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.