Surrealism Against the Current

Description

Bringing together many Surrealist texts that have never previously been available in English, this collection is an essential guide for anyone who wishes to understand the Surrealist movement.



It traces its development in the words of the Surrealists themselves, offering a definitive expression of Surrealism as a collective movement. It shows the extent of Surrealist positions and interests and shows how, having become a major cultural phenomenon of the twentieth century, the issues it has raised remain central to current debates.



Covering the period 1922-91, these texts illuminate its philosophical, political and ethical positions and locate Surrealism in a broader social and cultural context. Comprising statements from Surrealist groups in Paris, Belgium, Romania, Sweden and Czechoslovakia, and signed by the major participants, it reveals the international dimension of Surrealism.
Acknowledgements

Introduction: Surrealism as a Collective Adventure

Note on the selection of texts

1. Historical Orientation of Surrealism

2. Surrealism Vis-à-vis Revolutionary Politics

3. The Security of the Spirit

4. Declarations on Colonialism

Appendices

Bibliography

Index

Sujets

• Political Ideologies
• Political Science
• Democracy

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 20 septembre 2001
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783716197
• Langue: English

Extrait

SURREALISM AGAINST THE CURRENT
 
 
SURREALISM AGAINST THE CURRENT
Tracts and Declarations
Edited and translated by
M ICHAEL R ICHARDSON AND K RZYSZTOF F IJAŁKOWSKI
 
First published 2001 by Pluto Press
345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA and 22883 Quicksilver Drive, Sterling, VA 20166–2012, USA
www.plutobooks.com
This collection and translations copyright © Michael Richardson and Krzysztof Fijałkowski 2001
The right of Michael Richardson and Krzysztof Fijałkowski to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Surrealism against the current : tracts and declarations / edited and translated by Michael Richardson and Krzysztof Fijałkowski.
p. cm.
ISBN 0–7453–1779–0 (hardback) — ISBN 0–7453–1778–2 (paperback)
1. Surrealism. I. Richardson, Michael. II. Fijałkowski, Krzysztof.
NX456.5.S8 S868 2001
700'.41163'0944361—dc21
2001003307
ISBN 978 0 7453 1779 3 hardback
ISBN 978 0 7453 1778 6 paperback
ISBN 978 1 7837 1619 7 ePub
ISBN 978 1 7837 1620 3 Mobi
Designed and produced for Pluto Press by Chase Publishing Services, Fortescue, Sidmouth EX10 9QG
Typeset from disk by Stanford DTP Services, Towcester
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
 
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Surrealism as a Collective Adventure
Note on the Selection of Texts
1.
The Historical Orientation of Surrealism
 
Introduction to La Révolution surréaliste
 
Declaration of 27 January 1925
 
The Position of Surrealism
 
Letter to André Breton
 
Dialectics of the Dialectic
 
Inaugural Rupture
 
High Frequency
 
Note for Le Surréalisme, même
 
Confronting the Liquidators
 
Let’s Get to the Point
 
The Platform of Prague
 
The Possible Against the Current
 
When Surrealism Turned Fifty
 
Hermetic Bird
 
The Platform of Prague Twenty Years On
2.
Surrealism vis-à-vis Revolutionary Politics
 
The Revolution First and Always!
 
Burn Them Down!
 
Mobilisation Against War is Not Peace
 
‘Planet Without a Visa’
 
When the Surrealists Were Right
 
The Knife in the Wound
 
Counter-attack: Union of the Struggle of Revolutionary Intellectuals
 
Declaration: ‘The Truth About the Moscow Trials’
 
For a Revolutionary Union
 
Neither Your War Nor Your Peace!
 
Binary Star: Letter to a Group of Militants
 
Hungary, Rising Sun
 
The Example of Cuba and the Revolution
 
Neither Today Nor In This Way
 
The Surrealists to the French Section of the Fourth International
 
Portrait of the Enemy
 
Down with France!
 
The Public Sphere and Curiosity
3.
The Security of the Spirit
 
Letter to the Head Doctors of Insane Asylums
 
Address to the Dalai Lama
 
Address to the Pope
 
Open the Prisons/Disband the Army
 
The Fiftieth Anniversary of Hysteria
 
The Aragon Affair
 
Read... Don’t Read
 
Poetry Transfigured
 
The Fireships of Fear
 
Back to Your Kennels, Yelpers of God
 
See... Don’t See
 
Murderer!
 
Facing the Mob
 
The Heart’s Hue and Cry
 
Warning Shot
 
Against Céline
 
Expose the Physicists, Empty the Laboratories!
 
It’s Up to You
 
Run If You Must
 
The Stockholm Reminder
 
beautiful like BEAUTIFUL LIKE
4.
Declarations on Colonialism
 
To the Soldiers and Sailors
 
The World in the Surrealist Era
 
Don’t Visit the Colonial Exhibition
 
First Appraisal of the Colonial Exhibition
 
Legitimate Defence
 
Murderous Humanitarianism
 
Freedom is a Vietnamese Word
 
Declaration on the Right to Insubordination in the Algerian War
Appendices
Jean Schuster, The Fourth Canto
Definitions of Surrealism
Select Bibliography
Notes
Index
 
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
In keeping with the collective focus of the content of this work, we wish to acknowledge the stimulus generated through deliberations over many years about the nature of surrealism engaged in with participants in the surrealist movement that has made this work possible, in particular Jean-Louis Bédouin, Robert Benayoun, Jean Benoît, Johannes Bergmark, Elisa Breton, Jorge Camacho, Roger Cardinal, Eugenio Castro, Mario Cesariny, Stephen Clark, Claude Courtot, Kenneth Cox, Jean-Marc Debenedetti, Tony Earnshaw, Carl-Michael Edenborg, Jakub Effenberger, Nicole Espagnol, Rachel Fijałkowska, Guy Flandre, Mattias Forshage, Kathleen Fox, Guy Girard, Jimmy Gladiator, Georges Goldfayn, Jean-Michel Goutier, Paul Hammond, Bill Howe, Stuart Inman, Radovan Ivsic, Joseph Jablonski, Abdul Kader El Janaby, Josef Janda, Alain Joubert, Nelly Kaplan, Dominique Lambert, Jean-Pierre Le Goff, Sergio Lima, François Leperlier, Rik Lina, Annie Le Brun, Michael Löwy, Claudette Lucand, Conroy Maddox, Lurdes Martines, Marie-Dominique Massoni, Annie McGrath, Alena Nádvorníková, Sarah Metcalf, Peter Overton, Mimi Parent, José Pierre, André Pieyre de Mandiargues, José Manuel Rojo, Bertrand Schmidt, Jean Schuster, Robert Short, Gerald Stack, Martin Stejskal, Jan Švankmajer, Eva Švankmajerová, Hervé Télémaque, Jean Terrossian, John W. Welson, Haifa Zangana, Michel Zimbacca. Special thanks are due to Bruno Solařík and especially to Kateřina Piňosová for their hospitality at a critical stage of preparing this book. A generous grant from the Elephant Trust enabled us to develop this project from its early stages, and additional financial assistance was also made available thanks to the Research Committee of Norwich School of Art and Design.
This book is dedicated to the memories of Marguerite Bonnet, Émile Bouchard, Vincent Bounoure, Gherasim Luca, Pierre Naville, Ludvik Šváb and most of all to that of Peter Wood, all of whom gave us an incalculable insight into the fervour – and the friendship – at the heart of the collective adventure.
 
INTRODUCTION: SURREALISM AS A COLLECTIVE ADVENTURE

Here is a meeting of beings characterised by the same lines of balance. An exalting friendship at the heart of an elective group which situates itself beyond ideas, beyond the gregarious. A certainty that the amalgam of certain individuals, an active focal point, can recreate the world. Any action is only valid as a function of the TANGIBILITY it implies and projects. To turn each gesture into a spasm of love. WE WISH TO BE PRISMS, TOTALLY REFLECTIVE FOR EVERY KIND OF LIGHT, ABOVE ALL THOSE WE HAVE YET TO KNOW. 1
Surrealism is among the most influential ideas of the twentieth century. It has made an impact in virtually every sphere of life and the word itself has entered the vocabulary in a significant way as an adjective serving to describe a certain sort of outlandishness (even though such a bewildering array of different uses of the word rarely corresponds with anything the surrealists themselves would recognise). From another perspective, however, the influence of surrealism has been negligible, indeed the incorporation of the letter rather than the spirit of surrealism into the frame of a familiar vocabulary could be seen as a sign of defeat, a sign that it has succumbed to the forces of orthodoxy as an adolescent rebellion against prevailing, necessary reality. From its very beginnings, surrealism has had to struggle against its grave diggers. The verses of their song may have changed in content over the years, but its refrain remains familiar: surrealism is dead, but its ‘spirit’ lives on as an influence on one or another cultural activity in today’s society. Such a backhanded compliment rarely serves as anything but a transparent attempt at reductionism.
In editing this collection, we have wanted above all to bring attention to the essence of surrealism as a collective idea whose very rationale is founded in the implications that emerge from any attempt at thinking together. As such, its primary challenge may be said to have been to the individualism that has underwritten cultural forms since the Enlightenment. Surrealism may, in this respect, be accurately defined, as André Masson once asserted, as ’the collective experience of individualism’. The challenge this implies has rarely been taken up in critical studies either of surrealism or of individual surrealists, which overwhelmingly persist in regarding surrealism as an accretion of individuals coming together under the tutelage of André Breton rather than as a concentration of collective energy taking form through individual endeavour. This distinction is, we believe, crucial to any understanding of the nature of surrealism and is what motivates this volume. Jacques Lacan, one of the few non-surrealists to have appreciated this aspect, once defined surrealism as ‘a tornado on the edge of an atmospheric depression where the norms of humanist individualism founder’, 2 and the collective documents that have been a feature of surrealist activity from its beginnings are the most immediate evidence of its extent.
THE SURREALIST MILIEU
As is well known, surrealism was born in the social, cultural and intellectual ferment that followed the First World War. That it began as a Parisian movement is significant. In 1914, Paris perceived itself as the centre of civilisation. It was, as Walter Benjamin asserted, ‘the capital of the nineteenth century’ and it stood far above London – its only rival – as the city that embodied the aspirations and material achievements of Western civilisation. Not simply the centre of the West, it was more specifically the capital of French rationalism and the Enlightenment ideal, representing its quintessence against the narrowness of English empiricism or the portentousness of German philosophy. With the ending of the war in 1918, such a view was, if not in tatters, at least tarnished. The war exposed the raw nerves of civilisation itself and made the idea of being its ‘