Why Lettrism
1
It seems necessary to historically define the post war period in Europe
as one of the generalised halt of attempts at change, in the realm of emotions
as much as in the political realm.
Just when spectacular technical inventions multiply the chances of future
constructions, alongside the dangers of still unresolved contradictions,
we witness a stagnation of social struggles and, on the mental level, a
complete reaction against the movement of discovery which culminated around
1930 with the association of the broadest demands with the recognition of
the practical means of imposing them.
From the rise of fascism to the second world war, the exercise of revolutionary
means has been deceptive, and the regression of hopes linked to them has
been inevitable.
Following the incomplete liberation of 1944, intellectual and artistic reaction
broke loose everywhere: abstract painting, a simple moment of modern pictorial
evolution where it only occupies a very meagre place, is presented by all
the publicity machines as the basis of a new aesthetic. The alexandrine
is dedicated to a proletarian renaissance, where the proletariat will become
outmoded as a cultural form just as the quadriga and trireme have become
outmoded as a means of transport. The by-products of writing which had caused
indignation, and which had not been ready, are getting an ephemeral but
resounding admiration: the poetry of Prevert or Char, the prose of Gracq,
the drama of the atrocious cretin Pichette, and all the others. The Cinema,
where the various arrangements of scenarios are used just as harmonies,
proclaims its future in the plagiarism of De Sica, and finds novelty - and
above all exoticism - in various Italian films where meanness has imposed
a style of camerawork little different from the habits of Hollywood, but
so long after S.M.Eisenstein. Further, it is known that the scholars who
otherwise do not dance in caves, have given themselves up to laborious phenomenological
refinements.
Confronting this dismal and profitable mess, where each repetition has its
disciples, each regression its admirers, each remake its fans, a single
group shows universal opposition and complete contempt in the name of the
historically necessary supercession of old values. A kind of inventive optimism
has taken the place of refusal, affirming itself beyond refusal. It is necessary
to recognise the healthy role that Dada assumed in another epoch, despite
its very different intentions.
We may be told that it is not a very intelligent project to restart Dadaism.
But it is not a matter of going over Dadaism. The very serious setback of
revolutionary politics, linked to the glaring weakness of the working class
aesthetic promoted by the same retrograde phase, has lead to confusion in
every field where it will soon have raged for thirty years. On the spiritual
level the petit-bourgeoisie always hold sway. After several resounding crises,
its monopoly is even more extended than before: everything which is actually
impressed in the world - whether it be the capitalist literature, the social-realist
literature, the false formalist avant-garde living on forms which have dropped
into the public domain, or the bogus theosophical agonies of certain movements
of erstwhile emancipators - entirely nurtures the petit-bourgeois spirit.
Under the pressure of the realities of the epoch, it is well necessary to
finish with this spirit. From this perspective any measures are good.
The outrageous provocations that the Lettrist group has carried out or prepared
(poetry reduced to letters, metagraphic recital, cinema without images)
unleashes a fatal inflation in the arts.
We therefore joined them without hesitation.