"SPAIN IN THE HEART: THE SECOND INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF WRITERS", EUROPE, NO. 637, MAY 1982, PP. 179-199.
Having treated the First International Congress of Writers for the Defense of Culture (1935) in the General Dictionary of Surrealism and its Surroundings, Fribourg, Office du Livre, Paris, P. U. F, 1982, I was then surprised to find nothing on the second, which was held 2 years later, in Spain and ended in Paris. Tristan Tzara, in his capacity as head of the Alliance of Intellectuals for the Defense of Culture, whose Complete Works I was finishing publishing, had taken a notable part in it. I therefore produced this article, which required much research from me, and entrusted it to the journal Europe, always concerned with treating its own past and everything that touched on its own history through Jean-Richard Bloch, Jean Ghéhenno, etc.
More than twenty years later, Wolfgang Klein, associated with my research team at the CNRS, managed to have the documents relating to the 1st congress published, under the title:
For the Defense of Culture. The Texts of the International Congress of Writers, Paris, June 1935, assembled and presented by Sandra TERONI and Wolfgang KLEIN. Dijon: University Editions of Dijon, 2005, 665 p. (Sources Collection).
Download the PDF of my article
Text reprinted in: H.B. History of Literary Facts, Classiques Garnier, 2022, p. 49-62.
Read in Gallica the text of the interventions in the journal Commune, 1937
See: National Archives: International Congress of Writers for the Defense of Culture. Valencia. 1937
The Second International Congress of Writers for the Defense of Culture opened on July 4, 1937 in the meeting room of the Valencia City Hall, then capital of the Republic. Organized jointly by the Ministry of Public Instruction and Fine Arts of the Republican government and by the Alliance of Intellectuals for the Defense of Culture, it also took place in Madrid, Barcelona and Paris. This Congress, resolutely anti-fascist, constituted the most spectacular propaganda act organized by the Republican government during the Spanish Civil War and had a great media impact on an international scale. It also allowed intellectuals from around the world to express their solidarity with the Popular Front government of the Spanish Republic, victorious in the democratic elections of February 1936 but victim of the coup d'état led by General Franco with the help of international fascism...
Read: Tristan Tzara, Complete Works, vol. V, Flammarion ed.
Read: The Poetry of Pablo Neruda, Spain in the Heart, 1938.
