THE 'CURSED' SURREALISM THROUGH ITS JOURNALS (1939-1969)
par Lucrezia Mazzei
In December 1990, Alain Jouffroy takes up a declaration by Sarane Alexandrian: "One day, when we have a little more perspective, we will write the complete and objective history of post-war surrealism [1]," to emphasize the importance of shedding light on the years 1940-1969, a period during which surrealism experienced an adventure as long, as passionately contradictory, as alive, as charged with meaning, as that of its first twenty years. One cannot censor, according to the author, a part of the history of a collective experience, whose worldwide resonance and scope of perspectives have marked the 20th century, involving, more or less directly, three generations of the greatest poets, artists, filmmakers and men of culture and, beyond their works, all aspects of modern thought and sensibility, without harmful consequences on the understanding of our own present [2].
It is no longer possible, today, when referring to this period, to speak of the history of a clandestine surrealism. It suffices, to realize this, to follow the progressive enlargement of perspectives, achieved by the most remarkable histories devoted to this movement.
In 1997, Gérard Durozoi's History of the Surrealist Movement sees the light of day. Benefiting from all previous works, different in formulation and content: memoirs (Jacques Baron, André Breton, Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes), essays (Ferdinand Alquié, Michel Carrouges, Jules Monnerot), history and evaluation of the work produced (Henri Béhar, Carlo Bo), polemic (Tristan Tzara), collections of articles concerning the most recent history of surrealism (José Pierre and Jean Schuster), to name but a few, this latter work has the merit of considering, with the same eye, literary production and plastic production, not without a certain prevalence in favor of the second. Magnificently illustrated, relying on a meticulous chronology, it can boast of being the first history of the movement taken as a whole, from beginning to end, in its international dimension.
Similar work was conducted in 2002 in Italy, by Paola Dècina Lombardi, with Surrealism: 1919-1969: Rebellion and Imagination, a text that, through precise documents and testimonies, tells the history of an intellectual and human experience, through the debate of ideas, choices in relation to an era that, from the euphoria of the post-war period, slides into colonial wars, into totalitarianisms, into a new and dreadful world conflict, to arrive at a peace that divides the world into opposing blocks.
Some of these studies are discussed and debatable, because of their inevitable limitations and the reservations expressed by Henri Béhar regarding Gérard Durozoi's work can probably be extended to other texts. This study is conducted, according to the author, with a "praiseworthy" bias of sympathy towards André Breton and his friends and it is not devoid of partiality towards Dada and certain surrealists. The author is content to recount events, without explaining anything of the intellectual, historical and social context, without indicating the dynamics of the forces involved [3].
The conviction that, even if a large part of the history of surrealism of the second post-war period has been brought to light, "today, it is the secrets of surrealism that remain the greatest source of energy. They are [still] there, buried [4]," imposes that one cast a gaze that is not only explanatory and popularizing, but capable of organizing and evaluating critical reflection.
The histories devoted to surrealism, even the most favorable to the movement, display the conviction that it would have reached a sort of apogee during the thirties and that it would no longer be capable, afterwards, of adapting to the times and proposing a correct historical perspective, to the point that the Second World War and the experience of exile end up reducing it to an avant-garde of the first half of the century, characterized by repetition or, at most, by a deepening of themes and techniques already experimented with during the first twenty years of its existence.
The choice of this period was dictated by the observation of a lack of knowledge. The term "cursed' contained in the title chosen for my thesis must thus be taken in its etymological sense, to emphasize the misunderstandings and misinterpretations, of which a part of its history and activity are still today the target. Surrealism has become an object of interest, specialists and even more so a broader public have for a long time recognized it as having true existence only between 1920 and 1935. The journals of this period, Littérature, La Révolution surréaliste, Le Surréalisme au Service de la Révolution, Minotaure, have long been known and complete reissues make them easily accessible. On the other hand, the publications that have succeeded each other since the post-war period are often ignored and most of them have not yet benefited from a reissue: unknown to the general public, they enrich the heritage of great libraries and they attract the attention only of a few specialists. Increasingly rare on the shelves of second-hand booksellers, they feed the treasures of collectors and bibliophiles, as well as the financial resources of their sellers, because their prices are now exorbitant.
The originality of my study therefore consists in the refutation of the common idea that I have just illustrated, but also in the choice of the unprecedented point of view adopted to tell a still little-known history, from surrealist or surrealizing journals, which have proven to be a very sensitive historical barometer, to record the continual renewal of authors and artists, in search of new resources of inspiration and expression.
This study aims to traverse the history of surrealism, from the eve of the Second World War, through journals (privileged places for creation and debate of ideas), from the most luxurious to the most ephemeral, including those that have lent their columns to the group, dedicating special issues to it. On the other hand, newspapers had to be neglected, in which episodic collaborations would have led to posing the question of surrealist participation in non-surrealist publications, which would become too indefinite a terrain.
My study fits into the path partially traced by two authors, whose works have represented an important starting point and above all a precious source of identification. It is first necessary to emphasize the capital importance of two volumes published under the direction of Jacqueline Chénieux-Gendron:
- Analytical inventory of surrealist or related journals: surrealism around the world: 1929-1947, CNRS, Paris 1994.
This volume illustrates a set of surrealist or related journals, published between 1929 and 1947 outside France, where the history of the surrealist movement undergoes vicissitudes of which the historians of the movement have been the echo. Its purpose is therefore not to repeat this history, but to offer a convenient means of access to publications often evoked but little known, where a certain number of texts today famous appeared for the first time, where a certain number of artists could be seen for the first time through the channel of an always new iconography. These are journals directly inspired by the surrealist model, as it elaborates around André Breton, but which have arisen outside France and which are written in languages of wide diffusion: French, English, Spanish. The text has provided indispensable landmarks, concerning the journals "View" and "VVV."
- French Surrealist Journals. Around André Breton, 1948-1972, Kraus International Publications, Millwood, New York 1982.
This volume illustrates French surrealist journals (from Néon to Coupure), arisen between 1948 and 1972, the date when the cohesion of a group still linked by a community of thought and reactions definitively breaks down, but which can no longer shelter, henceforth since 1969, under the reassuring label of "surrealist."
The ambition of these works is therefore to propose an analytical survey of the whole of the great surrealist and related journals (article by article, illustration by illustration), with general indexes that allow easy identification, as much for the young researcher as for the specialist.
Fabrice Flahutez has the merit of having produced the first publication, in French:
New World and New Myth. Mutations of Surrealism, from American Exile to "Absolute Deviation" (1941-1965), Les Presses du réel, Paris, 2007
which deciphers - through an analytical and critical reading of the journals View, VVV and the catalog of the exhibition First Papers of Surrealism -, the transformations and mutations of surrealism, in the American literary and artistic context, and which also studies the taking into account of Fourierist, esoteric and alchemical philosophies, in its quest turned towards the foundation of a new myth. The study and interpretation of the plastic work often seem to prevail to the detriment of texts, whose variety and complexity invite a more attentive rediscovery, because they still offer broad perspectives to exegesis.
Without having the ambition to repeat here the detailed analysis of each of the examined journals, I will illustrate some of the elements that can distinguish them from each other. In the reactionary debacle of the values of the late thirties, the two issues of Clé and the double issue of Minotaure rise like a weapon, like a cry of freedom, against the political and social actions that oppress the people and against the new ideological systems that threaten art, that is to say the most palpable expression of the human spirit.
In this same perspective, the analysis of the journals of the American period of surrealism has been the occasion of a reading of exile, too often considered as synonymous with flight or betrayal, of a deeper understanding of the civil and cultural forms of refusal, certainly occulted by the militant and political modalities of the Resistance. Exile becomes a moment of reflection and refinement of the means at one's disposal to reappropriate a future. It is indeed through the columns of View that the contours of these reflections begin to become precise and to assume a collective dimension that will no longer ignore the anguished interrogations and severe criticisms, coming not only from outside, but also from some members of the group. The assessment that derives from it takes into examination, trying to reconcile them, the various instances expressed by each.
VVV is precisely the expression of the new orientations of surrealism and it allows to identify what is dead in the movement and what, on the contrary, is still alive and charged with promises. The complete reading of the journal has also allowed a more correct understanding of the interest manifested for Fourierist theories and the search for a new myth, which must not be interpreted as a renunciation of reality, but rather as the will to change man and life.
The return of the surrealists to France takes place under the sign of misunderstanding, because of an absence of nearly five years, during which, everything they could do or write had no echo in Europe. It is true that the surrealists do not immediately realize that they have not put surrealism in a suitcase in 1941, to bring it back to France in 1946, giving it life again after a period of occultation. André Breton, for example, is not aware of the activity pursued, with a courage that borders on unconsciousness, by the members of La Main à plume, in occupied Paris. Before the return of the surrealists to France, these young people think they can also decide the future of surrealism. The analysis of some of these surrealizing journals has highlighted the vivacity of these ferments. The signal that all is not lost comes from Yves Bonnefoy who founds, at the beginning of 1946, La Révolution la nuit, with the aim of making it the official organ of a "surrealist action" group, of which several former members of La Main à plume are precisely part, who energetically reject the pseudo-masters of the time, like Jean-Paul Sartre and Paul Éluard, proposing, at the same time, to surpass surrealism.
Another ephemeral journal has retained my attention. It is Qui vive, founded by a very young Jean-Louis Bédouin, who wants to fight in the name of a revolutionary conception of all intellectual manifestations and who seeks to assume a position in relation to the various tendencies of contemporary thought, in particular in relation to surrealism which, while having in his eyes the merit of having restored to daily life a fundamental element like the marvelous, has let itself be seduced "by a debauchery of subversive and aggressiveness that has not always had its raison d"être" and stifled by a "bric-a-brac that degenerates today into conformism [5]."
Some of the ideologues and organizers of these journals end up rubbing shoulders with the surrealists upon their return to France and collaborating on the five issues of Néon, published from January 1948 to July 1949, where the vast space reserved for lyrical texts and studies devoted to poetry, must not make one think of the temptation to take refuge in an apolitical attitude. Even in this case, the journal has been correctly reinserted into the historical context that determined its creation. The surrealists have indeed found France deeply traumatized by the conflict that has just ended and by the cold war that will intensify more and more and where, consequently, the Marxist and existentialist theses on the political and social role of literature and art, on the necessity of "commitment" seem to dominate. The surrealists are considered more than ever as decadent aesthetes, recovered by the bourgeoisie, individualists incapable of participating in the great collective struggles.
The distancing on the part of Néon from a P.C.F. that has compromised itself with Stalinism and former members of the group who have made pacts with the system, to obtain easy consecrations, is the sign of a different reflection, but no less important than that which has been pursued by the dominant currents, because it shifts the emphasis to research through the exercise of analogical thought, of a new relationship between man and the universe, between his inner world and the outer world, which will be essential to "remake from top to bottom human understanding."
The difficulties encountered by surrealism in adapting to post-war society have been aggravated by the fact that, until 1953, the group does not succeed in endowing itself with a true means of expression, which resembles those it could dispose of before 1939. It is therefore the special issues of some journals, of which a detailed analysis has been presented (La Nef, L'Âge du cinéma, La Rue), that play a determining role in the diffusion of their point of view and that testify to their intellectual vivacity.
It is necessary to wait until 1952 for the surrealists to be able to express themselves freely, thanks to the courage of the publisher Éric Losfeld. Médium. Surrealist Information is a sheet containing brief articles, with striking titles. It becomes the spokesperson both for surrealist activities and for those conducted outside the group, but in which surrealism recognizes its demands and concerns. Exhibitions, books, films and conferences are the subject of impertinent, contemptuous or laudatory reviews, which will become the apanage of all surrealist journals. However, it is only from November 1953 that Médium becomes a true journal, to which will succeed without interruption Le Surréalisme, même, Bief, La Brèche, L'Archibras and Coupure, thanks to which surrealism seems to have found a means worthy of its ambitions, to balance and surpass contradictory demands, with a view to deepening the fundamental data of the movement.
As Roger Navarri points out, if these journals remain largely dominated by poetic and pictorial creation or criticism, they are also very open to ethnology, history, psychology and philosophy, politics and all the miscellaneous facts that appear to their collaborators symptomatic of a collective state of mind, of a certain evolution or a certain stagnation of mentalities and mores [6].
If many pages are devoted to current events, to reactive criticism, to polemic, creation, theoretical research and experimentation always occupy a preponderant place, because the surrealists have always remained attentive "to everything that could renew, enlarge or specify their knowledge of men, works, methods of analysis or currents of thought that have always nourished their own approach" [7].
If André Breton's articles are very revealing, the journals also allow one to appreciate those of Gérard Legrand, Jean Schuster, José Pierre, Robert Benayoun, Annie Lebrun, Vincent Bounoure, René Nelli, René Alleau, to name but a few of their regular or occasional collaborators. Articles that consider questions of dream, automatism, love, myth, chance, object, abstract painting, Indian, Celtic or Oceanian art, troubadour eroticism or esotericism, on the theses of Lévi-Strauss, Herbert Marcuse or Deleuze. This list is obviously very incomplete and has only an indicative value.
These journals are characterized by biting irony, direct insolence, by the provocative or unusual title, by the shock formula which, in the best cases, is both humorous and poetic. One can observe the remarkable continuity of moral attitudes and political opinions, the vigilance and severity, which the surrealists show towards most of the intellectual fashions of the period considered, especially when they content themselves, according to their point of view, with bringing up to date, for a makeover, the ideologies or practices that they have always fought.
Not only do surrealist journals use the whole range of possible discourses, the whole range of discourse functions, but they also constitute a veritable mixture of culture by confronting almost all domains of knowledge.
However, they are distinguished from competing journals not only by content: their form, their presentation are also very specific. The surrealists have always been concerned with striking the eye as much as the mind, and for this they have not hesitated to increase the price and, consequently, to sacrifice a part of their potential public. Even if a semiological study of all the technical elements and all the procedures thus put into play has not been possible, those that seem the most significant have been evoked. Even more than the importance accorded to the image properly speaking, what characterizes most surrealist journals is the interest in all the other elements that constitute them: the choice of format, paper, colors, layout, typographic characters which are extremely varied, especially at the level of titles. To take up again the words of Roger Navarri:
No one has doubtless better understood than the surrealists to what extent the signified of a text and its readability are a function of its own image and that of its support [8].
The large number of journals succeeding each other from 1939 to 1969 can be interpreted as proof of the failure of each of them or as an index of obstinacy in producing them despite everything. Eric Losfeld declares significantly on this subject:
Here is something that has often astonished me: each time a journal began to have an existence, at the moment when the enterprise lost its Kafkaesque aspect, when one began to see the end of the tunnel, when strangers spoke to you about it first, it was always the moment when the surrealist group decided that it was out of fashion and that it was necessary to move on to another journal. Naturally, I had only to bow, but I remained perplexed [9].
However, as Roger Navarri points out, rereading them…
[…] one experiences the feeling that they have not aged. Doubtless there is nothing very astonishing there concerning a period whose vicissitudes, debates, concerns are often still very close to us. But, more profoundly, it is clear that the modernity of surrealist journals is essentially a function of the state of mind, of the intellectual approach and even of the sense of beauty that presided over their elaboration, which made them places of meeting, confrontation, dialogue or conciliation of writing and knowledge, of "criticism and invention" poetic and pictorial, of the profusion of the imaginary, of play, of passion and rigor of knowledge, of immediate current events and History. Modernity finally to which we are perhaps today more sensitive than ever, which holds to the fact that, if these journals are in many respects journals of bias and combat, they remain nevertheless the very opposite of dogmatic journals because their conception and their practice of intertextuality, the freedom of form and tone that they owe to their contempt for conventions and norms in all domains tends to break the closure of ideological systems, methods, discourses and rites that accompany them [10].
1 — . Cited in Alain Jouffroy, "The Black Years of Surrealism: the submerged part of the iceberg, in AA.VV., André Breton and International Surrealism, Opus International, n° 123-124, April-May 1991, p. 172. ↩
2 — . Cf. Alain Jouffroy's opinion, ibidem. ↩
3 — . Cf. Henri Béhar, From the First Year of the "Révolution surréaliste" to 2000, in Germana Cerenza Orlandi (ed.), Trajectories of Modernity: Surrealism at the Dawn of the Third Millennium, Lindau, Torino 2003, p. 69. ↩
4 — . Alain Jouffroy, "For Clandestine Modernity," in AA.VV., André Breton and International Surrealism, op. cit., p. 11. ↩
5 — . Jean-Louis Bédouin, Qui vive, "Qui vive," 1, 1947, p. 13. ↩
6 — . Roger Navarri, "Institutions - Movement - Group - Journal: the case of surrealist journals after 1945," Mélusine, n° 4, 1982, p. 21. ↩
7 — . Id, ibid., p. 22. ↩
8 — . Id, ibid., p. 25. ↩
9 — . Éric Losfeld, In Debt Like a Mule, or The Passion of Publishing, Belfond, Paris 1979, p. 53. ↩
10 — . Roger Navarri, Institutions - Movement - Group - Journal: the case of surrealist journals after 1945, cit., pp. 26-27. ↩