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Stephen SCHWARTZ 3 Th e Garden of Eden Penelope ROSEMONT 5 The Origin of Species (excerpt) Joseph JABLONSKI 6 Notes on the Revolution of Witchcraft Franklin ROSEMONT 9 T h e Crisis of the Im agination Paul G A R O N 16 Journey to the Center of the Pond Patrick M ULLINS 19 Poem Robert D A Y 19 T h e Exegesis of Love 20 War Against the Pope 20 Letter to Benjamin Mendoza y Amor Joseph JABLONSKI 21 Tw o Poems Penelope ROSEMONT 22 W here Have Y ou Been? M alcolm de C H A Z A L 22 Three Poems Peter M A N T I 23 Three Poems RIKKI 24 T h e D ouble Paul G A R O N 25 Surrealist Occupational Index Penelope ROSEMONT 26 Revenge of the Ibis S. P. D IN S M O O R 27 The Garden of Eden (Lucas, Kansas) Philip LAM ANTIA 32 Between the Gulfs V irgil T E O D O R E S C U 33 Leninism and the Structure of the Poetic Image G e llu N A U M 34 Persistence of Flames Paul GARON 35 The Illegality of Despair Philip LAM ANTIA 38 Becoming Visible (poems) Etienne LERO 40 Poem Stephen SCHWARTZ 41 A Visit W ith Don Talayesva Joyce MANSOUR 43 W ild Glee from Elsewhere Joseph JABLONSKI 44 T h e T errify in g Days: A Dream Tale T-Bone SLIM 45 Selections from Unpublished Works E. F. GRANELL 46 Drawings 48 Surrealism in Martinique (1932) E. L E R O , R. M E N IL et al. 48 Manifesto: Legitimate Defense Guy DUCORNET & RIKKI 50 T h e New L o tto Game Franklin ROSEMONT 51 Andre Breton by Anna Balakian: A Review Peter M A N TI et al. 55 Recently Published Works by Leon Trotsky 57 Surrealist Communications & Reviews 60 Surrealist Publications in the U.S.: 1971-73

N O T E S — A New Difficulty in the Path of Psychoanalysis + Heirs to Freud + Letter to Robert Bly + Americanization + Zydeco + Surrealism in Rumania + On the Elections + “Escritura de fuego sobre el jade" + The Padilla Affair + The Self-Humiliation of the Unbelievers + On the Interpretation of Irrational Phenomena +Surrealist Precognition + Mar^cuse's Epigones + Bun- uel + The Tel Quel School of Falsification + Homage to Magloire-Saint-Aude + Surrealist In­ quiry + Trajectory of V^oodoo.

ILLUSTRATIONS by Leonora CARRINGTON, Guy DUCORNET, E. F. GRANELL, Anton KREKULE, Conroy MADDOX, RIKKI, Franklin ROSEMONT, Jacques VACHfi.

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Address all correspondence to: Franklin Rosemont, 3714 North Racine Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 60613. F. R.: Buster Keaton's Smile (collage)

“Evil arises against good. It could do no less.” — Lautriamont

2 THE GARDEN OF EDEN

Reading Andre Breton I returned inexorably alogy has remained a secret element, often sup­ to two nearly identical phrases, one so contro­ pressed or distorted and refined beyond recog­ versial: in Nadja we are reminded of a knowl­ nition; let me confine myself to a reaffirmation edge of a kind “ to send men rushing into the of Idries Shah’s contention* that the various street” ; in The Second Manifesto of Surrealism forms assumed by analogical or fictitious “ the simplest surrealist act consists of dashing thought in the dominant cultures of the world into the street, revolver in hand, and firing (Zen, Tao, Tantrism, Zoroastrianism, Mithra- blindly, as fast as you can pull the trigger, into ism, Gnosticism, Sufism, the esoteric and heret­ the crowd . . .” For my part I cannot divorce ical doctrines of the Christian era, materialist the particular willingness manifest in these all- dialectics, and surrealism) may be derived by too-laconic emblems from the refrain of a M ex­ diffusion from the extraordinary structure of ican revolutionary song, I f they want to kill me liberation of expression embodied in Central tomorrow, then let them kill me today, or from Asian and Siberian shamanism, which, of course, the noted battle cry of the Cheyenne, It's a great extended itself across the Bering Strait. day to die! Here we find expressed a rare distil­ M ay the prominence of shamanic-automatis- lation of the total refusal to accept life on terms tic means of expression be correlated with a less- other than as a being filled with light, challeng­ repressive system of social obligations? While ing a physical and moral darkness. such correlation would easily lend itself to an Y et it is within such darkness that analogy abstract schematism of method, it is instructive functions most freely, breaking with reductive to examine the functioning of analogical thought means of cognition and submitting life to the in the matrices of Mayan civilization in Yuca­ rule of desire. Breton, in Signe Ascendant, fol­ tan. Two forms of analogical communication are lows Pierre Reverdy in identifying analogy, in evidence in both glyphic and alphabetic docu­ “ the spontaneous, extralucid, rebellious rapport ments; the first, glyphic analogy by homophony, which establishes itself, under certain conditions, or rebus writing, is attested by the scholarship between one thing and another,” as the most of J. Eric S. Thompson.5 The Yucatecan dia­ exalting form of poetic thought. In a later text' lects are rich in homonyms, and Thompson dis­ discussing the painting of Rene Magritte, Bret­ cuses their glyphic representation with the fol­ on calls our attention to the writings of the Ger- lowing examples, among others: “ the word xoc man-Jewish philosopher Constantin Brunner or xooc in Yucatec is a name for a mythological (1862-1937), whose theses on the structure of fish. The word xoc also means to count . . . there the mind deserve a wider circulation today. The is little reason to doubt that (in a particular con­ greater part of Brunner's writing3 follows Spin­ text the glyph) xoc-fish stands for xoc-count” ; oza in a careful but acerbic attack on scholas­ further, the name Bolon-Yocte or Nine Strides ticism “ in whatever guise, be it Kantianism or is represented with the inclusion of oc (head of Cartesianism,”’ and Brunner unfortunately does a dog) for oc (stride). While it may be argued not escape the pitfall of a rigid rationalism of that this phenomenon is merely exemplary of a the variety Trotsky had in mind when he wrote homonymic process whereby several systems of of “ rationalism . . . a reactionary factor the mo­ writing have developed, here the birth of the ment it is directed against dialectic/’ Y et not­ symbol extends itself beyond the development withstanding his shortcomings we are indebted of, for example, the Hebrew letter aleph from to Brunner for his introduction into the evi­ the sign for the world aleph (head of a cow), dence, so to speak, of a theoretical model of three with the addition of a dimension of analogical mental faculties: science, a system of assimila­ substitution, of words “ making love.” More ex­ tion of exterior and sense-derived data; spirit, tensive evidence for a major role for analogical an abstract form of interior motion; and anal- means of expression in Yucatecan thought is ogon or fictitious thought, synthesizing spirit and provided by the books of Chilam Balam, a col­ science. If we project Brunner's model into the lection of versions of a single Yucatecan text analysis of the structure of operant thought we transcribed, secretly, in Latin characters during can, I think, only conclude that at present the the immediate post-Conquest period, and still analogical potential is subject to a repression in in use in certain parts of the Mayan culture area the mind, dependent upon the whole proces of today. In the Book of Chilam Balam of Chuma- repression of Eros, and by which the faculty of y e l we encounter several complexes of meta­ conceptualization of obj'ects, contingent upon phoric analogy, as follows: language, is limited by a reduction of the field of signifiers at the individual's disposal. This "Son, where is the cenote? A ll are drenched reduction may be accomplished by the imposi­ by its water. There is no gravel at its bot­ tion upon the affective field of signifiers of a tom; a bow is inserted over its entrance. It system of signifiers (the “ micro-language” ) is the church . . . Son, where are the first- based on traumatic anxiety as well as upon pos­ baptised ones? One no mother, but has itivist logic. Thus the Excalibur of language, by a bead collar and little bells. I t is early yel­ which the world may be transformed, is torn low corn ...S o n , bring me what hooks the from the hands of the child. It is paradigmatic sky, and the hooked tooth. They are a deer of Indo-European and Chinese thought that an­ and a gopher . . . Son, bring me a three- 3 stranded cord. I want to see it. I t is an seemed to spring up between myself and Mary. iguana. . . ” I, for one, am unable to discern any resemblance While a germane issue in social analysis is the between such architectural incarnations of the extent to which comprehension of such systems darkest and brightest sides of the human mind of analogy was accessible only to initiates, I be­ and the dreadful styles affected on the one hand lieve we can infer a predominance of analogy in by the most desperate sectors of the bourgeoisie, the Mayan world-view. Further, Mayan hom- on the other by a soi-disant avant-garde; for me ophonic and metaphoric analogy are remarkable the Doric-columned marble monstrosities erec­ for their tendency to escape a rule of resem­ ted by the petty sugar or railroad magnates of blance and adopt a rule of pleasure. It is not California, OR the dreadful wedding-cake Stal­ entirely inconceivable that the key to untrans­ in-gothic prevalent in Eastern Europe and the lated Mayan glyphs may lie more in the realm USSR, OR Le Corbusier’s and Frank Lloyd of psychology than Qf pure linguistics. W right’s attacks on the human spirit, OR the Means to comprehend the functioning of a Los Angeles style of office and apartment build­ sublimated analogon in our own continuously- ing, are indistinguishable; it is a clue to the ex­ cvolving collective mental life are provided by tent of the anxiety that rules the bourgeoisie a multitude of sources; I think, now, of two An­ now that they feel called upon to sponsor intim­ glo-American precursors of the researches in the idation after intimidation in steel and concrete, triumph of the principle of pleasure carried out monuments to their own sterility, in a weak at­ under the sign of surrealism today, of whom I tempt to validate their fast-disappearing power. learned quite recently-Thomas Morton, the no­ Regretfully, too, the demolition-ball of “ urban torious M ay Lord of early New England history, renewal” is not aimed at the latest atrocity from and S. P. Dinsmoor, creator of the magnificent the minds of Lawrence Halprin or William Per­ “ Cabin Home and Garden of Eden” in Lucas, eira, but against one or another waterfront ware­ Kansas. Thomas Morton is among the few house or Victorian walkup, overwhelmed by ges­ wholly admirable figures in our sorry history; tures of liberation. The excuse that “ urban re­ in 1625 this gentleman took command of a fur- newal” eliminates only the miserable shelters trading post on the Kennebec River in Massa­ of an oppressed population and exchanges for chusetts, and in 1628 he was tried and banished by the Puritan authorities, charged with pro­ moting ribald May revels with the natives and SURREALIST selling them firearms. In 1637 he published, at Amsterdam, The New-English Canaan, a truly marvelous work7 including an extended suFVey INQUIRY and defense of the customs of native Americans; In spite of the fact that on Sunday people an exalted lyrical evocation of the American landscape; attacks on the Plymouth bigots filled are free from the responsibility of work, for with black humor; and a series of poems of start­ many there remains attached to that partic­ ling metaphoric quality. That Morton’s work is ular day a peculiar air of discomfort. In nearly unknown today can only be regarded as 1919 Sandor Ferenczi suggested that “Sun­ a consequence of deliberate suppression, for his day neuroses” were caused, in fact, pre­ writing is poetically the equal of Mather’s Won­ cisely by the freedom from work which, by ders of The Invisible World and is certainly su­ provoking an internal freedom, further en­ perior to the grim pieties of the repulsive Brad­ gendered a return of the repressed; this last, ford. Ferenczi argued, produced the displeasure S. P. Dinsmoor’s Garden of Eden, rising like so commonly associated with Sundays. a sign against the evil eye from the plains of An informal inquiry on this subject Kansas, makes manifest the revolutionary as­ among friends and acquaintances elicited pirations of Morton's work, best expressed in the following responses: terms of a disorientation by nature, and of a def­ 1. M a il is not delivered on Sunday. erence necessary to it. Rest assured, it is hard­ 2. Stores are generally closed. ly my wish to share the sentimental bondage of 3. Sunday is associated with the oppres­ “nature poets” ; rather, I am forced to acknowl­ sive atmosphere of early family life. edge an active role of a principle of the erotic 4. For the young boy, it is the day he can in the languages of stones, of trees, of whole least expect to be alone with his systems of signs yet obscure. Here we are faced mother, for father is home. by the marvelous communications of walls of 5. Sunday is associated with Sunday warehouses, of wharves, of certain residences, school, church and other aspects of deserted and overgrown, too rarely prey by their religion. very design to an architectural mad love. I think 6. Sunday is ruined by the anticipation of those structures that infest the Pacific Coast: of Monday; the week-end seems al­ in San Francisco alone the Octagonal Houses of ready over. Fourierist inspiration, the Caselli Avenue castle Obviously Ferenczi's observations and the in whose shadow I am pleased to live, the whole foregoing suggestions barely scratch the of the Embarcadero; and, above all, a house in surface. In the hope of deepening the in­ Guaymas, on the Sonora coast in Mexico, where vestigation of this problem, we therefore I passed a moment or two before conferring with pose the question to the readers of a r s e n a l: the hermit crabs: an old wooden house with a W hy is Sunday, among the days of the high, absurd keep surmounted by a balcony fit week, so especially intolerable? only for suicides, where an unbreakable bond ______P.G. 4 them light, airy, livable blocks where working should it not embrace a synthesis of jungle and men, women and their children may enjoy a city in certain quarters of San Francisco, of Chi­ measure of dignity is more than a little suspect cago, of Paris, of Port-au-Prince, of Cairo, of inasmuch as few would contest the contention Calcutta. For, after all, what exists for us but that prefabricated housing is a good deal more the living dream, those streets where the ohild- dehumanizing, with its ever-smaller rooms, than woman grows more beautiful with every step? crumbling, shadowy brick and wood remnants T o comprehend her power over me (by my of a past generation; it is not entirely without choice or hers) I must learn how to approach significance that one of the few creative expres­ this screen she has raised between me and all I sions open to young people in the ghetto or bar­ know, made translucent only by her presence, rio, the street gang, functions better in the latter confronting me with the Watts Towers, with the environment than the former, and that the won­ Dream Palace at Hauterives, with the Garden derful sublimative “ crimes” that blossom in the of Eden in Lucas, Kansas . . . latter (theft, arson, attacks on the police, etc.) are turned into petty forms of repressive desub­ Stephen S C H W AR TZ limation (wife-beating, for instance) in the for­ mer. In general at least 30 years’ natural action is required to make one another residence liv­ (1) Andre Breton: “ Envergure de Rene Magritte” in Le able; it is just then, of course, that the wrecking Surrealisme et la Peinture, Paris, 1965. crew makes its appearance. I dream of houses (2) Constantin Brunner: Science, Spirit, and Superstition, London, Allen & Unwin, 1968. built by madmen, their walls of antimatter re­ (3) Brunner: Ib id ., page 182. vealing every secret of their inhabitants, condu­ (4) Idries Shah: Oriental Magic, London, Rider, 1956. (5) J. Eric S. Thompson: Maya Hieroglyphic Writing, cive to every liberty like a half-deserted anony­ Washington, Carnegie Institution, 1951. mous hotel, more sinister than “ the aura of the (6) Ralph L. Roys; translator: Book of Chilam Balam of jungle, conceived almost as a sort of lyrical anti­ Chumayel, Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1968. (7) Thomas Morton: The New-English Canaan, edited by thesis to urbanism” ;8 you will, I am sure, pardon Charles Francis Adams, Jr., Boston, The Prince Society, 1883. me if I insist on the inadequacy of this remark­ (8) Franklin Rosemont: “ On the Painting of Jorge C^n- ably concise dictum of Franklin Rosemont’s acho,” in arsenal, no. 1, 1970. I I (excerpt) This morning, after dispos­ A viscous train greets me of the Rocky Mountains or on ing of three more skeletons without introduction. An arm­ some high Chilean plateau. that I found in my closet, I chair beckons and, seating my­ W e exchange addresses and began writing the word "slip­ self on an impetuous sea-lion, discuss the limitations involv­ pery” on my little finger and I survey the occult laboratory ing the height of ceilings in the found that I was unable to wherein are prepared unique city. stop until I had covered my plants and animals, perhaps entire hand. The door col­ to be condensed to seeds or Watching the magical rites lapsed when I inadvertently eggs, and transported to the performed over a lavender touched it with my hair. surface to be the form and caracara to reduce it to em­ fortune of the future. bryo size (necessary for it to Along the arrows of arches fit comfortably into an egg) the empty mirror opens and two birds of questionable spe­ assumes the aspect of a win­ cies, with beaks of bronze and dow of uncut night. A copy transparent wings of cello­ of reality lingers in the shad­ phane, run in circles shriek­ ows of a brief building, hold­ ing wildly and beating their ing its newspaper upright as a wings against the innocent air. protection against the heavy rain of hourglasses. Another creature, the aero­ Common European Octopus (0. tul- nautical octopus, equipped taris). (>:\o) with wings resembling those The anger of glass lions of bats (thus enabling him to echoes the metamorphosis of Those who were rejected by visit the surface world and eagles. I stand at the entrance the local committee of plastic of a cavern engraved with the lieutenants wander about carry away tender victims to hypnotic lightning of lumin­ amusing themselves balancing his dwelling beneath the sea) ous desires, whose alphabeti­ frying pans on soda straws is attired in white tie and eight cal mirages stretch endlessly and playing pool with arti­ white gloves; sporting slim into the depths. The walls chokes. bamboo canes in at least four awaken at the cry of a white of his arms, and his wings fall­ crane, and wings of isometric Included in their number ing about his shoulders like a amber entice me further into is a delightful giraffe, shim­ cloak stirred by a light breeze, the eternity of this translu­ mering with long sable hair he balances gracefully on two cent but artificial night. that reaches to his knees, who arms while lecturing on ma­ will not occur in our encircled rine life in six languages. A reality because the climate of most elegant gentleman, to be For on the surface of the Africa forbids it. H e hopes to sure! apple it is just noon. be placed in a secluded valley Penelope ROSEMONT 5 Notes o n The Revolution of W-ltchc^ralt

1. In tribal societies where the belief in witchcraft is constitutional, the peoples consis­ tently make use of an expression such as “witchcraft is increasing,” or “ the country is filthy with witches,” or some variant of the same notion. We tend logically to attribute this idea to the natural incidence of misfortunes which “superstitious natives” always interpret as resulting from malign magical influence. Psychologically, however, we could more plaus­ ibly view these sayings as a projection of the constant gnawing dissatisfaction within the human breast which people always complain about but also always cling to, as if its ache were itself the germ of a future fulfillment. At any time or place—the witches are increas­ ing. How could it be otherwise with man, so long as repression confronts him? Malinow­ ski attributes the origin of magical beliefs to a mechanism of wish-projection or emotion extended symbolically. Desire is the key to this explanation. The witch is a dreamer en­ gaged in a dream-type action. And conversely, every dreamer, every desirous person is potentially a witch.

2. Since I find Malinowski’s thesis wholly acceptable, I also find it necessary to accept Lucy Mair’s seemingly bland conception of the witch as the stereotypical “ bad neighbor.” This social anthropologist has accurately taken the measure of the witch from the per­ spective of social science. The witch is an enemy of the group, a hostile, petty rebel. The aims and goals, or else the methods, of the witch are always an infringement of roles and taboos. The witch kills, disturbs the elements, obtains meat he did not have to hunt, or commands the services of zombies to tend his crops, etc. The witch in fact enjoys com­ munity with a society of beings (familiars, zombies, fellow witches, ghosts, animals) within which satisfaction denied ordinary men and women is available. By acting on a premise of desire in defiance of a taboo, any magical operative becomes a witch by Mair’s defini­ tion. Is this definition too broad? I think not. If we were to submit it to members of tribal societies from various quarters of the globe, I am sure that all respondents would con­ firm that this is indeed the witch we have described.

3. Is not the point made that man does not necessarily wish to remain confined within human society or social humanity? The witch universally, strange clans such as the pseu­ do-leopards of Sierra Leone, the werewolf, the vampire, are all examples of human beings who have entered a community too broad for ordinary social taboos to regulate. Emman­ uel Le Roy Ladurie, in a study of peasant uprisings in Languedoc, reveals that witches 6 were associated with the uprisings. (Michelet advances similar conclusions.) One of these rebels however, a certain Jean Grenier, was condemned to death for being, additionally— a werewolf. In the days of Jean Grenier (the 16th century) there were many remote peasant com­ munities in Europe that had not been essentially altered by Christianity, which had long since “converted” Europe. The final conversion of the continent, so it appears, was a long pacification struggle conducted against the culture and the natural religion (the Old Religion of Margaret Murray) of those rural societies that were oldest and geographic­ ally well suited in terms of their self-defense. To this day the process is not total. It would be interesting to determine what relation the concentration and dispersion of such groups had to the geographical pattern of persecution in the centuries of all-out witch-hunting, 1450-1650. Did the peasant bring his archaic beliefs to the less remote villages, and later to the towns, thus precipitating a reaction on the part of the church?

4. Critics of Margaret Murray, and they include some of the leading authors in the field of European witchcraft, deny that witchcraft can be identified with a pre-Christian reli­ gion of the continent. Yet these authorities would be the last to deny that survivals of pag­ anism existed; indeed they still exist even in such unlikely places as Italy. What is more, it is well-known to all who have glanced at the subject that the church itself at times identified participation in any paganism as traffic with Satan, and hence witchcraft. Does this not suggest that Murray is essentially correct, even leaving aside her analysis of the specific archaeological evidence? Lucy Mair refutes Murray by applying her empirical definition of the witch as an anti­ social person acting hostilely through magic. How, she asks, can the regular devotee of a traditionally accepted cult be a witch if the witch is by definition an outsider morally and ritualistically? One can only answer that the hypothetical “Old Religion” was in fact an outlaw in the days of the witch trials. If applied from the perspective of larger historical forces, Mair’s definition includes Murray’s analysis as a specific ^case. Implicit in ap­ proach is the expectation that within the old, pre-Christian communities of Europe there were individuals who practiced malefic magic outside the rites and accepted mores of those societies. That is, when the “Old Religion” was the norm, there were also witches apart from it. It is highly pos^smfe that the pressure of conflict with Christianity caused the devotees of the archaic religions to fall back upon their most violent traditions (witchcraft traditions?) in a defensive reflex. The peasants of Friuli, up to the 17th century, believed (in common with the Nyakyusa of Tanganyika) both in witches and in an elect corp of “defenders” who waged supernatural combat with the witches attacking their harvests. The “defenders” were simply certain neighbors whose spirits left them in their sleep. Carlo Ginzburg, a supporter of Murray, has established how the pressure of the Inquisi­ tion eventually led the “defenders” (the Beruzndanti, “Do-gooders” ) to identify them­ selves with the witches and confess to witchcraft. Ginzburg raises the possibility that this process of polarization went on throughout Europe. When the Inquisition finally managed to convince the populace that all that was not of Rome was of Satan, millions drew the only possible conclusions about themselves. Elements that had never been of the church were joined by some that defected from the church. Basing itself upon theology and scrip­ ture, the church tried to subdue and rule a world in which the imminent, the Marvelous, was the fountainhead of all vivid experience. This is why the conflict between the church and witchcraft was to last for centuries and claim millions of lives. This is why it is pos­ sible to speak of a “Revolution of Witchcraft”-th e first great revolution that Europe saw. In the vast Sabbats and peasant risings, in the secret conclaves of the covens and the min­ istrations of solitary witches, rebellious liberty entered the consciousness of the European masses threatening the foundations both of feudalism and theocracy. In the arsenal of this revolution were the wolf, the black cat. belladonna and the dream.

5. While I have emphasized the rebellious nature of the witch and her friends I do not want to convey a one-dimensional impre^ion. The witch is not merely a social rebel, any more than she is merely the devotee of a pre-Christian fertility cult. Rather I would in­ sist that at the apex of this complex of tribal, rural occultism we must always recognize the mythic features of a figure whom many students have been nervous about, to the extent of wishing to banish her altogether, i.e. the wondrous, flying, night-witch. Despite the church and the Satanists, it is the night-witch herself, not the pact with the devil and the inversion of Christian symbolism, that is the alpha and omega of witchcraft. The traditions of African and Oceanic tribes widely echo the European belief in a hag (at times a beautiful one) who entertains a court of weird familiars and flies through 7 the night to Sabbats and evil works. In these societies it is woman who is placed in the center of malign occult responsibility. In Europe she is identified with night, as Baroja points out, citing Diana and Hecate. Woman, in the early mythology of the continent, needed no male devil’s aid to be herself in her element, to be, that is, the center of an erotic mystery in the heaven of night-the moon. Woman in her sexual transport does float and fly out of herself, just as the witch who anoints herself with an hallucinogenic oint­ ment swoons and flies to the Sabbat. Woman flies, man wishes to fly. In some parts of Africa all women are suspect of witchcraft simply by virtue of their sex. Woman is also the cook, therefore the experimental herbalist. If Satan was king of this world, it was al­ together fitting that he should have a bride who epitomized the greatest female prowess. But she was his mate-not his abject slave. It is clear that the fabled night-witch is the poetic heart of witch beliefs, the fertile soil out of which the myth had of necessity to grow. Magic flight and metamorphosis re­ move witchcraft to the realm of the other. There desire takes leave of its senses and dom­ inates the mind. Lacking any roots in this surreal ground, modern Satanism and Old Re­ ligion revivalism are wretched shells indeed-as various popular accounts on the pulp stands demonstrate.

6. If we reflect upon the tendencies that witchcraft and surrealism have in common we will realize that there is a continuity of human love for the material and animal worlds and a continuing desire to wed essences and experiences radiating from these viewpoints. This “animism” is more a social system than a metaphysic. The desirable society is per­ haps one in which things and animals have a function which somehow relieves the pres­ sure of man against man. Perhaps man will some day again le^ro to embrace the physical world as his fetish and the animal world as his totem.

Joseph JABLONSKI

A SHORT BIBLIOGRAPHY In recent years the idea of witchcraft has been spat upon so repeatedly by commercially inspired authors and publicity- inspired cult-faddists that one would reasonably ex^pec it to be beyond any kind of redemption. However, the persistence of witchcraft in its tribal and rural settings in many parts of the world, combined with the serious attention of ^wial sci­ entists, has made it possible to address this phenomena on its proper level, while at the same time appreciating the dismal “ witchcraft fad" to a certain extent as its nnperfect emanation. Tlie “ proper level” referred to is tnat of a symptomatol­ ogy of the universal disease of desire as it is em^bodied in myth, magic and oracular knowledge; and in addition to this, a particular kind of revolt, since it is im^^sible to di^ssociate witchcraft from revolt. While this proposition owes a great deal to the anthropological literature on witchcraft, it owes at least as much to the surrealist revelation of the centrality of ^^tic mechanisms within the expressive and behavioral life of man insofar as these take an “ irrational” form. The following works are among the best of those available that bear a scientific relationship to the subject. Witchcraft and Sorcery, ed. by Max Marwick, Penguin, 1970. European Witchcraft, ed. by E. W. Monter, John Wiley, 1969. Witchcraft, by Lucy Mair, McGraw-Hill, 1969. Satanism and Witchcraft, by Jules Michelet, Citadel, 1^969. Sorcerers of Dobu, by R. F. Fortune, Dutton, 1^963 Witchcraft In Tudor and Stuart England, by A. D. J. Macfarlane, Harper Torch^roks, 1970. T h e W orld O f T h e W itches, by Julio Caro Baroja, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1^964 The Witch-Cult In Western Europe, M. A. Murray, Clarendon PreM, 1921. T h e God O f The W itches, M. A. Murray, Oxford, 1970. Magic, Witchcraft, and Curing, ed. by John Middleton, Natural History Pr^es 1967. Magic, Science and Religion, Bronislaw Malinowski, Doubleday, 1954.

8 Tomas Urbina, Francisco Villa, Emiliano Zapata

The Crisis o f the Imagination

I. ABSOLUTE DIVERGENCE remains the pivot of the misery of the human condition. Everyone knows there are always What can be smashed should be smashed. beasts larger than life breaking loose from their What withstands the blow is fit to survive. W hat flies into pieces is rubbish. In any case, cages; that undiscovered continents continue to strike out right and left; no harm can come blossom forth at one’s fingertips; that the mar­ of it. -Dmitry PISAREV velous, in short, is an imperishable and inex­ haustible well. Yet the ignominious farce of life, Is it not deplorable that those who were com­ with its homilies on cradles and graves, the pelled as children to memorize that there are incessant stammering of the stock exchange and 365 days in the year, forget so easily, from one the intolerable omnipotence of the alarm clock, moment to the next, that there are also 365 goes on day after day. Who can deny that sur­ nights? But what a pitiable circumvention, this realism was ushered into the world precisely to forgetting, as if the morning’s headlines did not discredit and to smash this dismal, monotonous comprise, more or less degradedly it is true, procession of cowardice, hypocrisy, evasion at least agonized reflections of the imaginative and venality? I know very well how wildly uto­ energy everyone unleashes every night in the pian, how silly, how incredibly childish, the sur­ form of dreams. Look at these headlines spelling realist project inevitably seems to those who, out the crimes, infamies, massacres, calamities, having proceeded ceaselessly throughout their earthquakes, shipwrecks, suicides and hazardous lives from one set of prefabricated renunciations voyages to the north pole, to the peaks of un­ to another, are finally concerned exclusively conquered mountains, to the moon. Is not the with their little place in the sun, their ridiculous latent content unmistakable and irrefutable? position in the world. Currently only a very Are not men and women trying desperately to small minority manifests its total disdain for the tell themselves something of the appalling jeop­ paltry joys auctioned off by the racketeers in ardy of life today, and the crying need to trans­ charge of “ reality.” The fact remains that seri­ form the world, to rebuild everything from ous discussion is impossible with anyone else. scratch? Little by little this minority is growing, its I take it as beyond argument, in spite of the self-confidence expanding. On the street corners, fact that everyone avoids thinking about it, much in the factories, in the poolhalls, in the truck- less discussing it openly, that the flagrant con­ stops, in barracks, in prisons and even in schools, tradiction between dream-life and waking-life a few lone individuals refuse to say yes to the 9 existing state of affairs; a few lone individuals prime motive of surrealist action. Debate on this raise insolent questions and ruthless challenges: point, in fact, is no longer permissible. What Above all, they see what everyone else prefers must be emphasized, however, is not the com­ not to see. T o them alone could surrealism have patibility of surrealism and Marxism but rather any true meaning; with them alone is it possible their reciprocity. T o dre^n the revolution is to for us to speak freely, unburdened by the usual desire it all the more, by night as well as by day. morbid concessions. Sooner or later these few Surrealist activity and research supplement, will be more; I am even convinced that some day deepen, reinforce the theory which guides the the world will be theirs. But meanwhile all the self-emancipation of the workers, and vice versa. cynicism in the universe could not efface a single Any "M arxist" today who fails to take into ac­ drop of the marvelous. Childish? "Th e storms of count the surrealist contributions-and converse­ youth precede brilliant days,” said Lautrea- ly, anyone who pretends that surrealism today mont. There is still every reason to await great can ignore the struggles of the working class at things-I am not even joking-from a handful the point of production-is clearly an imbecile, of irreconcilable recalcitrants who continue to an impostor, or both. fling in the face of bourgeois law and order mes­ Surrealism today, far more than in the past, sages of thoroughgoing demoralization, insults, is surrounded by forces inimical to its develop­ blasphemies, imprecations and threats, and who ment; every action undertaken by us brings us do not conceal the fact that they are out to make into direct or indirect confrontation with those life as miserable as possible for everyone who who would like nothing so much as for us to call pretends to be satisfied with things as they are. a halt. There are still those, for example, who I admit that the means at our disposal are are disturbed to find us constantly overstepping severely lim ited-for the moment. And at least the conventional boundaries of art or poetry until this situation is corrected-until surreal­ and defending the organization of factory com­ ism, that is, attains some measure of executive mittees and a workers’ militia; that is, there are efficacity-it will remain impo^ible to expect those who wish to confine surrealism to the anything emancipatory or beautiful except from boundaries of bourgeois culture, to concede it violence. a comer in the Museum of Modern Art and a If ever it was necessary to speak out for com­ page or two in the textbooks. But there are also plete nonconformism, total insubordination, the those-some of whom even pretend to be Marx- necessity of atheism, revolutionary intolerance, ists-who would prefer that we abandon the sur­ systematic sabotage, treason, armed insurrec­ realist project as such, so that we could devote tion, and to lash out in all directions with abso­ our energies exclusively to socialist propaganda lutely modern fury against all and everything and political organization. T o these "classical" that restricts the quest for freedom and true critics must be added a third category, which is life, it is here and now. Make no mistake: As today more and more numerous: the ideologists far as surrealism is concerned, the whole stink­ of pseudo-surrealism (or "post-surrealism"), ing parade of patriotism, the flag, private prop­ representing a development comparable to the erty, God and everything having to do with appearance of revisionism and Stalinism in the religion, cops, the family, government, civiliza­ workers’ movement. United by essentially the tion, the "moral value" of work, etc., provides same reactionary fear, the same conservatism, nothing more than objects of derision, targets the same skeptical bad faith.all these critics lose for spit. Refusing to relinquish the unsparing sight of the specific historical mission of surreal­ rigor and incorruptible extremism that alone ism. For such critics, poetry, freedom and love ensure the advance of thought and action, sur­ are mere words. Such critics have forgotten, if realism today recognizes not only its basic orien­ they ever knew, that in the struggle for con­ tation but also its entire spirit in the principle of sciousness, as Hegel says, “The process of bring­ absolute divergence originally elaborated by ing all this out involves a twofold action-action Charles Fourier, which is the necessary comple­ on the part of the other and action on the part tion of Marx’s call for "merciless criticism of of itself . . . But in this there is implicated also everything in existence." A profound and lyrical the second kind of action, self-activity; for the radicalization of Cartesian doubt, absolute di­ former implies that it risks its own life. The rela­ vergence makes short work of every "eternal tion of both self-consciousnesses is in this way so value” of civilization, every justification of hu­ constituted that they prove themselves and each man misery. "The surest means of making use­ other through a life-and-death struggle. They ful discoveries," according to Fourier, is “ to must enter into this struggle, for they must bring diverge in every way from the paths followed by their certainty of themselves, the certainty of the uncertain sciences . . . t o remain in constant being for themselves, to the level of objective opposition to these sciences." By "uncertain truth ...A n d it is solely by risking life that free­ sciences" Fourier intended particularly the pre­ dom is obtained; only thus is it tried and proved vailing forms of the manifestation of bourgeois that the e^ential nature of self-consciousness is ideology. The specifically revolutionary char­ not bare existence, is not the merely immediate acter of our own struggle against bourgeois ide­ form in which it at first makes its appearance, ology in a l its forms should suffice to clear us of is not its mere absorption in the expanse of life." the absurd charge that our interest in the theo­ Disinclined as I to engage in exegetical ries of Fourier somehow mitigates our funda­ exercises, I wish to emphasize here, for the sake mental adherence to dialectical materialism or of elementary clarity, that too muoh of what our solidarity with the cause of the proletariat. passes for surrealism today is merely rotten Only proletarian revolution is capable of safe­ meat with a false label. Countless swine through­ guarding human freedom, which remains the out the world are building entire careers, all 10 rights reserved, on a line or two lifted from the psychic automatism is reducible to a literary works of Breton or Peret, just as Duchamp’s technique, the philosophical snakes in the grass, discoveries of 1912-23 are repackaged, at enor­ the hopeless malingerers, the dead weights, the mous profits, in the sickening “ idioms” of the two-bit cowards and shilly-shallying impostors! current “ art market.” Such putrescent intrigues To go forward we must sweep the road of every are not surrealism, however, but only its worst obstruction. The revolution we desire and fore- caricatures. Those who confuse their paltry am­ see—the revolution which alone can clear the bitions, their literary indigestion, their day-to- way for the actualization of the marvelous-is of day trepidations or the shabby products of their such a character as to admit of no equivocation, impotence with the surrealist crisis of conscious­ no wavering, no compromise. Surrealism would ness can only continue to slobber from one be nothing if it did not demand everything of wretched and inexcusable absurdity to the next. each of those who incarnate its living presence. When we use the word surrealism we intend Entirely on the other side of hope, beyond above all an adventure, the supreme adventure, literature, beyond boredom, at the point of total which may be undertaken only at the risk of despair or sublime love, one is less than ever everything that gets in its way. W e have nothing inclined to deny that “ all consciousness is an ap­ to discuss with those who use this word to signify peal to other consciousness” (H egel). One must anything less. The word itself, in any case, is go not only as far as one can, but always far­ hardly the decisive issue. What is essential is to ther. I insist on being among those who always devise — from scratch — a system of “ challenges go too far. Every fork in the road of thought and provocations,” as invoked in the Second demands its knife. A century ago Lautreamont Manifesto, “ to keep the public panting in expec­ wrote: “ When a thought offers itself to us like tation at the gate” — that is: to secure the P R O ­ a truth running through the streets, when we FOUND AND VERITABLE OCCULTATION take the trouble to develop it, we find that is OF SURREALISM. Everything everywhere a discovery.” awaits its true invention. As a child I resolved always to be a fanatic. It is not for us to succumb to a “ tradition,” Certainly I do not mind in the least if idiots even a pretended “ surrealist” tradition; it is not take me for a madman. for us to permit ourselves to fall to pieces before “ great works” that are indeed great but which II. WORLD REVOLUTION AND today are shoved down too many throats by too THE OUTCOME OF POETRY many reactionary scoundrels whose every grim­ Poetry has an aim: absolute human ace and every gesture make it perfectly clear liberation. that these works have to be completely renewed —Malcolm de and followed through all the way to the end. The absolute power of the workers’ councils The defense of the marvelous, like the strug­ is indispensable for the efflorescence of what gle for freedom, admits but one watchword: Lautreamont designated “poetry made by all.” STOP AT NOTHING. “Those who make rev­ As Engels noted in Anti-Duhring, the prole­ olutions half way,” said Saint-Just, “ merely dig tarian revolution will introduce “ a method of their own graves.” distribution which permits all the members of And thus I hope it will be understood that the society to perfect, preserve and practice all their well-known reproaches brought to bear against faculties to the greatest possible extent.” Mean­ us by enemies and critics of every description— while, in a society divided into classes, total war that we are nihilistic, conspiratorial, irrespon­ must be waged against the despicable convention sible, narcissistic, authoritarian and crazy; that we are purists, dogmatists, animators of tem­ pests in teapots, consumed by the thirst for ven­ geance, addicted to invective, driven by compul­ sions to excommunicate, to polemicize, to scan­ dalize, to fly into rages, to disrupt, to denounce, to destroy—for us, these are not even reproaches. Similarly, it is a matter of little importance if this or that transient associate or fellow traveler loses his nerve, starts slipping and comes to prefer the security of literature, the consolations of philosophy or even “ making a living.” If it is not always po^ible to recognize such parasitic elements at first glance, and if consequently they are able to insinuate themselves now and then into our midst, rest assured that once we become aware of their lack of moral qualifications we are content to abandon them indifferently to their lamentable fate and do not even listen to their whining farewells as they begin to make their peace with the enemies of all the principles they had sworn to uphold. Away with the intellectual tourists, the perpetual moaners oozing with vanity, the speculators in boredom ready to peddle half-truths at thirty-five cents a line, the Schematic Plan of Stonehenge timid bibliophiles for whom the pursuit of pure 11 by which the sustained pursuit of thought, or the human condition. "The words expre^ing what passes for thought, remains with very few evil,” wrote Lautreamont in the Poesies, "are exceptions the privilege of a small and parasiti­ destined to assume a useful significance. Ideas cal caste directly and indirectly in the service of improve. The meaning of words participates.” capitalist confusion. Notwithstanding the my­ And in Art Poetique Andre Breton and Jean opic oversimplification of some would-be "M arx­ Schuster wrote: ists,” the immediate task on this terrain is not Imagination is neither right nor wrong. One only to break through the provincial empiri­ does not invent in a void. I have resorted to cism, chauvinistic pragmatism and generally chance and to magic potions. I have dis­ philistine anti-intellectualism characteristic of dained reason and experience. I have the American way of evading life, but also, and changed, if only to have solicited from them more particularly, to undermine, overcome and their commanding way, the meaning of annihilate the concomitant pseudo-aristocratic words. Words leave me, nevertheless, richer pretension, condescension, alienated individual­ than they found me. They have enhanced ism, academism, mysticism and cliquism that in­ my powers by confrontations which are re­ fect what little real intellectual life exists in this tained in the mind. country, even among revolutionary tendencies. As The Platform of Prague ( 1^968 explains, The surrealists fundamentally agree, in this re­ poetry, in contrast to other modes of thought, gard, with Rosa Luxemburg's argument that the remains relatively free of the influence of the task of intellectuals is to prepare the way for the reality principle and thus opens more easily on abolition of intellectuals. This urgent critical task, of course, is inseparable from the more gen­ the chances of what can be, in much the same way that dreams, as Freud noted, "by picturing eral struggle for the revolutionary communist hegemony of the proletariat. our wishes as fulfilled ...a r e ...lead in g us into the future.” Poetry has its own laws, its own Virulent opposition to all conceptions of the "ivory tower” is integral to the surrealist per­ rigor, which reduce to dust the purely evasive spective of revolutionary clarity. W e make no etiquette and aesthetic sidestepping which are secret of our limitless disdain for the "little often mistaken for poetry today for the same historical reasons that Georg Lukacs has been magazines,” literary circles and other intellec­ mistaken for a revolutionary thinker. In the tual agglomerates that regard themselves as a sort of priesthood whose "talent” entitles them Poesies Lautreamont wrote: "Poetry must have practical truth for its goal. It enunciates the re­ to promenade like peacocks. As an organized movement surrealism is necessarily minoritary, lationships existing between the first principles and the secondary truths of life.” but in no sense whatever does it constitute it­ self as an elite; in no sense can it be codified into In the light of surrealism poetry fully re­ an ideology (it is not, in fact, truly an ism at trieves its highest prerogatives and prepares for all). The surrealists readily acknowledge that power. It becomes an unparalleled imaginative they have no interests separate and apart from stimulant; it provokes the most far-ranging in­ the movement of human emancipation as a spiration; it capsizes inhibitions; it foments new whole. "Surrealism is within the compass of necessities of the mind that it alone can sustain. every unconscious,” stated a card issued by the Poetry restores men and women to a truer Bureau of Surrealist Research in Paris in the sense of themselves by restoring to them the 1920s. " I am not for adepts,” said Andre Breton. oracular voice and a fuller consciousness of The profound egalitarian tendency of surreal­ their infinite capacities to act on the world, to ism is further proof that in its essence the sur­ change life. It is true that such a conception of realist cause is indissolubly united to the cause poetry is scarcely known in the English-speak­ of the self-emancipation of the workers. ing world today. The poverty of the poetry of­ ficially held up for our admiration today is a perfect mirror of the inexcusable poverty im­ posed on the h^man spirit in the epoch of im­ perialist decay. "Poetry Fetter'd Fetters the Human Race,” as Blake said. The time has come to show the door to the insufferable quibblers and toadies who bore us to tears with versified exegeses of their own contemptible worthless- Far more than is generally admitted by the neM. It is necessary to take up again the in­ critics, the revolutionary orientation of surreal­ destructible thread of Shakespeare, Young’s ism is the result of a thoroughgoing revaluation Night-Thoughts, Chatterton, Collins' "Ode to of poetry. "Language is given man that he might Fear,” Crabbe's World of Dreams, Falconer's make surrealist use of it,” wrote Andre Breton. Shipwreck, Cowper, Blake, Wordsworth, Cole­ Poetic thought, no matter what misfortunes may ridge's "Kubla Khan,” Shelley, Byron, Keats, have befallen it in the hands of epigones and Clare, Poe, Emily Bronte, Melville, Morris, poseurs, has proved itself, at various historical Swinburne, and Lewis Carroll's Hunting of the junctures, supremely capable of articulating the Snark. boldest solutions to the gravest problems facing The practice of poetry today, properly un­ humanity. The great examples of the past justify derstood, nece^arily a^umes a relentle^ly our expectations that the practice of poetry oppositional character, a fact which has not today will contribute decisively to dissipating escaped the attention of the ideologists of ad­ the clouds of skepticism and confusion that im­ vanced capitalism who do everything in their pede the serious and sustained confrontation of power to stifle every manifestation of poetic 12 genius, carefully steering all discussions of poetry into the tea-rooms and the universities— that is, into cages. Like wolves and lions in the zoo, poetry is thus provided a “ safe place” in the universal showcase of commodities. In cer­ tain cases even stricter measures are taken. Is it an accident that there is no current edition of the works of the greatest American poet of this century, Samuel Greenberg (1893-1917), most of whose writings, in fact, have never been published? Certainly it is clear that authentic seekers of poetic truth today can only disdain­ fully turn away from the trivial obsequies of the Great Soft Heads of our epoch. Poetry lies else­ where. For when we refer to poetry, to the practice of poetry, to poetic thought, to poetic action, it must be understood that this has nothing to do with the disgraceful and unforgivable rubbish commonly and mistakenly passed off as poetry by the editors of p o e t r y magazine, or its imita­ tors and competitors, or their academic accom­ plices, all of whom deserve a thrashing for their interminable vainglorious dissimulations which only feebly camouflage an infamous groveling before the icons of a rotten social order. From the surrealist point of view, this latter “ poetry” has as little to do with authentic poetic activity today as the so-called Communist and Socialist parties have to do with the emancipation of the proletariat. Completely severed from the great­ est adventures of the mind, this false poetry survives today only as an execrable illusion, an illusion that nonetheless continues to exert a certain debilitating influence, in precisely the “We must dream!” — Lenin same way that images of saints, crucifixes and the holy ghost extend a slovenly authority over nounced by Lautreamont which, often pro­ the unfortunate prisoners of Christian super­ ceeding from very different starting points, one stition. after the other have fallen into edification or Such illusions, of course, have material foun­ sunk into insipidity because they lack what dations, psychologically as well as socially. Marx Hegel called “ the seriousne^, the suffering, the analyzed the social function of religion (as the patience and the labor of the negative.” Only opium of the people and “ the heart of a heart­ the revolutionary practice of poetry can negate less world”) and Freud pinpointed its psycholog­ the reactionary negation of poetry. ical (infantile and unconscious) sources. Sur­ It cannot be emphasized too strongly that sur­ realism, for its part, demonstrates that the be­ realism is the only revolutionary conception of lief in the greatness of an Eliot, a Pound, a poetry today; that there is no longer any possi­ Claudel serves a similar reactionary social func­ ble solution to the poetic problem outside sur­ tion as a reinforcement of what Marcuse has realism. The desperate but trivial attempts by a called the performance principle. Largely de­ part of the bourgeois intelligentsia to reassemble rived from feelings of guilt and inhibition, trace­ the moldering fragments of bygone cultural able-like religion and other mysticisms-to the moments into a contemporary avant-garde, and social organization of the Oedipus complex in thus to invest the illusion of life into the rat­ advanced industrial society, the work of these tling bones left behind by the surrealist on­ “ poets” constitutes a veritable reserve army of slaught, are obviously doomed from the start. surplus repre&ion (to use another of Marcuse’s Deluding themselves that glue is the secret of terms) . collage, these blind idolaters of accomplished Surrealism intrudes on this dreary spectacle confusion merely multiply and magnify the as the nocturnal avenger of human potentiality, most retrograde errors and call their destitute armed against “ that poetry dripping with weak­ amalgam an “ innovation.” Such stupid exer­ ness, resembling decay” (Lautreamont). It is cises can be regarded only with the severest plain that surrealism automatically spells death contempt. Currently all the watchdogs of bour­ for all the poetry that longs for death. Let us geois culture are trying not to notice that the jig have done with the “ poetry” that is confused is up; that all the would-be emperors of Art and with prayer, the “ poetry” that fears dreams, re­ Literature are naked little scarecrows standing coils from the future, degrades Eros, and floun­ out in the rain. The problem of criteria, however, ders in memory, humility, confession, regret and is actually quite simple: Those who do not lead remorse. Let us hear no more of “ personal poetic lives have nothing to teach us about poetry,” weeping in public, all the tics de- poetry. Hats off to the guillotine, jokers! 13 Let us fraternize with the limits of cruelty. everyday life. There is absolutely no justification The streets redefine the actuality of evil. Ocean, for regarding a surrealist poem or painting in sleep, night: These are not ordinary words. an aesthetic light, when they are, in fact, exte­ Dawn breaks questioningly over the heads of riorizations of libido and as such, in a repre^ive strangers. “Ammunition, c’est moi," the twi­ society, vehicles of subversion. This should ex­ light replies. There is much to be learned from plain our relative indifference to the greater the wolf, the owl and the octopus. Poetry is portion of “artistic production" today, but our neither reflex nor reflection. Cast aside good in­ lively interest in a news item which reported tentions. You will make me happy. that the workers in a pet-food factory poured Is letting the cat out of the bag the same as green dye in a large vat of pet food that was letting the albatross out of the piano? Those who supposed to resemble meat. Let the bo^es, the call themselves sleepwalkers are all on the verge bankers and their insurance agents tear their of being on the verge of being on the verge of an hair over the thousands of dollars lost as a re­ irresistible grandeur. It is no less true that the sult of this splendid joke. Let the sociologists word “hello" conceals a terrifying enigma. and the clergy bemoan the “breakdown in com­ What? I ’m breaking your heart? munications between workers and manage­ Revolutionary poetry — there is no other kind ment." The point is that proletarian vandalism — navigates the disconsolate frontiers of the and sabotage frequently open the very doors visible and the invisible, calling into question of inspiration that today’s art and literature so every phantom, every alibi, every equation that often close. S u rrea li^ calls for nothing less is content merely to sink or swim. Even at its than the progre^ive negation of every obstacle worst life always exceeds the vici^itudes of the to the fullest realization of the dream of free­ written and the unwritten, always promising dom and the freedom of d r e ^ s . In its critique some unrestrained marvel or other just around of the reactionary ideology of “ talent" with the corner. Poetry intrudes precisely at that which the bourgeoisie continue to enforce their point. For my part, I have sufficient confidence detestable compartmentalization of life, the sur­ in these hurried formulations. And you? Do as realist position has always been, as Max Ernst you please. e x p r^ e d it in his e ^ y Inspiration to Order The false poets and artists of today, naively (1933), that “ surrealist painting is within the hoping to recapture a golden age of pomp and reach of everybody who is attracted by real patronage, are hired exclusively to patch and revelations and who is therefore ready to ^ i s t decorate the cracks in the repre^ive edifice. inspiration and make it work to order.” Their work is a fitting complement to the work Humanity faces today a profound and pro­ of the police. The surrealists, on the contrary, tracted crisis of the imagination. Dispersed to aim at the permanent destruction of all re- the four winds of distraction and subjected to the pre^ive mystifications, and the permanent rev­ demoralizing improvisations of bourgeois and elation of latent human resources, thus com­ Stalinist realistic and rationalistic encirclement, plementing the revolutionary party which, as which brutally imposes upon life only the most expressed in the Communist Manifesto, “ rep­ circumscribed and wretched po^ibilities for resents the future in the movement of the pres­ development, the imagination’s natural inclina­ ent. " tion to expand in all directions is severely in­ The surrealist intervention, on the poetic hibited. Reduced, that is, to the impoverished plane, consists of short-circuiting the whole ambition merely to survive rather than to con­ gamut of rationalizations (aesthetic, moral, etc.) quer, the imagination today, unguarded, solitary to express the real functioning of thought, and desperate, more often than not falters and thereby liberating images of concrete irration­ flounders helplessly on the shores of everyday ality in poetry that escapes the clutches of real­ desolation-a mere shadow of its former self, istic appearances, breaks through the meshes scarcely a glimmer of what will be. In the same of everyday lies, smashes the idols of one's own insidious way that d r e ^ s are conventionally alienation, destroys the barriers between d r e ^ confined to night and play confined to child­ and action and, breathing the flames of inspira­ hood, the imagination is confined to means and tion and revolt in all directions at once, calls for ends specifically inimical to its seizure of power: and prepares the dictatorship of the imagina­ It is enlisted in the service of mere literature, of tion. writing novels, of journalism or still worse, ad­ The tasks of poetry in our time clearly exceed vertising slogans; or it is channeled into the the formal limitations of the poem, and require miserable dead-ends of mysticism or other forms the continuation of poetry by other means. Sur- of asphyxiating acquiescence. And yet it is clear rp^ l i ^ has judged and condemned, once and that the objective prerequisites, on the planetary for all, the artistic apology, the literary alibi, the scale, are more than ripe for the creation of a aesthetic evasion. The very first skirmishes of new world ^ «ie ty in which the imagination the surrealist revolution demonstrated the would constitute the only power. counter-revolutionary idiocy of any sort of It is to resolve this contradiction that sur­ literary/artistic “solution" to the problems of realism is called on to enter the world-historical h^man existence, and the complete inadequacy arena as an organized international movement of employing purely literary or artistic means conscious of its specific and profound revolution­ to supersede Literature or Art. Surrealism uti­ ary tasks. The crisis of the imagination reduces lizes the “lamentable expedient" (in Breton’s itself to the crisis of surrealist intervention. It words) of painting and writing expressly to un­ is the historical mission of surrealism to break dermine and overthrow the fragmented, colo­ through and tear down the walls of repressive nized, frozen and hierarchical relationships of rationalizations; to uproot confusion and dis­ 14 credit its perpetrators; to liberate language metrically extending the dictatorship of the from its utilitarian and prosaic regimentation; to imagination until miraculous weapons are in subvert the mental hierarchies of apathy and everyone's hands and all other authority dis­ passivity; to wreck the ideological structures of solves in the free play of the passions. repression and reification; to recover the most Tristan Tzara observed in his Essay on the far-reaching and prehensile prerogatives of the Situation of Poetry (1931) that surrealism is imagination; to fortify every manifestation of preparing the transition, in the sphere of poetry, the marvelous; to set loose ferocious and un­ from quality to quantity, and bringing about the tamable images of desire. In short, it is the his­ materialization of what has been, heretofore, a torical mission of surrealism to assist in creating merely formal exigency. Already in the first the revolutionary situation, which, as Marx put Surrealist Manifesto (1924) Andre Breton wrote it, "makes all turning back impossible” ; that is, that surrealism "tends to ruin, once and for all, on the moral plane, to prepare not only the every other psychic m ech an ic and to substi­ liquidation of all inhibiting vestiges of the Greco- tute itself for them in solving all the priftipal Roman, Christian-bourgeois heritage, but also problems of life.” Surrealism is not merely the the creation of a new collective myth, a form of culmination of all poetic thought, but above all permanent exaltation rooted in human freedom. the foundation of a new and revolutionary stage For historical reasons which are only too of human society. Just as modem capitalism has evident, it is first of all in the modest and ap­ continued to extend and multiply its contradic­ parently "harmless” form of books, pamphlets, tions, surrealism today must extend and multi­ magazines, objects, films, paintings and draw­ ply its acts of subversion. If the surrealist leap ings that the unfettered imagination invades implies the death of all the alienated forms in the realm of everyday life. But these books, which poetry has dwelt in the past, it simul­ paintings, etc., slowly and unobtrusively, are taneously heralds the birth of a new civilization seizing minds and creating an indispensable in which poetry (and philosophy) will be real­ free territory of the imagination. The reinforce­ ized in everyday life. ment and expansion of this free territory-that W e are on the eve of a world congress of is, the widest po^ible circulation of authentic great dreamers! T o vanquish the unliveable we surrealist works-are thus urgent revolutionary shall enjoy every pleasure of true life! needs of the present epoch. initial vic­ The world will never be the same! tories on the literary and artistic plane do not, Faithful to its global perspective of unrelent­ of course, complete the surrealist insurrection; ing sabotage of all repressive systems, the sur­ they only begin it. The point is that the sur­ realist revolution not only supersedes all an­ realist presence is absolutely uncontainable; terior poetic development but, like the prole­ it invariably overflows whatever boundaries may tariat, creates the conditions for its own super­ be momentarily assigned to it. A Durruti Col­ session in practical life, proving once more, in its umn of the spirit, it pushes inexorably into all own way, that "the hand that inflicts the domains of life, smashing each and every re- wound,” as Hegel wrote, “ is also the hand that pre^ive structure, ceaselessly releasing new heals it.” forces for the freedom of desire, and thus geo­ Franklin ROSEMONT

Ladles In the Park (anonymous, c. 1924) 15 JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE POND

Everything about a toad is worthy of our ports, “ I assure you, we used to hear the poor attention — al that he is and all that he frog whooping and coughing, mortal bad, for d^&. — days after; it would have made your heart ache to hear the poor creature coughing as it did Charles Fort has said “ W e shall pick up an about the garden.” existence by its frogs.” W e will hear from Fort A ll of such cures, of course, are for humanity again. While I am in complete agreement w th — cures, that is, in which a frog is used. There is Fort’s statement, let me add, “We shall not pick little mention however, of cures for the ailments up a frog by its legs.” No, indeed. That can be of frogs. While this may seem a minor point, it very painful. I can still feel the pain — m my is deceptively so, for in our humanist terracen- knees, my feet, my back. As a frog, I am com­ tricity we have made little allowance for an ev­ pelled to believe, I could set new postural pre­ olutional hierarchy in which we may find frogs cedents for myself, positions in which I would at the top and human beings at the bottom. The at last be comfortable — comfortable without the winged frog and certain observations of Charles drugs, without the twitchings and stretchings Fort, which will come up later, suggest that the which now bring only minimal relief. matter before us requires far more than a purely Until 1968, I forgot my early connections with traditional scientific clarification. the world of frogs, the recollection only vaguely Citing Frazer a last time, “The Kapus or Red- reaffirming itself with the notion that a post­ dis are a large caste of cultivators and landown­ revolutionary era would be heralded by “ circles ers in the Madras Presidency. When rain falls, of frogs dancing in the sun.” Perhaps from an women of the caste will catch a frog and tie it old children’s picture book, you say? Perhaps. alive to a new winnowing fan made of bamboo. But these days I don’t feel much like dancing, in ^n this fan they spread a few margosa leaves the sun or out of it. There’s still the pain, and and go from door to door singing, ‘Lady frog there are dreams: must have her bath. Oh! rain-god, give a little Many frogs, each of a different solid color, are water for her at least.’ While the Kapu women hopping about the floor of a large room. There sing their song, the woman of the house pours is a yellow frog which does not hop, but simply water over the frog and gives an alms, convinced crawls along, dragging one broken leg behind that by so doing she will soon bring rain down in him. torrents.” I awaken feeling very sad. A woman is mur­ Rainmaking rituals involving frogs are no dered, put into a large sack, and dumped into a rarity. Roheim has analyzed dozens of them. lake. She sinks, but then she floats back to the Yet I am at a loss as to how to approach this top. For a long time, the body remained uniden­ whole question of frogs and water. The beliefs tified , but the willingness with which the woman and myths imply that frogs have some sort of in white intervenes in my fantasy life suggests control over water — we are reminded of Puck­ that the frogs are in for rough riding — riding, as ett’s report, “ Killing a bullfrog means a spring it were, into forests of ghosts that can be passion­ will dry up.’’ M y own reaction is difficult to pin ate only in terms of their venom. Once I had a down, simply because my own metamorphosis hearth, and if I had one now, I would burn those into a frog is hardly complete. To further the gowns of death, and from the sputtering ashes, difficulty, it is neither direct nor continuous; it small frogs and toads would hop to freedom. is simply oscillatory. To the notion of my own Small frogs and toads, indeed. pond drying up, I react with panic, and I do not appreciate the jokes of my friends regarding droughts, the receding water level of the pond, the enemy fish that lurk in deeper waters, etc. In Folk Beliefs of the Southern Negro Puckett Yet, at other times, not a frog but a man, I think reports hundreds of beliefs connected with frogs diving to the bottom of the pond for safety is an and toads. A few of these seem appropriate here. excellent idea when I am a frog, but now, while 1) Frogs are dangerous; they eat buck-shot and I a man, I prefer to stay as far away from coals of fire. 2) Goiter may be cured by wearmg immersion in water as poMible. That frogs are a live frog around the neck. 3) Killing a bullfrog amphibious is taken for granted, but I see an means a spring will dry up. 4) There is a case of analogy between amphibious and ambivalent. a murdered husband’s ghost hopping out of his A frog is never so attractive as when it is resting coffin in the form of a frog and going back into in the water, but with its head and arms perched the coffin again. on the land, seemingly recapitulating its role in A nice collection. With a connection drawn evolution, but really only preparing himself for between springs, frogs, and murder, we also have lengthy conversation — and possibly, simply un­ the report of a cure, a cure for goiter. While able, between the water and the land, to make Puckett cites dozens of such cures, Frazer, in up its mind. The Golden Bough, reports that in Chelsea, when aphta or thrush affects children’s mouths and throats, a frog is held with its head inside the mouth of the sufferer. The frog catches the The yellow frog mentioned in the dream above disease and the sufferer is cured. A witness re­ could only crawl about dragging its broken leg. 16 W ere it a healthy bullfrog, it could jump 72 pressive restraint, their “hidden” meaning no inches or nine times its own length. The tiny longer secret. Acris gryllus can jump thirty-six times its own Silberer could have quoted Peetie Wheat- length, while the human athlete can, perhaps, straw: jump five or six times his own length. Frogs and I f you feel froggie and want to hop my gal toads can be as large as 13 inches long and the or “ Funny Paper” Smith: various species (of which there are more than Just let me hop you one time, Mama, and 2600) may live up to seven years. Yet we are you’ll keep me for your little toad. told by the Guinness Book of Superlatives that Mama, would you let a poor little old toad- a toad held captive in Copenhagen lived for frog dive down in your water pond? fifty-four years. Roheim could have quoted Walter Beasley: If we date the birth of psychoanalysis from the Everytime I see a toad-frog, Lord, it makes publication of The Interpretation of Dreams, it me cry. 2x would be seventy-three years old - slightly It makes me think about my baby, way she ahead of the toad. Psychoanalysts have not dwelt rolls her goo-goo eyes. much on frogs and toads, but a few of their ob­ servations are worth repeating. T o the uncon­ Finally, even the fairy story has its parallel in this song by Jenny Pope in which a frog is at scious mind, says Silberer (Problems of Mysti­ first undesirable, but is later welcomed: cism and Its Symbolism), the frog represents the penis, the toad represents the womb. Roheim Hey, hey, hey, hey. (The Gates of the Dream; Animism, Magic, and Bullfrog blues is really on my mind. the Divine King) says the frog represents the They’re all in my bedroom, drinking up my vagina, womb, or mother. I shall not attempt to wine. settle this disagreement. Roheim’s thesis is sup­ Hey, pretty papa, hey, pretty papa, ported by his analyses of many myths and rit­ I can’t stand these bullfrog blues no more. uals, a number of which are connected with rain- They’re all in my cabinets, hopping all over making. Silberer's thesis seems to draw support my clothes. from Jones (On the Nightmare) and Riklin (Wish-fulfillment and Symbolism in Fairy I woke up this morning to make a fire in my Tales), both of whom discuss the fairy tale in stove. 2x which a girl is first repelled by a frog that later Bullfrog’s in my breakfast (making their?) turns into a handsome prince whom she then jelly-roll. marries. This aspect of the fairy tale is said to Hey, M r. Bullfrog, I ’m gonna tell you all, represent the girl’s overcoming of her inhibi­ I can’t stand your jelly-rolling here. tion (or revulsion) regarding sexuality. You can go out in the backyard, I ’ll make a It is not without interest that all of the above pallet there. theses find not only their analogies but their partial confirmation in the blues. For in the I ’ll make you a pallet so you can jelly-roll. blues, it does not surprise us to find that certain 2x connections and associations that are usually And you can make your breakfast right on unconscious become conscious, free from re­ my brand new stove.

f. R. 17 W e will not forget that aside from the psycho­ piens. It’s what I ’ve always wanted to be. There analytic interpretations offered above, to many would be no more drugs; indeed, it’s quite blacks in the Southern United States, frogs and laughable to imagine a frog tying himself off, toads also represented death or the devil. Fur­ giving himself injections, etc., and my distaste ther, because of the vast curative powers attri­ for vegetables fits in quite well with my final buted to them, they found their way into many destiny — for frogs, of course, are hardly vege­ witches’ brews. Some authorities who believe tarians. Whether or not worms are my idea of a that the power of witches is simply due to "mass midnight snack shall be decided by me alone. hallucinations” could point, as have Hoffer and And if I should decide to munch upon a piano- Osmond in The Hallucinogens, to the fact that leg or the leg of my lover, that is what I shall do. the skins of some toads do contain bufotenine, a Regarding my participation in certain strictly hallucinogenic drug. human affairs (for example, funerals) I think What we must not overlook, however, is that it can be said that frogs can be inconspicuous while to some people frogs and toads seem guests at mortuary rituals if they can refrain strange and alien, and no doubt perfectly fit for from hopping about on the coffin and the face a witch’s brew, to many of us, especially rural and chest of the deceased. Cherry pies in the dwellers, frogs and toads are quite familiar. This corner of a lantern-lit log, a home for those who leads us back to one more line of psychoanalytic would cheer me in my chair. How nice to have a inquiry. Ernest Jones (On the Nightmare) sardine as one’s best friend! The climate of the quotes Herbert Spencer who suggested that upper world seems cold to the touch, and the primitive man was led to identify animals with pain of Christmas could kill the strongest of us ancestors through 1) The stealthy way in which all. But I have eyes with two lids, I can swim both enter houses at night while the occupants faster than ever, I can boast of a thousand lives, are asleep; and 2) the presence of animals near no two alike, none without love. corpses and graves. Jones himself adds that the Chestnut glistenings of a frog's open a ^ s , my idea of metamorphosis which is associated with allies in the seed-bed croak in wa^rning for the animal worship comes from dreams in which effervescent sanatorium keeper. Snails attend such metamorphoses actually take place. While conferences of corn-bread and discarded jugular Jones: statement contains a serious omission — veins, the purpose of which is beyond me, but that it is not only in dreams that such metamor­ which hint at the sabotage of the ventral crev­ phoses take place, but in the frog as well — I ices of Peru’s limestone graveyard. The niceties must hasten to inform you of how fond I am of of your laughter warm the chill from the ice­ both Jones’ and Spencer’s statements. Perhaps house where tongues of lampreys wait for medi­ the reference to "the stealthy way . . .” reminds eval choruses. me of the woman in white who can rattle the Strange phantoms try to regain control of my entire building with her pounding and scream­ despair and reinstigate it whenever they are ing, yet who can also be stealthy enough to keep capable. T o me, you are still more than a tree. her grave-eaten shawl from rustling in even the The drone of bees that light your eyes and drives strongest of sto^ s. And not perhaps, but cer­ the rigidity from my fingers is incapable of de­ tainly, I am reminded not only of the metamor­ feat. The moon can be monotonous, but the stars phoses that take place in the dream, not only of are not. I am preoccupied with your eight arms, the metamorphosis that takes place in frogs, the way they grasp me, your home in the sea, but of my own as well. and your remarkable presence on the earth, Because of the frog’s amphibious nature and breathing oxygen from the air as if it were a personal metamorphosis, not only are all sorts of calamity of lightning-rods and not a kitchenette transitional phenomena associated with frogs, for newlyweds. Down with fishermen who would but so, too, are all sorts of transformational ones. pull you from your home — live with me where The frog distinctively reminds one, even more you are safe from the hook, the harpoon, the than do the reptiles, of prehistoric eras. That it shark, and the tragedy of carefully mapped took millions of years for man to "evolve” from roads. the frog, if I may be permitted such a vulgarism, I have a pact with a persimmon, a chair that may be astounding — no le ^ astounding is that resembles a coalbucket, a winter that only I can the same process is occurring in me in reverse, resist. I have fingernails that bleed only when I all to take place in less than seven years. climb walls of ice. Plots against me thicken — I To have only a few years left on earth as a myself with battallions of amphibians, but man is really no cause for alarm. Already I have I can’t always see them. begun considering the virtues of frogdom, and my only complaint is that I may not be able to report the last stages of my transformation. On Tadpole of Frog in later the other hand, the oscillatory nature of the stagcsofdevelopmenl. ( H,1) whole process may make it possible for me to The immediately preceding text, written dur­ leave a farewell note of sorts, replete with de­ ing periods of violent oscillation, would, in spite scriptions of unimaginable detail. of its intimations of love, seem to indicate a con­ M y human fantasy, constantly present, of nection between the woman in white and my having great tongs for hands so that I could walk transformation into a frog, for it is the hand of across walls and ceilings (a fantasy that has not the hag placed over my eyes that keeps me from left me for seven years), would be realized if seeing my amphibious allies. The latter subject I were transformed into a tree-frog. I would pre­ was under discussion, I realize, but the auto­ fer, however, being a leopard frog — Rana pi- matic intervention of the hag into my associ­ 18 ations guarantees her a place there. What can be phibians cannot be thought of as being merely done with her remains to be seen. She knows trapped between land and sea, for they are that I, who if given a choice of deaths would creatures at one with the land, the sea and the choose drowning last, will be immune to such air. Flying faster than the owl that might pursue disasters after my transformation. No doubt, as them, they have been known to drop, by the a frog resting peacefully at the bottom of my thousands, in hundreds of locations, without pond, the sack containing the body will sink their wings, to be sure, but their presence still back down. Indeed, that is the nature of her unexplained. Charles Fort collected many ob­ forced intervention into the present text; simply servations of “ rains of frogs” (there are never stated, she will do everything in her power to tadpole rains), only a minority of which could prevent my transformation. But she will not be explained by either the mass hatching theory succeed. or the tornado and whirlwind theory. Fort asks She is the witch that flies at night (although the question, “Where do they come from”? and she prefers a dragging, limping gait), the witch if the answer is “from the sky,” he asks, “ How that uses frogs and toads for her potions. But do they get there”? The answer, although it did we must not think that it is only witches that not present itself to Fort, is simple. They fly fly. No. For did not Walter Beasley sing: there. I f a toad-frog had wings, he would be flying They fly, and in so doing give us a glimpse of all around. our own limited conception of reality, a con­ and Yank Rachell: ception that refuses to recognize other occluded If I had wings like the bullfrog on the pond. aspects of reality in which frogs and toads play Frogs and toads also have wings. They too can a role with which we are totally unfamiliar, fly, and if such is the case, it need hardly be aspects of reality in which their wings are, after said that there are other things to do besides all, not simply fantastic, but of necessity. dive to the bottoms of various ponds. The am­ Paul G ARO N POEM Southern Louisiana is Cajun The catydids are like butter country, where one can enter melting on the treetops a roadhouse and never hear a when the snowstorms in rumpled clothing word of English, since many residents still speak only pause at the door French and where the French­ of a threatened house during an avalanche speaking blacks carry on one and drop the dusk of the most admirable musical into a saddlebag traditions in the country: zy- deco. that is a leopard flying In many of its manifesta­ like a taxicab sitting in an armchair tions, zydeco can be described only as “French blues.” The Patrick M ULLINS lyrics, sung mostly in French, are indisputably blues lyrics, and the music too is easily rec­ ognizable as blues, although the THE EXEGESIS OF LOVE guitar line is often carried by an accordion. Perhaps the most Outside of the triangular peacocks of algebraic versatile and certainly the most confusion, a faint smile celebrated zydeco accordionist tinted with the color of sad caverns is Clifton Chenier, whose most recent L P (K ing of the Bayous, reflects the pentagrams of on the Arhoolie label) is unre­ a forgotten silence, and from servedly recommended. an unseen locomotive, That the blues tradition is a touch of stained glass laughter carried on in Southern Louisi­ ana by French-speaking black exposes the concealed morning. people is as yet known (outside Love is the night of the killer shark, Cajun country) only to a few It is the veiled thought of desperation dancing behind specialists. (M ore widely known the mouth of a billiard ball. is that whites in the same area have been producing their own Love is the sunlight sleeping in the gravg of dreams, unique mixture of country mu­ the light that broke the sheltering walls sic and French song.) But zy- of a dictionary song. deco demands to be heard, for Love is the screaming of silk batwings on a a more splendid combination of vitality, passion and provoc­ vertical horizon of brass paper clips, ative lyrics has rarely appeared it is the twisted sky of liberty raked by liquid lightning in this country. the magnificence of no particular night or day ... Clifton Chenier, the magician Love is the ocean of birds that lies between my eyes and -who, with his accordion, pro­ duces music that is at once the your fingers sound of silk, the music of owls Love is light in extension. and of the night. p g R obert D A Y 19 Whoever fails to struggle against religion is unworthy of WAR AGAINST THE POPE bearing the name of revolu­ tionist. In 1925, in Paris, the third issue of l a REVOLUTION SUR- Leon TROTSKY ^^.LISTE published the surrealists’ Address to the Pope, which said in part: “ . .. we are thinking of a new war-war Everything that is doddering, squint-eyed, infamous, sullying on you, Pope, dog.” and grotesque is contained for On Thanksgiving Day 1970, in Manila, Benjamin Men­ me in this single word: God. doza y Amor, disguised as a priest, attempted to assassinate Andre B R ETO N Pope Paul V I with a twelve-inch blade. For this admirable, courageous and unexpected act (the last Pope to die a You say you believe in the violent death was Lucius II—in 1145) our comrade is now nesessity of religion. Be sin­ serving a twenty year prison sentence in the Philippines— cere! You believe in the neces­ sity of the police. that is, under one of the most corrupt and barbarous re­ gimes in the world. Friedrich NIETZSCHE Mendoza y Amor was not directly associated with the T o make you forget that you're international surrealist movement. But he has consistently a man, you’re taught to sing the described himself as a surrealist. Moreover, his effort to praises of God. rid the world of one of its vilest symbols of oppression Patrice LUMUMBA (think for a moment exactly what a Pope is) and his re­ markable paintings-a few were reproduced in the news­ Th e purpose of sacerdotal papers early in December 1970-are sufficient evidence of chains, and the need for them, his supreme qualifications. is to reinforce political ones. . . . only by breaking that com­ Just as the surrealists recognize themselves today in the mon front will the people ever most extreme and far-reaching acts of the proletariat-from achieve their liberation. the Detroit Insurrection of 1967 to the Lordstown strike of D. A. F. SADE 1971-so we recognize ourselves in the purest acts of in­ dividual audacity-of which Mendoza y Amor’s gracious Prisons are built with stones of gesture offers an unparalleled example. Law, Brothels with bricks of The following letter, with which all adherents of the Religion. surrealist movement in the United States are in full accord, William BLAKE was addressed to Benjamin Mendoza y Amor by Stephen Schwartz immediately after the Thanksgiving Day 1970 Even if God really existed it news broadcasts. would be necessary to abolish him. Mikhail BAKUNIN

M y subjectivity and the Crea­ tor: This is too much for one brain. LAUTREAMONT

War on the supernatural-that is the enemy. Louis-Auguste B L A N Q U I

Sky of a priest, is it going to rain? If it rains you’ll be butchered; If it doesn’t you’ll be burned.

Benjamin P E R E T Jos6 Guadalupe POSADA: Assassination of a Priest

The forgiveness of God: a Letter from the Surrealists pretty turn of phrase to dis­ turb us. But what can this to -Senjamin Mendoza y Amor hyprocrisy do against free in­ solence fully developed? Dear Comrade, Rene CREVEL While no lack of idiots and church apologists will hasten to impugn your sincerity, we consider it sufficient only to Away with those who with their recall the names of a few of the heroes honored by your sanctified hallucinations are the attack on bigotry and ignorance: not only Jan Hus and curses of liberty and happiness: Giordano Bruno among the millions of victims of the In­ the priesthood of all sorts! quisition, but human beings of the calibre of Cuauhtemoc, Johann MOST Moctezuma, Atahualpa, Tupac Amaru-representatives of 20 whole races deprived of life and liberty for the “crime” of Man is not free as long as there not believing man unfit for heaven on earth. is a God. Your gesture partakes so deeply of the wellspring of William GODWIN “living dream” it first provokes disbelief, then limitless admiration. In restoring to the revolutionary impulse an element crucial to the maintenance of its imperishable Our revolution will not be a equilibrium, you have helped fulfill the promise given us by success until we have extirpated the greatest of poets, your namesake Benjamin Peret, and, the myth of God from the hu­ man mind. above all, by the most noble human being who ever existed, implacable enemy of the Church and its system of dreadful V. l. L E N IN hoaxes, D .A .F. Sade. While the minions of class and sectarian justice have Th e criticism of religion is the penalized you we beg you, dear comrade, to bear in mind prerequisite of all criticism. the esteem in which we hold you, born of the conviction Karl M A R X that your name will be remembered with love by men and women everywhere whose love of liberty is as unquench­ able as your own. ALT AZIMUTH in the name of the feather, the sun LETTER and the lovely ghost the glands have loosened their teeth for a showdown to because the parted horns are intrigued by the skinned light there is a pinch of vaporized mountains ROBERT BLY in the grove of glued oaks that surrounds the hand the breast within the hand is elevated to grip the silk trays For some time we have been where the hairy mormons are bathed in mold perfectly aware that you are and the neat tournaments are pressed and folded by the among the most contemptible of swine; an enemy of every­ always crumpled bladder of the cow thing that is important to us in the world-love and freedom, from the tongue the army the moisture for example; a particularly like the sky of the body loathesome reactionary cretin or the tear of sex who deserves only to be pushed into the grave, along with those performs the abstract eating of the ritual newspapers unforgivably shitty exercises in on which the glasses have been laid down stupidity which your sickening in a moment of sudden distraction vanity has led you to confuse while the eye grabbed its knapsack and scurried off down with the practice of poetry. However, your scurrilous re­ alleys of photography view of the poetry of Octavio where raisins as large as the wharves lie and pulsate Paz, published in the NEW YO RK gathering all of time unto themselves TIMES BOOK REVIEW (18 April from clocks of fish-forms painted on the backs of crabs 1971) exceeds the limits of our endurance. this is this is If we ever run into you in per­ son, we intend to correct this the sister winks and opens her knife reprehensible outrage which is I am saying that love has a long pigtail the measure of your vileness. and I have no shame Vengeance will be ours, no as I stab the torturers with my rapier matter what. W ith surrealist greetings, and replace their brands with kisses open your time to me sister of the knaves (signed) as long as the mountains are wrapped in althaea Schlechter DUVALL my legs are wrapped around the planets of the mist Paul GARON Joseph M. JABLONSKI that visit your interior and prod the warm stations of your Peter MANTI derelict smile Franklin ROSEMONT the whole ocean the ocean’s hole Penelope ROSEMONT David SCHANOES “it is six o’clock, sir Stephen SCHWARTZ I have brought your pen and paper John SIMMONS as usual” (Note: The preceding letter was sent to Robert B ly in the Joseph J A B W N S K I summer of 1971.) 21 A NEW DIFFICULTY A POEM WHICH IS CALLED IN THE PATH OF PSYCHOANALYSIS TO BE A POEM

Our disappointment with the There is no fool like an old chair first issue of THE RADICAL THERA­ spitting when the waves have riven the streets PIST progreMed geometrically and the monkeys stand on the mountain tops until we were faced with Vol. 2, in the secret harbor where love is more than light No. 2, which was totally vile and treacherous. What is An expedition sent out to find the plans passed off as radical psychology returned empty-handed is the worst sort of faddish pos­ marked with the invisible seal turing: cheap layout gimmicks and indeed their hands were left behind and cartoons three years old are used to attract the most in the pit of the triangular fountain backward elements of the which always rumbled between day and night "youth culture," while the edi­ consonant with the song of a dog patting the moon tors' resistance to psychoana­ Signed and sealed also were the wings of diagonal birds lytic thought is manifested in a thoroughly deceitful piece of inside glass paperweights of almond eyes simpering trash on the season’s that had fruitful relations with the lost clans most popular and overworked whose mating cousins were carried into the chinks of theme, “ Male Supremacy in the wind Freud," presenting a shallow case already argued just as fal­ as far as the burning core of the magnet laciously but only slightly less in all the frost of the solemnized days fraudulently in the NEW YORK the blood days of the seven consecutive winters TIMES MAGAZINE. the laundry pools and the carnival planets The slogan of THE RADICAL to skin the overland hunger t h e r a p i s t (“Therapy Is and the hairless pistons Change, Not Adjustment") not only reveals its preoccupation with therapy, as opposed to the Joseph JABW NSKI total transformation of society, but cleverly hides the main con­ cern of the magazine: group therapies, "rap sessions” and any form of mass adjustment THREE POEMS rather than revolutionary change. Its editors and contrib­ utors have managed almost to­ T h e river T h e shadow N oth in g tally to ignore the existence oi of diamonds is can the unconscious, a surprise to has no the weight be more oval no one who is familiar with bed of tim e Freud's papers, “The Resist­ than fru it ances to Psychoanalysis" and M a lcolm de C H A Z A L "A Difficulty in the Path of Psy­ choanalysis." From the many naive and intolerable confes­ sions of traumatic confronta­ tions with the horrors of estab­ lishment psychiatry to the pe­ WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN? culiar smell that can arise only from a combination of youth culture jargon, little homages I've been speaking with the wells of darkness to Mao, intellectual pretension and reading the sacred books of fishes and its own totally superficial The winds of the sorcerers have let me drink and useless brand of social psy­ from their crystal lips chology, THE RADICAL THERAPIST emerges as an odorous and ab­ I've heard the frightened speech ject specimen, certainly unfit of adjectives beside their vehicles for human consumption. and seen the fog that dissolvediham The name of the magazine w ithout sacrifices has been changed to ROUGH Indeed. - Even the window ledges leap from their heights w P.G. leaving sills without lawyers The stairs run up the passageway to keep a rendez-vous with a waiting wall Night falls behind a door and it takes several weeks and a raft to find him Penelope ROSEMONT 22 ARCANA AMERICANIZATION Though undoubtedly terrestrial We are witnessing today, ac­ the conspiracy of jays through gnostic dodecahedrons cording to the flyleaf of M ajor unknown to us New Poets (W orld), “the Amer­ render impossibilities as lightly as checkered hats icanization of surrealism.” But this putrid anthology repre­ chipped blue daisies falling through these white sents only the vulgarization of geometries with the sound of scalpels surrealism, a feeble attempt to liquidate surrealist conquests Irritatingly quick ten green curved looks by eleven into the leftover porridge of collegiate verse. The old bally­ single structures hoo about “the Americanization broadcast over the striated 44th meridian of Communism” resulted in the tickled to weeping keys by spiders whose forge-flame Yankee Doodle Stalinism of origin testifies Earl Browder solemnly posed before the American imperialist to uniform ecclesiastical flaws engendered by the flag. Now we have Michael metaphysics of rye mould Benedikt pretending to repre­ sent “ the Americanization of The boots cooled down to receive magenta lunchboxes surrealism” with his unspeak­ ably dreary, lame, wilted and bristled eyes withered extrapolations from freezing instead the white linked fat that bound it the French, properly diluted defying this particularly twisted strict euclidian arcology and deodorized to meet the lost twice before it was found again and collapsed with standards of the Guggenheim Fellowship. over-use Benedikt’s complete intellec­ tual incompetence, not to men­ tion his insufferable bellycrawl- ing before the idols of bourgeois THREE TIMES criticism, are plainly revealed in his “Introduction” to 22 Poems by Robert Desnos. The salted curtain (Kayak). Quoting a 1926 poem no longer hovers above the snow fence by Desnos (“ The Spaces Inside fan cabinet concealing auroras Sleep” ) , Benedikt observes that in Jean-Louis Bedouin’s an­ while the melting calendar whistles flower tunes thology, La Poesie surrealiste (“ a conventionally ‘party-line’ Ten suckling toes for you anthology,” we are told) the though no m ulticolored shoat has called quoted passage is “lovingly broken up into three separate Follow that frog lines, as if the editor could not understand the reason for Desnos' marvelously contemp­ tuous phrasing of what was for him, even by 1926, an outworn and essentially corny string of THE PLUMED NOTCH images.” The joke, however, is on Benedikt, who as usual has Tantamount to crime understood nothing. It happens the red fish winks its unblinking eye that in LA revolution surreal­ i s t e (No. 7, 1926) where this cheerfully scattering diamond flakes shattering cubes of poem first appeared, the quoted disgusting gray neon passage is in fact “lovingly where bright women gorge on proximate tangibles broken up into three separate or solely refuse to splay themselves to shared excrement lines” by none other than Robert Desnos himself. The Stalinist caricatures of Dogs in a profusion of blankets set to howl “slime" Marxism and the academic/ as choking green legumes dissemble little great men dilletante caricatures of sur­ realism will some day meet and in a heralding wake of the arching white snail embrace in the realm of bad in­ finity. Meanwhile, the sooner Hearing the windows to be happy the bells spoke very they drop dead or at least shut round syllables up, the better it will be for the and every timepiece stopped forever out of self-respect cause of human emancipation. Not one step foward will be and raised fists taken by blathering frauds and for the monks no longer shave their heads and there are merchants of odious confusion no longer monks such as Benedikt, whose high­ est aspiration seems to be to and marvelous totemic maypoles are replacing bannered testify against surrealism be­ and serried hopes fore the House Internal Secur­ Peter M ANTI ity Committee. H e is already 23 doing a stoolpigeon’s work, whether or not he is receiving stoolpigeon’s pay. What he and his classmates lack, ultimately, is taste and decency. Neither Sade nor When Mrs. Bloomgarden awoke at seven o’clock on Lautreamont has ever existed for them. The merest glance Saturday morning the third of September, she discovered from Maldoror’s bulldog is that her feet had come off sometime during the night. Her sufficient to dissipate the Bene- feet, small and sympathetic, had tumbled to the floor and diktine bluff. lay quietly on the rug, their fresh pink nail-polish shining F. R. prettily in the morning sun. "Escrituro el fuego “Well, I’ll be damned,” she exclaimed. “Well, I’ll be damned!” And, turning to her husband, Leo Bernie sabre el iode" Bloomgarden, she whispered (perhaps more sharply than Like an Olmec mask, like the she intended) “Leo! Wake up Leo, for God’s sake, wake landscape of Sonora, like the up L eo!” Cananea strike of 1906, like the stone marking Leon Trotsky's “I’m leaving,” said Leo simply after breakfast. “For­ grave, the poetic thought of give me, Gloria, but I can’t take it,” and he wept. “You Octavio Paz germinates from a can call me up on the phone if you like, sometime,” he violent austerity. For me there added. “ I ’ll understand.” exists no greater affirmation of the vitality of Mexican reality, “Sweet Leo,” she said, stroking the back of his neck. of the experience of the M exi­ “And don’t throw them out,” he ordered, indicating can Revolution, still fruitful the bedroom as he was leaving. “Who knows, they might with understanding beyond all come in handy.” And he chuckled. the Stalinist pseudo-proverbs of our illiterate leftists, than the “Dear Leo,” she smiled to herself after he had gone. recitation by my friend Ignacio “Always ready for a laugh.” V., a few days after the ex­ The next day she noticed that her feet were growing tended battles with the police back. With a pang of secret understanding, she went to at the University of Sinaloa, of Paz’s poem dedicated to find the shoebox hidden in the closet. In a moment her Sade, “ El Prisonero.” Let us feet lay bare and vulnerable in her lap. She smiled. It was welcome to our store of marvel­ as she had thought. No, she was not surprised. Hadn’t she ous weapons six newly-trans­ somehow known all along? The feet were growing legs. lated books: Aguila o Sol?/ Eagle or Sun? (October House); “W ill they join?” she pondered. “I suppose I’d better Marcel Duchamp or the Castle leave them out of the box now.” And she lay them on the of Purity (Cape Goliard /Gross­ bed, being careful to place them in proper juxtaposition. m an); Claude Levi-Strauss (Columbia University Press) ; If they were going to join, as undoubtedly they were, Configurations (New Direc­ (were not her own feet now half grown?) there would be tions) ; The Other Mexico: no malformation. And that is why, within a very short Critique of the Pyramid (Grove time, a new Gloria Bloomgarden grew perfectly and to Press), and, most recently, A l­ full height. (I shudder to think what might have hap­ ternating Current (Viking). W e who are far from agree­ pened had she left her feet in the shoe box . . . ) ing with all of his conclusions That night she lay in bed beside the new Gloria (who nonetheless recognize in all of had not yet attained consciousness) and watched her Paz’s work an electrifying force sleep. of purity, a passionate lucidity which has absolutely nothing in “How beautiful I am,” she thought, and she bent over common with the well-known the sleeping double and kissed her on the lips. positivist “passion for lucidity” “When she awakens tomorrow (and it was certain that serves as a smokescreen for that she would awaken-were not her own two feet fully the maneuvers of cops. re-grown now but for the nails?)-when she awakens I Whether he is criticizing con­ temporary bureaucratization or will not tell Leo,” she decided. “ I will keep her to myself, celebrating the paintings of Re- and she will be my secret as I will be hers. How lovely it is medios Varo, Paz remains going to be!” And gently she caressed her double’s perfect faithful to Goethe’s watchword: breasts (beneath which she distinctly heard the beating “More light!” In his very moving essay on of a heart). Andre Breton in Alternating RIKKI Current Paz writes: “ I have no idea what the future of the sur­ realist group will be; I am cer­ tain, however, that the current that has flowed from German Romanticism and Blake to sur­ realism will not disappear. It will live a life apart; it will be the other voice.” S. S. 24 SURREALIST OCCUPATIONAL INDEX

Twenty years ago, 3000 people rated the “prestige value” of ninety insipid occupa­ tions. A sample of the results (the Hatt-North Occupational Prestige Ratings) appears below at the left. One wintry evening we devised our own scale of occupational ratings, intending to exceed the colorless array of occupations with which Hatt and North pro­ vided their respondents. It should be noted that the Surrealist Occupational Index (be­ low, at right) is only a fraction of the 200 jobs which we rated; space limitations alone kept toymaker, weight-lifter, bee-keeper and many others off the list.

Hatt-North Scale Surrealist Occupational Index

96 U. S. Supreme Court Justice 99 Copkiller 93 Physician 98 Werewolf 90 Mayor of large city 98 Assassin of Pope 89 College profe^or 95 Arsonist 89 Scientist 90 Headhunter 88 Banker 90 Human cannonball 87 County judge 88 Bankrobber 87 Minister 85 Blues-singer 86 Lawyer 76 Voodoo 86 Priest 73 Pirate 83 Airline pilot 70 Hobo 82 Sociologist 69 Sword-swallower 81 Biologist 69 Tattoo artist 80 Novelist 66 Second-story man 79 Economist 65 Ohio Hegelian 77 Railroad engineer 64 Rain dancer 75 Radio announcer 60 Pony Express rider 73 Electrician 58 Lighthouse keeper 72 Undertaker 54 Clown _ 68 Insurance agent 53 Snake charmer 68 Tenant farmer 50 Water-carrier for elephants 67 Policeman 48 Skyscraper window-washer 66 Mail carrier 41 Goblin 65 Carpenter 37 Tree-tapper 63 Plumber 29 Ventriloquist 59 Barber 23 Lemonade vendor 58 Clerk in store 20 Swineherd 54 Milkman 19 Pickpocket 54 Truckdriver 14 Lawsonomist 49 Coal miner 4 Ecologist 49 Taxi driver 2 Art critic 48 Railroad section hand 0 Cop, Priest 47 Night watchman 0 Gestalt therapist 44 Bartender 0 Politician, Banker 44 Janitor 0 President of the U.S. 40 Sharecropper 0 Capitalist, M ilitary Official 34 Street sweeper 0 Judge, Scientologist, Scab 33 Shoe shiner -5 Pope

The inescapable conclusion is that most imaginative occupations, or those which par­ take ineluctably of the marvelous, are found today only in the circus or in the world of crime. The forces of desire only rarely be satisfied even remotely by the activities classified as jobs. It is true that the Surrealist Occupational Index inevitably reflects the dominant strains of this epoch. Quite possibly, for example, in a future society, the Hatt- North job of electrician would take on a new meaning and rise higher on the scale. On the other hand, such vocations as copkiller, cop or pope, will disappear from the scale as the jobs themselves become obsolete. Moreover, the entire notion of “occupation” is destined to be overthrown, or to wither away, as the proletariat reconstructs society on communist foundations, elaborating a social organization in accordance with the laws of Passional Attraction, announced by Fourier. Then it will be possible to be “ cobbler in the morning, gardener in the afternoon, actor in the evening” (Karl Marx) and infinitely more. Paul G A R O N 25 Revenge of the i b i s With all that is no longer or waits to exist oned in the body of a fish. Moreover, the stature I find the lost unity ibis mummy -Andre BRETON of the Egyptian beings allows them to see farther than their animal ancestors and they have hands Sometimes there is an old man standing on that can hold weapons and make revolutions. the corner with white bats in his long white But their animal heads possess still the keen beard. Sometimes a parrot is perched on his sight, the superhuman hearing, and a cruelty cane of carefully fitted finger-bones. Sometimes resulting from a lack of sympathy for that suf­ the windows wear their shades to prevent us fering but inferior race, humanity. Their rigid from seeing what roams about outside. Some­ posture incarnates that motionless second be­ times images and perhaps more than images fore the panther springs; their voiceless quiet from the past gather about us in dreams or even waits only to be pierced by a shrill scream. in the streets. Sometimes in the evening when I The ancient Egyptians believed that to create see a long, tall shadow standing apart from the an image was to embody that image with spirit; shadows of the other buildings, I stop, and with that to name a thing was to have power over it. a curiosity mixed with fear I trace that silhou­ Thus drawings of demons were often left un­ ette across seemingly endless drifting sands to completed, so as not to release their demonic its very top, fully expecting to recognize the power. This process recalls the essence of mag­ head of a jackal attached to a form so rigid that, ical thinking which still exists in the mind of in comparison, brick buildings would seem to the child, for whom thought and act, word and be in motion. object, are not distinguished. Judaism, recog­ Long ago I was fascinated by the gods of the nizing the power of the created image, sought ancient Egyptians, fascinated by their unique to destroy it and forbade all graven images. dignity, their complete unhumanness. I remem­ Christian civilization has been the heir of this ber reading the novel She by H. Rider Haggard, repression, but what has been inherited above in which the hero (on attaining adulthood) all is the repressed image — a mere imitation of opens several boxes, one inside the other, the repressed life. Against the Judeo-Christian heri­ last one of Egyptian origin, intricately carved tage, surrealism insists that liberated images — and imbued with the mystery of the ancients. images of liberation — are an initial necessity in This box also contains the secret of his own the process of the liberation of life. origin and consequently the mystery of sexual­ The magical power of images is derived from ity, primal source of all mysteries. W e know that the source of all creative power: the uncon­ interest in genealogy (which often awakens as scious; and the repression of images results only one approaches maturity) is a sublimation of in their recurrence — in one form or another. curiosity about sexuality; and archaeology can Signs multiply. The marvelous beings with be viewed as a further extension of this curios­ heads of beasts and human bodies found their ity (and therefore of this sublimation) into the way back through the collages of Max Ernst in realm of ancient civilizations. Une semaine de bonte, where they participate Animals have always represented for me the in orgies of delight. And just recently I was finest innocence, but of course not necessarily fortunate enough to discover the enchanting gentleness. They are fortunate not to be plagued, music, dance and myths around which Sun Ra as is mankind, by problems of good and evil, and has created his own cosmology, combining an­ have even managed to completely avoid that cient Egypt and outer space. There is even the original curse called religion, while mankind, Reebie Storage building at 2325 North Clark with its fine and versatile hands and body, Street, in Chicago, decorated in a kind of Egyp­ weighs itself down with amazing burdens of tian rococo style, which I have always suspected guilt and property. It is not accidental that shelters the mummies of pharaohs, and which “primitive” peoples have chosen animals as their still causes me to pause every time I pass by it. totems. Man finds correspondences between As I began to write some notes on these things himself and certain animals, and by choosing — which I had had no intention of doing, but animals as totems he may share the superior which, no doubt, was provoked by a shadowy powers they possess and can thus better deal necessity — the local community newspaper ar­ with a barely understood and largely unnamed rived at our door (21 March 1973) bearing the nature. Remnants of this totemic past continue front-page lead story headline: R E T U R N TO to exist in our everyday language as metaphors THE GODS/ANCIENT EGYPTIAN RITES and similes (brave as a lion, wise as an owl) and PR A C T IC E D B Y CHURCH GROUP - and all undoubtedly remain in our psychic structures. this happening no more than fourteen blocks The Egyptian mythical figures represent a from our apartment. unique development of the totemic conception, It is impossible to deny that words and im­ combining the heads of birds and beasts with ages, once created, have the power of actualizing human bodies, a practice which to modern civil­ themselves, becoming eternal for us through the ization seems so monstrous. What do these be­ medium of desire. I know with all certainty that ings, neither man nor beast, represent to the these fantastic beings will always remain, in mind? Not innocence: for their human bodies Roheim’s words, “ the eternal ones of the tell us that they no longer remain at the mercy dream,” and that they will always be meeting of nature like the dolphin whose brain capacity, me on the busy streets and in the dark forests. though larger than the human, remains impris­ Penelope ROSEMONT 26 This is my sign — "G A R D E N O F E D E N ” — I could hear so many, as they go by, sing out, “ What is this?” so I put this sign up. Now they can read it, stop or go on, just as they please.

THE GARDEN EJF EBEN

Lucas, Kansas (on State Highways K-18 and of cement. By 1927 he had used over 113 tons or K-232, sixteen miles north of Interstate 70 on approximately 2300 sacks of cement. Lake Wilson R oad), is the site of the Garden of Dinsmoor married his first wife on horseback Eden, “the most unique home for living or in 1870; she died in 1917. In 1924, aged 81, Dins­ dead,” in the words of its builder, S. P. Dinsmoor moor married 20-year-old Emilie Brozek, from (1843-1932). Czechoslovakia. A t his death in 1932 his body A veteran of the Union Army during the Civil was placed in his limestone mausoleum along­ War, Dinsmoor began constructing his “ Rock side the body of his first wife. Log Cabin” in 1907, at the age of 64. The cabin- The italicized quotations on this and the next built entirely of native limestone rock, cut and four pages are all excerpted from a pocket-size fitted like logs in a log cabin-consists of eleven Pictorial History of the Garden of Eden pub­ rooms, bath, closets and a cave. In the surround­ lished by Dinsmoor himself. A reprint of this ing yard, over the next quarter of a century, 60-page booklet is available (at $1.15 postpaid) Dinsmoor built his Garden of Eden, primarily from the Garden of Eden, Lucas, Kansas. 27 CAIN AND ABEL SCENE

When I was building this they accused me of being bughouse on religion. I am bughouse good and proper, but not on religion, perpetual motion or any other fool thing that I cannot find out one thing about.

28 LABOR CRUCIFIED

I believe Labor has been crucified between a thousand grafters ever since Labor begun, but I could not put them all up, so I have put up the leaders - Lawyer, Doctor, Preacher and Banker. . . . The Lawyer interprets the law. The Doctor has his knife and saw ready to carve up the bones. The Preacher is saying to this poor fellow crucified, "N ever mind your suffering here on earth, my friend, never mind your suffering here, secure home in heaven for A -l-l- E-t-e-r-n-i-t-y and you’ll be all right." This is the stuff he is giving Labor for his cake. 29 GODDESS OF LIBERTY TREE

Here is the next tree bringing down civilization as I think it should be. There is the Goddess of Liberty with one foot on the trusts and a spear in her hand going through the head of the trusts. The trusts’ claws are getting nothing. Down below is a man and woman with a cross-cut saw marked ballot, sawing off the chartered rights limb that the trust stands on. That shows how we can get away with the trusts and if we don’t get away with them with the ballot, they will be shot away with the bullet, as they were in Russia. 30 MAUSOLEUM

I have a will that none except my widow, my descendants, their husbands and wives, shall go in to see me for less than $1.00. That will pay some one to look after the place, and I promise everyone that comes in to see me (they can look through the plate glass and glass in the lid of my coffin and see my face) that if I see them dropping a dollar in the hands of the flunky, and I see the dollar, I will give them a smile.

MR. AND MRS. DINSMOOR

And notwithstanding the prediction of almost all our acquaintances and visitors who came to see this place that we would not live together a year, we are still living together, and the prospects are that we'll still be together until my wife puts me in the mausoleum. I was 81 years and she 20 years old when we were married. 31 H E I R S t o FREUD Having pointed earlier to the dangerously low level to which psychoanalysis has allowed itself to fall, and fully cognizant of the fact that the perpetuators of this decline have no intention of per­ mitting the occurrence of a rever­ sal, we can nonetheless not help but be slightly encouraged by the fact that the publishing industry, for motives of its own, has re­ cently made available the works of several analysts who set them­ selves apart from the morass of academic pseudo-metapsycholog- ical speculations, dull clinical af­ BETWEEN THE GULFS firmations, and “new” hypothe­ ses and theories which can hardly I have watched the metamorphosis of a theory of “vola- stand the test of reading, much tile-negative-analogies” rise through a group of poems less the test of time. Those analysts who so distin­ bearing the title Becoming Visible, in the sense of releasing guished themselves wrote in ear­ out of darkness the words desiring movement with other lier decades; only now, in one words in a free interchange and development of their prop­ case nearly fifty years later, are erties and signatures, but within a process stalked by the their works being republished. I refer, first, to Robert Fliess’ three emotion-radiant, palpitant activity that magnetizes the volume work: Erogeneity and L i­ illimitable resources of the arbitrary — a risk-laden region bido, Ego and Body-Ego and from which the exigent action of unprecedented verbal en­ Symbol, Dream, and Psychosis counters relates to the refusal of previously known paths of (International Universi­ ties Press), all of which, together association. Here at the center of a void inundated by a with the same author’s superbly shadow of flashing color, the necessity of the voice released critical Revival of Interest in the by psychic automatism to find its body provokes the pri­ Dream (International Universi­ mal spark of dynamic movement while the great “nega- ties Press, 1953) are essential reading for those who have de­ tivistic hand” Andre Breton exalted as an essential lever of voted themselves to the study of poetic vitality opens dialectically the window on the hera- the dynamics of mental pro­ clitian plane of “the hidden harmonies.” Armed with this cesses, and who find themselves negative power, writing becomes a rigorous reconstruction drawn to writings which are not only marvelously and astutely against the past, an adamant refusal to be entangled in theoretical, but rigorously clini­ previously conquered areas of association. From this vista cal as well. of dormant volcanos and tropical ice, we can all the more No less exciting is the republi­ cation of two of the earliest books happily trace our inspirations from Lautreamont and Rim­ by the pioneer psychoanalyst-an- baud to Breton and Peret and Roussel to Magloire-Saint- thropologist Geza Roheim, Aus­ Aude, exemplary signposts for further transgressions, with­ tralian Totemism (Cass) and out literally re-tracing in one’s own poetic praxis their Animism, M agic and the Divine King (International Universities inimitable movements. The vitality of automatistic pro­ Press). Almost simultaneously gression from this negative summit renders ineffectual the there has appeared a collection of efforts of academic and literary — commodity fetish — as­ Wilhelm Reich’s Sex-Pol writ­ similation of surrealism’s becoming, exposing the absurd ings (Vintage Books), several portions of which have appeared nature of conventional aesthetic criteria, that farce of the in England in pamphlet form dead hand of “ positive identity.” T h e C IA of the mind shall (Socialist Reproductions, 57d be dessicated in its attempts to stigmatize the latent furor Jamestown Road, London). The in the great deserts to be overturned. works of other major psychoana­ lytic contributors, from Freud, Ferenczi, Abraham, Sachs and Jones to Glover, Sharpe and Eiss- BY ELECTIVE AFFINITIES, THEN AND NOW 1 er continue to be available, either in the United States or in From having initially found the key (the road opening, England. 1943-1946) to having lost the key (the road closed down, The vitality of the revolution­ 1946-1966) and since rediscovering the key (the road re­ ary aspects of psychoanalysis must re-emerge independently of opening in 1967): my solidarity with the surrealist move­ the psychoanalytic establishment ment, represented in this time and place by ARSENAL, which continues to be preoccu­ re-invents itself without the slightest ambiguity. pied with its own involutional af­ flictions. Philip L A M A N T I A P. G. A p r il 1973 32 LENINISM and the Structure of the Poetic Im age

April 22, 1970: the lOOth anniversary of the of Marxism, what Marx called “the active part birth of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. His work, his of cognition,” and would eliminate all that con­ entire activity represent a vivid illustration of stitutes the radical originality of Marxism, the the creative spirit of the revolutionary theory absolute necessity that every man should be a of the proletariat, a brilliant and masterly dem­ creator. onstration of the fact that Marxist theory is According to the Leninist conception of cog­ not and cannot be merely a practical guide, a nition, the dialectical character of natural proc­ collection of unchanging theses, but a revolu­ esses corresponds to the dialectic of the process tionary method of investigating phenomena in of creation, in which we must therefore admit, all domains of life. Hostile to the ossification of besides the presence of succession, that of simul­ thought, he was inflexibly hostile to conformism, taneity as well (“ Rectilinearity and one-sided­ to all those who aim at changing the human ness, woodenness and petrification . . . there brain into amorphous gray matter. are the epistemological roots of idealism,” According to the Leninist conception, man’s writes Lenin) . In taking into account this ebb cognition does not follow a straight line but a and flow, we notice that very often a confusion sinuous one, permanently approaching a num­ occurs between the artistic thought and the ber of circles representing a spiral always ready image as such, because the artistic thought does to continue its race. This means. that in con­ not mean image in the sense of form, but con­ ceiving the work of art we must necessarily take stitutes the acme and, consequently, the most into account the active role of cognition, for the advanced phase of motion. I think this can be final aim of the theory of reflection is not the stated, since in the field of thought, motion and making of a mirror which assumes the function object, image and desire merge and blend into of expressing reality by reflecting it in its icy a new and final synthesis in which sensations crystal. are no longer able to exist. In other words, the In the creation of a work of art (and I refer image becomes the sensitive form of the idea. especially to poetry) we cannot overlook the And now, considering that Lenin bestowed upon ceaseless surprises which, throughout the proc­ artistic consciousness a somewhat autonomous ess of sublimation, the motion produces — I role in the relationships between the base and should say, thrusts into things and organic the superstructure, it might be necessary to plasma, into bodies and their shadows; or the mention what Marx called “the particular role complicated shiftings and traumatisms caused of objectifying.” by the implacable clash of contraries, compel­ First of all, in fact, is the necessity that every ling you to be in one place and at the same true artist must eliminate cliches which mul­ time in another, to be a straight line and a tiply by themselves in the absence of a direct curved one at the same time, impelled by the contact with the object, with facts; that he must dialectical laws of contradiction well known reduce to nothing the shallow mania of servile since Greek antiquity. reproduction, and, on the contrary, explore, Rest, as a special datum and fortuitous de­ interpret, constitute and recompose the real in sire, may be valid. But this state cannot exist its entire infinite complexity, instilling into it objectively in the midst of a world in permanent a new emotional value, turning the poetry of and continuous interdetermination. This is all the real into a means of cognition. As a matter the more obvious today, when the rhythm of of fact, what other meaning could have been history is subject to an unprecedented accelera­ intended by Engels — in Ludwig Feurbach and tion, and when the struggle between contraries the End of Classical German Philosophy, when is acquiring a rapid and ever harsher aspect. he writes that with every new and far-reaching Those who are content to cultivate an over­ discovery a new form of materialism has to be simplified understanding of the phenomenon of invented — than that every epoch must produce creation and of the relationship between cause new artistic forms to express reality genuinely? and effect, usually consider contradiction and We must add that form is a reaction of matter the absurd to be the same thing, believing that and image is the surface, named the symbol for the identity between a straight line and a curve, an individual reaction. As it is continually sym­ which no longer requires demonstration, is bol and idea, however, the image, as idea, is nothing but an obvious absurdity. never a symbol, because the idea does not mean Such a viewpoint precludes the active role pure image. In this sense, it is desirable to avoid of cognition in the process of creation and, at mistaking the symbol for the metaphor, if we best, leads to technicism, an omnipotent self­ agree that the metaphor is nothing else than satisfied virtuosity and, implicitly, to rigid di­ the considered employment of a word, part of viding lines in the classification of the phenom­ a phrase, a phrase or a figure of speech in a ena of creation; that is to say, to the conception context other than its own. If, for example, we opposed by Lenin and the founders of dialecti­ say that a woman looks like an exclamation or cal materialism: that of the conservation of that somebody sees red, the two comparative matter rather than its transformation. This terms are used in an altogether different or would mean disregarding the basic principles opposite sense than their usual meaning. Like 33 any thoughtful expression, the metaphor, as a reality. It can only transform it, enhance it. metaphor, is an idea, whereas the significance Desire is continually obliged to take into ac­ of the symbol may vary. However, this variable count concrete reality — which is nothing but aspect of the significance of the symbol is not “ prose” in the way it is present in the world its only symbolic aspect; if it were, images the poet lives in. This prose supplies the raw would have only a strictly individual value, material on which the poetic sublimation of which would make the establishment of rela­ language will be exerted. And vice-versa, those tionships between people in the world of phe­ who do not use language for a poetic purpose, nomena impossible. It is the constant aspect of but as a means to attain different results, if the symbol which makes possible affective links they want their prose to preserve its efficacy, between human beings. This constant element must take poetry into account, poetry as it was is a permanent psychological function, and the created in their milieu, as reality is a synthesis variable element represents the ever-renewed of two preceding truths, that of reality and relationship of the individual with the environ­ pleasure, of necerity and enjoyment. ment. Taking into account what has been said Proceeding now to the discu^ion of poetic above, as well as the fact that beyond the ar­ language, we shall start by saying that every tist’s resolution, language is accepted by the written word means image. W ith phonetic spell­ “speaking masses” and that it enjoys a collec­ ing, however, the image is always twofold be­ tive life, it is not difficult to observe that the cause the word is the sign of both sound and manner in which language is treated in poetic visual image. Hence the poetic use of the written writings exhibits important differences within word makes us discover either the image of the the general clarification of a trend or an ar­ object or else only its sound sign. By reason of tistic movement. auditive stratification, the mutest words have In connection with the theory of reflection, serious vocal qualities. In whatever way it is Lenin points out that the object reflected exists considered, poetry cannot avoid that tribute independently of the person in which the image claimed by the infused echo of words even if is produced and that dialectical materialism it comes from afar and becomes a muffled mur­ grounds its theory of knowledge, consciously, mur or diffuse groan. And, having noted the on the “ naive” belief of mankind. Lenin also tribute which words, willy-nilly, have to grant mentions the importance of fantasy in creative to the auditive deposit, we find that the problem works, the possibility of detaching fantasy from of language cannot be understood from the life, even the possibility of turning an abstract aesthetic or structural viewpoints unless we are notion, an idea, into fantasy. Considering that aware of the everpresent dialectical movement, fantasy is absolutely indispensable to a poet (to that is the antithesis pleasure-reality, symbol- the mathematician as well, for that matter), he utility, poetry-prose. points out that dreams are a necessary human The utilitarian employment of words and activity (“W e must dream” ) and, hinting at groups of words represents the prose element Pisarev, he cannot help saying that those who of language, and the symbolic use of language take pride in “ their lucidity” , in their closeness constitutes the poetic element. It may therefore to the concrete, dream least. be said that poetry which ignores “ prose” is false poetry, for pleasure can never ignore Virgil TEODORESCU

SPINOZA PERSISTENCE OF FLAMES

Storm s of glass The devouring image of what will be become the prevailing weather the star kindled by a burning house Elegant ladies admire the cat what was loved what was hoped for W inter becomes the mode what remains to be known but spring the means The seals fly The acrobats’ costumes maintain their gaudiness M a n walks sleepwalking begins again The postage stamp seals itself on the tightrope between dream and water The letter addresses itself between death and expectancy The destination between memory and strangling cannot be told in this room beckoning with the colors of its coffins Behind the screen your shriek opens like a window Along the road It will be met It is time we knew the sleeping woman it is what she awaits Metals crumble into dust she watches with one eye languishing The confrontation is profound the bats nesting in our palms

Penelope ROSEMONT G ellu N A U M 34 LARMEf J>v CRI,.E

THE ILLEGALITY OF DESPAIR

A Brief Survey of the Literature on Heroin Addiction

It is not uncommon for the ex-addict to dream mere token, and its presence in scientific works of heroin-and often, in the dream, the feeling of is inevitably the limit to which the authors’ crit­ euphoria is identical to the actual effects of her­ ical faculties extend. For the scientists, the in­ oin in the past. If the wish-fulfilling function of junction to observe but never evaluate has had dreams is overt in this case, the day-residue that its usual paralytic effect, with few exceptions. contributes to the formation of the dream is also Unfortunately, more numerous are those sci­ rather obvious, for the same thought runs entists and medical men who are willing to pro­ through the mind of the ex-addict every day: duce totally fabricated reports, if the price is more heroin. right. As an example of the latter type, we find But in another dream, I peeked over the edge Dr. G. Larimore (New York State Department of a pit and saw a green dog, covered with of Health) and Dr. Henry Brill (New York vomit ... State Department of Mental Health) concocting * * * * a report for Governor Rockefeller on the “ Brit­ A t times it seems that nearly everyone has ish system” of narcotic control. Their findings written about narcotics: doctors and scientists, were subsequently published in a disgusting book psychoanalysts, priests and cops, lawyers, writ­ called Narcotics and Hallucinogenics, edited by ers, poets, artists, sociologists, psychologists, and John B. Williams, a former vice detective. As an professional moralizers drawn from all fields. addict who was treated under the British sys­ The literature is voluminous, but not without in­ tem, I can testify that during the period under terest, for in it can be found the source of the discussion in the report, the British system was addict stereotype, the programmatic design for as graphically different from the United States the implementation of oppressive force, the back­ system as it was possible to be: U.S. addicts can ground for the necessity of repression in the cur­ obtain heroin only illegally at extremely high rent economic situation, and even an occasional prices; they are frequently made to undergo glimmer of nonrepressive future possibilities. withdrawal by force, and they are often jailed Admittedly, the number falling into the latter and beaten; British addicts can obtain heroin category is infinitesimal. The bulk of work on the legally and cheaply (with ease), they are never subject is devoted to studies: “ Characteristics of forced into withdrawal, hospitalization is volun­ the Addict Population,” “ Rate of Recidivism in tary, and the addict need never deal with law New York Addicts,” etc. Nearly all the authors enforcement agents. (M any of the British laws cast their goals in terms of therapy systems, were changed several years ago, but the report from the conservative incarceration theorists to was written in 1958 when laws were quite leni­ the more liberal advocates of ambulatory treat­ ent.) Yet Dr. Larimore wrote, “The differences ment in out-patient clinics. A few authors are which appear so striking when laws . . . are com­ careful to suggest that addiction is “ a symptom pared becomes much less significant when the of a sick society,” but the suggestion is usually a • . . systems of the two countries are examined

35 at the operational level . . . The British narcotic control system is found not so dissimilar (to the U.S. system).” Of course, Larimore’s statement is nothing more than a patent lie, constructed solely to deceive the public, for as we know, to the addict, it was precisely on the “operational level” that the most graphic differences were manifest. But the U.S. government and its branches will not authorize statements that are entirely true, unless it serves their purposes, so the facts must continuously be falsified. Consequently, the treasury department and the F B I have worked diligently since the passage of the Harrison Act (1914) to present a totally distorted picture of the drug addict. It was from government releases that the public first (and continuously) heard that the use of heroin would cause the addict to commit violent crimes (“ The addict becomes a crazed killer,” etc.), just as they heard from the same source that marijuana was truly addicting and causative of moral degeneration and vio­ lence. The government's tendency to falsify ev­ erything connected with the narcotics problem, diction process, with emphasis as varied as char­ including the statistics they release, has been acteristics (of addicts), group interaction pat­ amply explored by Alfred Lindesmith in The tern's, contagion, mortality rates, etc. There are Addict and the Law.* also numerous works devoted to the medical as­ It should go without saying that once the gov­ pects of addiction. covering the physiology of ernment had established a totally distorted base habituation and tolerance, cell chemistry, symp- from which to operate, they were free to create tomology of withdrawal, and more. Y et as val­ and concentrate on other problems. By never uable as some of these studies may be, they have discussing the fact that legal narcotics were (and as an inherent weakness their refusal to face the are) extremely inexpensive, they were free to actual problems that perpetuate the addiction insist that addicts had to be arrested simply be­ cycle. For the dynamics of addiction do not just cause they stole so much merchandise! The gov­ involve an interaction of sociological, psycholog­ ernment has had little difficulty di^eminating ical, and physiological factors-they also refer to their views to the people, as can be seen from a elements both economic and political (as well as column in last year’s Chicago DAILY NEWS, poetic), elements of crucial significance, only be­ in which a reader asked, “Why is everyone so ginning to be explored. down on the drug addict? He doesn’t really hurt Perhaps at this juncture, at the introduction anyone.” The paper replied, “ Doesn’t hurt any­ of economic and political factors, we should say one? Addicts steal millions of dollars worth of a few words about the attitude of the so-called goods every year-is that harmless?” By citing “ underground” press and the radical press. the end result (stealing) of the oppression as Their viewpoints are different, but the effects of the cause of the oppression, the issue is conveni­ their views are the same. The “underground” ently sidestepped. press chiefly concerns itself with hallucinogenic Aside from those works produced by certain drugs and marihuana, publishing price lists and government scientists and doctors, the majority other drivel relevant to current consumption. Its of the enormous number of scientific works on references to heroin are few and generally of the addiction do not support the highly untenable straight-forward scare-story type. In brief, the theses advanced by law enforcement authorities. underground press is totally irrelevant to a dis­ Addiction studies of the scientific type are gen­ cussion of drug addiction. erally sincere attempts to clarify relevant as­ The radical press occasionally mentions her­ pects of the problem, and what is most unfor­ oin, but invariably its reference is a platitudin­ tunate about these works is that their conclu­ ous repetition of the simplistic absurdity, “H er­ sions are often wholly irrelevant in any revolu­ oin is nothing but a capitalist plot to enslave the tionary or materially progressive way. The con­ minds of the proletariat.” There is little doubt ditioning theorists (Lindesmith, Wikler, etc.) that their inability to supply even the most su­ have suggested a hypotheses through which the perficial analysis has done almost as much dam­ mechanism of addiction may be described, while age as police propaganda. It is unfortunate that the psychoanalysts (Rado, Glover, Fenichel, and the existence of a class-economic factor should more recently Krystal and Savitt) have adum­ be treated in such a dull and uninspired fashion, brated the dynamic interplay of unconscious but recently there has appeared one discussion factors operative in the entire addiction syn­ which has gone beyond the stale and anachron­ drome. An enormous number of papers have istic harpings of the pseudo-Marxist hack. “The been devoted to social factors involved in the ad- Political Economy of Junk" (M O N TH LY REVIEW, •A thoroughly intriguing analysis of the “marihuana and December 1970) by Sol Yurick is a more delib­ violence” myth has been published by Don M. Casto III, erate and detailed analysis of the economic im­ under the title “ Marihuana and the A^^^in.^An Etymol­ ogical Investigation,” in The INTERNATIONAL JOUR­ portance of heroin than has previously been pub­ NAL OF THE ADDICTIONS, Vol. 5, #4. lished. The theory is not new-any addict who 36 would seriously be interested in the M O N TH LY their conclusion, that mystification and drug use REVIEW article (how many are there?) would do not contribute to the implementation of rad­ find nothing in it he hadn't realized after his ical social change, is undeniable. The book deals lOOth shot. But for those whose knowledge of specifically with the various contexts of drug the addiction process has not been gained first­ problems, but it is also an excellent study of the hand, the Yurick article would seem to be ex­ all-pervasive weapon of mystification which is tremely important and worthy of some further consistently brought to bear, from all directions, discussion here. against the forces of revolution. There are few references to outside sources in There is one other article worth mentioning. the Yurick article, and it is not without signifi­ Edward Preble, an anthropologist, and John J. cance that two are to the writers Nelson Algren Casey, Jr., an economist, published a paper in and William Burroughs, for the writings of these the INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE two men has done more to accurately describe ADDICTIONS Vol. 4, #1 (“Taking Care of the whole phenomenon of addiction than nearly Business-the Heroin User’s Life on the Street”) all the scientific writings combined. Algren rare­ in which heroin use is described as providing “ a ly writes about addiction now, however, and motivation and rationale for the pursuit of a Burroughs has sunk into a sea of frightened, meaningful life.” More of their conclusions are anti-feminist vapidity, but as Yurick points out, worth quoting: “ The activities these individuals it was Burroughs, a long-time addict, who first engage in and the relationships they have . . . described heroin in terms of its “ ideal commod­ are far more important than the minimal anal­ ity” status. gesic and euphoric effects of the . . . heroin Yurick carefully delineates the incapacitating available to them. The heroin user is . . . like the effects of heroin on the ability of the addict to compulsively hard working business executive achieve any form of group solidarity (against whose ostensible goal is the acquisition of mon­ the capitalists, ideally), just as he also clarifies ey, but whose real satisfaction is in meeting the heroin’s role as a commodity i.j advanced cap­ inordinate challenge he creates for himself. He, italist society (a billion dollar a year product). too, is driven by a need to find meaning in life A t times, however, it seems that Yurick under- which, because of certain deficits and impair­ emphasizes heroin’s commodity status in order ments, he cannot find in the normal course of to attribute to the capitalists a tremendous sense living.” Additionally, “ Given the social condi­ of purpose in reducing a potentially rebellious tions of the slums . . . the odds are strongly section of the population to drug addicts. The against the development of a legitimate . . . ca­ sense of purpose is perhaps exaggerated in the reer that is challenging and rewarding. The most article, but it relates to Yurick's other weak common legitimate career is a menial job, with point: He seems to actually support the thesis no future . . . If anyone can be called passive in that marihuana use is dangerous ( “ disruptive” ) the slums, it is not the heroin user, but the one to capitalism. This is developed into the theory who submits to and accepts these conditions.” that in reaction (through fear) to the marihuana Such statements initiate the rediscovery of culture, the President has made a conscious ef­ another dimension of addiction-one that can fort to addict marihuana users (and other dis­ only be comprehended poetically: a revolt rupters) to heroin. If there is any truth to this against everyday degradation that is also a quest statement, it can be found more in Yurick’s for unprecarious elation. Needless to say, the “commodity theory” than in his “disarming of quest in this case is never free of the degrada­ the disruptive mystique” theory, for as he did tion. In rejecting the alms tossed to him by the point out, there is much more money to be made capitalists; in confronting the contradictions and in heroin than in marihuana. Aside from the refusing to participate, even marginally, in minor disagreements mentioned above, I must bourgeois ideology, man is often struck by a point out that in this article the political econ­ tormenting despair that frequently drives him omy of heroin has received its most enlightened to the absolute negating power of suicide, the treatment to date. subjective reconstructions of madness, or the The Jossey-Bass Co.’s Behavioral Science negation/reconstruction complex of addiction. Series has published several books dealing with There are many levels of revolt-addiction is drug abuse and their newest release, Mystifica­ certainly not the highest. Yet, it is preferable to tion and Drug Misuse, is quite important. The the total surrendering of self which is necessary authors (Lennard, Epstein, Bernstein and Ran­ to participate fully in bourgeois society. T o cite som) clarify the process whereby the pharma­ causes and cures for addiction is entirely irrele­ ceutical industry, physicians, mass media, and vant if one cannot cite causes and cures for man’s youth culture have all cooperated to produce despair. If addiction is a symptom, the despair an atmosphere of obscurantism and mystifica­ is only a symptom operating on another level. tion in which drug use and abuse is encouraged, Men and women will fight to be free, and as and in which situations are constantly being re­ long as they are not free, they will despair-and defined in terms of increased drug therapy or some will be unable to endure without narcotics. drug use. Their thesis is wholly supportable, and Paul G AR O N “They spit on our theory, but that doesn’t stop them ★ from dreaming every night.” * — Sandor Ferenczi

37 N O T E S o n t h e BECOMING VISIBLE ELECTION

The 1972 Presidential election BECOMING VISIBLE provided an excellent opportu­ nity to observe the servility, con­ A whorl of happy eyes and devilish faces formism, confusion and coward­ struck out of antique sensuous paintings ice of what passes for a Left in­ twinkle from the knees and calves telligentsia in this country. Be­ tween elections, of course, all the moving slower than dream women “ free-thinking" loudmouth dil- letantes dabble in all sorts of the hands are gesturing with violet blood “ daring" ideas — even commun­ come from floating feathers ism. But every four years they their sea-anemone fingernails opening tropical fruits return sheepishly to the electoral (mango skins over snow) fold, repentent and repulsive, and quickly rising to summer I meet you firmly rubber-cemented to the walking in sateen boots over jewels of ice we spread for you status quo for the duration. No one has failed to notice that the most voluble abstainers from the 1968 election (the inconsequen­ tial Yippies) came to kneel be­ With the fox to see by fore the Democratic altar in 1972. subterranean rivers advance And now here is Bobby Seale, from under an asphalt sky still vaguely pretending to have Auroras you exhale a quarter of an ounce of revolu­ tionary sentiment in his vest- the scorpion poem between our bellies pocket, running for mayor on a the mint’s pebble trickles down the three thousand year old flute platform that Theodore Roose­ washed up on a lemon-leaf bed velt, if he were here, would the tway your look born of mollusc tears hardly hesitate to endorse. How mirrors the fins of memory in a dolphin’s eye many authors, poets, artists, en­ tertainers, critics and profeMors continue tugging on the tuxedoes of the graying Panthers! Still Ah that taste of liquid spoon worse, the spoiled brats of TEI.OS continue their phenomenological magnified from the forest’s apple hide-and-seek with Marxism, and where your odors lie unfurling shutting their eyes to the blood comet’s toes fire into orioles being spilled everywhere and in­ (on their steps leave no traces) sisting that “ critical theory” has twining my narrow’s light everything under control. from your turning head of nervous lips But these are merely symp­ The stars dress up their furrows toms of a many-faceted and long- whose divers sign you bathing lingering illness, for which the only cure remains the revolu­ a torch of musk awakening my spark of fruit tionary claMwide organization of the proletariat and its seizure of power through workers’ coun­ cils. The only truly meaningful BED OF SPHINXES social action is that which assists this revolutionary effort. All the A light opens as a street closes rest is contemptible rubbish. against the bedrock of insistent glimmers and your face talking to its cloud The “ radical” bootlickers for Always the rinsings of milky flowers cry on the crest McGovern, the tired New Left­ where I ’m a magnet gamboling with a drunken adept overs, the eco-fetishists, the aca­ There’s a cloth of wine beneath us demic exhumers of Lukacs, the the sugar of precipitous birds hands out rectangles of light blind cynics who see a “ revolu­ Racing out of town tionary victory" in the sellout of the nerve veined hair swallows the road the Vietnamese Revolution: these are surely an essential bat- tallion in the reserve a ^ y of bourgeois domination on the in­ tellectual plane. Their sole func­ The verb cunningly made tion is to maintain and deepen traverses the shattered lamp the stultification and demorali­ on the stockings’ shimmering key zation of the working c la r and The plate over the doortway every other sector capable of swoons with miniature figures following the lead of the workers’ councils. It is not surprising that impersonating what I ’m handed out of shadows fascist tendencies are surfacing once again. The overriding fear The day heaving straw giants aroused in the bourgeoisie and if you can see them petty-bourgeoisie by an inde- expects me in a wet mirror

38 With the middling haste of quest pendent proletariat becoming and further questions conscious of its power and its rumbling at breakneck speed aims — and it was precisely this the cortex of history looks through fear that characterized the entire the tubes of its material horizon Nixon/McGovern campaign-fits less and less comfortably within * the confines of traditional liberal­ ism. * * * The hand and spoon What is there to say about the gather themselves into a turbulent cloudburst “organized” Left? Entirely de­ before the latch-key from the advancing storm void of spirit and guts, with con­ takes leave of its gullies fidence neither in the workers with purple screams charging the table of water become nor in themselves, these shamed the ocean I hand you from an antelope beating incompetents are incapable of devising anything more than de­ the stream of flies diagonal fense mechanisms with which to to the fall of an empire and perpendicular disguise their impotence. One has to the truss on fire with scimitars of breath only to glance through the tortu­ A war in the clothes closet is worth a panda on the moon ous exercises in self-serving hum­ I am fluorescent bug that masquerade as the U.S. And you are a teardrop of infinite agate “socialist” press. T h e whole lot is overgrown with yesterday’s worst moments, Zinoviev’s bad breath, an illiterate irrelevance and an overwhelming fear of the future. VISIBILITIES Even the better Left papers to­ day fully deserve Trotsky’s criti­ Through the cotton balls of sleep cism of the publication of his a table from my stomach U. S. supporters in 1939: “ The walled on the precipice by gossamer veils paper is very well done from the the anvil hungry for its metabolic secret lights up the bobbing journalistic point of view; but it motors (apparitions is a paper for the workers and your fingertips silhouette the sky with) not a workers’ paper. . . . The paper is divided among various writers, each of whom is very There is a voice to your singing glance good, but collectively they do not There’s a coriander leaf with a spiked foot permit the workers to penetrate as the terrace sleepily descends to the water to the pages. . . . Each of them I pick up an embittered mica speaks for the workers (and rolling from a bed confused with your castle of hair-spun speaks very well) but nobody will riddles hear the workers. . . . You do You are behind me as I rip up the pavement palpitant not hear at all how the workers live, fight, clash with the police as a squid on a roulette table or drink whiskey. . . . The task is The black lines lead the white however you see the invisible not to make a paper through the tendril burrowing out of a cyclone joint forces of a skilled editorial Deeply sacked below board but to encourage the work­ a tulip raves among the murmuring metals ers to speak for themselves.” whose ravines reconstruct my life Needless to add that every un­ from the flight of vegetable-crows foreseen occurrence catches the Left off guard, napping, confused and helpless. In August 1970, when James Johnson — a black PRIMAVERA assembly-line worker at the Chrysler Gear and Axle Plant in Detroit — shot and killed two It is the oaken village that falls, splintered through a dust of foremen and a strikebreaker with visage where I gallop, no more flint than air, to think of cabalist an M-1 carbine at the point of hope: a universal alteration in the germination of planets. But, production, the L eft press either the mystagogic chairs smashed in seed-wars, I ’m conceived ignored it entirely or went all again by the imponderables of total conjunction -e v e n my aflutter delivering silly sermons shadow with another’s that left its organs (sex-ploding suns) against terrorism and individual some distance from the translations of matter into an image. action. As if Johnson’s gesture did not represent the very quin­ tessence of this epoch! Y e t only This way the poem becomes an open sluice for darkness. Only a very small black revolutionary the most obscure body is the brightest unity. I catch hold of a minority had anything lucid to train inside an iris. say about it. As the elections approached, Time at the window of maternal cosmetic, the high-heeled foot the various Left sects dutifully garlanded by a silken phallus spectates the forest where the took positions, passed resolutions uterine furnishings sink into drawers at bay from that twilight and went home. No one remem­ bers anything about it now. And flashing in a m irror of dressing and undressing. no one cares. * * * The preternatural identities beat the clouds from their barks, a Let us emphasize that the child’s chance look at the raging smolder of roses. Nearing sleep, workers, by and large, boycotted

39 the election — a fact that every­ this same erotic wind rustles the void of blood-stained horses one tries to hide and hide from. (m y first cabals) whose galaxy di&olves with a kiM the victori­ But scarcely anyone has drawn ous rescue of the palpable shadow streaming stars, her face: the n ^ ^ ^ r y conclusions from this bed, the undulant phantom: her hips. this situation. Thirty-five years ago Trotsky wrote that the objective factors We ride wooden horses for communist revolution were A^lways a desert marries the boiling iwater. not only ripe but even somewhat rotten. It is the subjective factors Philip LAMANTIA that lie suffocated, separated, cowering, incoherent - submit­ ted to all the ravages of imperial­ ist decay. Sade is to morality what Marx is to ^^iety. The theory of total revolution today could be called: Sado-Marxism. The workers must learn to follow through all the implications of their funda­ mental antipathy to capitalism. The authentic revolutionary must not only be inspired with self-confidence, rigorous lucidity, imagination and ferocity — he must also learn to inspire the working cla ^ in the ^same way, and to inspire masochism in the bourgeoisie. The desire for freedom must arm itself with the freedom of desire. Some day s o n the intellectual scum and a good number of the treacherous dunces who appoint themselves the “ leaders” of the “revolutionary movement” are going to be called to account for collage by F. A their basene^. As the workers increasingly transform their POEM more or leM passive and sporadic acts of resistance into more ag- Chestnuts in the eyelashes of the tide greMive and more disciplined You are the meeting place forms of struggle; as they rally Of beautiful insubmersible rocks to their own banner and kick the Loosening the ladder of silk two capitalist parties into the O f a night that steers to the trraces of bl^ood sewer along with the fetid bu­ The hourglass of the face I love reaucrats in the unions: when In this hand a world ends the workers decide that they’ve had enough and start to take Where the sun of r^oads calls to the other shore over; on that great day, greatest The careless convicts of all days, it will be rough-going Of the glances where thunder refuses to return indeed for all those who have O f the bottles filled with wasted time played the parasites' game and The landscape of last lights devoted their lives to siphoning Of a throat on pilings every legitimate h^rnan aspira­ The ancient hair tion into the bourgeois-demo­ Fastens to the boughs the depths of an empty sea cratic two-party ^^^rol. Sometimes in my fantasies I Where your Ibody is only a memory like to imagine a sort of Emer­ Where spring trims its nails gency Council to Defend the R e­ The helix of your far-flung smile volution consisting of Felix Dzer­ On the houses of which we ask nothing zhinsky, Alfred Jarry, Nicolas And the slopes of flesh imprison Flamel, Billie Holliday and The servile chance of saddlebows of honey Black Hawk, armed to the teeth In the eaten morning of sweat and stalking the streets, round­ I have lost only my useless feet while traveling ing up all the Norman Mailers, In the railroad stations of the wind the Sidney Hooks, the B. F. Skin­ ners, the Irving Howes, the Rob­ The gloved cocoon of a ship without veils ert Blys, the Bob Dylans. the And I speak with your voice Andy Warhols, the Marshall At the hour when all the roads of sand block themselves MacLuhans, the editors of the At the hour indicated by the burnt lighthouses of sycamore Tribune, Ramparts and the New In the humid wound of a wingless bird York Review of Books — and a The summer breaker of shipwrecks plunges host of others! After a few min­ utes before a revolutionary work­ Etienne LERO ers’ tribunal, the Council lines these counter-revolutionary ver- by Stetephen 40 min against the wall. “Ready! Aim! Fire!” A VISIT W ITH * * * W e who are not inclined to overestimate the capacities of a limited-circulation journal are DON TALAYESVA nonetheless determined to con­ tinue setting in motion a furious Though my family had lived, too briefly, in Arizona, agitation in the minds of men and women. And we shall see to and though I had often seen and admired Hopi kachinas it that it becomes more and more and Zuni hunting fetishes, I did not feel I had m et with furious - as well as more and Pueblo peoples until December of 1966 when by accident more refined. Determined to I came upon Don Talayesva’s overwhelming book Sun carry our rage against bourgeois civilization to its outermost Chief, a Hopi man’s autobiography, first published in limits, we shall happily resort to 1940. M y reading, nearly three years later, of the homage every violence, every excess, of the French surrealists to Talayesva and his book every evil, to dispose of this des­ picable system of Christian dol­ pleased me in its confirmation of my initial impression: lars and capitalist common sense. that in its pages one comes into privileged contact with “How funny it'll be, don’t you a rare and truly sacred mode of daily life, incomparably see,” wrote Jacques Vache to achieved, and bearing at its fullest the light one glimpses Andre Breton in 1918, “ if this real New Spirit breaks loose!” behind, for example, the Zen screen. Bear in mind that the surrealists The concept of the sacred has been so ill-used in our were among those who laughed culture that I must admit a certain hesitation before even when the ridiculous John F. Ken­ enunciating it. A similar reticence, perhaps contrariwise, nedy got himself shot in the head. grips me when I attempt to describe the trip to Hopi Ten years later our sense of hu­ mor is sharper than ever! country I made in February 1971. I thought myself en route elsewhere: suffice it to say that m y first steps in the streets of Oraibi brought me closer than I have ever been, before or since, to knowing where I am going. ^ - ■ F R . In Hotevilla, the most vital Hopi town, the kivas, like PLATYPUS wells, push their way from world to world; like a broad glass blade, San Francisco Mountain, the kachinas’ abode, 44°5 LATITUDE NORTH is poised against the remote, habitable sky. In Hopi coun­ try the landscape abandons the gestures by which the 26° LONGITUDE EAST peaks of the desert communicate, and has devised a mode By circuitous paths two texts of writing. At Powamu (Bean Ceremony) in mid-Febru­ by Rumanian surrealists hap­ ary Crow Mother appears, her glance banishing the ver­ pened to reach us and are pub­ tigo it provokes, with a throw of fragments of midnight lished in this issue of ARSENAL: like dice against the dawn that hour by hour allows the Virgil Teodorescu’s study of earth’s best-concealed messages to be read. San Fran­ Lenin and a poem by Gellu Naum. Unfortunately we have cisco Mountain is a taproot for a light rivalling the sun not yet succeeded in establishing and moon that enters the Hopi towns by way of the net­ contact with these comrades, and work o f kivas . . . know very little of the current In Walpi (First Mesa) the Black Ogres spread their situation of surrealism in Ru­ mania. Other European com­ metallic terror from door to door; in Shongopovi (Second rades inform us that although Mesa) a child avails himself of the protection of a paho Teodorescu and Naum are un­ (a feathered wand, not unlike a talisman against the evil able to conduct surrealist activity eye, in my view ); at Hotevilla (Third Mesa) smoke pours as such (except for the publica­ tion of books of poems), they from the kiva, clearing a path for the kachinas: masters have nonetheless maintained fi­ of the gulfs of silence, guides in the corridors opened by delity to surrealist aims and night between the mesa-tops, crowds of lightning-men. Old principles in the most difficult men scatter cornmeal before them. circumstances. Teodorescu and Naum entered W e visited other pueblos, then: Tesuque and Acoma the surrealist movement around in particular. Of Acoma I can write no more than that it 1940 and participated in what presents one with a thrust into the unknown that must be Jean-Louis Bedouin (in Vingt experienced. The road from Acoma, too, leads back to my ans de surrealisme) has called the “frenetic” activity of the Ru­ too-brief encounters with the elderly man who, near a manian group throughout the house half stone-and-adobe, half green clapboard, a few decade, until the Stalinization of yards from a kiva topped with freshly cut switches, an­ the country prohibited further swered with an extreme dignity to the name of Talayesva. surrealist manifestations. They are among the five signers of the W e spoke for some time; the gist of our conversation important Rumanian declara­ escapes me now. I offered, a little clumsily, a copy of tion, “The Nocturnal Sand,” ARSENAL. I was, perhaps, struck dumb by what Mary, published in Le Surrealisme en gazing out Talayesva’s window, discerned: that the ex­ 1947 in Paris. 41 panse of plain below Oraibi, psychically no less than phys­ On the ically, from sign to trap along the mesa, demands to be known and provides enough to be known, in a single step, "PADILLA AFFAIR” to make every map and compass useless. The air of Hotevilla, of Oraibi, of Acoma germinates The passage of two years an absolute liberty of the kind revealed to me a few weeks since the "Padilla a fa ir” and its unfortunate sequels has dimin­ later by a Pomo boy, at the rancheria at Stewart’s Point ished neither those events’ sig­ on the California coast, when I inquired the name of a nificance nor the urgency and river: “Any name you want to give it.” appropriateness of Octa­ And the challenge, the irresistible challenge of vio Paz’s comments, which we publish below. smoke scented with pinon, pours from the kivas at Hote­ The persecution of Heberto villa. Padilla, the slandering of K.S. Stephen SC H W AR TZ Karol and other commentators San Francisco / Chicago on Cuban reality whose integ­ 30 March 1972 rity is unimpeachable, the inane Postscript: The immense mesa upon which the Hopi reply of Fidel Castro to the mildly critical letter of certain communities are situated, Black Mesa, is now threatened European, North American and with thorough exploitation/destruction by a cabal of Latin American intellectuals, strip-mining and power companies bent on supporting the well known for their unstinting collapsing false light of Los Angeles and Las Vegas. In solidarity with the Cuban Revo­ lution, and, finally, the Cuban defense of their culture, their land and its uses, the Hopis state’s adoption of utterly retro­ and other peoples in the area are conducting a campaign grade standards for the develop­ of resistance. Such campaigns need support. If you ^m, ment of creativity and morality please send such sums as are possible to Thomas Bany- among youth, have unambigu­ ously illuminated the extent of acya, Hopi Speaker, Hotevilla, Arizona. deformation of the Cuban work­ ers’ state. These events make it impossible for even the most ecstatic convert to the ohapel of St. Fidel to dismiss, as "isolated errors,” the destruction of the Cuban Trotskyist cadre (1964), the invidious campaign against the revolutionary writer and veteran of the anti-Batista struggle Guillermo Cabrera In­ fante (1966), and the Cuban gove^m ent’s simultaneous ac­ claim for the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and accommo­ dation of the murderers Diaz Ordaz and Echeverria in Mexico and the leftish gangster Velasco in Peru (1968-70). Furthermore, the crudity of Castro’s accusation of coward­ ice against those revolutionary intellectuals (most of whom are prevented from living in their own countries by reason of their fidelity to the anti-imperialist cause) who had criticized the administration of intellectual divergences by a police appara­ tus, becomes grotesque when one considers that among the signers of the offending letters was no less than Carlos Fran- qui, a founder of the 26th of July Revolutionary Movement, coordinator of illegal propa­ ganda during the anti-Batista struggle, and editor of REVOLU- CION, official organ of the revo­ lutionary government from 1959 to 1966. That Franqui, whose courage was amply tested by his acceptance of the revolu­ tion’s most hazardous tasks, should now have to live in Eu­ rope, testifies eloquently to the present condition of fulfillment Anton KREKULE: *'/ was a daisy” (photograph, 1915) 42 of the revolutionary aspirations WILD GLEE FROM ELSEWHERE of the Cuban proletariat. In ex­ for Reinhoud changing the costume of an Hard calloused dreams ingenuous “friend of the peo­ Burst palefully ple” for that of a Stalinoid cop Castro merely exposes the fra­ Through the seams of tasteless gility of the pretensions he once Yesterday enjoyed. Don’t whine for help In affirming our unalterable Lie bleeding solidarity with the Cuban L ife is a perpetual sneeze masses in their resistance to U.S. imperialism and their Listen to the screech of iron in the rocky struggle for socialism, we like­ Vacuum wise recognize and affirm that Of an eyeless the success of their struggle Socket cannot be divorced from the de­ fense and expansion (both in­ To the mouthless prayer of ambiguous men ternally and externally) of Stretched out in anguish and surgical green workers' democracy, of full Listen freedom of expression within Sharpen your tongue on the soft white womb the Revolution. The future of the Cuban Revolution remains Nestling in formol in the hands of the Cuban work­ Then all shouting done ers, for whom the seizure of Watch brittle sperm rain down like cheese power for themselves, and the Collect the bubbles overthrow of the Stalinist ver­ min and their petty-bourgeois Hustle sour winds up the sidewalk henchmen, should suffice. Suck the fresh flesh of the ruby S.S. Leave it screaming N o matter ★ ★ ★ Strange shallow dreams eat at random And shriek not with age The Soundless laughter like the midnight sea SELF-HUMILIATION W ill toil back to slumber of Ihe And there will the bodiless breaker unroll its metal Dip thunder and vanish UNBELIEVERS In a thousand grim echoes Th e “confessions” of Buk­ Far beyond the bloody swelling of a mother’s breast harin, Radek and the other “Pardon me” said she dressed in small town bereavement Bolsheviks thirty years ago, And Humpty-Dumpty closed a huge savage eye produced an indescribable hor­ ror. The Moscow trials combine Joyce MANSOUR Ivan the Terrible with Dostoy-

Conroy MADDOX: The Mirror of the Marvelous (collage/painting, 1971) 43 evsky, and Caligula with the Grand Inquisitor: The crimes of which Lenin’s comrades ac­ cused themselves were im­ mense and abominable. A tran­ sition from history as univer­ sal nightmare to history as lit­ erary gossip-the self-indict­ 2r ment of Heberto Padilla. And let us suppose Padilla speaks THE TERRIFYING DAYS the truth and he really de­ famed the Cuban regime in his talks with foreign writers and (A Dream Tale) journalists: Is the fate of the Revolution decided in You hear the noise of the to^^^roents going on all the editorial offices of London day and all night now. Over the public addr^, from one and Milan literary magazines end of the city to the other, you hear the familiar or in the cafes of Saint-Ger- main-des-Pres? Stalin obliga­ voice bellowing, “The Green Knight now challenges the ted his opponents to declare Red Knight!” Or some such. A crib with broken slats their complicity in idiotic in­ meets you at every turn of the sidewalk. The streets flow ternational conspiracies, sup­ as though it were suddenly natural for stone and asphalt posedly to guarantee the sur­ vival of the USSR. The Cuban to just flow. You go into a No one there, not even a regime, to cleanse the reputa­ bartender. The television is showing one of the to ^ ^ - tion of its leadership, supposed­ ments and as the camera pans the grandstands, it is not ly stained by a few books and people you there. It is — voting machines. articles casting doubts about its functioning, obliges one of its Sit at a ^roth. Ah, a woman emerges from the lounge critics to announce his complic­ ity in abject, and finally, in­ and walks to the end of the and leans there. Is she significant politico-literary of­ a barmaid perhaps, or a prostitute? fenses. . . “By yourself today?” Nevertheless, two common “By myself every day.” aspects should be noted: first, the obsession with foreign “Can I have a drink?” hands behind the least critical “Mercy. You have mercy, if you’ve a mind to beg.” gestures, an obsession well- “Your room?” known in Mexico, where it is “M y . .. room.” enough to recall the inquisi­ torial use of the little phrase The quarter where she lives is the one where all the “ a partisan of exotic ideas"; on the other hand, the disturbingly headier ^ »p le live. Some of them are on the streets and religious tone of the confes­ stoops. Others lean out of windows in a leisurely way. sions. Clearly, the self-sancti­ Mute? No. They speak in ech^». fication of the leaders presumes “Cheap to live here,” she says, “fifty souls a month. I as a counterpart the self-hu­ miliation of the unbelievers. give birth to the souls in one afternoon, usually on the All this would be merely gro­ 27th of each month. It is not too . . .” We ^pas tesque were it not symtomatic a huge gray bird, something like a crow, whose head of Cuba’s drift in the fatal proc­ towers out of sight. Bl^ood is dripping in its vicinity like ess that turns the revolu­ rain. tionary party into a bureau­ cratic caste and the leader into “Sad to a child lost like that.” a Caesar; a universal process In her room there is no furniture, only a large cow, that demands that we examine clumsily butchered, lying by the wall. She goes directly with other eyes the history of this century. Ours is the time of to the bathroom and slips down the commode quietly. the authoritarian plague. If You stand there. A beetle with an eye in its back scuttles Marx’s critique was of capital­ down the wall a little and squirts something and scuttles ism, we must formulate a cri­ again. tique of the state and the con­ temporary bureaucracies, East­ “The Silver Champion challenges the Master of ern no leM than Western, a cri­ Hounds!” tique which Latin Americans must complement with others Night is falling in large flakes this evening. The of a historical and political or­ its intestines ac^ros the bridge into the railroad der: a critique of the govern­ ^ ^ . N o tr^ains, only a pile of swords. ment of exception by the ex­ You go to your window to speak. ceptional man; that is, a cri­ tique of the caudillo, that His- The hallways are empty. pano-Arab heritage. In the darkened lavatory you are p ilin g out of fear. On your way out you ^pas the night clerk who is ^carv­ Octavio PAZ SIEMPRE!, 19 May 1971 ing a face in his left knee to match the one on his right For the tou^^ment you have your testicles in a brown paper bag to throw at the villain. Joseph JABW NSKI

44 UNPUBLISHED WORKS OF T-BONE SLIM

EDITOR’S NOTE: T-Bone Slim was born Matt Valentine Huhta, of Finnish parents, presum­ ably in Ashtabula, Ohio, around the turn of the century. As a young man he joined the Indus­ trial Workers of the World (IW W ), the most important revolutionary workers’ organization in U.S. history. Throughout his adult life he traveled ceaselessly around the country as an IW W organizer and hobo. Best known for his satirical songs (several of which are included in the IW W songbook) he also wrote a regular column for the IW W weekly industrial solidarity, and contributed frequently to other IW W publications, up to his death in 1942. His writing, char­ acterized by wild humor and constant, almost oneiric, shifting of the subject, reveals his remark­ able receptiveness to the most playful possibilities of language, and participates fully in that specifically poetic state of mind that undermines the barriers separating dream and action.*

Sensitive cars: (A ll the way?) — If you have a sore foot (couple [3] toes smashed) walk on the pavement; sidewalks are too rough. Automobile drivers will swear at you, of course, but you should not let that worry you; they’re going to hell fast and can’t stop to pick you up. It is not so much a habit to kill the remnant of generosity in them as a program to create a proper sense of humility in you. Crusted independence survives; generosity perishes -a n d the chicks come home to roost. All right Wilbur, my crutches! The story of the soul uncrusht — It’s the toes. Robins have not uttered “cheer-up” since 1937, now that I remember. Fourth of July explosions have been rare. Saving our powder for the several enemies that threaten? Cop: “Were you uptown begging the town?” H obo: “No, God bless you officer, I was just uptown trying to steer that restaurant- keeper away from the poorhouse — and he appreciated it so much that he gave me an extra cup of coffee. Say, officer, do I look as if I need a birth certificate?” Cop: “Tell the truth, I think you need a death-notice in all the lea^rng papers — now get the hell off the Godgiven streets before the Fire Department over you!” Run-over or run-in and so it goes? The maximum age of 64 acceptable for compulsory military training coincides with the minimum age (64) acceptable in poorhouses and old gentlemen’s homes, in some states. Uncle Sam doesn’t want to raid the pogeys or old folks’ homes — to say nothing about graveyards or mausoleums — just all those that haven’t had a chance to duck into the shel­ ters. * * * Harvester Co., Chicago, goes in for profit-sharing. Steel declares a dividend in “com­ mon” — money rolling in like nobody’s bU3 in ess. million was added to army of unemployed as of February last and — get this — at­ tendance at the ballgames is expected to drop. Displacement of labor continues apace — one man “tends” 2^W ton boat in New York harbor. Night and Day. No, you don’t have to organize? You can go on relief and learn to sing communist hymns — recently Pittsburgh commies were brought up with a round turn for using the name of F.D.R. Hm, I once knew a man who thought himself Napoleon. Nothing serious; just a bit of hysteria. * * * Darn this world anyhow — can’t sleep and read at once. Can’t sleep because the boys are fighting the war all over again, second-seeing the errors, terrors and tragedies of the past. If I lay down, those race-horses might step on me. Or I might get beaned by a base­ ball. * * * Wherever you find injustice, the proper form of politene^ is ittack. T-Bone SLIM

•Our thanks to Walter H. Westman, an old-timer (and for many years the union’s General Secretary-Treasurer) who, several years aiio. permitted us to salvage a number of T-Bone Slim’s original manuscripts from the disorder then prevailing at the Chicago IWW Branch headquarters. It is our intention to publish excerpts from these manuscripts from time to t me in Arsenal, and eventually to publish an extensive selection as a ^rok or pamphlet.

45 drawings by E. F. GRANELL

46 Snow Is Black 47 SURREALISM IN MARTINIQUE T i s In 1932 a group of Martiniquan blacks, so­ This is only a preliminary warning. W e con­ journing in Paris, published a single issue of a sider ourselves totally committed. W e are sure surrealist journal. l e g i t i m e d e f e n s e . Its princi­ that there are other young people like us who pal animators were Etienne Lero, who also col­ could add their signatures to ours and who — laborated on LE SURREALISME AU SERVICE DE LA to the extent that it is compatible with remaining REVOLUTION and the surrealist issue of DOCU­ alive — refuse to adjust to the surrounding dis­ MENTS 34, and Rene M enil who, a decade later, honor. And we are against all those who attempt, co-edited (with Suzanne and Aime Cesaire) the consciously or not, by their smiles, work, ex­ surrealist journal t r o p iq u e s , in Martinique. L it­ actitude, propriety, speech, writings, actions and tle has been written about this important early their very persons, to pretend that everything group in the international surrealist movement, can continue as it is. W e rise up here against all partly because of its brief existence (its last those who are not suffocated by this capitalist, public manifestation seems to have been in Christian, bourgeois world to which, involuntar­ 1935) and because its journal has long been un­ ily, our protesting bodies belong. obtainable, even in libraries (recently, however, In every country the Communist Party (Third it has been reprinted by the Kraus Reprint Cor­ International) is in the process of playing the poration). Evidently the only published study decisive card of the Spirit — in the Hegelian of the LEGITIME DEFENSE group is the first part sense of the word. Its defeat, impossible as we of Lilyan Kesteloot's Les Ecrivains noirs de think it to be, would be for us the definitive “Je langue franfaise: naissance d’une litterature ne peux plus.” W e believe unreservedly in its (Brussels. 1965). triumph because we accept the dialectical ma­ Lero died in 1939 at the age of 30. A fine poet terialism of Marx, freed of all misleading inter­ as well as a master polemicist, his work remains pretation and victoriously put to the test of almost totally unknown, scattered in various experience by Lenin. W e are ready, on this obscure reviews. N o collection of his poems or plane, to submit to the discipline that such con­ other writings has yet appeared. Sartre, in victions demand. Black Orpheus (originally written as an intro­ On the concrete plane of modes of human ex­ duction to Leopold Senghor's Anthologie de la pression, we equally and unreservedly accept nouvelle poesie negre et malgache de langue francaise, 1948), refers to Lero only in passing can read his book without ever guessing the and in condescending terms. This attitude — color of his skin. . . . The foreigner can go aside from the fact that Sartre is hardly a quali­ through all this literature looking in vain for an fied judge of poetry - is perhaps explainable by original or meaningful accent. never finding a the fact that in Senghor's anthology (which in­ trace of the black man’s sensuous and colorful cluded the work by Lero on which Sartre based imagination or the echo of the hatreds and his judgment) Lero was represented by a sadly aspirations of an oppressed people.” mutilated text. Senghor himself wrote of Lero's Others in the LEGITIME DEFENSE group also effort: “M ore than a review. LEGITIME DEFENSE collaborated with the Paris surrealists. Pierre was a cultural movement. Beginning with a Yoyotte wrote on the significance of surrealism Marxist analysis of the society of the West In ­ in the anti-fascist struggle for DOCUMENTS 34, dies, it discovered in the Caribbean the descend- and contributed to LE SURREALISME A.S.D.L.R. ents of the Negro-African slaves held for three Jules Monnerot participated in surrealist activ­ centuries in the stultifying conditions of the pro­ ity for over a decade; his study, La Poesie mo- letariat. Lero affi.rmed that only surrealism derne et le sacre (1945) was praised by Breton. could deliver them from their taboos and express (Later, however, M onnerot renounced his ear­ them in their integrity.” lier views and defected to the extreme Right.) l e g i t i m e d e f e n s e also included articles and I f LEGITIME DEFENSE is finally beginning to re­ poems by other members of the group, an ex­ ceive attention from the historians of negritude cerpt from Claude M cK ay’s Banjo, and, most and Pan-Africanism, its specifically surrealist notably, Lero's strident critique of West Indian character yet remains misknown, distorted or poetry, cited as "one of the cornerstones of ne- ignored. W e publish here a translation of its gritude” by Norman R. Shapiro in his antholo­ opening manifesto, not merely to correct this gy Negritude: Black Poetry from Africa and historical omission, but above all to contribute the Caribbean (1970). “The West Indian,” to the clarification of the poetic/theoretical per­ wrote Lero, "crammed full of white morality, spectives of the American black cultural move­ white culture, white education and white preju­ ment that has already given the world the mar­ dices, displays the puffed-up image of himself in velous and revolutionary works of Peetie Wheat- his little books of verse. The very reason for his straw, Memphis Minnie, Victoria Spivey, E l­ entire social and poetic existence is to be a faith­ more James, Yank Rachell, Johnny Shines, ful copy of the pale-skinned gentleman. . . . Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Charles ‘You’re acting like a Negro!' This is his indig­ Mingus, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Sun nant accusation whenever you give way, in his Ra, Cecil Taylor, Pharoah Sanders, Joseph presence, to any natural exuberance. In his Jarman, Anthony Braxton-and countless others poetry, too, he tries not to 'act like a Negro.' He - and from which wonders undreamt of are yet takes a special pride in the fact that a white man expected. 48 LEGITIMATE DEFENSE***

surrealism to which, in 1932, we relate our be­ choanalytic theory) pure and simple psycho­ coming. W e refer our readers to the two M ani­ logical confessions which, provided that the ob­ festoes of Andre Breton, to the complete works stacles of social conventions are removed, can of Aragon, Andre Breton, Rene Crevel, Salvador tell us a great deal. W e do not admit that one can Dali, Paul Eluard, Benjamin Peret and Tristan be ashamed of what he suffers. The Useful — Tzara. It must be said that it is one of the dis­ social convention — constitutes the backbone of graces of our time that these works are not better the bourgeois “ reality” that we want to break. known everywhere that French is read. And in In the realm of intellectual investigation, we pit the works of Sade, Hegel, Lautreamont, Rim­ against this “ reality” the sincerity that allows baud - to mention only a few - we seek every­ man to disclose in his love, for example, the am­ thing surrealism has taught us to find. As for bivalence which permits the elimination of the Freud, we are ready to utilize the immense ma­ contradiction decreed by logic. According to chine that he set in motion to di^olve the bour­ logic, once an object with an affective value ap­ geois family. We are moving with sincerity at pears, we must respond to it either with the a furious pace. W e want to see clearly into our feeling called love or with the feeling called hate. dreams and we listen to their voices. An^ our Contradiction is a function of the Useful. It does dreams permit us to see clearly into the life that not exist in love. It does not exist in the dream. has been imposed on us for so long. And it is only by horribly gritting our teeth Among the filthy bourgeois conventions, we that we are able to endure the abominable sys­ despise above all the humanitarian hypocrisy, tem of constraints and restrictions, the exter­ this stinking emanation of Christian decay. W e mination of love and the limitation of the dream, loathe pity. W e don’t give a damn about senti­ generally known by the name of western civiliza­ ment. W e intend to shed light on human psychic tion. concretions - a light related to that which illu­ Emerging from the French black bourgeoisie, minates Salvador Dali’s splendid, convulsive, which is one of the saddest things on this earth, plastic works, where it seems sometimes, sud­ we declare - and we shall not go back on this denly, that love-birds could be ink-bottles or declaration — that we are opposed to a l the shoes or little bits of bread, taking wing from corpses: administrative, governmental, parlia­ assassinated conventions. mentary, industrial, commercial and all the If this little journal, a temporary instrument, others. W e intend, as traitors to this class, to breaks down, we shall find other instruments. take the path of treason as far as it will go. We W e accept with indifference the conditions of spit on everything that they love and venerate, time and space which, by defining us in 1932 as especially those things that give them sustenance people of the French West Indies, have thus set­ and joy. tled our boundaries without at all limiting our And all those who adopt the same attitude as field of action. This first collection of texts is we, no matter where they come from, will be particularly devoted to the West Indian ques­ welcome among us. * tion as it appears to us. (The following issues, Etienne LERO, Thelus LERO, without abandoning this matter, will take up Rene M ENIL, Jules-Marcel MONNEROT, many others.) And if, by its content, this col­ Michel PILOTIN, Maurice-Sabas QUITMAN, lection is addressed primarily to young French Auguste THESEE, Pierre YOYOITE. West Indians, it is because we think it is a good idea that our first effort finds its way to people (translated by Paula Wissing) (1932) whose capacity for revolt we are far from under­ "If our critique is purely negative here, if we do not pro- estimating. And if it is aimed especially at young ^ree any ^reitive efforts in place of that which we mer­ cilessly condemn, we excuse ourselves on the grounds that blacks, this is because we believe that they es­ it was necessary to begin — a necessity which did not en­ pecially have had to suffer from capitalism (out­ able us to await the full development of our ideas. In our next issue, we hope to develop our ideology of revolt. side Africa, witness Scottsboro) and that they seem to offer, in that they have a materially de­ termined ethnic personality, a generally higher potential for revolt and for joy. For want of a The Letter X black proletariat, to whom international capital­ ism has not given the means to understand us, W e had intended to include we speak to the children of the black bour­ in this issue of arsenal a sum­ geoisie; we speak to those who are not already mary of the responses to the inquiry published in the first killed established fucked-up academic successful i^ue (What role does the letter decorated decayed endowed decorative prudish X play in your life? Which ex­ decided opportunist; we speak to those who can tinct animal would you most still accept life with some appearance of truth­ like to reappear, and why? fulness. What should be done with the Having decided to be as objective as possible, White House?). Space limita­ we know nothing of each other's personal lives. tions, however, require that W e want to go a long way, and if we expect much publication of this summary be from psychoanalytic investigation, we do not postponed till the third issue. underestimate (from those acquainted with psy­

49 THE NEW LOTTO GAME

This New Lotto Game is composed of eight cards on pumpkin or gray stock, and of sixty-four tallies on white stock. Cut out the eight cards. Cut out the sixty-four tallies. Depending on the num­ ber of dreamers, distribute one or more cards to each. Put aside the unused cards and their corres­ ponding tallies. Place the tallies on the table, face down, and mix them up. The Game Leader (or one of the dreamers) takes one of the tallies and announces its name. The dreamer who has the card where the tally is represented places it on the corresponding square. The first dreamer whose card or cards are covered is the winner and may close his or her eyes. Thus children begin the discovery of the dreams that dwell in the five corners of the world. Guy D U C O R N E T and R IK K I 50 Andre Breton by Anna Balakian A Review Andre Breton: Magus of Surrealism by Anna degradation. This is revealed on the first page, Balakian (Oxford University Press) has re­ on which she speaks of "the three Andres” - ceived wide acclaim. Reviewers who know Gide, Malraux and Breton. For Anna Balakian, nothing except where their money comes from Professor of French and Comparative Litera­ have hailed the book's "important discoveries” ture, enthusiasm for Breton means to reduce his and “original insights.” As if this were not bad work to literature. enough, the critics unanimously maintain the For us, Andre Breton always will transcend unforgivable pretense that Anna Balakian is a the miserable limits imposed on him by the "convinced partisan” of surrealism. It is there­ critics. His destiny, turned toward the polar star, fore all the more necessary to expose this "bio­ will always stand as an unparalleled example of graphical study” for what it is: a compendium of integrity, lucidity, audacity. The triple cause of gross falsifications, wretched go^ip, absurd in­ freedom, love and poetry that inspired his entire terpretations, malicious insinuations and errors life will continue to repel the trespa^ers whose of all kinds. sole aim is self-aggrandizement. I see no reason Anna Balakian has long enjoyed a reputation to tolerate even for a second the convention in this country as an "authority” on surrealism. which permits a few pompous fools in search of But this latest work betrays, from cover to cover, a career to specialize in directing vainglorious her incomprehension of even the most elemen­ gibes at men and women whose lives and work tary surrealist aims and principles, as her earlier remain unimpeachable. How many fourth-rate efforts had done. Her first book, Literary Origins triflers have achieved such dubious successes on of Surrealism (1947), carried an infamous sub­ the academic plateau by this parasitical attach­ title: "A New Mysticism in French Poetry.” In ment on the truly great! How many scholarly Surrealism: Road to the Absolute she argued or journalistic mosquitoes have been set loose, that "the post-war works of Aragon and Eluard time and again, on the works of Marx, Freud give clear evidence of the aesthetic continuity of and, more and more frequently, Lautreamont. surrealism,” that "the surrealist state of mind Now, it seems, it is the turn of the works of prevails in the majority of these writings.” One Andre Breton to be subjected to these petty af­ could hardly cite, in the critical literature, a flictions. A t the present moment, because of the more reprehensible fabrication. Of the patriotic, ignorance in this country of everything having to Stalinist verse penned by Aragon and Eluard do with Andre Breton and surrealism, it is neces­ after their break with surrealism Benjamin sary to maintain an exacting vigilance to dispel Peret wrote that it did not rise even to the level the confusion wrought by these "authorities.” of pharmaceutical advertising. It is significant, too, that in the first edition of * * * Surrealism: Road to the Absolute (1959) Peret's There is no point in trying to enumerate all name figures only twice, and only in passing. In of this book’s errors and deficiencies. It- suffices the revised edition (1970) Balakian notes that to prove that Anna Balakian does not know what “of all the surrealists, Benjamin Peret has least she is talking about; that she carelessly and con­ caught the attention of critics and scholars,” stantly abuses and makes a mockery of the very and, by way of compensation, adds a few pages standards of traditional scholarship she pre­ about him, riddled with misinformation. She tends to respect. Let us examine some of her tells us, for example, that "the revolutionary "discoveries” and "insights.” spirit described by Peret is one of noncommit­ In Chapter 3 she presents seemingly strong ment.” It happens, however, that he participated evidence that an early, decisive and enduring actively in revolutionary organizations from the influence on Breton, and on surrealism gen­ mid-1920s to his death in 1959, when he was erally, was the work of Dr. Pierre Janet, a prom­ collaborating with Grandizo Munis on a book inent French psychologist of the late 19th and with the hardly noncommitted title, For a early 20 th centuries. No other observer, least of Second Communist Manifesto. all Breton himself or any other surrealist, has It is sufficiently clear, then, that Anna Bala- acknowledged this influence-which seems of kian has demonstrated over a long period a dis­ such importance to Anna Balakian, however, turbing failure to grasp even the rudiments of that her book contains more references to Janet what is at stake in the surrealist adventure. She than to Freud. One would think that at this late must therefore be regarded as completely dis­ date the profound influence of Freud on the qualified from writing authoritatively on Andre origins and development of surrealism was be­ Breton. It is true that, in her own peculiar man­ yond argument. Breton’s entire work-or the ner, she evidently admires Breton; frequently work of other surrealists-leaves no room for she writes of him in a tone approaching adora­ doubt in this regard. But Balakian, to enhance tion. But her infatuation matters little, just as it her "discovery” of Janet, does not hesitate to matters little that she has read most of Breton's speak of "the limitations of the influence of writings and conducted interviews with many Freud,” adding that "Janet, unlike Freud, did people who knew him. The point is that she has not stop at clinical analysis; he concluded his understood nothing. Her "enthusiasm” for Bre­ case studies with a magnificent poetic synthesis ton is nothing more than a variety of academic about the human condition.” Finding Freud

51 guilty of “scientific detachment,” she heralds quality of a surrealist sentence rather than of a Janet as “ a source nearer to Andre Breton.” Let wandering mind.” Aside from the slander us note that her statement, “ Breton refers to against Breton implicit in this whole chapter, it Janet frequently in his writings,” is demonstra­ should be noted that Balakian reveals here near­ bly false. But why does she refrain from quoting, total ignorance of surrealist thought. For her, or even acknowledging, Janet’s remark on sur­ eternal barriers exist between the “ elite” of poets realism as quoted in the Annales Medico-Psy- and the “uneducated” others. The surrealists, chologiques (November 1929), that “the sur­ on the contrary, challenge these barriers and realists’ writings are chiefly the confessions of mercilessly criticize the reactionary ideology obsessed persons and doubters” ? Janet’s “ ridic­ that upholds them. ulous statement,” as Breton called it, contributes Concerning the authenticity of Nadja, no a touching commentary on the “magnificent po­ problem exists outside the pretentiously critical etic synthesis” which so dazzles Anna Balakian. mind of Anna Balakian; actual letters from It is also perhaps worth recalling Janet's assess­ Nadja, now in possession of Elisa Breton, prove ment of Raymond Roussel, author of Locus the Balakian accusations to be wholly false. Salus, Impressions of Africa and other works. From fallacious evaluation and veiled insinua­ The surrealists regard Roussel as an exemplary tion to outright derision, of course, is but a single poetic figure; his works, according to Breton, are step, which Anna Balakian ventures more than “ pure of all concessions.” For Janet, however, once. How else could one describe her unfounded Roussel was merely a “ poor little sick man.” and ridiculous contention that Morgan le Fay, The simple truth is that the influence of Janet the celebrated figure of Celtic legend whose ap­ on the origins of surrealism was negligible. The parition illuminates Breton’s poem, Fata M o r­ psychological event of greatest significance in gana, is “identifiable also perhaps with the those years was the theory of Freud, of which statue of Notre Dame de la Garde that domi­ Janet, in company with the great majority of nates Marseilles” ? It should hardly be necessary academic psychologists and psychiatrists then to recall that it is to Breton that we owe the and now, was an opponent. surrealist slogan, GOD IS A PIG, which says Equally without foundation is Anna Bala- everything that has to be said about religion. kian’s belief that the works of the French her­ Yet there are those who persist-Anna Bala- metic philosopher Eliphas Levi influenced “ the kian is among them-in efforts to blunt the structure of Breton's poetic analogies from Les ferocious anti-religious quality of Breton's champs magnetiques,” that is, as early as 1919. works. By emphasizing what they like to call Again, in her blind effort to make discoveries, the “ spiritual” aspects of surrealism, and em­ Anna Balakian makes only mistakes. Breton’s ploying a method of insipid allusion and dis­ interest in Levi came, in fact, about a decade torted half-truths, they find some “common later. ground” on which surrealism and religion are All critics fall into the traps set out by the supposed to meet. T o these liars and scoundrels umore of Jacques Vache, whose influence on Breton replied unmistakably in Entretiens: Breton-as Breton himself insisted-probably “Nothing will ever reconcile me with christian exceeded all other influences. Balakian tries to civilization.” It is absolutely unthinkable, in any escape the difficulties posed by Vache by pre­ case, that he could have been “ inspired” by any tending they do not exist. religious monument. One can scarcely resist laughing out loud Spurious “ discoveries” and gross defamations when she wonders “ to what degree the image do not exhaust the catalog of Balakian’s con­ of Vache was a figment of Breton’s imagination.” fusion. They are in fact subsidiary aspects of the When she adds on the next page, “ It is hard to total incomprehension which characterizes the imagine a man, as intellectually oriented as Bre­ entire work. Nor is this incomprehension con­ ton, so fervently involved with Jacques Vache,” fined to surrealism alone. The references to and again when she asks, “ Was not Vache an Hegel, Marxism, psychoanalysis and hermetic invention?” and finally, when she describes philosophy evidence an equally astonishing ig­ Vache as a “ rather ordinary youth,” one per­ norance of even basic theoretical premises. One ceives yet more clearly the impoverished depths may glean the value of her long-winded discus­ of ineptitude from which this “leading author­ sion of surrealism and politics, for example, from ity” draws her critical “ insights.” a single passage in which we are told of “the Far more insidious are her efforts to under­ dialectical materialism of Hegel . . . the prag­ mine the significance of Breton’s Nadja by matic applications of Marx . . . and the human­ shifting it onto the plane of fiction, repeatedly istic thought implementations of Lenin and advancing allegations against Breton’s honesty. Trotsky.” The materialist Hegel, the pragmatic “One wonders how far the things that Breton Marx, the humanists Lenin and Trotsky: These makes Nadja say . . . are as authentic, as ‘docu­ three strikes, alone, should be sufficient to retire mentary' as his own reactions,” she writes. She Balakian from the field of serious consideration. pretends even to find parallels between some of Again, when she asserts that Breton, unlike Nadja's experiences and behavior and the case Sartre, never “rrtade the United States the tar­ history of a patient of Janet's named Nadia. get of his attacks,” going so far as to suggest that Balakian declares that “ the poetization of the he “ immunized, as it were, against attack, the irrational world of Nadja is Breton’s rather than country to which he felt profoundly grateful” - that of the little, uneducated waif he met by because he lived here in exile during World War chance,” and proceeds to say that a quotation II-o n e sees a classic example of the dangers of from Nadja (“ the blue and the wind” ) has “ the impressionistic sentimentality. It is true that

52 Breton did not indulge in foolish diatribes viously Balakian was content merely to glance against the U. S., as did Sartre. But this was not at the title of the article. One must bear in mind because of any fondness for this country; it was that this was the book that introduced Breton rather because surrealism was and remains con­ and the surrealists to Marxist thought, to the sistently internationalist, in line with Marxist spirit of the October Revolution; it was a major perspectives of world proletarian solidarity. and even determining influence. That the surrealists never ceased attacking American capitalism, imperialism, racism and * * * other institutions of the “ land of the dollar” may It has long been the fate of revolutionary in­ be seen by even a cursory perusal of surrealist novators to be violently denounced by the ruling reviews. The mindless and uncritical anti- ideologists of their time, only to be posthumous­ American ravings of Sartre, on the contrary, ly taught in the schools and subjected to repul­ were pathetically xenophobic, in accordance sive “honors” staged by the scum of officialdom. with the ideological requirements of the Soviet The fundamental task today is not only to re­ bureaucracy during a particular period of the trieve their authentic teachings from the falsi­ Cold War, when French existentialism placed fiers and epigones but above all to advance on itself in the service of the Stalinist counter­ the path of revolt and of revolution, the only revolution. path that can lead to a situation in which free­ It is worth adding a final note regarding Bala- dom will be substantially more than the most kian’s method of research. She writes: “When beautiful of all ideas and the most resonant in 1925, eight years after the Soviet Revolution, word in all languages. Trotsky's work on Lenin reached Paris, Breton A serious full-length study of Breton’s life had it published in LA REVOLUTION SURREALISTE.” and work could contribute appreciably to the She implies that Trotsky’s book had taken a long elaboration of the surrealist project. Several time to reach Paris, although it appeared orig­ studies in French-notably those by Philippe inally in Russian in mid-1924. But what is Audoin, Jean-Louis Bedouin and Julien G racq- important is this: Trotsky’s Lenin is a volume of are useful in this connection. But nothing com­ some 200 pages; it was not published in LA parable exists in English. Anna Balakian has REVOLUTION SURREALISTE: The text entitled Leon written a hopeless travesty. A significant biog­ Trotsky: Lenine (p. 29 of LA r e v o l u t io n SUR­ raphy of Andre Breton has yet to appear. REALISTE, No. 5, 1925) is not an excerpt from Trotsky’s work but a review of it by Breton. Ob­ F.R.

RIKKI: Phenomenology of the Pineapple (linocut, 1971)

53 FIFTEEN CENTS

The Weekly News-Magazine

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COMMISSAR TROTZKY VOL. V. No. 20 T!ic Krcmliu ua.r cold MAY 18, 1925 (See Page 10)

“The struggle for revolutionary ideas in art must begin once again with the struggle for artistic truth ... in terms of the immutable faith of the artist in his own inner self. Without this there is no art. ‘You shall not lie!’ — that is the formula of salvation. . . . In our epoch of convulsive reaction, of cultural decline and return to savagery, truly independent crea­ tion cannot but be revolutionary by its very nature, for it cannot but seek an outlet from intolerable social suffocation. But art as a whole, and each artist in particular, seeks this outlet in ways proper to himself - not relying on orders from outside, but rejecting such orders and heaping scorn on all who submit to them." T ___'T.Tjnrpou-v- (excerpts from a letter to — Leon IK U I 0 K 1 Andre Breton, 22 December 1938) 54 RECENTLY PUBLISHED WORKS OF TROTSKY The salutary, irreducible genius of Leon activity occurs as much outside and against the Trotsky is disputed today only by outright re­ framework of aesthetics as the workers’ councils actionaries, incurable ignoramuses and the function outside and against the framework of usual gang of idle chatterers who prefer "radi­ existing political institutions. The proletarian cal” fads and postures to unadorned revolution­ revolution — that is, the abolition of class society ary truth. The rigorous evaluation of Trotsky’s — will permit humanity, for the first time, to ideas, meanwhile, remains an urgent task of confront the human condition in all its dimen­ our time, impeded though it is on all sides by sions. The well-known combat alliance between bourgeois academicians and pro-Mao liberals, Trotsky and the surrealists was based to a con­ by anarchist oversimplifiers and Stalinist falsi­ siderable extent on their agreement on this fiers, as well as by too many ill-informed zealots fundamental point. of the various sects contending for the mantle This collection includes the discourse "ClaM of Trotskyist "orthodoxy.” It should be added and Art”; the celebrated manifesto written in that we are far from having Trotsky’s complete collaboration with Andre Breton (and one of works at our disposal: entire books (such as the Trotsky’s letters to Breton); two e^ ys on three-volume military study, How the Revolu­ Tolstoy; beautiful short texts on Sergei Esenin tion Armed Itself), numerous essays, speeches and Vladimir Mayakovsky; warm appreciations and short articles have never appeared in Eng­ of the Autobiography of M other Jones and Jack lish translation. In these times when countless London’s Iron Heel; and several other texts. It confusionists noisily engage themselves in non­ is occasionally exasperating to see how seriously stop competition, the publication of certain pre­ Trotsky considered certain fly-by-night pol­ viously untranslated or uncollected works by troons — Celine, for example — while he ignored Trotsky must be recognized as a significant event far greater writers such as Crevel and Peret. in the becoming of freedom. But even in eMays devoted to authors now de­ servedly forgotten or scorned one finds memor­ ON LITERATURE AND ART able traces of the lucidity, the sensitiveness, the audacity that make Trotsky, in the opinion of Leon Trotsky on Literature and Art (Path­ many, the finest Marxist since Marx. finder) is especially welcome at this moment, This volume actually includes only a small when the perfumed lucubrations of the late and portion of Trotsky’s writings on literature and unlamented Lukacs and the crude populist pon- art. Hopefully his early e^ays on Nietzsche, tifications of the persistently invidious Mao Zola, Ibsen, Ruskin, Maupassant, Herzen, Bel­ monopolize the completely idiotic discussions of insky, Dobrolyubov and others will be included "Marxist aesthetics.” Trotsky’s irrelrangible in a later collection. Meanwhile, a number of dialectics provides an effective antidote to this significant texts are available in other volumes: poisonous miasma of Stalinist garbage. A an essay on Gogol in The Basic Writings of "Marxist aesthetics,” of course, does not and Trotsky (Vintage); a communication on "The cannot exist, and Trotsky’s superiority to all Party’s Policy in the Field of Art and Philoso­ those who have tried to contrive such a bureau­ phy” in Writings 1932-3 (Pathfinder); "Revo­ cratic-metaphysical chimera is demonstrated by lutionary Art and the Fourth International” in the fact that his poetic and artistic preoccupa­ Writings 1938-9 (Pathfinder); and a remarkable tions (and this is true also of Marx and Engels) e^ay, "Vodka, the Church and the Cinema” in lay entirely elsewhere. Problems of Everyday Life (forthcoming from As he rather modestly explained in his Pathfinder). superb essay, "A rt and Politics in Our Epoch,” F.R. Trotsky was concerned primarily with "posing the problem correctly.” H e was concerned, that THE STRUGGLE AGAINST FASCISM is, first and last, with human freedom, with the reconstruction of social reality on communist In the U. S. we have recently observed the foundations which, as he wrote in Literature reactivation of the American Nazi Party, the and Revolution, "will develop all the vital ele­ rise of the Jewish Defense League and confusion ments of contemporary art to the highest point,” regarding the presidential campaign of Alabama so that "the average human type will rise to the governor George Wallace. In Italy the Sicilian heights of an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Marx. regional arem bly elections of 13-14 June 1971 And above this ridge new peaks will rise.” registered the gains of the fascist Movimento Trotsky here, without in the least sacrificing Sociale Italiano, which captured 13.9% of the Marxist rigor, picks up the venerable thread of total vote, up from 8.2% the year before. Recent utopian inquiry — it is not accidental that he events in Chile, Bolivia, Britain, Ireland and greatly admired Fourier. And it is not only his West Germany clearly delineate the inevitable thorough grasp of the realities of the class strug­ slide toward Bonapartism on an international gle but also his vision of the limitless poMibilities scale. In the fundamental life and death ques­ of communist life that made it impossible for tions of Bonai: irtism, Fascism, and War, the him to succumb to the abject deceit of "pro­ bourgeoisie has learned more from the class letarian art” or other philistine evasions. Woe struggles since 1929 than has the workers’ move­ unto those who pretend that "poetry made by ment. all” signifies merely that under communism The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany everyone will write poems! Revolutionary poetic (Pathfinder) unites nearly all of Trotsky’s 55 brilliant and incisive writings on the subject: munists is the same as that of all other pro­ one full book, three long essays and twenty other letarian parties: formation of the proletariat pamphlets, articles and letters. Having analyzed into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois suprem­ this new social phenomenon since its inception, acy, conquest of political power by the pro­ Trotsky-fighting in exile with only a few scat­ letariat” (M arx and Engels, The Communist tered comrades around him; hunted by all the Manifesto), Trotsky brilliantly exposes and united forces of reaction; repeatedly exiled and analyzes the day-to-day molecular process of denied asylum by the “democracies”; a price in the formation of the Russian proletariat into rubles on his head and the only public political the class-for-itself, a class conscious of itself as trials in the Third Reich being organized against a class, in the heat of the forge of the mighty his followers-marshalled all his forces both per­ events of 1905 in the aftermath of the Russo- sonal and political for a fight to the knife against Japanese war. Overthrowing the narrow organ­ the barbarity of “ national socialism.” In his izational bonds which serve as the material unflinching combat against the degeneration of vehicles of bourgeois ideology in times of qui­ the Third International and for the united front escence (churches, nationalist parties, trade against fascism, Trotsky had to slice through unions, etc.) the Russian proletariat organized the near total confusion surrounding the social itself into the only vehicle proper for its “for­ pathology that is fascism: confusion stretching mation . . . into a class, [its] overthrow of the from the bourgeoisie and their fascist allies to bourgeois supremacy [and its] conquest of polit­ Social Democracy and the Stalinists. These ical power” — soviets, workers' councils. writings stand as an adamantine monument to As an exposition of this entire process, from struggling humanity, unblemished against the united front to workers’ councils and the seizure lies, slanders and vilification surrounding his of power, and of the class-for-itself concept of cause and his unheeded call. organizing (a basic tenet of scientific socialism), Fascism as an international phenomenon in­ Trotsky's 1905 is comparable only to The troduced certain structural changes that pre­ Mass Strike, the Political Party and the Trade figure significant features of capitalist economy Unions by Rosa Luxemburg. The reading and today. That fascism conducted initial experi­ assimilation of these texts is but a necessary ments and carried important lessons for the preliminary to the realization of freedom, the subsequent course of bourgeois economy is triumph of the human spirit. startlingly realized in Trotsky's Marxism in Our Peter MANTI Time (also from Pathfinder Press). Trotsky's writings on fascism are therefore not simply a THE YOUNG LENIN penetrating scientific analysis of some dead and transitory historical phenomenon, but in fact a Leon Trotsky's The Young Lenin (Double­ prognosis and-a warning. day) is far more than a brilliant study of the developing personality of a man who trans­ 1905 formed man's future. It is more than an ex­ pression of deep love and respect by the man The present historical moment, eve of the im­ who alone seemed, at one time, to grasp the full pending socialist revolution in these United reality of Lenin’s role as leader of the Bol­ States, reveals at one and the same time the shevik Party. It is a valuable and incisive ac­ total disarray of the workers’ movement and the count of and confrontation with the ideological unique availability of the highest theoretical trends preceding the emergence of Marxism in acquisitions of scientific socialism, the distilled Russia. It is a stern rebuke to those who, for essential lessons of prior battles in the class various motives, seek to reduce comrade Lenin struggle. to the level of a Stalin, a Mao, a Castro — to On the one hand, nearly every avowedly so­ equate an eagle and a flea. cialist organization is today pursuing a variant Recently, while discussing Lenin, the follow­ of “community control,” touting a segment of ing proposal occurred to me: that the anniver­ the “oppressed” as the “new vanguard”; or, sary of Ilyich's birth be commemorated by a when it dares blusteringly to speak of workers, performance of Shakespeare's Tempest in which does so only in the narrowest sense of trade the various characters would be made up and unionists, i.e., only 20 per cent of the entire costumed as the principal figures in the exile of workforce of North America. These narrow and Leon Trotsky: Trotsky as Prospero, Stalin as particularist conceptions, reflecting a slavish Antonio, Lenin as Ariel, etc. The backdrop for worship of the accomplished fact, merely rep­ such a performance would be a set of revolving resent the class as it is, the class-in-itself. In reproductions of works by Matthias Griinewald, organizing around these concepts instead of Giorgio de Chirico, Arshile Gorky; musical ac­ their transcendence, the Left reveals its essenti­ companiment would include Charlie Parker's ally bourgeois ideology and unfitness for revolu­ Ornithology, Thelonious Monk's Brilliant Cor­ tion : the “ old” L eft having forgotten more than ners, John Coltrane’s Vigil. A book such as it ever remembered, and the “new” L eft exhibit­ Trotsky's Young Lenin is comparable only to ing in its infancy all the signs of advanced se­ such works as these. nility. On the other hand, the publication of Trotsky's 1905 (Vintage), for the first time in English, makes available a revolutionary classic directly pertinent to immediate problems. R e­ iterating that “ the immediate aim of the com­ Pangolin Robbing a white ant's nest. 56 HOMAGE TO MAGLOIRE-SAINT-AUDE Though it happened in May 1971, I did not bought the latest INTERCONTINENTAL P ^ S , learn of the death of my friend Clement Mag- noting, on the headquarters wall, an enormous loire-Saint-Aude until almost three months had poster depicting the founder of the Red Army, passed-it was during the weekend when, as hur­ caricatured as a long-whiskered lion pouncing ricane Edith neared the Gulf Coast, the deeply on the counter-revolutionaries. moving revolt erupted at Attica, N.Y. It would " I went home, and found an answer from be absurd for me to deny that I discern in the Magloire-Saint-Aude in the mail. As I began juxtaposition of such supposedly unrelated reading it, the power went off. I thought the events the magnetic dialectics of Afro-American fuses needed changing, and went down into the civilization that Magloire-Saint-Aude himself cellar. Entering the low-ceilinged room I was embodied so forcefully. momentarily stunned by the density of the light About him much more needs to be written: streaming through the small, dirty windows. It This modest personification of black lightning resembled the light in Mayan and Aztec ruins, remains one of the very greatest of poets, a and seemed to give me a glimpse of how the master of humor and revolt, of the storm within house would look at the end of another three the word. For now let s^ufce a rereading of an hundred years. I noticed my black cat, Trotsky, entry in an old journal of mine, parallel to the stock still as if meditating, under one of the day when I first communicated with Magloire windows. Coming closer I distinguished the ob­ Saint-Aude, ject of his stare: a single human hair, very long, Visiteur en guide ovale de nuit auburn, caught in the splintered sash and flut­ Et tering in and out of the light. I was able to En habits de gala de lord sans crane. affirm that this hair was from the head of my “ August 6. It was the hottest day of the year. loved one, Mary. It turned out the power-failure About 4 in the afternoon I stopped by the head­ was city-wide.” quarters of the Socialist Workers Party and S. S. THE TEL QUEL SCHOOL OF FALSIFICATION The French review QUEL, devoted to Q^UEL'S judgment is that surrealism “ ap­ "Literature/Philosophy/Science/Politics” and peared” to be on the Left in the 1920s and 30s largely derived, theoretically, from various but reappears today “ on the Right.” This sort schools of structuralism and the “ thoughts” of of “ criticism” is made in such bad faith that it Mao Tsetung (whom t e l q u e l is fond of quot­ requires no reply. Nothing is clearer than that ing in the original Chinese), has attracted no the current resurgence of surrealism parallels followers, nor even any serious attention, in the and is indissolubly linked to the resurgence of U.S. t e l q u e l specializes in a form of sophis­ militancy in the working class. The struggle for ticated cretinization which enables it simulta­ surrealism today is an indispensable compo­ neously to proclaim its solidarity with world nent of the class struggle on the side of the communism and to publish William Burroughs, workers’ councils. Just as surrealism finds irre­ Jean Genet, Ezra Pound, degraded obfuscations placeable material weapons in the proletariat, of Lautreamont, and a vast quantity of incred­ so the proletariat will increasingly find mirac­ ibly pompous and demagogic literary criticism ulous weapons in surrealism. which it pretends has something to do with Q^UEL, however, prefers the resurrection of Marxism-Leninism. In taking sides with the so- Joseph Djugashvili Stalin, whose counter-revo­ called “ socialist” camp, QUEL means, of lutionary bureaucracy continues to oppress the course, the bureaucratic apparatuses which de­ workers of the “ socialist” countries and to sta­ stroyed the Communist International of Lenin bilize the world regime of the imperialist bour­ and Trotsky and which continue to perpetrate, geoisie. TEL QUEL’s infatuation with Maoism on an international scale, a vicious counter­ and other variants of Stalinism is sufficient revolutionary caricature of Marxism. proof that its program represents merely a Such grotesque intellectual confusionism pseudo-negation of capitalist society, character­ would not be worth mentioning were it not for istic of petty-bourgeois intellectuals who, feel­ the fact that almost half-48 pages out of 104-of ing compelled to criticize the bourgeoisie which its 46th issue (summer 1971) consists of a series restrains them, nonetheleM recoil with far of degenerate polemics against surrealism, or, more fear and trembling from the power of more specifically, against what t e l Q^UEL calls the workers. For Q^UEL, as for many other the “ new diffusion of surrealist ideology” to­ anti-proletarian academicians and journalists, day. Noting that the present resurgence of sur­ the Stalinist bureaucracies are a readymade realism far exceeds the sporadic renewals of savior. the past, QUEL unleashes a popular front of A more recent ex^ple of TEL Q^UEL’s anti­ false criticism and slander against the entirety surrealist effort-a tract titled Down With Sur­ of surrealist aims and principles, and particu­ realism, Long Live the Vanguard, dated May larly against surrealism’s association with Trots­ 1972-adds to its earlier libels only a little ky, its reliance on Hegel, its conception of dia­ foaming at the mouth. The “ new vanguard” lectical materialism, its utilization of Freudian proclaimed by t e l q u e l , as Jean-Louis Bedouin theory and its interest in F. W. H. Myers’ re­ noted in the fifth issue of the BULLETIN DE LIAI­ searches into psychic automatism. SON SU^^^USTE (September 1972), remains 57 “nothing other than one of the most insidious but that such an endeavor should be approached forms of reaction in the intellectual domain.” from so offensively condescending an attitude is How else can one describe an outfit that bab­ racist exploitation of the most egregiously in­ bles about the “ cause of the proletariat” but tellectual variety. declares “ NO to Revolt” and regards freedom Any attempt to assimilate the marvelous po­ as a “ bourgeois and Christian” value? etic powers of non-European, non-exploitative TEL QUEL’s editorial statement, “ The princi­ cultures into the imbecile pursuits of any crowd pal enemy is the bourgeoisie,” requires amend­ of dubious litterateurs and slave-overseers must ment: the principal enemy is the bourgeoisie be resisted with all the weapon’s at a houngan’s and its Stalinist accomplices. W e insist that disposal. S.S. this is, for us, by no means a purely theoretical question. More than anyone we strive with un­ BUNUUNUEL . . quenchable enthusiasm toward the day when the seizure of power by the workers’ councils Any of Luis Bufiuel’s works since Belle de will realize in practice, not only the victory of Jour ( The Milky Way, Tristana, The Discreet the world proletarian revolution (and there­ Charm of the Bourgeoisie) is a profound experi­ fore the complete vindication of the political ence; it is impossible to apply to them the insipid position of surrealism) but also, at the same vocabulary of the cinema critic. W e have pre­ time, the extirpation, once and for all, of the viously noted (see ARSENAL 1, “ Since Atheists Stalinist gangsters and their groveling pan- Dare Exist” ) the purity and strength of the derers: TEL QUEL. for example. Bufiuelian system of absolute divergences, F. R. which, for its richness and depth, is comparable only to those of Fourier, Lautreamont, Roussel TRAJECTORY and Duchamp, and is illimitably superior to the clever maunderings of any given exemplar of OF VOODOO venality and swinishness in film production, Milo Rigaud's Secrets Of Voodoo (Pocket from the retarded Howard Hawks to the repul­ Books) has, since its first publication in Paris sive Jean-Luc Godard. in 1953, remained the most lucid exposition of It is significant that the partisans of various the activities of the Haitian mysteres, fortun­ "theories of film” (none of which is more than a ately lacking both the sensationalism of W i l l i e childish attempt to whitewash the most morally Seabrook and the too-rigid rationalism of Alfred bankrupt Hollywood excretions) have had to Metraux. Its thorough catalogue of loas and, es­ maintain an uneasy silence in Bufiuel’s presence. pecially, its analysis of the personality of Dan- Let us admit, once and for all, that today Bufi- balah are invaluable; its photographs are as uel alone demonstrates what is to be done in unique as Rigaud’s own experience in so many cinema. houn’ fors. Although the mysteres have nowhere S.S. else attained so wide an influence as in Haiti, their extension to the Southern U.S.; to Vera­ cruz, Mexico; to Venezuela; to Brazil; and to A NOTE ON THE Cuba should not be neglected, although, unfor­ tunately, serious anthropological literature, INTERPRETATION largely limited to Brazil and (since the Revolu­ tion) Cuba, has found few opportunities for OF IRRATIONAL translation and publication in the U.S. Two sig­ nificant exceptions are recent: Autobiography PHENOMENA of a Runaway Slave, told by Esteban Montejo W hy was it that today, as the weather warmed to Miguel Barnet (Morrow), and Pepe Carril’s and I walked down the street, the smell of tar play Shango de Ima (Doubleday) provides a being melted by roofers nearby produced in me glimpse of the power of santeria (a Cuban form a sensation of nostalgia for laboring work and of the mysteres, analogous to Haitian vaudou) industrial atmosphere? Then, in a drug store, I and naniguismo (a complex of esoteric associa­ looked around for medicated soap and quite ac­ tions limited, unlike santeria, to its initiates) in cidentally ended up with a bar of pine tar soap. the daily life of Cuban Blacks. Carril’s work, A little later I was reading a ridiculous little fortunately, is powerful enough to overcome the pamphlet on “ witchcraft” by a local “ wag” and mendacity of the attached effusion by one Jer­ came across a reference to tar as an anti-demon­ ome Rothenberg. iac charm. The all-too-lucrative labors of Rothenberg & Three experiences involving the substance or Co., exemplified by the anthology Technicians the word “tar” -a ll within the space of about of the Sacred and the periodical Alcheringa. rep­ three hours . .. resent neither more nor less than a racist, im­ perialist, cultural theft/rape of frightful propor­ ARCANUM III-THE EMPRESS (Ve­ tions. That Rothenberg should, given his appar­ nus) ... attraction. ently complete ignorance of linguistics and even ARCANUM XVIII (R)-THE MOON the most elementary principles of cultural rela­ (dusk) . . . “ a ROOF which stifles and tivism, proceed with such ardent pretensions is oppresses” merely irritating; that the task of making ac- ARCANUM XX (T) — JUDGMENT . . . cesible the poetic thought of non-European cul­ renewal of consciousness (ARCHE­ tures should devolve upon personalities so obvi­ T Y P E , which inspires sundering of roof- ously mediocre as Rochelle Owens is grotesque; prison) 58 ARCANUM I (A)-TH E MAGICIAN! ... as an “exemplary critique”; Shierry Weber’s at­ the ability to realize desire through oc­ tempts to harness Marcuse with obscurantist cult means Jungian concepts and her subsequent eulogy to The roof, the magician, even the concept of re­ (believe it or not) vegetarianism, etc. — such newal which corresponds so beautifully with the elements must be seen not as the flyleaf pre­ “ pine tar” soap! The indication of Arcanum I I I tends, as “ an indispensable extension of the is to combine the cards in an order at odds with Marcusean vision of man and society," but the order of the letters T-A-R, but not in reverse rather as moments in a process of debasement (R -A -T ) since the Empress is positive. W e can which lasts 188 pages. do this by following the chronology of the orig­ From such pseudo-critical spectators as these inal “ events" and getting a three part reading nothing of importance is to be expected. But if corresponding to the three chronological divi­ they think their little vicarious weapons are sions, past, present and future. Thus the roof­ sufficient to turn the critical theory of Marcuse ing tar (oppressive, enclosing) corresponds to into its opposite, it is our pleasure to call their division one, the past; the soap (renewal) cor­ bluff. responds to division two, the present; the mag­ Let this lilliputian crew, all dreMed up and no ical use of tar (occult power) corresponds to di­ place to go, scamper back to the philosophical vision three, the future. security of their grandmothers' kitchens. As This process (R -T -A ) is identical with the Marcuse himself has said, we cannot be indis­ traditional route of progress toward illumina­ criminate “ where freedom and happineM them­ tion. And we might note that it evades the only selves are at stake: here, certain things cannot other permutation available, A R T (T R A ). F i­ be said, certain ideas cannot be expressed . . . nally, as I originally consulted the word-letter without making tolerance an instrument for the correspondence to find the appropriate Arcana, continuation of servitude." Our fraternal respect I accidentally began with R, then caught myself for Marcuse — especially the Marcuse of Rea­ and went next to T-A. son and Revolution and Eros and Civilization — T h e criticism of this is quite obvious: the ex­ necessitates this attack on this wretched com­ citable mind “ reading into” and seeing forced pilation which is, from cover to cover, a reaction­ analogies that are trivial. However, the “ events" ary mystification and therefore completely in­ cannot be prejudged as trivial with any justice tolerable. either, neither in what they are nor in what they F.R. mean on the most various levels. Their coher­ ence is undeniable. And the cards lead to a deep­ ening of meaning in everything they refer to, in­ SURREALIST sofar as they cut a new swath of light across the phenomena, always adding something new. “ Su­ PRECOGNITION perstition” in regard to the cards in this sense Superficially, Manitoba means nothing to me, means actually willingness to trust them and except that the word appeared “ out of the blue” learn from them. It means in fact the ability at a as a motif in a severely automatic poem I wrote moment's notice to regard anything whatsoever in 1968, two years before I became aware of from a new perspective, to radicalize meaning Franklin Rosemont and corresponded with him. by the application of juxtaposition. Here per­ The text in question begins, “ something floated ception is ceaselessly renewed, intuition is an ac­ out of Manitoba, telling me your name", and tive function. continues elsewhere to mention “ your name" as J. J. well as “ Manitoba”. For example: your name out of Manitoba your silent name beyond orders MARCUSE’S EPIGONES from the pits of dark passion Some time ago the Roman Catholic publishing where fire flagellates god’s behind till he house of Herder & Herder published an anthol­ sends the names coursing through my ogy of "new left perspectives" on Herbert Mar­ nerves cuse, entitled Critical Interruptions, edited by by-passing ears Paul Breines. The flyleaf says it is the collective and the stop signs of intelligence work of six young “radical activists," but the Later, in the Fall of 1970. Franklin Rose­ content of the book is sufficient proof that the mont sent me the Fall 1969 issue of MOSAIC, a “ activity" of these “ activists" has never seen journal published by the University of Manitoba the light of day or the blackness of night, never Press. This periodical, which I had never seen once touched either the spirit or the flesh of real before, contained an article by J. H. Matthews, life. Rather, they have obviously spent the whole “ Surrealism, Politics, and Poetry." Therein, as of their anemic energy in the petty, self-satisfied, I knew I would, I found the name of Rosemont, vacuous voyeurism once so fashionable in the the name “ out of Manitoba" that the voice be­ now defunct salons of the upper-middle-class hind the poem was invoking so monotonously echelons of the “ New Left." Thus the book’s and intriguingly. dedication to Ho Chi Minh, the late Stalinist J. J. bureaucrat and murderer of the finest cadres of the Vietnamese revolutionary movement; Breines's footnote in which a totally addled pamphlet, Listen, Marxist! by the “ post-scar­ city” anarcho-imbecile M. Bookchin is described AARl>-VARlt (io) 59 SURREALIST PUBLICATIONS: 1971-1973

Since the publication of the first issue of AR­ tion of slightly over 300 copies was sold mostly SENAL in December 1970, the surrealist move­ at the Conference itself. ment in the United States has issued the follow­ The Apple of the Automatic Zebra’s Eye (De­ ing tracts (8112'' x 11" unless otherwise noted) cember). 28-page pamphlet of poems by and pamphlets: Franklin Rosemont, with a Preface and “ A *1 9 7 1 * Note on Automatism” ; and positive and neg­ Declaration of War (January). ative drawings by Schlechter Duvall. Sur­ 12" x 18" poster outlining the surrealists’ realist Research & Development Monograph fundamental orientation and announcing the Series Number One. appearance of ARSENAL. * 1 9 7 2 * The Surrealists to the Students of Northwestern Surrealism and Madness (February). University (A p ril). Leaflet protesting a course 9-page 8'h'' x 11" compilation on the subject of in surrealism taught by a certain Professor madness, prepared for the Conference on Waage. Madness in Toronto. Preface by Franklin The Anteater’s Umbrella/A Contribution to the Rosemont; “Fate of the Obsessive Image” by Critique of the Ideology of Zoos (August). Paul Garon (a paper read at the Conference); 81h'' x 14" leaflet (illustrated with drawings other texts and excerpts by Antonin Artaud, by Leonora Carrington) originally distributed Andre Breton, Jean-Frois Wittman and Con­ at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago. roy Maddox; also a list of “Other Works to Notes for an Introduction to the First Principles Consult.” of Surrealism (August). An 8-page summary The Irish Rebellion Here and Now (March). of basic surrealist perspectives, prepared for Leaflet of solidarity with the proletariat of the colloquium on surrealism sponsored by the Ireland distributed at the St. Patrick’s Day Chicago branch of the International Socialists. parade in Chicago. Surrealism 1971 (August) . Hidden Locks (April) A 64-page compilation of responses to an in­ 12-page collection of surrealist texts by quiry on the present situation and future of Stephen Schwartz, with a frontispiece by surrealism. The inquiry had been sent out in Max-Walter Svanberg. Monograph Series January 1971 to those in the U.S. who had Number Two. indicated their intentions to pursue the sur­ The Poetical Alphabet (A pril). realist adventure. The responses were printed 24-page reprint of the appendix to Pluriverse in an edition of 100 copies intended solely as by Benjamin Paul Blood, with an Introduc­ a bulletin of internal discussion. tion by Stephen Schwartz. Monograph Series No Surrealism for the Enemies of Surrealism! Number Three. (September). Leaflet (co-signed by Conroy Rana Mozelle (October). Maddox in England and Guy Ducornet and 16-page collection of surrealist texts, pre­ Rikki in Canada) protesting the police ma­ ceded by “Fate of the Obsessive Image,” by neuvers of the British pseudo-surrealist book­ Paul Garon. Monograph Series Number Four. seller, John Lyle. Music Is Dangerous (October) . Toward the Second Chicago Fire/Surrealism 32-page slightly abridged English translation and the Housing Question (September). of the celebrated “ Conference de Charleroi” Leaflet printed on both sides, originally dis­ (1929) by Paul Nouge. Monograph Series tributed at the official ceremonies commem­ Number Five. orating the centennial of the Chicago Fire of Down Below (October). 1871. 48-page account by Leonora Carrington of her In Memory of Georg Lukacs (October). experiences in Spain on the other side of the 20-page compilation of contributions to the mirror, after being pronounced incurably in­ demystification of the late Stalinist mystic. sane. Monograph Series Number Six. Preface by Franklin Rosemont; texts by Peter Surrealist Insurrection 5 (October). Manti and David Schanoes; also an open 17112" x 22112" poster with a statement “ On the letter to the editors of the journal TELOS. 1972 Elections,” “ Capitalism & Liberty,” etc. War, Hide Yourself! (November). * 1973* 8W' x 14" illustrated leaflet containing a Bulletin of Surrealist Information 1 (February) . “ Message to the Workers” and quotations by 8W' x 14" bulletin, printed on both sides, Lenin, Luxemburg, Trotsky, Malatesta, Peret summarizing recent activity of the surrealist and Creve!. Originally distributed at an anti­ movement. war rally in Chicago. Declaration on Joseph Losey’s Film: The Assas­ Surrealist Intervention (November). sination of Leon Trotsky (M arch). 5112'' x 8112'' 24-page 8'h'' x 11" compilation of papers pre­ leaflet denouncing the recent Stalinist cine­ sented by the Surrealist Group at the 2nd matic caricature of Leon Trotsky. International TELOS Conference in Buffalo, Bulletin of Surrealist Information 2 (M a y ). New York. The Preface indicates the surreal­ 8W' x 14" bulletin, printed on both sides, con­ ists’ revolutionary oppositional orientation at taining “The Defenestration of the Dissimu­ the Conference. Texts by Franklin Rosemont, lators” and a brief statement of the surreal­ John Simmons and David Schanoes. The edi­ ists’ political position. 60 SURREALISM Huing blucu MAGAZINE Books — Pamphlets — Periodicals

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63 SURREALIST R E S E A R C H & DEVELOPMENT Black Swan Press MONOGRAPH SERIES Fata Morgana by Andre Breton 1. The Apple of the Automatic Zebra’s Eye A long poem written in 1940, illustrated by Seventeen surrealist poems and “ A Note the Cuban surrealist painter Wi fredo Lam. on Automatism” by Franklin Rosemont, “This poem,” said Breton, “ fixes my posi­ with positive and negative drawings by tion, more unyielding than ever, of resist­ Schlechter Duvall. “Emblems of evil dom­ ance to the masochistic undertakings which inate in the accursed societies . . . It is not tend in France to restrain poetic liberty or my fault if the wolf professes the same po­ immolate it on the same altar as the litical opinions as the mouflon and the others.” 32 pages. 850 zebra” (Alphonse Toussenel). 28 pages. 750 Athanor by Penelope Rosemont Seventeen surrealist poems illustrated with 2. Hidden Locks alchemical engravings. “A as in Athanor, A collection of surrealist texts by Stephen cormorant-poems by Penelope Rosemont” Schwartz, with a frontispiece by Max- (Joyce Mansour). Second printing. 16 Walter Svanberg. “The tulips more vicious pages. 500 than a rotten liver; you are my sister tear of green ears” (Benjamin Peret). 12 The Morning o f a Machine Gun pages. 500 by Franklin Rosemont Twenty surrealist poems profusely illus­ 3. The Poetical Alphabet trated with drawings by the author. Also An inquiry into language by the American includes the essay Situation of Surrealism presurrealist philosopher Benjamin Paul in the U.S. (1966) originally published in Blood (reprinted from Pluriverse, 1920), the French surrealist journal L ’Archibras, with an introduction by Stephen and the texts of various leaflets issued by Schwartz. “Language is given man that the surrealists in Chicago. Cover by Eric he might make surrealist use of it” (An­ Matheson. 64 pages. $1.75 dre Breton) . 24 pages. 500 In Memory of Georg Lukacs 4. Rana Mozelle Contributions to the demystification of the Fifteen surrealist texts, authentically am­ late Stalinist mystic. 20 pages. 500 phibious and automatic, preceded by a succinct treatise on the “Fate of the Ob­ Remove Your Hat by Benjamin Peret sessive Image,” ’ by Paul Garon, author of Twenty poems by one of the greatest poets The Devil’s Son-In-Law. “ W e shall pick and theorists of the surrealist movement. up an existence by its frogs” (Charles “What is Benjamin Peret? A menagerie in F o rt). 20 pages. 500 revolt, a jungle, liberty” (Marcel Noll and Raymond Queneau). 32 pages. 750 5. Down Below Leonora Carrington’s classic account of Surrealist Insurrection her adventures in Spain on the other side Wall-poster periodically issued by the Sur­ of the mirror, after being pronounced in­ realist Group in Chicago. 250 curably insane (reprinted from VVV No. 4, 1944). “The task of the right eye is to Surrealism in the Service of the Revolution peer into the telescope, while the left eye Edited by Franklin Rosemont. A 96-paged peers into the microscope” (Leonora Car­ Special Issue of Radical America with es­ rington) . With detailed map. 48 pages. $1 says, poems and drawings by Andre Breton, Leonora Carrington, Aime Cesaire, Rene 6. Music Is Dangerous Crevel, Schlechter Duvall, Paul Garon, Translation of a 1929 lecture by Paul Arshile Gorky, Ted Joans, Gerard Legrand, Nouge (1895-1967), a leading figure of the Etienne Lero, Pierre Mabille, Joyce Man- surrealist movement in Belgium (re­ sour, M imi Parent, Benjamin Peret, Jose printed from View magazine, 1946). Pierre, Penelope Rosemont, T-Bone Slim, “Eyes are more accurate witnesses than Toyen et al. $1.50 ears” (Heraclitus). 32 pages. 750

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64 "surrealism, n. Pure psychic automatism, by which it is proposed to expreffi, verbally, in writing or by other means, the real functioning of thought. The dictation of thought, in the absence of all control exercised by reason, and outside all aesthetic or moral preoccupations.” — Andri Breton (First Surrealist Manifesto)

SU^MER1973 $ 2°°