BENJAMIN PÉRET OF CURRENT INTEREST

Book Review par Eddie Breuil

On:

Benjamin Péret, Je ne mange pas de ce pain là, Paris, Syllepse, "Les archipels du Surréalisme," presentation by Gérard Roche, 2010, 154 pages. 9782849502563

Benjamin Péret et les Amériques, Lyon: Association des Amis de Benjamin Péret, 2010, 81 pages, 63 illustrations. 9782953567601

As part of the commemorations of Benjamin Péret's fiftieth anniversary, the Association of Friends of Benjamin Péret organized several events including the exhibition "Benjamin Péret and the Americas." It was accompanied by a largely illustrated publication with articles on his Mexican period (by Gérard Durozoi or Jean-Louis Bédouin), Brazilian (by Leonor L. de Abreu) or the poet's encounter with Remedios Varo (by Victoria Combalía).

As Claude Courtot recalls, Péret lived "three years in Brazil from 1929 to 1931, then six years in Mexico from 1941 to 1947. He finally made a last one-year trip to Brazil in 1955-1956." These stays, sometimes linked to major personal events, would profoundly mark Péret. Generally speaking, academics recognize this influence well, if we look at the thesis subjects submitted on the writer, interested in this aspect, such as: "Benjamin Péret facing the Mexican imagination" (Sonia Andres), "Poetry and mythical thought in Benjamin Péret's work" (Jean-Marc Debenedetti), "Benjamin Péret and Brazil" (Lourenco de Abreu, who is also the author, in the publication, of the article "When the poet meets the ethnologist: African religions of Brazil") or "Benjamin Péret's tales: rewriting of myth and poetic invention" (Gaëlle Quemener). However, Péret seems, despite this research work and the activity of the Association of Friends of B.P., a surrealist writer little read by the general public (except for a flagship text like Le déshonneur des poètes). The reissue of Je ne mange pas de ce pain là contributes relatively to putting some of his other writings back on the shelves. Because one of the problems that most surrealist texts experience is their availability: a large part having had a confidential print run (less than 250 copies according to Gérard Roche for Je ne mange pas de ce pain là), readers sometimes know them (when they are not reissued) as myths or through critical discourse. However, the relationship to the text is essential, and this reissue is an opportunity to seize to give a spotlight back to Péret's "engaged" side. This is another subject, but one can legitimately wonder if a reissue (accompanied by a suitable critical apparatus) does not have more influence than a series of critical discourses on the work and we can only salute the editorial risks taken to try to put certain surrealist texts back on the market and thus contribute to forging the representation of the history of literary surrealism among non-specialists.

One of the interests of the Syllepse edition is to bring a significant complement of information, appendices to a complex text to apprehend on several aspects: the motivations for the collection's publication, its homogeneity, and especially its interpretation, remain delicate. Notes at the end of the volume, "relating to a context and events that today belong to History," will fill any gaps the reader may have. Among these appendices is a survey previously published in the German edition (and therefore difficult to access for many French speakers). The responses are from José Pierre, Claude Courtot, Laurens Vancrevel, Guy Prévan, Franklin Rosemont, Rik Lina, Jean-Michel Goutier, Alain-Pierre Pillet, Jean-Louis Clément, Hervé Delabarre, Jean-Clarence Lambert, Alain Joubert, André Blavier, Guy Cabanel, Arturo Schwarz, Robert Lagarde, Michael Richardson, Bernd Straub-Molitor, Adolf Endler, Her de Vries, Jurgen Brôcan, Milan Nàpravnik and Richard Anders.

The first edition of the text dated from 1936, from surrealist editions. The collection gathered texts published nearly ten years earlier in La Révolution surréaliste as well as between 1930 and 1933 in Le Surréalisme au service de la révolution, to which were added texts written for the occasion; the publication also indicates the "Initial publications of each of the poems" on page 81, which allows sensitization to the collection's history. The text had been made available again in Péret's Complete Works in 1969 (volume 1), still available from the Association of Friends of Benjamin Péret.

The choice of this collection, less known, is interesting in more than one way. Consisting of virulent pieces against "religion, homeland, nationalism and politicians" of all eras, its true intention and nature intrigue. The question seems settled if we refer to the author's words: in 1945, for a publication project of some of these texts proposed by Léon Pierre-Quint, Benjamin Péret is categorical about the nature of his texts: "I have never considered this as poems properly speaking." Yet, can't we consider these pieces as poetry? Would all the texts in the collection, even written at different times, respond to this affirmation? And what to think then of the text "Macia désossé" which ends with this imprecation: "may your dust drown the writings / of those who will speak ill of this poem."

The survey reproduced at the end of the volume is interested, from the first question, in this problematic point of the "relationship between poetry and poetic materials," and many responses establish an almost obvious link with Le Déshonneur des poètes (Jérôme Duwa, in Benjamin Péret et les Amériques, moreover offers an enlightening article on the historical significance of the essay), which seems in apparent contradiction with the intention that can be attributed to the collection. Because does surrealist engagement in poetry necessarily accompany some relationship to politics? The introduction to the work has the merit of not avoiding the problem and returns (pages 11 to 16) to the complexity of the relationship between surrealism and communism. It seeks to show how the conception of surrealist poetry (notably of Breton and Péret) was constituted through the directions proposed in the essays and the positions taken according to the intellectual context. Refusing any political instrumentalization, Péret adopts from this collection a clear poetic position that affirms itself through full freedom.

The fourth question of the survey prolongs the interrogation on the motor of the poetic. The responses do not agree on the definition to give to the notion of engagement, and this survey therefore constitutes interesting material for reflection on "engaged" surrealist poetry. This question indeed deserves, with the help of documents reproduced in Benjamin Péret et les Amériques, to be approached by trying to relativize and precisely estimate the action of the poetic on the social: there is reproduced for example a letter to the Brazilian ambassador writing in 1929 (Je ne mange pas de ce pain là was not yet published) that "Mr. Péret is one of the champions of the Surrealist School which counts quite a few followers among the young, but which poses no danger to social order." To finish with certain hasty or too general considerations on surrealist engagement, a study of surrealist action (and its representations) throughout its existence would clarify the problem.

If the form of the collection Je ne mange pas de ce pain là is intriguing and risks remaining problematic (because the role played by the publisher incontestably contributes to forging the generic identity of a text), it must not make us forget the collection's purpose. The tone is almost unprecedented in Péret, and denotes compared to his previous publications: "Péret lets his anger burst forth, wielding invective, insult and denigration with rare violence" (p. 8); Péret's verbal violence emanates almost spontaneously and as a necessity, as if in parallel with this period of troubles, with Péret's commitments. This verbal violence, necessary, is a reaction against oppressions that seem not to be reduced to the contemporary period. The very subjects of the poems testify to this, making reference to all eras and all milieus. Péret wants, as Gérard Roche writes, to fight against "everything that stifles the spirit and threatens freedom." Salutary reaction. Passionate calls to freedom, which will be found especially in the texts of the Mexican period (from Airmexicain to Le Déshonneur des poètes).

Two other questions (2 and 5) of the survey attach themselves to not distinguishing creation from current events, and consequently ask if the texts of the collection are still current, and what would be the targets worthy of a discourse similar to that of Péret, today. This fifth question recalls certain surrealist surveys (on monuments, etc.), but is posed in too open a way to call for a classification of the type that the latter were able to propose. Some target themes stand out, but it seems that religion, which is nevertheless the object of uncompromising attacks from Péret, is the object of less severe repulsions from the respondents, besides some great -isms (fundamentalisms...) presented in a fairly general way: the reissue of the collection is necessary today on this level. "Nothing has changed" complain several respondents, yet a little updating in the collection's targets would not hurt. The collection, far from being a discourse of hatred, incites to rid oneself of the fundamentalisms that pollute existence, uglify it while poetic activity (Mexican myths, etc.) contributes to exalting it.