DID YOU KNOW that the academics of the Melusine mailing
listwho pretend to report on everything having to do with
surrealismhave concealed from their subscribers the fact that,
with one or two minor exceptions, not one surrealist has signed
the comic petition addressed to the French Minister of Culture and
the President of the Republic by the so-called "Breton Committee"?
WHY HAVE THEY SUPPRESSED the collective declaration, "Surrealism
Is Not For Sale!" sent to them many weeks ago by the Surrealist
Movement in the United States?
CAN YOU IMAGINE any surrealist, anywhere, asking the State
to finance any sort of museum? We are thinking in particular of
those who actually knew André Breton and enjoyed his confidence:
Sarane Alexandrian, Enrico Baj, Jean Benoit, Guy Cabanel, Jorge
Camacho, Her de Vries, Hervé Delabarre, Gabriel Der Kevorkian,
Nicole Espagnol, Georges Goldfayn, Georges Gronier, Jean-Pierre
Guillon, Robert Guyon, Radovan Ivsic, Ted Joans, Alain Joubert,
Gerome Kamrowski, Konrad Klapheck, Jacques Lacomblez, Annie Le Brun,
Elisabeth Lenk, Sergio Lima, Mary Low, Conroy Maddox, Mimi Parent,
Bernard Roger, Penelope and Franklin Rosemont, Georges Sebbag, Francois-René
Simon, Michel Zimbacca, and several others.
FROM WHAT FOG AND GLOOM, meanwhile, did the self-proclaimed
"André Breton Committee" emerge? Who are these gentlemen
who so modestly have conferred upon themselves that prestigious
title? What are their qualifications? Only one among them, it so
happens, has ever raised his voice in Bretons defense before
the announcement of the infamous auction provided an opportunity
to advertise themselves so shamelessly. So far, the Committee has
shown only its talent for media manipulation and misrepresentation.
IS IT NOT REVEALING that, in their eagerness to enlist the
aid of surrealisms irreducible enemies (politicians, senile
and neo-Stalinists, littérateurs), the Committee has categorically
refused to acknowledge that all of Bretons surviving friends
and comrades, as well as the younger surrealists throughout the
world, are totally opposed to the Committees exercise in appropriation,
which has no other aim than to render surrealism inoffensive?
BY WHAT RIGHT do they falsely portray André Breton as a rich
collector, shrewd merchant, pandering author, chauvinistic poet?
Dont they know that such "portraits" are nothing
but lies?
AND WHAT CAN ONE EXPECT of these obsequious and self-aggrandizing
"Palcontents" (to use Alfred Jarrys term)who
have spread so much misinformation about the author of Nadja,
and manifested their complete contempt for Bretons friends
and for all surrealists, past, present, and future should
they manage to gain control of a "Breton Museum," a "Breton
Temple," a "Breton Mausoleum": if, that is, the French
government provides the indispensable funds and metal detectors?
WHO will embalm the embalmers?
WE INVITE all those who would like a true idea of the poets
thought, and of the sense that he intended to give to surrealism,
to read or reread "The Disdainful Confession," and to
recall, in the face of the recuperators of every stripe, that today
as yesterday,
|
April 2003
For THE SURREALIST GROUP IN CHICAGO: Gale Ahrens, Jennifer
Bean, Jen Besemer, Dennis Cooper, Guy Ducornet, J. Allen Fees, Beth
Garon, Paul Garon, Robert Green, Jan Hathaway, Joseph Jablonski, Don
LaCoss, David London, Mary Low, Tristan Meinecke, Anne Olson, Ruth
Oppenheim-Rothschild, David Roediger, Franklin Rosemont, Penelope
Rosemont, Mark Rosenzweig, Louise Simons, Tamara Smith, Debra Taub,
Joel Williams. For THE SURREALIST GROUP IN PORTLAND: Andrew
Daily, Sarah Frances, Brandon Freels, Morgan Miller, and M.K. Shibek.
For LES LOUPS SONT FACHES (Paris): Eric Benveniste. |