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I will focus here on three poems written by the poet and artist Christian Dotremont about the CoBrA movement, of which he was the great animator. Shared between three small Northern European countries (and three cities), this movement appeared at the end of the forties, in the exaltation of a period of liberation that had succeeded the dark years of the Second World War.
These three countries, Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark, had all experienced German Occupation. The young artists and poets who gathered in CoBrA had therefore mostly seen their youth sacrificed. In this perspective, they dreamed of finding it again despite everything in a collective expression unleashed by their imagination and creative personality.
The first of these poems is entitled: 'The Object Through the Ages'. It begins with the following words: "For a purely poetic purpose although knowledge has something to do with it desire and curiosity being originally identical the revolutionary surrealist group that is found too surrealist and that they find too revolutionary" (1). From the outset, Dotremont affirmed the radical poetic dimension of the movement, as well as its attachment to the principles of revolutionary surrealism that had been defined in the Manifesto of the same name published in 1947. This had gathered the signatures of the most important Belgian avant-garde artists and poets of their generation, from Magritte to Paul Nougé including Louis Scutenaire.
The stake of this manifesto had been first political. It was indeed necessary to reaffirm the link of surrealism to Marxism and the fundamental principles of the Russian Revolution, while Breton, by contrast, had already broken with these and opted for Fourierist utopia. Beyond this position, however, the signatories of this manifesto wanted to demonstrate their intellectual and aesthetic independence from Parisian surrealism, that of André Breton.
The reference to the revolutionary surrealist group implied here that artists and poets like Dotremont remained faithful to the original spirit of surrealism, that of the twenties and thirties. This radical and uncompromising spirit had somehow diluted over time to give way to another surrealism, more socially or culturally established and less politically engaged.
It is obvious that in the years following the end of the Second World War, communism still enjoyed an aura that was largely derived from the role played by the Soviet Union in the defeat of Nazism. This manifesto revealed in this sense a somewhat naive and juvenile enthusiasm, which was based on the belief in the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of a new society, theoretically freer and more egalitarian.
In a way, Breton's personal evolution had testified to a form of regression and even abdication that the Belgian avant-garde artists and poets refused. The shadow of surrealism remained overwhelming, however, insofar as it had very quickly found many followers in Belgium. It extended in many ways the strong tradition both baroque and supernatural of this culture, which had been embodied in particular by the pictorial works of James Ensor and Léon Spilliaert. This tradition contained an unequivocal break with the realistic dogma of classical academic art.
In his poem, Dotremont affirmed in this regard the aesthetic presuppositions of CoBrA, distinct from both realism and abstraction. "And because we don't like realistic ferns nor candied abstract sugar" (2). CoBrA somehow rejected the cubist avant-garde and its bias of cerebral formalism, but also a painter like Mondrian, in favor of a spontaneity claimed by each of its members. The revolutionary surrealist group, according to Dotremont's own words, was also part of the movement of the international front of experimental artists. The word experience was essential in this context. It made it possible to emphasize CoBrA's link to the spirit and history of the avant-gardes of the early 20th century in Europe. The notion of experience had indeed constituted one of the major philosophical articulations of Dada and Duchamp's project. It had to be reformulated in the context of post-war culture, some thirty years therefore after the foundation of dada and the public presentation of the urinal.
But this notion also figured prominently in the works and writings of the Lettrist and Situationist International, from the fifties, whether in cinematographic creation or in critical discourse. In this regard, an artist like Asger Jorn emphasized the rapprochements between CoBrA and this very particular avant-garde, since he was closely linked to both.
Experience naturally included the sense of chance in art and poetry. It had constituted in particular an essential stake of Paul Nougé's poetry, within the framework of Belgian surrealism. The expression: 'international front' also emphasized the necessity and even urgency of a combative attitude, but also the imperative need to inscribe this combat in a transnational perspective. Nationalist obsession, we know, had been at the source of Nazism, and consequently, at the origin of the Second World War. It had represented in this sense the very negation of culture.
"CoBrA so that the beauty in the wood of the frame already dreams and awakens again in my memory and in my imagination she who does not dance CoBrA of the future in the text and in the margin" (3). Dotremont celebrated here, according to a perspective largely influenced by surrealism, the role of dream and imagination in art and poetry, while insisting on the movement's ability to invent the future. Further on, he alluded to both French surrealists like Breton and Benjamin Péret, but also to Maurice Nadeau, who was one of the best defenders of surrealism in the world of publishing in France.
In this poem, the question of the object occupied an important place. It was already included in its title. "Some realistic objects put in delicate situations that is to say surrealist as in life from August 6 to August 13, 1949 approximately at the arts seminar around Ravenstein street to say everything and show everything for a purely experimental purpose" (4). It was thus necessary to transform the simple practical and utilitarian definition of the object and reveal its intrinsically poetic dimension, an approach that surrealism had already explored, from Man Ray to Magritte.
"So that the object gets rid of its waistcoat of its gibus of its game bag of nested dolls so that it no longer speaks of itself in terms of its civil servant's salary so that it decongests so that it deconstructs so that it no longer functions but walks as in life" (5). Dotremont's poetic approach thus privileged wordplay and verbal juggling, in the spirit of a Desnos, but also of a Duchamp, without even going back to Alfred Jarry's pataphysics.
The object had to be detached from its primary function, purely social. It no longer had to function, but it was language itself, then, that had to escape this constraining imperative. It had to be able to drift and especially deviate from its narrow meaning in order to open up to the both speculative and playful character of experimental poetry. It was a question, to use the words that serve as a conclusion to this poem, of opening "what was before him only boxes and packages." (6)
Thus, the spirit of CoBrA had to reflect the joint taste for play and chance. In this perspective, it still referred to the spirit of original surrealism defined by Breton in the 1924 Manifesto. Dotremont insisted here on the community dimension of the movement, a dimension that had been particularly decisive in the foundation of surrealism.
The second poem, entitled: 'The International Congress of CoBrA', returns again to this community dimension. It alludes to a historical meeting of the group in a small Danish locality, in the heart of summer 1949. The poem determines from the first lines the pictorial and poetic aesthetics of CoBrA: "Painting has made its nest Poetry has lost them I only dictate to birds" (7). The thematic figure of the bird constituted in this regard an essential source of inspiration for CoBrA artists, particularly in Appel and Corneille. The bird was then seen as a symbol of unlimited freedom.
References to surrealism continued in this poem: "From one bed to another dreams make love and words from one language to another embrace" (8). One can only think of certain affirmations of Breton, particularly in Clair de terre. It was a question of illuminating above all phenomena of irresistible attraction, deeply passionate and simultaneously inscribed in poetic language. This was not limited to a single language: it indeed made French, Dutch and Danish meet. One could evoke according to this optic a fusion principle of language, beyond its fundamental heterogeneity and diversity.
"Dinner must be done by all not by one". This imperative also had to apply, in CoBrA, to pictorial practice and poetic writing. The International Congress of CoBrA was the occasion of a great gathering that made it possible to define the main orientations and objectives of the movement. "And yellow discusses with blue then agrees with him For there is no congress if there is no discussion" (9).
The emphasis was therefore placed on the necessity of constant verbal dialogues and exchanges between the members of the group. Once again, such a perspective recalled the original spirit of surrealism. "And milk discusses with itself which turns bad And the road to Birkerød discusses with the road to Bregnerød and also the bike with its padlock" (10).
These exchanges had to take place, however, in good humor and relaxation. Everything could be subject to discussion, according to this perspective, which implied the idea of a common language intended to produce an identity based on the relationship between all the participants in this congress. "And also the notion of Congress with the Congress itself But it is the Congress that prevails like a tree over the void" (11).
In this sense, CoBrA did not exist only through creations and pictorial and poetic works, but also through a sharing of oral language, a language devoted by definition to loss. The Congress prevailed, in this perspective, because it made it possible to bring together different individuals from different countries and cultures.
It was not, however, a strictly academic or professional conference in the strict sense of the term. The emphasis was rather placed here on conviviality and the collective quest for pleasure, in a spirit that announced the Fluxus movement. "The inextricable in cities here the wood where one gets lost with pleasure" (12). It was therefore necessary to accept getting lost together, in a deliberate proximity to nature.
The third poem that I will consider here is entitled '10, rue de la Paille Brussels.' It alludes to one of the high places of CoBrA movement history, a house located in the Belgian capital in which its members developed experiences of communal living. It opens with the following words: "The table the table of contents the physical potato the psychological feast the fable of materials against the sand of manners" (13). We find here Dotremont's taste for puns which, far from being gratuitous, refer to a collective identity affirmation. The painting, that is to say art, constitutes in this context an essential element of the table of contents, that of the imaginary book written by the members of CoBrA. Matter, moreover, presents itself as a very important concern for the artists of this movement.
These, indeed, worked this matter in an original way, emphasizing its both rough and raw dimension. Matter, thus, was well opposed to manner, that is to say to forms too polished and constrained of expression. Such work brought CoBrA closer to the work of Jean Dubuffet, in particular, in its insistence on the properly physical and at the same time impure or imperfect dimension of the painting's surface.
The foundation of CoBrA rested on fragile and precarious bases. The artists belonging to this movement often had to face difficult living conditions. Yet they endeavored to pursue their approach and carry out their common projects. "The straw of misery the beauty mark CoBrA makes a case of coffee" (14). The very name of this street made in this optic reference to poverty, since it naturally led to the expression: 'to be on the straw'. Nevertheless, these artists sought a form of beauty obstinately and with their own means, however modest they were.
"The painting that rises on the wall that falls the fresh magazines of improvisation and printing oil painting cooking with margarine" (15). CoBrA had above all defined itself as a pictorial movement, but it also embodied itself in the experience of magazines, in the manner of surrealism before it.
We can consider in this context first the CoBrA magazine, which had ten issues. This emphasized both the collective dimension of the movement and the instantaneous character of its creativity. It was also a question of reiterating the fusion of art and life grasped in its most concrete form, a fusion that surrealism had already undertaken before. "Jorn peels the potatoes before painting the eyes Atlan opens the wine Noiret the discussion Alechinsky paints the wardrobe Calonne sets the monocle Osterlin opens the bread Havrenne the poem" (16). It is as much a question here of cooking and drinks as of art and poetry. Daily life therefore meets at every moment the domain of creation, without one being able to really distinguish one from the other.
In a certain way, CoBrA pursued with its own means the work of desacralization of art begun by Dada and Duchamp. This movement also attached itself to a process of democratization of art, that of an essentially acephalous community, which official surrealism from Breton had contested because of the very privileged and almost authoritarian status of its leader.
"Appel's painting in song cries the door handle keeps Sandberg's hand Corneille's painting in cry songs Constant's board in electrified wood" (17). CoBrA represented one of the most striking forms of primitivism in post-war art. Surrealism had already claimed it, in many ways, but CoBrA considered that it had often betrayed this belonging by getting lost in certain mannerisms of hallucinatory essence.
Finding man's primal cry, such was in a way CoBrA's motto. This cry also constituted a song, that is to say that it carried an undeniable lyrical intensity. According to such a perspective, the hand had to remain the artist's main organ, and not his head. The spontaneity of expression thus rested on drawing and graphic art, in particular, as evidenced by Dotremont's works, including his Logogrammes. The hand was indeed the most natural extension of the artist's body: it made it possible to inscribe art in physical reality. Thus CoBrA contradicted the first conceptual developments of contemporary art, which were to appear only a few years after the creation of the movement.
We can therefore affirm that CoBrA represented the last avatar of surrealism in Western culture of the second half of the 20th century, while claiming to distinguish itself from it. The artist had according to him to exercise his gift of childhood despite social rules and processes of legitimization of art by theory.
Art and poetry, in this context, never ceased to merge joyfully: "The typewriter at the pawnshop to pay for red and black letter paper poetry letters by hand to the dough paint poetry without model nor fashion but modern from the depths of ages to the tips of nails" (18).
The poet of this era used the typewriter as a priority. He was moreover simultaneously a man of letters and a man of plastic forms, as Dotremont's personal journey proves. He therefore literally put his hand to the dough in his work. It was necessary in this sense to paint poetry, which constituted precisely the stake of the Logogrammes (19).
He insisted in these lines on the absence of a model for such an approach, insofar as it proved necessary to deviate from the paths already marked out by Breton's surrealism. CoBrA wanted in a way to be free of any artistic debt, and therefore of any aesthetic submission to the avant-gardes that had preceded it.
It was also necessary to escape the traps of fashion, which, in the fifties, simultaneously to the emergence of this movement, led to the celebration of Pop Art, in particular. These traps inevitably led to the commercialization of art and its integration into the logic of the market.
The artists and poets of CoBrA had however to constantly affirm their eminently and fiercely modern character. Modern, that is to say permanently open to the possibility of new experiences and the unpredictable character of individual and collective imagination.
The imperative of the avant-garde was already without doubt less pressing in the post-war period than it had been at the time of the foundation of Dada and surrealism. This had been accompanied by a duty of rupture that CoBrA had felt less intensely. In this sense, it was no longer really a question of making history but rather of inscribing oneself without ambiguity in a certain dynamic of the modern world marked by an irrepressible need for freedom both aesthetic and existential.
This freedom manifested itself in particular through the numerous travels and displacements that characterized the artistic activities of CoBrA members from its origin. Dotremont himself stayed several times in the Far North, that of Lapland, which became for him a symbolic land of asylum. It was thus a question of defining a privileged elsewhere beyond the rooting of these artists and poets in their respective cultures. '10 rue de la Paille Brussels' evokes this situation well in its last part. "The suitcase that goes to the Palace of Fine Arts without it going to it the train that goes to Copenhagen to Tycho Brahe's tower the tram that goes to Colinet the shoe that goes to Amsterdam the city of Brussels owner of CoBrA-on-universe" (20).
The suitcase constituted the mirror object of this intoxication of travel. We can therefore add that the main avant-gardes of the 20th century, from Dada to surrealism and CoBrA, exalted or at least were the crucible of infinite wandering, a sort of non-geographical belonging, voluntary or forced by historical circumstances, which did not however prevent the construction of a creative identity.
It suffices to think here of the expatriation of a Benjamin Péret, from Brazil to Mexico, or even that of a Breton, exiled to New York during the Second World War, without forgetting in the other direction Man Ray's Parisian stay. We know moreover that the dada artist and poet Kurt Schwitters was tossed between several countries, including Norway, following the Nazi seizure of power in the thirties and finally ended up in England where he died just after obtaining British nationality.
All means of transport were thus permitted, from train to tram. The latter was characteristic of the great cities of Northern Europe, and in particular of Brussels, the beacon city of the movement. The Brussels in question in these lines was very different from today's Brussels.
The European Union did not yet exist, indeed, and this provincial capital therefore did not then benefit from the status of global political and economic center that it currently enjoys. In a way, CoBrA affirmed the international identity of this city in an anticipated manner, and this not by the power of bureaucracy, but indeed by that of art and poetry.
Brussels defined in this perspective the universal dimension of a certain avant-garde. This had nothing to do with nations and their philosophical as well as political limits. All the artists and poets of CoBrA spoke in this sense the same language, that is to say a love of spontaneous forms and a deep playful sensitivity.
"The life of the party to the end neither florins nor crowns nor francs but like bread the first the last square of antisquares where I write the speech of the meeting of the natural and the scandal" (21). At that time, the monetary union resulting from the Maastricht treaty, we know, was not yet in force. The Dutch therefore used Florins (Gulden) and the Belgians Belgian Francs, as this passage from the poem reminds us.
In these lines, Dotremont also reiterated the quest for an art both natural and provocative, or to be more precise, provocative in its very naturalness. The term 'anti squares' referred to the refusal of aesthetic but also social conformism, an aesthetic and social conformism that had already won over part of the surrealist movement after the Second World War. But it could also be read as an expression of opposition to abstract and purely geometric art, too calculated and too dry, and in a way immaterial.
It was also a question of going to the end of the journey, to explore and discover the most remote corners of the imagination. One could consequently pass very quickly from the space of a studio to that of a hotel room and vice versa. The two merged in a way in the experience of art.
After all, it was in a hotel room located Place du Panthéon in Paris that automatic writing was born more than a century ago, the authentic origin of the surrealist movement, with the creation of Les Champs magnétiques by Breton and Soupault. Let us not forget either, in the same order of ideas, that Marcel Duchamp conceived a sort of conceptual suitcase containing several of his own works in reduced model.
Moreover, the experience of the Second World War and the Occupation lived by most of CoBrA's members had considerably restricted the travel possibilities of these young people of the time. They had indeed been long confined within the national space by the enemy. Travel represented in this optic a promise of unique and unprecedented freedom at the end of the war.
Dotremont proposed in these poems a new definition of the manifesto, that is to say the presentation of the main ideas and opinions of an avant-garde movement. I will qualify this original definition as poem-manifesto. We must well recognize, by comparison, that the poet André Breton clearly separated these two genres in his own practice of writing.
His two manifestos of surrealism, indeed, that of 1924 and that of 1930, adopted an often polemical tone that did not correspond to the very spirit of poetry. They emphasized above all the ideological dimension of surrealism at a time when it had to face many detractors and multiple misunderstandings (22).
These surrealist manifestos also contained a didactic dimension, insofar as they were intended to explain the deep meaning of the movement to essentially profane readers. The critical perspective, in this sense, clearly prevailed over that of poetry, even if the latter was defined in these manifestos as the dominant expression of the movement and its common language. In other words, these manifestos expressed above all a politics of the surrealist movement, that is to say a set of absolute and indisputable dogmas and principles. They then struck by the radical and intransigent character of their argumentation.
By contrast, Dotremont's poem-manifestos demonstrate a deep flexibility and philosophical relativism. They do not impose a truth conceived as universal but rather suggest aesthetic and philosophical hypotheses. The emphasis was then placed on the constitutive community of the avant-garde, a living community inscribed in daily reality.
This is why the CoBrA movement did not generate any exclusion or opprobrium, unlike the surrealist movement led by Breton. It did not impose an existential line of conduct or writing standards but contented itself with expressing in simple terms the most buried dreams and desires of its members.
If we absolutely must seek a filiation between these singular poems and other avant-garde movements, it is towards Dada then that we should probably turn. For Tzara's Dada Manifestos included in their own way a poetic dimension, in their raw and exalted expression. Tzara thus composed a set of manifesto-poems, while Dotremont preferred the original form of the poem-manifesto (23).
The era of manifestos corresponded above all to the 20th century, and more precisely to the first half of the 20th century, at the time of the origin and development of the avant-gardes. But we could go back to the 19th century, if we consider Marx and Engels' Communist Manifesto.
By opposition, the beginning of the 21st century has not given birth to equivalent texts. These manifestos, beyond their formal differences, all expressed a revolutionary consciousness and a utopian fiber. Moreover, they reflected the fundamentally community dimension of the political or artistic project.
Dotremont's poem-manifestos do not escape this rule, despite their ironic aspect. They imply the vision of another world than the one in which man is forced to live. In our time, however, such requirements are becoming rarer, insofar as the notion of avant-garde has become above all a historical reality anchored in the past, and with it the very idea of a revolutionary and utopian project in the field of literature and art.
The manifestos of that time rested on the hope of a radical social and cultural change, in times dominated by communist and anarchist movements, in particular. Faced with the surrounding chaos, they affirmed the power of the community's dreams. Every manifesto implies in this regard the sovereignty of the we over the I.
We must therefore read Dotremont's poem-manifestos as unique and original forms that could only be repeated with difficulty in our day. They strike by their enthusiastic and sincere character, by their generous and idealistic momentum. A deep faith animates them, based on the sense of sharing and a better future.
Apparently post-surrealist, they are in reality neo-surrealist in their conception of the art of life. Here however, the idea must always submit to the force of the concrete and the verbal inventiveness of the poet. "This is not a manifesto," one could then add, but this is indeed a poem that defines with precision the identity of the CoBrA movement.
This was inhabited by the necessity of a centrifugal movement, since by choosing Brussels, Amsterdam and Copenhagen as new capitals of the avant-garde, it detached itself from the overwhelming shadow of Paris that Breton had somehow imposed in his personal definition of surrealism.
It was indeed in this sense a question of disseminating the avant-garde in an original and still poorly known geographical space. Concretely, it no longer possessed a real center and affirmed itself in its very interculturality. 'I am not at home anywhere, therefore I am at home everywhere', thus affirmed the poet and artist of CoBrA.
Another important dimension of CoBrA and its aesthetics was the emphasis placed on the representation of chaos. This movement was born immediately after the Second World War, as we have already seen, and it could only be influenced by the tragic events related to this conflict. The poets and artists of CoBrA, indeed, had mostly lived their youth (their twenties) during these dark years. They had therefore in a way been dispossessed of it against their will.
CoBrA's chaos was not cubist chaos, still skillfully composed and organized. It defined by contrast a deliberate explosion of forms and a radical rejection of realistic representation. This realism, surrealism itself had not been able to get rid of completely, whether in literature or art.
I will allow myself in conclusion to quote one of my own poems, from my poetic memoirs L'Esprit des Lieux (24). It was inspired by a trip to Finland as part of an international conference. This poem is entitled: In Dotremont's Country:

At the end of the old continent At the tip of a pencil At the end of a brush dipped in black ink In the land of the midnight sun In the land of winter without light Extreme-Europe where they didn't speak his language A drawing traced in the snow Frozen dreams dreams on the ground Further still a Lapp this unsuspected brother At the end of this poem the image of a writing that drifts The journey to the north of the man who wanted to be outside Outside himself outside the world The crossing of an imaginary lake In the country that resembled him In the country that was not his At the end of the gaze a sky that brightens At the end of the step the question of art

It is a question of defining a unique geography, which does not correspond to the usual itineraries of modern poets and artists. The extreme north of Europe seems to be the end of the world, indeed. The poet and artist Dotremont is well elsewhere, according to this perspective, in a place almost uninhabited and in a way undeveloped.
I strive to insist here on the very materiality of the artist's work, between pencil and black ink. I also allude to the first Logogramme conceived by Dotremont, which was traced in the snow. Finland presents itself literally as a country both strange and fascinating, in the experience in particular of the Midnight Sun. This country contains many dreams, however, notably that of fleeing reality to better find it again. It is thus a question of being outside oneself and the world, in an imaginary space that belongs only to the poet and the artist.
The expression 'at the end', repeated several times, emphasizes in this sense the presence of a distant and apparently inaccessible space. But the adventure of poetry and art is precisely what can make this space closer to us. Travel, anyway, never completely carries us away. It always brings us back in a certain way towards ourselves. Elsewhere, in this optic, constitutes indeed an illusion, since even the longest journey does not separate us from our identity.
Wandering, in this sense, is not synonymous with loss, but on the contrary with reaffirmation and reconstitution of oneself. All of CoBrA's experience rested on this fundamental postulate: it then engendered an original poetics of non-belonging shared with others, and a fabric of unsuspected and fruitful encounters.
This presentation has allowed me to highlight the essential role of poetry in the CoBrA movement, while this movement, we must admit, is today better known for its pictorial creation. On this point again, CoBrA joins surrealism in many ways. But it has also led me to define an original identity of the poet as a man of ideas through the very notion of poem-manifesto.
The poet, in a way, is someone who shows the way to follow and imposes a certain collective project by expressing its values and objectives. This was the case with Dotremont, and also with André Breton. But the idea, here, is first that of poetry, of its eternal meaning and its universality, beyond any philosophical or ideological bias.

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