Why Lettrism
4
The words we make up during this epoch in the world, unfortunately tend
to limit us. Without a doubt, the term Lettrist is a hard description for
people who have no particular esteem for this kind of sound effect, and
except on the sound track of a few films, have not made use of it. But the
term 'French' seems to give us exclusive links with this nation and its
colonies. Atheism has been qualified as 'Christian', 'Jewish' or 'Islamic'
with disconcerting ease. And also we are obviously locked within a more
or less refined 'bourgeois' education, if not such ideas, at least such
vocabulary.
Thus a good number of terms will be made guardedly, despite the evolution
of our researches and usage - leading to refinement - of many waves of followers:
Lettrist International, metagraphy, and other neologisms of which we have
remarked that they excite the fury of all sorts of people. The first condition
of our agreement is to keep such people a long way away from us.
It could be objected that this is, on our part, to propagate an arbitrary,
stupid and dishonest confusion amongst the intellectual elite; this gives
us a subject ready to ask us 'what exactly do we want' with a concerned
and protective air, which immediately throws it out by doing this. But in
the certainty that no literary or journalistic hack has seriously occupied
themselves with what we have been carrying out for a number of years, we
know that any confusion has in no way been engendered by ourselves. And
on the other hand it pleases us.