
mind that one vanished when one applied this cream, nor that my mother
applied it and vanished on occasion. The instructions for application were
quite clear, and I longed to be initiated into this secret rite, to apply the
cream and vanish. How glorious to have the omnipotence of one's parents I
But there were absolutely no instructions regarding how to reappear. I
was afraid that in my vanished state, although I would be able to learn
all secrets, I might not be able to communicate with anyone, and thus be
destined to remain vanished and lost forever. Worried that I might be
discovered, I replaced the lid, being careful not to get any cream on my­
self lest I vanish in part, and thus reveal to all what I had discovered,
leading to some punishment.

Cornell's boxes appeal to that time when we first learned to wonder,

when the sun still followed us wherever we went, when dream and reality
were not understood as being separate : a time of alchemists when the mind
triumphed over matter and base metals could certainly be transmuted
into gold through the correct process of thought and combined action; when
one had the power to bring on the night by making a shadow with one's
hand. The alchemists sought to transform matter; COrnell transforms mat­
ter into dreams by the creation of perfect worlds in miniature, entirely
self-contained. A rational order with a seemingly incomprehensible end,
COrnell's worlds appear remote - as remote as distant galaxies - but
they are in fact the reflection of the forgotten and forbidden secrets of
one's own mind.

P enelope ROSEMONT

NOTES:

1. Among cornell's contributions to VIEW are an article 'Enchanted

Wanderer: Excerpt from a Journey Album for Hedy Lamarr' (Vol. I,
NO. 9-10); a series of collages, 'Story Without a Name--For Max Ernst'
(2nd series, no. 1); and his contributions to the 'Americana Fantastica'
issue (2nd series, no. 4). cornell's first one-man show was at the Julien
Levy Gallery in December 1939. He was represented in the International
Surrealist Exhibition in New York, 1960.
2. This untitled collage is reproduced in ART NEWS, summer 1967,
p. 56.
3. A photograph of this box is reproduced in Julien Levy, Surrealism
(New York, Black Sun p ress, 1936), p. 183. This book, for which cornell
designed the cover, also includes one of his collages and his film scenario,
'Monsieur Phot'.
4. Stillman, The History of Alchemy and Early Chemistry. P. 17l.
5. A photograph of this box is reproduced in colOr in LIFE , Dec. 15,
1967, P. 5 8 .
42
Bird of Paradise
Once in the blond garden
of the extricated smoke
Twice in the vaguenesses
of eyes blinking
in slow motion
Three times in the sun
which folds
like a newspaper
Four times in the funnel
of snow the glass of alcohol
and gloves
Five time s in the five senses
arranged like a puzzle
against the arthritic sky
Six times in the almanac
heavy with a pendulum
and with the index of allusions
Eight times in the frosty grass
where pebbles sleep like fish
Nine times in the purple floors
of dolphin's eyes
Ten times in the hypnotic window
simple as a grape
in its lace and laundry

The sphere of the dark

loosened from its distant hinges
in the light of frogs
so suddenly asleep

F. R.

drawing by TOYEN

43
WHERE P�
=I'N OT H I N G �
I
I'

Le ==;{ H APP E N S
[
a

WILL define pop by Happenings.

• It is virtually the only manifest form that pop has adopted since its
•
laWlching, which was accomplished in total confusion of theory and
title. I recall that the p op artists called themselves in turn Neo -Dadaists,
New Realists , Factualists, COmmonists , poly materialists , painters of
placards and comics, Urban Folklore Artists , all without a single collec-
tive statement to justify one or the other epithet. The invention of FOP Art
has been, as Hilton Kramer remarked, 'a declaration of independence from
the art critic' but the artists themselves, in the uproar that surrounded
them, have kept for a very long time a prudent Silence, that they are only
now beginning to break. Their most frequent and laconic utterance has been
'no comment'. Their most exuberant was this reflection of Lichtenstein:
'1 am anti -expe rimental, anti -contempla ti ve, anti -nuance, anti -getting-a way ­
from -the-tyranny -of-the-rectangle, anti-movement and anti -light, anti­
mystery, anti-paint-quality, anti-zen and anti-all those brilliant ideas of
preceding movements which everyone understands so thoroughly.' One could
say no more in refusing to explain oneself.

We know, meanwhile, that p op artists participate in Happenings , which

they organise regularly (the word is disquieting and not mine) and that
these manifestations have had in Allen Kaprow a fluent and cultured de­
fender . In May 1961, in ART NEWS, Kaprow explained eloquently the dis­
gust that is inspired in him, as much as in his friends, by the pre cious and
hygienic modern art galleries where works which seem so natural in their
native studios become delicate after -thoughts 011 the white walls of well-lit
and wall-papered rooms where the conversation echoes that of cocktail
parties .

Happenings were born, he explains , of a wish to make the work of art

theatrical by forcing the visitor into active participation, in a series of
acts improvised like jazz, where chance would play a primordial role.
The Happening would utilis e , in an environmentoi total alienation (backyard,
kitchen, garage , hangar, supermarket, warehouse), perishable mate rials :
newspapers, s crapiron, rags, jam-jars, sundry gadgets or cardboard boxes.

In the Happening called 'Alter of Apples' (and which Kaprow signed),

the public fought its way through a labyrinth of wire and brown paper,
under bands of colored paper which constituted a 'tranquil space'. In the
'Spring Happening' (also by Kaprow) water is poured over the aUdience ,
protected by plastic curtains, and a lawn-mower cuts, suddenly, all the
partitions. In the 'Automobile COllision' by Jim Dine , two cars, male and
female, acted by two men, make love and change sex. Dine drew a car in
chalk on a blackboard with frightful groans and stutterings. In 'American
Moon' by RObert Whitman, an enormous plastic bubble swells up, pushing
44

J
away tn( spectators, and the artist climbs over it, acrobatically, over their
heads, }�prow gives :l more general description of happening atmosphere:
color tI'ansparencies are projected on the wan, representing all kinds of
hamburgers, big, red, thin or flat. Clouds of 'New Automobile' perfume are
dispersed, with odors of hospitals and lemons . The spectators, in tileir
claustrophobia, are prisoners of the work, and if they dirty themselves a
little, so much the better, says Kaprow, for 'dirt is at once fertile and or­
ganic'•

None of this is very new. He admits it, and notes: 'It all goes back to
surrealism, Dada, mime, the circus, the carnival, and the mysteries of
the medieval procession.' But Happenings give to the artist a new melo­
dramatic role : 'After the {»wboy, the Indian, Stella Dallas, Charlie Chaplin,
the Organisation Man and Mike Todd, the American Artist has become a
figure of melodrama ••• He ends the creator aspect of his career His ac­
•••

tivity incarnates the myth of non-success while Happenings can be sold

and sent away home •••The new myth is going to develop by itself, without
reference to what it would have been, the artist will achieve a perfect iso ­
lation, will be celebrated for purely imaginery gifts, and will be free to
explore something that nobody will notice.' I

There is in this sufficiently superb conclusion something singularly

disenchanted. Plastic art become theatrical and each artist a buffoon, the
act at first sight seems called to supplant the work, or to replace it. The
Artist at this stage will be simply whoever defines himself in this and that
as an artist. Will the Happening turn outto be a scuttling of the plastic arts?
One may well ask. Certain propositions uttered by Kaprow remain unan­
swered. If the art-gallery devalues the work, why shouldn't it be seen in
its natural habitat, the artist's studio? Why aren't Happenings arranged
at the painter's own place, and if they have to use perishable goods in them,
why aren't the works that these painters exhibit in other ways submitted
to the same liberating destruction?

One suspects that the revolt against art dealers is not very serious,
that pop artists' studios are too comfortable to be subjected to the momen­
tary anarchy of the warehouse and backyardj one suspects above all that
pop works, whatever is said of them , have no other function than to be ex­
hibited, like the rest, in these beautiful over-polished galleries, where alone
these shock-absorbers, bits of sacking, and aggregates of detritus can ap­
pear expensive.

But let us return to Allan Kaprow, who in July 1963 came to paris to
, give us a Happening, under the lofty patronage of Mr. Bohlen, U,S, Ambas ­
sador. It is a matter, the catalogue told us, of transposing onto the stage
the art of Assemblage , which becomes at the same time an envelopment, so
that the spectators become an integral part of the compOSition, then of pro­
voking a 'collage of unforeseen events, at once very sophisticated and very
primitive.' In the Theatre Recamier Mr. Kaprow explained to his guests
that no theatre auditorium could be suitable for a Happenin'g, unless one
could demolish it from floor to ceiling. The Happening was going to re ­
move, with its aUdience, into the great Bon Marche shop, after closlng­
time. Mr. Kaprow explained to us that he was fascinated by the ritual of
buying and selling in the framework of the Big Store.

45
T q

Each ticket would give us the right to a packet. At a given signal, each
would open his packet, and the password would be 'Have you got any bread?',
a touching American play on words. (One of the packets, it is understood,
would give an unforgettable surprise by containing a morsel of bread.) In
the Big Store, somewhat dreary, we assisted in some little scenes, inno­
cent enough: a lady in her bath, a washing-machine and a television attend­
ed by their demonstrator would try to communicate a thrill of novelty to
an audience glum and bored, in which Mr. Kaprow hastened to combat the
least humor. It had good cause to be in a sullen mood; as regards the Hap - �
pening, it had assisted at a shopping session, where the roles, allocated in
advance, left nothing to chance, and in which invention had been conspicu-
ously poverty-stricken. The fascination Mr. Kaprow seemed to find in the
motions of shopping chimed very discordantly with his postulated wordly
disinterest. Was not the 'rite' of purchasing, in order to be propelled out-
side the domain of the art-market, simply exalting another kind of trans -
action, eminently well -paid, and for the minimum of intellectual expendi-
ture?

* * *

'The Pop Artist judges nothing,' writes Clair Wolfe, 'he is neither the
translator of his own images, nor a mentor, an intepreter nor a revolu­
tionary. The conclusions drawn from his art do not engage his responsi­
bility. His works are not declarations of principle, but questions.' And the
critic Stanley KUnitz, examining the term New Dada, recalls opportunely
'Dada was essentially a revolutionary movement, impelled by an immense
social passion. It was an attack on the bourgeois SOciety to which the Dada­
ists imputed the First World War.' But the Neo-Dadaists embrace, on the
contrary, the bourgeois symbolism, and are closed to passion. 'It was a
matter,' wrote Leo Steinberg, 'of out-bourgeoising the bourgeOisie, of go ­
ing beyond it, o f taking its place and playing its role, with excess.'

* * *

Does everything one sees in the U,S" ugly or beautiful, transform itself
into a work of art, a cult object or currency? One might as well say at
once: America has become a work of art. The step towards the great de­
claration of American chauvinism begun by the handsome flags of Jasper
Johns has been taken with perfect satisfaction: 'Pop is the American dream,
optimistic, generous, and naive,' says Robert Indiana. 'It is industrial paint­
ing,' says Lichtenstein. 'America was hit by industrialism and capitalism,
the meaning of my work is that it's industrial ; it's what all the world will
soon become.' Already Jim Dine is reproaching Motherwell with having
written, in a famous canvas, the words 'Je t'aime' (I love you) ! And when
one remarks to Lichtenstein that he too often liked to isolate warlike and
aggressive elements in the comics - machine gunners, torpedoes, or ma­
rines in action, to spell out insistently 'Takka Takka', 'Tzing! ' or the IAck­
Ack' of fascist riflefire - he replies evasively: 'The heroes depicted in
comic -bQoks are fascist types. But I don't take them seriously, I use them
for purely formal reasons.'

One might ask, then, why he never copies the exultant and poetic images
of Flash Gordon, Mandrake, or Krazy Kat, or the satirical and liberal
comics like 'pogo' or 'Li!' Abner'.
46
 The moral implications of all this are inevitable. What can one say of
this news from Warhol: 'My next series will be pornographic pictures. They
will look blank; but when you turn on the black lights, then you will see
them, big breasts and ••• If a cop came in, you could just flick out the lights ,
or turn on the regular lights. How could you say that was pornographic?
Segal did a sculpture of two people in the act of making love, but he cut it
all up. I guess because he thought it was too po rnographic to be art. Ac­
tually, it was very beautiful.'

We could at this stage grow indignant, or poke fUn at the m , if it weren't

that this collection of facts and remarks seemed to conceal a kind of drama.
(This generalisation should not include BOb Rauschenberg, whose title s ,
writings, and collages, supported b y assemblages like 'canyon' (1.959 -
the stuffed eagle) have always worked in a neaUy anti-�atriotic and sub­
versive sense. I am sorry that this artist, who, though an involuntary pre ­
cursor of pop, is always dissociated from them by the more purist critics
like Thomas Hess, should mix, dOUbtless from emulation , in manifesta­
tions like 'The Building of BOston'. Likewise, the self-brutalising procedure
I attribute to Warhol, Lichenstein or Oldenberg, is foreign to James Rosen­
qUist, whose painting, instead of working by repetition or simple copying,
proceeds from choice, focuses, makes montage -- an individual activity of
a superior order.) I can't help thinking that in the Happenings, the pop
artists find their moment of truth in the devaluation of the ir own work, in
the reduction to nothing, the physical destruction of these morsels of strict
obedience and slavery that are their daily affectory to the ugly, the digest­
ible, the venal.

TO the cry of Dore Ashton 'Where is the aesthetic distance? Where

does the problem of metaphor come in?' none of these artists could reply,
because their problem lies elsewhe re. Don't look at what we reproduce,
they seem to say, look at our gesture, our torment. We aren't rebellious
artists : all that we do succeeds, and that's the drama! But we could do some ­
thing else. Don't look at our works , look at US! We are the true heroes of
our time, the perfect symbols of refrigeration, of electronics, of taylorisa ­
tion, of reproduction techniques. We are the perfect chameleons in an aes ­
thetic desert where we have eaten all the cactuses , which we replace - ­
see with what realis m ! I s e e , o n this stage , p rotean man, transforming"him ­
self into a hot sausage , a shooting gallery, a juke -box, a waffle -iron, the
news -items of the Qaily News, the noise of a grenade, a cream bun. The
curtain falls.

Where were we?

Robert BENAYOUN

(translated by John Lyle)

On your wooden horse you advance

p your slender lance of flesh
strong with the white odor of childhood
o Straining before you
Determined to pierce the gross indifference
e Of mushrooms dressed in pink satin
D1 Who lie down in your bed
Of beardless cavaliers
Without stain and trouser -fly Joyce MANSOUR
47
 -

drawing by Schlechter DUVALL

� cfithanor
This morning
I brought you the sun
in a sack

I rose from my bed very early

I put on a brown dress
of pheasant feathers
a cloak made of chameleon skins
and on my head I set the nest
of a robin

I sped to the edge of the sea

on the back of a snow leopard
who chilled the air as he passed
causing hoarfrost on weeds and trees

At the sea's edge

While the horizon was invisible
I concealed myself (with the help
of my chameleon cloak)
among lavender clouds
and silver rocks

Just as the still drowsy sun

came from behind the sea
I seized it with tongs of liquid mercury
and cast it into a sack
lined with brimstone
and nettles

I will bring it to you

for your breakfast
to spread on your bread like butter
and drink like honeysuckle nectar
and rub on your body
so that you will become lum inous
dazzle your ene m ies
and become master
of all the beasts

P e nelope ROSE MONT

23 August 1967

drawing by F ,R.
 Sei�,"ograplt
01
Shoe r�iOH
Notes on Some Ame rican Precu rsors

U
HE APPEARANCE of Les Champs Magnetigues by Andre Breton and
Phillippe Soupault, in 1920, marked a new and higher stage in the ex­
ploration and liberation of the mind: the unconscious passivity of the
romantics was superceded, definitively, by the conscious activity of the sur­
realists . Doubtless the early fruits of 'Pure psychic automatism' (as sur-
realism originally defined itself) were harvested with a multippcity of
intentions ; doubtless a few wished to utilize this discovery only for the
reprehensible rejUvenation of the literary marketplace. Thus Soupault,
for example, rapidly became a poet only in the past tense, and in the worst
sense. BUt the revolutionary development of surrealism was such that the
automatic revelation was notpermitted to harden into a comfortable aesthetic
form ula : the change of the title ofthe first surrealist review from LA REVO ­
LUTION SURREALISTE to LE SURREALISME AU SE RVICE DE LA
REVOLUTION demonstrates clearly the direction indicated by the sur­
realist vaccination against literary and artistic sclerosis. It has been false ­
ly insinuated that surrealism was able to advance only after it renounced (?)
automatic writing. Rather, we may go so far as to say that it was precisely
its fidelity to the principles of automatism that carried surrealism for­
ward. Far from being 'abandoned', as so many critics pretend, automatism
has never ceased constituting a fundamental pivot of the surrealist aspira­
tion, a revolving door opening upon our brightest dreams.
,
In the first Surrealist Manifesto (1924) Breton surveyed the literature
,
of the past, noting certain examples and specifying in what respect they
could be considered surrealist : 'Young's Night Thoughts is surrealist from
cover to cover •••Swift is surrealist in malice Saint -pol-ROUX is sur­
•••

realist in the symbol ••• Roussel is surrealist in anecdote : etc. 'They

••

are not always surrealists,' he goes on to stress, 'in that I discern in each
of them a certain number of preconceived ideas to which - very naively! -
they hold. They hold to them because they had not heard the surrealist
VOice, the one that continues to preach on the eve of death and above the
storms, be cause they did not wish to serve simply to orchestrate the mar­
velous score.' We may say that they unconsciously, and hesitatingly, ar­
ticulated this surrealist voice, without themselves hearing its full implica­
tions. The degree to which these figures of the past speak in this sur­
realist voice is precisely the degree to which they speak directly to
those of us who have rallied to the surrealist cause, which is none other
50
than the cause of human emancipation conceived in its most expansive
sense, in which the seizure of power by the proletariat is an absolutely
essential preliminary. In the United States , it goes without saying, hardly
anyone has ever attempted to listen for this voice , which is all but drowned
out by the chorus of utilitarian cash registers and endless box -cars of
imbecile pragmatic gadgets. It is our pleasure and our pride , as sur ­
realists, to have begun this task, to have listened attentively to this vOice,
and to have observed that its multifarious patterns, sensitively traced
upon the graph of imaginative possibilities, constitutes a veritable road­
map of implacable inspiration. The present text should be seen above all
as the notes of a brief excursion along the road thus revealed.

The reader is forewarned, however, that there will be nothing in the

subsequent observations to call to mind the impoverished etiquette of for ­
mal literary criticism ; that every form o f conventional aesthetic crite ria
has been rejected in advance; that didacticis m, too, with its dreary profe s ­
sorial physiognomy and its cosmopolitan triteness, has been forced t o
retreat like a penitent jesuit into the deepest jungles o f E cuador, hopefully
never to return.

The following notes - unsyste matic, incomplete, and tending to move

forward roughly and unpremeditatedly through a series of mountainous and
cavernous digressions rather than comfortably across the smooth terrain
of a well-defined subject matter - are intended only to provide at least some
opening in a road that has been closed for so long, and is so overgrown with
the weeds of verifiable despair, that its very existence has been almost
effaced not only from view but from memory. Along this road, which alone
among the avenues of Ame rican consciousness really interests me, to the
point of fascination, and which at present can be traveled only at night,
it has fallen to me to witness occas ional flashes from the darkness which
provided sufficient illum ination to venture a few steps further. The theo ­
retical and practical ramifications and implications of such illum ination
are problems I willingly leave to the future : like a strip of magnesium held
in flame it is the brilliance of the flash itself, here, which focusses our
attention to the exclusion of all other considerations .

It hardly needs to be said that we shall find few indications of the sur­
realist spirit in the repressive context of colonial p uritan righteousness
and wrath. If the early colonists built the cradle of what became America,
no less did they dig the grave of poetry. Surrealism is, of course, absolutely
incompatible with all forms of religion, and Christianity has naturally
received the greatest share of its anti-re ligious violence. 'Nothing will
ever reconcile me with Christian civilization,' said Andre Breton, to whom
we also owe the watchword: 'God is a swine.' With p uritanism one sees
the viciousness, inhumanity, rigidity and swinishness implicit in all religion
developed to an extreme frenzy which was doubly danb'erous because it
also controlled the machinery of state powe r . Everyone was to succumb
to an individual and social authoritarianis m in the cloak of theology which
e ffected an almost total censorship of mind and body. Everything that sur­
realism celebrates - mad love, dreams, freedom, humor, desire, the mar - .
velous , the unfettered imagination - was rele gated to the province of Satan.
But we know today , to the everlasting credit of Freud, that such human ten-

51
d":r�(" ",s cannot be entice;" suppressed; t!i�_ Y \�:>vit"blr returr., 'mexl,Jectedly
and U1.consc iously, for they ll re inte !i,'ra l tr til" very Hfe of map, in all cul­
tures and in all periods.

Thus in thE; colonial period, oppressed -Nith p uritanism , 5fHltte d with

s uperstition, one perceives s igns of the struggle of the imlt,rlnation to
libe rate itself. We cannot afford the In:'wry of di.<; missing these manifesta­
tions because of their religious mantle : it is necessary to see the truly
human poetry, fragmented as it is, that lies !lEmeath it struggling for its
e mancipation. Perhaps no one has described this process better tha.'l
Moses COit Tyler who wrote thus , in his llistory of American Literature ·
1607- 1765 , of the plight of the puritan and poetry: 'Though denied expres­
sion in one way, the poetry that was in him forced itself into utterance in
another. If his theology drove poetry out of many forms in which it had
been used to reside, poetry itself practiced a noble revenge by taking up
its abode in his theology.'

Throughout this period many of the most popular works were those
which enumerated, with painstaking detail and with imagery suitably som­
be r and stark, the endless terrors of Hell. COtton Mather's Wonders of the
Invis ible World, Jonatha n Edwards' sermon Sinners 1n the Hands of an
Angry God and Michael WiggleSWorth's poem The Day of Doom - the best­
se llers of colonial
America - are all blaCk, diabolical visions in which
the light of the marvelous erupts through the starry eloquence of the satanic,
the sinful, the eternally damned. One is reminded of Blake's note in TI!g
Marriage of Heaven and Hel l : 'The reason Milton wrote i n fetters when he
wrote of Angels and God, and at liberty when of DevUs & Hell, is because
he was a true Poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it.' A serious
argument could be made, I am convinced, for the poetic superiority of
Michael Wigglesworth ove-r (let us say) T. S. Eliot, whose servile, pros­
trate sentimentality. and his sensibility of a London banker, seem to me
thoroughly anti -poetic, whe reas Wigglesworth possesses at least a certain
ruthle ss, raw magnificence. 'His pages,' Tyler notes, 'are strewn with many
unwrought ingots of poetry.' One senses a desperateness in these simple
narrations of devilish rage and writhing agonies of flesh and flame, a des ­
perate quest for poetry, for true life, beyond the inhuman borders imposed
by their monstrous theology whose praises they sang with s uch Sinister,
volcanic - almost ironic - elegance.

It is certain that this period, the least know of American literature,

st111 Obscured by ccnte mporary academicians, needs careful reinterpreta­
tion. pe rhaps our sens itivity to its real significance could benefit from a

highly experimental attitude , surely one should be able to go beyond the

cretinous limitations of 'historical fiction' to feel the real content of a
vanished period. For my part, some time ago, poring over some extracts
from Wigglesworth's Day of Doorn, I found myself suppressing, with a pen,
its religious elements, as well as its starved metrical form, and at the
same time making certain automatic additions and 'corrections' . thus lib­
e rating and extending its remarkable poetic potentiality. These 'Wiggle s ­
worth Corre ctions' , part o f a series Q f surrealist experiments, will hope ­
fully be made public in the near future .

1m �!f.!��J�I!Pe�J!�!.
::�R����l�c���a!fi::'::!la�iib Ave., New Vork,
52
 With one splendid exception, there was no poetry in America in the lat­
ter half of the eighteenth century other than the act of colonial Revolution :
the exception consists of four novels written in great haste in less than a
year (between the summer of 1798 and that of 1799) by Charles Brockden
Brown , in whom we recognize the first true American precursor of sur­
realis m . Very popular and highly regarded in his own time and throughout
the first half of the nineteenth century (his admirers included Shelley, poe,
Hawthorne) the subsequent decline of interest in his work is largely attribut ­
able to the rise to power of literary realism and other consolidations of
Ame rican bourgeois consciousness. Brown wrote in a specifically American
variation of the GOthic genre , a category of Uterature since fallen into com­
plete disrepute;, indeed, it is ofte n held up to ridiCUle as a ver.itable model
of bad literature. But it is worth emphasizing that surrealists, who general­
ly scorn the novel as an inherently confined and me diocre literary form,
have always shared a passionate regard for the maste rpieces of GOthic
romance : Walpole's castle of Otranto , Ann Radcliffe 's Mysteries of Udolpho
and others, Lewis' Monk, and Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer. In the first
Manifesto, Breton ex cepts from his severe condemnation of novels in general,
only these GOthic works whose character isticdevices of terror and appari­
tions situate them unrese rvedly in the service of deSire .

Although Brown wrote mostly about the formally excluded areas of reali­
ty - the marvelous - he was nonetheless, like his contemporaries Blake
and Sade , an adherent of the fundamental principles of the Age of Reason,
and, also like them, disdained religious mystifications. Also comparable to
the attitude of Blake and sade is Brown's early intimation of the Age of Rea ­
son's immense boastfulness, and its consequent failures. For despite his
avowed acceptance of the tenets of the Enlightenment, his work constitutes
one of the earliest recognitions of their essential deficiencies. The rational
solutions concluding his works really solve nothing, for the reader is
finally confronted with problems of even greater magnitude than s upernatural
mysteries . 'The voices that drove the fanatic to madness and murder in
�,' writes Harry Levin in his lucid study The Power of Blackness,
'are produced by a ventriloqUist whose avowed intent has been to test his
victim'S credulity. This raises questions more terrifying in their purport
than the superstitions they undermine, for Wieland's voices are easily dis ­
credited; but carwin, the malevolent rationalist, is prompted by that 'mis ­
chievous demon' who will subsequently instigate Dostoyevsky's possessed.'

Brown , almost systematically, breaks one's confidence in the perma­

nence of immediate reality. His severe attack on religious superstition
does not in any way support the pillars of comfortable deist optimism.
He, too, perceived obscure voices calling from the darkest corners: his
work comprises a remarkable premonition, an adm irable , if unsteady,
step towa rd the definitive conquest of the irrational.

Or. O. P. BROWN'S HERBAL OINTMENT,

ONLY A flU.4BTEB A POT.
The case of Edgar Allen poe, put through every conce ivable sieve of
criticism and analysis, yet holds fast to a certain disdainful obscurity,
stubbornly refusing to be laid to rest by too hasty evaluations. Hardly a
real influence in the last few years, Poe has suffered the brutal castiga­
tion and, alternately, complete neglect, not only of conservative and lib­
eral academics but also of what has passed itself off as an American 'avant-
53
garde'. Let us note that his reputation even within surrealism has not been
constant: cited in the 1924 Manifesto as 'surrealist in adventure', by the
Second Manifesto of 1929 he is attacked as the initiator of police fiction
('Let us spit, in passing, on Edgar poe'); but he is inclUded in Breton's
Anthologie de I'Humeur Noir (1939), and, in an inte rview in NEW DIREC­
TIONS 1940 on 'The Meaning of Surrealism', Nicolas calas mentions. poe
l
)
!
and Melville as American presurrealists. (It should be mentioned too that
Antonin Artaud consistently included poe among the 'accursed' poets -­
along with Villon, Baudelaire, Gerard de Nerval: 'men tortured by lan­
guage, hemhorraging as they write.,) What we find of special interest in
the works of poe are some of his least-cited tales : 'The Angel of the Odd',
'The Imp Of the Perverse', and 'A P redicament' ('At �wenty -five minutes
past five in the afternooon, precisely, the huge minute-hand had proceeded
sufficiently far on its terrible revolution to sever the s mall remainder of
my neck,) -- tales in which the imaginatively liberating element and 'the
ego's victorious assertion of its own invulnerability' (FreUd) attain ver­
tiginous excess.

poe's reactionary political pretensions, his fanatical rac.tsm and his

hopelessly pompous stance as 'literary gentleman' are doubtless sufficient
to confine him to a relatively minor position. But it is necessary to chal­
lenge and overthrow the particular prejudices against him (based on ideo­
logical oversimplifications such as 'de cadence', 'neurasthenia', and even
'bad taste') enforced by his academic detractors. poe's greatest influence
in this century, it would seem, has been primarily 'Underground' : it is
espe cially discernible in the work of Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith.
Perhaps it is given to the sympathetic interpreters of these latter authors
to provoke a new recognition of the true significance of this curiously iso­
lated figure, whom Apollinaire touchingly hailed as 'the drunkard of Bal­
timore'.

With the single eXception of Herman Melville - who remains extremely

problematical - the only Americans whose work is wholly or largely ad­
mirable in our eyes are either academically 'discredited' or completely
unknown. As for Melville, it is necessary to inSist, before going on, that
the work of this author of indisputable genius possesses disturbingly long
and compli�tedly interwoven threads of ambiguity which no one has been
able to unravel with more than slight success, an attribute he shares with
Rimbaud, and which explains the origins of the abusive posthumous 'al­
liances' which both have suffered. For us Melville will always be the one
who shouted 'Nol' in thunder, and it is a source of regret that there were
no surrealists in the US to mobilize their rage on his behalf against the
abject critical assimilation campaign of the 1920s and '30s, as the sur­
realists in France did for Rimbaud with their pamphlet 'Permettezl' and
the demonstration against the unveiling of the statue of Rimbaud at Charle­
ville.

One can say without exaggeration that the ink of scholarship poured
over Melville's works has done more to conceal them, to bury them, than
the fog of neglect that shrouded his works in earlier generations. Melville
holds steadfast, however, to a position of unassailable defiance -- a darkly
brooding figure, driven, obsessed, flamingly lucid and commanding inspira­
tion. His ruthlessly total grasp of reality situated itself in a mythology which
54
is haunted and haunting, but strangely, distressingly compressed; his in­
tuitive dialectical materialism flew, like an albatross, on wings of the wild­
est lyricism . I would say without hesitation that Moby Dick seems to me
closer to Hegel's phenomenology than to any novel. Moreover, no criticism
of this work, no explication, annotation, nor interpretation has seemed to
me one -twentieth as significant as a news -story I came across some months
ago in a magazine from the 1950s, which told of a remarkable incident
that occurred, far at sea, during the production of a film -version of Moby
ill£!i : the specially -constructed model of the white whale somehow broke
away from its moorings and led the entire ship - directors , cast and crew -
on a long and terrible chase. How vitally, passionately dangerous Melville
remains, hOw clear his voice rings in our ears, like the sea in a conch ­
shell, years afte r certain morons have celebrated, with cockta.ils and ser­
mons, his centennial!

OPIUM
H A B I T C U R E D. I as k n o pay
nHAJ�
ilU -yoll k u are cured. DR.
lL C. BEN Richmond, IIld.
So much has been written about Emily Dickinson, one would al­
most consider her 'case' closed. The salaried official historians of Lit ­
erature and their goon -squad henchmen, the compilers of textbooks, have
been largely successful in their efforts to mold her into a prototype of the
sort of 'Poet' - lifeless, cold, wooden, saccharine, sentimental, cloistered -
rightly despised by schoolchildren. Surrealism intends to rescue her from
this stupid lie. It is true that a vague religious strain too often intrudes to
mar her sense of wonder, and one could reproach her with surrendtring
to her isolation and retreating into silence rather than advancing toward a
more conscious attitude of revolt. But I think we should have done with such
retrospective advice, so easy, so idiotic. What matters is that this woman
has left us inexhaustible resources of poetic reverie : 'Dust is the only
secret' ; 'The Spide r holds a Silver Ball' ; 'We Shall find the cube of the Rain-
bow'.

The 'hatred of the marvelous' decried by Breton in the Surrealist Mani­

W.t2 has been refined in this 'land of the dollar' (as the US has been known
for years to the working class movements of other countries) with tech­
nological exactitude . The capitalist road of reification has become a four­
lane highway, and the 'traffic death toll' a suitable symbol of the state of
American civilization which decades ago Freud recognized as a 'colossal
miscarriage'. I think it is impossible, in 1969, to exaggerate the precarious ­
ness of the human condition. It is clear today that there is something empty.
rotten and wrong about any 'POlitics' which has nothing to say about the
near-extinction of polar bears. It is thus exceedingly important - urgent -
for us to give increasing attention to all the truly oppositional voices in
our past, to those voices of truthful fervour which raised, under many and
divergent Circumstances , the most terrible q uestions And this is necessary
not only for the sake of intellectual survival but to better comprehend what
is to be done in the future. In the fragile hands of Emily Dickinson
the sidereal grandeur of the dandelion and the shadow of the Carolina
parakeet left the signature of their insolent trajectories. We whose
specific task it is to put the English language in a state of miraculous
effervescence, to liberate language from commodity fetishism and place it
in the service of desire and thus to restore it to a high place in the struggle
for the revolutionary transformation of the world, do not hesitate in
avowing the pleasure we derive from certain magnificent lines by this
admirable mistress of the image, who woke -at Midnight dreaming of
• • •

the Dawn.- 55
 l
* * *

'Revolt! and still revolt! revolt!

Revolt! and the bullet for tyrants!'

-- Walt Whitman (1856)
I
I

Ambrose Bierce, according to the writer of the introduction to his

very incomplete Collected Writings, 'is not, of course, a great writer';
following which quaint wisdom the same little literary justice of the peace,
who calls himself Clifton Fadiman, goes on to bemoan Bierce's 'Painful
faults of vulgarity and cheapness of imagination', lines which reveal, with
incredible clarity, the most repulsive and police-like aspects of literary
criticism, calculated - in this case - to convict and imprison the works of
Ambrose Bierce (and many others!) behind the four walls of positivist for­
malism. Fortunately Bierce's own SUbversive genius naturally reinforces
the s urrealist arsenal with highly effective weapons which already permit
us to forecast the almost inevitable destruction of the cultural bastille in
the wake of an authentic poetic jailbreak. Bierce's s ublime pessimism,
pushed to the point of paroxysm , placed on American civilization's moral
grave monstrous and pOisonous wreathes of desecration so boundless that
he resists all the conventions of literary classification. Those critics who
content themselves with writing him off as a 'minor precursor' of realistic
fiction should contemplate this definition from his Devil's Dictionary:
'REALISM, n. The art of depicting nature as it is seen by toads.' In relent­
less opposition to all intellectual fashions of his day, Ambrose Bierce
casually swung the unsparing razor of his humor into the stifling hypocrisy
of America's philosophical mid-afternoon of one-dimensional humanism.
Today more than ever his is the best introduction to the night in which our
footsteps continue to move forward. And in this night, during which the
American dream continues to revolve on its axle of anxiety and boredom,
we turn again and again to our s urest guide, the one who hurled the silver­
plated platter of progress into the Amazon River of his laughte r : Ambrose
Bierce , this bitterest beacon of black light.

I�i:Hfi llt UNTERNS WANTED

"UlMAr
HAIlBACH '" co. 809filbert St.Phlla.P.

samuel Greenberg was a Jewish immigrant from Austria who died in

New York in 19 17 of tuberculosis at the age of 24. To him we owe some of
the most astonishingly hermetic poetry in the English language, poetry
whose amazing transparence, extra ordinary mobility and captivating images
give it the magical charm of a kaleidoscope, as well as a wildly glistening
quality, like rare glass in starlight. It is unfortunate that no COllection of
his manuscripts (he published nothing during his lifetime) is currently
available, and even more unfortunate that he remains known almost exclu­
sively to literary specialists, and even to them only as an obscure verbo­
maniac frequently plagiarized by that celebrated mediocrity Hart Crane,
who happened to come across the Greenberg manuscripts. It is clear that
at a period in which most people who thought they were poets in the English
language - not only Hart crane but also Eliot, pound, Joyce, etc. - were
merely dabbling in the ignoblest sort of literary deception and the most
grotesque vanity, leaving behind nothing but various blind alleys of mysti-
56
flcattons, Samuel Greenberg, on the contrary, was involved, despe rately,
in a quest of an immeas urably higher order. On his prim itive raft of ex­
hilaration and anguish he set sail on a passionate exploration of the poetic
marvelous according to the principles of what Rimbaud had referred to as
the 'alchemy of the word'. It is Greenberg's delirious fidelity to the caus � of
poetry conceived as a revolutionary and emancipatory activity of the mmd
that makes his whole work belong as much to the living future as the work
of crane-Eliot-pound-Joyce & company belongs entirely to the dead past.

Celebra ted fia ts.

STYLE AND QUALITY UNEQUA LED.

There are a host of writers, perhaps more plentiful in America than

anywhere else, commonly categorized as 'cranks ' : protagoniSts of bizarre
systems, monomaniacs of unaccepted theories, professors of weird s Ciences,
proselytes of new religions. It should hardly be necessary to dwe ll upon
tlle facts that such phenomena are especially noticeable among the increasing­
ly pauperized petty-bourgeoisie, always in sear.:h of the most impossibly
utopian panaceas; or that the underlying motivations would almost invariably
reveal more or less serious psycholOgical disorders ; or that a great majority
of such cases would doubtless be found to possess, at best, a conservative
political attitude. The career of the Nazi 'COsmic Ice Theory' movement
(based on pseudoscientific works) should be sufficient to make us wary of
greeting such phenomena with enthusiasm , and confusional literature on the
subject (s uch as the particularly stupid book The Morning of the Magicians
by Pauwels and Bergier) must be vigorously combatted. On the other hand,
the immense quantity (and in some cases high imaginative quality) of this
literature, as well as the great inflUence it has exerted and continues to
exert on a portion of the population which is by no means negligible, alone
make it a subject worthy of consideration. The very least one may expect
from research in this area would be some additional light on some of the
darker regions of the mind. And perhaps from this foggy terrain there may
yet emerge one or two genuine bearers of illumination . It serves to recall
Lewis carroll, for example, who was clearly <psychologically disturbed',
and politically a conservative protestant; factors which do not, however,
in any way detract from the sublime and subversive splendour of --
Alice's
Adventures in Wonderland.

There is of course in this brief preliminary reconnaisance no space to

do more than cite an example from this vast literature. Of special interest
is Alfred Lawson, baseball playe r, inventor, and pioneer of US aviatiOn,
who developed an extraordinary conception of the universe, reducing all
worldly and unworldly phenomena to a handful of s uperbly idiotic laws,
elaborating a veritable 'system' to which he gave the name Lawsonony:
'the knowledge of Life and eve rything that pertains thereto', also defined
as 'the science of that which is, not that which ain't'. Lawson's 1904 novel
BOrn Again, more or less s cience fiction, is interesting for its utopian
and propt.etic aspects (it forecasts radio, among other things), as well
as for its overriding paranoid s chizophrenic plot. Lawsonomy could be seen
as a kind of homegrown, roughcast species of 'pataphysics (Alfred Jarry's
'science of imaginary solutions') though Lawson seems to have had none of
Jarry's faustrollian sagacity. But such Lawsonomian conceptions as the
'menorgs' and the 'disorgs' (microsopic creatures inhabiting the human
body and responsible for organizing and disorganizing its activity), and
the 'law of zig-zag-and-swirl' (illustrated by the example of a germ moving
57
across the surface of a corpuscle which is traveling up the bloodstream of
a man who in turn is walking down the aisle of an airliner which is traveling
at 100 m iles per hour and at an angle of 32 degrees from the Earth , etc.)
reveal Lawson's unmistakeable (even if unconscious) reservoir of humor.
And it is impossible to remain indifferent to an author who could write such
lines as these : 'When my Eyes no longer see objects about me; when my
ears no longer record sound messages; when my Nostrils do not attract
odors; nor my Taste distinguish flavors ; when external P ressure can no
longer affect my mentality, nor internal pressure register the appeal of
my VOice ; when the power of Suction has deserted me and my body is dis­
solved and the s ubstances of which it is composed have returned to the
great ocean of Dens ity from whence they came ; my words must still talk
and urge you forward in search of the unlimited knowledge to be found in
til., unexplored regions of PENETRABILITY.'

SUe" 'r"l(k Sl\&4C1<s O �

S!I)/lT""l J! II/t.VOU;'tION -
·. I'll Glva fUll' � 'l'WOf�
lA� .g,, · OAD4 · -

'--_________ �� Her,;J/WII- l(m.yf<IiT

Situatp.d equidistant from what is called 'serious' literature and from
�" ost all of thf' aforementioned 'crank' literature is the invaluable body
of work left to us by Charles Fort. Interest in this remarkable figure (all
of whose books are now in paper editions) has risen greatly in recent years;
i! would appear as if his work has been permanently retrieved from ob­
[,curity. It is too early to perceive what this resurgence of interest will
bring in the way of clarification and new ideas; one may expect very l ittle,
for instance, from s uch collegiate pastimes as the rejuvenated 'Fortean
SOCiety' in which the scathing humor and intell1gence of the master are
reduced to platitudes and stagnation. Fort was the systematizer and ex­
perimental cosmologist of 'accursed' phenomena : frogs that fell from the
sky, visitations fFQm space , astronomical peculiarities, animals that talk,
etc. Noting that the disappearance of Ambrose Bierce into revolutionary
Mexico coincided in time with the disappearance of an Ambrose Small, a
Canadian, Fort asked: 'Is somebody collecting Ambroses?' With untiring
intellectual fortitude he compiled and speculated upon his compell1ng data
in books whose fluid style has been compared to collage : quotes from sci­
entific journals, luminous analogies, polemical intrusions, disturbing coin­
cidences, violent juxtapositions give these works a specifically irresistable
quality of magical evoc.ation. This philosopher of Absolute Doubt chronicled
the everyday interventions of the conventionally unexpected and wove from
these scattered stars a defiant galaxy of the imagination, far from the
fashionable neighborhood of novelists and other gossip columnists and even
farther from their psychological maneuvering and s carcely -concealed com-
mercial ambitions.
5.
 Live Steam Feed-Water P U R I FI E R S
are guaranteed to keep boilers clean.

Another writer unique in American literature, whom we regard with

great admiration, is the IWW poet and theoretician T -Blme Slim. He is best
known for his contributions to the famous Little Red Song Book : songs char­
acterized by a deeply cutting humor and a reckless spirit of revolt. BUt
it is in the columns that he wrote regularly for the IWW papers - especially
in the 19208 when his texts seem to have been published with little or no
editing - that his poetic magistery reached its t ruest ai ticulation. Like
the style of Charles Fort, the poetic method of T -Bone Slim bears a re­
semblance to the technique of collage : headlines, news stories, advertising
slogans and popular songs provide occasions for the intervention of his
laughter with which he mows down the pillars of simplistic rationality,
leaping unpredictably from subject to subject. He did not 'organize' his
pages; he used no outline, no premeditated plan: utilizing every variety of
word-play, certain of his texts seem to possess continuity primarily through
the flowing shapes and sounds of the very words themselves, and through
the spontaneous images formed as they collide and roll along the page, ra­
ther than in their conventional meaning. But it is his profound humor, and
his revolutionary sensibility, which distinguishes these experiments with
language from the superficial and contrived 'revolution of the word' prac­
ticed in the 1920s and '30s by Eugene Jolas and many of the collaborators
of the literary magazine transition.

Let us emphasize that T -Bone Slim was unquestionably a proletarian

writer, which makes his destiny and his message so much more moving
in our eyes. It is clear, moreover, that his work obviously resists assimi ­
lation into the stifling categories of so-called <proletarian' o r 'socialist'
(actually stalinist) 'realism', which in fact was never anything else than an
essentially petty-b ourgeois, bureaucratic, guilt -ridden parasitical and
repressive ideological device, in flagrant contradiction with the teachings
of Marx, Engels, and Lenin : it was 'the kind of art functionaries understand',
as Che Guevara wrote. Functionaries in the service of stalinist state capi­
talism could obviously not tolerate T-Bone Slim: the seif -activity of the
imagination is as terrifying to them as the self -activity of the working
class. 'It is up to us,' wrote Breton in the Second Manifesto, 'to move, as
slowly as necessary, without any sudden fits or starts, towards the worker's
way of thinking • •. ' Let us meanwhile render homage to T-Bone Slim, a work ­
ing man conscious of the oniric weaponry of language, who gave to poetic
revolt in English a resonance peculiarly his own, and to whose memory
we are pleased to offer at least this minimal act of reparation.

H ERE � AGAIN BOYS.

,•• ,', THIS TIllE IT'S AN ADJUSTABLE BULLET
It is not only in the written word that we recognize poetry. The revo­
lutionary defense of the marvelous must be achieved by any means neces­
sary.

Night weaves the brightest of magical flames in the subtlest folds of

its darkness, speaking to us sometimes in a voice as criminal as the sea,
burning with purity and yet as frozen as the tracks of wolves in the snow
before dawn. The BLUES comprise an extraordinarily fertile poetic tradi ­
tion which is only now beginning to emerge in a new light. The inadequacies
of the existing critical literature, which even at its best tends to restrict
59
blues to the categories of the social sciences, should bEicome increasingly
evident as Paul Garon publishes his researches into the profound and exalted
lyricism emanating from the work of such bluesmen as Peetie Wheatstraw
o r the better known Robert Johnson. Much has been written of blues lyrics
as a means of expression; almost nothing regarding them as an activity of
the mind. We have everything to expect of further exploration of this elu­
s ive, important domain, which promises to unravel many tangled mysteries
of human expression as well as to liberate new and dynamic forces of in­
spiration.

HORNS FOR TALKING

Mfn.
MACHINES
CraM Br... .
!field. W.. Man.

COMICS and cartooning comprise one oftbis century's clearest windows

on all that is most marvelous in the imaginative life of man. Heir of folk­
lore and fairy tale, as well as many aspects of 'artistic' tradition, the best
comics articulate delicious dreams of adventure, revenge and the realiza­
tion of the mind's potentiality, offering momentary flights of incomparable
exhilaration from the prison walls of immediate reality, and permitting
the human sensibility to arm itself somewhat against the drab military
background of everyday life with its cushioned monotony, its ceaseless
procession of inhibitions , laws , cops, courts , priests and the well-known
sterility of truly human faculties in the capitalist epoch, a situation which
finds its most adequate expression in best-selling novels cranked off an
assembly-line of enforced stultification. For me, a Single BUgs Bunny
comic book of the early 1950s (such as 'The Magic Sneeze' of 1952) will
always be worth more - in terms of freedom and human dignity - than all
the novels of p roust, Sartre, Faulkner, Hemingway •••Such a judgment,
which will probably strike some as exceSSive, possesses at least the virtue
of complete seriousness. Regrettably the spatial limitations of the present
article do not permit me to deal more concretely, nor even at greater
length, with this subject, to which, however, I shall return in the future.
Meanwhile it must suffice to signal certain of the comics which, from the
surrealist point of view, seem to offer the greatest promise, the brightest
revelation : in the first place, the deliriOUS lyricism of 'Krazy Kat' by
George Herriman, a mad ballet with eternal variations on a single theme,
the simplicity of which only emphasizes the poetic heights and depths it
attains at every turn. Also close to us are Winsor McKay's 'Little Nemo',
a beautifully-constructed celebration of the Pleasure P rinciple ; the wild­
eyed buffoonery of 'Happy Hooligan' by F rederick Burr Opper; the 'Toon­
erville Folk of Fontaine FOX; and the concrete irrationality of Rube Gold­
berg's elaborate inventions, as well as the sublime ridiculousness of his
'Foolish Questions'. From a later period surrealism singles out especially
the comic characters of violent humor: these are most always animated
cartoon 'stars' who are later featured in comic books and sometimes news­
paper strips : particularly Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, but also Tom &
Jerry and the early Woody Woodpecker, characters whose origins and de ­
velopment are linked to a revolt against the bourgeois banality of the Walt
Disney stUdios. Among animated cartoonists surrealism affirms the amaz­
ing dynamite of black humor in the work of Tex Avery; also the master­
pieces of the 'gag' by Chuck Jones, Robert McKimpson and others ; and the
senSitive, penetrating delight of several works of Norman MacLaren. Of
the 'super-hero' comics, generally a boring genre, marked with semi­
fascist ideology, surrealists pOint out only certain rare exceptions : 'cap-
60
tain Marve l' whose bungling humor is in such complete contrast to the
dreary unemotionalism of 'Superman'; the early <Plastic Man' (like the
forme r, not to be confused with its current dull reincarnation); and Will
Eisner's fantastic 'Spirit'.

M(Cay-
We can do no more here than merely mention the names of certain
PAINTE RS in whom we recognize preoccupations that foretell, enhance or
parallel our own: some of the curious allegorical landscapes of Thomas
Cole (1801-48); certain works of John Quidor (180 1 -8 1) illustratil'g themes
of Washington Irving and James Fenimore Coope r; the entire work of Al ­
bert Ryder (184 1 - 19 1 7), Louis Eilshemius ( 1864-1941), and Edward Hopper;
certain 'naive' painters, above all Morris Hirschfield; and Joseph Stella's
early and specifically New york interpretation of futurism. More attention
should be given to American Dadais m : particularly to Man Ray, who went
on to become the first Ame rican surrealist -- aside from toppling the gov ­
erning conceptions of 'artistic' photography he has contributed a great
number of paintings, drawings and objects which are still far from re ­
ceiving their full measure of appreciation. Later there were those who ad­
hered to the principles of the surrealist movement in this country : the sculp ­
tor and photographer David Hare (who e dited the first US surrealist jour ­
nal, VVV) , Joseph Cornell, Kay Sage , Dorothea Tanning, the early Alexan ­
qer calder (inventer of the mobile), the Armenian imm igrant Arshile
Gorky, and Marie Wilson. We should also mention some of the more ob ­
sessed abstract-expre ssionists, principally Jackson pollock. Of recent
American painting there has been little which meets the fundamental sur ­
realist requirements of revolt and revelation : a few examples by Rauschen ­
berg and Rosenquist are very small oases in a vast desert. Of foreign
surrealists living in the United States let us extend our warmest frate rnal
greetings to the Spaniard E. F. Granell, whose pass ionate and ceaseless
explorations of the internal labytinth have brought him into close col­
laboration with the minotaur; and the Indonesian Schlechter Duvall, who has
plunged m e rcilessly into the imagination's deepest sea of flames to rise as
the non-e uclidean phoenix. We may expect the growing presence of sur ­
realism here to overthrow completely the existing tendencies in 'art', to
restore imaginative vital ity to painting and to situate it in the service of
poetry and

If surrealism tends to reject the greater portion of Ame rican CINEMA

for its comme rcialis m , its racism and its state Department ideology, if
it agrees with Luis Burtuel that 'in none of the traditional arts is there so
great a disproportion between potential and achievement as in the Cinema',
61
it nonetheless calls attention to certain remarkable exceptions : the entire
early work of Chaplin, the Mack Sennett comedies, Buste r Keaton , W. C.
Fields, all the works of the Marx Brothers, and a few exemplary films
(King Kong, The Phantom of the Opera, Peter Ibbetson) which reveal the
explosive possibilities of the miracle of cinema, which Andr� Breton has
called 'the first great open bridge' uniting day and night.
A ll varletle8at Jowestprlces. Be8t RaIJroad

Seal OS �l�
S
d�°':.r&�I:"�CI��e: ���
ewing Machines, Bicycles, TOOls. etc.
Excepting only the igloo, the longhouse, the adobe and the wigwam ,
we are quite prepared to say that the ar chitecture of this continent bores
us to tears. The only other exception might be the oddities of American
building: the isolated 'castles' of nineteenth century eccentriCS, certain
magnificent grain elevators, the Leadville Ice Palace of 1896, the Chicago
Water Tower ••• Thus it is with J:articular pleasure that we affirm the ab­
solute splendour of Simon Rodia's towers in Watts, triumph of automatism
and collage , and a de lirious promise of the surrealist architecture that
will be.
Nothm..l1 to Watch. but the R.oad Ahead.
. ar-Send for CataJog.,AJ
'History is a conception of the future !' wrote Nicolas Calas. In the pre­
sent period we are surrounded by bourgeois mis conceptions -- pompous
crucifixes of philosophical hypocriSy; pink satin pillows of capitalist cul­
ture for soft heads ; iron bars of bureaucratic sociology and the miserable
glue of patriotism , respect for property, religion, advertiSing, education,
etc. -- which must be discredited and destroyed. Such a transformation
of the past in the service of the future is not, for us, an abstract diversion
to be pursued in isolation in this or that ivory tower. It take s shape and
develops, rather, in the heat and light of genuine struggle -- struggle against
bourgeois ideology and the concomitant struggle to liberate forces of revo­
lutionary inspiration and action. The conceptions of the past which prevail
today are rooted in ideological deception. They are, coI1ectively, the auto­
biography (hidden behind the mask of anonymous 'ObjectiVity') of the ruling
class. To attack this deception , to tear away this maSk, is to provide surer
ground for the revolutionary movement to advance on; it is to clarify our
perception of the terrain on which we must fight.

For us, surrealists, this task of revolutionary reval uation necessarily

commences with the theory and practice of poetry, for poetry is, as Ben­
jamin peret has said, tthe source and crown of all thought'. But let no
one confuse this point of departure for a point of arrival; let no one think
that we accept any of the stale literary evasions which are the puerile staff
of life only for those pretenders who wrongly call themselves poets. our
unreserved adherence to the fundamental principles of marxism- leninism,
our active participation in concrete political struggles and on militant
de monstrations , should be sufficient proof that our conception of poetry
does not end with the poem.

At the same time, however, we recognize that specifically 'Poetic'

problems do exist, and that their solution is crucial to the development of
a truly effective revolutionary theory and practi ce. The solution of these
problems - problems of human expression in all its forms, problems of
dreams, love, madness - cannot be harnessed to the ideological or tactical
62
requirements of any political group, even under the best circumstances .
Among existing intellectual efforts, it i s preCisely surrealism, in fact, which
seems to be most able to propose and carry through the most daring so­
lutions. Before s urrealism, in any case, almost noth ing concrete had been
done in the area it set out to explore, and it is clear that surrealism has
contributed more than anything else to this project. Moreove r, surreaUsm
has always situated its consideration of these problems in a framework tend­
ing to support the struggle for socialist consciousness and proletarian
revolution .

It is unforgiveable that there is a growing tendency by reactionary

critics to consider s urrealist works as mere literature : Andr� Breton's \
Nadja is even described as a 'novel'. Nothing could be more m isleading.
Nadia should be read the way one reads What Is To Be ponp.? It is also worth
pointing out, howeve r , against this distortion at the hands of critiCS, that
there are young people today, unquestionably intelligent, sensitive and per­
ceptive - and their number is steadily increasing - whose very sense of
life has been brought to the boil ing point by poems by peret, Breton or
Cesaire s a painting by Tanguy, Go rky or Toyen, an early collage by Max
E rnst, a story by Leonora carrington or an object by Oscar Dominguez.

q call tobacco that which is ear,' wrote Benjamin peret shortly before
he left for Spain to fight, alongside the workers, as a militiaman in defense
of the Spanish Revolution. poetry, properly understood, concretizes man's
desire for freedom ; but we are quite prepared to pick up the gun, when ne ­
cessary, to defend that freedom in the streets.

Communism and s urrealism are 'communicating vessels' -- and their

unfette red communication leads to the total liberation of man.

On the pOlitical plane , the watchword of Marx and Engels retains its
impassioned validity : 'Workers of the world, unite !' And on the poetic
plane, the revolutionary watchword remains that of Lautreamont: 'Poetry
must be made by all. Not by one.'
Franklin ROSE MONT

The Simplified Pencil -Sharpener by Rube GOLDBERG

63
 The Pale Impromptu

Silver mourned gray. Slepted the greenlight

pale neath coil of rock and clay
Stirred the tasted belt, s uch flower s ighed tears
Kept lewd powers away - - - by
Northern soprano
The Easthern lute
The forgotten pallete
Strains ramble
Pellucid Quest
times chant
Hearts brow
pale heat
Fusive bleat
Thus of eye. lived low beyond colours earned retreat
But dared not show - - - a vain vampires rath
can you forget this wreap
Hidden winds perspired foul - - - as
a palmed rose
The well shade
urgent fears
Eyes jealousy
painted m irth
royal flesh
candle salve
consumed moon
And here, the ash tray was Blown !

II

Blue turned white , gave the earth

a coating balzomized sooth
Though naked light shealds the trail of love
The fold metal granite doth move
In - - - Waves of skin
Shapes of tale
tinted staines
graceing clumps
Slime pigments
Lurid farrows
Nulling marrow
Shallows cloak
Marble sponge
Therein I but tarry, as the yoke of Helium tinge
Unmatched, foreign, alien to the sh rine of beauties cringe
Leaness will but crave
Wate r waves
torque blocks
Skulls of saints
patience absent
Yellow dreams
64
 Sensive stirs
Silent hills
pre cious death
His woob? hath yet nigh its breath

III

Clover sank to iron heat, stole the

liUies of pale mat gold
The hearse in ghosts, where black
jet black - - - driven in F rail --- By
Solitudes wish
phantoms orient
Grey life
Fouls deviation
Spiritual songs
pearls from tissue
traits rejuvenation
Stale plants
dim accuracy
There sat the minstrel, bent in leagues
of Frozen charm
Though lightly, fette red, as perfect calm
Thawing melancholy
Into
Early psalms
river rhodes
tale of lamps
Satyres burial
Paradise shrine
Noble realms
Mirror 's envil
Clove r's muse
o soul! enlivened from dire perfume.

Samuel GREENBERG
( 19 15)

�i-----=== .IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIt=::=-::=::====:==-----;�

E L E CT R I C ITY
Juice is stranger than friction.
A friendly s tranger is half as strange as a strange friend.
The world's champion friend has 198 friends --- two, former ·friends - - ­
are no more.
China has 440,000,000 opportunities for a man looking for friends.
The thinning out of the Chinese, in favor of western civilinsanity, has
started in earnest --- earnfest - - - to enslave the rest.
The idea is to get the 440,000,000 Chinese to support the world --- an
impossibility without thinning them out, and impossible afte r.
c:hina industrialized will number about 200,000,000 workers, and will be
able to do much of Europe's manufacturing, when not conducting an engage -
.
65
 1

ment with rice and chop suey --- and, when Europe's unemployed hold ex­
traordinary sessions with soup and petrified biscuits. i
Europe's civilinsanity, too, will feel safer after China is deflated: re­
member how rosy the school girl complexion of 'our' capitalism got after
labor was deflated, 1 920---?
But. (note this) they do not deflate labor in America any more --- they
use a stomach-pump : they grab a man in the street, full of compulsory tem­
perance, rush him to a hospital, and pump the constitutional . sobriety out of
him.
Sometimes they save the man. Good! Bravo! But, neverthelittle, pro ­
hibition has killed more men than we lost in the last war --- this is not fa­
voring war nor prohibition -- prohibition is the worst stuff I ever drank.
I would not mention it if it wasn't a thinning-out process --- why carry
on war when --- when you can give the victims wood alcohol, hair oil,
chloral and torso-ointment --- ?
If you want to thin 'em faster, re -introduce saloons, legalize moonshine
and denatured 'gas'.
Not much prohibitionary stimulant is being guzzled --- little is SO ef­
fective, and So cheap. Really, prohibition seems like a concession to the
mounting gas bills --- with what would you buy a radio if the people were
allowed to spend the money for liquor? Only a saloon-keeper would have
Fords and 'Neitherdynes'.
Leaving all jokes aside, I would rather listen to a radio than a drunk,
yes I would - - - as muchas the pufforme�sta.gger in their igloo --- Sixon --­
but I would rather be half shot while doing it, yes I would.
How helpless we Americans are. Law tells us when to work, what to eat,
what to drink, what to chew and smoke, where and when to sleep; tells us
what to think; tells us where to live ; tells u'> when to die --- where would we
be without law? What would we do? It tells us not to celebrate our Indepen­
dence with Chinese fire -craCkers.
I suggest --- patriotically suggest --- that we loan our laws to China,
just as soon as we can spare them.
Another thing in our favor is cheap food. It's really astoundful!
You can get two spoonfuls of oats and a tube of milk for 10 cents --­

everybody, too, seems to have a dime -- ah, may the dimes never grow
extinct!
I stood by the cashier'S desk and watched the breakfast customers pay
their bills. Here is what the register registered: 10, 15, 10, 05 , 10, 10, 10,
10, 05 , 10, 20, 10, 10 --- I wonder where all that money is coming from. --­

A hundred years from now they'll celebrate this prosperity and COolidge --­

the one-man P ROSPERITY,

T-Bcme S LI M
(Industrial Pioneer, August 192 5)

Jean-Claude SILBERMANN
66
 The Devil's Son-In-Law
� EN BLUES SINGER William Bunch was killed in a car -train wreck in
1941, he had recorded nearly 200 songs. Although his death was reported
in the music trade journals and his name is familiar to record collectors,
he still rests in an obscurity incommensurate with his eloquence. Buncb
was known as P eetie Wheatstraw, the Devil's Son-in-Law (indeed, nearly
all his records were labelled as such) and often referred to himself as the
High Sheriff from Hell. Although the name Peetie Wheatstraw was a folk­
name like Stavin' Chain , or the more common John Henry, it should be
recognized that William Bunch must always be associll.ted with the name
as well as with the myth with which he sur rounded it.

The character of peetie Wheatstraw was strikingly manifest in his

songs, and a sample of the lyrics is extremely revealing:

'Women all raving about peetie Wheatstraw in this land (2 times)

He got some of these women going from hand to hand.

I am peetie Wheatstraw, the High Sheriff from Hell. (2X)

The way I strut my stUff, oooh well well, you never can tell.'
('P eetie Wheatstraw Stomp #1')

'Everybody hollering 'Here comes that peetie Wheatstraw'. (2x)

Better known by the Devil's Son-in-Law.

Everybody wondering what that Feetie Wheatstraw do. (2x)

cause everytime you hear him he's coming out with something new.

He makes some happy , some he makes cry. (2x)

Now he made one old lady go hang herself and die .

This is P eetie Wheatstraw , I' m always on the line. (2X)

Save up your nickels and dime s , you can come up and see me some­
time.'
('Peetie Wheatstraw Stomp #2')

'Now I am a man that everybody !mows . (2x)

And you can see a crowd everywhere he goes.

My name is P eetie I'm on the line, you bet. (2x)

I got something new that I ain't never told you yet.'
('Shack BUlly Stomp,)

Although the s ubjects covered by Wheatstraw in his songs are various ,

and as diverse as suicide, travel, the depression, welfare, urban renewal,
insanity, drinking, women, gambling and murder, each song contributes a
bit more to the picture, and what ultimately emerges is a remarkably fan­
tastic characte r :

'1 did more for you than you understand

You can tell by the bullet-holes , mama now, here in my hand•••'
('Ice and Snow Blues')
67

..
 l
Or :

'This is P eetie Wheatstraw this morning, people want to know why

do I (frown)* (2x)
Sometime I (frown) in the far distant lands , sometime I (frown) Over
the rising clouds.'
('Pete Wheatstraw')

'Kidnappe r's Blues' is a magnificent, and elaborately constructed,

Wheatstraw fantasy :

'They kidnapped m y baby, she was all I bad. (2x)

They asked for 10,000 ransom, it made me feel so bad.

No kidnapper can do me thisaway. (2X)

I'm going to the chief detective to see what will he say.

I love my babe, and I want her to come on home . (2x)

But the lowdown kidnappers have taken my babe and gone .

I'd give them 10,000 dollars just to see her smiling face again. (2x)
She is all I got to live for, also she is my best friend.

The chief detective say, 'I got all my mens on the block. (2x)
And I'm telling everybody this kidnapping must be stoppe d'.'
('Kidnapper's Blues')

Although women figure significantly in his blues, their role certainly

varies :

'(NOW where would you be mama), you made my life a wreck. (2x)
I'd rather have a rattlesnake wrapped aroWld my neck.'
('Devil's Son-in-Law')

Wheatstraw's significance and influence in the world of blues is often

underestimated. He embellished the last line of each of his verses with an
looh, well, well' cry that soon became his trademark. Musicians who played
with him only briefly later began to use his cry on their own records, and
blatant Peetie Wheatstraw imitators were common. The blues singer
He rman Ray billed himself as 'Peetie Wheatstraw's BUddy', and although
pictures Of the real Peetie Wbeatstraw appeared in early Decca catalogs,
it would seem to be a photo of Ray that has been recently and erroneously
circulated as a picture of peetie Wheatstraw. The blues singers Casey Bill
Weldon, Smokey Hogg, John Henry Barbee, Champion Jack Dupree, and
even, possibly, Sleepy John Estes all show traces of having been influenced
by Wbeatstraw.

Toward the end of his career , on his last recording session, Wheat ­
s traw no longe r accompanied himself. Most of his early records featured
his smooth, rolling piano, or, in a few cases, his strangely jerky but rhyth ­
mic guitar playing. His later records had not been quite as good as his
earlier ones, but on the last seSSion, his lyrical compositions were stun­
ning. He recorded 'Southern Gi rl', a song about the ill effects that urban
life (and whiskey) have on women. The song ends with the verse :
68
r
!
'1 know Chicago w1ll get them that way. (2x)
The re's people coming to Chicago going hog-wild every day.'
('Southe rn Girl Blues')

peetie's last session was made less than a month before his death.
'
Although his death was seemingly accidental, of the nine songs he recorded
that day, one was called 'Separation Day Blues', one began 'Old organ, you've
played your last tune ' , while anothe r was called 'Hearseman Blues' and
still another was called 'Bring Me Flowerll While I'm Living'.

'Bring me flowers whilst I'm living, please don't bring them wben I'm
dead. (2x)
And bring them back to my bedside, to cool my achin' head.

When a man is sick in bed, please come to my rescue. (2x)

When a man is dead and gone, how in the world he know what you do?

Bring me water to my bed, a drink will keep me cool. (2X)

And just say after I've gone, '1 sure tried to help that fool.'

I'll stay here as long as I can, leave when I can't help myself. (2x)
We has all got to die, and I ain't no better than no one else.
Don't bring me flowers after I'm dead, a dead man sure can't
smell. (2X)
And if I don't go to heaven, I don't sure need no flowers in hell.

paul GARON

* NOTE : In this verse, the word 'frown' is unclear and could easily be
'cry' or 'clown'.

. , , .

No 3249
KIDNAPPERS BLUES and FROGGIE BLUES

3249 -VOQI, Piano, Guitar Ace. Peetie Wheat·

straw .......
_.__ .__._._._-_.

69
. .. . . 5ge
_......._ . . .. .
 1I
,

Su.ch Pu. lp As DreaD1s

Are �ade OD

(H. P. Lovecraft and Clark A.hton Smith)

(The recently reawakened interest in the work of H. P. Lovecraft and Clark

Ashton Smith sufficiently justifies reprinting the following artic1e-one of
the earliest serious discussions of these writers-which appeared in the
American surrealist journal VVV in 1943.)

I
ORESTS are decimated and the dismembered corpses of trees are
tossed into a hell-broth concocted by industrial chemurgy. and so re ­
duce d to cellulose. This wood-pulp is converted into paper of various
types. Nine -hundred and sixty nine mills are engaged in the primary
pulp and paper industry in the united states : more than a million per-
sons are supported by this process. These figures do not include those
masses engaged, in one way or another. in the various skills of spreading
ink upon the paper.
All this multifarious activity has grown up in response to one hasic
human craving -- that insatiable appetite to escape from the 'low dark
prison' of segmented existence. Some might define this unconscious drive
as a passion for participation; others as the revolt against the boredom
of life imposed by the dictatorship of the Machine. The 'Ilews' purveyed
on paper may intensify and temporarily nourish, in vicarious fashion, the
hunger for communal participation, and provide a temporary release from
the rigors of everyday monotomy.
To some thirty millions of Ame ricans , pulp-paper publications offer
avenues of release ; yet, in the hierarchy of contemporary literature , the
'Pulps' are relegated to the lowly caste of the untouchable. Disdained by
the literary experts, they are preserved in few libraries ; they have never
been diagnosed by SOCiologists and psycholOgiSts, who remain blandly in­
diffe rent to the significance of their widespread and enduring appeal.
The 'literature' of the subject is sparse and well-nigh inaccessible.
Neverthe less, from the point of view of communication by the printed
word, the 'Pulps' function efficiently. They engage the loyalty of mil­
lions of faithful and habitual readers, who vociferously express their ap ­
proval with reader -response letters, organize themselves into 'fan' clubs,
even hold annual conventions and trade their cherished fantasies with each
other -- even to the extent of printing bibliographies of their preferences
and masterpieces of 'futurian' literature.
Successful communication may be likened to an electric current.
Writer and reade r, in such a communal experience, are lifted out of their
individual isolation and fused into a Single, all -enveloping identity. The I
is transfigured by the We. The reader -response published by the editors
'
of the pulps, if authentic, is adequate testimony of this communal partici­
pation.
This class of untouchables populates the newsstands with impudent
density. The pulps thrive with the hardihood of weeds -- or the ambiguous
hemp-plant. They bring to mind the words of Hamlet: '••• an unweeded gar­
den that grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature possess it merely.'
70
The life of the individual pulp is brief, evanescent, ephemeral; but the species
spawns and pullulates. Some of them answer the craving for purely physical
derring-do : 'action' stories, 'Westerns' , aviation adventures . Others purvey
ersatz opiates designed to assuage thwarted sexual impulses. Still others
indulge in masked orgies of murder, torture, violence, sadis m , sterilized
and rendered morally innocuous by the automatic triumph of the fo rces
of law and order.
Most fascinating, perhaps, are those pulps devoted to super -realistic
'Wonder' -- to the weird, the horrendous, the pseudo-s cientific, the resur­
rection of ancient myths and folklore. In these we discover a wild, undis ­
ciplined jail-break from the concentration camp of the mundane, a carefree
defiance of all the laws of the universe, a flight from the penury of life
in three or fo ur dimensions . Here is explosive votalization of repressed
imaginations, wrenching off the manacles of Time and Spaee!

These 'scienti-fictions' catapult the reader (by 'spaceship') to the

remotest reaches of the solar syste m . With Thomas Traherne the pulp e ­
teer cries out : " Tis mean ambition to define a single world: t o many I
aspire, the one upon another hurl'd.' Some of these 'interplaneta ries' (the
technical name for such tales) transport you in the twinkling of an eye to
any one or another of the 1830 (or is it 138 1?) planets , asterOids, or plane ­
toids' of our own solar syste m . you find youself, pe rhaps , in some 'hot
spot ' in 10 City, megalopolis of the planet Jupiter. There (in surreptitious
defiance of the interplanetary Gestapo) 'space -farers' and 'space -rats'
carouse and plot. You, reade r, are really the hero -- a right guy , a regular
fellOW, a prince among your com rade star-rovers. you pick up bits of start­
ling information from 'slender snake -like Venusians ' , lepidopterous Me r ­
cUI"ians , o r good-natured Brobdingnagian Jovians. you plot the downfall
of the Hitlerian dictator of the solar system; and from the sidereal double ­
talk o f five planets you inadvertently learn o f a colossal snatch -racket: a
gangste r -star from the other side of infinity is plotting to kidnap our Bro­
ther the Sun! Or you may speed through space-lanes regulated by inte r ­
planetary traffic cops to the rescue of some trans -lunar princess . As they
thrust out their revolting se rpentine feelers toward the princess in distress,
you lasso giant man-eating pitche r-plants. Or else you discover the popu­
lace of two alien and irreconc ilable dimensions battling for the supre macy
of our little world. In all these variegate d adventures, the naive reader e x ­
periences a dilation o f conSCiousne ss, the expansion o f belief beyond the
boundaries of the credible, release from that disagreeable little patch of
experience men know as the plausible. credo qui absurdum!
The exhilaration experienced by hardened addicts is suggestive of the
e cstatic elevation induced by hashish or marihuana : the soaring into a
paradise of Mahomet, the distorted awareness, then weightle ss, effortless
flight, followe d by a sudden, chilling drop to reality. The addict feels him­
self large r, stronger, far freer, the dominant feeling 'one of immense joy
and liberation'. His experience recalls DeQuincey's with laudanum : 'The
sense of space, and in the end the sense of time, were both powerfully
affe cted. BUildings, landscapes, etc., were eXhibited in proportions so vast
as the bOdily eye is not fit to receive. Space swelled, and was amplified
to an extent of unutterable and self -repeating infinity. This disturbed me
very much less than the vast expansion of time. Sometimes I seemed to
have lived for seventy or a hundred years in one night; nay, sometimes
had feelings representative of a duration far beyond the limits of any hu­
man expe rience .'

* * *
71
 August Derleth and Donald Wandrei have salvaged the work of two ex­
traordinary 'stars' of the pulpwood fiction -factories -- H. p . Lovecraft
and Clark Ashton Smith. convinced that Lovecraft (this name is slightly
incredible, but it is no nom de plume) was of more than passing signifi­
cance , Derleth and Wandrei collected thirty-six of his tales (Love craft
had died in 1937) and submitted the huge manuscript to leading p ublishers.
Most of these promptly rejected the project as a 'Poor commercial risk'.
Undismayed, these two young litterateurs set up their own publishing house,
the Ar�ham press, in sauk City, Wisconsin. Lovecraft's work (�­
sider and Others) was printed in a bulky volume of 553 closely printed
pages, including an introduction and Lovecraft's own exhaustive essay on
'Supernatural Horror in Lite rature'.

Whipped on by some inner compulsion to write, Howard Lovecraft

passed most of the forty-seven years of his life in an old Georgian house
in p rovidence, Rhode Island, timorously shunning all rough -and-ready con ­
tacts with the workaday world. At an early age, through the medium of his
own microscopic calligraphy, he began to create his own subjective uni­
verse. This imagined cosmos was peopled with ghouls and demons, pri­
mordial creatures of Manichean evil surviving from prehistory, or super­
cosmic Titans ready to take possession of the human race at some un­
guarded moment. Lovecraft spun his own endless filature of ink as an ar­
mour against the external. He communicat.,·... with other sympathetic minds
through the medium of letters. With more than two hundred unseen friends
he corresponded regularly -- letters of forty, sixth, or seventy sheets of
standard typewriter size, covered on both sides with spidery penmanship.
Some of these letters grew longer than a full-length novel, bulking from
fifty to one hundred thousand words.
Pre cocious wonder-children create their own imaginary kingdoms,
complete with custom, currency and costume. Like them this recluse mapped
and charted his own s ubjective archaeology and fantastic prehistory. The
recluse was oppressed by the presence of 'Old Ones' who might return to
take possession of the human mind and unleash the powers of darkness.
'All my stories,' Lovecraft confessed, 'are based on the fundamental lore
or legend that this world was inhabited at one time by another race Who,
in practising black magic, lost their foothold and were expelled, yet live
on outside ever ready to take possession of this earth again.' With Arthur
Machen he agreed that 'it is possible that man may sometimes return on
the track of evolution.' He found support for his own neurotic sense of doom
in Algernon Blackwood's disturbing warning of 'a survival of a hugely re ­
mote period when consciousness was manifested in shapes and forms long
since withdrawn before the tide of advancing humanity -- forms of which
poetry and legend alone have caught a flying memory and called them gods ,
monste rs , mythical beings of all sorts and kinds ... .'
Lovecraft's tales e ventually found publication in such pulpwood publi­
cations as Weird Tales, Astounding Stories and others devoted to the super ­
natural. His financial rewards were infinitesimal, averaging h i m less
than a cent a word. Lovecraft recalls Dunsany, Algernon Blackwood, Arthur
Machen and poe. He overstrains his efforts to strike terror. Like all verbo­
maniacs, he fails to master his obsessions : he is too wordy, too explanatory,
too rhetorical. He is at his best when he retreats into the universe of his
own creation, or indulges in flights of pseudo-archaeology, and leads his
readers in grim expeditions to hunt down traces of the prehistoric malevo­
lence, as embodied in the 'Old Ones'. Most impressive, in my opinion at
least, are 'The call of Cthulhu' and 'At the Mountains of Madness ' . Here
72
he frees himself from the conventions of fiction in its standardized forms ,
and presents an uncensored testimony of his inner adventures.
'The call of Cthulhu' is a long narrative of 'the Great Old Ones who
lived ages before there we.re any men, and who came to the young world out
of the sky. These Old Ones were gone now, inside the earth and under the
sea; but their dead bodies had told their se crets in dreams to the first
man, who formed a cult which had never died.' The story ends with the
imagined narrator testifying:
'Cthulhu still lives ••• again in that chasm of stone which has shielded
him since the sun was young. His accursed city is sunken once more •••
but his m inisters on earth still bellow and prance and slay around idol­
capped monoliths in lonely places ••• Who knows the end? What has risen
may sink, and what has sunk may rise. Loathesomeness waits and dreams
in the deep, and decay spreads over the tottering cities of men.'
In 'At the Mountains of Madness' Lovecraft transports us, by plane
of course, to the ruins of a lost, primordial, super -cosmic super -city
founded by Titans who were both animal and vegetable, a city that formed
the primary nucleus and center of some archaic chapte r of earth's history.

'Here sprawled a Paleogaean megalopolis compared with which the

fabled Atlantis and Lemuria, COmmoriom and Uzuldaroum, and Olathae
in the land of Lamar are re cent things of today -- not even of yester ­
da y ; a megalopolis ranking with such whispered prehuman blasphemies
as valusia, R'lyeh, Ib in the land of Mnar, and the Nameless City of
Arabia Deserta. As we flew above the tangle of stark Titan towers my
imagination sometimes escaped all bounds and roved aimlessly in
realms of fantastic associations -- even weaving links betwixt this lost
world and some of my own wildest dreams concerning the mad horror
at the camp.

'The things once rearing and dwelling in this frightful masonry in the
age of dinosaurs were not indeed dinosaurs, but far worse. Mere di­
nosaurs were new and almost brainless objects -- but the builders of
the city were wise and old, and had left certain traces in rocks even
then laid down well nigh a thousand million years -- rocks laid down
before the true life of earth had advanced beyond plastic groups of cells -­
rocks laid down before the true life of earth had existed at all. They
were the makers and enslavers of that life, and above all doubt the origi­
nals of the fiendish elder myths which things like the Pnakotic Manu­
s cripts and the Necronomicon affrightedly hint about. They were the
'Old Ones' that had filtered down from the stars when earth was young -­
the be ings whose substances an alien evolution had shaped, and whose
powers were s uch as this planet had never bred.'

The expedition to the 'Mountains of Madness' ends with the allegorical

and semi -prophetic admonition: 'It is absolutely necessary, for the peace
and safety of mankind,that some of earth's dark, dead corners and un­
plumbed depths be left alone; lest sleeping abnormalities wake to res urgent
life , and blasphe mously surviving nightmares squirm and splasil out of their
black lairs to newer and wider conquests.'

* * *

73
 1
More arresting, from the paint of view of unconscious revelation, is
the californian Clark Ashton Smith, a collection of whose tales (Out of
Space and Time) has just been published by Messrs. Derleth and Wandrei.
As an explorer of the grotesque, the interplanetary and the trans-dimen­
sional in pseudo-scientific fiction, Smith has for many years enjoyed
widespread popularity among pulpwood 'fans'.
Born in Long Valley, california, Clark Ashton Smith began to write
at the age of eleven. Almost wholly self-educated, at seventeen he was sell­
ing stories to The Black cat. Before he was twenty, his first collection
of verse was published. This boY'1loet of the Sierras soon discovered that
juvenile and provincial fame is fickle. He could not live on the acclamation
of his admirers. In his twenties, Smith became a journalist, a fruit-picker
and' packe r, a wood":'chopper, a typist, a cement-mixer, a gardener, a hard­
rock mine r , mucker and windlasser. He was past thirty-five when he re ­
sumed the writing of short stories as a profession. Then, with publication
in Weird Tales of 'The End of the story', he came into his own in prose.
The success of this story inspired others -- all weird, macabre, fantastic,
all flights from 'the real'.
Smith has tried his hands at all kinds of pseudo -scientific fiction.
Throughout his tales, as now collected, the reader is haunted by a sense
of gloominess, of isolation. They are, perhaps unconsciously, autobio­
graphical.
In 'The uncharted Isle', for instance, a shipwrecked sailor is beached
upon a strange island of the pacific and finds himself in a jungle that
m ight have been painted by Rousseau Ie Douanier. The plant-forms are not
the palm -fe rns, grasses and shrubs native to South Sea islands : leaves,
stems, frolldage are of archaic types , such as might have existed in former
eons, on the sea-lost littorals of Mu. The sailor is overwhelmed with in­
timidations of a dark and prehistoric antiquity. 'And the silence around me
seemed to become the silence of dead ages and of things that have gone down
beneath oblivion's tide. From that moment, I felt that there was some­
thing wrong about the island.'
The sailor discovers the main town of the strange island, where the
inhabitants move about in perplexing and perplexed fashion :

'None of them appeared to notice me; and I went up to a group of three

who were studying one ofthe long scrolls I have mentioned, and addressed
them. For all answer, they bent closer above the scroll; and even
when I plucked one of them by the sleeve, it was evident that he did not
observe me. Much amazed, 1 peered into t!leir faces , and was struck by
the mingling of supreme perplexity and monomaniacal intentness which
, their expression displayed. There was much of the madman, and more
of the scientist absorbed in some insoluble problem . Their eyes were
fixed and fiery, their lips moved and mumbled in a fever of perpetual
disqUiet; and, following their gaze, I saw that the thing they were study­
ing was a sort of <:bart or map, whose yellowing paper and faded inks
, were manifestly of past ages ••• These beings were so palpably astray
and bewilde:red; it was , so obvious that they knew as well as I that there
was something wrong with the geography, and perhaps with the chro­
nology, of their island.'

The poet wanders here in isolation in a Silent, alien universe, striving

vainly to communicate with his fellow-humans. They live in another age,
another dimension, wrapped in their own perplexity. In other tales the
74
pariah wreaks unspeakable revenge upon the Tyrant. In one story the ma ­
gician calls forth a cavalcade of giant stallions.

'Like a many-turreted storm they came , and it seemed that the world
sunk gulfward, tilted beneath the weight. Still as a man enchanted into
marble, zotulla stood and beheld the ruining that was wrought on his
e mpire ••• Closer drew the gigantic stallions ••• and louder was the thun ­
dering of their footfalls, that now began to blot the green fields and fruit ­
ed orchards lying for many miles to the west of Ummaos.And the sha ­
dow of the stallions climbed like an evil gloom of eclipse , till it covered
U mmaos. and looking up , the emperor saw their eyes halfway between
earth and zenith like baleful suns that glare down from soaring cumuli.'

'The City of the Singing Flame', a tale of trans -dimensional adventure ,

is weighted with allegorical and mystical implications. After venturing into
alien dimensions, following the faraway alluring music of the 'singing
flame', the narrator wonde rs why he came back again to the human world.

'Wo rds are futile to express what I have beheld and experienced, and
the change that has come upon me; beneath the play of incalculable
forces is a world of which no other mortal is even cognisant. Litera­
ture is nothing more than a shadow. Life, with its drawn-out length of
monotonous, reiterative days, is unreal and without meaning, now, in
comparison with the splendid death which I might have had -- the gloriOUS
doom which is still in store.'

He ventures into the Inner Sphe re, in which ' .•. a whole range of new
senses had been opened up to me, together with corresponding thought­
symbols for which there are no words in human speech •••'
He becomes 'a large r , stronger and freer entity , differing as much
from my former self as the personality developed beneath the influence
of hashish or kava would diffe r .' His dominant fe eling is 'of immense jo y
and libe ration, coupled with a sense of impe rative haste, of the need to
es cape into other realms where the joy would endure ete rnal and un­
threatened.' This trans -dimens ional explorer discovers possibilities of
'boundless, unforeseeable realms, planet on planet, universe on universe,
to which we might attain, and among whose prodigies and marvels we could
dwell or wander indefinitely. In these worlds , our brains would be attuned
to the comprehension of vaster and higher scientific laws, and states of
entity beyond those of our present dimensional m ilieu :

* * *

In our search for the typical , we are ineluctably led to the un-typical.
Even in the naivest of pulp fiction, we detect the unending conflict between
the conscious craft and the unconscious drives -- the controlled versus the
uncontrollable. Were we adepts in academic research, we might trace the
mongrel ancestry of this pseudo -scientific allegorizing back through Lord
Dunsany and Algernon Blackwood, H. G. Wells, Samue l BUtler and Jules
Verne , the satirical 'futurists' like Eugene Zamiatin (author of �), the
Voltaire of Micromegas, and the Swift of Gulliver . On and on, to ever
more remote courses , we arrive finally at the IslamiC, oral storytellers
of the souks , or the anonymous compilers of The BOok of a Thousand
Nights and One Night.

75
 II.

PO EMS p ut the earrings under the chair

and the flowers of the carpet

and all the old woman's bouquets

I.
so that the sweat of the breezes
Abandon to electrical dentitions

and the underwater trumpets

Our hand."i and the birds

may survive at the precipice.

The eleva tor carries off

The tree:> <tnd the photographs

Etienne LERO
The rive r keeps our heads n.' :Ja i r

The lIigJ;t :otrangles itself t o i he banging of the doors

and you b<� gin the advel'tufl' a ' 'll" .

The o l igin of all mode I I i l 'xpres s l<.." IS always far more ancient than
we SUppOSf' -- even of the ta l hir.({ moving [.lctures. So the ephemeral pulps
of the IH' II'Sstands bear a 5t1 iking ana !u/?y to the Arabian Nights . With its
subjectivt! universe dominatel! by Ifrits aId djinn (WIL'1 their magical powers
of transforming themselves H I L) bE'ai;'s. ,)1ant3 or insects), its malicious
negation of external moralit v , its sly f!ls i;>!} of magic and reality, and es­
pe cially its bold supension of dist res:.L;giv ins is tent physical laws, that
endless Persian (,Il' Indian) Labyrinth of narrative survives as
i n voluted
the most audacious and mo.'-. " captivatlJJ;; n'Volt from the obje ctive world
even depieted. It entices the I .'ade r i l l ] O a never-never land in which in­
dividual rpsponsibility is swept aside, J. walrn of surcease from iron laws
of the dismal sciences, where E uclid ar,;] h" wto[J never ventured.
W. B. yeats once wrote : 'Childrell play at being great and wonderful
people, at the ambitions they will put away for one reason or another be­
fore they grow into ordinary men and women. Mankind as a whole had a
like dream once ; everybody and Ilobo 'iy huilt up the dream bit by bit,
and the ancient storytellers are there to w a ke us remember what mankind
would have been like, had not fear and th;:> falling will and the laws of na­
ture tripped up its heels .... But r ight h, re and now, under our very eyes,
between the lurid covers of the pulps, we fitld storytellers carrying on the
same role -- transforming tht" concept s of micro-physics and astro-phys ­
ics into horrendous imps, Ifrits and dj inn pndowed with the magical powers
for enslavitlf{ or liberating mankind. Thir tv millions or more addicts, through
these vica rious adventures, still play, as in the childhood of mankind, at
being .great and wonderful pl'ople', still sepk release from the world out ­
side themsp.lves, a holiday from the 'rf'ality' (Jf that external realm, des­
pite the grandeur of all its m i racles ant] the nobility of the myths.
The significance of all this is not limited to mere 'literature'. Large­
scale communication has tended morl' and more to restrict and thwart the
individual, be he writer or reader. Th(� \I.,ice of the individual is lost in the
whir of the well -lubricated machinery of mass production -- even in the
76
mass production of fantasy. Individual can no longer commune with in­
dividual , but only with the 'masses' -- glib symbol of a non-existent entity!
Driven to wholesale production of standardized merchandise, the pulp ­
fictioneer strives with all conscious craft to meet the demands and schedules
df his publishers. yet unconscious impulses and compulsions, suppressed
Ilnd thwarted in seeking their natural outlet, take their revenge in uncon­
scious ways . As in all fields of art and literature , this clash between con­
SciOUS endeavor and unconscious revolt generates the reader's interest
and focusses his attention. Knowingly or unknowingly, the j <;olated reade r,
in being reduced to means instead of being respected as an end in himse lf,
shares the suppressed struggle of the writer toward emancipation. This
must be one basic reason for the appeal of such writers as Clark Ashton
Smith or H. p . Lovecraft, and for the phenomenal prospe rity (If the pulps.
The pulps are engaged in the mass production of mass dreams. They
mock at the piddling, puny, hypocritical plausibility and credibility of the
commercial product of the more honored castes of contemporary letters.
Here among the ridiculed and rejected, impartial assay may discover
craftsmen who are carrying on the ancient and cryptical tradition of the
story -tellers of the Orient.
The pseudo -scientific tale is developing a new school of illustration.
The draughtsman is challenged to use all the resources of his imagination -­
with the m ost direct and most economical of means. The illuStrations from
the various pulp periodicals offer encouraging evidence of this supe r ­
realistic s chool. Especially noteworthy are the drawings o f Hannes BOk,
a young artist who was born near Seattle.

Robert Allerton PARKER

E DITOR'S NOTE : Readers are urged to write to Arkham House, Batik
City, Wisconsin 53583, and request their catalogue ; several volumes
by Love craft and Smith are currently available and more will be
pUblished in the future. They have also pUblished many books by other
collaborators on Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos : Robert Bloch, August
Derleth, Robert Howard, F rank Belknap Long, Donald Wandrei and
others . Arkham House also publishes a periOdical, The Arkham Col­
lector (50� a copy), which reprints rare or unpublished Lovecraft
texts , news, reViews, stories, etc. 'The
City of Singing Flame' by
Clark Ashton Smith was reprinted in the first issue of Famous S ci ­
ence Fiction, Winter 1966.

A BI-MONTHLY JOURNAL FOR SOCIALIST THEORY

Now available - a special double issue - no. 38/39

contains a selection of Trotsky's writings on the rise of Nazism in Germany
between 1930 and 1934, together with a historical introduction and extensive
notes. $1 per copy, post free.

Price for normal issues is 50C. Annual subscriptions $3 from 36 Gilden

Road, London NW 5, England 77
 l
I
i

UHtr.lces
of my lamp and my emotion

p rovoked along the way

and of my truth

on the s urface of the cloak of mourning

and the ponderous dignified rings

of the horseman with the bell

ringing from his elbow

artful, the pastel

of sun and soot on my wall.

Clement MAGLOlRE-SAINT -A UDE )

"'-nslated, Almutb pau-;J' _

drawing by MaX-Walter SVANBERG

71
� THOUGH I always promised myself to keep the secret about this epi­
sode, I ended up writing it down, inevitably. In any case, the reputation
of certain very illustrious foreigners being at stake, I felt myself ob­
liged to use fictitious names, which do not" disguise anyone , for every read­
er familiar with the customs of the British in the tropics will have no dif­
ficulty in recognizing everyone.

I received an invitation asking me to attend a masked ball. Surprise

being one of my habits , I greased my face heavily with a phosphorescent
electric-green pomade. On this foundation layer I scattered some tiny false
diamonds in order to powder myself with stars like a nocturnal sky, with ­
out other pretense.

Then, nervously, I got into a public conveyance which drove me up to

the vicinity of the city, to General Epigastro Square. A splendid equestrian
bust of the celebrated soldier dominated the square; the artist who was able
to resolve the strange problem presented by this monument turned to a
courageous archaic simplicity, limiting himself to making a marvelous
portrait in the form of a bust of the General's horse. Generalissimo Don
Epigastro remains imprinted in the public's imagination.

The castle of Mr. Mac F rolick occupied the entire western facade of
General Epigastro Square. An Indian domestic showed me into a great re­
ception hall of baroque style. I found myself among about a hundred per­
sons. A rather oppressive atmosphere finally indicated to me that I was
the only person to have taken the invitation seriously : I was the only one
to have disguised myself.

'Really,' said the master of the house, Mister Mac F rolick, to me, 'did
you have the sly intention of resembling a certain p rincess of Tibet, mis ­
tress of a King who prevailed over the solemn rituals of the Bon, happily
lost in the most distant part? I would hesitate to recount the atrocious ex­
ploits of the Green p rincess in the presence of women: let it suffice to say
that she died under mysterious circumstances, around which various le ­
gends still circulate in the Far East. Some hold that the corpse was car­
ried away by bees who still preserve it in a clear honey of flowers -of-Venus .
Others say that the painted coffin does not contain the princess, but the
body of a crane with a woman's face. Still others affirm that the princess
returns in the form of a sow.' Mr. Mac F rolick stopped himself brusquely,
while staring at me severely: 'I shall not say more about it, Madame,' he
says to me, 'for we are catholic.'

COnfused, I gave up the thought of any explanation and lowered my head:

my feet were bathed in a rain of cold sweat which fell from my forehead.
Mister Mac Frolick watched me with a lustreless eye. He had small bluish
eyes, a big, thick, slight snub nose. It was difficult not to notice that this
very distinguished man, devout, of impeccable morality, was the human por­
trait of a great white pig. An enormous mustache hung on his chin, well en-
79
dowed with flesh but a bit receding. Yes, Mister Mac F rolick looked like
a pig, but a beautiful pig, a devout and distinguished pig. As these dangerous
thoughts marched past behind my green face, a young man with a celtic ap ­
pearance took me by the hand, saying: 'Come, dear lady, do not torment
yourself, inevitably we all resemble the bestial orders; you are certainly
conscious of your own horse -like appearance , so • • • so do not torment your­
self, everything is confused on our planet. Do you know M . D . . . ?'

'No,' I say, very confused, 'I don't know him.'

'D . . . is here tonight,' says the young man, 'he is a magician, and I am
his pupil. Say, he's just over there, seated next to a tall blonde dressed in
violet satin, do you see him?'

I see a man of such neutral demeanor that it strikes the glance as

violently as a salmon on the head of the Sphinx seen in a railway station.
The extraordinary neutrality of this personage gave such a disagreeable
imp ression that I staggered toward a chair.

'Do you waHt to make D • .'s acquaintance?' asked the young man. 'He is
a very remarkable man.' I was going to reply when a woman like a shepherd
of the Sun King, with an extremely harsh look, took me by the shoulder and
pushed me straight ahead into a gaming room .

'We need a fourth at bridge,' s h e tells m e . 'Of cours e , You know how
to play bridge?' I didn't know at all, but fear silenced m e . I would have
wanted to leave , but I was too timid, so I explained that I could only play
with felt cards because of an allergy in the little finger of my left hand. Out­
Side, the orchestra was playing a waltz which I detested so much that I did
not have the courage to say I was hungry. A high ecclesiastical dignitary
seated at my right drew a pork cutlet from the inside of his rich purple
ha-ha: 'Well, my girl,' he says to me , 'Charity dispenses Mercy equally on
cats, the poor, and women with a green face.' The cutlet, which certainly
had sojourned a very long time near the ecclesiastic's abdomen, did not
at all make me desirous , but I take it with the intention of burying it in the
garden. As I went outside with the cutlet I found myself in the night faintly
illuminated by the planet Venus. I was walking near a stagnant fountain
full of perished bees When I saw I was opposite the magician, the neutral
man.

'So, you are walking?' he says in a very contemptuous tone. 'It's al­
ways the same thing � mong English expatriate s : they go to pot.'

I admitted shamefully that I too was English, and the neutral man gave
a sarcastic little laugh : 'It's hardly your fault if you are English ,' he says.
'The congenital idiocy of the inhabitants of the British Isles is so well wo­
ven into their blood that they themselves are no longer conscious of it.'
Vaguely irritated, I replied that it rained more in England, but that this
country had engendered the best poets of our planet. Then, to change the
conversation: 'I just met one of your pupils. He told me you are an adept
of magic.'

'Indeed,' says the neutral man, 'I am a spiritual instructor, one in the
know, if you wish, but this poor boy will never a mount to anything. KnOW,
my poor girl, that the Esoteric Path is hard, strewn with catastrophes. Many
80
are called, few are chosen. I advise you to limit yourself to your charming
feminine foolishnesses and to forget eVerything which belongs to a superior
order of things.'

While the neutral man talked to me, I sought to hide the pork cutlet,
which was dripping hor rible blobs of grease between my fingers. I succeed­
ed in putting it in my pocket. Relieved, I understood that this man would
never take me seriously if he knew that I went walking with cutlets. Neve r ­
theless, I feared the neutral man like the plague, while W3'lting to make a
good impression on him.

'I would like to know something about your magiC, pe rhaps to study
with you. Until now •• .' With a superb gesture, he brusquely cut me off:
'THERE IS NOTHING,' he tells me. 'Try to understand that, there is no ­
thing, absolutely nothing.'

It is then that I felt myself evaporated in an opaque mass , colorless

and endless . When I regained my breath, the neutral man had disappeared.
I wanted to return home, but I was lost in this garden heavy with the per ­
fume of a certain shrub which they call Scent of Night here. I wandered ra­
ther a long time on the paths until coming to a tower through a half-open
gate from which I saw a winding staircase. Someone called me from the
inside of the towe r, and I climbed the staircase, thinking that fun damentally
I had no great thing to lose. I was certainly too foolish to flee like the hare
in triangular teeth. I thought bitte rly : 'At this moment I am poorer than a
beggar, although the bees may have done everything to warn me off . See
there, how I have lost the honey of an entire year and Venus in the sky.'

At the top of the staircase I found myself in the private boudoir of

Mister Mac Frolick. He received me amiably, and I could not explain
the change in attitude to myself. With a gesture borrowed from the cour ­
tesies of former times, Mr. Mac Frolick offered me an earthenware dish
(quite fine) on which lay his own mustache. I hesitated to accept the mus­
tache , thinking that he perhaps wanted me to eat it. 'He is an eccentric,' I
thought. I quickly excused myself: '1 thank you infinitely, Sir, but I am no
longer hungry, after having tasted the delicious cutlet which the Bishop so
kindly offered me •• .'

Mac F rolick appeared slightly Offended: 'Madame,' he says to me,

'It is a souvenir of this summer SOiree, and I dared to think that you would
pe rhaps keep it in some box suitable for this purpose. I should add that
this m ustache has no magical power, but that its important volume dif­
fe rentiates it from common Objects.' Seeing that I had made a faux -pas ,
I took the mustache and carefully put it in my pocket, where it glued itself
immediate ly to the disgusting pork cutlet. Mac F rolick pushed me onto the
couch then and, resting heavily on my stomach, says to me in a confiden­
tial tone : 'Green Woman, know that there are different kinds of magic:
black magic, white magic, and, the worst of all, gray magic. It is indis ­
pensable that you know that among us tonight there is a dangerous gray
magician, one named D. .. This man, this vampire of velvet words , is re ­
sponsible for the murder of numerous souls, human and otherwise. At sev­
eral revivals, D wormed his way through the walls of this castle to rob us
•••

of our vital materials.' I had difficulty in concealing a slight smile, for I

have lived with a vampire from Transylvania for a long time , and my step ­
mother, a werewolf, taught me all the culinary secrets necessary to tre&t
and satisfy the most rapacious vampires .
II
 Mac Frolick leaned more heavily on me, while hissing: '1 must ab­
solutely rid myself of D, Unfortunately, the church forbids private assassi­
..

nation : I am therefore obliged to ask you to come to my aid. you are pro­
testant, aren't you?'

'Not at all,' I replied, '1 am not Christian, Mister Frolick. Besides,

don't wish to kill D " even if I had the least chance to do it before he
..

pulverized me ten times.'

Mac Frolick's countenance became mobile with rage : 'Then leave! '
h e roared, ' I do not receive unbelievers i n my home. Leave, Madame!'

I left as quickly as the stairs permitted, while Mac Frolick leaned out
his door insulting me in a very rich manner for such a devout man.

There is no precise ending to this story which I recount as a simple

incident in the summer, There is no end because the incident is authentic,
because all its personages are still alive and each follows his fate. All, ex­
cept the ecclesiastic who tragically drowned himself in the castle swimming
pool : they say that he was lured by some sirens disguised as choir children.

Mr. Mac Frolick has not ever invited me to the castle, but they assure
me that he is in good health.
Leonora CARRINGTON

translated by A, P ,

drawing by Eric MATHESON

Bureau de Recherches
Surr�allstes
33 Binnenkant
bruD1es AMSTERDAM
82
blondes
 dialectic o:f dialectic

EPARATED
Message to the International Surrealist Movement

I
fro m 0", frien'" 'Inoe the begloning of the Impe""",1
i�:. world war, we know nothing more about them. But we have always guard­
: . : ed the secret hope that, on this planet, where our existence seems to
become more untenable each day, the real functioning of thought has not
ceased to guide the group which holds in its hands the highest ideological
freedom which has ever eXisted : the international surrealist movement.

We address ourselves particularly to Andre Breton, sending to him

our most ardent message, and communicating at the same time to the entire
international surrealist movement certain theoretical results at which we
have arrived during these last few years of solitude , in the indefatigable
pursuit of new dialectical solutions which permit us to surpass the abusive
conflict which exists between the world and us.

As surrealists , we have continued to see the possibility of these pe r ­

manent confrontations between interior reality and exterior reality i n our
adherence to dialectical materialis m, in the historical destiny of the in­
ternational proletariat and in the sublime theoretical conquests of sur­
realism.
* * * * *

In this effort to reconcile interior reality and exterior reality, we un -

tiringly resume certain sublime discoveries which exalt our positions. In
the first place we are thinking of the materialist (leninist) positiQn of the
relative -absolute and of objective chance, in its acceptance of the encounter
of human finality with universal causality.

Objective chance constitutes for us the most terrible means of locat­

ing the relative -absolute aspects of reality, and it alone ceaselessly offe rs
possibilities of discovering the contradictions of a society div ided into
classes.

Objective chance has led us to see in love the general revolutionary

method proper to surrealism.

After several frunless attempts to find a concrete revolutionary me ­

thod, unblemished by any idealist reSidue , we have finally come to con­
sider erotic magnetism as our most valuable insurrectional support.

It is evident that to have arrived at this general conclusion our posi­

tion regarding love has developed itself in an unprecedented manner. This
position implies all known states of love up to the present day, but it de ­
mands, at the same time, the dialectical negation of these states .

We accept, but we surpass (at least theoretically) a l l the known

states of love : libe rtinage, unique love, complexual love, the psychpathology
of love. In atte mpting to capture love in its most violent and most decisive
aspects, the most attractive and the most impOSSible, we no longer content
ourselves with seeing in it the great disturbe r, which succeeds sometimes
83
in shattering, here and there, the divisions of class society. The destruc­
tive power of love against all established order contains and surpasses the
revolutionary needs of our epoch.

We proclaim love , delivered of all its constraints - social and indi­

vidual, psychological and theoretical, religiOUS or sentimental - as our
principal method of knowledge and action. Its methodical exasperation, its
limitless development, its overwhelming fascination, of which we have pre­
viously cleared the first steps with Bade, Engels, Freud and Breton, otte r
monstrous digress ions and scandalous efforts which put in our hands, and
in the hands of every revolutionary, the most efficacio4ls means of action.

This dialectlcized and materialized love constitutes the revolutionary

relative -ilbsolute method that surrealism has disclosed to us, and in the
discovery of new erotic possibilities, which surpass social, medical or
psychological love , we are approaching the knowledge of the first aspects
of objective love. Even in its most immediate aspects, we believe that the
limitless eroticization of the proletariat constitutes the most precious means
one can find of assuring it, across the miserable epoch which we are now
traversing, a real revolutionary development.

* * * * *

The necessity of discovering love , which can uninterruptedly overthrow

social and national obstacles, leads us to a non-oedipal position. The exis ­
tence of natal traumatism and the oedipus complex, as discovered by Freudi­
an psychoanalysIs, constitute natural and amnesic limits, the unfavorable
unconscious undulations which determine, unknown to us, our attltude toward
the exterior world. We have posed the problem of the integral deliverance
of man, conditioning this deliverance by the destruction of our initial com­
plexes.
The necessities of revolution demand the extension of the non-oedipal
attitude on a general plane concerning the infrapsychic position of revolu­
tionaries in their immediate struggle.

As long as the proletariat keeps within it the fundamental initial com­

plexes that we combat, . its struggle and its victory will be illusory, be­
cause its class enemy will remain hidden, unknown to it, in its very blood.
Oedipal limitations fix the proletariat in a position of purely symetrical
negation of the bourgeoisie, who thus come to inculcate in it, in a manner
as dangerous as it is unknown, its odious fundamental attitudes.

* * * * *

Although they remain separated one from the other, we envision the
secret accord which must exist between dream and the fourth dimenSion,
between desire and brownian movements, between the hypnotic glance of
love and space -time. In agreement with science in its attractive and crypt­
aesthetic aspects, the surrealist movement 'overthrows , at the same time,
its mathematical rigidity, with the assuran!!e which recalls the voyages of
somnambulists toward the interior of their own mystery, identified for a
moment with the secret destiny of humanity.

Gherasim LUCA and TROST

(excerpts) Bucharest, 1945

14
 SUR REA LISM :
@
ill 6 eoo:;:>sfi � A New Sensibility

J
T IS TIME to ask whether surrealist tendencies are still viable,
whether they are still relevant to reality and show signs of develop­
ment. TO listen to the art critics, surrealism was merely a transitory
an long-dead school of aesthetics, a school comparable to cubism , ab­
stractivism, dadaism.

This conception is not entirely false. Like its predecessors, sur­

realism had its manifestoes, its irregular and short-lived reviews, its
demonstrations. Following the nineteenth century tradition, it made its
round of a few cafes, it had its internal intrigues, it received support from
a few bourgeois snobs. For a great many of its participants, it was an ado­
lescent adventure followed by a sobered return to bourgeois conformity.

In the face of the exceptional vitaUty of surreal ism, the official cri­
tics have sought to identify it as being within the bounds of normal intel­
lectual evolution, the reby to minimize its significance. (I do not speak of
the imbeciles who view the whole affair as a conspiracy for the purpose of
acquiring notoriety by means of exhibitionism . The exhibitionists of course
exist but that is not the question.) Well dissected on the autopsy tables of
the academiCS, surrealism is revealed as a continuation of the well -known
romantic tradition. So identified, it is given its armchair in the great as­
sembly of European culture. This kind of assimilation is a typical bourgeois
maneuver : the academies are always willing to honor a few noncomformists
.
along with the assurance that they are no longer dangerous.

If surrealism were no more than an artistic school it would be quite

app ropriate to set aside a place for it in the museums. It is however a more
important phenomenon, one with a role to play in the drama of the real
world. It is the first collective sign of a total rupture with the classical
outlook, a new climate of sensibility that calls into question the very foun­
dations of SOCiety.

The authenticity of surrealism is proved by the spontaneity of its ori­

gins . Before the appearance of any communication among the surrealists,
there were those who turned aside from the life-aims of their conte mpo­
raries. For my part, before having ever come into the surrealist m ilieu,
I found myself the victim of what seemed to me a singular outlook, one which
I felt disposed to hide like an embarrassing disease. Others like myself
appeared in great numbers but found themselves at the margins of SOCiety,
living apart whatever effort they might make to reintegrate themselves.
strangely isolated, mournful . Surrealism achieved this miracle, that when
these people met they found themselves from the first moment in a com ­
munion o f outlook, loving and detesting in common, readly to bind their
lives in the same undertaking.

It is my belief that what each of us felt within ourselves was the an­
nouncement of a drama which will yet manifest itself in the real world,
the drama of a culture that has known its most brilliant successes, achieved
its masterpieces and exhausted its possibilities of expansion, and which is
now called upon to undergo a total transmutation.
85
 The collapse of Europe 15 foreseen by no one but ourselves because
it is we who experienced within ourselves the essence of a change that is
even now taking place. We know too well the fragility of that which appears
to the immense majority to be placed under the sign of immutable eter­
nity.

If Europe wishes simply to survive , it will continue to belittle sur­

realism . If Europe wishes to undergo a fiery death and thereby experience
a renaissance in the literal sense of that word, it will embrace surrealism,
for only in this way can it utilize the permanent values of the past, those
that will serve as the future baSis of a new civilization.

Pierre MABILLE

drawing by E. F. GRANELL
86
 We Don 't EAR It That Way
Ji INTERNATIONAL exhibition of surrealis m is now being held in New
york at the D'Arcy Galleries. Its opening has been marked by a very
unexpected and annoying event: Salvador Dali's app earance on the pre ­
mises, his formal introduction with respects due to a high -ranking guest,
and, most of all, the deliberate intrusion, amongst the OthH exhibits , of a
portentous Madonna (entitled by him : 'The Anti-Matter E ar', painted in
his most clerical manne r, and which its large dimensions, added to its re ­
cent execution, should have excluded from such a gathering.

Of the exhibition's four organizers (Marcel Duchamp, Andre Breton,

Edouard Jaguer and Jose Pierre) only the first was present on the spot, and
able to take any last -minute decision as befitted the incident. The last three
still ignore, at this very minute, unde r which pressures , on which strategi­
cal motives he could concede DaH, in such a collective demonstration, this
exorbitant part.

We respect him too much, we have too long respected the resources
of his mind to believe he could yield, were it a second, to such deceptive
dialectics following which conformism should provide nowadays the only
yeast of s ubversion.

France's present political climate in these very first days of Decembe r

1960, make it impe rative for us to issue this protest at once. Never less
than now have the aesthetic adventure and its cheap , notorious 'asides' ap­
peared self-sufficient. At the particular moment when qualified intellectu­
als are consciously fighting for the defense of whatever freedom of thought
and expression as is yet left to the m, we remind everyone concerned that
Salvador Dali, more than twenty years ago, was expelled from surrealism .
More than ever do we see in this man Hitler's former apologist, the fascist
painter , the religious bigot, the avowed racist and friend of Franco who
opened Spain as a drill -ground for the mostabominable surge of barbarism
the world has yet endured.

Robert BENAYOUN Jean BENOIT Guido BIASI Vincent BOUNOURE

Andre BRETON CORNEILLE Adrien DAX Gianni DOV A
Yves ELLEOUET Roland GIGUERE Radovan IVSIC Edouard JAGUER
Alain JOUBERT Jacques LACO MBLEZ Juan LANGLOIS
Gerard LEGRAND Julio LLINAS E, L, T, MESENS Mimi pARENT
Jose PIERRE carl-F redrik RE UTERSWARD Jean S CHUSTER
Claude TARNAUD Jean THIERCE LIN TOYEN

(surrealist tract, December 1960)

� trlcontlnentBI Subsaiptio,,: one-year $ 3.60;

P. o. lox 4224, Havana, C"
17
 l

The I nvi s ible Ra�

8�
�-
�
URREA LISM is above all an · attack on those systems which contract
consciousness - - rationalism, utilitarianism , dogmatism , all of which
are based on fictions which justify what is in fact detestable in life. Such
systems sacrifice everything, including man, to an abstraction known vari-
ously as public order, the free world, general welfare, the well-being of
humanity , Christian civilization or technical progress.

It is in surrealism that the idea prevails that man alone is the measure
of all things -- not man considered as an abstraction, but rather as the
center of 'Passional attraction' (Charles Fourier), the palpable, living
reality of the individual. It is thus that surrealism has indicated a way out
of the total defeat of the previously mentioned spiritual techniques; And
this way out is not toward some vague 'Progress' nor toward a mystical
and cosmic future (as is suggested in the detestable periodical P LANETE)
but simply toward a living reality in which, on principle, one may do as
he pleases.

Andre Breton has compared the painting of poetic inspiration to 'an

admirable corridor' through which we return cas we return to an anterior
life'. Surrealist works are torches and signposts halfway to the omnipotence
of attraction, where the idea of 'duty' has lost all its sense. ART also has
disappeared, leaving no trace; a 'surrealist art' cannot exist: only creations
exist.

The fiction of aesthetics is annihilated, and BEAUTY is no longe r

synonymous with sterility, but rather fiuds its source in ardent contrast,
in the convulsive unity which reveals itself to us like a sudden flash.

* * *

Surrealism is not inte reskd in 'anti -art' (op, POP, happening) because,
although anti-art is the far-fetched proof of the impotence toward which
artistic evolution has led, bribed down a blind alley, it is also an erroneous
and often fatal reaction against certain anachronistic psychic mechanisms.
Anti-art is not only the annihilation of art, it is at the same time the sui­
cide of creativity and the imagination.

* * *

Surrealism is unceasingly the 'invisible ray' which since the Manifesto

of 1924 has been the common weapon in a permanent revolution which will
reduce total reality to its living essence.

Laurens VANCREVEL
(excerpt)

(p reface to the SURREALIST E XHIBITION, yelp, Holland, 1967)

II
 The Platform of Prague
(The following declaration was prepared in Spring 1968 by the surrealist
groups of Prague and Paris on the occasion of a major exhibition,
-The Pleasure Principle, " which remained one month each in Bratislava,
Brno and Prague. The emancipatory activity of 'Jurrealism in
Czechoslovakia, as outlined in the Platform, was brutally interrupted
by the Soviet imperialist invasion and the subsequent restalinization.

fE
These excerpts are translated from the French text in L'ARCIllBRAS.)

REP RESSIVE system monopolizes language to return it to men only

after it has been reduced to its utilitarian function or turned toward ends
of mere distraction. Thus , men are deprived of the real powe r of their
own thoughts ; they are forced - and soon become resigned to it - to rely on
cultural agents who provide them with patterns of thinking which naturally
conform to the good and efficient functioning of the system. In this way peo ­
ple are made to turn away , with s uspicion and contempt., from the interior
domain most personal to the m , in which their identity is anchored ••• With
such a vacuous lan guage men cannot formulate the ardent images that make
the satisfaction of their real desires absolutely imperative . Responsibility
for this situation rests in part with contemporary art, as Vlell as with the
liberal arts and s ciences, for they often reflect the present devaluation of
language only passively - even in so-called avant-garde formulas - and
consequently contribute to the obscuring of thought.

The role of surrealism is to tear language away from the repressive

system and to make it the instrument of deSire. Thus, what is called sur­
realist 'art' has no other goal than to liberate words , or more generally
the signs , from the codes of usefulness or entertainment, in order to re ­
store them as bearers of revelation of subjective reality and of the essen­
tial inters ubjectivity of desire in the public mind.

* * * * *

. . . the surrealists do not hes itate to put forward the examples of the
revolutionaries who, like Fourier , Marx , Engels , Lenin, Trotsky or Che
Guevara, have given revolutionary dyna mism its greatest social resonance .
They will support, with all their energy, the new movements advancing in
the same direction • • •

* * * * *

The surrealists be lieve that thought interprets the world and contributes
to its transformation according to several ways which do not exclude one
another.

The only philosophical way is , in their eyes - as far as western thought

is concerned - transitorily divided into exoteric and esoteric philosophy.
In relation to the first, they take (as their integral basis) Hegelian diale c -
89
tics, which they recognize as irreproachably organizing the evolutive facul­
ties of the mind. From the second, they retain above all its capacity to
give this very mind indispensable keys to the analogical interpretation of
the various realms of nature, in their mutual relationships and in their
development. Dialectics and analogy are the foundation of a new theory of
knowledge which must liberate man, not from what is vital in reason, but
from what paralyses it into alienating systems : the principle of non-con­
tradiction and the principle of identity.

* * * * *

For us, surrealists, there is a poetic thought as there is a philosophical

thought or a scientific thought. If at Umes it is difficult to distinguish poetic
from philosophical thought, it has its own laws, nevertheless, and conse­
quently its rigor. BUt its relations with the Reality p rinciple are free,
whereas philosophical and scientific thought - even the most daring - are
permanently submitted to it. poetic thought escapes time to give man the
power of prophecy. It is thought - practical thought - at the moment when,
formulating the imaginary, it aims at transforming reality. For 'every
creative force •••leading to a new knowledge and to a new interpretation of
the universe, has its source in man's essential and irrevocable discontent
with the kingdom of necessity' (Karel Teige),

* * * * *

The question of the relations between art (or poetry or literature) and
revolution is the pretext for a burlesque of polemics among the partisans
of extreme solutions who, generation after generation, do nothing but per­
fect their vocabularies in an effort to revive dead ideas . Opposed to the
theory of Art for Art's sake, as well as to the theory of engaged art, sur­
realism reaffirms that in the present state of reality (in which men possess
only a fragmented and alienated perception), art, to be revolutionary, can
seek its substance only on unknown terrain, essentially in the most obscure
zones of psychic reality. To subordinate it to purely practical ends would
be to deviate its energy, to submit it to external constraint which would de­
prive it 01 any truth while giving it only a fictitious efficacy. The only
revolutionary ideology which might englobe artistic cr_tion would be one
which would recognize its immanent autonomy, particularly in the deter ­
mination o f its sphere o f intervention. Such a n ideology would require that
artists fulfill their specific function : to liberate the powers and desires
immobilized in the unconscious ; this would also, at the same time, ruin
what authority still remains to the priests of Art for Art's sake.

* * * * *

L'A RCHIBRAS in Paris and AURA, forthcoming in prague, are not only
the organs of surrealist groups constituted in these cities, but above all
the global expressions of the surrealist movement as it defines itself to­
day, notwithstanding geographical distances. These forms of intervention
remain, it seems to us, insufficient; they must be completed in each situa ­
tion by interventions adapted to the audience to be reached and to the mes -
90
sage to be transmitted. It is up to surrealist spontaneity to suggest or to
take any initiative called for by circumstances.

We salute our comrades, isolated in the world: F ranklin and penelope

Rosemont who publish SURREALIST INSURRECTION in Chicago; Nicolas
Calas in New york; Aldo pellegrini in Buenos Aires ; Georges Gronier in
Brussels; and our surrealist friends in CUba.

On April 9, 1935 , in prague, the International Surreahst Bulletin was

published.

On April 9, 1968, in prague, opens the surrealist exhibition under the

title, 'The pleasure prinCiple'.

"
THE VESSELS COMMUNICATE FOREVER �
(And� Breton)

p rague-paris
(translated by Guy Ducomet) April 1968

drawing by Mimi P ARENT

91
 Good N ight

T he parrot o f the moon

imparts a feather to your loins

and the bird who believes me

burns at the window

At the laceration of the wind

c.. n'lf!nnc� dans I'ang/� a thistle

red as the handke rchief

drawing by Adrien DAX
of your first love

consumes itself.

Jean -Claude SILBERMANN

translated: Almuth Palinkas

92
r
i N ole s on C o n l r i b u t o rs
An English translation of Antonin ARTAVD's Complete Works is being
published in England. * Robert BENAYOVN's books include Le Dessin
anime apres Walt Disney and Erotique du Surrealisme (Pauvert,
Paris). -<Ii} Vincent BOVNOVRE is one of the leading theorists of
contemporary surrealism in France, especially interested in hermetic
and primitive art. -c. Victor BRAVNER was a Rouman:an surrealist
painter. 8 Among the works of Andre BRETON available in English
translation are Nadja (Grove Press), The Manifestoes of Surrealism and
Young Cherry Trees Secured Against Hares (V. of Mich.), Fata Monrana
(Black Swan Press) and Selected Poems (Cape Editions). « NiCf'las CALAS
was an active promoter of surrealism in the V.S. throughout the 40s. Author
of Foyers d'Incendie (1939) and Confound the Wise (1942), and editor of the
surrealist section of .New Directions 1940, his most recent collection of
articles, only a few of which relate to surrealism, entitled Art in the Age of
Risk, was published last year by Dutton. '* Jorge CAMACHO is a young
Cuban surrealist painter •• The Black Swan Press intends to publish
a collection of the marvelous stories by the surrealist painter Leonora
CARRINGTON. * The poem by Aime CESAIRE is from his 1946 collection
Les Armes Miraculeuses. Best known as a pioneer of the Negritude
movement, he contributed frequently to surrealist publications in the 1940s,
and edited the surrealist journal Tropiques. He is presently one of the
principal animators of the review Presence Africaine. "* Claude COVRTOT
is a young surrealist living in Paris, author of the Introduction 'it la Lecture
de Benjamin Peret and more recently (1969) a study of Rene CREVEL
(1900-1935), one of the most important theorists of the first decade of
surrealism, none of whose works, unfortunately, are currently available
in English translation.JWl/l Adrien Dl'_X has participated actively as a writer
and painter in the surrealist movement since the late 40s. 'XIndonesian
painter and poet Schlechter DUVALL lived for a time in Holland, where
he was associated with the comrades of the Bure?u des Recherches
Surrealistes in Amsterdam; presently he lives in the V.S., where he
participates in all surrealist activitieso He had a one-man show at the
Gallery Bugs Bunny in Chicago last spring. ®!) Paul GARON is editing
a collection of Peetie Wheatstraw's songs to be published next year by
Black Swan Press. � Arshile GORKY, "the eye-spring the first painter
• • •

to whom the secret had been completely revealed,· in the words of Andre
Breton, committed suicide in 1948. The best full-length study of his work
is Julien Levy's large volume published by Abrams. � E. F. GRANELL,
from Spain, fought in the Spanish Revolution, later lived in Puerto Rico and
Guatemala, and presently lives in New York. He has participated in
surrealist activities since the second World War. N'/"'A Ted JOANS' Black
Pow-Wow has just been published by Hill & Wang. e Zavis KAL ANnRA
was a member of the Communist Press Directorate in Prague in the 1930s;
he was murdered by the stalinists after World War IL� Wifredo LAM
is a Cuban painter who has participated in surrealism since the
30s • Gerard LEGRAND directed the surrealist journal BIEF (1958-60);
•

prepared with Georges Goldfayn an important annotated edition of

Lautreamont's Poesies; and most recently has published a collection of
poems, Marche du Lierre, from which the poem here has been
translated. X E tienne LERO (1909 -39), a native of Martinique, organized
in the early 30s the Legitime Defense group, combining a marxist-leninist
93
anti-colonialist political viewpoint with the revolutionary cultural combat
of surrealism. The poems here appeared originally in Le Surrealisme au
Service de la Revolution. � Gherasim LUCA (and TROST) were the
principal animators of surrealism in Roumania throughout the 1930s and
40s. Luca's works include Le Vampire Pas sif, Quantitativement aimee,
and othersj he lives today in Paris. Cl.o Pierre MABILLE was active in
surrealism in the 30s and 40sj among his books are Egr§gores and
Le Miroir du Merveilleux. The article here originally appeared in 1957
in the Courier du centre international d'Etudes pOOtiquesj the translation
appeared�� mimeographed New York anarchist magazine Resurgence
in 1964.�Conroy MADDOX has been active in surrealism in England
for three decades j he is presently co -editor, with John Lyle, of Surrealist
Transformaction. � Clement MAGLOIRE-SAINT -AUDE was born and
lives in Haitij he is the author of several collections of poetry• • Joyce
MANSOUR was born in Egypt, later lived in England, and presently lives
in Paris j she is the author of many books of surrealist poems and
tales•• Eric MATHESON is a young New York painter who has
participated in surrealist activity in the U.S, _ E. L. T. MESENS was
among the original surrealist group in Belgium but has lived for many
years in London . ... J.- H. MOESMAN live s in Holland. + Mimi PARENT,
originally from Quebec, presently lives in Paris, surrounded by
birds • .1.t Robert Allerton PARKER contributed to surrealist and
sympathetic magazines in the early 40s. (1) Benjamin PERET (1899-1959),
the magnificent insulter of priests, who fought as a militiaman in the
Spanish Revolution, was one of the purest surrealist poets and
theoreticians. !?ill Franklin ROSEMONT has published a collection of poems
and drawings, The Morning of a Machine Gun. and edits, with Penelope
ROSEMONT, the periodical wall-poster Surrealist Insurrection.1iItIt Jean
SCHUSTER, one of the leading post-war surrealists, edited the important
political journal Le 14 Juilletj he has just published a collection of texts,
ARChives 57-68 (Ie terrain vague).40 Jean-Claude SILBERMANN's
Le Ravis seur was published in 1966. J1:H Max-Walter SVANBERG lives in
Sweden. He has illustrated the Illuminations of Rimbaud.Oof3-OTOYEN was
active in the Prague surrealist group in the 30s but has lived for years in
Paris. She has illustrated the works of many surrealist writers, and
remains one of the lighthouses of visionary painting today. 'V' Laurens
V ANCREVEL is one of the leading animators of surrealism in Holland,
co-editor (with Her de Vries) of the Dutch surrealist journal Brumes
Blondes. � Martha ZUIK is a young Argentine painter.

C Edited by

Analagon 0 G�rard LEGRAND

Journal of th e Surrealist Movement U

� ;t---)
Jos� PIERRE
in C ZECHOSLOVAKIA
P
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r
e
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FATA MORGANA
long poem by Andre Breton with illustrations by the Cuban surrealist
painter Wifredo Lam. 85C

RETURN TO MY NATIVE LAND

bilingual edition (by Presence Mricaine) of a long surrealist poem
by Aime Cesaire. $3

THE MORNING OF 'A MACHINE GUN

by Franklin Rosemont. Surrealist poems, drawings and documents.
Cover by Eric Matheson. $1.75

13 POEMS
by Tristan Tzara, with a portrait of the author by Francis Picabia;
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THE OBSOLESCENCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS

by Herbert Marcuse. A previously unpublished evaluation of the enduring
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by Walker C. Smith. Reprint of a rare 1913 IWW manual. Note by
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SPARTACUS : A Program for Revolution

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by James Connolly. Analysis of urban insurrections from 1830 to 1905.
Street-fighting, guerrilla warfare, etc. 60C'

SOCIALISM : UTOPIAN & SCIENTIFIC

by Frederick Engels. An introduction to marxism. 75C

SURREALIST EXInBITION Catalogue

eight-page folder of drawings. photographs, poems and texts by Lester
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" An extraordinarily valuable and interesting bibliography. It will be :

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Marxism and
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a selective annotated bibliography of
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compiled by Lee Saxandall

Cow" every ... of the ... from dance to elrama,. from peind.. tD dOlma, from fic:tion 10
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STAFF: General Editors: Paul BUhle, Dale Tomich. Madison Stafi': Henry
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