ROGER VITRAC, HUMOROUS COLUMNIST

Henri BÉHAR

Known as a poet, playwright, and screenwriter, Roger Vitrac is not particularly recognized as a journalist—a profession he never truly practiced[1]. However, after helping to found the journal Aventure (three issues from November 1921 to January 1922), he did not hesitate to proclaim himself its director in order to join the organizing committee for the Paris Congress "for the determination of guidelines and the defense of the modern spirit." This event brought him into friendship with André Breton. From then on, he took part in all the activities of the group, which would soon proclaim itself "surrealist," though he was the first to be expelled in September 1925, learning of his definitive exclusion—expressed in harsh terms—from the Second Surrealist Manifesto. Whatever the reasons for his dismissal, it is certain that his journalistic contributions to the left-wing press throughout 1923 were not the cause—far from it!

Thereafter, Vitrac published a handful of isolated pieces in Comoedia, Paris-Journal, Le Journal littéraire, L’Intransigeant; four articles on theatre in the artistic journal La Bête noire (run by Tériade); about ten columns in Paris-Soir in 1938; and a cinema column in L’Écran Français in 1946[6][9]. Altogether, as far as I can tell, less than a hundred short pieces appeared in the newspapers—excluding more specifically literary and artistic journals. Most were collected by Jean-Pierre Han in three volumes: for literature, Champ de bataille (Rougerie, 1975, 122 p.); for the cinema, Re-tour de manivelle (Rougerie, 1976, 102 p.). In principle (1), these do not include texts published in journals, nor the "Voyage en Grèce" articles, which are essential for understanding his character, while his writings on art—L’Enlèvement des Sabines (Deyrolle, 1990, 126 p.), assembled from articles in journals like Documents, Les Cahiers d’art, and even newspapers like L’Intransigeant—demonstrate, almost absurdly, how little such distinctions between newspapers and literary journals matter for Vitrac. Proof is found in the article from Visages du monde cited in the appendix.

Browsing through these collections, one is struck by their internal coherence—each within its chosen subject—and by Vitrac’s repeated insistence that he was not a specialist critic (neither literary, nor artistic, nor cinematic). What a curious journalist he was, who didn’t comment on the news and approached recent events only obliquely, if at all! Ultimately, he was a columnist striving for "a science of humor"(2), trying to extract from everyday life an amusing, timeless truth: "Let us remain contemporary without doing current events," he writes. "To be contemporary is to resist the news, so that one day it may transform. Since the news stubbornly dies with the ephemeral, the contemporary, like the Phoenix, is endlessly reborn from its ashes"(3).

Having elsewhere analyzed his articles in L’Écran français and his work as a screenwriter (4), and given the scope of this dossier, I will limit myself to examining Vitrac’s journalistic activity strictly during 1922–1923, leaving to others his reflections on art, which involve a different approach.

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The Vitrac family came from the Lot, a department whose notable figure was Louis-Jean Malvy, radical-socialist MP from 1906 to 1919. Malvy secured a Parisian job for Roger’s father. As Interior Minister in the Viviani government, accused of defeatism, he was attacked by the right and brought before the High Court on August 6, 1918, where he was sentenced to five years banishment for "malfeasance." Once amnestied, he was quickly re-elected and regained official positions. In those difficulties, a steadfast supporter was journalist Henri Fabre, director of two closely related publications. First, Fabre had founded Les Hommes du jour (1908–1939), a weekly known for its caustic caricatures of parliamentarians. Then, in February 1916, he created Le Journal du Peuple, a political, literary, aesthetic, and social newspaper. Starting as a daily, then weekly until 1929 (when it was merged into Les Hommes du jour), the paper leaned socialist and anarchist and brought together major writers (Henry Torrès, Victor Méric, Bernard Lecache, Alexandre Blanc). Its circulation reached 40,000 in 1917. Open to "Bolsheviks" by 1917, joining the Third International at the Tours Congress in 1920, Fabre aimed to keep the journal independent, but was excluded from the Communist Party in May 1922. Undeterred, he continued publishing Le Journal du Peuple, alternating with Les Hommes du jour.

Through Malvy’s intervention (5), Fabre accepted Roger Vitrac into his newspapers, making him one of the few Dadaists to write regularly, from December 15, 1922, to December 15, 1923, for the left-wing press! Admittedly, these articles had no political slant, and they seem to have been allocated to either periodical according to available space rather than any principle. At the very least, they provided the young man with pocket money to keep up with the Littérature group and allowed him to act as a herald for nascent Surrealism and its leading figures.

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While Jean Madelaigue, Renée Dunan, and Lucien Blumenfeld handled book columns and Paul Reboux the theatre section, Vitrac’s articles in Le Journal du Peuple and Les Hommes du jour were primarily about literature emerging from the avant-garde laboratories, whose voice he became—sometimes allusively, not without a certain obscurity. There is no link between the weekly’s editorial line and the substance of these billets—on the latest Dada event, a literary hoax, an artist’s portrait, an exhibition, the staging of Locus Solus, the anniversary of a poet’s death, the publication of Soupault’s Bon Apôtre, etc.—save for their shared marginality and a form of anarchism. They fall into three main categories: interviews, accounts of key authors’ works, and personal essays.

With total freedom, the young journalist enjoyed interviewing his closest friends, representatives of the younger generation: Breton, Tzara, Picabia, and finally himself (for lack of responses from the older generation—Valéry, Larbaud, Barrès, Gide, Romains—who let him down).

His goal is clear: he set out to pursue the inquiry opened by the journal Littérature—"why do you write?"—attempting to dispel ambiguous answers, never taking sides or concluding, merely seeking to find in his interviewees "wonderful human machines"(6).

First among these, and whom he openly admires, is André Breton, whose imminent literary withdrawal he announces, along with Paul Éluard and Robert Desnos(7). The information is significant and merits detail. In April 1923, Breton considered the battle "absolutely lost." The old literary game had regained the upper hand through works like those of Cocteau, Morand, Rivière, and even the comeback of Valéry (recently so admired!). If the war had managed to liberate certain energies aimed at undermining the very idea of literature, these had provoked an overwhelming reaction, and the public was no longer following. Soon there would be no readers left for Littérature, which would cease to appear. In short, Breton gives up all ambition and despairs of everything but "the most unrestrained love."

The next week, Tzara’s attitude, marked by individualism, is not so different. Interviewed, Vitrac paints a negative portrait of the founder of Dada, not as he is but as he should be—according to himself or the public(8). Tzara ironically obliges by calling himself an opportunist, cultivating his three vices to the limit: "love, money, poetry." Notably, he defines poetry as "a way to transmit a certain amount of humanity or elements of life you have inside you." Tzara has turned the page on Dada, seeing it as a purely personal adventure, born of his disgust. That movement can boast of having introduced "active indifference, contemporary carelessness, spontaneity and relativity" into life. He indirectly answers Breton—who felt that all recent movements shared a common background—by affirming Dada was always simply a protest. As for destroying literature, he sees no better method than attacking it from within, using its own means, to save what matters—poetry. That is now his life’s aim, even if it means publishing De nos oiseaux, a collection he shows to the journalist but which would only appear in 1929!

Considerably shorter and more anecdotal, the interview with Francis Picabia remains provocative, if telling the truth can be considered a provocation! Met at an exhibition of his Spanish Women, the painter admits to exhibiting for publicity, painting to sell, and recommends scandal for self-promotion. The second interview is a masterpiece of nonchalance: as usual, the artist tosses off aphorisms, contradicting himself with every breath. He acts to relieve his boredom, believes poetry does not exist, that there will always be modernism so long as art is needed, that Dadaism only helped him "make men," and that variety is the greatest thing in life(9).

Humor, provocation, or naïveté—Vitrac does not hesitate to interview himself(10). Posing the fundamental question, he confesses, like Tzara, to writing naturally, as one speaks, without a message to deliver. This uselessness of literature implies absolute gratuitousness, unless it merely conceals the fear of suicide. For him, there is a deep gap between thought and the work. Asking himself about this loss of meaning, he thinks that only the greatest poets, like Mallarmé or Rimbaud (whom he is far from equaling), managed to reach the source: one to reveal his own impotence, the other, through illumination, attaining an infernal fever. His aim is thus to prove the power of language by probing the mystery of words, to reach the depths of his being, past the layers of the unconscious, toward a "bare mysticism."

Also worth mentioning in this series is Jacques Rivière, who replied in writing on behalf of Jean Paulhan, whom Vitrac had known in 1921 while preparing the Paris Congress. His response showed that the editor of the Nouvelle Revue Française intended to keep a firm hand on the magazine, confirming that Vitrac and Le Journal du Peuple were to be taken seriously. Rivière saw Dada as "a definitive liquidation of the romantic conception"(11) latent in all European literature, now marked by relativity, exemplified by Proust. As for the NRF’s program, "as little dogmatic as possible," it aimed to welcome both "modernism" and inner reality. Young literature was contesting itself—a fight the NRF could not ignore, acting as the battlefield, knowing natural selection would prevail. It is obvious Rivière was thinking of Breton and Aragon, named in his article "Reconnaissance à Dada" (August 1, 1920). Knowing this conflict from the inside, Vitrac points out the term Dada, used by his interlocutor, no longer meant the same thing; he reserved the right to revisit the interview in a future article. That would appear nine months later in Paris-Journal. Under the lively, polemical headline "Jacques the Weak, Editor of the NRF," Vitrac accuses Rivière of contradicting himself from one interview to the next, and, above all, of having done nothing for the Surrealist forerunners (Rimbaud, Lautréamont, Roussel, etc.). In closing, he calls him an unwitting positivist whose greatest poet would be Valéry—"a poet entirely fabricated"(12).

Young Vitrac might have had the talent to apply his questionnaire to dead authors, but instead, he gave his readers a lively introduction to his models in literature and theatre: Apollinaire, Jarry, or Roussel.

Entitled "Death for the Audience," his first article in Les Hommes du jour (December 30, 1922) was a lengthy report on the theatrical adaptation of Locus Solus. True, all Paris papers covered the fortune Raymond Roussel spent mounting this run at the Théâtre Antoine, but Vitrac did not hesitate to challenge the audience: "Though there are no experiments and the results are as sterile as the omelet from which no chicken will ever emerge, this is the last time I’ll worry about having seen the audience turn red." He adds, with wit: "When I say the audience, I exclude no one and mean especially the literati, and that cerebral foam they use for shaving—‘criticism’." Don’t search for argument where there is only enthusiasm for Roussel’s inventions—emeralds, veal-railings, aqua micans, parrot tongues grafted onto fish, a nickel dental forceps made for the occasion.

On the contrary, "The Theatre of Apollinaire," published in Comoedia (November 3, 1923), commemorating the fifth anniversary of the poet’s death, is a model of clear instruction, as if, using a different outlet, Vitrac sought to address a wider audience. To this end, he liberally cites the prince of journalists, Gaston Picard, and lines from the mirliton verse of Les Mamelles de Tirésias. Pondering the meaning of the play, he doubts the patriotic values the author claims, turning instead to medieval farce and workshop gags. He describes the production seriously and concludes that Apollinaire founded a school, opening many doors that were soon shut again.

But Vitrac’s real master was Alfred Jarry, to whom he devoted at least three articles in Fabre’s weeklies(13). Don’t expect a methodical explanation of ‘pataphysics in the article of the same name, inspired by the republication of Faustroll. Like Aragon, Vitrac embarks, with brio, on synthetic criticism, allusively and concisely alluding not to the volume’s subject but to its scientific preoccupations: "Nicotine quarries opened in sublimated blossoms, red clovers crawling with teenagers’ spinal cords like the rigging of a mercury ship." Vitrac readers will recognize the tone of Connaissance de la mort.

On the anniversary of Ubu’s creator’s death, Vitrac followed with an insightful retrospective of all his works. Having, like Jarry, known a particularly grotesque and mean teacher, he believed Jarry exorcized him by creating the puppet Père Ubu, with whom he would identify ever after. Vitrac comments on Faustroll, Le Surmâle, and especially L’Amour absolu, which was then entirely unavailable, and finally, marks Jarry’s passing with a short scene in the style of the Ubu almanacs.

Did left-wing and far-left readers understand or appreciate these brief profiles of Roussel, Cocteau, de Chirico, or Picabia; the account of the final Dada evening, interrupted by Breton and friends; the uncompromising celebration of Pataphysics and absolute love? It is uncertain. Even though journalism was freer and less codified then than now, such exploits must have sparked reactions from weeklies that eventually dispensed with Vitrac’s prose.

Did maturity, or the passage of time, play a role? Vitrac seems to have learned from the disruptive effects of his synthetic criticism: his one-off contributions elsewhere seem more informative, rigorous, and explicit. I’ll note three that, in a way, clarify his vision of Surrealism. "The Mysteries of the Dream" appeared in Comoedia on January 1, 1925; "The Interior Monologue and Surrealism" in the same paper on March 17, 1925; and later, "The Modern Spirit" in L’Intransigeant on March 17, 1931(14).

Beginning with a philological exploration of the distinction between "songe" and "rêve," Vitrac defines the former as "a disciplined dream," plausible and open to only one interpretation. On the other hand, the nascent Surrealism demands that life should adopt the effects of the dream, shaped after Strindberg’s Dream Play, which he considers the first dramatic work built entirely as a dream. His analysis reveals the characters’ deep inner life, and, as he says, the whole thing is the true language of the dream. Unsurprisingly, the Alfred-Jarry Theatre (run by Artaud and Vitrac) staged this play for the first time in France in their third production, June 1928.

Along similar lines, his article on interior monologue begins with the casual phrase "everything that pops into our heads," which he links to the discovery of automatic writing by Breton and Soupault in Les Champs magnétiques. The blank-page fear may be over, but the practice must serve as an investigative tool, whereas the interior monologue as practiced by Édouard Dujardin in Les Lauriers sont coupés brings only words, not images. It is, in the end, just a soliloquy, when what is needed is a rendering of dream images. Yet this "can be told through monstrous architectures, which are really just words gone wild again." The rest is a lively plea for Surrealism, echoing the preface to La Révolution surréaliste, which Vitrac himself helped write.

A few years later, "The Modern Spirit" describes the meetings convened by Breton among journal editors to define a shared outlook. Vitrac laments that nothing came of it—but explains this failure by noting that such a phenomenon really existed only in the first years of the twentieth century, up until the war, symbolized by Picasso’s La Dame au fauteuil (1914), which Surrealist painters, apart from perhaps Miró, did not follow.

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This journalistic collaboration finds a rather unexpected echo in Vitrac’s four-act play Le Camelot, staged by Dullin at L’Atelier in 1936, with Georgius in the lead. Beyond the satire and intent to entertain, I see, for my part, a depiction of the habits of newsmen. Having observed journalism firsthand and studied press history in an era marked by political and financial scandals, Vitrac used this world as the engine of his comedy.

After developing a surrealist dramatic aesthetic summed up in the "Theatre of Fire," Vitrac sought to paint "Life as it is." In fact, the playwright’s imagination was nourished by concrete events (the Stavisky affair was on everyone’s mind). Regarding Le Lapin, the newspaper launched by Le Camelot and friends, one can think of lasting satirical weeklies—for example, the first editorial of Le Canard enchaîné (September 10, 1915) announced, "From now on, Le Canard enchaîné will only publish, after careful checking, rigorously inaccurate news." More apt is a comparison to its contemporaneous rival, Le Merle blanc, which advocated the same causticity. Founded in 1919, it sold over 800,000 copies by 1924, when founder Eugène Merle shut it down to launch ventures like Paris-Soir. Sunk by a "consortium" of France’s five largest papers, allied with Agence Havas and Messageries Hachette, he launched Paris-Matinal in 1927, offering subscribers giveaways worth three or four times the subscription, just like Le Camelot’s raffle, funded by advertising. Needless to say, Vitrac lived with Léo Merle (wife of that ingenious press magnate) from 1933 to 1948, and thus learned all the tricks of the trade.

Well-informed, the playwright simply highlights the workings of the period's press: beholden to private interests, subsidized by ministry and party slush funds, gathering information and support from corporate offices like the Centre de propagande des Républicains nationaux, run by journalist Henri de Kérillis of L’Écho de Paris (whom the Camelot references as Kirikilis), which funded no fewer than three hundred papers!

Above all, Vitrac is comic, not out to attack the mores of the Third Republic. He merely extends a principle of irony embodied by young Victor playing with the idiotic General (in Victor ou Les Enfants au pouvoir): to be heard, always say the opposite of what you think. Life is such that this contradiction is spot on! Like Victor, Le Camelot pulls the strings of all the characters—puppets he manipulates as he pleases—even up to his own final vanishing act.

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Even if the journalism profession between the wars wasn’t regulated as it is today, and making a living was easier, all things considered Roger Vitrac was merely an occasional columnist, a contributor for Le Journal du Peuple. Was he noticed by his peers at the time? It’s hard to say, but appearing between the end of Dada and the rise of Surrealism, his series of interviews remains an irreplaceable contribution, as demonstrated by its inclusion in the complete works of Breton and Tzara. He not only welcomed the carefully weighed opinions of Jacques Rivière but also dared to contest them. Conversely, he echoed the output of his friends, showing real enthusiasm for Roussel, Jarry, or Picabia. At the very least, in addressing an assumed popular readership, he made no concessions—unlike the literary critics of L’Humanité, "needlessly stupefying," according to Breton. Maybe that led to his departure, but it allowed him to publish his views in higher-profile newspapers. His lively style, wit, apparent detachment, and humor contributed greatly to his success.

UNIVERSITÉ PARIS III SORBONNE NOUVELLE

1. In principle only, since the first volume actually includes some articles initially published in Aventure, Littérature, La Revue européenne, La NRF.
2. R. Vitrac, "Chambre ouverte," Les Hommes du jour, April 28, 1923, Champ de bataille, p. 46.
3. R. Vitrac, "Actualité 46," L’Écran français, January 9, 1946, Re-tour de manivelle, p. 17.
4. Cf. H. Béhar, "Le cinéma de Roger Vitrac," Universität Siegen (forthcoming).
5. He is the politician Vitrac admired in the preferences poll published by Littérature (new series, no. 2, April 1, 1922, p. 4).
6. R. Vitrac, "Mise en confiance," Le Journal du Peuple, March 31, 1923, Champ de bataille, p. 30.
7. R. Vitrac, "André Breton n’écrira plus," Le Journal du Peuple, April 7, 1923, Champ de bataille, pp. 31–34.
8. Roger Vitrac, "Tristan Tzara va cultiver ses vices," Le Journal du Peuple, April 14, 1923, Champ de bataille, pp. 35–38.
9. R. Vitrac, "Exposition René Picabia," Les Hommes du jour, May 19, 1923; "F. Picabia évêque," Le Journal du Peuple, June 9, 1923, Champ de bataille, p. 49 and pp. 56–58.
10. R. Vitrac, "Roger Vidrac," Le Journal du Peuple, May 26, 1923, Champ de bataille, pp. 52–55 (the title’s misspelling isn’t a ruse).
11. Roger Vitrac, "La NRF champ de bataille," Le Journal du Peuple, April 21, 1923, Champ de bataille, p. 40.
12. R. Vitrac, "Jacques la faiblesse directeur de la NRF," Paris-Journal, December 21, 1923, Champ de bataille, p. 98.
13. R. Vitrac, "Pataphysique," Le Journal du Peuple, October 13, 1923; "Jarry," ibid., November 3, 1923; "Un jour sans homme," Les Hommes du jour, November 10, 1923. Champ de bataille, p. 66, 74, 84 ff.
14. The first two reprinted in Champ de bataille, p. 107 and p. 113; the last in L’Enlèvement des Sabines, p. 111.

TWO IN THE MORNING, AT THE HALLES

Roger VITRAC

For nearly fifteen years I lived at 17, rue de Palestro. "The 17," as the tenants—who all knew each other, from the concierge to those on the top floor—used to call it. On the top lived a worker at a car factory in Suresnes. There was—and perhaps still is—a seller of umbrellas, a seller of postcards, a clinic, some employees, an actor and his partner, both choristers at the Gaîté-Lyrique. In short, the small world of Paris: people who work, amuse themselves on little, and get through life discreetly, victims only of life’s own blows. Coup de Trafalgar owes much to all these characters, but owes even more to the Bonne-Nouvelle neighborhood.

As a student, I would never leave the Latin Quarter without making a detour through the Halles. As soon as I reached Châtelet, around two in the morning, I felt irresistibly drawn to the open-air kitchens of the Square des Innocents, where, for a few sous, I could have a sausage sandwich with plenty of fries and a dash of vinegar.

Among the Halles crowd, I felt at home—indeed, in my element.

The small steam train running down from Luxembourg with its white smoke, leaving behind the scent of strawberries and raspberries, seemed a kind of charming spirit to me, like a woman with a cloud of a hat, mourning slumbering fields, trailing not chains but strips of shadow where, like elderflowers, blue sunbursts of cauliflowers and delicate lettuce and escarole moons bloomed.

This was the hour of the most unexpected encounters and human signals, whose strange alphabet promised subtle pleasure.

The Halles became an enormous garden—not a living garden, but one frozen in its agony. It had just enough strength to last until annihilation, until that final transformation when it would deck the fruit and flower shops of Paris streets.

It seemed as if it put its last fervor into this final sacrifice, gathering all the powers of chlorophyll and essence. It was an inspiring orchestration of forms, scents, colors, and cries.

A final symphony, where odd ghosts in woollen caps and leather hats passed by burdened with the simplest loads, those closest to the earth and its ways.

Cries, silence—and above it all, like a trill or a breath, the electric ringing of a miniature train, the white steam from the percolator.

In this world of skylights and electric arcs, night falls cautiously. Cafés glow with little lights. At this hour, matter has little substance. Calvados regains the shine of apple and sea; wine blends with the farmers’ red lanterns. There is blood, tripe, and meadows on the sidewalk, and clothes take on the look of moors and fields through which, like dew among insects, the jewelry and glances of the beautiful soup-eaters pass.

Nothing sleazy in it—just an immense sensation, a shivering euphoria manifesting in exaggerated gestures, in fleeting displays of skin, in songs around a zinc counter thick with the smell of coffee and cigars.

From door to door, the sack or crate, the stump of cabbage and the carrot’s ironic hair, all await some unknown apparition. Everything is haphazardly arranged for the arrival of a fairy or a demon: demons with pursed lips, fairies with golden headscarves in the mirrors of the forty-horse cafés.

And what architecture! It conjures up the bazaar of Damascus, hanging gardens, sea caves—the hallucinatory vistas of riverbanks. Corridors of tenderness, chambers of love. Here there is lyricism, comedy, and even the bloody wings of tragedy. Minotaurs! Sirens! Heroes armed with all the gear of mystery: butchers!

I suspect this is where the expectation of outlandish events finally merged with fatigue, and where the day’s fog surprised us with its blue lamp and salmon-colored linens.

We went home. We parted ways. My friends passed under Etienne-Marcel métro’s art nouveau "triumphal arch," and I would go back to wake the poor old woman asleep on my doorstep—the unfortunate invalid I had to step over before climbing four flights, at the top of which my open bedsheets would close over me, pulled by hands I no longer recognized as my own. The next day I was full of remorse, but I would think of Gérard de Nerval. And that would comfort me.

1. Article published in Visages du Monde – Heures de Paris, No. 46, 15 June 1937.

Read: Roger Vitrac, Champ de bataille. With "A Poetics of Combat" by Jean-Pierre Han. Mortemart: Rougerie, 1975.
"This collection of 'articles' attests both to the boundless artistic curiosity of the author of the famous play 'Victor ou Les Enfants au pouvoir,' and to the breathtaking power of a style in which nothing is ever expected. Flouting every convention, denouncing dogmas and institutions, Vitrac—here, poet-journalist, definitively irreducible—expresses, with vigor and courage, analyses that mock prevailing judgments. A feast for the intellect."