Why Lettrism
3
From this fundamental opposition which is definitively the conflict of a
sufficiently new way of conducting one's life against an ancient tradition
of alienating it, there arises antagonisms of all sorts, provisionally smoothed
out in view of general action which is amusing and that, despite its awkwardness
and insufficiencies, we still maintain today is positive.
Certain ambiguities also arise from the humour that some place, and others
do not place, in their chosen affirmations for their stupefying aspect:
although completely indifferent at any nominal survival through this or
that famous literature, we write so that our works - practically non-existent
- remain in history, with as much certainty as those histrionic people who
would become "eternal". What's more, we declare on all occasions
that we are beautiful. The baseness of arguments that are presented to us
in the film clubs and elsewhere do not give us the opportunity to reply
seriously. Elsewhere we continue to have plenty of charm.
The crisis of Lettrism, announced by the semi-open opposition of the old
fogeies to the experimental cinematography, which to their discredit they
judged as 'unstylish' violence, broke out in 1952 when the Lettrist Internationale,
which regrouped the extreme fraction of the movement in the shadow of a
magazine of this title, threw out damaging texts at a press conference held
by Chaplin. The aesthetic-Lettrists, now in a minority, were not in solidarity
with this action, leading to a break which their lame excuses did not succeed
to postpone or subsequently heal - because according to them, the creative
role carried out by Chaplin in the cinema makes him above criticism. The
rest of 'revolutionary' opinion reproached us once again at this time, because
the work and person of Chaplin still appeared to them to remain in a positive
perspective. Since then, many of these have changed their opinion.
To denounce the senility of doctrines, or the men who have given their name
to them, is an urgent and easy task for those who have retained the taste
for resolving the most alluring questions posed by our day and age. Whatever
the trickery of the lost generation who showed themselves between the last
war and today, they are condemned to debunk themselves. Nevertheless, having
recognised the bankruptcy of critical thought that these frauds have found
before them, it can be seen how Lettrism has contributed to their more rapid
oblivion; and that it is by no means strange that the presentation of an
Ionesco, remaking several scenic excesses of Tzara thirty years later and
twenty times more stupid, does not get a quarter of the distracted attention.
There are several years to go before the exaggerated corpse of Antonin Artaud.