“He said to me: “You are an
opportunist.” It's true. But I think in the sense that Lenin was, or Nietzsche,
or Rousseau; in the sense that I want to transform the world; I want to enforce
proper conceptions on the vile and unimportant.”
Reflections
on André Breton
Isidore
Isou
Read at the
Demonstration in the Salle des Sociétés Savantes in 1947
Published in 1948
Translated
by Anna O’Meara
His
generation is actively mediocre. It hasn't produced a Proust, a Bergson, a
Valéry, or a Picasso.
Even
compared to the ones that produced Mallarmé, Verlaine, Rimbaud, all of whom are
now nothing but dust, shining worms in the grass of poverty.
For
men who still dream of Descartes as a marble statue, presenting the impossible,
who treat him with reverence; no one notices those with attentive expressions,
minions to greatness. They judge impartially. They look for people to have
haughty conversations with them. We often may be inclined to permit them this
luxury.
Breton
is no seer, but perhaps sees the most among the invisible. He tries to form
unique questions. And so I feel obligated to say hello to him in passing. He
has a knack for chewing up, crushing, and vomiting out his multi-colored food,
mixed and dynamic with tiny moments in French literature (colors that become
reduced to gray.)
I
called Breton when I was organizing a demonstration and he filled the room. I
think I saw him after the publication of my second book purely for political
questions; he looked like a lion to some and as though he'd attack to others.
We, however, dreamed of luring him into revealing himself and he predicted
this, because the first words he said to me were: “Despite my wishes, I haven't
seen you until now, because I was afraid of offending the paparazzi.” Surely,
people prefer Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, or at least Rita Hayworth (for her
legs), but since we aren't interested in baseness...
I
am not modest, but he gave the impression that he knew me: “For some time, I
have been looking for something new.”
He
kept this amiable air, even through the evening quarrel.
But
here's the coarse of events: on the phone, I asked him to come to the
demonstration.
He
said: “Yes, but I would like to meet you first.”
Me:
I will come with my friends.
Him:
I would prefer to meet you alone.
We
met at the Rhumerie Martiniquaise. He was a big he-she (sometimes more he and
sometimes
more she.) He was very sensible (in the good sense of the word); not a
pontificater
as some say. He was intelligent like his books, and I held a conversation with
him as though he were one of my best friends.
Certain
things showed he was conscious. He said, “One of your Lettrist friends told me
he wanted to eliminate me. In our day, people don't usually want to eliminate
the uneliminatable.”
“...Apollinaire
is more important than I am, but his work is less important.”
This
is what destroyed Breton; he never had to battle with the notion that he was
mediocre the way Mallarmé, Kant, and Spinoza battled...
“When
Tristan Tzara came to Paris, I saw how methodical he was, which shows in his
'Introduction.'
I took to his disposition through my modest means.”
Me:
I should tell you that I'm shocked that you accept Lettrism despite the fact
that the other men who you know don't.
Him:
They are traitors to the idea that surrealism works toward the new and accepts
new ideas.
I
laid out my political ideas, which sparked the following argument. I have the
tendency to be persuasive, argumentative, and convincing. He smelled my intent
very quickly. I said a few words about how youth is forced into a diaper of
inferiority, but it is economically and socially capable of revolution before
the proletariat. He said to me, “I don't think about youth.” (If he had thought
about it, he wouldn't be a “Trotskyist.”) Perhaps we can demonstrate together
for the idea of youth.” He went to the demonstration and stammered as always;
and afterwards he said: the dadaists and surrealists don't have demonstrations
anymore. They are now just a legend, swollen and pre-defined.”
After
I published my second book, he invited me over: it was here that the quarrel
began to unfold.
Primo.
I
told him that I had recently read a passage from Aragon that touched me and
angered
him. “How? You can't be moved by Aragon...etc, etc. I don't read that
anymore...etc, etc.”
However,
you can't accuse me of specifically liking Aragon. But people are complex and
free, and think differently. People shouldn't be more afraid of what they like
than of what they despise; nor should they be predictable, suffocated by a
single idea as though they are gyrating and blind; they become mechanic like
stylized writing.
I
tried to discuss this further, but I was in his house, on his turf.
Secondo.
Breton
said: “As for youth, I convinced my friends to send a letter to “Combat.” I explained
that there is something new about this diaper; also the question of their
housing; my friends talked about this idea all night until they came to agree.
I
understood that Breton stole and pastiched works from all sorts of
predecessors, who
formed
pieces of a monstrous whole, large and poorly put together. Beginning with
Apollinaire and moving to Jacques Vaché (outside of confessing small, humble
thievery from Freud and Bergson); he also wore out and striped down Tristan
Tzara in a diplomatic way. This attitude included a bloated tapestry of others,
but never included an idea of his own. He was the wind who blew through the balloons,
through the lungs of his neighbors. Again, he wanted to make my ideas into a
sauce, a garnish in his melting pot of matadors from literature. I was alright with
him splashing it in there, but only after I published them, not before. I know
that I am talented enough to ask this.
In
conclusion. I proposed that I speak with his friends
about my political ideas, because our movement was considered a “member” of
surrealism. Exploited by gossip columns, we were permitted to win over this “party,”
along with other, more precise victories. According to Breton's lectures at
Yale, this “membership” seemed acceptable. We set up a meeting at the Place
Blanche café, where he met (appeared) each Wednesday night with his regulars.
My
first blunder: I arrived half an hour late. This made him impatient. Not yet
furious (“What a faux pas,” he said later.)
All
around him were his good, faded old women; viciously lined up. Victor Brauner
kept an eye on their nails in a humid, poisonous, and lively trance.
He
chewed up scandals like a sorcerer, between his chest and gums, and so I
couldn't shoot an arrow at Breton without him counterattacking with mastery. I
think Brauner liked Breton best because it was his job, his daily bread. Love
was in his nature, and, a foreigner. I don't like foreigners who wriggle and
nibble for peanuts and protection, allowing other people to define their paths
in life.
We
the naïve are thought to be objective and impartial. However, the spirit of his
group, the possessed troop of Breton's milieu, was to know nothing but café
strategies. They pass political literature from hand to hand, from mouth to
mouth; old tricks, arguments, and warrants.
In
truth, they listened to my ideas and understood what I was saying well enough,
agreeing with some things and disagreeing with others.
To
be precise, I explained new economic theories: my own. However, Breton knew
nothing of economics or politics, Ricardo or Walras, Le Play or Schumpeter, and
instead chimed gossip about the next events coming up in the quarter.
He
had the attitude of the old Bonzes who say that everything has already been
done and gives the impression that he's done something honorable through the
bad ideas in his first serial.
I
got up and refused to continue when the conversation took on this tone (or so
it seemed to me.)
This
was when Breton lashed out. As if he'd done this before, he had me easily. I
didn't resist annihilation from his volubility, because then I would have to
lie.
He
yelled, “You care about nothing but your own glory. You don't believe in your
friends, you just employ them.”
He
dared to speak of my friends, he who had been booed and spit on by them,
beginning with Soupault and Vihac and ending with Desnos and Prévert, who were
his former friends; this man who would spinelessly fuck Buddha and Apollinaire.
He would magnanimously hold any ass.
He
said to me: “You are an opportunist.” It's true. But I think in the sense that
Lenin was, or Nietzsche, or Rousseau; in the sense that I want to transform the
world; I want to enforce proper conceptions on the vile and unimportant. While
Breton is a backward opportunist, a hypocrite, without force (as though he has
tuberculosis, resembling his drinking neighbors) who do nothing with their day
but go to this or that café; La Place Blanche, Les Deux Magots, and no further.
I
said to myself (which he thought to be very serious): “You can keep exhausting
these points, but I, Breton, am not going to.” And he lied, he who had come to
Paris for the 2nd and 3rd recruitment when he started with none and after a
painful period, he had smiles reinforcing him, and hands on board to
double-check him (because he is very servile toward women), and he finally
succeeded in amassing about 10 men at most, who would tranquilly meet on Mondays
at the Deux Magots where they would chant Monsieur Breton's name.
And
in the end, Breton exhausted his arguments and he yelled a supreme insult: “You
will be certainly be accepted as one of the washed out followers.” We said, “Yes,”
integrating everyone who decided to be among us, and he began to yell, he who
wrote a stringy paper every week like a priest of Mauriac, Claudel, Tharaud,
etc.[1]
I
know very well that this is all very petty and unimportant, but hopefully I
have deviated the reader from the haughtiness of their neighbors. I've also
averted the fact that he makes up a mediocre generation who believes too much
in life and not enough in books. Who doesn't look further than their own
inconsistent navel.
Conclusion.
1.
We can never learn anything from a discussion with a man who writes books. The
first shock of the disappointing encounter comes from the fact that I tried to
relate a real person to a created image. He is now just a man who can't chew
his food, who sits with the forgotten; André Breton the poor grazer.
2.
Putting creative goals in perspective, compared to the ladder of past
achievements, up until the haughtiness, he was without pity. In order to uproot
the sentimentalism of our time for certain sensations or amazements,, it is
necessary to learn to hold contempt.[2]2
3.
Our generation measures its quantum importance (each one of us) by the paths we
take
alone, without winks from understanding eyes behind us. one of menstruation.
[1] “I saw Desnos praying and
speaking in a mania, and he had the attention of the silence around him, the
hope of verbal discovery from men who had always hated him before.” That's the
passage from Aragon. I think, in reading this, we form a tight-knit group of
Lettrists, and you who hate us now will love us one day.
[2] The first time he clenched his
fist was in a treacherous interview with us. His generation cannot judge valor.
His attitude toward men and books is based on his mood and apoplectic romances.
Breton thinks like a whore; with crises and emotions (cf. the changes in
Artuad, Bataille, etc.) It is necessary to read his tone as Greatness comes
from contempt. As for me, apart from all of this, he remains the man who
defined Dada through automatic writing.
