Histoire desinvolte du surrealisme was written in a couple of weeks under the pressure of a contractual deadline. The original bearer of the name chosen as a pseudonym, "jules-fran ois dupuis" was the janitor of the building where Lautreamont died. Despite its polemical character and peremptory tone, it remains a useful "schoolbook"
Histoire desinvolte du surrealisme was written in a couple of weeks under the pressure of a contractual deadline. The original bearer of the name chosen as a pseudonym, "jules-fran ois dupuis" was the janitor of the building where Lautreamont died. Despite its polemical character and peremptory tone, it remains a useful "schoolbook"
Histoire desinvolte du surrealisme was written in a couple of weeks under the pressure of a contractual deadline. The original bearer of the name chosen as a pseudonym, "jules-fran ois dupuis" was the janitor of the building where Lautreamont died. Despite its polemical character and peremptory tone, it remains a useful "schoolbook"
Histoire desinvolte du surrealisme was written in a couple of weeks under the pressure of a contractual deadline. The original bearer of the name chosen as a pseudonym, "jules-fran ois dupuis" was the janitor of the building where Lautreamont died. Despite its polemical character and peremptory tone, it remains a useful "schoolbook"
Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith A Cavalier History of Surrealism A CAVALIER HISTOR Y OF SURREALISM by Jules-Franois Dupuis (Raoul Vaneigem] Trnslated by Donald Nicholson-Smith Edinburgh. London. San Francisco First published as Histoire desinvolte du surrealisme by Paul Vermont, Nonville, France, 1977. English translation copyright 1999 by Donald Nicholson-Smith. ISBN 1-873176-94-5 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data: A catalog record for this title is available from the Library of Congress. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data: A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library. AK Press PO EVA 127GG Edinburgh Scotland EH8 9YE AK Press PO Box 40M2 San Francisco, CA 94140-0682 USA AUTHOR ' S NOTE Commissioned in 1970 by a French publisher who planned to issue it in a series intended for high-school pupils, this Histoire desinvo/te du surrealisme was written in a couple of weeks under the pressure of a contractual deadline. The fact that the original bearer of the name chosen as a pseudonym, "Jules-Fran< ois Dupuis", was the janitor of the building where Lautreamont died, and a witness to his death cer tificate, should be a clear enough sign that this book is not one of those that are particularly dear to my heart; it was merely a diverion. When the original publisher's projected series was abandoned, the manuscript was returned to me. It then languished for some years at the house of a friend, who in 1976 showed it to a young publish er of her acquaintance. As a result it was published a year later (Nonville: Paul Vermont). It was reprinted in 1988 (Paris: Llnstant). Perhaps it is fair to say that, despite its polemical character and peremptory tone, it remains a useful "schoolbook"-and one which may steer those just discovering Surrealism away from a certain number of received ideas. R.V TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. HISTORY AND SURREALISM The Crisis of Culture The Break from Dada The Specificity of Surrealism In the Shadow of the Communist Party 2. CHANGING LIFE The Refusal of Survival Fragments of a Project of Human Emancipation Knowledge of the Human and Its Experimental Investigation 3. TRANSFORMING THE WORLD Revolutionary Ideology An Informal Organization 4. PROMOTING THE IMAGE AS OBJECT Language and Its Subversion The Savage Eye and the Civilization of the Image 5. CONVERTING TO MYSTICISM Reconsecration An Anti-Christian Ecumenism 6. NOW TRANSLATOR'S ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 3 11 16 20 35 49 54 67 74 81 95 105 121 125 131 CHAPTER 1 HISTORY AND SURREALISM THE CRISIS OF CULTURE Surrealism belongs to one of the terminal phases in the crisis of cul ture. In unitary regimes, of which monarchy based on divine right is the best known example, the integrative power of myth concealed the separation between culture and social life. Artists, writers, schol ars and philosophers, just like the peasants, the bourgeois, the wield ers of power, and even the King himself, had to live out their con tradictions within a hierarchical structure which was from top to bottom the work of a Cod, and unchangeable in its very essence. The growth of the bourgeois class of merchants and manufac turers meant the moulding of human relationships to the rationality of exchange, the imposition of the quantifiable power of money with mechanistic certainty as to its concrete truth. This development was accompanied by an accelerating tendency toward secularization which destroyed the formerly idllic relationship between masters and slaves. The reality of class struggle broke upon history with the same brutality as the reign of economics, which had suddenly emerged as the focus of all preoccupations. Once the divine State, whose form constituted an obstacle to the development of capitalism, had been done away With, the exploitation of the proletariat, the forward march of capital, and the laws of the commodity, by everywhere bending beings and things to their will, became cumbersome realities susceptible neither to the authority of a divine providence nor to incorporation into the myth of a transcendent order: realities which the ruling class, if it was not to be borne away by the next revolutionary wave-already incon testably foreshadowed by the Enrages and Babouvists-was now oblig ed at all costs to conceal from the consciousness of the proletariat. Out of the relics of myth, which were also the relics of Cod, the bourgeoisie sought to construct a new transcendent unity capable of using the force of illusion to dissolve the separations and contradic tions that individuals deprived of religion (in the etymological sense of a collective bond with Cod) experienced within themselves and 3 between each other. In the wake of the abortive cults of the Supreme Being and the Goddess of Reason, nationalism in its multifarious gUises-from Bonaparte's Caesarism to the gamut of national social isms-came to the fore as the necessary but increasingly inad equate ideology of the State (whether the State of private and monop olistic capitalism or the State of capitalism in its socialized form). Indeed, the fall of Napoleon marked the end of any prospect of reinstituting a unitary myth founded on empire, on the prestige of arms or on the mystique of territorial power. All the same, there is one trait common to all the ideologies that evolved either from the memory of the divine myth, or out of the contradictions of the bour geoisie (liberalism), or by way of the deformation of revolutionary theories (that is, theories thrown up by real struggles which feed back into those struggles and hasten the advent of a classless society by remaining necessarily opposed to all ideology). That common trait is the same dissimulation or distortion, the same dep recation or misapprehension, of the real movement that arises from human praxis. The radical consciousness cannot be reconciled with ideology, whose only function is to mystify. What the acutest eighteenth-cen tury consciousness perceived for the most part, in the void left behind by the ebb tide of divine consciousness, was the suffering of separation, isolation and alienation. Disenchantment (in the literal sense of the end of the spell cast by a unifying God) thus went hand in hand with an awareness of contradictions that had no chance of being resolved or transcended. As all sectors of human activity proceeded to break apart from one another, culture, just as much as the economic, social or politi cal spheres, became a separate realm, an autonomous entity. And as the masters of the economy gradually built up their hegemony over society as a whole, artists, writers and thinkers were left in posses sion of the consciousness of an independent cultural domain which the imperialism of the economy would be very slow to colonize. They turned this domain into a citadel of the gratuitous, but they 4 acted as mercenaries of dominant ideas as often as they raised the flag of rebellion or revolution. Victims of the unhappy consciousness, despised by those con cerned with finance, trade and industry, these creators tended in the main to turn culture into a replacement for myth, into a new totali ty, a reconsecrated space starkly opposed to the material spheres of commercial transaction and production. Naturally, since the area they governed was no more than a fragment, irreducible to econom ic terms and cut off from the social and the political, they could not aspire to any genuine resuscitation of the unitary myth: all they could do was represent it-and in this respect indeed they were no dif ferent from the more astute minds of the bourgeoisie, seeking to build a new myth by resacralizing all those zones where the econo my did not interene directly (no attempt would be made to conse crate the Stock Exchange, for instance, but the cult of work was an attempt to sanctify the factor). The "spectacle" is all that remains of the myth that perished along with unitary society: an ideological organization whereby the actions of histor upon individuals themselves seeking, whether in their own name or collectively, to act upon history, are reflected, corrupted and transformed into their opposite-into an autonomous life of the non-lived. We shall understand nothing of Romanticism, nor of Surrealism, if we lose sight of culture's entanglement with the organization of the spectacle. To begin with, everthing new thrown up by these movements bore the stamp of a rejection of the bourgeoisie, a refusal of everything utilitarian or functional. There is no artist of the first half of the nineteenth centur whose work was not grounded in con tempt for bourgeois and commercial values (which of course in no way prevented artists from behaVing exactly like bourgeois and tak ing money wherever they could get it-Flaubert is a case in point). Aestheticism acquired ideological force as the contrary of commer cial value, as the thing which could make the world worth living in, and which thus held the key to a particular style of life, a particular 5 way of i nvesti ng being with value that was di ametrically opposed to the capi talist' s reduction of being to having. Wi thin the spectacle, i t was cul ture's task to supply val i dati ng rol e models al ong these l i nes. Gradual ly, as economic rational i ty created a cul tural market, trans formi ng books, pi ctures or scul pture i nto commodi ties, the domi nant forms of cul ture became ever more abstract, eventually cal l i ng forth anti -cul tural reacti ons. At the same time, the greater the sway of the economy, and the more wi dely it imposed i ts commodi ty sys tem, the greater was the bourgeoi si e' s need to update i ts spectacular ideol ogical free market as a way of masking an expl oi tation that was ever more brutal-and ever more brutally contested by the prol e tari at. After the Second World War, the col l apse of the great ide ol ogies and the expanding consumer market, wi th its books, records and cul turali zed gadgets, brought cul ture to centre stage. The pover ty of the mere survival imposed on peopl e accentuated thi s devel op ment by encouragi ng them to l ive abstractly, i n accordance wi th models whose universal fictions, dominated by stereotypes and i mages, were conti nually i n need of renewal . Surreali sm would pay the price here, i n the coin of a co- optation which i ts heart, if not i ts i ntel l ect, had always refused. Cul ture, however, was not a monol i th. As a separate sphere of knowl edge, it i nevitabl y attested to the spl i ts that had been brought about; i t remai ned the l ocus of parti al forms of knowl edge that claimed to be absolute in the name of the old myth, which, though irremedi ably lost, was forever being sought after The rnmr;!'5'SS of creators underwent a corresponding evoluti on, as cul ture estab l i shed a parallel market of i ts own (around 18507), so givi ng rise to 'units' of presti ge which in the spectacul ar system repl aced profi t, or refined i t, and i n any event i nteracted with i t. Creators who failed to burst the bubble in whi ch they were usu ally content to generate endless reflecti ons of themselves risked becomi ng mere producers of cul tural commodi ti es or fncti onaries of the i deological - aesthetic spectacle. The man of refusal, so defined by the scorn poured upon hi m by the worl d of commerce, could very 6 easily be transformed into a bearer of false consciousness. When reproached by the businessman for not having his feet on the ground, the artist tended to appeal to the life of the mind. Surrealism bore the traces of this absurd antagonism between mercantile "mate rialism" on the one hand and Mind (whether in its reactionary or its revolutionary form) on the other. All the same, the more lucid or sensitive creators succeeded in identifying their own condition more or less clearly with that of the proletariat. The result was a tendency that might be called "radical aesthetics"-exemplified by Neral, Stendhal, Baudelaire, Keats, Byron, Navalis, Buchner, Forneret, Blake, etc.-for which the quest for a new unity was expressed through the symbolic destruction of the old world, the provocative espousal of the gratuitous, and the rejection of commercial logic and the immediate concrete dimension which that logic controlled and defined as the only reality. Hegel would come to represent the historical consciousness of this attitude. Another tendency, extending "radical aesthetics" into a "radical ethics", arose from an awareness of the separatedness of culture, from the consciousness of thinkers and artists, hitherto alienated in the pure impotence of the mind, who now developed creativity as a mode of authentic existence welded to the critique of the commod ity system and of the survival imposed universally by that system. Marx and Fourier were this tendency's main voices. Lastly, there was a third current which, without grounding itself as firmly in history as Mar or Fourier, made its basic principle the abolition of culture as a separate sphere through the realization of art and philosophy in everyday life. This tradition runs from Meslier to de Sade, and thence, via Petrus Borel, Holderlin, Charles LassailIy, Ernest Coeurderoy, Joseph Dejacque and Lautreamont, to Ravachol and Jules Bonnot. It is in fact less a tradition than a somewhat serendipitous trac ery of theories and practices constituting a kind of ideal map of radi cal refusal. Though thrown up by history, and reinserting itself into history, often in violent fashion, this was a heritage with no clear con sciousness of its power over that history, no effective knowledge of its 7 actual potential. In the years between 1915 and 1925, however, as his tory took its revenge upon all its ideological travesties, these isolated voices were revealed as eminently harmonious, called forth as they all were by the pressure for human emancipation. Dada embodied both the consciousness of the crumbling of ide ology and the will to destroy ideology in the name of authentic life. But Dada in its nihilism sought to constitute an absolute-and hence purely abstract-break. Not only did it fail to ground itself in the historical conditions by which it had itself been produced, but, by deconsecrating culture, by mocking its claims to be an independent sphere, by playing games with its fragments, it effectively cut itself off from a tradition forged by creators who in fact shared Dada's goal, the destruction of art and philosophy, but who pursued this goal with the intention of reinventing and realizing art and philosophy-once they had been liquidated as ideological forms, as components of culture-in everyone's actual life. After Dada's failure, Surrealism for its part renewed ties with the older tradition. It did so, however, just as though Dada had never eXisted, just as though Dada's dynamiting of culture had never occurred. It prolonged the yearning for transcendence, as nurtured from de Sade to Jarry, without ever realizing that the transcendence in question had now become possible. It curated and popularized the great human aspirations without ever discovering that the prerequi sites for their fulfilment were already present. In so doing, Surrealism ended up reinvigorating the spectacle, whose fnrt;o! 'a to :0" ceal from the last class in history, the proletariat, bearer of total free dom, the history that was yet to be made. To Surrealism's credit, assuredly, is the creation of a school-for-all which, if it did not make revolution, at least popularized revolutionary thinkers. The Surrealists were the first to make it impossible, in France, to conflate Marx and Bolshevism, the first to use Lautreamont as gunpowder, the first to plant the black flag of de Sade in the heart of Christian humanism. These are legitimate claims to glory: to this extent, at any rate, Surrealism's failure was an honourable one. 8 DADA AND CULTURE IN QUESTION Dada was born at a turning-point in the history of industrial societies. By reducing human beings to citizens who kill and are killed in the name of a State that oppresses them, the model ideolo gies of imperialism and nationalism sered to underline the gulf that separated real, universal man from the spectacular image of a human ity perceived as an abstraction; the two were irreparably opposed, for example, from the standpoint of France, or from the standpoint of Germany. Yet at the very moment when spectacular organization reached what to minds enamoured of true freedom appeared to be its most Ubuesque representational form, that organization was suc cessfully attracting and enlisting almost all the intellectuals and artists to be found in the realm of culture. This tendency arose, moreover, in tandem with the move of the proletariat's official lead ership into the militarist camp. Dada denounced the mystificator power of culture in its entiret as early as 1915-1918. On the other hand, once Dada had proved itself incapable of realizing art and philosophy (a project which a successful Spartacist revolution would no doubt have made easier), Surrealism was content merely to condemn the spinelessness of the intelligentsia, to point the finger at the chauvinist idiocy of anyone, from Maurice Barres to Xavier Montehus, who was an intellectual and proud of it. As culture and its partisans were busily demonstrating how actively they supported the organization of the spectacle and the mystification of social realit Surrealism ignored the negativity embodied in Dada; being nevertheless hard put to it to institute any positive project, it succeeded only in setting in motion the old ide ological mechanism whereby today's partial revolt is turned into tomorrow's official culture. The eventual co-optation of late Dadaism, the transformation of its radicalism into ideological form, would have to await the advent of Pop Art. In the matter of co-optation, Surrealism, its protestations to the contrary notwith standing, was quite sufficient unto itself. 9 The ignorance that Surrealism fostered with respect to the disso lution of art and philosophy is every bit as appalling as the ignorance Dada fostered with respect to the opposite aspect of the same ten dency, namely the trnscendence of art and philosophy. The things that Dada unified so vigorously included Lautreamont's dismantling of poetic language, the condemnation of philosophy in opposing yet identical ways by Hegel and Marx, the bringing of painting to its melting point by Impressionism, or theatre embracing its own parodic self-destruction in Ubu. What plainer illustrations could there be here than Malevich with his white square on a white ground, or the urinal, entitled Fountain, which Marcel Duchamp sent to the New York Independents Exhibition in 1917, or the first Dadaist collage-poems made from words clipped from newspapers and then randomly assembledt Arthur Cravan conflated artistic activity and shitting. Even Valery grasped what Joyce was demonstrating with Finnegans Wake: the fact that novels could no longer exist. Erik Sa tie supplied the final ironic coda to the joke that was music. Yet even as Dada was denouncing cultural pollution and spectacular rot on every Side, Surrealism was already on the scene with its big plans for clean-up and regeneration. When artistic production resumed, it did so against and without Dada, but against and witb Surrealism. Surrealist reformism would deviate from reformism's well-trodden paths and follow its own new roads: Bolshevism, Trotskyism, Guevarism, anarchism. Just as the economy in crisis, which did not disappear but was in<tfrr rnm formed into a crisis economy, so likewise the crisis of culture out lived itself in the shape of a culture of crisis. Hence Surrealism became the spectacularization of everything in the cultural past that refused separations, sought transcendence, or strggled against ideologies and the organization of the spectacle. 10 THE BREAK FROM DADA When exactly did Surrealism emancipate itself from Dada? The question is badly framed, because it suggests that the Surrealists were reconstructed Dadaists, which is far from certain. Indeed, if we look closely at the beginnings of the earliest proponents of Surrealism, we find that their works are of a personal kind, hostile, certainly, to the dominant tradition, but bearing scant trace of Dada's corrosive spirit. The good relations maintained by the early Surrealists with Pierre Reverdy, editor of the literar review Nord-Sud, or the poems of Breton, Benjamin Peret, Paul E luard or Philippe Soupault, are quite adequate testimony to the adherence of these new voices to a certain conception of literature. What the first Surrealists knew of Dada was above all its edulcorated Parisian version, the antics of Tzara, and a few clashes between individuals. With Grosz, Huelsenbeck, Schwitters, Haussmann, lung or even Picabia they were still largely unacquainted. In 1917 the word "surrealist" appeared in the subtitle to Apollinaire's play Les Mamelles de Trisias [The Teats of Tresias). [n 1920 Paul Dermee used the term in the review [Esprit Nouveau, and in 1924 Yvan Goll chose it as the title of a periodical that lasted for only one issue. As early as 1919, however, the concept had acquired less vague connotations. In that year Aragon produced his first automatic texts. In "Entree des mediums" [Enter the Mediums], Breton sought to cir cumscribe the notion-a task that he would pursue further in the first Maniesto of Surrealism (1924). From the outset "surrealism" signi fied a new quest; the word immediately became the label of a new cultural product, clearly reflecting the will to distinguish that product unequivocally from all others. The contradiction between a volun taristic rigour and the inclination to compromise that was objective ly encouraged by Surrealism's fresh embrace of culture created a per manent point of stress and led to endless splits in the movement. 1 1 The revi ew Litteature, founded in 1919, was so named by anti phrasis, but from the begi nni ng it retai ned not a few genuinely l i ter ary aspects; even i n appearance i t resembl ed a traditional l i terary magazi ne in many respects. Thi s was the starti ng poi nt for the Surreal i st proj ect of foundi ng a new way of thi nki ng, feel i ng and l iv i ng, of creating a new worl d; and here l ay the seeds of the particul ar way i n which thi s proj ect would be worked out, as of the particular way in whi ch it would fai l. I n the regressive conjuncture which fol lowed the tri ple defeat of Spartacus, of Dada and of the revolution of the Sovi ets i n Russi a (co-opted by the Bolsheviks), the Surreali sts made a promi se which they kept: to be the capricious consci ousness of a time without consci ousness, a wi l l - o' the-wi sp i n the night of Nati onal Soci al i sm and Nati onal Bolshevism. The first few i ssues of Litterature i ncluded contributions from Val ery, Gide, Leon-Paul Fargue, Blaise Cendrars, Jules Romai ns, Max Jacoh, Georges Auric and Darius Mi l haud. The young Breton admired Val er, Pierre Reverdy and Sai nt-Pol -Roux, and to the last of these he remai ned loyal his whole l i fe long; yet he also had a fascination for Arthur Cravan and Jacques Vache, prime exempl ars of Dada ni hi l ism authentically l ived out. In a sense Breton' s work and even Surral ism itself were the product of these two divergent ori entations. The impl icati ons of thi s doubl e allegiance are clear from Breton' s remarks in the Second Maniesto of Surrealism (1930): In spi te of the various efforts peculi ar to each of those who !_!sed tc c1.im kinship V-ith SUHtdlism, or who stIli do, one must ultimately admit that, more than anythi ng el se, Surrealism attempted to provoke, from the i ntel l ectual and moral poi nt of vi ew, a crisis of consciousness of the most gener al and serious ki nd, and that the extent to which thi s was or was not accompl i shed al one can determi ne i ts hi storical success or fai lure. The restri ction here to "the i ntel l ectual and moral poi nt of view" clearly i ndi cates an attachment to cul ture as an i ndependent sphere, whi l e "a cri si s of consciousness of the most general and seri - 12 ous ki nd" evokes what Surreal i sm woul d i nheri t, al bei t superfi ci al ly, of the Dada spi ri t . I n fact Dada preci pitated the purgi ng of Litterture: i t was under Dada's i nfluence that quarrel s between litterateurs metamorphosed i nto a general hosti l ity towards the homme de lettres per se-that ani mosity towards a Max}acob, an Andre Gi de or a}ean Cocteau came to be j usti fi ed i n terms of contempt for wri ti ng as a trade or craft. I n 1 920 Littirature's thi rteenth i ssue opened the doors wider than ever before to the Dadai st i nfluence, publ i shi ng twenty- three of the movement's mani festoes. Si mul taneousl y, however, the break between Andre Breton and Tristan Tzara was i n the maki ng. Breton's i ntel l i gence and discreti on undoubtedly endowed Surreali sm with a good part of its genius. For Dada, unfortunately, j ust the opposi te occurred: al ready sorely l acki ng for revolutionar theo rists, i t l ost much of i ts rich potential when i t came under the thumb of Tzara, the poverty of whose i deas and the banal ity of whose i mag i nation were onl y rivall ed by hi s lust for recognition, for celebri ty. Tzara possessed nothi ng of the critical sense and clear- mi nded combativeness needed to i nci te artists to despair of art, grasp hol d of everyday l i fe and transform themselves i nto the subj ect of a col l ec tive work of revoluti on. And the sai d artists, i ndecisive and at bot tom more susceptible to the temptation of an artistic career than they cared to acknowledge, quickly discovered that repeati ng the fami l i ar j apes of Dada's anti - art "show", wi th Tzara as choreograph er and star, offered a conveni ent way of surreptitiously resuming cul tural activity wi thout formally renounci ng the Dadaist contempt for art: they merely had to pretend to bel i eve that that contempt appl i ed sol el y to the domi nant forms of l i terature, thought or art. I n a sense, Surreal i sm itsel f resided in these shortcomi ngs of Dada. Littiature's surey based on the questi on "Why do you wri te?" was not so radical as one mi ght justifiably have supposed at first glance. True, it cl early exposed the general vulgarity of i ntent and l ack of i magi nati on of t he makers of novel s, the asi ni ni ty of versi fi ers and academi c thi nkers, yet at the same ti me it l ai d the groundwork 13 for the "discovery" of profounder justifications for a new art of writ ing, feel i ng, or painting and authorized a new form of expression with cl aims to being authentic and total . Such a form of expression already existed experimentally. As Breton recal ls in Entretiem [ Conversations ( 1 952)], "I n 1 9 1 9, I began paying attention to those more or less complete sentences which, when one was entirely alone, as sleep came on, would become perceptible to the mind without it being possible to find any pre-existing reason for them. " The practical resul ts appeared in a joint work by Breton and Soupault, The Magnetic Fields ( 1 920), supposedly written under the direct dictates of the unconscious. The book foreshadowed the l ater experimental "sleeping" by means of which Robert Desnos, Benj amin Peret and Rene Creve I sought to express themselves without any mediation by the conscious mind. By the time Breton took over as editor of a new series of LittCtture i n March 1 922, and evenhandedly rejected both Dadaism and the l i terary brigade (Gide, Val ery and Co. ), he al ready had a clear agenda, in the form of a positive project. The coming break with Dada was hastened in 1 92 1 by a public event organized by Aragon and Breton: the "indictment and trial of Mauri ce Barres". Barres was a literary anarchist of the "cult of the Ego" variety who sang the praises of nationalism in dulcet tones. He was, in short, the perfect symbol of a fin-de-siecl e intel l igentsia that now practised the poetry of the bugle-cal l , thus by their negative example The trial was hel d on 1 3 May. The accused was represented by a carnival manikin; Breton presided, Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes took the role of public prosecutor, and Soupault and Aragon, who had every a priori reason to like Barres, were his defenders. No effort was spared in the attempt to ensure that the event would provoke l egal action and spark a confrontation which woul d ratify Dada's seditiousness in the eyes of revolutionary groups. Short of such an outcome, indeed, there was no hope of saving Dada. Benj amin Peret, whose entire life was informed by an unwaver ing and intransigent radicalism, testified to great effect at the Barres 1 4 tri al, speaki ng i n German and pl ayi ng "The Unknown Sol dier". Al l the wi tnesses, moreover, waxed el oquent upon the excrementi al character of veterans, of Barres and of everythi ng havi ng to do wi th the nati on and its trai ts. Victor Crastre i s right, however, when he i nsists i n hi s book Le Drame du surrialisme [The Tragedy of Surreal i sm] that the Barres trial was a fai l ure: The absence of any reacti on from the right, coupled with the si l ence of the revolutionary parties, meant that the tri al had fai l ed. Thi s fai lure was echoed by a regressi on to aes theti ci sm, in the shape of the Salon Dada that opened at the Galerie Montai gne on the 6th of June 1922, and i ts mediocre triumph. I n thi s connection Breton wrote: "It seems to me that the sponsorshi p of a series of utterly futile 'Dada' actions i s on the poi nt of very seriously compromi si ng an undertak ing to which I remai n attached." Thi s attachment would obl i ge Breton to try and save Dada from the steri l i ty that was now threateni ng i t. He deci ded to convene a congress in order to cl ear matters up: the "Paris Congress for the Ori entati on and Defence of the Modern Spiri t". Thi s was an ambi ti ous project, ai mi ng as it did to get poetry and art back onto fi rmer ground than the shi fti ng sands in which they had been caught. And it did not succeed. Wri ters and artists who had made smal l reputations for themselves in and through Dada saw l i ttle reason to throw everythi ng away for the sake of a venture which seemed to them to have no future, for they had nothi ng but mi strust for the "spirit" i n whose name the Congress was bei ng called. After this setback Breton and hi s fri ends scal ed down their ambi ti ons, being i ncl ined to explore the depths while cast i ng their net less wi dely. They refused all all iances. And, now much reduced in numbers, the group withdrew i nto i tsel f. I t i s notable that Pi cabia, the most consi stent ni hi l i st of the Dadai st group, l ent his support to the projected Congress. By con trast Tzara opposed the i dea, cl ai mi ng that such a proj ect was essen tially constructive, whereas Dada was by defi ni ti on pure negati on! 15 THE SPECIFICITY OF SURREALISM The break with Dada became utterly final in 1923, when, at a per formance of T zara's Coeur a gat [The Gas Heart], the author called the police and sought to have Eluard, Breton and Peret thrown out as troublemakers. Around a hard core made up initially of Breton, Aragon and Soupault, there now revolved an often disparate group of personali ties, among them Eluard, Peret, Robert Desnos, Roger Vitrac, Max Morise, Georges Limbour, Joseph Delteil, Jacques Baron, Rene Crevel, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, and Max Ernst. 1924 and 1925 were to be the pivotal years of Surrealism: until then, the movement was detaching itself from a Dadaist spirit which it had always espoused only with reticence; afterards, the Surrealists began to seek agreement with communists of one kind or another, from the somewhat marginal Leninists of Clareto the hard-line Stalinists of the French Communist Party. This fruitful period saw the conception and publication of Breton's Maniesto of Surrealism, the appearance of a review, La Revolution Surrealiste, and the creation of a "Bureau for Surrealist Research". The Surrealists' interest in dreams and automatic writing, the attention they paid to Freud, their invention of games, their cultivation of the derive and of chance encounters, and their experiments with spiritual ism-ali these together constituted a unified set of preoccupations the first issue of La Reolution Surreal iste proclaimed the need for "a new declaration of the rights of man". The group was soon joined by Andre Masson, Mathias Lubeck, Georges Malkine, Pierre Naville, Raymond Queneau, Antonin Artaud, Jacques Prevert, Marcel Duhamel and Pierre Brasseur, while in Yugoslavia a Surrealist movement emerged whose prime mover was Marco Ristitch. At this time, too, Surrealism created a piquant genealogy for itself which included figures whose work cried out for dialectical 16 supersessi on on the pl ane of real l i fe ( de Sade, Lautreamont, Fourier, Marx, etc. ) , great dreamers ( Nerval , Noval i s, Achi m von Arni m) , alchemists ( Paracelsus, Basi l Val enti ne) , a motley of i mpassi oned, eccentric and fantastic forebears, poets of bl ack humour, and so on-i n short, a whol e pantheon that was conti nual l y bei ng added to ( and occasi onal l y reduced, as i n the case of Poe, who was i nducted at first, only to be expel l ed subsequently on account of hi s contribu ti on to the science of pol i ce work) . Most i mportant of al l , the group appropri ated the Dadaist techni que of scandal -maki ng and turned i t effectively agai nst the representatives of official cul ture. Two scan dals i n particular may be sai d to have thoroughly shaken up the con venti onal wi sdom of the time. These were the publ i cati on of the pamphlet A Corse, hai l i ng the buri al of Anatole France, and the events surroundi ng the Sai nt- Pol - Roux banquet. Anatole France, as Breton explai ns i n Entretiens, was the prototype of everythi ng we hel d in contempt. I n our eyes, i f ever there was a n undeserved reputati on, i t was hi s. The supposed transparency o f hi s style l eft us col d, and hi s much vaunted scepti ci sm we found repug nant. It was he who had said that IIRi mbaud's sonnet 'Voyel l es' [ Vowel s] defi es common sense", even i f i ts vers es were lIamusi ng" . On the human level , we found hi s att i tude as s i ni ster and despi cabl e as could be: he had done whatever one had to do to garner the support of Right and Left al i ke. He was so puffed up wi th his honours and hi s own sel f- i mportance that we fel t no compuncti on whatsoever. Thi s wi ndbag has si nce been so thoroughly deflated that i t i s hard today to i magi ne the rage that those four pages, contai ni ng texts by Aragon, Delteil, Drieu l a Rochel l e and me, were capable of unleashing. Accordi ng to Cami l l e Maucl ai r, Aragon and I were nothing but IIravi ng maniacs", and he added that 'These are the manners not of upstarts and ruffi ans but of j ackals . . . ". Others went further, cal l i ng for l egal sancti ons agai nst us. 17 In July 1925, a banquet i n honour of Sai nt- Pol - Roux, who was an i dol to Breton and several other Surreal i sts, offered the perfect opportuni ty to get rid of the l i terary trash once and for al l . The French ambassador, Paul Cl au del , had decl ared to an I tal i an news paper that Surreal i sm, just l i ke Dadai sm, had "one meani ng onl y-a pederastic one". The Surreal i sts' ri poste came i n the form of an "Open Letter" pri nted on sang-de-boeuJ paper and sl i pped under each pl ate at the Cl oserie des Li l as, where the banquet took pl ace. Breton' s amused account of what ensued i s well known: By the ti me a rather sad "hake i n whi te sauce" was bei ng served, a number of us were standi ng on the tables. Thi ngs fel l completely apart when three of the guests went off and came back soon afterwards wi th the pol i ce i n tow. But, as humour woul d have i t, it was Mme Rachi l de, by this time at a hi gh pi tch of agi tati on, who in the general chaos ended up getting arrested. On this occasion, too, Mi chel Lei ri s was nearly lynched for shouti ng sedi tious slogans from the restaurant wi ndow at a passi ng veterans' parade: "Long l ive Germany! Long l ive Chi na! Long l ive Abd-e1- Krim!" Anarcho-Dadaism was sti l l a livel y strand in the Surrealism of thi s period. For i nstance, the cover of the first number of La Revolution Surrfaliste showed a photograph of the anarchi st Germai ne Berton u 0 .. gsl i\ib"x; of dlt gIUp. Bur [here was more provocation here than commitment, for neither Bonnot nor Ravachol were mem bers of the Surreal i st pantheon; what is worse, Meci sl as Charrier would be gui l l oti ned by Poi ncare wi thout so much as a peep out of Breton and hi s fri ends. Al l the same, i t was the ferment of revol t that they kept on the boi l , and the preci Si on wi th which they conti nued to denounce the permanent outrageousness of the prevai l i ng organi zati on of soci ety ( a preci si on sti l l very much i n evidence i n the i nter venti on i n favour of Vi ol ette Nozieres) that woul d prevent the best Surreal i sts from reduci ng thei r dream of a global revolution, no matter 18 how confused it was, to the mediocre level of Bolshevism. It was these, together with the cult of the passions, and especially of love, that saved the movement from any outright compromise with infamy. (Surrealism's passing alliance with Trotsky, the butcher of Kronstadt in 192 1, may be put down to ignorance.) 19 IN THE SHAOW OF THE COMMUNIST PART Beginning in 1924 and 1925, the feeling gradually came to prevail in the movement that its aesthetic critique needed political reinforce ment. Meetings were held between the Surrealists and members of Clartc, among them Victor Crastre, Marcel Fourrier and Jean Bernier. This was a group of avant-garde intellectuals on the left of the Communist Party who opposed the conformism of Henri Barbusse, then literary editor of the Party newspaper L'manite There were many Surrealists who felt that ensuring the sup port, or at any rate the benevolence of the Party was a more deci sive way of breaking with the l itteateurs than merely playing the barbarians hammering at the gates of culture, a ploy which in any case ran the risk that one day those gates would give way, allowing the barbarians to pitch their tents within the citadel, and thus be co-opted. For those who felt this way, and for a few others too, the image of the Bolshevik with a knife between his teeth, much exploited by the Right, continued to be very seductive. What they did not know was that the freshest blood on that knife, fresher than that of the Whites, was that of the Makhnovists and the left opposition, and that before long it would be put to work settling all of Stalin's vendettas. Only Artaud, ever sensitive to the merest hint of oppression, now distanced himself in clear awareness of what was at stake. As his friend: ic'ed cosc.- and iLscf tv Clulii, ile iood more and more aloof, and eventually withdrew altogether. Soupault, Vitrac, Baron and a few others opted straightforwardly for literary careers at this point; they thus made their exits by the opposite door to Artaud, duly receiving Breton's farewell in the Second Maniesto as they departed. In 1926 it was resolved that a new periodical entitled La Guerre Civile would be launched in conjunction with Clarte That this plan came to naught bespeaks the fact that it was now too late for two autonomous spheres, that of a specialized politics and that of a spe cialized reanimated art, to fuse into one. 20 Surrealist activity had nonetheless never before reached such heights. The spirit of the movement was spreading internationally. In Belgium, Rene Magritte, Paul Nouge and Louis Scutenaire founded a Surrealist group whose inventiveness, style and violence would carry it a very long way before-much later on-it collapsed into a sopho moric humour punctuated by Stalinist professions of faith. The game of "Exquisite Corpse", in which a poem or picture is cre ated collectively by players who are unaware, except for the first ele ment, of what the others write or draw, was a successful revival, with increased emphasis on language, of the spirit of Dadaist collage, of the notion of a poetry made by all, of the idea of objective chance. This pastime supplied Surrealism with one of its best and most interesting ways of satisfying its propensity for playfulness. In 1927 Andre Breton joined the Communist Party. Assigned to the "gasworkers' cell", he set out with a disarming willingness to do his bit, but he was exasperated by the Communists' bureaucratic tenden cies (which for the time being were not so much sinister as ridicu lous), and before long he left the Party militants to their illusions. On the Artaud side of things, meanwhile, though without any direct input from Artaud, a tendency emerged in Surrealism which would become preponderant after the Second World War. The voice of this tendency was Rene Daumal and Roger-Gilbert Lecomte's review Le Grand leu, whose first issue appeared in 1928. The possibility of a con vergence between this group and Breton's was explored, but proved impossible. Daumal and Lecomte had little taste for the kind of disci pline Breton imposed. Furthermore, they had a certain contempt for politics, this at a time when the mainstream Surrealists were hastily becoming politicized, and whenever they were reproached on these grounds, which was often, they would respond by warning of the dan ger of Surrealism's co-optation. The two groups had a common interest in union, but neither side felt passionately enough about its necessity for it to come about, and as soon as a pretext presented itself, they went their separate ways. That pretext was an apologia for the Prefect of Police, Chiappe, written for a newspaper by Roger Vailland, a member 21 of the Grand Jeu group. Daumal and Lecomte rebuked Vailland for this in the weakest of termsi Breton was not accustomed to tolerating the ahsence of a viol ent reacti on to a fai l ing of this kind. ( Subsequently Daumal moved cl oser and cl oser to a Gurdjieffian position, so much so that in 1 93 3 he broke with Lecomte. ) The Second Maniesto, publ i shed i n 1 930, became in effect a gen eral settling of accounts. Among those expel led were Jacques Baron, Georges Limbour, Andre Masson, Roger Vitrac, Desnos, Prevert and Raymond Queneau. I t was Artaud above al l , however, who came under attack. Admittedly, he had brought anathema upon himsel f by cal ling the police on his friends when they tried to disrupt a perfor mance at the Al fred Jarry Theatrei yet T zara, after all, had pointed Breton and E l uard out to the police in 1 92 3, and Breton was now reconciled with him. During this period the Surrealist group was reinforced by the arrival of Luis Bunuel , Salvador Dal f and Rene Char. I n Prague the movement was riding hi gh thanks to Vitezl av Nezval, Jindrich Styrsky, Karel Teige and Toyen. I n 1 929 Jacques Rigaut, like Cravan and Vache a great l i vi ng exempl ar of Dadaist nihilism, kil led himsel f. On the scandal front, the psychiatrists got up in arms over the cal l s to murder contained in Breton's Ni dj 1 , which were indeed directed at them personally. A new periodical, Le Surrealisme au Service de la Revolution [ Surrealism at the Service of the Revol ution], was l aunched with an appropri ate aggressivenpss tho!!Gh th. tit!. Sg gested a marked retreat as compared with that of the earlier La Revolution Surrealiste. I f Surrealism was to be in the train of a revolu ti on whose only possibl e motor was the Communi st Party, the fate of poetry-not to mention that of the revolutionaries-was surely sealed. Happily, the content of the new periodical tended to belie its title. Crevel, summari zi ng the state of play in the third issue, was able to write: Surrealism: not a school but a movementi does not therefore speak ex cathedra but goes to see, goes in search of knowl- 22 edge, of knowledge applied to the Revolution (via a poetic route). Lautreamont had said: poetry must be made by all, not by one. E luard's comment On this: poetry will purify all men. All ivory towers will be demolished. And Crevel adds: "Starting out from Hegel, like Marx and Engels but following a different path, Surrealism ends up at dialecti cal materialism. " Truth to tell, Hegel was discovered very belatedly by the Surrealists, and, even more important, they made barely any practical use of him-not even as a tool for discriminating between the dialectic and the thinking of a Maurice Thorez. Their taste for life made a much greater contribution, and the best of Surrealist thought unquestionably arose from their analyses of lived moments, which revealed the dialectic far better than quotations from Hegel and created poetry far more effectively than any poem. In response to Breton's diatribes in the Second Maniesto, the excludees issued a violent pamphlet which emulated the tone and borrowed the title of the compendium of insults earlier directed at Anatole France: Un Cadavre [A Corpse]. The "Bar Maldoror"-a pre mature attempt at commercial co-optation-was sacked by Breton and his friends. Bufuel's film rAge d'or roused the ire of war veterans and of the Right. One particularly fine expression of anger, an open letter to the top student applicant of the year admitted to the Saint Cyr Military Academy, exposed Georges Sadoul, one of the signa tories, to a three-year prison term. And a critic at La Liberti called for Peret to be shot for having written the poem "Vie de l' assassin Foch" [Life of the Murderer Foch], which dealt with its subject in tones of unparalleled execration. At this time too, Maurice Heine published his admirable preface to de Sade's Justine. Heine exerted a much greater influence on the Surrealist movement than his natural discretion, and that of his friends, might lead one to suppose. In 1931 Surrealism's dalliance with the Communist Party took a militant turn. The group signed up with the Association of Revolutionary Writers and Artists, which was controlled by the 23 Party. Was it perhaps by way of a counterweight that at this same time research i nto "magical" works i ntensi fi ed, spurred on by the rev elati on of Alberto Giacometti's "obj ects wi th symbol i c functions"? At al l events, the l i nks between al chemy and creative paths to new and sacrosanct relati onshi ps was very much i n the forefront of Surreal i st meditations even as the "Aragon affai r" was bubbl i ng up. This affai r began when Breton and hi s fri ends, though approv i ng of neither its spi ri t nor its form, nevertheless took up the defence of Aragon's long poem "Front rouge" [Red Front], wri tten duri ng a vi si t to the USSR. The embarrassment Breton experienced at thus having to stand behi nd Aragon, whose text al ready contai ned the seeds of the paeans to the fatherl and that were to fol l ow, i s quite tan gible i n his Misere de la poesie [The Poverty of Poetry]. I n the meantime, Aragon was sendi ng very optimistic reports back from Moscow concerni ng the prospect of the Surreali sts reach i ng agreement wi th the Communi sts. Sadoul, Aragon's travel l i ng companion i n RUSSia, returned to Paris ahead of Aragon himsel f, who stopped off i n Brssels for a few days. Here i s Breton's account in Entretiens of the conversation he had wi th Sadoul on the latter's return: Yes, everythi ng had gone well; yes, the objectives we had deci ded to set ourselves had been met, but.. . . There was indeed a very large "but". An hour or two before their depar ture, they had been asked to sign a decl arati on that impl i ed the abandonment, not to say the expl i ci t rej ecti on, of prac tl(l1y ever PC5!t!Or ;C had held lp lU"liii then. They were expected to renounce the Second Maniesto "i nasmuch"-I quote word for word-"as it is contrary to dialectical materi al i sm". They were supposed to denounce Freudi ani sm as "an idealist i deol og" and Trotskyi sm as "a soci al - democratic and counter- revolutionary ideol ogy" . Fi nal l y, they would undertake to submi t their l i terary activi ty "to the disci pl i ne and control of the Communi st Party". "And so?", I asked Sadoul brusquely. And, getti ng no repl y, "I take it you refused?" "No," he repl i ed, "Aragon fel t that we-that is, you as well as us-would have to go al ong if we wanted to 24 work in the Party's cultural organizations. " That was the first time in my life that I saw a chasm opening up before my very eyes, a chasm that has since widened dizzyingly, in proportion to the relentless headway made by the outra geous idea that truth should bow down before efficacity, that neither conscience nor individual personality are worth heeding-in short, that the end justifies the means. In 1932 Aragon rallied to the Communist Party. The same year saw the publication of Breton's Communicating Vessels and one of Rene Crevel's finest texts, Le Clavecin de Diderot [Diderot's Harpsichord]. THE BREAK WITH THE SO-CALLED COMMUNIST PARTY Breton was saddened by Aragon's lack of spine; his friends, outraged, reacted according to the tradition. Several of them produced texts lambasting the author of "Red Front". E luard, notably, did not hesi tate to write: What was inconsistency has become calculation; what was subtlety has become intrigue. Aragon has become other, and his memory henceforward cannot attach itself to me. To defend myself I have a sentence which between him and me can no longer have the exchange value I so long accorded it, a sentence which has never lost its meaning and effec tively passes judgement on Aragon as on so many others: All the water in the sea could not wash away a single intellectual bloodstain (Lautreamont). This turned out, however, to be a case of the pot calling the ket tle black. A few years later, E luard, hand in hand with Aragon, would be a fashionable figure in the Stalinist star system, ever ready to claim that the words party, fatherland and freedom rhymed to per fection. And in 1950, when Breton implored him to intervene on 25 behal f of an ol d mutual friend of theirs, Zavis Kal andra, condemned to death in Prague, [ Iuard ( though he forgot to quote his favorite sentence) had thi s to say: "1 am too busy with i nnocents procl aiming their i nnocence to bother with peopl e who are gUil ty procl ai ming their gui l t. " Kalandra was executed. In 193 3 the Association of Revolutionary Writers and Artists announced its first expulsion: Andre Breton. As Breton recal l ed l ater i n Entretiens: The reason for this expul si on was that Number 5 of Le Surrealisme au Serice de la Revolution contai ned a l etter addressed to me by Ferdi nand Al quie, a l etter written in a libertarian spi rit, indeed a most movi ng letter, in which the writer took vi olent exception to the civic and moral tone i nforming the Russian film Te Road to Lie. Regardl ess of the opi nions Alquie expressed, not all of which I agreed with, the intensi ty of life and revolt distil led into his letter seemed to cr out for its publication. There was therefore no chance at all of my uttering the retraction that was bei ng demanded of me. The fol l owi ng year a Surrealist group appeared in Egypt, with Georges Henei n as its prime mover. In Brussel s, Documents 34 pub l ished a special issue on "Surreal ist I nterventi on" which included a number of contributions remarkable for thei r viol ence and uncom promiSing attitude. 1934 was above al l the year of the Surrealists' hO!!agc to \-ro!ette uZi(;c5. iCI Li.i yuung parricide, who had been condemned to death, the Surreal ists saluted a symbol of active resistance to oppression by the family. I t i s hard, though, to expl ai n the fail ure of the group to raise a si mi l ar cry i n support of the Papi n si sters, servants who around the same ti me i l l ustrated Swift's Directions to Serants after thei r own fashion by murderi ng thei r mis tress and her daughter. It is true that by thi s ti me pol i tical events were fast gathering momentum. Rel ations between the Surreal i sts and the Communist Party leadershi p grew ever more hostile. An i nci dent i n 1 93 5 was to bring 26 these relations to an end once and for all. About ten o'clock one night, shortly before the opening of the Congress of Writers for the Defence of Culture, a Stalinist-rn event, Breton ran into Ilya Ehrenburg on the Boulevard du Montparnasse. Once again we may rely on Breton's account in Entretiens : There was a passage I was not ready to forget i n a book of Ehrenburg's, Vus par un ecrivain de / 'R. S. S. [Observations of a Soviet Writer], which had appeared a few months earlier. Among his remarks therein were the following: "The Surrealists are all for Hegel, all for Mar, all for the Revolution. What they are absolutely against, however, is work. Not that they do not have their occupations. They study pederasty and dreams, for example.. . . They keep themselves busy consuming their inheritances and dowries . . . . " And so on. So, after identifying myself, I slapped him several times, while he tried pathetically to palaver with me without so much as raising his hand to pro tect his face. I fail to see what other revenge I could have taken on this confirmed slanderer . . . . On the eve of the Congress, after exhausting discussions with the organizers over their refusal to let Breton address the gathering, Rene Crevel took his own life. This gesture, just like Artaud's solipsism, con stitutes an immediate, spontaneous, negative response to the problem that Surrealism had posed-a false problem, in fact, because its basic assumptions were false. For how was it conceivable, on the basis of independent sectors already objectively stripped of all human values by the depredations of the spectacular-commodity system, on the basis of activities which, though in fact partial, were promoted as totalities (as art, politics, thought, the unconscious, survival, etc.) and presented as positive-how was it conceivable that on such bases any unity of the individual, either within himself or with respect to others, might be achieved? How could Surrealism, while ignoring the Dadaist quest for total negativity, expect to provide any historical foundation for the positivity and global transcendence to which it aspired? 27 The Surreal i sts denounced the Moscow tri al s. They moved cl oser to Georges Batai l l e, whose Contre- Attaque movement defi ned i tsel f as " a combat group of revol uti onary i ntel lectual s opposed to fascism" . I n Tokyo a Surreal i st revi ew was started by Yamanaka. I n London Rol and Penrose mounted a major exhi bi ti on. Benj ami n Peret publ ished Je ne mange pas de ce pain-li [ I ' d Rather StarveJ-poetry genui nely searchi ng for adequate practi cal expres si on wi th its cal l for the l i qui dati on of army, pol i ce, priests, bosses, money, work and al l other forces of brutal i zati on. Peret, who had the courage of hi s convicti ons, enl isted wi th the anarchi sts i n the Spani sh Revolution. He was the onl y Surreal i st to partici pate direct ly i n that struggl e; all the others supported the cause enthusiastical ly, but from afar. Pi ctori al concerns, which seemed to come back to the fore after the break with the Communi st Party, did not override the Surreal i sts' conti nui ng embrace of a l esser-evi l approach to pol i ti cs, and before l ong they ral l ied to Trotsky and the Fourth I nternati onal : on a vi si t to Mexi co i n 193 8, Breton publ i shed the mani festo "For an I ndependent Revolutionary Art" i n col l aborati on wi th Di ego Rivera and the author of The Crimes of Stalin. Dal f's i mbeci l i c games had fi nal ly pal l ed, and he was expel l ed from the group i n 1939. He was thus compl etel y free to devel op a "techni que", bl endi ng obscuranti sm wi th the symptoms of demen ti a praecox, which to thi s day conti nues to provi de ferti l e soi l for the avant- gardists of the adverti si ng worl r f".pite the a,:gr;:; mati c ni ckname of "Avi da Dol l ars" , used by Breton to casti gate hi m, Dal f at l east had the meri t, i n hi s shamel ess pursui t of money, con tracts and honours, of openl y treati ng art works as commodi ti es somethi ng whi ch the Ernsts, the Mi ros, the Pi cassos and all the other Surreal i st arti sts, whether they were tal ented or not, did onl y shamefacedly. Breton now made up with both Artaud and Prevert. Nothi ng, real ly, shoul d ever have i nduced them to part company. Prevert and Peret were cut from the same cl oth, and i n Breton, al bei t strictly con- 28 trolled, there was a good deal of Artaud. These four waged unceas ing war on Surrealism as ideology, on the growing co-optation of the movement. Unfortunately Surrealism had been an ideology in the profoundest sense from the beginning; it was always doomed to be part of the game of old and new in the cultural sphere-and could have avoided this destiny only if, say, the Spanish Revolution had triumphed over both the Stalinists and the fascists and hence made possible a transformation of Surrealism into revolutionary theory. Unaware of this, or refusing to accept it, Artaud, Breton, Peret and Prevert fought to the glorious strains of what sounded very much like a song of defeat. They were the last formation of four, and, having nothing more to lose, they never surrendered. On the other hand, Salvador Dalf adopted Surrealism at its most ideological on a full-time (and fll-space) basis. He espoused fascism, Catholicism or Franco just as Aragon had espoused Stalinism. E luard took the same road as Aragon. As Breton recalls in Entretiens : When I learnt, in Mexico City, that poems of E luard's had just appeared in Commune. which was the magazine of the "Maison de la Culture", I naturally hastened to inform him about the unspeakable methods those people had used against me, nor did I doubt for a second that he would immediately distance himself from them. But I had no reply from E luard, and upon my return I was stupefied to hear him claim that a collaboration of this kind in no way implied any particular commitment on his part, and indeed that in the last few months he had contributed, just as willingly as to Commune. to various fascist publications (these are his words, not mine) in Germany and Italy. I confined myself to the obseration that this attitude of his amounted to a rejection of any kind of agreement that we had ever reached between us and made any further meeting pointless. In 1940 the deaths of Paul Klee, Maurice Heine and Saint- Pol Roux-three non-Surrealists who nevertheless left a deep impression 29 on the movement-i n a way marked the end of Surreali sm's great peri od. Breton, it is true, would still have much to say, as would Peret, but from now on these two would be virtually alone as they strove to keep thi ngs goi ng. In the summer of 194 1 Breton disembarked in New York, soon to be joi ned by Ernst and Masson. Peret chose Mexico. The onl y Surrealism known in the Uni ted States was the "Avi da Dol l ars" versi on. With hel p from Marcel Duchamp, Breton contrived to produce a revi ew, VVv i n which he publ ished "Prolegomena to a Third Surrealist Mani festo or Not" ( 1942) . POSTWAR YEARS After 1 945 Surrealism began firi ng i ts last salvoes. It l ived on wi th out achi eving cl earer defi niti on. The movement turned i ts attenti on i n a more determi ned manner towards mysti ci sm and alchemy, whi l e i ts pol i tical effusions betrayed growi ng confusi on and vapi di ty. I n 1 946 the pamphlet Liberte est un mot vietnamien ( Liberty Is a Vi etnamese Word] protested agai nst French repressi on in I ndochi na. Inau g url Break ( 1947) was a denunci ati on of Stal i ni sm-though i n 1956 the Surreali sts would express the hope that after the Khrushchev speech at the Twentieth Congress of the Soviet Communi st Party a new broom woul d be applied to the party apparatus. No sooner had they dispensed this consi derate advi ce. however th;n thp)' fourG then selves obl iged to hail the Hungari an upri si ng in Hon g rie, soleil levant ( Hungary: The Sun Rises] . I n 1 960 Surreali sts were the i ni ti ators of the "Declarati on on the Ri ght of Conscientious Objection in the Algeri an War"-the so called "Declarati on of the 12 1", Eight years later, whatever resi due sti l l went by the the name "Surreali st" was si ngi ng the praises of Cuba! Along the way the Surreal i sts worked wi th the anarchi sts of Ie Libertaire, and for a time supported Garry Davi s's Ci ti zens of the World movement. 30 Before the war the review Minotaure had been the last real melt ing pot of Surrealist ideas. Its successors in the post- war world, Neon ( 1 948- 49) , Medium ( 1 953 - 55) , Le Surrealisme, mee ( 1 956- 59) , L Breche ( 1 96 1 - 65) , Bie ( 1 958- 60) , and rArchibras ( 1 967-69) bear increasingly brutal witness to the decay of the movement. Important Surrealist works did appear in the post- war years; unfortunately they were overshadowed by the fashionable but dis mal elucubrations of the likes of Sartre, Camus or Saint-Exupery. These works included Breton's Anthologie de l 'humour noir [Anthology of Black Humour J, banned by the Vichy government in 1 94 1 and bare ly noticed in 1 945; Le Deshonneur des poetes ( 1 944) , in which Peret hauled Aragon, E luard and the other patriot-poets over the coals; Breton's Arcanum 1 7 ( 1 945) , a lyrical meditation on sensibility, love and poetry, his very beautiful Ode to Charles Fourier ( 1 947) , and his Flagrnt Deiit [ Caught Red- Handed] , which exposed a fraudulent attribution of poems to Rimbaud, condemned the imbecility of liter ary critics in general, and heaped scorn on Maurice Nadeau, author of a Histor oj Surrealism; Peret's Anthologie de l 'amour sublime, with its extraordinary profusion of linguistic fireworks; the novels of Jul ien Gracq and Maurice Fourre; Malcolm de Chazal's Sens plastique; and Jean Markale and Lancelot Lengyel's studies on Celtic art. Apart from such personal works, however, Surrealism now dis played a great tolerance for rehashes, for mere imitation of the masters, for sor expressions of mutual admiration. Many Surrealists made their peace with the incoherence of the dominant system. Others fell silent. Yet others followed the example of Crevel and committed suicide indeed, the decline of Surrealism, the last movement to have held a genuine belief in the purity of art, is peppered with suicides, among them those of the painter Arshile Gorky ( 1 948) , the painter Oscar Dominguez ( 1 957) , the poet Jean- Pierre Duprey ( 1 959) , the painter Wolfgang Paalen ( 1 959), as well as that of Karel Teige, who killed him self in Prague as the police were coming to arrest him. A pamphlet published on 7 June 1 947 by the Revolutionary Surrealists, a dissident Belgian group, had issued a salutary warning 31 to the movement as a whole. Signed by Paul Bourgoignie, Achille Chavee, Christian Dotremont, Marcel Havrenne, Rene Magritte, Marcel Marien, Paul Nouge and Louis Scutenaire, it declared: Landlords, crooks, Druids, poseurs, all your efforts have been in vain: we persist in relying on SURREALISM in our quest to bring the universe and desire INTO ALIGN MENT ... First and foremost, we guarantee that Surrealism will no longer sere as a standard for the vainglorious, nor as a springboard for the devious, nor as a Delphic oracle; it will no longer be the philosopher's stone of the distracted, the battleground of the timid, the pastime of the lazy, the intellectualism of the impotent, the draft of blood of the "poet" or the draft of wine of the litterteur. But, as though to give the true measure of their protest, and cer tainly exemplifying the grotesquerie which would thenceforard dog Surealism in its dotage, the aforesaid signatories declared without fur ther ado that they placed their entire faith in the Communist Party! 32 CHAPTE R 2 CHANGI NG LI F E THE REFUSAL OF SURVIVAL It is significant that the first Maniesto of Surrealism starts out by denouncing that mode of existence which, to distinguish it from pas sionate and multidimensional lie, has been called "survival" : So strong is the belief in life, in what is most fragile in life real life, I mean-that in the end this belief is lost. Man, that inveterate dreamer, daily more discontent with his lot, has trouble assessing the objects he has been led to use, objects that his nonchalance has brought his way, or that he has earned through his own efforts, almost always through his own efforts, for he has agreed to work, at least he has not refused to try his luck (or what he calls his luckl ). At this point he feels extremely modest: he knows what women he has had, what silly affairs he has been involved in; he is unimpressed by his wealth or poverty, in this respect he is a newborn babe and, as for the approval of his conscience, I confess that he does very nicely without it. The only thing absent from Breton's tableau of intolerable medi ocrity is history. No doubt the nostalgia for the "chateau life" which always haunted the Surrealist dream contained an implicit reference to the great myth of the unitary society of old, wher the individual tra jectory of even the humblest of men was inextricably bound up with the cosmic in a mass of fictional realities and real fictions, an atmos phere in which every event was a sign and ever word or gesture mag icaIIy sparked off mysterious currents of mental electricity. The col lapse of this myth, and its subsequent co-optation as spectacle by the bourgeoisie, were never successfuIIy analysed by Surrealism. In the end the Surrealist movement never did more than echo the kind of furious foot-stamping which, from Romanticism to Dada, had been the sole response of artists thwarted by the demobilizing combination (supplied courtesy of the commodit system) of a lifeless soul and a soulless life. Romantic rebellion from SheIIey to Karl Sand and Pierre Franois Lacenaire had given way to the aggressive aestheticism of 35 Vi l l i ers de l ' l sl e-Adam and the pl unge i nto Symbol i sm, i nto the man neri sm of the theatrical transposi ti on of decadence and death. The bl oody comic opera of the Great War was to l end real content to the macabre imagi ni ngs of a Rol l i nat or a Huysmans, as l i kewise to those baroque decors which paradoxi cal l y expressed a taste for great refi nement. Nati onal i sm thus contrived to crown the sorry festivities of the fi n de siecle with the apotheosis of a great feast of the dead. A few mi l l i on corpses quickly revived the taste for l i fe. And when the prol etariat redi scovered its voice, and the voi ce of history, i n the shape of the cal l for soviets and the Spartacus movement, the great est hopes were justi fied regardi ng the prospects for a radi cal ly di f ferent l i fe, for the creation of the onl y condi ti ons capabl e of under pi nni ng such a l i fe: the abol i ti on of the commodi ty system and of bourgeoi s- Christian civi l i zation . Dada had not been mi staken about thi s, though some Dadaists erred less than others. Breton was l i kewise correct i n 1922, i n the fi fth issue of Litterture, when he wrote: "In fairness to Dada i t must be acknowledged that, had i ts strength not fai l ed i t, i t would have want ed nothi ng better than to destroy everythi ngfrom top to bottom. " Yet i n general the Surreal i sts grasped even l ess cl early than the Dadaists to what degree and i n what sense the sai lors of Ki el , the Spartaci st workers or the members of the fi rst Russi an counci l s were putti ng I nto practice the same project that they themselves nurtured. Once revol uti on had been crushed from Berl i n to Kronstadt, via La Courti ne and the plains of the Ukrai ne, Dada alone conti nued to demand, unabashedly if confusedly, the global destruction of art, phi l osophy and cul ture as separate spheres and their realization i n the context of a uni tary soci al l i fe. The gui l ty consci ence of Surreal i st reformism is testi mony to this global revol uti onary project, which the movement rejected onl y with great rel uctance and i ndeed con ti nued to embrace i n a repressed form. Thus Breton was qui te able to procl ai m, in Number 4 of La Revolution Surrealiste, that "There is no such thi ng as a work of art that can withstand our total pri mi tivism", and Aragon could evoke "the pal try pol i tical activi ty that has occurred to the East of us over the 36 last few years". Though both these remarks are accurate enough, the first bespeaks someone who is still lacking in consciousness, the sec ond someone who is already an imbecile. The sequel was to demon strate, i n any event, that these were merely words wi thout practical consequences. The Dada spirit outlived itself as an empty verbal form; Surrealism surreptitiously endowed that form with another content. All the same, the melancholy of everyday life was the sti rrup that enabled Surrealism to take its wild ride through the world of dreams. Contrary to the prognostications of not a few Stalinist thinkers, the movement was not destined to sere si mply as a tram poline for escapism and mysticism. On the contrary, i t became that focus of despai r whence all new hope derives, even i f the road taken was the cultural one. Arthur Cravan and Jacques Vache, two great wi tnesses to mal de v;vre, were soon to die. The fi rst put out to sea one stormy evening on the Gulf of Mexico; the second, who had written from the front that i t was "ti resome to die so young", ki lled himself i n Nantes no sooner than the War was over. Soon after there would be Jacques Rigaut and Raymond Rousse! and, among the Surreali sts, Rene Creve\ . Like Artaud, Creve! had been struck by the predominance of non-life in the totali ty of human affairs, and it was he who, in a text on Paul Klee, voiced a sentiment that the Surrealists would have done well to pursue further: "We care neither for the asparagus of the poor nor for the leeks of the rich. " Dada held up a mirror to surival as an absence of real life and as a directly apprehended reality, thus "making its shame more shameful"; suicide constituted a condemnation, by way of the negative, of sur vival's logi c of death. Being an ideology, Surrealism was a strictly static vi sion whose impressi on upon hi stor could never surpass the wei ght which hi s tor i tself accorded it (as distinct from revolutionary theory, which starts out from history, then returns to hi stor and moves it forward) ; for Surreali sm, surival, suicide and death were the starting point which life was supposed to negate, but which it could not transform without first achi eving a state of "absolute deviation". Thi s was the 37 metaphysical conundrum from which the Surrealists were trying to escape when they mistakenly pinned thei r hopes on Bolshevism That i s why the first issue of La Revolution Surdaliste is replete wi th press clippings concerning suicide. In the survey conducted in that issue on the question of why people kill themselves , Artaud's response remains exemplary: I suffer frightfully from life. There is no state I cannot attai n. And without a doubt I have been dead for a long ti me already-I have already committed suicide. I have, as it were, been suicided. But what would you think of a suicide before the fact-a suicide that made you redirect your steps, but to somewhere beyond being, not towards death. Artaud's path was already quite clear. Through a nihilism that Dada never attained, though it had sought it as a basi s on which to reconstruct the self, life, and social organization, Artaud chose a return to the dissolution of the self in a spiritual totali ty. The Surrealism of the years after the Second World War would adopt a comparable stance, returning in this way to the movement's starting point, and even transcending it, but it nevertheless avoided the lucidity and the drama lived out by Artaud. Very few Surrealists would ever apprehend their own alienation with Artaud's courage and awareness: " I am unhappy like a man who has lost the best part of himself. " Very few would face up so directly to their own frag mented state: "I no longer want to he onf 0f the deluded. Iki i i g dead, others are not separated from themselves. They continue to circle around their own corpses. As for me, I am not dead, but I am separated from myself. " For Artaud, i n 1924, the hope of a classless society, the hope of a coming reign of freedom, so passionately entertained by Surrealism, had already been dashed. Later, when the unmasking of Stalinism cast a dark cloud over these aspirations in the hearts of Breton and his friends, Surrealism embraced Artaud's conclusion in an intellectual way, and resolved like him to live the drama of every- 3 8 day al i enati on as a cosmi c tragedy of the mi nd. I n 1 924, though, Surreal i sm was nowhere near that poi nt. I ts survey of sui ci de al so addressed the questi on of l i fe. To the possibi l i ty of death were qUickly attached al l the possi bi l ities of freedom and all the freedoms of the possi bl e. As Breton put i t, It i s remarkabl e how these repl i es, be they subtl e, l iterary or derisive, al l seem so arid; why is i t that no human resonance is detectable i n them? To kill onesel-has no one wei ghed the fury and experi ence, the disgust and passi on, that are con tai ned i n thi s phrase? Surreal i sm thus recogni zed the mark of the ol d world and its oppressive structures in the i nhumanity of survival . Though i t may have di spl ayed a si ngul ar lack of discernment with regard to the ram ificati ons of commodity fetishi sm, it must sti l l be given credit for havi ng so very rarely fai l ed to measure up (as Breton was wont to say) to the revoluti onary ethic of freedom. The Surreal ists' denunci ation of oppressi on was well - ni gh continual , and the vi ol ence of their tone cannot hel p but arouse our sympathy. The fact remai ns that these young people, who ought by ri ghts to have turned themselves i nto theorists and practi ti oners of the rev oluti on of everyday l i fe, were content to be mere arti sts thereof, wag ing a war of mere harassment against bourgeois soci ety as though it fel l to the Communi st Party alone to mount the mai n offensive. I t thus came about that targets of great moment were chosen without any deep conviction that they ought to be designated as spheres of oppressi on towards which the proletari at's anger should be directed; i ndeed many a fl ami ng brand hurled by the Surreal ists amounted to l i ttle more than pyrotechnics. The struggle agai nst Christianity, for i nstance, by now abandoned by Bolshevism, suffered not a l i ttle from this misconceived modesty. Apart from the anodyne imagery of Clovis Troui l l e, and Max Ernst's Virgin spanking the i nfant Jesus with her hal o, Surrealist pai nti ng eschewed the theme altogether. 39 Responding to an attempt to annex him (by means, no doubt, of one of those miracles for which the Christians are so renowned) , Artaud offered the following unambiguous and definitive answer: "I shit on the Christian virtues and on whatever it is that does duty for them among the buddhas or the lamas" (Histoire entre la groume et Dieu [ History between Grousing and God]) . Ever faithful to his photo graph in L Revolution Surrealiste, which bore the caption "Our Contributor Benjamin Peret Insulting a Priest", Peret did much to rescue modern poetry from its tinkliness, and re-endow words with the promise of action, when he wrote such lines as these, from "Le Cardinal Mercier est mort": Cardinal Mercier mounted on a policeman you looked the other day like a dustbin spilling over with communion wafers Cardinal Mercier you stink ofgod as the stable stinks of dung and as dung stinks of Jesus Or these, from "La loi Paul Boncour" [The Paul Boncour Law l Men who crush senators like dog turds looking each other stright in the eye til/ laugh like mountains will force the priests to kill the last generals with their crsses and then using the fag !'ill ,'s:;c; t]c pdrsts t1)cm:eivfs by way of an Amen The bases of a practical approach to religion were laid down in fAction immediate by Rene Magritte, E. L. T Mesens, Paul Nouge, Louis Scutenaire and Andre Souris: We are convinced that what has been done to oppose religion up to now has been virtually without effect and that new means of action must be envisaged. At the present time the Surrealists are the people best fitted to undertake this task. So as not to lose any time, 40 we must aim for the head: the outrageous history of reli gions should be made known to all, the lives of young priests should be made unbearable, and all sects and orga nizations of the Salvation Army or of the Evangel ical vari ety should be discredited by means of every kind of mockery our imagination can devise. Think how exhila rating it would be if we could persuade the better part of our youth to mount a weI l prepared and systematic cam paign of disruption of church services, baptisms, commu nions, funerals and so on. Meanwhile roadside crosses might usefuIly be replaced by images promoting erotic love or poeticaIly eulogizing the natural surroundings, particularly if these happen to be grim. In an article published in Interention surrialiste ( 1 934) which went scandalously unheeded, Pierre Yoyotte set the tone for a debate that ought by rights to have sparked action of the broadest scope: The Communists have always officially evinced an extreme ly unintelligent suspicion with respect to the discoveries of psychoanalysis, discoveries which would in fact have allowed them to combat the emotional processes associated with family, religion and fatherland in a completely informed manner. Though hardly a response adequate to the seriousness of this project, Rene Crevel's delicious psychoanalytical account of Jesus in Le Clavfcin de Diderot (family and neuroses/family of neuroseslfamily neurosis) is well worth quoting: As the masochistic little chickabiddie of the Father Eternal, much given to turning the other cheek, Jesus was not the sort to be satisfied by some brisk return visit to the mother's breast. On the contrary, he had to go back up into the most pri vate of the genital parts of the genitor, to become one of those parts himself-the right testicle, say-because the Trinity may be, indeed must be interpreted as the tripartite 4 1 assemblage (in appearance) of the male sexual apparatus: a banana and two mandarin oranges, perhaps-since the Oriental style insists on fruit similes only. Tre, the apotheosis of masochism is preceded by a num ber of smaller diversions, by what the French call diddlings at the door: baptismal badinage with Saint John the Baptist, intimate grooming with perfumed oils at the hands of saint ly women, and, above all, the Last Supper with its loaves (long loaves, that is, whose meaning we all know; we also know that not one of the painters who have represented this meal in so many celebrated pictures has ever put on the table the little split loaves that commonly symbolize the sex of the woman) . Dressed in a most elegant white robe, bent under the weight of his cross, Jesus offers his back to whatever blows might be forthcoming. As soon as Pontius Pilate has washed his hands of the accused, the sexual symbolism becomes crystal- clear. Jesus falls, then gets up again: in other words, he has come, and is ready to come again under the whips of the athletic types with their skimpy costumes. And, just as the young newly-wed wife cal l s for her mother, so frightened is she so of voluptuous pleasure, so Jesus continually calls out for his father . . . . Then comes the vinegar-soaked sponge, signalling the contempt of the handsomest of Jesus's ruffianly guards for this tatter demalion yearning to be his pretty boy. In other words, the legionary in question, who can hardly have failed to spot the practised hips of Mary Magdalene among thp whores crowding around the foot of the cross, flatly refuses to pay Jesus the hommage of even the tiniest drop of sem inal fluid, and in effect pisses in his mouth to underline the point. So . . . no more threesomes . Between the two fel ons all that remains are two chestnuts-the former juicy divine oranges have shrivelled into a pair of pitiful dried-up conkers, and the Christ is just a pathetic empty vessel. Before leaving the subject of the critical avenues which were suitable for exploration by Surrealism in its revolutionary specificity, 42 but which were barely entered upon in practice, it is worth citing one quite exemplary demonstration of the popular character of anti Christian feeling. The Communist paper L:Humanite having reported how a church in flames had been saved thanks to the courage of a few young people, a reader sent a letter of protest to the editors that was published in Number 2 of Le Surrealisme au Service de la Revolution : Dear Comrades, I cannot but deplore your reporter's praise for the courage of a group of young people when the only result of that courage was the preseration of a building that should by rights have been razed long ago. After Christianity, and setting aside capitalism, with regard to which the Surrealists espoused Lenin's arguments, the chief target of execration was the family. The trial of Violette Nozieres, who had murdered her father, the engine-driver of the presidential train, after he tried to rape her, offered the Surrealists the perfect opportunity to voice their views on this question. The young parricide inspired some of Eluard's sincerest lines: Violette dreamed of undoing And did undo The frightul viper' nest of blood ties Another emblematic figure, gleefully pounced on by Peret, was the prodigiously fertile "Mother Cognacq": Alas she has croaked Mother Cognacq croaked just like France From her belly green as a pasture swarmed record-breaking broods and for each new arrival they got a stoker' shovel 43 No more Mother Cognacq No more babies coming after eighteen others ever Easter or Christmas to Piss in the family cooking-pot She has croaked Mother Cognacq So let' dance let' dance in a ring round her grave with a turd on the top Peret was the most enthusi asti c member of the group when i t came to pouri ng scorn on the fatherl and-on France, on Gal l i c avari ci ousness, on the cops and the army. I n thi s vei n he produced many emi nently quotabl e l i nes, among them thi s one, from "Briand creve" [ Briand Has Croaked]: "Fi nal l y thi s parboi l ed sperm sprang forth from the maternal whorehouse wi th an ol ive branch stuck up his arse . . . ". Or these, from "La Stabi l i sati on du franc": I the pigs ' ears quiver It is because "L Marseillaise" is being sung Come on children of the shit bucket Let' fi1/ Poincarts ear with our snot And let us not forget two cl assics, "La Mort heroique du l i eu tenant Condami ne de l a Tour"- Rot Condamine de la Tour With your eyes the Pope will make communion wafers for your Moroccan sergeant and your prick will become his brigadier' baton Rot Condamine de la Tour Rot you spineless shit -and "Epitaphe sur un monument aux morts de la guerre" [Epi taph on a Monument to the War Dead] , which Peret entered i n the l i ter ary contest of the Academi e Fran<ai se: 44 Te general told us with his finger up his bum The enemy is that way Move out It was for the fatherland So off we went with our fingers up our bums In Breton i t i s possible to fi nd the somewhat scattered maki ngs of a l ibertari an posi ti on. A footnote in the first Maniesto of Surrealism i s particularly suggestive in this regard: Whatever reservati ons I may be al l owed to make con cerni ng responsi bi l i ty i n general and the medi co-l egal con si derati ons whi ch determi ne an i ndi vi dual's degree of responsi bi l i ty-compl ete responsi bi l i ty, irresponsi bi l i ty, l i mi ted responsi bi l i ty (si c}-however di fficult it may be for me to accept the pri nci pl e of any degree of responsi bi l i ty, I woul d l i ke to know how the first punishable offenses whose Surreal i st character i s cl early apparent will be judged. Wi l l the accused be acquitted, or wi l l he merely be given the benefi t of the doubt because of extenuati ng circumstances? I t i s a shame that the violation of the l aws governi ng the press i s today scarcely punished, for otherwi se we would soon see a trial of this sort: the accused has publ ished a book whi ch is an outrage to publ i c decency; several of hi s "most respectabl e and honorable" fel low ci ti zens have l odged a complai nt against hi m, and he is also charged with sl ander and l i bel; there are also all sorts of other charges agai nst hi m, such as i nsul ti ng and defaming the army, i nci t i ng to murder, rape, etc. The accused, moreover, wastes no ti me i n agreei ng wi th the accusers i n "sti gmatizi ng" most of the i deas expressed. Hi s onl y defence i s clai mi ng that he does not consi der hi msel f to be the author of hi s book, sai d book bei ng no more and no less than a Surreal i st concoc tion, which precludes any questi on of merit or l ack of merit on the part of the person who signs it; further, that al l he has 45 done is copy a document wi thout offeri ng any opi nI On thereon, and that he i s at l east as forei gn to the accused text as is the presi di ng judge hi msel f. What i s true for the publ i cati on wi l l al so hol d true for a whole host of other acts as soon as Surreal i st methods begin to enjoy widespread favour. When that happens, a new moral i ty must be substi tuted for the prevai l i ng moral i ty, the source of al l our tri als and tribul ati ons. This l ast paragraph i s truly extraordi nary i n i ts i mpl i cati ons. To describe every act condemned by law as Surreal i st woul d serve i n the first i nstance to poi nt up the universal i ty of al i enati on, the fact that peopl e are never truly themselves but rather that everyone acts for the most part i n accordance wi th the i nhuman tendencies i nsti l led i n them by soci al condi ti oni ng. I t woul d then become a si mpl e matter, when consideri ng acts that were "reprehensi bl e" from the standpoi nt of the l aw, to disti nguish cl early between those whi ch i ndeed obey a l ogic of death, the l ogic of i nhumani ty i mposed by the powers in pl ace, and those which by contrast flow from a reflex of the wi l l to l ive. It is thus surpri si ng on the face of it that Breton should ever have been embarassed when remi nded of hi s cel ebrated proposi ti on i n the Second Maniesto: The simplest Surrealist act consists in dashi ng down i nto the street, pistol i n hand, and firi ng bl i ndly, as fast as you can pull the trigger, i nto the crowd. Anyone who, at l east once i n hi " li te, has not dreamed of thus putting an end to the petty sys tem of debasement and creti nization i n effect has a wel l defined place i n that crowd, with hi s belly at barrel level . Thi s was a quite adequate expl anati on, after al l , of why such an act would si mply be a way of maki ng al l the worki ngs of an economic and soci al system whi ch kills human bei ngs by redUCi ng them to the state of objects clear and comprehensi ble to everone. For it i s true not onl y that the cri mi nal is not responsi bl e, but al so that the hi er archi cal organi zati on of soci ety, wi th its batteri es of flunkeys-its 46 magistrates, cops, managers, bosses and pri ests-i s i tsel f ful l y responsi bl e for al l the acts that i t condemns. But thi s negative aspect escaped Breton-and consequently he was unable to grasp the pos i tivity involved ei ther. The point of transcendence here was, nonethel ess, obvious to hi m, and he immediately adds a ri der: The justi fication of such an act is, to my mind, i n no way incompatible with the beli ef in that gleam of l ight that Surreal i sm seeks to detect deep within us. I simply wanted to bring in here the element of human despair, on thi s si de of whi ch nothing would be abl e to justify that belief. I t i s impos sible to give one's assent to one and not to the other. Anyone who should pretend to embrace thi s belief without truly shar ing this despai r would soon be revealed as an enemy. While it is tre that extreme despair may arouse l imitless hopes, the real si te of the struggle still has to be made clear. Once we have arrived at the sort of despair that impel s us, following the logic of death that power i mposes, to open fire into the crowd, there i s only one way beyond thi s predicament, and that is the l i quidation of power in the name of a dialectic of l i fe and of all the hope l i fe embodies. Having reached that point, i t behoved Sureal i sm, as a mirror held up to the power of death, to inaugrate an anti - Surreal i sm capable of combining in a single practice the strggle against all forms of oppression and the defence of ever positive spark thrown up by everday l i fe. On such a proj ect, whi ch the Si tuationists clearly formulated i n the early 1960s, the Surreali sts possessed but a few scattered insights, and the only cohesion they could achieve here was a lyri ci sm endowing these fragments with an i l lusory uni ty. Here is Breton on Viol ette Nozieres: In face of your sex winged like a fower of the Catacombs Students old fogeys jouralists rte bastards fake rrvolutionaries priests judges Wanking lawyers Know full well that all hierarchy ends here 47 When all is said and done, however, poetry as incitement to practice, and in this instance as action directed towards the abolition of the bourgeois order, is far more apparent i n Breton's di atribe against psychiatrists in Nadja: I know that if I were mad, after several days of confinement J should take advantage of any l apses i n my madness to mur der anyone, preferably a doctor, who came near me. At least this woul d permit me, like the viol ent, to be confined in solitary. Perhaps they'd l eave me al one. 48 FRAGMENTS OF A PROJECT OF HUMAN EMANCI PATI ON Any attempt at a total revolution of everyday life i s condemned to failure and fragmentation if it does not embody a coherent and glob al negative critique. What is more, such theoretical and practical inadequacy means that authentic desires for freedom are rendered abstract by ideology, even though they may continue to manifest themselves in the shape of an illusory will to transcendence at the ambiguous level of language. There is thus a trace, in the Surrealists' striving to circumscribe exceptional or disturbing occasions in lived experience, of a theor of passionate moments. "I pay no heed to the empty moments of my life," wrote Breton, and indeed his entire work revolves around intensely experienced instants. These he celebrates with a lyricism which by no means excludes their critical analysis, but which, since it fails to incorporate them into a generalized social practice, suc ceeds only in sealing them in the amber of aesthetic emotions. The verbal always carries the day, and, sadly, the only consistency attained by Surralism was that of its self- justification in cultural terms. These revolutionaries of the heart were fated to carr out their revolution solely in the realm of the mind. The points at which the old worl d was crumbling were emi nently perceptible to the Surrealists, and they surounded these areas with an aura that lent them a certain omnipotence. Moments of love, encounter, communication, subjectivity-all were allegedly unified by a shared quality of freedom, yet in reality they remained isolated so long as no heed was being paid to the fact that liberation as a material force cannot be detached from the overall emancipa tion of the proletariat; so isolated, indeed, that not a single Surrealist reSisted the temptation to turn one or another of them into an absolute, so creating an illusory totality. Love in particular (and justifiably so) was the object of Surrealism's most firmly and consistently sustained hopes. Presenting 49 the " I nqui ry" i nto love in Number 1 2 of La Revolution Surrealiste ( 1929) , Breton wrote that "I f there i s one i dea which to thi s day seems to have escaped every attempt at reduction . . . it i s, we bel ieve, the idea of love, alone i n i ts capaci ty to reconci l e every man, temporarily or not, wi th the i dea of l ife. " On every occasion, and at every stage, the Surreal ists i nvoked the desired uni ty of poetry, love and revol t. ''There i s no solution outside of love" , procl ai med Breton over and over agai n. Yet, si nce he had fai l ed to understand that as part of the same process there i s no love wi thout a revol ution of everyday l i fe, Breton ended up, vi a the notion of "mad l ove", promoti ng a veri table cult of Woman. The Surreal i sts opposed l i berti ni sm in the name of an elective and exclusive form of love, but it i s an open question whether these two antagonistic atti tudes do not i n the end amount to much the same thi ng, whether a woman el evated to the rank of the Chosen One and a woman fucked l ovelessly are not both bei ng treated as objects. Be that as i t may, nei ther Breton nor Peret ever changed their mi nds, no matter how closely they studied Fourier and his detai led theories on thi s subj ect. De Sade offers a perti nent counterwei ght to the hi nt of Romanticism in thi s conception of love. Marcel Marien is right to poi nt out, in hi s Les Poids et les mesures [Wei ghts and Measures], that we shoul d thank the Divi ne Marquis for "so judi ciously enl ighteni ng us as to the real i ty of our nature and for provi di ng us with a basis for understanding love". Likewise Rene Char, in the second issue of Le Surreali'me au Serl fcf dp 11 R(po'Htion : IIDe Sade': !egucy i; i love at I Ul l g last cl eansed of the muck of the cel esti al , wi th al l the hypocrisy exposed and extermi nated: a legacy capabl e of preservi ng men from starvation and keepi ng thei r fi ne strangl ers' hands out of thei r pockets. " Nevertheless, no matter how often they deni ed i t, the Surreal i sts were conti nually (and curiously, for readers of de Sade) drawi ng the Christian distinction between carnal and spi ri tual love. Here, once agai n, the poi nt of vi ew of real practice was never grasped. What could be more Sadean than the di alectic of pleasure in i ts dual relati onshi p to love on the one hand and i nsurrection on 50 the other; Even the ni hi l i st Jacques Rigaut acknowledged that any reconstructi on of love must fol l ow this path: " I have ridiculed many thi ngs. There i s only one thi ng i n the worl d that I have never been able to ri dicule, and that i s pleasure. " Now i t i s true that the very same Peret who compi l ed a superb anthology of "subl i me l ove" also wrote the ejacul atory poems of Rouilles encagees [ Caged Rusts-meani ng couilles enragees , or "ragi ng ball s"-Trns . ] . But where exactly do the two obj ects of celebrati on i nvolved here really come i nto conjuncti on? That the practical activ i ty of i ndivi dual s wi thi n the Surrealist mil ieu somehow guaranteed a uni ty of thi s ki nd is a disti nctly dubious proposi ti on. Breton, sup posed standard-bearer of every freedom, was quite capable of the bald asserti on, uttered duri ng a publ ic debate on the issue, that he "found homosexuals gui l ty of beggi ng human tolerance for a mental and moral shortcomi ng that tends to set itself up as a system and paralyse every undertaki ng of the ki nd for which I have any respect". And he proceeded to confess, after deigni ng to pardon Jean Lorrai n and ( nothi ng l oath! ) de Sade, that he "was quite prepared to be an obscuranti st i n that particular area". Thi s way of promoting a per sonal di staste to the level of a general law or pri nci pl e ( Breton even threatened to walk out of the meeti ng if the discussi on of homo sexual i ty was not abandoned) cl early bespeaks the worst ki nd of repressive atti tude. Duri ng the same debate the author of Mad Love evi nced deep hosti l i ty to the idea of a man maki ng l ove with two women at the same ti me. If this was Surreali sm's way of accordi ng al l power to passi on, i t woul d hardly take a Fourier to describe it as a very rocky road. Subj ectivity, which Surreali sm simultaneously obscured and i l l u mi nated, i s one of those fragmentary spheres whose fl i ghts of lyri cism may mask thei r fai lure to evolve i nto revoluti onary theory. The very first i ssue of L Revolution Surrealiste quoted Pierre Reverdy's credo accordi ng to which 'The poet must seek the true substance of poet ry everywhere wi thi n hi mself. " And throughout hi s work Breton repeatedly emphasi zes the i rreducible aspect of each i ndividal , the 5 1 magic of the surrender to chance, the pursuit of adventure real or imaginary, and the revelation of unsuspected desires. "I n order to remain what it ought to be, namely a conductor of mental el ectricity, poetic thought must in the first pl ace be charged up in an isolated environment", writes Breton, while Georges Batail l e maintains that "Surrealism is precisely that movement which strips the ultimate interest bare, emancipating it from all compromise and resolutely casting it as caprice pure and simpl e. " Yet neither this prescription of Batail le's nor Breton's meditations on chance ( which Nietzsche defined as "yourself bringing yoursel f to yoursel f") opens the way to a practical investment of the riches of subjectivity in the col l ective struggl e for the total liberation of the individual . Thus subj ectivity and its demands, acknowledged but not realized on the social pl ane, became a source of artistic inspiration and a measure of expressive value, but nothing more. Nothing more, in sum, than that cel ebrat ed "inner necessity" which Kandinsky hel d to be the one essential determinant of all creation. Primacy accorded subjectivity i n the cul tural real m l ed t o the cal l for a new "way of feeling", a notion that a curious figure like Lotus de Paini would successful ly nurture in response to the general ener vation of the senses, of thought and of sensation. The Grand Jeu group went ahead of the Surrealists down the mystical road which confl ated subjectivity not onl y with the new way of feel ing but al so with the myth of ol d. This was what Rene Daumal cal l ed "the turn ing back of Real i ty towar! i t 5(rC " , ard it focused al l hvPC5 0fl the point described by Breton as fol l ows: "Everthing tends to sug gest that the mind may reach a point whence life and death, real and imaginar, past and future, communicable and incommunicable, and high and l ow, al l cease being perceived as contradictory. " So l ong as it remained detached from the revol utionary project of the total man, however, this outl ook could never become anything more, at best, than an initiatory or hermetic doctrine. So al though Surrealism drew attention to each individual's potential for creativity in everyday life, it failed to spur the col l ec- 52 tive actual i zati on of that creativity by means of a revolution made by al l in the i nterests of al l ; i nstead, it i nvited the i ndividual to lose hi s way twi ce over: to engage i n a margi nal activity which rel i ed on Bolshevism to spark the revolutionary process, and to strive for a strictly cul tural overthrow of cul ture. Thi s de facto renunci ati on of the possi bi l i ti es for subj ective sel f-real i zati on, even as these were i nvoked on the l i terary and pictorial levels, was accompani ed by a call to sacri fice ( from Breton on several occasi ons)-a cal l , i n other words, to the castrati on which i s the Iynchpi n of al l hi erarchical power. Those who had wanted to restore art to l i fe thus ended up turni ng direct experi ence i nto just one more value on the art market. What prevented Surreal i sm from becomi ng a cultural cattle- trough, after the fashi on of abstract art, existenti ali sm, the nouveau roman, Pop Art, or happeni ngs, was the fact that-unl ike Aragon, E luard and Dal f-Breton, Peret, Tanguy and Artaud di d conti nue, confusedly and spontaneously, to reject anythi ng in the movement that deni ed thei r subj ecti vi ty or ul ti mate uni queness. I n his "Preface for a Repri nt of the Mani festo" ( 1929), Breton put i nto words what the best of the Surreali sts almost certai nly fel t: I f a system whi ch I make my own, which I slowly adapt to mysel f, such as Surreali sm, remai ns, and must always remai n, substanti al enough to overwhelm me, it wi ll for all that never acquire the wherewithal to make of me what I wanted to be, as ready and wi l l i ng as I mi ght be for i t to do so. The choi ce of l i fe, i f not restricted to the rol e of nourishi ng l i t erary or pictorial forms of expressi on, to the world of i mages, anal o gi es, metaphors or trick words, i s thus apt to lead to an i nci pi ent practice, to an embryoni c science of man that is stri pped of al l pos i tivism, as far removed as can be imagi ned from the speci al i zed atti tude of the "sci enti st", and i nhabited by a desire to experi ment i n every directi on, and to document all such experi mentation to what ever extent mi ght be requi red. 53 KNOWLEDGE OF THE HUMAN AND ITS EXPERI MENTAL I NVESTI GATI ON Paul Nouge of the Belgi an Surreal i st group puts hi s fi nger on a very important concern of the movement when he wri tes: We must turn what can be ours to the very best account. Let man go where he has never gone, experience what he has never experienced, thi nk what he has never thought, he what he has never been. But help i s cal led for here: such departures, such a cri si s, need to be preci pi tated, so with thi s in mi nd let us create disconcerti ng objects. Leavi ng aside the fai th thus pl aced i n the earth-shattering power of such objects, whose transformation i nto commodi ties and condi tion ing mechanisms Surrealism failed to foresee, Nouge's proposition has the great merit that i t prohibits from the outset any appeal to pure knowledge. Likewise, when the first number of L Revolution Surrealiste rei terated Aragon's formulation, in Une Vague de reves [A Wave of Dreams], to the effect that "We have to arrive at a new decl aration of the ri ghts of man", the clear i mpl ication is that nothi ng that concerns thought, imagi nation, action, expression or desi re mu<t he deemed al ien to the revolutionary project. The founderi ng of this project under the helmsmanshi p of Stal i ni sm and i ts attendant leftisms was to reduce Surreal i sm to a mere generator of what mi ght be ca1 ! er thp speci al effects of the human. From this box of tricks, not al together unl i ke a Renai ssance "wonder- cabi net", al bei t one richer in wri tten testimonials than in actual phenomena, Breton and his companions contrived to produce a shi mmeri ng rhetori c, but despite al l their efforts they were unable wholly to conceal the i nsurrectional purpos es for which all these di scoveries had origi nal l y been made. "We need to form a physi cal i dea of the revolution, " sai d Andre Masson i n La Revolution Surrealiste, Number 3 , and here we have both a way of gauging the contribution of the human dimension and the key that in a revol utionary si tuation wi l l make it possible to loot 54 (while at the same time enriching) the Surrealist storehouse of knowledge. Before Breton located the moment of revolution in a mythical absolute where individual and collective history were supposed to come together, Guy Rosey, in Violette Nozieres ( 1933), wrote the fol lowing lines, resounding like a last echo of Masson's watchword: Here revealed at last by another inviolate sel of hers is the personalit unknown and poetic of Violette Nozieres murderess as one might be a painter FRUD AND AUTOMATIC WRITING A considerable portion of Surrealism's energ was applied to research into the limits of the possible, into extreme forms, varieties of expression, and the affirmation or destruction of the human phe nomenon in its relationships with the world, as seen from the stand point of a total liberation of the emotions. A multitude of character istically Surrealist preoccupations arose from this attitude, among them the interest in spiritualism; the taste for Gothic novels; the experimentation with techniques of simulation and critical paranoia; the interest in childhood and in madness; the exploration of the world of dreams and of the unconscious or subconscious; the ana lytical approach to individual mythologies, as to the mythologies of allegedly primitive peoples (Michel Leiris, Breton, Artaud, Peret); the excursions into Celtic origins Oean Markale and Lancelot Lengyel); the infatuation with alchemy and hermetic doctrines; and the constrction of a new literar, artistic and philosophical pan theon which rescued many very great names from the silence, lies or discredit of official culture, among them Lautreamont, de Sade, 55 Fourier, Loui s- Cl aude de Sai nt- Marti n, Germai n Nouveau, Oscar Pani zza, Antoi ne Fabre d' Ol i vet, Al phonse Rabbe, Chri sti an Dietrich Grabbe, Xavier Forneret, Al fred Jarry, Facteur Cheval , Arnol d Bockl i n, Monsu Des i deri o, Al brecht Al tdorfer, Ni col as Manuel Deutsch, Urs Graf, Jean Mesl i er, Pierre- FraOoi s Lacenai re, Paracelsus, Basi l Val enti ne, Achi m von Arni m, Lewi s Carroll , Edward Lear, lichtenberg, Bl ake, Charles Robert Maturi n, Monk Lewi s, Adol f Wol fl i , Jean-Pi erre Bri sset, Douani er Rousseau, Betti na, "the Portuguese Nun", Arthur Cravan, Jacques Vache, Lotus de Pa'ni , and many more. The influence of Freud, whom Breton vi si ted i n t 92 t , was appar ent from the very begi nni ng. When the "Bureau de Recherches Surreal i stes" opened at t 5 rue de Grenel l e, on t t October t 924, i ts stated ai m was to acquai nt the general public wi th those psychoana lytical methods whereby anyone coul d attai n better knowledge of thei r darker si de and thei r hi dden possi bi l i ti es. Once rid of i ts dusty therapeutic pretenti ons, the art of psychoanalysi s, along wi th the psychoanalysis of an art made by al l , woul d be capable, accordi ng to the Surreal ists, of laying the groundwork for a radi cally di fferent form of social behaviour. The fai lure of thi s project even before it had been thoroughly clarified was to put the Surreal ists at a distinct di sadvan tage i n their attempt to make common cause wi th the Communist Party. The notion di d not disappear enti rely, however, for i n t 945 we find Gherasim Luca, i n hi s Lnventeur de ramour [The I nventor of Love], proposi ng a "l i mi tless eroticization of the orol etariat" as a general organi zi ng tool and hol di ng it as a sel f-evi dent truth that the di s mantl i ng of the i ni ti al Oedi pal posi ti on must faci l itate the qual i tative transfonation of l ove i nto a uni versal lever of revoluti on. Freud also i nspi red the Surreal i sts i n thei r hosti l i ty to the psy chi atrists, to the i nventors of the very noti on of madness, to all who held sway over the worl d of chi ldren (those whom Jules Celma would l ater call "educastrators") . Breton evoked a chi l dhood i n whi ch "everythi ng, after al l , ought t o favour the effective and guar anteed possessi on of onesel f" , addi ng hopeful l y that "thanks to 56 Surrealism, it seems as if those conditions may be restored". 'The lib eration of children"-Roger-Gilbert Lecomte would later exclaim "why, that would be even finer than opening the madhouses! " And here again is Breton, in Nadja : "But as I see it, all confinements are arbitrary. I still cannot see why a human being should be deprived of freedom. " These are ideas that have since made headway: even if Celma was met with police repression, even if Rene Vienet was unable to obtain from the Sorbonne Assembly in May 1 968 that a call be issued for the release of all those held in asylums, it is incon ceivable that revolutionary movements of the future will fail to place such demands high on the agenda. In the case of the Surrealists, it was the absence, again, of a practice concordant with the ideas held by the group that effec tively downgraded the beginnings of a genuine psychoanalytically grounded social campaign-along the lines, perhaps, of that con ducted by Wilhelm Reich, of whom incidentally the Surrealists knew nothing-to a mere technique of revelation and to mere cul tural agitation. This backtracking is already discernible in the Maniesto of 1 924. In his "encyclopaedic" comment on Surrealism, Breton writes: Surrealism is based on the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of previously neglected associations, in the omnipotence of dream, in the disinterested play of thought. It tends to rin once and for all all other psychic mecha nisms and to substitute itself for them in solving all the prin cipal problems of life. The adjacent "dictionary definition" rns as follows: SURREALISM, n. Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express-verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner-the actual func tioning of thought. Dictated by thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern. 57 The importance the Surrealists attributed to automatic writing does little to offset the impression one often gets on readi ng even their finest texts that the movement gravely misjudged its own poten tial riches. By and large the practice of automatism, restricted to writ ing, failed to lead to any analysis of the ego, any uncovering of fan tasies or strange drives, or any critique of language as a form of alien ation. In short, it never got beyond Breton's original set of directions: After you have settled yourself in a place as favorable as possi ble to the concentration of your mind upon itself, have writing materials brought to you. Put yourself in as passive, or receptive, a state of mind as you can. Forget about your genius, your talents, and the talents of every one else. Keep reminding yourself that literature is one of the saddest roads that leads to everything. Write quickly, without any preconceived subject, fast enough so that you will not remember what you're writing and be tempted to reread what you have written. The first sentence will come spontaneously, so compelling is the truth that with every passi ng second there is a sentence unknown to our consci ousness which is only crying out to be heard. It is somewhat of a problem to form an opinion about the next sentence; it doubtless partakes both of our conscious activ i ty and of the other, if one agrees that the fact of having written the first involves the minimum of perception. This should be of no importance to you, however; to a large extent, this is what is most interesti ng and intrigui ng about the urrealist game. The fact still remains that punctuation no doubt resists the absolute continuity of the flow with which we are concerned, although it may seem as neces sary as the arrangement of knots in a vibrating cord. Go on as long as you like. Put your trust in the inexhaustible nature of the murmur. . . . What was being proposed, in other words, was a means of renewing the artistic style, which had been in free fall since Apollinaire, and which Dada had turned into spare parts. 58 THE UNDERWORLD OF DREAMS AND PARESTHAESI AS Dreams do indeed constitute that marvel l ous and unitary worl d whose immanence the Surrealists hymned. The Surrealists' theory of dreams, however, never progressed to a degree commensurate with the amount of attention they paid to the subject. Just as they l eft it to the "communists" to advance the cause of revolution, so l ikewise even their best contributions in this area (those of Breton, in Communicating Vessels and Mad Love, or those of Michel Leiris) were simpl y appl ications of Freud's arguments in The Interpretation of Dreams. La Revolution Surreal iste was content merely to publish accounts of dreams, but it soon became apparent that oneiric inspiration al so qUickly turned into a literary technique. True, the occasional inter pretation would endeavour to show how the beauty of an image can arise from a dream's short- circuiting of meaning, how the poetic spark may spring from a sudden condensation of different emotion al significances that the dream contradictorily combines, how the il lusion of premonition fol l ows a particular dream pathway, and how, once the space- time of the dream has become identical with the space- time of myth, the signs of past, present and future may come to correspond to one another. Yet here too the absence of any impl ications of a practical kind took its tol l , in this case a retreat into the ideology of "the great transparent ones" and hidden mean ings . Confusedly aware, nonetheless, that mastery of dreams woul d imply mastery of life, and that meanwhile those who control sur vival, who run the government and the spectacl e, need al so to be the guardians of dreams, the Surrealists achieved their most con crete defence of the dream when they targeted the psychiatrists and al ienists, psychoanalytical reformism, the technicians of social con ditioning and al l the watchdogs of the mental real m. The hal f cocked nature of this campaign, however, meant that they never effectively demanded a society in which the fantasy worl d of dreams woul d have at its disposal, for the purpose of its material actual ization, the entire technical armamentarium which under pre- 59 sent condi ti ons serves only to destroy those prospects. The Surreali sts were content to mi ne dreams in order to renew the i mages whose interplay so i nterested them; they fai led to appreci ate that thi s was another way for the dream to be co-opted by the domi nant mechanisms of decepti on and fasci nation (as in the pil lagi ng of dreams by the admen and the manufacturers of "si lent majori ti es" ) . Much the same may be said in connection wi th forms of behav iour stigmatized as mad by the logic of profi t, by the rationality of the commodi ty system: the contempt which the Surrealists heaped on torturers in white coats did not inoculate them against a tempta ti on to co-opt attitudes usually treated clinically for purely artistic purposes. Thus, Dalf defined his "paranoiac-criti cal" technique as "a spontaneous method of i rrational knowledge based on the interpre tative-critical association of delusional phenomena", and he appli ed it notably to Violette Nozi eres, paronymic variati ons on whose name-"nazi ere" , "Nazi", "Dinazo", "Nez"-inspi red his drawing of a long-nosed fi gure the sexual symbolism of which evoked both the charm of the young woman and her father's attempt to rape her. Si mi larly, an attempt was made to achieve a general rehabilita tion of certain tendencies judged to be pathologi cal. In 1 928, to commemorate the fifti eth annj verary of the i nvention of hysteria, Number 1 1 of La Revolution Surrea/iste publi shed a beautiful series of photographs of female hysteri CS under the ti tle "Passi onate Attitudes, 1 878". Breton and A rr gon commfntfn Hysteria is a more or less irreducible mental state charac terized by the overturning of the relations that obtai n between the subject and a moral world to which, i n a prac ti cal sense, and in the absence of any delusional system, he considers himself to belong. Thi s mental state answers to the requi rements of a reciprocal seduction which accounts for the hastily accepted miracles of medical suggesti on (or counter-suggestion) . Hysteri a is not a pathological phe nomenon, and i t may justi fi ably be deemed, in ever sense, a supreme form of expression. 60 In The Immaculate Conception ( 1 930) , Breton and Eluard composed texts based on the simulation of various types of mental i l l ness. Knowledge of the wi l d and repressed aspects of man also came from some who were less preoccupied wi th the reconstruction of art, among them Michel Leiris and other of Surrealism's fellow travel l ers, notably Georges Batai I l e and Maurice Hei ne. Hei ne i n particular ( the first person clearly to hai l the l i berato ry spirit of the pedagogical de Sade of Philosophy in the Bedroom) was a methodical explorer of the frontiers of human possi bi l i ty. Better than anyone else, he grasped the hope that Surrealism held out for a real total i ty and a total freedom. Hi s article i n Minotaure, Number 8 ( 1 936) , "Regard sur I'enfer anthropoclasique" [A Look at Anthropo clastic HeI l ], i n a sort of contrapuntal echo to the ol d Surreal ist i nquiry i nto SUici de, sets forth an i magi nary discussi on between de Sade, Jack the Ri pper, the Comte de Mesanges and Professor Brouardel on human bei ngs as the obj ects of a long series of refi ned destructive measures and on the pleasure to be derived from thei r progressi ve and systematic degradati on. I l lustrated wi th pho tographs by the forensi c surgeon Lacassagne from Annales d'hygiene publique et de medecine legale [Annals of Publ i c Health and Legal Medici ne] , the text contrasts the transformati on of man i nto an object, as promoted by a hi erarchical social organizati on, with hi s destructi on i n the name of human passions. As the negation of sl ow rei ficati on, Hei ne proposes the project of the total man, a universe i n which humani ty would paradoxicaIly be reborn from i ts paroxysti c anni hi l ati on i n the relationship between torturer and victi m. The presumption i s that this conscious ni hi l ism, which is the ni hi l ism of the great kiI lers, wi l l precipi tate the transcendence of al l the ol d worl d's negativi ty. The same ni hi l istic perspective governs "Notes sur un c1assement psycho-bi ologique des paresthesies sexuel les" [Notes on the Psycho Biological Cl assi ficati on of Sexual Paresthaesias], where Heine seeks to rid the scienti fic obserati on of man of the last vesti ges of ethical and rel i gi ous prejudice. He adopts the term "paresthaesi a" i n order to elimi nate the false distinction between normal and abnormal and 6 1 apprehend direct experience as a unity despite all its contradictions. Heine's writings-among which "Confessions et obserations psycho sexuelles" also deseres mention-opened a line of inquiry which Bataille was to pursue but on which most Surrealists quickly turned their backs. Dalf, however, was well aware of the potential for provocation in any attribution of aesthetic value to acts condemned by puritani cal laws. For example, in the second issue of Le Surra/ isme au Service de la REvo/ution , he elected to celebrate a non-destructive and perfectly banal paresthaesia, namely exhibitionism: Last May, between Cambronne and Glaciere on the metro, a man about thirty, who was seated opposite a very beauti ful young girl, cleverly parted the pages of a magazine that he was affecting to read, so arranging things that his sex, fully and magnificently erect, was exposed to her view, and to her view only. No sooner had another passenger, an idiot, become aware of this act of exhibitionism, which had plunged the girl into an enormous but delightful state of embarassment, though without eliciting the slightest protest from her, than the mass of travellers fell upon the exhibitionist, hitting him and throwing him out of the car riage. We must cry out in utmost indignation and express our utter contempt for such an abominable way of treating one of the purest and most disinterested acts of which any man is capable in this effete and morally degenerate age. However sympathetic one might find this attitude, it was cer tainly never extended to a general defence of paresthaesias; at best it was subsumed by black humour, at worst incorporated into the stock of images which Dalf used, only slightly in advance of sexually ori entated advertiSing, to test the shock effect of representations of erection, masturbation or defecation. Similar themes inspired Eluard to produce genuinely charm ing verse: 62 In a corer agile incest Circles around the virginity of a sweet little dress But even had aesthetic co- optation not dominated the Surreali sts' concerns, their lack of the sense of totality that moved Maurice Heine and no doubt also Georges Batai lle would have sufficed to reduce any fresh ethical demands on their part-any i nvocati on of a right to free l ove, i ncest, exhibitionism or homosexual i ty-to the rol e of a mere stimul ant to the regeneration of the ol d order of things. Andre Thirion had cl early grasped this paradoxical truth when, i n Le Grand Ordinaire, he offered a jocular demonstration of how i ncest can serve to buttress the stabi l i ty of the family: "Our miseries are due to the fact that we have forgotten the ol d ways, " decl ared our fri end Moscheles i n grave tones as he was getti ng his circumcised member sucked by hi s youngest daughter Sarah, who was barely thirteen. "Modern l i fe has devalued the pure j oys of home and hearth, and every day the practice of sports takes children a l i ttle further away from their parents, and exposes them to a thousand temptati ons. ( No, Sarah! Work on the head-how many times do I have to tell you! And for goodness sake don' t be afraid to use your tongue as much as you can! ) One only needs think of the extreme freedom of manners, i n fact the sheer l icence, that permits the horri fyi ng way couples dress at bal l s, in the street or in public parks. As for the l atest, campi ng hol i days, they encourage a quite i ndecent promi s cui ty, i ndeed I can' t see how campi ng di ffers from vagrancy pure and si mpl e. And have you ever read the columns i n some of the women's weekl ies? They actual l y recommend l ove affairs! Adultery i s supposed to be a good thing! Sarah, come on, girl ! Don't go to sleep on the j ob! " 63 CHAPTER 3 TRANS F ORMI NG THE WORLD REVOLUTI ONARY I DEOLOGY The fail ure of the Barres tri al , as of al l other efforts to equi p Dada with a social and poli ti cal consciousness, led to the adopti on of Marxi sm, as revised and corrected by Leni n, and to the abandon ment of Dada's two great enterprises-the quest for total negati on and the proj ect of a col l ective poetry. The latter, had i t succeeded, woul d have evolved i nto a critical theor i n search of i ts practi cal self-real i zati on through the overthrow of all the condi ti ons present ly i mposed on the worl d and on everyday l i fe. As we have noted, the Surreali st group at i ts very i nception-unsurpri si ngly, i n vi ew of the artistic preoccupations of i ts founders-already bore the traces of thi s twofol d renunci ati on. Thi s was the root, furthermore, of a gUi l ty consci ence whose persi stence throughout the enti re histor of the movement mani fested i tself as a fundamental and unshakeabl e despair and a continual hankeri ng, i n consequence, for sel f-justi fi ca tions and exorci sms. Thi s despair of the ego, whi ch i n time devel oped existenti al overtones, was Simul taneously contai ned and com bated by the Surreal ists' l eftism. Unti l their break wi th the Communi st Party, they accepted a functi onal rol e i n the pol i ti cal realm; thereafter that rol e became a caricature, and remai ned so unti l the advent of a compl etely new offi ci al leftism i n 1968. The words that occur most frequently i n Surreal ist i deology are "revolution" and "Iove", and i t must be said that, no matter how con fusedly and abstractly they may be used, certai nly no i nfamy attach es to these words-no bl oodstains i ntel lectual or otherwise. There i s i ndeed somethi ng very touchi ng about Peret and Breton's ti rel ess efforts to keep their ideol ogy pure-or, as Breton so l oved to say, "immacul ate"-especi al ly si nce, qua i deol ogy, it was i mpure by defi ni ti on. Frequently thi s mi x of ri gour and naIvety, produced in a con text of pragmatism or tactical manoeuvri ng, would acquire the poet ic aspect of a chi l di sh vi rtue ("chi ldi sh" bei ng understood i n the pos i tive sense that i t had for Fourier) . Here, for i nstance, i s Breton speaki ng at the Barcel ona Ateneo on 17 November 1922: 67 There is onl y one thing that can get us out, if only for a moment, of the horrible cage in which we are trapped. That thing is revol ution-any revol ution, no matter how bloody-and to this day I cal l for it with al l my might I am sorry if Dada did not turn out to be that revolution, but you have to understand that nothing else much matters to me. Breton made himsel f even cl earer in the collective manifesto "La Revol ution d'abord et toujours" [ Revolution First and Forever]' reprinted in Number 4 of La Revolution Surrealiste ( 1 5 October 1 925) , asserting that "the idea of Revolution i s t he safeguard of everything that is best and most effective in the individual ". We may reasonably take this libertarian sentiment, to which Breton and Peret woul d always remain l oyal ( even if Breton occasional l y failed to live up to it in practice), as embodying precisely that element of "innocence" which kept Surrealism at arm's l ength from Bolshevism and ul timately meant that the movement's heyday woul d be remembered for its attempt (quite rare in history) to create an innocent ideology. This attitude al so accounts for the charming lyricism which compensated for Surrealism's l ack of analysis: "I move through a l andscape," wrote Rene Char in Le Surrealisme au Service de la Reolution, Number 3, "where Revolution and Love together il l uminate amazing perspectives and del iver shattering disqUisitions. " The very confusion that enveloped the notion of revolution al l owed it to encompass the daydreams of subjectivity, the human pas sions, the "i ll tv l ive, the vi ulence or i ndividual demands-indeed everything that tended to resist being reduced and manipulated by bureaucratic revolutions. But this "everthing", sad to say, was just what Surrealism could apprehend only in bits and pieces, in fragments which in their fagmentariness were inevitably inconsequential . To begin with, sincerity and anger still took precedence over concern wi th the poetic image. Thus Desnos's "La Revolution, c'est a- dire la Terreur" [Revolution, That Is To Say, Terror], in LA Revolution Surrealiste, Number 3 , was able to recapture the finest libertarian cadences of an earlier day: 68 But what a rel i ef it would be to witness a methodi cal purge from the popul ati on of all founders of fami l i es, all doers of good works ( chari ty i s a mark of degeneracy) , al l pri ests and pastors ( l et us not forget that crew) , all sol di ery, al l those peopl e who, i f they fi nd a wallet i n the street, wi l l i mmedi ately return i t to i ts rightful owner, al l fathers I l a Cornei l l e, al l mothers of exempl arily l arge fami l i es, al l deposi tors i n savi ngs banks (worse than t he capi tal i sts ) , the pol i ce a s a body, men a nd women of letters, i nventors of serums agai nst epi demi cs, "benefactors of humani ty", di spensers and reci pi ents of compassion-i f onl y al l thi s rabbl e woul d just di sappear! The greatest Revol uti ons are born of strict adherence to a si ngle pri nci pl e; the moti ve for the Revol uti on that i s comi ng wi l l be the pri nci pl e of absolute freedom. I n this admirable l ast sentence Desnos unequivocally defends a genui ne col l ecti ve poetry agai nst the appropri ati on of the Revolution of 1 9 1 7 by the Bolsheviks and their State. As much can not be sai d of Eluard's ambi guous comments i n L Revolution Surreal is te, Number 4 (5 July 1 925) , apropos of a publi c decl aration by the Philosophies group: The opti mi sm of t he Clarte people shone i n al l i ts glory beneath the hammer- and-si ckle sun of a medi ocre regi me founded, just l ike the capi tali st regi me, on the faci l e and repugnant reign of work. Truth to tel l , i t barel y matters to those who are born revoluti onaries that the i nequality of cl asses i s unjust. That El uard could thus quite rightly condemn the reign of work, and then i n the very next breath, with unparal l eled stupi di ty, di sparage the class struggl e, gives us some clue as to how it was that the Surreal ists ( always thought of as cl owns by even the most pri mary and l east cultivated of Marxists) were able for a ti me to accept the role of faithful disci pl es, first to the Communi st Party and l ater to Trotsky. 69 Three months later, however, E luard had cl early made progress, for he si gned the joi nt Surrealist- Clare mani festo L Riolution d'abord et toujours , which i ncluded the pronouncement: "We are not Utopians: we conceive of the comi ng Revolution as strictly social in character. " Unfortunately, the social character i n questi on was that of soci al oppressi on, as per the Bolshevi k model . Breton, i n Le Surrealisme au Service de l a Revolution, Number 2, concl uded a discussi on of "The Rel ati onship between Brai n Work and Capi tal" wi th a proto-Maoi st exhortati on: there is no need to give house- room to speci fical ly i ntel l ec tual pleadi ngs which, i nasmuch as they have any justi fi ca ti on at al l , have no busi ness mani festi ng themselves i n the form of vain corporati st campai gns but ought far rather to persuade those who suffer in thi s way in the present order of thi ngs to serve the prol etariat's admi rable cause unre servedly, and treat that cause just as if it were thei r own. The notion of i ntel lectuals servi ng the people ( a watered-down versi on of Blanqui's theory) was one of the most laughable i deas that the Surreal ists ever espoused. Dada had poi nted out the congeni tal impotence of i ntel l ectuals as such, condemned as they were to reign over a dead planet and i ssue decrees wi th no force i n law unti l such time as the State's real laws assigned these ghosts a role i n the general system of appearances and l i es. A worl d away from Dada's radical - woul d come l ater) which the Communi st Party coul d turn on and off l i ke a tap. The scandal at the Closerie des Li l as i n July 1 925 aptly foreshadowed the Red Guards' "storm in a teacup of piss". Surrealism's leftist cri ti que was not al ways wi thout merit: an exhi bi ti on called 'The Truth About the Col oni es" (September 1 93 t ) was a case i n poi nt. But i f the Surreal i sts occasi onal l y became the cri ti cal consciousness of the Communi st Party, the Communi sts never gave a hoot for these butterfl i es and thei r fasci nati on wi th that great proletari at- crushi ng machi ne, the Party bureaucracy. 70 I n Legitime deense [Sel f- Defence, 1 926], Breton wri tes: "Upon reflecti on, I do not know why I should abstai n any l onger from say i ng that L'Humaniti-hi l di sh, decl amatory, unnecessarily cretin ising i s an unreadable newspaper, utterly unworthy of the rol e of prol e tari an educati on i t cl ai ms to assume. " " I cannot understand, " he goes on, "that on the road of revolt there should be a right and a l eft . " "I say that the revoluti onary fl ame burns where it l i sts, and that i t i s not up to a smal l band of men, in the period of trnsition we are living through, to decree that i t can burn only here or there. " Conspi cuously absent from al l thi s discussi on i s the prol etariat, and Rene Daumal i s ri ght to direct his i rony at the supposed Marxists of the Party and the l eft wi ng sects, whose "total fai l ure to comprehend the di alecti c makes them i nfi ni tely more i gnorant than absolutely any revoluti onary worker, for whom the very least that may be said is that he lives the dialectic" . Needless to say, merely by imagi ni ng that the masses mi ght be reached via the Communi st Party, Surrealism automatically prevented itsel f-quite asi de from the grotesque nature of such an i l l usi on from speaki ng the l anguage of revolution or from ever devel opi ng a radical discourse. The i dea of a poetry made by al l , had it ever been properly analysed and carried to its l ogical conclusi on, woul d have been found to embody the revolutionary theory of general i zed sel f management-that "i nvi si bl e ray", to borrow Breton's descri pti on of the surreal , "whi ch wi l l make i t possible for us one day to rout our adversaries". As I have tried to show above, Surrealism di d have a theory, al bei t a l atent, fragmentar one, qUickly swal l owed up by i deol ogy. It was concerned with privileged moments of l i fe and the quest for such moments, wi th l ove and its subversive potenti al in everyday l i fe, wi th the analysis of the quotidian and i ts al i enati ons. It never rose to the l evel of a cri ti que of Bolshevism, even though Breton was capabl e, bel atedly, of offeri ng an implicit correcti on to hi s appal l i ng juxtaposi ti on, i n a sentence such as the fol l owi ng, of the author of Poisies and the author of What Is To Be Dono: "Surreal i sm i s part of a 71 vast undertaking, of that reconstructi on of the universe to which both Lautreamont and Leni n commi tted themselves utterly. " When polemics broke out between the Surreal i sts and thei r ol d fri end Pi erre Navi l l e, the opposi ti on between cul ture and soci al organi zation was addressed by nei ther si de. "Quarrel s of the i ntel l ect" , wrote Navi l l e i n La Reolution e t les intellectuels ( 1 926) , "are absolutely vai n in face of this one uni fied condi ti on [ wage- l abour] . " A few pages earl i er, however, he had al ready exposed the l i mi ts of hi s own intellect and of hi s thesi s, once agai n bri ngi ng up a di l em ma that had haunted the Surreal i sts ever si nce their fai lure to under stand Dada: "00 the Surreal ists bel i eve in a l i berati on of the mi nd pri or to the abol i ti on of bourgeoi s condi ti ons of material l i fe, or do they thi nk that a revolutionary mi nd can onl y come i nto existence i n the wake of a successsfully compl eted revol uti on?" Everyone stuck to thei r own posi ti on, and no criti que of social separati ons was ever broached by any of the parti es. Thus Breton held that revolution must concern the facts and the mi nd, Navi l l e that i t must affect the facts before it can affect the mi nd, while Artaud held out for the primacy of the mi nd i n the genesis of revoluti on. I t was not l ong before the Stal i ni st vi rus made i ts appearance. No one bl i nked when Georges Sadoul , as part of a denunci ati on of the French police i n the December 1 929 i ssue of L Repo/ution Surrealiste, stated flatly that he would l i ke "to take thi s opportunity to hai l the GPU, a counter- pol i ce i n the serice of the prol etari at, ever bit as necessary to the Russi an Revol uti on as the Red Army" . Ann barely a murmur was heard when Aragon, i n "Red Front" ( 1 93 1 ) , famously cried "Long l ive the GPU, dialectical fi gure of heroi sm". Only Roland de Renevi l l e, then cl ose to the Grand Jeu group, ven tured to point out that Aragon's poem "ends with a hymn to the GPU whi ch, seen from the prophetic standpoi nt of the mind, becomes simply a hymn to the pol ice" . Later, after the brak with the Stal i ni sts, Breton turned more unequivocally towards Trotsky. With Trotsky he col l aborated on the mani festo "For an I ndependent Revolutionary Art" ( 1 93 8) . (At 72 Totsky's request, Diego Rivera co-si gned with Breton i n hi s stead. ) Before l ong, however, Breton was admi tti ng his astonishment that Trotsky could i nvoke the ol d Jesui t precept that "the end justi fi es the means", and he cal l ed i mmediately for "a thoroughgoi ng criti que of certai n aspects of the thought of Leni n and even of Marx". He hi m sel f never fol l owed up on thi s. After the Second Worl d War the pol itical acti on of Surreal i sm was i ntermi ttent and scattershot. The discovery of Fourier mi ght perhaps have underpi nned an overal l recasti ng of the movement, but Breton woul d always prefer Fourier the vi si onary, Fourier the poet of anal ogy, to Fourier the theorist of a radically new soci ety. Peret and Breton's l ast successors took Cuba i nstead of the USSR as the object of thei r enthusiasm. Echoi ng the someti me si ni ster good faith of a Sadoul , Jean Schuster would write, in Batai lles pour Ie surrealisme: What coul d possi bl y be more legiti mate than that a revol u ti onary soci ety, i n the process of constructi ng social i sm, should fi nd itsel f obl i ged, as Cuba does today, to requi re a surplus of labour from i ts members, thus ensuri ng that work be as fairly shared and equally remunerated as possi bl e? 73 AN I NFORAL ORGANI ZATI ON Spurred by i ts own i nternati onal i sm and ai ded by the cri si s condi ti ons i n al l i ndustri al i zed countri es, Surreal i sm swarmed far and wi de. Groups model l ed on the French one sprang up i n Rumani a, Yugosl avi a, Czechosl ovaki a, Scandi navi a, Bel gi um, I taly, South Ameri ca, the Canary I sl ands, Mexi co, Japan, Hai ti . Di rect contacts general l y accompani ed the establ i shment of rel ati ons between groups. The French group set the tone-which meant, most often, that Breton set the tone. The basis of recrui tment, i ndeed the basis of the group, had much to do, no doubt, wi th Breton's claim in Les Pas perdus that "One publ i shes to fi nd peopl e, and for no other reason"-an ambi guous statement i ndeed i f one consi ders how generous, yet at the same time how authoritari an, the author of Nadja could be. Breton was a bri l l i ant thi nker, but he was less radi cal than Peret. The ardour he brought to fri endships whether transi ent or enduri ng was such as to pl unge hi m now i nto bl i nd fai th, now i nto wi l d rage. Even though he was as fond of i mposi ng his views as others were to obl i ge hi m i n thi s, the fact remai ns that the Surreal i st group never devel oped any but the most flui d of hi erarchi es. Deeper probi ng would doubtless assign Benj ami n Peret a more i mportant rol e, for, so far from bei ng the second- i n- command, the fai thful l i eutenant that an obtuse view of thi ngs has portrayed, Peret was in fact the most i ndependent and 1 t brtari an member of the mcvcmnt. I t V3S thJnks to hi tli , i n all likelihood, that nearly al l the group's deci si ons were arri ved at in a l argely democratic way. Breton was the centre, certai nly, but thi s al so made hi m i nto a target , and those whom he al l owed hi msel f to treat as fri ends , j ust as much as those who al l owed themsel ves to put up wi t h hi m as a fri end, rarely l os t an opportuni ty to mock hi s seri ousness, hi s l ack of humour, hi s tantrums , hi s tendency to choose peopl e's aperi ti fs for them. The most seri ous charges, no doubt, were made by Desnos: 74 Andre Breton detests Eluard and hi s poetry. I have seen Breton throw Eluard's books i nto the fi re. Admi ttedly, i t was on a day when the author of LAmour La Poe;e had refused to loan him ten thousand francs-that is, unl ess Breton was prepared to sign a bill of exchange. So why does Breton conti nue to si ng the prai ses of Eluard and hi s work? Because Paul Eluard, as Communist as he claims to be, i s a property speculator, and the money he gets from sel l i ng swampland lots to workers i s used for buyi ng the pi ctures and Afri can art i n which the pai r of them deal . Andre Breton detests Aragon, and never tires of recount i ng hi s i nfami es . Why then does he show hi m any consi d erati on? Because he is afrai d of hi m, and he knows that a break wi th Aragon would spell disaster for himself. Andre Breton once broke off with Tristan T zara for the very preci se reason that when we attended Tzara's "Eveni ng of the Bearded Heart", the Dada- i n-chi ef had us arrested. Breton knows thi s very wel l . He saw and heard T zara denounci ng us to the pol icemen just as clearly as I did. Why i s he now reconci led with T zara? Because Tri stan T zara buys Negro feti sh obj ects and pai nti ngs and Andre Breton sells them. I II an article of hi s on pai nti ng, Andre Breton takes Joan Mi r6 to task for havi ng made a l i ttle money al ong the way. But it was he, Breton, who, havi ng bought the pai nti ng "Pl oughed Land" for fi ve hunded francs, turned around and sold it for si x or ei ght thousand. So Mi r6 may have come across a l i ttle money along the way, but i t was Breton who stuffed his pockets wi th i t. As seri ous as a pope, as digni fied as a magus, as pure as El i aki m, Andre Breton i s the author of Surrealism and Painting. I t is a curious fact, however, that the only painters who find unconditional favour i n his eyes are those with whom he can do busi ness. What Desnos rightly condemns here, albeit after the fact, is i ndicative at the ver least of a malaise in the Surrealists' interpersonal rel ationships. What is this concern with the art market, repressed 75 or conceal ed behi nd the fi rmament of i deas, if not hi story's know i ng wi nk i n the di recti on of those who have been payi ng i t no heed? The basic fraud perpetrated by Surreal i sm thus emerges quite clearly on the factual pl ane: the ideology of an art that seres l i fe cannot l ong prevail over the reality of art and surival bei ng pressed i nto the ser vice of a spectacular soci ety founded on the commodi ty system. In the 1 9 October 1924 issue of hi s revi ew 3 9 1 , Picabi a described Surreal i sm as "nothi ng but Dada i n the travesti ed form of an adverti si ng bal l oon for Breton and Co. " Surreal i sm i ndeed gave the appearance of bei ng above al l a scheme whereby Breton sought to establ i sh an objective basi s for his subjective choi ces, tastes or passi ons. That he shoul d also make busi ness deals under cover of the movement was i n the order of thi ngs-part of the shameful aspect of all i deol ogy. But si mply to denounce Breton was not enough: what needed closer scruti ny was Surreal i sm's unheal thy and suspect defence of the work of art (poetry, pai nti ng, object or i mage) . As soon as art was rei nvested wi th val ue, the natural arrivisme of the arti st, compl ete wi th the desire to make a name and promote an oeuvre, was bound to foll ow. This tendency, though offi ci al ly con demned by Surreal i sm, existed wi thi n the group i tself. Breton may have written, in Pleine marge [ Wi de Margi n] ( t 940), that "I am not for adepts"; the fact remai ns that, except for Artaud and Peret, he was never to have anythi ng but adepts, and i ndeed he took very good care of thei r proper i ni ti ati on, so as never to be surrounded by any thi ng but discreet approbation I t i s i n the shadow of thi s parti cularly di stressi ng ki nd of behav i our that the question of breaks and expul si ons has to be consi dered. "Wi thout bei ng obsessed by personal rancour and refusi ng to derive our private angui sh on every occasi on from the soci al condi ti ons i mposed upon us, we are obl i ged to turn around at every moment, and to hate"-thus Breton i n Legitime de1ense. There is no denyi ng that expul si ons and the breaki ng off of rel ati ons are the only arms avai l abl e to an i ntel l ectual group. The probl em i n the case of the Surreal i sts was that the struggle agai nst compromi se was waged from 76 the standpoi nt of an i deology, that is to say, from the standpoi nt of an i ni ti al compromi se struck wi th the rul i ng order. The Surreal i st group expelled quite a few notori ous i diots who had been admi tted i n the first pl ace out of misplaced i ndulgence. Joseph Del tei l , author of a l i fe of Joan of Are, and Maxime Alexandre, who would later convert to Catholici sm under the aus pi ces of Paul Claudel , are cases i n point, and there were others. This by no means prevented the Surrealists from maki ng common cause with such mediocrities as Camus and I onesco, or, especially in the post-war peri od, from keepi ng company with some truly pathetic characters. There were expul si ons, too, that were utterly well founded: expulsi ons for pol i tical reasons, or on the grounds of i rreconci l able di fferences ( as wi th Artaud) , or for atti tudes that were repugnant (Aragon, Sadoul , Eluard, Dal l) . And fi nal ly there were expulsi ons, at once the most si gni fi cant and the most questi onable ones-and the most i ndicative of the movement's malaise and its need to exorcise i t-of artists or wri ters seduced by the appeal of money and accl ai m. Surreal i sm demanded of i ts exponents that they not parti ci pate in the spectacular and commodity- driven system of which the move ment i tsel f partook wi l ly- ni l ly. When Breton threw Phi l i ppe Soupault and Robert Desnos out, accusi ng them of l i terary coquetry, he would have done well to heed the already resonant cauti onary words of Rene Daumal : "Beware, Andre Breton, lest you fi gure i n future textbooks of l i terary history, remember that the only disti nc ti on we ever aspi red to was to go down i n the annals of cataclysms. " The fact i s that Surrealism accepted compromi se-up to a poi nt. I t was acceptable to deal i n works of art, or to achi eve disti ncti on by produci ng such works, but only to a certai n degree. And in Breton's eyes the gaugi ng of that degree was hi s prerogative. "I t has often struck me", noted Victor Crastre in his Le Drme du surrea!isme, "that active spi rits were rare in the group. All decisions were taken by a small directorate comprised of Breton, Aragon, Eluard, Desnos, Peret and Leiris, then accepted wi thout further di scussi on. Critical reac- 77 ti ons were voiced as i nfrequently among the Surreal i sts as in any hi ghl y organized party. " How coul d a group with such a passive atti tude towards real struggles i n the outsi de worl d condemn passi vi ty i n i ts own mem bers? How could a group accepti ng of hi erarchi es oppose ambi ti on and opportuni sm? And how coul d a group whose i nsti ncts were essenti al l y cultural be expected to wi thstand the co- optive mecha ni sms of a cul ture that was i nexorably fal l i ng under the sway of the economy and i ts representati ons? 78 CHAPTE R 4 PROMOTI NG THE I MAGE AS OBJ E CT LANGUAGE AND ITS SUBVERSION The adventure of the arts ( pai nti ng, sculpture, poetry, l i terature, musi c) passes i n i ts decl i ne through three essential phases; a phase of sel-liquidation ( Mal evich's "white square", MuttlDuchamp's uri nal rebaptized "Fountai n", Dadai st word-coll ages, Finnegans Wake, certai n composi ti ons by Varese) ; a phase of sel-parody ( Sati e, Pi cabi a, Duchamp) ; and a phase of sel-transcendence, exemplified i n the directly l ived poetry of revoluti onary moments, in theory as i t takes hol d of the masses, or i n this notice posted on Saragossa Cathedral by Ascaso and DUIUti , and fol lowed up by the acti on announced; "Havi ng learnt that i njustice reigns i n Saragossa, Ascaso and Durruti have come here to shoot the Archbishop. " Surrealism partook of each of these three tendencies but gave itself over to none of them; on the contrary, it deformed them to the benefit of the same separate art and separate thought whose demise they were i ntended to embody. Hence the real conflict was trans muted i nto i deology, i nto a system of i deas which was cut off from real i ty, simultaneously conceali ng and distorti ng i t. On the moral plane this process created a confrontati on between an ethic of puri ty and a surrender to compromise; on the aesthetic pl ane, submi ssi on to the rul i ng l anguage of words, si gns or art stood opposed to the refusal of that l anguage, i ts redirection, subversi on, and replacement by the magic of i mages and objects drawn from the adventure of everyday l i fe. True to Dada, Franci s Picabia passed defi ni tive j udgement on art when he described it as "a pharmaceutical product for imbeci l es". And here i s Artaud, as l ate as 1 927, i n Le Pese-ner [The Nervometer l "All wri ti ng is pi g-swi l l . People who come down from their cl ouds to try and say anythi ng at al l about what is goi ng on in their heads are pi gs. All l i terati are pi gs, especi al ly those of the present time. " But i t was not i n the same spirit as Picabia or Artaud that Surrealism rejected art and writing. Its rejection concerned the wri t i ng only of an Andre Gi de, an Anatole France or a Paul C1audel , the 8 1 art onl y of the Cubists, the Abstracti oni sts or the Salon pai nters. Even i n 1 952, speaki ng on Ode, Breton still fel t compel l ed to assai l what he cal l ed a "marvel l ous speci men of a species that we Surreal i sts have ever wished exti nct, that of the professi onal littirteur, the i ndi vi dual perpetually gnawed by the need to wri te, to publ i sh, to be read, transl ated, commented upon-the type of person who is sure that he wi l l "hook" us, and that he wi l l "hook" posterity too, through the sheer quanti ty of his producti on, just so l ong as thi s i s not attai ned at the expense of styl e. " Unfortunately the di sti ncti on i mpl i ed i s a completely false one, and i ndeed al l ows the very worst varieties of l i terature to escape rebuke. For proof of thi s, were proof needed, one has only to re- read al l the l i terary testi moni al s, all the effusi ve prefaces, al l the backscratchi ng puffery that the Surreal i sts al l owed themselves to produce as favours to fri ends; al ternatively, one has onl y to contem plate the unspeakable exercises i n style publ i shed i n t he Surreal i st peri odi cals of the postwar peri od. At the same ti me, however, thei r creative experi mentati on brought the Surreal i sts face to face wi th the redoubtabl e l anguage whi ch is not merel y the i di om of Gi dean l i terature but, far more broadly, the domi nant mode of al l communi cati on, all expresssi on. They were thus very <oon deal i ng wi t h t wo correlati ons: that between thi s domi nant l anguage and the forces of repressi on and decepti on, and that between l i vi ng speech and revol t. I n Legitime defense Breton ri diculed Henri Barhl !<<f, the Part i ntellectual , who was cal l i ng for arti sti c renewal , in the fol l owi ng terms: "What does this artistic renaissance matter to us? Long l ive the social revol uti on, and i t al one! We have a serious account to settle wi th the mi nd, we are too uncomfortable i n our thought . . . . " Peret al so took ai m at the al i enati ng character of detached thought and of the prevai l i ng use of l anguage: 'There are certai n sentences that completely prevent me from maki ng l ove. " I mpl i ed here, of course, i s the existence of a l anguage (understood broadly enough to i nclude attitudes, songs, gestures, speech, and so on) 82 whi ch on the contrary encourages us to make love, and i ndeed to make revol uti on. Surreal i sm, though it may not have overl ooked such a l anguage compl etel y, cannot be sai d to have come very cl ose to i t. The movement's confi nement withi n cul ture l i mi ted i t to devel opi ng and experi menti ng wi th a mere shadow of the revol uti on of l anguage, and this under strictly isol ated conditions: the Surreal i sts champi oned an emanci pati on of words and i mages that mi stook a certai n autonomy for real freedom and chance abstract associ ati ons for real gauntl ets thrown down to the ol d worl d. Sti l l , the more radical fel t the temptation to i denti fy poetry, as the mai n counter- l anguage, wi th revoluti onary theory, whi ch detaches itsel f from the real struggles of the proletari at, then rej oi ns them i n the shape of a radi cal i zi ng practice. Thus Andre Thiri on and Pi erre Yoyotte di d produce a number of fine Marxi st analyses, even if critical thought was not si gni ficantly advanced thereby. The noti on that the true l anguage of poetry governs acti on and con tributes to i ts ful fi l ment must i n fact be sought elsewhere. Certai nl y such a l anguage has nothi ng i n common with the verbi age and the Stal i ni zi ng gul l i bi l i ty of Aragon's "Red Front". Nor does i t j i be wi th i nsults and sarcasm ( as i n "Jean Cassou, Dog-Savant; Marcel Arl and, the Town Sewer; Albert Thibaudet, Fri end to Tooth Decay; Maurice Maeterl inck, Featherless Bi rd; Paul Valery, Natural - Born Cl own; Cocteau the Sti nki ng Beast", etc. , etc. ) , unl ess such i nsults follow or announce events cal l i ng for an i mmediate scandal ous or vi ol ent response. A case i n poi nt i s the pamphlet A Corse, publ ished on the occasi on of the death of Anatole France ( 1 924) . I n sharp contrast to the ordinary use of the l i terary i nsul t, A Corse broke wi th the con venti on accordi ng to whi ch no i l l shoul d be spoken of the dead, and effectively rehabi l i tated desecrati on; words here were not separate from acti on, i ndeed thei r role was to occasi on acti on, and to estab l i sh a precedent. Si mi l arly, a genui nel y poetic functi on i s met by the fol l owi ng l i nes, publ ished upon the death of Joffre, but three years before that of Poi ncare: 83 Marshal Joffre Marshal Foch Georges Clemenceau and President Poincare will ever endure in our memor Peret and Eluard strove to bri dge the gap between poetry and the act envisaged, but i t has to be said that their call to murder i n the fol lowi ng passage l ies open to the charge which revolutionary tac ti cs must perforce level at any gratuitous terrorism: In France our own shithouse Mussol i ni has once more crawled out of the sewer. Poincare presides as the "average Frenchman" over banal events and rotting straw men. How much longer can he stay the obviously willing hand of the assassin? As a rle i t was Peret who unerri ngly found the sensual l anguage of the true cry of rage and execrati on. His Je ne mange pas de ce pain-Ii puts one in mind of the chants i ntoned by ancient Welsh bards, which accordi ng to Jul ius Caesar struck such terror i nto enemies that they had been known to fal l dead on the spot. Rarely has the power of contempt, in the struggle agai nst the oppressiveness and stupidity of authority, attai ned such an i ntensi ty ot raw el oquence. The hero ism of the patriot will remai n a dead letter unti l we forget the words: Rot Cundami;ii de fa Tour Rot you spineless shit. And great leader will have to ponder their weight in history so long as little children conti nue to recite Peret's ditty about "Tger" Clemenceau: He has croaked Eat him maggots "to the last ditch" Devour this corpse And let his bones whistle up the revolution. 84 When it came to the l anguage of practi ce, however, Peret deal t merely wi th i ts most di rectly emotional and immediate dimensi on . Like al l the Surreali sts , whose real practice was more artistic than revoluti onary, he never tested radical theory, redUci ng i t i nstead to a challenge to the rul i ng i deological l angage that was i tself couched i n i deological terms. Breton i s on the way to a serious analysis of the l anguage of the domi nant ideol ogy i n "I ntroduction to the Di scourse on the Pauci ty of Real i ty", when he notes that "words tend to group themselves accordi ng to speci fic affi ni ti es whose general result i s to recreate the same old worl d over and over agai n". But he fai l s to grasp that such a language i s si mply the most hi ghly sophisticated and persuasive form of the i deological system which power (that of the rul i ng cl ass or caste) uses to assert i tsel f. Thus when he goes on, apropos of words, "I t is enough that we di rect our criticism at the l aws that gov ern thei r assembly", he refuses to understand that only the l anguage of total subversi on-only radical theory or practical poetry-an successfully destroy both the domi nant language and the old worl d. By contrast, to assert that "words pl ay, words make l ove" is to cl ai m to be combati ng the l anguage of power whi le actually renewi ng and moderni zi ng that l anguage and givi ng i t a fresh appearance of l i fe. The most lucid tendencies withi n Surrealist ideology were forever seeki ng to retrieve the repressed radical moment of Dada's final period, and i ndeed several such tendencies (paralleling differi ng attitudes towards art) are clearly disti nguishable, i ncludi ng self-parody, the hope for transcendence, the will to destrction, and the l iterar opti on. The subversive nature of Dadai sm's word-collages was i nherited by the Surreali sts i n i ts pl ayful aspect only. I t i s true that Marcel Duchamp's dall i ance wi th i nfectious phonetic puns and wordpl ay retai ned a certai n demysti fyi ng power: Le systeme metrite par UI temps blel0rrhagieux The metritic system [ not the metric system] during blenorrhagic [as opposed to orageux, or stormy] weather 85 Du dos de la cuiller au cui de la douri riere From the back of the spoon to the arse of the dowager La bagarre d'Austerlitz The dust-up [not the Bataille, and not the Gare] of Austerl i tz Rrose Se1avy trouve qu'un insecticide doit coucher avec sa mere avant de la tuer Rrose Sel avy feels that an i nsecti ci de ought to sleep wi th its mother before ki l l i ng her Les punaises sont de rigueur Fleas are required Mi chel Leiris uses a si mi l ar method to i l l umi nate the mysterious anal ogies thrown up by the reveries of subjectivi ty, by the secret agencies of the mi nd, as wi tness these two pl ays on words from hi s "Glossai re: j'y serre mes gloses" [ Gl ossary: Where I Keep My Glosses} Epaves: dies pavent la mer Wrecks : they pave the sea Fantome: enfant! par les heaumes Ghost: somethi ng born of hel mets The second "dtfi ni tion" here contai nc ; rnvprt reference to the fan. - tastic scene in Horace Walpol e's The Castle of Otranto where a gigan ti c hel met appears i n the castl e yard. Whereas Lei ri s sought to uncover a l anguage whose flui di ty al l owed it to express the vi ci ssitudes of subjectivi ty, whose reso nances referred us to the i nner l ife of the i ndivi dual (several of Lei ri s's books analyse l anguage as the receptacl e of a personal mythology) , Breton for hi s part fostered bel i ef i n an objective counter- language in which the connecti ons between words coul d escape the control of the domi nant l anguage and i ts rati onal i ty. The 86 Surreali sts cl early bel i eved that the reigni ng language-in-itself coul d be successful l y contested by means of an abstract form of language-or itself. That there is such a thi ng as l anguage- for- i tsel f is ampl y demon strated by the l anguage of revoluti onary moments. The si gns of that l anguage are many and various, and they al l tend towards uni ficati on i n a general i nsurrecti onal movement, i n a global transcendence. Leiris showed thi s tendency at work i n the i ndividual ; the art of chi l dren and the art of the mad exempl i fi ed i t in a parti al way. But it was onl y i n such fragmented or epiphenomenal mani festati ons, unfortu nately, that l anguage- for- i tself was perceived by Surreal i sm. The Surreal i sts conceived of a counter- language-whi ch to begin wi th never answered to anythi ng beyond a need to get out of the rut of tradi ti onal poetry, to wri te a di fferent ki nd of poetry-as an i mmedi ate given. Thi s enti rely l i terary requirement gave ri se to research of two ki nds : research i nto the autonomy of the rel ati on shi ps between words a nd research i nto the psychoanalytical uni ty of those rel ati onshi ps. Lautreamont's evocati on of "the chance encounter of a sewi ng machi ne and an umbrel l a on a dissecti ng table" was the start i ng poi nt for the Surreal ists' laboratory experi ments wi th l anguage. The game of Exqui si te Corpse was based above all on the pri nci pl e of obj ective chance. I t i s defi ned i n Breton and E luard's Dictionnaire abrege du surreal isme [Abri dged Di cti onary of Surreal i sm, 1 938J as follows : A folded-paper game in which sentences or pi ctures are cre ated by several people, none of whom can tell what the con tributi on of any precedi ng pl ayer may have been. The clas si c exampl e, whi ch supplied the name of the game, is the first sentence ever obtained in this way: "The exqui si te corpse shal l dri nk the new wi ne. " Breton proceeded, i n Communicating Vessels, to try and i denti fy an i nternal l ogic common to al l sentences thus generated. The model, once agai n, was Lautreamont's phrase: 87 Anyone who contemplates the extraordi nary power that can be exerted upon the reader's mi nd by Lautreamont's cel ebrated formulation, "as beauti ful . . . as the chance encounter of a sewi ng machi ne and an umbrel l a on a dissecting table", and who i s wi l l i ng to consult a key to the si mpl est of sexu al symbol s, must quickly concede that thi s power derives from the fact that the umbrel l a here can stand onl y for a man, the sewi ng machi ne only for a woman ( thi s woul d be true, moreover, for almost al l machi nes, a rei nforci ng factor in this case bei ng that sewi ng machi nes, as i s well known, are often put to onanistic uses by women) , and the dissect ing table onl y for a bed-which i s itself the common mea sure between l i fe and death. When one compares Breton's observati ons wi th Lei ri s's approach, the di fference is quite stri ki ng. Lei ri s sought to ci rcum scribe the l anguage of deSire, whereas Breton wanted to establ i sh and expl icate a new ki nd of beauty-to promote, i n short, a more human aesthetic. Breton had one foot i n l i terature and the other i n real i ty as directly experi enced. Hi s enti re work bears the traces of hi s resul ti ng discomfort, even though he had the wi t to transform thi s hobbl ed state i nto a thought of great el egance. To the pol iti cal right of Breton, the l i terary opti on carried the day. In the case of E luard, tor i nstance, that choi ce was unmi stakabl e: "Lovers are not necessarily the authors of the most beautiful love poems, and even when they are they do not make thei r l ove respon SI ble for i t . " Here direct experI ence i s deemed less i mportant than its representation, than its i mage-a perfect epi tome of the al i enati on of l i fe by culture. To Breton's l eft , meanwhi l e-i f we except Lei ri s, whose research, though of genui ne i nterest, di d not l ead to any social prac ti ce, and so degenerated i nto positivism-the memory of a possi ble transcendence shaped two contrasti ng traj ectori es, that of Peret and that of Artaud. Apart from that portion of hi s work in whi ch he sought to push poetic i nvective as far as i t woul d go ( notably J ne mange pas de ce pail- 88 Il) , Benjami n Peret devoted hi s energies to the constructi on of a ki nd of l i ngui sti c Chateau de Si l l i ng whereby, much as de Sade aspired t o produce an exhaustive catal ogue of sexual fantasi es, he strove t o i nventory every conceivable metaphorical combi nati on. Peret was undoubtedly the onl y person ever to create a counter- l i ngui sti c worl d, a world directly accessible to al l chi l dren and i mpeni tent dreamers, and a worl d whi ch cries out for soci al revol uti on as the only natural means of exposi ng i ts profound banal i ty to al l : I t was a great rage-the great rage of a faded flower tossed upon a church roof-that now shook Nestor. "Just thi nk, " America had tol d hi m, "I am Wurtemberg. " And when Nestor had repl i ed that New York was not i n Wurtemberg, America had retorted angri ly that New York had i ndeed been the capi tal of Wurtemberg ever si nce the sea- l egged squi d had dragged i nto its pi ncers, known as tentacles, a chi l d hangi ng from a branch on Fourteenth Avenue l i ke a cherry from an ol ive tree. Nestor, sure that he was in the right, l i t up a pi pe that he had previously l oaded with pearl oyster shel l s, whi ch al l owed him to say with pride, "I smoke onl y pearl s. " lighti ng a pi pe is not enough, though-you also have to smoke i t. Nestor soon found out that thi s was an i mpossi bi l i ty. His pi pe was smoki ng but he was not. ( from La Brebis galante [The Amorous Ewe] ) The discovery of automatic wri ti ng compensated for the lack of consistency in Dada's negativity, but i t meant that the aspi rati on to a l anguage of the total i ty was now abandoned in favour of the search for a merely l i ngui sti c total i ty. Automatic wri ti ng was Artaud's start i ng- poi nt too, but he took the opposite tack to Peret, di recti ng his attenti on to the i nner l i fe of the mi nd, to the drama of al i enated con sci ousness. Though j ust as far removed as the other Surreal i sts from the historical di mensi on of the antagoni sm between spontaneous verbal associ ati ons and l anguage- i n- itself, Artaud did succeed in i so l ati ng thi s contradi cti on and treati ng it as an ontol ogi cal mal ady, as the curse of bei ng (whence hi s conti nual casting about for exorci sms 89 of one ki nd or another) . A manuscri pt of hi s pi npoi nts the ori gi n of that osci l l ati on wi thi n whi ch he si tuated hi msel f, somewhere between the disaster of wri ti ng on the one hand and spi ri tual and physi cal disaster on the other: In the realm of the determi nate, only those phrases whi ch flow directly from the unconscious can ever reach ful l flower. But i f perchance my consci ous mi nd awakes, ei ther because [lacuna in manuscript], or because of an external event, then I become aware of the obstacles that stand in the way of the ful fi l ment of my thought. Such obstacles are always of the same order: i deas are stri pped of thei r mean i ng, of thei r neuronal or affective content, at whatever poi nt i n thei r formati on or materi al i zati on one apprehends them, at whatever pOi nt one becomes aware of thei r degenerati on, thei r deflati on-and i n whatever sense one chooses to understand the term "i deas". A ki nd of amnesi a i s i nvolved here, but i t i s a physical amnesi a, an i nhi bi ti on of the cur rent that bears expressi on al ong. A sudden upset or bl ock age occurs, the lucid state produced by the active exerci se of the mi nd i s brutally dispel l ed, and i deas are thrown i nto turmoil because they cease bei ng grasped, because of the di ssi pati on and di spersal of who knows what vi tal magnet i sm. We enter a state of major confusi on whi ch we are tempted to blame on a chaos of the mi nd, that i s, to treat the mi nd as a great unregul ated mass, whereas in real i ty it is si mpl y a void, and to seek remedy for what we assume to be a transi ent rcntal pO\er1e5snesf i IIIUmenlary stumbi i ng bl ock that can swi ftly be corrected for by the psyche's cen tral functi on. We try changi ng the object of our i ntel l ectu al activi ty, imagi ni ng that such a change i n ori entati on, by bringi ng the mind to bear on a new and better chosen real m, must perforce restore i ts vi tal i ty, but we are pl unged i nstead i nto an atrocious despai r, a despai r rendered al l the more fri ghtful i n that i t centres on nothi ng, i n that i t is no l onger connected to the general desi ccati on of the i nner l i fe of the emoti ons; a despai r, too, that is truly absolute, because we perceive that it is the organ of i ntel lectual activ- 90 i ty i tself that has suffered a trauma, that thought is degen erati ng, that the i mpulse to think has been prejudiced, that our ani mal magnetism i s escapi ng i n every directi on, fai l i ng to overcome the obstacles i n i ts path, peteri ng out at i ts source, weakeni ng wi th every renewed effort. What i s more, although a belated analysi s of our state of confusi on and exacerbated weakness may be withi n our means, we are per fectly i ncapable of descri bi ng the dysfunctions i t provokes or of showi ng how every component of the personal i ty is drawn i nto the debacl e, how even the ver feel i ng of the ego's existence is overwhelmed by this despai r of the ego and its possi bi l i ti es. Somethi ng that Artaud and Peret had i n common was a bel i ef i n archetypes. For both of them the impossi bi l ity of attai ni ng total being or of accedi ng to the total i ty of language underlay a meta physics i n whi ch a boundless sol i psi sm al l owed i tself to be satisfied with enti ti es pre- exi stent to all real i ty whose discovery and defi ni ti on, and the modi fi cati on of whose signs, are possi hl e onl y by way of acts of cl ai rvoyance. Thus Artaud's analysi s of the hi dden mean i ngs to be found i n rock formations, in hi s Voyage au pays des Tarahumaras [Voyage to the Land of the Tarahumaras] ' has a parallel i n Perer's discusssi on of the pai nter Wil fedo Lam (al though Peret does feel the need for some ki nd of materi al underpi nni ng) : The true mi ssi on of the artist, whether pai nter or poet, has always been to rediscover withi n himself the archetypes that underpi n poeti c thought, and to rei nvest that thought wi th a fresh emoti onal charge so that between hi msel f and hi s peers a current of energy mi ght be set in moti on which will be al l the more i ntense i nasmuch as these reactivated archetypes emerge as the clearest and newest expressi on of the determi ni ng factors in his background. Mi dway between Artaud and Peret, and given to vOi ci ng reser vati ons about strai ghtforward l iterary or pictori al work precisely 9 1 because hi s de facto posi ti ons tended to justify them, Breton devot ed a great deal of hi s attenti on to the metaphor as such, that is, to the metaphor as an aesthetic factor. An anti - aesthetic aesthete, Breton was often content to revive the worm- eaten attractions of modern art's graveyards . Hi s famous sl o gan, "Beauty wi l l be convul sive or wi l l not be at al l ", is more valuable in i tself than any of the examples he offers in support of it. Perhaps at some future hi gh poi nt i n the fi nal struggle this sl ogan wi l l i ndeed become the watchword, but i n the context of Surreal i sm i tself i t was never more than a gl i tteri ng trace of subjectivi ty and of everyday adventure i nscribed on the tattered fabric of the rul i ng l anguage. The first Maniesto procl ai med: "The marvel l ous is always beauti ful , anythi ng marvell ous i s beauti ful , i n fact onl y the marel l ous i s beauti ful . " We were already i n the l and of Fantomas versus Lafcadi o, Nerval versus Lamarti ne, Jarry versus Zol a-the l and, i n short, of everythi ng that now consti tutes l eft- wi ng cul ture: cl earer i deas i n the servi ce of a more general i di ocy. In Breton's mi nd the marvel l ous was al so the foundati on of the cul t of the metaphor, casti ng beauty in a new l i ght. Metaphors, of whi ch the whole of Surreal i st poetry (i n the narrow sense) is a many spl endored cel ebrati on, combi ne two sparks: the spark, produced by the i nteracti on of contrasti ng assembl ages, whi ch destroys cun geal ed l anguage, and the spark, produced by the cl ash of subjective symbol s, which creates a new l anguage. The two become one in the l i ght of the mftphor, ! ! the con'/u! slvcnes: of beut. The system of metaphor and i mage in pai nti ng thus consti tuted an i deol ogical ruse whereby Surreal i sm managed for a ti me to avoi d the fal l out of cul tural fragments generated by the explosi on of 19 15- 1920. This was what kept the movement apart from mai nstream l i t erary and arti stic producti on, which was condemned, in a pi ti ful l y regi mented way, to the rehashi ng of the end of the novel after Joyce, the end of pai nti ng after Mal evich, the end of sculpture after Duchamp, and the end of everythi ng after Dada. It was also the means whereby Surreal i sm successful l y concealed both the bankruptcy 92 of cul ture as a separate and al ienating sphere and the coroIl ary need to advance from the archai c noti on of a l iving art to the real i ty of an art of li vi ng. Metaphor and i mage are self-suffi ci ent. They are the basi s of a cul tural closed ci rcuit whose seemi ng emanci pati on from the sway of cul ture is nothing but a mask for the fact that, so far from threat eni ng culture's hegemony, i t actuaIly rei nforces it. Qui te apart from the contributi on of the art of fasci nati ng images to the growi ng voyeurism that attends the expansi on of an economy of over consumpti on which must di splay what i t has to "offer" and can sel l onl y what i t di spl ays, i t i s worth poi nti ng out that appeal i ng t o the marveI l ousness of the metaphor system would be meani ngless out si de the context of an i deol ogy taki ng on more and more esoteri c overtones and tendi ng to become i ndi sti nguishable from a hermeti c doctri ne. Paradoxically ( and rather as alchemy discovered sulphuric aci d i n a purely serendi pi tous way) , the shi ft from the magi c of l anguage to the l anguage of magic produced a genuine tool of demysti ficati on, namely the techni que of diversi on, or detourement. Admi ttedly Breton never defi ned thi s techni que as precisely as the Si tuati oni sts di d l ater, as for exampl e i n Interationale Situationni ste, Numher 3 (December 1 959) : The two basic pri nci ples of detourement are the l oss of impor tance, and in the extreme case the complete disappearance, of the origi nal meani ng of each i ndependent diverted el e menti and, si multaneously, the organi zi ng of another mean i ngful whole which confers a new signi ficance upon each of those elements. Breton merely observed-i n Point du jour [Break of Day, 1 934J-that "Al l thi ngs are bound to be put to uses for which they are not usual ly desti ned" , but he certai nly applied the principle of detourement , as for i nstance in "Notes on Poetry", written in collaborati on with Paul Eluard (L Revolution Surrealiste, Number 1 2, 1 929) . Valery had wri t- 93 ten, "A poem must be a feast of the i ntel l ect" , and "Poetry is a sur vival ". These edicts now became: "A poem must be a di saster of the i ntel l ect" and "Poetry i s a pi pe". It i s al so worth recal l i ng the humor ous use made of detourement by Rene Magri tte when he replaced the fi gures in classical pai nti ngs by coffi ns. I n the absence of a global cri ti que, the tactic was never expl ored further or appl i ed to the revolu ti onary struggl e. Detourement was one of the weapons Surreal i sm left behi nd for its heirs to put to as good a use as they coul d. 94 THE SAVAGE EYE AND THE CIVI LIZATI ON OF THE I MAGE There were two reasons for Breton's violent reacti on to Pi erre Navi l l e, when, as editor of La Revolution Surrealiste, the latter defended the i dea that there could be no such thing as Surreali st pai nti ng: the requirement that the metaphor thesi s be i nternally consistent, and the money that several of t he Surreal ists made by deal i ng i n art. I f Surreal i st pai nti ng wished t o demonstrate a commi tment to radi cal posi ti ons or to revolutionary vi ol ence, i t coul d not poi nt, as poetry could, to a cri tical or mordant discourse of i ts own. On the other hand i t was readi ly compati bl e wi th the same i deol ogy as the metaphor, for, j ust l ike the metaphor's, i ts effect on the fl ow of di s crete symbols and vei l ed Wi shes, as on the chance encounters of obj ective forms, was to produce condensations. And, unl ike poeti c wri ti ng, i t had a market. Breton was wel l aware of thi s, and, whi l e he i nvari ably condemned the ostentati ous pursui t of fame or weal t h, he never made so bold as to defi ne pai nti ng quite si mply as a poeti c occupati on. Rather, he justified the Surrealist approach to the pi cto ri al wi th the same arguments that he had used i n connection wi th metaphor: just as words pl ayed and made love, so the eye "exi sted i n i t s savage state" (Surrealism and Painting, 1928). To procl ai m the i nnocence of art i n a period when art coul d be i nnocent onl y i f i t were transcended, only i f i t were real i zed, was to mi sapprehend the si gni ficance of Dada and to underestimate the feti shi sm of the commodity. The proposi ti on that "the eye exi sts i n i ts savage state" was self- glori fyi ng i n two equally unjustified ways. I n the first pl ace, thi s was a time when adverti si ng and the news media ( not to mention the fasci st "happeni ngs" of the moment) already knew perfectly wel l how to mani pulate clashi ng images, how to mi l k "free" representations for all they were worth; i t was there fore qui te predictable that the rul i ng system woul d co- opt t he new way of looki ng that Surreal i sm was so busily promoti ng. Secondly, i t shoul d have been pl ai n-to any avant- garde worth the name at 95 least-that the organi zation of social passivity, i n its concern to mi n i mize the recourse to poli ce and army, was bound to foster the con sumption of i ncreasi ngly l i fel ike and i ncreasi ngly personal ized i mages, the ai m being that the proletariat should move only to the extent required for the contempl ati on of its own i nert contentment, that it should be rendered so passive as to be i ncapable of anythi ng beyond i nfatuati on wi th varied representati ons of its dreams. Painting was a privileged sector of Surreal i st activity; it was also the sector most thoroughly co-opted by what the sociol ogists, in thei r eagerness to avoi d any analysi s of the spectacle and the com modity system, l i ke to call "the civi l i zation of the i mage". Thus, for all its appeal, Breton's statement of 1929, accordi ng to which "Onei ri c values are cl early now preponderant, and I insi st that any one should be treated as an idiot i f they sti l l refuse, for i nstance, to see a horse gal l opi ng across a tomato", must be pl aced i n the context of the i mage-as-object disti l l i ng the commodity's power to attract, conceal i ng the al i enating rel ati onshi ps that the commodity entai l s, and reproduci ng the commodity as pure ideological appearance. There can be no doubt that by the end of the 19205 Surrealism had al ready unresistingly accepted the i nfl ated value placed on vision. "Every day, " said Man Ray, "we are the reci pi ents of open con fidences; our eye can trai n i tel f to comprehend them without preju dice or constrai nt. " And here i s the Czech Ji ndrich Styrsky: "My eyes are forever demanding that food be thrown their way. They swallow it wi th brutal eagerness . And at ni ght ? ! deep they digc:t i t. " Marx used to say to Engel s, as they strol l ed about London, 'That's their Westmi nster, that's thei r Parl i ament", and so on. How i s it that the Surreali sts never real i zed that by pai nti ng "their" bui l di ngs ( even had they devastated them with i mages of desi re-somethi ng whi ch they never did, there bei ng in Surreal ist pai nti ng nothi ng remotely comparable to Peret's Je ne man g e pas de ce pain-la) , that by pai nti ng "their" parks and coveri ng "thei r" decors wi th faces out of dreams, they were just redOi ng the fa<ade of the old worl d. Of course, thi s reproach would have no force whatsoever had not 96 Surreali sm l onged so passi onately to be revolutionary. When not repressed enti rely by the Surreal ists, the memory of Dada's radi cal i sm mani fested itself less i n the form of scandalous i mages than i n the form of techni ques that pl aced pai nti ng wi thi n everyone's grasp. Thi s i s how Max Ernst described hi s discovery of "frottage" i n 1925: Starti ng from a chi ldhood memory . . . i n which a fake mahogany panel opposi te my bed had served as an optical catalyst for a vi si on while half-asleep, and now fi ndi ng mysel f at a seaside hotel on a rai ny day, I was struck by the obsessive fasci nati on that the floor, its cracks accentuated by uncounted scrubbi ngs, was able to exercise upon my dis tracted gaze. I resolved to i nvestigate the symbol i c meani ng of thi s obsessi on, and to assi st my capaci ty for medi tation and hal l uci nati on I made a set of rubbi ngs of the floor boards, posi ti oni ng sheets of paper on them at random and usi ng graphi te to bring up the pattern. When I careful ly i nspected the resul ts, some areas of which were qui te dark whi l e others were but l i ghtly shaded, I was taken aback by a sudden i ntensi fication of my vi si onary facul ti es, and by a halluci natory sequence of contradictory images, each super i mposed upon its predecessor with the persi stence and speed that one associ ates with memories of love. Curi ous, i ndeed enthral led, I ended up usi ng the same method to expl ore al l sorts of materi als that happened to enter my vi sual field: l eaves and their vei ns, the frayed edges of sackcl oth, the brushstrokes of some "modern" pai nter, thread unravel l ed from a bobbi n, and so forth. My eyes then perceived human heads, various animals, a battle that ended up as a kiss ( The Fiancee of the Wind) , some rocks, The Sea and the Rain, earthquakes, the Sphynx in its stabl e, some Little Tables Around the Earth, Caesar' Palette, some False Positions, a Shawl with Frost-Covered Flowers, the Pampas, etc. Thus in a sense frottage became the equival ent of automatic writing. "It i s as a spectator" , Ernst adds, "that the creator, whether 97 i ndi fferently or passionately, wi tnesses the bi rth of his work and observes the stages of hi s own devel opment. " I nstead, then, of emphasi zi ng the possibi l i ty of a techni que of thi s ki nd bei ng used by al l , Ernst stressed the painter's transformati on i nto a passive spectator, i nsi sti ng on the joy of contempl ati on and not on the j oy of creati on. I t i s hard not to conclude that the Surreali st pai nters fel t threatened by any tendency to treat art as a game, and that, as pai nti ng and scul pture acknowledged thei r affi ni ty wi th the world of chi l dhood and were secul arized by a spirit of pl ayful ness, these artists suddenly sensed a chal l enge to thei r digni ty-the di gni ty of honours and prof it-and fel t obl iged to move heaven and earth i f need be to make sure their products did not l ose the aura of the sacrosanct. Breton's descri ption ( 1 936) of decal comani a, i nvented by Oscar Domi nguez, betrays the same urge to reduce the technical rel ics of Dada's di ssolution to a Surreal i st "magical art" : Chi l dren have tradi ti onal l y enj oyed fol di ng sheets of paper after bl otti ng them wi th wet i nk so as to produce the i l l u si on of ani mal or vegetable enti ti es or growths, but the el e mentary techni que of whi ch chi l dren are capabl e i s far from exhausti ng the resources of such a procedure. In par ti cul ar the use of undi l uted ink excludes any surprises in terms of "substance" and l i mi ts the resul t to a contoured deSi gn which suffers from a certai n monotony resul ti ng from the repeti ti on of symmetrical forms on ei ther si de of an axi s. Certai n wash-draWi ngs by Vi ctor Hugo seem to provide evidence of systemati c expl orati ons i n the di rec ti on whi ch concerns us here; certai nly an extraordi nary power of suggesti on is obviously expected to emanate from the entirely i nvoluntary mechani cal detai l s whi ch predom i nate, but the results are mostly l i mi ted to Chi nese shadows and cloudy appariti ons. Oscar Domi nguez's discovery bri ngs preci ous advice on the method to fol l ow in obtai n i ng i deal fi el ds of i nterpretati on. Here we can rediscover i n al l thei r purity the rocks and wi l l ows of Arthur Rackham which enchanted us when we were about to l eave chi l d hood behi nd. Once agai n, we are offered a reci pe within 98 everbody' grsp, a reci pe which demands to be i ncluded among the "Secrets of the magical surreal i st art" and which may be formulated as fol l ows: In order to open ones window at will upon the most beautiul landscapes in this or any other world With a brad brush, spread some black gouache, more or less diluted in pl aces, on a sheet of white gl azed paper and then cover this immedi ately with a similar sheet which you will press down lightly with the back of your hand. Take this upper sheet by one edge and peel it of slow ly as you would do with an ordinar transfer, then continue to reapply it and l it it away again until the colour is almost dr. What you have in your hands now is perhaps nothing more than Leonardo' paranoiac ancient wall, but it is this wal l perfected. All you need do now is study the resulting image long enough for you to find a title that conveys the reality you have discovered in it, and you can be quite sure of having expressed yoursel in the most completely personal and valid manner. The techni que of detourement was l i kewise i ncorporated i nto the alchemy of Surreal i sm's pi ctori al ists, and thus rendered "occul t" i nstead of bei ng populari zed in every form, as by rights it should have been. The pai nters' cl i que i n Surreal ism was much prone to apol i ti ci sm i n the strict sense, and together wi th the neo-litterateurs constituted the right- l eani ng fracti on of the movement. Asi de from a handful of mediocre camp- fol l owers, most of the Surreal ist pai nters "succeed ed"; few among them di spl ayed any scruples as to how their success was achieved, and many had no hesitation about qui tti ng the group as soon as they were l aunched-or as soon as the l ackeys of the ol d worl d tossed them a bone. I nasmuch as Surreal i sm di d i ndeed i nherit from Dada the proj ect of the transcendence of art (and even i f i t deal t with thi s i nheritance solely on an abstract pl ane) , i t i s to two non-Surreal i st pai nters, Giorgi o de Chi ri co and Paul Klee, that credit shoul d go for convey ing the unconsci ous memory which made the agoni zi ng decor of our 99 rei fi cati on and the return to the sources of creativity i nto essenti al aspects of Surreal ism's most i mportant arti sti c works. No one better than de Chi ri co ( though he soon retreated i nto seni l i ty l i ke Ri mbaud fleei ng to Harar) has perceived the i nvasi on of things, the prol i fera ti on of stucco, the spread of human absence, the di sappearance of faces, and the i ncreased burden of anxi ety borne by the cheap goods and theatri cal props that crowd around us. No one better than Klee, wi th hi s ever Vigi l ant i ntel l i gence, has captured the movement of creati vi ty i n i ts ful l freshness and spontaneousness; hi s work may well one day serve, just l i ke Peret's, as one of the fi nest avenues open to future generati ons wi shi ng to understand the culture of the past. Surreal i st pai nti ng pi tched i ts tent between the two pi nnacl es represented by de Chi rico and Klee on the one hand and the Dadaist abyss on the other. Max Ernst decked de Chi ri co's angst wi th hi s characteri stic mi neral concreti ons and luxuri ant vegetati on; Mi r6 redi d Kl ee in a fake- chi l di sh and more sophi sti cated manner; and Magri tte, the pai nter most concerned wi th the i mage as poetic metaphor, offered the best response to the i dea of a wi ndow open i ng at every i nstant onto a strange everydayness and i ts objects obj ects which every human dreams of humani zi ng. Among the "litteateurs", Pi casso, a ti rel ess and tedious creator of gi mcrackery who eventual l y i ndeed "hooked us by sheer quanti ty", stands el bow to elbow wi th the canny DaH, whose work, dedi cated to the greater glory of the moroni c, the del i quescent and the i mpo tent, resonated remarkably wel l wi th the softeni ng-up techni ques of the soci ety of the spectacl e, and as a corol lary ensured Dal f support from the most hi ghl y pl aced cul tural and medi a functi onari es. There i s a sense i n whi ch Dal f epi tomi zes both the fai lure and the success of Surreal i sm: on the one hand the derai l i ng of creati vi ty as a revolutionary force, on the other a seamless i ntegration i nto the old world. Never opting firmly ei ther for a poetry made by al l or for the venal i ty of the rul i ng system, Surreal i sm took somethi ng of both and produced an i mpoveri shed cul tural hodgepodge. The move ment's enti re di scourse is one l ong sel f-consol ati on whose growi ng 1 00 pathos, accompani ed by an ever more pressing appeal to the mists of magi c, becomes onl y too comprehensible when we hear Breton con demni ng the dictatorshi p of the rati onal and cal l i ng i nstead for "machi nes of most i ngeni ous design desti ned for no particular use" ( a cal l which Tnguely, for one, woul d answer, constructi ng just such machi nes without, however, remotely affecting the ever ti ghter gri p of the rati onal i ty of things); or, agai n, when we find Jean Schuster, i n 1 969, quite wi l l i ng to write that "All images are dangerous, because they facil i tate the ci rcul ati on of i deas. " As for Surreal i st fi l ms, there i s not much to be sai d, save perhaps that the movement's two masterpieces, Un Chien andalou and rAge d'or, had a profound i nfluence on the ci nema. (Dreams Tat Mone Can Buy, by Man Ray, Hans Richter and Max Ernst, is a fil m that deserves to be better known i n France. ) rAe d'or embodied a viol ence, al bei t one cl oaked i n aestheti ci sm, that seemed at the time to presage a later devel opment i n which the Surreal i st fi l m, by taki ng i ts di stance from the pi ctori al perspective, would achieve formi dabl e agitati onal and demysti ficator power. But everyone knows what became of Dal f; and Bufuel became what one mi ght have feared for anyone who takes pri de i n bei ng cal l ed a cineaste. 1 0 1 CHAP TE R 5 CONVERTI NG TO MYS TI CI S M RECONSECRTION No sooner had ascendant bourgeois power, thanks to the ars of crit icism and criticism by arms, successfully shattered the unity of the ol d social and rel i gious myth, than the new rulers felt the urgent need t o rei nstitute an organi zation of appearances-a universal representtion of the i ndividual freedoms so essential to the conduct of busi ness-that could provide a justification for thei r function as an expl oiting class. The tentacular expansion of the economy-nere-centre of the bour geoisie just as it would later be of the rul i ng caste of the soci al i st State-was not easily reconciled, however, with recourse to a god, to a mysterious uni ty which the new conditions of social atomization could not i n any case ei ther resuscitate or maintai n. By the begi nni ng of the twentieth century art had been effec tively annexed by the general system of the economy, and no choice remai ned to i t save that between self- transcendence, which i s to say i ts actual i zation as a mode of l i fe i n a society without hi erarchi es, and a slow agony. Dada had an awareness of the negative but not of the necessi ty of such a transcendence; Surrealism was aware of the necessity of transcendence but not of the necessity of negativi ty. I n both cases the dice were l oaded, but only Surrealism must be hel d to account by hi story for its reactionary attempt to restore to art a l i fe that it no l onger had, a l i fe whose very memor was already l ost to i t. (We have already noted the great store that Surrealist art set by great names and great moments of the past, by their l ivi ng rel evance and by the need for them to be remembered. ) Li ttl e by l i ttl e, as the dream of revolution broke up on the reefs of nascent Stal i ni sm, but also as the soci ety of the spectacle and of the commodity system i nevitably co-opted anythi ng that could be called artistic, Surreal i sm retreated to the heights of pure mi nd. From a fortress open to every wind blowi ng i n from the ol d worl d, it began-after the fashi on of the Romantics reinventi ng an i dyl l i c Mi ddle Ages, complete wi th val iant kni ghts, in the very shadow of the stock exchanges, banks and factories-to entertai n the fantasy of 1 05 a powerful myth, stripped of any rel i gi ous overtones, that woul d combat the poverty of the spectacle and that woul d draw i ts strength from a reconsecrati on of human rel ati onshi ps model l ed on the reconsecrati on of art . It would be hard to outdo thi s as sheer contempt for hi story. Not that such a project could absolutely never be made i nto real i ty for a ti me: after al l , the Nazi s launched a comparabl e operati on, al bei t one orientated i n a diametri cal l y opposed directi on, when they sought to return to the reign of myth by reconsecrati ng everythi ng that the Surreal i sts shat upon from the greatest hei ght: the Fatherl and, the Army, the Fuhrer, the State, etc. As confused as they may have been, the Surreali sts remai ned commi tted i n the pre- war period to the destrcti on of capital i sm in both i ts private and i ts State versi ons; they had not renounced the hopes they pl aced i n the "fi nal struggl e", and they threw down the gauntl et i n al l si ncerity to whatever served to sustai n and moderni ze the expl oi tati on of the prol etari at. The position of Surrealism after the Second Worl d War flowed from a despairing view of hi stor. Thi s view was based on the succes sive defeats of a workers' movement whose revol uti on the Surreal ists had awai ted passively i n the expectation that it woul d resolve their own problems. Breton hi mself offers a clear account of this in "Prolegomena to a Thi rd Surrealist Mani festo or Not" ( t 942) He begins by evoki ng the failure of supposedly "emanci patory" systems: Though I am only too l ikely to demand everythi ng of a creature I consi der beauti ful , I am far from granti ng the same credi t to those abstract constructi ons that go by the name of systems . When faced wi th them my ardour cool s, and i t i s cl ear that l ove no l onger spurs me on. I have been seduced, of course, but never to the extent of hi di ng from mysel f theJallible poi nt in what a man like me hol ds to be true. Thi s fal l i bl e poi nt, even though i t is not necessari ly si tuated on the l i ne traced for me by the ori gi nal teacher duri ng hi s l i feti me, always appears to me to be l ocated somewhere fur ther along this l i ne as extended through others . 1 06 This fai l ure is expl ai ned wi thout the sl i ghtest al lusi on to the cri ti que of hierarchy, wi thout ever addressi ng the questi on of the mecha ni sms of co- optati on: The greater the power of thi s man, the more he i s l i mited by the i nertia resul ti ng from the veneration that he wi l l i nspi re i n some and by the tireless activity of others who will empl oy the most devious means to rui n him. Aside from these two causes of degenerati on, there is also the fact that every great i dea i s perhaps subject to being seri ously al tered the i nstant that it enters i nto contact with the mass of humani ty, where i t i s made to come to terms wi th mi nds of a compl etely di fferent stature than that of the mi nd i t came from origi nal ly. There is al so the unrel i abi l i ty of comrades- i n- arms to be considered: The evi l s that are always the price of favour, of renown, l i e i n wai t even for Sureali sm, though it has been i n existence for twenty years. The precautions taken to safegard the i nner integrit of this movement-which generally are regarded as bei ng much too severe-have not precluded the raving false witness of an Aragon, nor the picaresque brand of i mposture of that neo- Falangist bedsi de- table Avi da Dollars. And Breton i s galled by the general al i enati on of the movement: Surreal i sm i s al ready far from bei ng able to cover everythi ng that i s undertaken i n its name, openly or not, from the most obscure teashops of Tokyo to the rai n- streaked wi ndows of Fi fth Avenue, even though Japan and America are at war. What is being done in any given directi on bears l i ttle resem bl ance to what was wanted. Even the most outstandi ng men must put up wi th passing away not so much wi th a halo as with a great cl oud of dust trai l i ng behi nd them. Breton's di sarray of 1 942 sti l l embodi es much of the despai r fel t by Artaud i n 1 925. I n Le Drame du surrealisme, Victor Crastre presents t o7 a somewhat caval i er expl anati on of Artaud's lack of enthusiasm for meeti ng the Clarte peopl e: "Hi s unheal thy passi on for bei ng tor mented, his taste for fai l ure, even for catastrophe, prohi bi ted hi m from searchi ng for a social form of revolt, from conceiving of any opti mi sti c plan for the transformation of the worl d. " I t would doubtless have been more to the poi nt to i nqui re whether Artaud's vocati on for fai l ure di d not stem rather from an i nsti nctive rej ecti on of hi story at a time when hi stor gave every appearance of havi ng been monopol i zed by the Bol sheviks. I n vi ew of thi s halt i mposed on human emanci pation i n the name of the prol etariat i tself, i t is not hard to understand that a luci d but i solated mi nd, and one i n any case cut of f from whatever l eft-wi ng opposi ti on t o Bolshevism still exi sted, should have apprehended hi storical consci ousness as a consci ousness of a voi d and as the utter negation of any i ndi vi dual hi story. Artaud proceeded, al one, al ong a path that Breton would later i mpose on the Surreali st movement under much less dire ci rcum stances. The tragic myth that Artaud constructed i n order to cope wi th hi s state of sel f- divisi on was somethi ng whi ch i n that early period he had to confront wi thout the backi ng even of what Surreal i sm would eventual l y achi eve, namely a real histor whi ch, as al i enated as i t may have been, di d contrive to be at once collec tive and i ndi vi dual . Artaud's deci si on i s registered i n his Le Pese-ners , where he talks of "bri ngi ng mysel f face to face wi th the metaphysics that I have created for mycel f on the basi s of thi s nothi ngness that I carry wi thi n me", and, when he writes in the third issue of L Revolution Surreal iste that "Through the rents in what is henceforward an unl iveable real i ty speaks a wi l fully sibyl l i ne world", there is a cl ear i nti mati on that he i ntends to devote hi s l i fe to the deci pher ing of that "worl d" . Not long afterwards, the Grand Jeu group woul d briefly embrace the same anguished hope for a renewal of myth before suc cumbi ng to the charms of esoteri ci sm, Zen, and Gurdj i eff. When it came Surreal i sm's turn to tread the path of mystical retreat, i t has to 1 08 be said that i t was better armed for i t-armed, as i t were, by a hi gh er tal l y of fai lures . . . . Fi rst of al l , Surreal i sm, i n i ts attempt to salvage art, had al ready experi enced the call of the sacred, the attraction of magic, the taste for the mysterious and the temptati ons of the hermetic tradi ti on. It had pursued all of them to a degree, while conti nui ng to focus most of i ts attenti on on the adventure of l ove, the exploration of dreams, creative activity, everday l i fe, and revoluti on. Compromi se with Communism certai nly threatened the ver soul of Surreal i sm. So much so, i n fact, that Breton fel t obl i ged ( i n 1929) t o wri te: I fai l to see, whatever certai n narrow-mi nded revolutionaries may think, why we should refrai n from addressi ng the ques tions of l ove, dreams, madness, and so on-provi ded always that we pl ace them in the same perspective as that from which they (and i ndeed we too) envisage the revoluti on. One of Surreal i sm's chi ef faul ts, and one for whi ch even the move ment's basi cally ideological character cannot be bl amed, i s that it handed over all responsi bi l i ty for the universal revolutionary project to Bolshevi sm, which, hewi ng fast to the logic of Leni n's work, had never done anythi ng but undermi ne that project. Although Breton di d not concede any part of what he rightly con sidered to be fundamental , he could not help feel i ng that the break with the orthodox Communists represented a moving away from the historical possibi l ities opened up at "privileged" moments of ever d y l i fe. Thi s was truly an i nstant when ideology came i nto play in the most striki ng manner, with all its power to tum the world on i ts head: the demands of subjectivi ty, never yet made the basis of the actual revolu tionary movement, were now transformed i nto the abstract underin ni ngs of an ideology which the critical -cum-practical action of real his tor would have utterly dispelled, but which Lni no- Stal i ni sm merely dbbed a "solipsistic ideolog", and excluded on that basis fom its own pseudo- revolutionary practice ( i . e. , the practice of the bureaucrats) . 1 09 The revolutionary feels despair when confronted by the trans formati on of real historical movement i nto i deol ogy. The Surrealists despaired on two counts: as would-be revoluti onaries, they had an i nkl i ng of the revolutionary's despair; at the same time they fel t the despair of the i deol ogues they were at bei ng excluded from the rul i ng revolutionary i deol ogy ( the Bolshevism of the 1 930s) . Little wonder that they saw no other way forward than resolutely to embrace a mysti cism founded on their earl ier but since repressed commi tments. Surreal ism thus plumped for a mystique of l i fe, and of the l i fti ng of repression, just when Nazism, at the cul mi nati on of a period dur i ng which the German people had demonstrated their own i ncl i na ti on to l eap i nto unreal i ty, was promoti ng a mystique of death and repressi on. Georges Batai l l e was cl early aware of thi s when he called for the l i vi ng forces of Surrealism to be thrown si mul taneously i nto the struggl e against fascism and i nto the struggle against the Stal i ni st run anti fascist fronts. This idea, i n any case somewhat dubious, was a nonstarter. The time had come, so far as the Surreal ists were concerned, to l i sten to Artaud's words from an earl ier day: Enough l anguage games, enough syntactical tri cks, enough word-juggl i ng and phrase-making! We must now seek the great Law of the heart, that Law which i s not a Law, not a pri un, but a gUi de ror the Mi nd iost in i ts own l abyri nth. Surreali sm's turn to metaphysics, however, was not just a response to i ndividual confusions or to a particular set of ci rcumstances. The pai nters' lobby, never much i nterested in the pol i tical debate, was much rel ieved to see the movement taki ng a mystical tack. Al ready attached to the notion of the magic of the creative act, this tenden cy had everthi ng to gai n from a revital i zati on of myth centred on the i dea of beauty and on art as a mi rror of the marel l ous. Such a perspective woul d al l ow the pai nters to devote themselves entirely I t O to matters aesthetic whi le loudly denyi ng any concession to aes theticism. Thei r i nfluence on Surrealism's change of course was cer tainly not negl i gi bl e. At al l events, the appearance of "Prolegomena to a Thi rd Surreali st Mani festo or Not", in 1 942, clearly marks the shi ft to a purely metaphysical posi ti on. The conclusion of thi s text, in parti c ular/ gives the measure of the new orientation; i t also exposes the close ki nshi p between that orientation and the goal s earlier set for hi msel f by Artaud. Under the headi ng "The Great Transparent Ones", Breton writes: Man i s perhaps not the center, the cynosure of the uni verse. One can go so far as to believe that there exist above hi m, on the ani mal scale, bei ngs whose behavior is as strange to him as hi s may be to the mayfly or the whale . Nothi ng necessarily stands i n the way of these creatures/ bei ng able to completely escape man/s sensory system of references through a camouflage of whatever sort one cares to i magi ne, though the possi bi l i ty of such a camouflage is posi ted only by the theor of fors and the study of mi meti c ani mal s. There i s no doubt that there is ampl e room for speculati on here, even though this i dea tends to pl ace man i n the same modest conditions of i nterpretation of hi s own universe as the child who i s pleased to form his conception of an ant from its underside just after he has kicked over an anthil l . I n consi deri ng disturbances such as cyclones, i n face of which man i s powerless to be anythi ng but a victim or a witness, or those such as wart notori ously i nadequate ver sions of which are set forth, i t woul d not be i mpossible, i n the course of a vast work over which the most dari ng sort of i nducti on should never cease t o preside, t o approximate the structure and the constitution of such hypothetical bei ngs (which mysteriously reveal themselves to us when we are afrai d and when we are conscious of the workings of chance) to the poi nt where they become credi bl e. I thi nk i t necessary to poi nt out that I am not departi ng appreciably from Novali s/s testimony: "I n real i ty we l ive i n 1 1 1 an animal whose parasites we are. The consti tuti on of this ani mal determi nes ours and vice versa, " and that I am only agreeing with a thought of Wi l l i am James's: "Who knows whether, i n nature, we do not occupy just as smal l a pl ace al ongsi de bei ngs whose existence we do not suspect as our cats and dogs that live with us in our homes?" Even l earned men do not all contradict this view of thi ngs: "Perhaps there ci rcl e round about us bei ngs bui l t on the same pl an as we are, but di fferent, men for exampl e whose al bumi ns are strai ght, " said Emi l e Duclaux, a former director of the Pasteur I nsti tute ( 1 840- 1 904) . A new myth; Must these bei ngs be convi nced that they result from a mi rage or must they be given a chance to show themselves; As fantastic as Breton's hypothesi s may appear at first si ght, it casts an unbl i nki ng eye on the posture of Surreal i sm in i ts final peri od. It flows from the same judgement as that made by the Ni etzsche who exhorted us to embrace an amor Jati-to l ove our fate. I t postu l ates that we have to choose between submi ssi on to the wretched vi ci ssi tudes of everyday l i fe and a vow of feal ty to mysterious forces that i ntervene i n the gui se of luck or ill luck i n the enterpri ses of the i ndi vi dual wi l l . These forces ( and i t i s easy to see how dupl i ci tously i ndi vi dual subj ectivity, once deprived of i ts materi al and histori cal prospects of self-real i zati on, wi l l i nvent, whi l e fei gni ng to discover them) do not supposedly requi re us to reconci l e ourselves with them by means of reiigi ous or magical rites; rather, our task is to provoke thei r emergence through a pati ent decanti ng of all our faculti es, al l our senses. This i s an alchemical procedure, i n fact, i ts goal the goal once sought by the hermetic tradi ti on; and, sure enough, from this poi nt on the hermetic thinkers would be i nducted in force i nto the Surreal i st pantheon. The most cursory reading l eaves us i n no doubt that Breton i s i mpl i ci tly posi ti ng the permanence of human al i enati on, asserti ng that there i s no way of ever disentangl i ng ourselves from its thral l . And upon thi s basis he proceeds t o set up an opposi ti on, and a con- 1 1 2 f1 ict, between the presumed positivity of a sacrosanct al i enati on and the negativity of the al i enation of the present, al i enati on as an i mmedi ate datum of our current state of survival under the rl e of the spectacle. Thus the Surreal i sts took up the defence of myth, at a ti me when myth no l onger existed, against the spectacle, whi ch was every where. They were Don Quixotes tilting against housi ng proj ects; no one i n that ti me of change so much resembled the Cervantes char acter as these latterday kni ghts wanderi ng between the devil of total freedom and the death of cul ture. To these agei ng men, sclerotic from so many defeats yet sti l l ani mated by an unshakeable enthusiasm, the paral l el and mental l y accessible universe of gods and heroes of myth and legend hel d out the prospect of i ntel l ectual adventure via the concrete activity of the creator and discoverer of meani ngs, via the i nventi on and cel e brati on of obscure gui des, via the athanor of all the Great Works of the possibl e. The best anal ogy here is not hard to fi nd, for i t l i es i n the epi c and worl d of the Celts, for whom the Surrealists now conceived a most vi gorous admi ration, as wi tness Jean Markale's account of LEpopee celtique en Bretagne [The Celtic Epi c i n Brittany l Fi rst there is the Quest, that is to say the search ( i n every sphere, but most especially with respect to Man's equil ibri um and happi ness) for complete harmony with nature. But happi ness i s achi eved only after a whole series of trials-the trials of l i fe itself, vi olent, hard, and bloody; only then does Man come to know, does he learn the miraculous formula that al lows him to face hi s destiny, for thi s mi raculous power can be taught by no one: only he hi msel f has the abi l i ty to make i t out, piece by piece, along the roads he travel s, in battles haunted by death, i n the victory that he hol ds in his hands. Then there i s the quest for Woman, the Chosen One, who at ti mes takes on a di fferent countenance the better to l ead Man astray, the better to make him prove hi s worth, 1 1 3 the better to metamorphose hi m. For the woman of the Breton epic is necessarily a fai ry, a goddess: she has powers that no man can snatch away from her, al though she may bestow them, i f she so wi shes, upon a man of her choosi ng. For Woman i s ever soverei gn, whether she i s a mere serant girl or one of those mysteri ous mai dens who so often make thei r appearance i n some castle l oomi ng from the shadows of the ni ght only to vanish come morni ng i nto the mi sts of memory. There is also what is cal l ed the Quest in the Other World, the search for the treasures hi dden i n that World, whi ch cannot be very far away, si nce i t i s everywhere pre sent-at every twi st i n the road, i n a val l ey domi nated by a castle, in a forest cleari ng, or on a mound blasted betimes by storms whose wi ld l i ghtni ng flashes transform the l and scape. Thi s is a permanent descent i nto hel l , i nto Man's deepest core, i nto the shadowi est l ands of hi s conscious ness, hi s imagi ni ngs and hi s dreams. But we al ways return, for mi nd always triumphs over matter. Death i tsel f does not exi st: i t i s deni ed. Arthur sl umbers yet on the I sl e of Aval on or i n some cavern beneath the earth: he wi l l return. Al l the characteristic themes of Cel ti c l i terature suppl i ed the base materi al out of which post-war Surreal i sm dreamt of construct ing a new mythical i magery. These themes had of course been pre sent i n Surrealism from the begi nni ng, compl ete wi th thei r sacred aspect. The turn towards the Beyond, towards the i mmanence of the myth- to- be- l ived, meant a return to love, dreams, madness, chi l d hood, the savage eye, mi neral coi nci dences, the alchemi cal tradi ti on, the art of the South Seas, of the I ndi ans, of the Celts, mediu mi sti c experi mentati on, automati sm, etc. And al l of them were now flung together i n a veritable whi rl wi nd of consol i dati on. When he discovered Fouri er's work, Breton saw it pri mari ly as a "hi eroglyphi c i nterpretati on of the worl d based on the anal ogy between the human passi ons and the products of the three real ms of nature. : ' I n l i On Surreal i sm i n I ts Livi ng Works" ( 1953) , he was more speci fi c: 1 1 4 The mi nd then proves to i tself, fragmentarily of course, but at the least by itsel that "everythi ng above is like everythi ng below" and everythi ng i nsi de is l ike everythi ng outsi de. The world thereupon seems to be l ike a cryptogram which remai ns i ndeci pherable only so long as one i s not thor oughl y fami l iar with the gymnastics that permi t one to pass at will from one pi ece of apparatus to another. I n the general conversi on of Surrealist values, which was gov erned by the hope of i nsti tuting a mythical edifice capable of foster ing new forms of acti on, the importance of l anguage remained car di nal , particul arly the i mportance of poetic i ntuiti on, which, fi nally unleashed by Surrealism, seeks not only to assi mi l ate al l known forms but also bol dly to create new forms that i s to say, to be i n a position to embrace all the struc tures of the worl d, mani fested or not. It alone proVi des the thread that can put us back on the road of Gnosi s as knowl edge of suprasensi bl e Real i ty, "i nvisibly visible i n an eternal mystery" . Prevented by i ts i deol ogical nature from accedi ng to a critical use of l anguage, and at the same time decl i ni ng to engage i n any effective criti que of the ruli ng language, Surrealism ended up defi n i ng itsel f as a quest for the original , magical kernel of things , for what mi ght be called the l anguage of the gods. As Breton put i t, "The whole poi nt, for Surreal i sm, was to convi nce ourselves that we had got our hands on the ' prime matter' ( i n the alchemical sense) of l an guage"-i n other words, l anguage i n i ts primi tive form, as it existed prior to any disti ncti on between speech and di scourse. As for the kind of i ntel l igence that made such a return "possi bl e, and even con ceivable", i t was, i n Breton's view, "none other than that which has always moved occult phi losophy". I n the 1 940s the pai nter Wol fgang Paalen came to a similar con clusi on wi th respect to pi ctorial language. Aski ng "What to pai nt?", Paalen suggested that artists should attempt the "direct visualization 1 1 5 of the forces that move us, both physical l y and emotional l y". He cal l ed this approach a "plastic cosmogony". The texts that Desnos and Crevel had dictated whi l e plunged i nto mediumistic trances back around 1 92 5 were now seen as oper ating in very much the same way as the manuals of the alchemists. For Surreal ism, this was evi dence of the movement's kinshi p with the hermetic tradi ti on. Mythically restored, the uni ty of l anguage and world meant that different ki nds of phenomena could now be put on the same plane and so become subject to associations and cor respondences . The sharpest attenti on was pai d, however, to premo ni ti ons, objective chance and the various forms of occultism for which Surreal ism had always had a l atent affi ni ty. Breton had already been struck (as he recounts at l ength i n Mad Love) by the accuracy with which hi s poem "Sunfl ower" ( 1 92 3 ) fore tol d the ci rcumstances of an especi al l y si gni ficant romanti c encounter of hi s: The traveler passing through the Hailes at summeral l Was walking on her tiptoes Despair was swirling its great lovely calla lilies in the sky And in the handbag was my dream that fask oj sal ts Only God' godmother had breathed Torpor spread like mist At the Smoking Dog CaN Were the pro and the con had just come in Te young woman could scarcely be seen by them, and only askance Was I speaking with the ambassadress oj saltpeter Or oj the white cure on black ground that we cal l thought Breton ci tes several other disconcerti ng coi ncidences, among them de Chirico's circl ing of Apoll i nai re's temple in a portrai t done long before the poet, after being trepanned, was obl i ged to cover the spot wi th a l eather patch; or, agai n, the l arge number of canvases i n which Victor Brauner recorded a haunti ng obsessi on with ocular muti l ati on just shortly before an accident that cost him an eye. All 1 1 6 such events would now constitute a whole for the Surreali sts-a whole nowhere better exempl i fied than in the dream. Recounted or analysed, dreams now became ei ther l i terary objects or the subjects of common- or-garden Freudian i nterpreta tion. Asi de from their admiration for Ferdi nand Cheval , who had wel l and truly set about real i zi ng hi s dream i n the shape of hi s I deal Palace, the Surrealists never developed the perspective of the prac tical real ization of dreams much beyond vaguely prophetic edicts: "The poet of the future", accordi ng to Breton and El uard's Dictiolnaire abreg{ du surrealisme ( t 938) , "wi l l surmount the depressi ng i dea of an unbridgeable gap between actions and dreams. " The turn to mysticism resolved thi s tension solely on the pl ane of an abstract coherence. In the fi rst pl ace, the dream was the marel lous in microcosm, l yi ng wi thi n everyone's reach. As Paracl esus recom mended, "Let al l exami ne thei r own dreams, for each is hi s own i nterpreter. " Here was the i ndivi dual's way of i nitiation i nto the "practice" of myth, a way whi ch opened (and thi s i s the second point) onto a panopti cal prospect, i n accordance, once agai n, wi th Paracel sus: "For I tel l you, it is possible to see everthing through the mi nd" (Philosophia occulta ) . Myth was thus the i deal precondition for the expansi on of the dream universe, the unreal real i ty of a fun damental uni ty of sel f and worl d-that state which Karl Phi l i pp Mori tz had descri bed i n hi s Fragmente aus dem Tagebuche eines Geistersehers [ournal of a Visionary, t 787] as "the i neffable joy of finding mysel f outsi de mysel f . . . . I had lost all sense of pl ace-I was nowhere and everywhere at the same time. I felt del ivered from the order of things, or thrust out of it, and I no l onger had any need of space. " I t was perhaps, once agai n, Benj amin Peret who offered the most ominous account of this dream system, at the same time putting his finger on its point of potential self- transcendence, its i nternal need for objective realizati on: "Heard in the morning on 20 May last, in a half slumber punctuated by confusing images of the Aragon front, which I had l eft thre weeks earl ier, the fol l owing sentence shook me sudden- t t 7 Iy awake: Durrti' egg will hatch " There can be no doubt at all that i n Peret's mi nd every possible measure had to be taken to fulfil (or to ensure that others would someday ful fi l ) this dream-borne prophecy. The Surrealist explorati on of human l i mi ts and potenti al i ties l ikewi se felt the i mpact of the change to a mystical vi si on of thi ngs. The experimental approach to the human was repl aced by a puri fi cati on of the ego by vi rtue of the al chemi cal Great Work. Concrete problems of subjectivity became problems of bei ng. Thi s ontologi cal shi ft impl ied a movement from i nternal to external and evoked a cosmi c uni ty divested of all anthropocentrism where the forces of the mi neral , vegetable and human worl ds all had their parts to pl ay-a universe where, in Rene Guenon's formulati on, as approved by Breton, "hi storical facts have no value save as symbols of spi ri tu al real i ties" . This view, which tended towards an absolute objective i deal i sm, was to find its poet in Malcolm de Chazal , whose sensi ti ve analytical powers and master of general metaphors are displayed i n hi s Sens plastiquf ( 1 947) . Lastly ( though this does not exhaust the avenues pursued by the Surreali st "quest") , we must note the metamorphosi s of the passi on of l ove i nto a veritable cult of Woman. I n thi s connecti on a passage from Mi chel Leiris's Le Point cardinal ( 1 925) clearly foreshadowed what was to come: Then I saw that the I ngenue, her eyel i ds sti l l l owered, was drawi ng my attenti on by means of an obscene moti on of her hand to the portal ot her thighs. I concluded from this ges ture that I was bei ng shown the onl y way out of the bed room that remai ned open to me. For mad love, with the possi bi l i ty of i ts actual i zati on blocked by hi storical upheaval , and consi deri ng the di sgust it i mpl i ed for what Breton called "the amorous i deal of pseudo-couples ruled by resi g nati on and cynicism and hence embodyi ng the pri nci ple of thei r own di si ntegration"-for mad l ove, the only way out was a mutati on i nto subl i me love, based on a consecrati on of the female geni tals 1 1 8 (which myth lost no time i nvesting with the meani ngs of l i fe and death, of penetration and of chthonian depths, of the visible and the hi dden, of air and earth, and so forth) . Thus Breton's hymn t o the glo r of Melusi na, i n Arcanum 1 7, betokens an abandonment of the love celebrated in [Amour Iou: Love, only love that you are, carnal love, I adore, I have never ceased to adore, your lethal shadow, your mortal shadow. A day wi l l come when man wi l l be able to recog nize you for his only master, honoring you even i n the mys terious perersi ons you surround him with. That l ove gives way, though with no expl icit acknowledgement, to the mystery of Woman, lost only to be found once more, uni ti ng i n her person al l the contradictions of the worl d: Melusi na after the scream, Melusina below the bust, I see her scales mi rrored i n the autumn sky. Her radiant coi l twists three times around a wooded hil l , which undulates in waves that follow a score where all the harmonies are tuned to, and reverberate with, those of the nasturtium i n bloom . . . . Melusi na below the bust i s gil ded by all the reflections of the sun off the fal l fol iage. The snakes of her legs dance to the beat of the tambouri ne, the fish of her legs dive and thei r heads reappear elsewhere as i f hanging from the words of that priest who preached among the scorpion grass, the bi rds of her legs drape her with airy netting. Melusi na half reclaimed by pani c-stricken l i fe, Melusina with l ower joi nts of broken stones or aquatic plants or the down of a nest, she's the one I i nvoke, she' s the only one I can see who could redeem thi s savage epoch. The monogamous incl i nation of most of the Surreal ists was herewith offered a transcendent justification far better suited to it than an anti - l ibertine ethic which had occasi onally taken on an unpleasant authoritari anism and often turned i nto a hypocri tical glori fication of fidel i ty, and by extension of jealousy. Respondi ng to t t 9 Peret's i njunction, in hi s Anthologie de ramour sublime, to "hai l woman as the object of all veneration", Breton wrote: It is solely on this conditi on, accordi ng to hi m, that l ove can come to be i ncarnated in a si ngl e bei ng. I t seems to me per sonally that such a process cannot be ful ly concluded unl ess the veneration of which the woman is the object is not shared at all , because that woul d amount for her to a ki nd of frustrati on. Some day the dubious aspect of restri cti ons of thi s sort wi l l need to be cl ari fied i n the li ght of the notion of sacri fice-the pillar of all rel i gi ons, and most especi al ly of the Christian one. The fact is that Breton never attacked this noti on, i ndeed on occasi on he embraced it wi th a wi l l . 1 20 AN ANTI - CHRI STIAN ECUMENI SM One question must have arisen very soon for those seeki ng the con secration of Surreali st values i n the attempt to reconstruct a new mythic uni ty: how were the very notions of the sacred and the myth i cal to be separated out from rel igious systems? The boundaries are certainly di fficult to fix, and perhaps when all is said and done it scarcely matters whether reference is made to Celtic heroes, or to the virtues extolled in the Sagas, rather than to Jesus Christ. Be that as i t may, Surrealism, which is hardly open to the charge of i ndul gence towards Chri stiani ty, cannot, simply by preferri ng the here below to the Beyond, evade the reproach, which i t ought to have addressed to itself, that by plunging into the mists of the transcen dent i t was at the very least abandoni ng all hope of changi ng l i fe and, concomitantly, transformi ng the world-a hope that it had always previ ously sustai ned, even i f the movement's ideological nature precluded any genuine practical pursuit of i t. I t is not possi ble for myth to operate today: there is only the spectacl e, and the spectacle alone rules. Placed now i n a perspective so strongly i ncl i ned to put soci o- economi c condi ti ons in brackets, the Surreal ists' opposition to religion was bound to l ose much of the force it had had i n Ie Surrealisme au Serice de l a Revolution, or for Peret, and i t soon took on the ambiguous character of an anti - rel i gi ous ecumeni sm. I n December 1 945, in his Supplement aux Lctr de Rodez, Artaud proclaimed: "As for me, Artaud, I have no use for God, and I refuse to countenance anyone's founding a rel igion on my backbone or on my brai n. " Thi s pronouncement di d not prevent a few rumour- mon gers from putti ng i t about that Artaud had undergone a conversi on. I t was agai nst this calumny, the model for which Paul Claude! had supplied with hi s attempt to co-opt Rimbaud, and versions of which had recently been directed i n an equally outrageous manner at de Sade and Nietzsche, that the Surrealist pamphlet of 1 948, A la niche les glapisseurs de Dieu! [Back to the Kennel with God's Yappi ng Dogs! ] 1 2 1 was a wel l -justi fied protest. But what is one to thi nk of the fact that onl y shortly afterwards Breton and his fri ends went along wi th a bla tant attempt to co- opt Surreal i sm by the Chri sti an Mi chel Carrouges, with whom they eventual ly broke off sol el y on the basi s of i nternal disagreements? The same ki nd of uncertai nty was displayed by the Surrealists with respect to two essentially desacral i zi ng strategies, namely the ludic mode and black humour. The ol der Surreal i sm grew, the more seriously it took itsel f. A pl ayful spi rit sti l l often presided over the creati on of works of art, but care was al ways taken that this spi ri t should never, as woul d have been consi stent with its own l ogi c, go so far as to destroy such works, to destroy their value by changi ng the rul es of the game. Likewi se, bl ack humour, i n essence a corrosive and negative force, as when i t i nformed the behavi our of an Arthur Cravan, a Jacques Vache or a Jacques Ri gaut, now became nothing more than a critical aspect of a particular work. As negative and crit ical as i t mi ght be i n that i ntegrated rol e, i t was never al l owed to chal l enge art i tsel f. I ndeed Breton went much further i n thi s direc ti on, i nti mating in his Anthologie de I 'humour noir that there was such a thi ng as an "art" of black humour. Let us be cl ear, however: the texts assembled by Breton in his anthol ogy, and thus made avai l abl e to al l , were undoubtedly of a highly explosive nature, and the Vichy gov ernment was quite right to ban the book; but treati ng bl ack humour as nothing more than an aesthetic category was i n effect to suppress the i nstructions for the proper use of these texts and to obscure their true character, for they were the foam of a rage buil t up over the cen turies against al l forms of oppressi on, a rage that must i n the end be unleashed, otherwise every kind of conformi sm would be able to drape itself in the robes of the extraordi nary, and welcome subver sive l aughter with open arms. From a mystical viewpoi nt, pl ay i s ritual and black humour resembles the devi lish fi gres that the Church was cunni ng enough to retai n in i ts archi tecture, even goi ng so far as to carve them on the capitals supporting church roofs. 1 22 Is thi s to say, then, that Surreali sm emerged from the Second World War as a purely specul ative system? Yes and no. Paradoxi cal l y, the more successful Breton and Peret were in givi ng thei r movement the aspect of a mythic construct that had somehow strayed i nto the present, the more they helped nourish a certai n sense of l i fe, a sense that was repeatedly redi scovered duri ng the series of revoluti onary outbursts that began i n 1 968. In this way the eruption of l i fe that had characterized Surreal i sm's earliest days, and then faci l i tated the movement's own erupti on i nto cul tural surival, now once more came to the fore in i ts origi nal form, at once hasteni ng the demi se of cul ture as a separate sphere and hel pi ng to topple the mythi c system of Surreal i sm itself. Thi s coll apse had to wait on the disappearance of Breton and Peret, however, for so long as they l ived they were able, thanks to the authenti ci ty of their own odyssey and thanks to thei r determi nati on to fix their system firmly in pl ace as a sort of centre of effort for all eterity, to i nfuse Surrealism wi th an appearance of l i fe and turn it i nto an effective vei l over reality. I f we bother to trace such resurgences of l i fe through their various i nverted mani festations i n art and l i terature, we find that they flag and conserve all the diverse experiences whose more or less vivid traces humani ty has left i n its various cultures. I t was as though Surreal ism, on the eve of upheavals i n which the will to l ive would throw the corpse of culture onto a joyful pyre, had wanted to save everythi ng from past cul ture that was worthy of rei ncarnation i n new forms of existence. The movement's attempt at synthesis, inciting us as i t does to retrieve every si ngle passionate bizarrerie of i ntellect or custom, must surely count as one of the greatest legacies of this centry. I f there is any trth to the notion that the drowni ng see thei r whole l i fe repl ayed befor thei r eyes i n a few short seconds, Surreali sm mi ght well be described as the last dram of a founderi ng culture. Ami dst the profusi on of riches thus left in our care by Surreal i sm, the contributi on of Lotus de Paini has the merit of goi ng further back i n ti me than any other. Her hal f-i ntui tive, hal f-reasoned analyses seek to ascertai n what pri mi tive mankind's structure of " feel - 1 2 3 i ngs"-meani ng a uni ty of thought, sensati on, emoti on and action must have been, this on the basis of cave pai nti ngs whose very exis tence already betokens the breaki ng up of that uni ty. I t was surel y not by chance that this search for "knowledge of the soul of those far di stant from us" was conducted at a time when the necessity for a new "structure of feel i ng", for a multi di mensi onal and uni tary l i fe, was maki ng itself acutely fel t. A strange figre, who never partici pated di rectly i n thei r movement but whom the Surreali sts discovered and hai led, Lotus de Pa'ini seems to qui t the paths of the i magi nation i n order to offer the revolution the poetic totalit of the old worl d. 1 24 CHAPTER 6 NOW Today Surreal i sm is all around us in its co- opted forms-as con sumer goods, art works, advertisi ng techniques, ali enati ng i mages, cul t objects, rel i gious paraphernal ia and what have you. As much at odds as some of these multi farious forms may seem to be with the spi rit of Surreal i sm, what I have been seeki ng to convey i s that Surreali sm i ndeed "contained" them all from the begi nni ng, just as Bolshevism was "fated" to generate the Stali ni st state. Surreal i sm's curse was its i deological nature, and it was forever condemned to try and exorcise thi s curse, even goi ng so far as to repl ay it on the pri vate and mystical stage of the myth of ol d, duly exhumed from the depths of hi story. Surreali sm had the luci dity of its passi ons, but it never con ceived a passi on for lucidity. Somewhere between the arti ficial par adises of capitalism and soci al i sm's pie in the sky, i t created a space time of uncomfortabl e detachment and blunted aggressiveness which the commodity system and its spectacle, spanni ng as they do both these aspects of the old world, have swi ftly gnawed to the bone. All we can do now, therefore, is to search in Surreal i sm, as we might i n any culture, for the radioactive radical nucleus that i t contai ns. The occupati ons movement of 1 96 8 di d precisely that, rei nvok i ng the vi olence of Surreali sm's profoundest impulses. This appl i es even to the anachronistic and longwinded diatribes of the Surreal i st review LArcbibras, whi ch, i n June 1 96 8 , could still wri te: Let us conti nue to profane the war memorials and turn them i nto monuments of i ngrati tude. (It must be said that only a nation of pi gs could have had the i dea of honouri ng the unknown soldier-let us hope that he was a German desert er!-by pl aci ng his tomb beneath a grotesque triumphal arch, which, with its four legs spread, seems for all the worl d to be shi tti ng on that poor devi l sent one snowy day to shed his red blood for the blue l i ne of the Vosges. ) I t also applies to the i ncendiary rant, fully worthy of Peret, i ssued by a "Surreali st Liberati on Group": 1 27 If you are in despai r, if you are sui ci dal from boredom, it i s ti me to stop acti ng agai nst yourselves. Tme to turn your anger agai nst those who are really to bl ame for your predi cament. Burn down the churches, the barracks, the pol ice stati ons! Loot the department stores! Bl ow up the stock exchange! Shoot all j udges, bosses, trade- uni on potentates, cops, and slave- drivers! Wreak vengeance at last on those who take their revenge on you for thei r own i mpo tence and servi l i ty! But i t was no doubt outsi de Surreal i sm, and in large measure thanks to those who defined themselves i n contradisti ncti on to i t, that that i rreduci bl e kernel of freedom whi ch Surreal i sm had so fai thful l y yet so mal adroi tly champi oned was most effectively reaf fi rmed. Returni ng for the fi rst ti me to the movement's roots, and vi ewi ng i t clearly i n the context of today's hi storical condi ti ons, these opponents of Surreal i sm readdressed a problem that had been alternately l ost and found i n the ebb and fl ow of the Surreal i st ti de: the problem of the total human bei ng's sel f- real i zation under the si gn of freedom. Seen from the standpoi nt of thi s aspi rati on, the Surreal i sts may surely be sai d to have been what Breton wanted them to be, namel y, that mi nori ty whom he descri bed, i n "Prolegomena t o a Thi rd Mani festo of Surreal i sm Or Not", as "those who rise wi th every new program which promotes the greater eman ci pati on of manki nd but whi ch has not yet been put to the test o f real i ty" . To these Breton gr;nted the gracf of a perpetual abi l i ty to start afresh: I n view of the hi storical process, where as we wel l know truth mani fests itself only as a knowi ng chuckle, and i s never really grasped, I must at least decl are my al legiance to thi s mi nori ty, who are endlessly renewable and who always act as a l ever: my greatest ambi ti on woul d be f ulfi lled i f I could somehow ensure the never- endi ng transmi ssi bi l i ty o f thei r theoretical contributi on after I am gone. 128 TRANSLATOR'S ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Many, many thanks to those fri ends who generously read al l or part of the translati on and gave me the benefit of their advice ( even if I did not always follow i t ) : Ji m Brook, Bruce Elwel l , Paul Hammond, Cathy Pozzo di Borgo, Fl orence Sebasti ani , and John Si mmons. On the desi gn and producti on fronts, I am most grateful to Marha Slomowitz, the AK col l ective, Freddie Baer, and above al l to Anne Cordel l . Thanks too, once agai n, to Mi a Rublowska for al l ki nds of vital hel p. I n handl i ng quoted material I have rel i ed on the exi sti ng trans l ati ons l i sted below (though I have occasionally made changes) . I gratefully acknowledge my debt to the transl ators and publ i shers concerned. Al l other transl ati ons of quoted materi al are my own. Breton, Arcanum 1 7, translated by Zack Rogow ( Los Angeles: Sun and Moon Press, 1994) Breton, "Introduction to the Di scourse on the Paucity of Real i ty", transl ated by Richard Si eburth and Jenni fer Gordon, October 69 ( Summer 1994) Breton, "Legi timate Defence", translated by Richard Howard, i n Frankl i n Rosemont, ed. , What Is Surrealism? Selected Writings ( Chi cago: Monad Press, 1978) Breton, Md Love, translated by Mary Ann Caws ( Li ncoln and London: Universi ty of Nebraska Press, 1987) , i ncludi ng Breton's poem "Sunflower", translated by Caws and Jean-Pier Cauvi n Breton, Maniestoes of Surrealism, transl ated by Richard Seaver and Hel en R. Lane (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1969) Breton, Nadja, transl ated by Richard Howard (New York: Grove Press, 1960) Breton, Surrealism and Painting, translated by Simon Watson Taylor ( London: Macdonald, 1972) Jose Pierre, ed. , Investigating Sex: Surrealist Discussions 1 928-1 932, trans lated by Malcolm I mri e ( London: Verso, 1992) 1 3 1 "I there is an truth to the notion that the drwning see their whole lie replayed before their eyes in a few short seconds, Surrealism may well be described as the last dream of a foundering culture. II A Cavalier Histor of Surrealism offers an unequivocal answer to the question "What was living and what was dead in Surrealism?" Though blistering in its criticism of Surrealism's artistic and political aporias, the book identifies the "radioactive fragment of radicalism" that the movement never quite managed to shed. Packed with quotations that still shock after so many years, Vaneigem's pseudonymous primer summarizes the views of the Situationists on their celebrated forerunners. Raoul Vaneigem was born in 1934 in Lessines, Belgium. From 1961 until 1970 he was a leading light in the Situationist International. Of his main writings, the following have been translated into English: The Rwo/utioll of Everday Life (1967), The Book of Pleasures (1979), and Te Movement of the Free Spirit ( 1986). US $9.95 UK f7.95 ISBN 1-873176-94-5 I 9 781873 176948