ZENITHISM VERSUS SURREALISM

[On the complete reprint of Zenit, international review, n° 1-43, Zagreb/Belgrade 1921-1926; Vidosava Golubović and Irina Subotić: Zenit 1921-1926, monograph; illustrations; bibliography; index; summary in English, 530 p. Belgrade, co-edition National Library of Serbia, Institute of Literature and Art, Belgrade, and SKD Prosvjeta, Zagreb, 2008]

During the session of November 2, 1925, the surrealist "Committee" (Louis Aragon, Jean Bernier, André Breton, Marcel Fourrier), discusses among other things the follow-up to give to a letter of protest from Ljubomir Micić, editor of Zenit, international review published in Yugoslavia, about the short iconographic novel Vampire, translated from Serbo-Croatian from Svedočanstva [Testimonies] - review "appearing under the direction of Mr. Marco Ristitch," presented by Monny de Boully in La Révolution surréaliste n° 5, October 1925, p. 18-19.

A point on the agenda is: n° 10: "de Boully – Zenith (1)," and the session secretary, Fourrier (main animator of the review Clarté), notes: "Breton explains that in the last issue of La Révolution surréaliste a madman's confession was published. In response to this article he received a letter emanating from the review Zenith, of revolutionary tendency. He asks if he can insert purely and simply the various rectifications." (id., p. 99).

At the Committee session of October 26, 1925, the same ones - Aragon, Bernier, Breton, Fourrier (in the absence of Eluard, sick, and - without excuses - Lefebvre and Morhange from the review Philosophie), discuss about the Balkan Federation. "Aragon thinks that the Macedonian question is idle for the group," and proposes this radical response: "The only possible solution to the Macedonian question is the Bolshevik solution." (id., p. 70). The French surrealists and their counterparts from Clarté were therefore not ignorant of the political reality of the Balkans; Breton's description of Zenit as "review... of revolutionary tendency" (2-XI-1925), confirms it.

However, no rectification will be published in LRS, and it is only in the pages of the review Zenit (n° 37, 1924), where Micić reproduces his letter of protest, that one will find the solution to the enigma.

To become aware of it, thanks to the reprint of the complete collection of 43 issues of Zenit which has just been published in Belgrade by the National Library of Serbia, also highlights the reasons why Ljubomir Micić conducted a polemic against the French and Serbian surrealists.

The international review Zenit indeed represented the "zenithist" movement which propagated a program of decivilization of Europe through an activity of "Barbarogeny" - cult of archaic, primitive forces supposedly beneficial to the cultural health of a "syphilitic Europe" through acculturation. The review was published by the Serbian poet Ljubomir Micić (Jastrebarsko, 1895 - Pančevo, 1971) in Zagreb (February 1921 - 1923), then in Belgrade (1923-1926), until its prohibition by royal censorship (2), provoked by the article "Zenitizam kroz prizmu marksizma" ["Zenithism through the Prism of Marxism"]. Micić was obliged to flee Serbia, in the night of December 15 to 16, 1926 and, with the help of F. T. Marinetti, to emigrate passing through Italy to France where he will remain ten years, until 1936.

At the Gare de Lyon, Ljubomir Micić was welcomed by Yvan Goll (1891-1950), who for a certain time was the editor of Zenit for Western Europe (n° 8, October 1921 - n° 13, April 1922). Goll seems to us to be at the origin of the conflict with La Révolution surréaliste (3). He was co-author, with Micić and Boško Tokin (Čakovo, 1894 - Belgrade, 1953) of the "Manifesto of Zenithism" published in Serbo-Croatian in Zagreb and in German, in Berlin, from 1921 (zenithism making targeted propaganda on the territory of expressionism, Micić visited Herwarth Walden, editor of the review Der Sturm, in 1922). But he was also author of an essay, "Surrealism and Alogic of the New Drama" published in Serbo-Croatian translation (Zenit n° 14, Zagreb, May 1922, p. 26-27), then of a single issue of the review Surréalisme published in September 1924, one month before Breton's Manifesto of Surrealism. Certainly, the definition: "Surrealism is the negation of realism" in Zenit n° 14, 1922, is the opposite of Breton's definition of surrealism, as an elevation of the real intensified to the surreal... Yet, Micić - forgetting that the term represents Apollinaire's heritage - will cry that the term "Surrealism" (Nadrealizam) had been used by Goll in the pages of Zenit before Breton's Manifesto. Among the texts and illustrations by French writers and artists that Goll sends for Zenit, the collaboration of Paul Dermée stands out notably - the other opponent of Breton in the affair of the appropriation of the movement's name in 1924, whose polemical text Zenit translates (4). Does it not represent the beginning of a controversy with the French and Serbian surrealists? Because, after his collaboration with Goll was consumed, Micić writes at the end of the translation of Paul Dermée's article - in Serbian and French -: "And that's not all. There still exists a 'surrealism' of Mr. Ivan Goll, who is known as a chameleon of all modern movements. In the next issue, we will try to discover the [finger]nails of his 'surrealism' in - zenithism!" [p. 14] (5).

Zenit not only follows the affair by publishing Dermée's texts translated into Serbo-Croatian, but it takes up the polemic with Breton's surrealist group, then with the one which as "epigone" was born in Belgrade from 1924 (review Svedočanstva).

Unfortunately, the comments in the very rich monograph Zenit 1921-1926 accompanying the reprint of the review, do not elucidate the confusion between the use of the term "Surrealism" by Goll, Dermée and Breton. Faced with the texts, one wonders what is this "Breton dogma" against which Dermée polemicizes, according to Vidosava Golubović (p. 316).

The fact that on the 2nd cover page of Zenit n° 11 (February 1922), one finds the name of René Crevel, editor of the review Aventure, or in n° 26-33 (October 1924), the names of Francis Gérard and Pierre Naville, among the collaborators of the review L'Œuf dur, and the name of Philippe Soupault among the collaborators of Disque Vert (n° 4-5, "special issue devoted to Freud and Psychoanalysis"), presents only the ritual announcement, the material exchange between the editorial offices of avant-garde reviews on the give-and-take mode. Nevertheless, Micić will capitalize on this exchange: "Nemo propheta in Patria," published for Zenit's fifth anniversary (February 1924), enumerating all these announcements will take them as cultural "proof" of the "balkanization of Europe" by the review. Despite reserved letters like those of Michel Seuphor (Zenit n° /1924), it is the interpreters of zenithism who will push the paradox furthest to take up this strategy by knowingly constructing the "influence" or even "radiance" of zenithism (6).

Now, the names of future surrealists cited by Micić are only the announcements of their collective action: it is as members of the organized group that Crevel, Gérard, Naville, Soupault (7) - without ever naming André Breton or Louis Aragon... - will henceforth be castigated by Micić. Surprising, it is the editorial staff of LRS that sent an issue to Micić's address, because Zenit n° 36 of October 1925 cites it among the reviews received: "La Révolution Surréaliste (sic). Paris, Pierre Naville and B. Péret. (8)"

It is therefore an issue - probably n° 4, the last signed by the duo - preceding a litigious n° 5. Let us recall that Naville and Péret are the official directors of LRS from n° 1 (November 1924) to n° 4 (July 1925) and that Breton takes over the direction starting with n° 5.

It is the publication of a text - "illustrated novel" - by Miroslav Feler in the review Svedočanstva, which will give Micić the idea of publishing two articles, the first, "Pesnik u ludnici" ["The Poet in the Madhouse"] in Zenit, n° 36 (Belgrade, October 1925), which protests the fact that the author, Miroslav Feler, writer known under the pseudonym Miroslav Evgenijević-Godovski, was forcibly confined (9), and the second, in French in Zenit, n° 37 (Belgrade, November-December 1925), p. (21).

From this last article, we transcribe here one third, accompanying it with four critical apostilles (a-d).

"A Mystification in Paris.

The editorial staff of 'La Révolution Surréaliste' (sic), in its fifth issue in October, could not resist an ordinary mystification of Belgrade's literary snobs. Here is what it is about: an unfortunate young poet finds himself in the madhouse (10), because of some transgressions of civil character. The manuscripts (sic) and drawings that were found (11) with him, were published - with the assistance of a doctor - as manifestations of a madman (12). We protested against this dilettantism (sic), by unmasking this mystification in the last issue of 'Z'. (a)

To the misfortune of the mystifiers, the editor of 'Zenit' knew even before the banishment of this 'madman' one of his poems and still holds other manuscripts. (b) But that was not enough for the ignorant and the mystifiers. They took again (sic) the trait of great bravery and placed (sic) it under the editorial 'R. S.' in Paris, where they sign in passing and in boredom - revolutionary manifestations. (c)

Our young friends d[o n]ot notice how amusing and grotesque it is. Isn't it? In their homeland, these mystifiers (13) are blasé counter-revolutionaries, which is equivalent to - anti-zenithists - although, until quite recently, they were its epigones. (d)

It is known even in Madagascar that only zenithism (sic) directs one of the bloodiest revolutions of spirit and thought.", etc. etc.

(a) First, there remains the fact that the editors of Svedočanstva found the testimony of the alienated (Feller) in an asylum. The source given by Svedočanstva is cited in LRS: "Asylum for the alienated of the city of Belgrade." No "mystification"!

(b) Second, Micić has trouble hiding his remorse for not having published the "manuscripts" he held from Feller. Svedočanstva preceded him, then LRS. The "ignorant" therefore showed more lucidity than the editor of Zenit, who catches up by publishing in n° 36/1925 three brief fragments by M. Feller.

(c) The jealous criticism of Boully and Dušan Matić as co-signatories of the surrealist tract "Revolution First and Always" in 1925, in Clarté and in La Révolution surréaliste n° 5, is misplaced. The characteristic: "in passing and in boredom" does not correspond to the virulence of the public reaction to which the surrealists had exposed themselves by this manifesto.

(d) The arrest of several Serbian surrealists by the royal police, in 1932, which provokes the systematic stopping of the movement, contradicts Micić's gratuitous accusations. As for saying that the surrealists "were his epigones," it is simply the height of megalomania on the part of Zenit's editor-in-chief.

It is in vain, therefore, that Micić congratulates himself, in 1926, that Zenit succeeded in preventing "the importation of surrealism" in Serbia (n° 38).

And it is also in vain that, describing his meeting with Henri Barbusse, on December 6, 1925 in Belgrade, Micić adds: "...Moreover, Barbusse confirmed my opinion that the so-called surrealists (in fact, repainted dadaists), will destroy Clarté, since they are the offspring of an outdated bourgeois culture, that is to say of European degeneration (14)."

It is a pity that the very documented work by Vidosava Golubović and Irina Subotić, accompanying the reprinting of the review Zenit, does not respond by a critical examination to its object of study. An abundant bibliography appears at the end of the reprint (15), without any attempt at evaluation of the literary history of recent criticisms of zenithism, those after the Second World War, including in particular those that start from Radomir Konstantinović's critical essay of 1966: "Ko je Barbarogenije" ["What is Barbarogeny?"].

In this retrospective, it would be ridiculous to accuse the most interesting collaborators among the young Serbian writers and poets Rastko Petrović, promoter of the Svedočanstva issue devoted to the creation of madmen, then Dušan Matić, author of an article on Bergson's philosophy, and future author - with Marko Ristić - of the surrealist programmatic text "Incidentally" in the surrealist almanac Nemoguće - L'Impossible (May 1930), not to mention great modernist writers such as Miloš Crnjanski or Stanislav Vinaver, of having been only "epigones" of Micić's zenithism. In a collective letter, published from 1921 in Kritika in Zagreb, they publicly dissociated themselves from Micić, arguing that they had taken him for an editor (editor of the review Zenit), but did not think they could take part in his movement, "zenithism." It is therefore an imposture of Micić to treat these writers subsequently as "expelled" by him from his review (n° 43/1926)! It is also a lack of perspective of contemporary criticism to insinuate that the cited writers "preferred individual creation to that of the group"! On the contrary. Their separation from the zenithist group - or from "the phalanx," as Barbusse says -, did not prevent them from adhering to the surrealist group! Obsessed by the fear of being "plagiarized," Micić found everywhere the influence of "zenithism," even among the surrealists who had declared in their tract Revolution First and Always!: "We are certainly Barbarians since a certain form of civilization disgusts us." Micić was wrong to interpret this agreement of revolt as a new plagiarism of his "Barbarogeny"! In Zenit n° 43, which was to remain the ultimate issue of the review, he attacked the group of independent writers who separated from Zenit, (taxed as "followers of zenithism"!), then the surrealists who wanted "Western civilization to be destroyed," to announce to the French surrealists and to the "most important representatives of surrealism among us, Messrs. Marko Ristić and Aleksandar Vučo... that this 'Bolshevik' part of surrealism (according to us, a hyper-realism) is an undeniable borrowing from - zenithism" (n° 43; trans. B.A.).

As a complete response, Vane Bor and Marko Ristić, commenting on the development of the surrealist movement in relation to "Belgrade post-war modernism, which represented the expression of general uneasiness of the time, the search for a new way of thinking more free and more alive...," finally mention in a footnote "Ljubomir Micić's zenithism, example of a stubborn negation without content" (Anti-Zid, prilog zapravilnije shatanje nadrealizma ["Anti-Wall, contribution to a better understanding of surrealism"], Surrealist Editions in Belgrade, November 1932, p. 27).

By his anti-European and therefore anti-historical attitude, - paradox still at the heart of "Barbarogeny," but not the last, - Micić cultivated a dada-anarchic attitude. Let us conclude that the anti-historical attitude cannot justify the anachronisms of the contemporary critical examination of this last publication of Zenit nor of the "zenithist" movement. The paradoxes accumulated within the movement that wanted to be the program of one alone, exalt the contradictions between "zenithism" and the other avant-garde movements of the time; Marinetti was aware of it when he affirmed during a conference at the Sorbonne, in 1924, that "zenithism" represented "the barbarous variant of Futurism"; Breton was also aware of it, in 1925, who had detected its "revolutionary" character, just like the surrealists Vane Bor and Marko Ristić who retrospectively, in 1932, stigmatized the "stubborn," even irascible character of zenithism.

(21) 9. The interest of Serbian surrealists in Freud's psychoanalysis is suspect, in Micić's eyes, suspected of "further disturbing the brain." Zenit, n° 36/1925, [p. 17].

Original: "foux"; we correct.
Original: "trouvait." Idem.
In the original again: "foux."
We restore these mystifiers instead of "se mystificateurs."
Lj. Micić, "Mon susret sa Anri Barbisom" ["My Meeting with Henri Barbusse"], Zenit n° 41, Belgrade, May 1926 (p. 17-21), p.19; translation B. A. - A letter from Barbusse, dated Miramar, 2-I-1926, is published at the head of the 5th anniversary issue of Zenit (n° 38/1926): "My dear colleague, I have not been able until now to respond to the letter that you did me the friendship of giving me at Belgrade station and to tell you the good memory I had kept of our brief literary relations in Serbia. (...) I send you all my wishes for your journal and I wish at the same time that I hope to collaborate in some measure with the artistic phalanx that you represent, for a great living cause. (...) I was happy to read the inspired and energetic poems that you address to me."
"Literatura o Zenitu i zenitizmu" (1921-2007), p.421-463. The criticisms of Zenit in the years 1921-1941 are alone commented on in the first part of this monograph ("Chronology of Zenit and Zenithism," p. 80-286), by the rubrics "Pro and contra" and "Echoes."