Читать книгу Why Art Criticism? A Reader - Группа авторов - Страница 27
Оглавлениеfrom Œuvres Complètes, Paris 1970, first published in 1932
André Breton, Le revolver à cheveux blancs (The White-Haired Revolver);1 Tristan Tzara, Où boivent les loups (Where the Wolves Drink); Paul Éluard, La vie immédiate (The Immediate Life), Paris, Cahiers libres, vol. I, 1932.
These three collections of poems are just about this year’s only testimony to the diminished activity of Surrealism, and it is certainly in keeping with the will of their authors to study them not from a vague and more or less bluntly literary point of view and rather from a point of view that they themselves have sought to define.
It was not exactly into literary existence, considered as a specialized domain, but rather into existence as such that Surrealism sought to introduce a mode of activity that exceeds limits—those fixing law and those fixing custom—that atrophy to the same extent as thought and its expression; acts and attitudes. Critiques formulated on all sides have only avoided insignificance to the degree that they have documented the various outcomes in pursuit of this declared goal.
In the latter case, they happily deride those literati who have only barely managed to escape the degradation of an intellectual life that, for the very reason of its broad development, has debased itself ever closer to the point of inanity.
But it must be recognized that it is not enough to ironically note the discrepancy between effort and outcome. It is certain that all activity worthy of interest requires a radical rupture from the world of impoverished vanity, of rarefied thought, in which the current excitement of the literary bourgeoisie is to be found. It remains possible to assign vital importance to the representation of humanity before its own eyes and to refuse entirely those conditions of expression which, as a matter of obligation, make of this representation a senile farce, a little pretense here, a little perversity there. For this determination to reach a region perfectly estranged from this world of petty hypocrisies has been now expressed by the Surrealists with a certain force, and it is thus that their maneuvers, their impoverished precocities, their conventional provocations that have responded to this resolution without perceptible reward, cause little mirth given that they now warrant a pessimism more or less without reserve.
André Breton publishes under the title Le revolver à cheveux blancs a collection of poems that, written between 1915 and the present year, at least has the merit of not insisting on promises too loosely kept. On the contrary, its entire poetic activity is situated in keeping with a French literary tradition typified best by Stéphane Mallarmé and to which even Paul Valéry reattaches himself. Surrealism’s own contributions to technique, tasked with subverting expression and via expression life itself, appear reduced to their proper scale: a method just as impoverished as those others in a series of efforts characterized by a search for method having replaced the vulgarity of poetic inspiration.
Within this series, however, it is possible to consider the Surrealist method as a denouement after which all novelty of the same kind would be untenable from the very start. It would thus have the merit of a perfect demonstration: the systematic search for modes of expression has the outcome of coming closer to an increasingly estranged image of poetry, but to a degree this image has emptied itself of its human significance in that it has rid itself of certain elements that are in immediate contact with elements essential to life. Revolver à cheveux blancs is situated entirely within this impasse.
The collection is preceded by a sort of preface in which André Breton himself comes to speak of puerility and which is certainly the most degenerate product of Surrealist literature: having reached this extremity of dullness, it is difficult to observe any difference from the nauseating horticultures of Jean Cocteau.
Tristan Tzara’s poems are tinged with an incontestable grandeur. And if they appear estranged and situated outside of life, this character of isolation, far from introducing impotence, is undoubtedly the only thing that exists in the most blinding of worlds. Within the limits of poetry, expression reaches a point of extremity. But at the same time, it reveals itself to be incapable of changing the course of any kind of existence or of responding to the base need expressed by Surrealism. As seductive as it may be, rupturing from life in its entirety remains nothing more than the culmination of the impoverished tendencies of Mallarméan poetry. It emerges with particular clarity in Tzara’s work—precisely because of a real force of expression—that Surrealism cannot have any meaning other than to carry to their extremes the exhaustion, emptiness, and despair that give modern societies’ mental existence its deepest meaning. In no case would he be able to keep the promise made to effect an exit from that existence, being incapable of creating a connection between poetry and life.
Paul Éluard’s poetry is keenly appreciated by a class of enlightened amateur enthusiasts of modern literature, but it has nothing to do with poetry. The author himself, who must suffer on account of this, does not hesitate to treat those who enjoy his writing as “men smaller than nature.”
Joan Miró: Recent Paintings
The set of Joan Miró’s paintings that we publish here represents the most recent development of this painter, with this present evolution being of particular interest. Miró commenced with a representation of objects so minute that to some degree, it turned reality to dust; a kind of sunlit dust. Subsequently these very objects, infinitesimal as they are, liberate themselves individually from any kind of reality, appearing like a throng of elements decomposed and all the more agitated. Ultimately, Miró having himself confessed his desire to “kill painting,” the decomposition was forced to a point at which nothing other than a few formless stains remained on the lid (or tombstone, if one prefers) of its box of tricks. The small, enraged, and alienated elements then once more force violent entry, before again disappearing here in these paintings, leaving behind nothing more than traces of who knows what disaster.
Les Pieds Nickelés
A Mexican god such as Quetzalcoatl, amusing itself by sneaking down from atop the mountains in small, illustrated form, seems to me more than any other thing explicable with the miserable repertoire of common words to have always been a Pied Nickelé:2 In its evident sadness and gratuitousness, any observation of this kind is nothing other than another small effort to denounce the pathetic stubbornness with which an insect colony of intellectuals, set in motion by an overwhelming imperative, repairs small holes in a hive wall that threatens to allow a pernicious light to pass through. It is in fact vital to the strength of the edifice upon which our intellectual existence depends that a certain part of human activity, falling, if we like, within the purview of moral freedom, cannot be defined by any term. It is already many years since the coughing and spluttering Dada (also rather courteous in the final analysis, making itself available rather quickly as an object of laughter) was ditched by its own makers. On the other hand, and in spite of a number of equivocations, it remains out of the question to speak of Surrealism, especially at that very moment where it seeks to culminate in nothing other than a morose obscurity.
It would be vain to seek direct remedy to such a state of affairs: it is evidently impossible at present, in any intellectual form at all, to permit sufficient freedom to the figures of the Mexican Valhalla, at once bloodied and dying with laughter. Today, it is easier to find their hilarious puerility and their scorn for grandiosity in the mocking faces of the Pieds Nickelés. The Pieds Nickelés, all in all, do nothing more than what small boys do to entertain themselves and, likely not knowing how to spit in the wind, no one would have the effrontery to clearly and loudly declare that the suffering we endure, the work performed the world over, the banks, the ministries, the hospitals, and the prisons have any goal other than to be the object of three especially ugly rascals’ delirious laughter.
The adventures—or misadventures—of the Pieds Nickelés gang, composed wholly of the characters Croquignol, Ribouldingue, and Filochard, have appeared since 1908 and without pause in one of the main illustrated children’s weeklies, L’Épatant. On sale before the war for just a few pennies, this weekly magazine was aimed at children from the classes referred to, with a singular cynicism, as underprivileged. Its enduring success and, we might say, the extraordinary fame of the Pieds Nickelés are of an essentially populaire (working-class) character. The exploits of the Pieds Nickelés, however, are very much familiar across the whole social ladder.
It is curious to once again note that to find the lowest of the likable bandits, it suffices to lose one’s seriousness (whereby a person old before their time cannot fail to rival the most terrible child). The social order may originate with a burst of laughter; children can be entertained by representations of this order being scorned by beings of perfect grotesqueness: they are never going to be anything other than people of the utmost honesty. Teachers and mothers effectively tell astonished children—not without the most comic gravity—that “life is not a burst of laughter.” With a soft hand, they give the children Pieds Nickelés for immediate enjoyment—before taking them back away from them with another.
But I imagine that in a sad mind clouded by that mysterious conditioning, a still-shimmering paradise can emerge from the formidable noise of breaking crockery: somewhere, in those extravagant stores where a jacketed specter armed with the notorious Do not touch sign moves around only to collapse with a cry like that of a duck whose throat has been cut in a hideous trap. Idiocy and wrongheadedness receiving outrageous reward, ugliness, the New Prometheus turned to a grimace, ripping from the sky not fire, but rather a burst of laughter; and finally, overflowing with joy, grinning angels of marvelous beauty reduced to decorating canned peas or camembert: unrestrained entertainment makes use of all the products of the world, and all discarded objects must be broken like playthings.
I cannot help but be crudely delighted at the thought that when they find no such paradise in reach, people—somewhat wild—generously permit one to puppets elevated to the status of gods, reducing themselves to the role of a plaything, looking curiously, but with the help of a large knife, at what is contained within the belly of that screeching plaything.
It is perhaps possible to push this timid pleasure a little further via a seemingly naïve assumption: when an individual is not a plaything, they are a player, unless they are both at the same time.
And if we lend to entertainment a sufficiently “Mexican” meaning, that is to say an intervention which is more or less always out of place in the most serious of domains, entertainment still runs the risk of appearing to be idealism’s sole reduction. A simple dream analysis can indicate, ultimately, that entertainment is the most desperate of needs and, of course, the most terrifying one in human nature.
1 This and the subsequent two collections have never appeared in English translation.
2 The comic Les Pieds Nickelés took its name from a French pejorative, “nickel-plated feet,” used to designate people perceived as evading or unable to work.
