Text published in the "Correspondence" section of the journal:

2016: the triumph of Dada Today, the media is buzzing only about the upcoming edition, announced by Fayard editions, of Mein Kampf [My Struggle], falling into the public domain this year.

Should we, in this period of characterized mental regression, give the floor back to the most criminal of men?

Some protest, in the name of thousands of dead.

Others, of whom I am one, think, like Apollinaire, that everything must be published.

Publish, yes. But for which readers? Adult minds, knowing how to recognize the performativity of a text, have the right to know the basic library of Nazism. Should we exclude others for all that?

In this regard, I remember the difficulties I encountered when, preparing this critical anthology on Dada, which would eventually be published, with the collaboration of Michel Carassou, under the title Dada, History of a Subversion (Fayard, 1990, 2005). Knowing that Hitler had announced that he would make his party to Dada as soon as he came to power, I had to find the exact passage of Mein Kampf where this threat was recorded.

The closest library, for me, was then that of the Sorbonne. I only had one floor to climb to get this cursed work. If there was indeed a card for this author and this title in the bibliography room, the work, or more exactly, its French translation, was not found on the shelves, to which I had direct access, like all tenured professors.

I opened up to the director of this inter-university establishment, and asked him to enlighten my lantern on this material disappearance. Didn't we regularly close the rooms for inventory reasons, in search of unreturned, missing works, but not for everyone? And even if an unscrupulous reader had appropriated the volume, didn't we have the means to replace it?

This dear director then explained to me that at the Liberation, a purge committee had constituted itself to put a certain number of titles out of reach of readers. Political Hell, in short.

Strong in my rational convictions, I asked him to fill the void. Which he did immediately, warning me as soon as the work arrived, equipped with a flyer which, in accordance with the law, warned the reader against the morbid effects of such reading.

Here is the passage I drew from it concerning Dada:

"If Camus's judgment on Dada reflects an understanding that cannot fail to surprise, that of Adolf Hitler, on the other hand, in perfect conformity with his intimate convictions, reflects the threat that Dada posed to culture: 'But such a development [of the Dadaist epidemic] had to end one day; indeed, the day when this form of art would really correspond to the general conception, one of the most consequential upheavals would have occurred in the history of humanity. The reverse development of the human brain would thus have begun... but one trembles at the thought of how it might end" (Adolf Hitler: My Struggle (1924), Nouvelles Editions Latines, 1984, p. 258). Hitler had understood, Dada clearly intended to provoke "a cultural collapse". Claiming to defend culture, he himself was to provoke a quite different collapse which would still give reason to Dada. To defend the values of a "culture" and particular interests, the dictator was going to cause the death of millions of men. Conversely, Dada attacked these values and these interests in the name of life, of a life that would be fully lived by all men." (p. 42)

Today, Dada has clearly triumphed over its Nazi adversary. The centenary of its birth in Zurich should mark this victory, with public ceremonies worthy of the event.

Will it always be the same?

If, in 1979, a judgment of the Court of Appeal enjoined the Nouvelles Éditions Latines to publish the only authorized translation of Mein Kampf equipped with a warning, the fact that the original enters the public domain on January 1, 2016 means that anyone can edit it as they wish, have it retranslated, and offer it for sale without any warning. Especially since it cannot be targeted by the law on freedom of the press, nor by its complement called the Gayssot Law (which only concerns the contestation of Nazi crimes).

One observation only, but of size: the booksellers questioned all tell us that putting a French translation on sale would not be a good commercial deal.

I repeat: only intellectual reasons justify making this infamous work available to readers. Better that it be accompanied by an important critical apparatus, written by the best historians, as Fayard editions announce.

It remains, alas, that no publisher is master of the quality of reading, nor of the aberrations or diversions to which it can lead. Fortunately, French laws are not only made for the protection of animals.

Henri BÉHAR October 19, 2015