Agulha Revista de Cultura: FLORIANO MARTINS | 100 years of eternity on the dissecting table

In 1919, poets André Breton, Louis Aragon and Philippe Soupault walked the streets of Paris, sat at cafés, met at the La Maison des Amis des Libres bookstore. Their friendship evoked magical affinity, far beyond the turmoil that would later be the brand of their lives. That was the year when Surrealism was born. Breton himself recalls that when the Manifesto came out, in 1924, that is, it sat on the shoulders of five years of uninterrupted experimentation, bringing along a large number and impressive variety of participants. Breton further recalls having met his two friends, Soupault through Apollinaire, Aragon at Adrienne Monnier’s bookstore. He speaks of them, first of Soupault, that he had enviable natural dispositions: in particular, he appeared to get along with the “old-school” poetry that Rimbaud had admittedly never been able to eliminate; and, of Aragon: No-one has been as skillful detecting the unusual in every aspect, or projecting such dizzying dreams on a hidden city life of sorts. Thus, the meeting of the three poets was the spark that, even in the bosom of Dada, was to feed the Surrealist spirit.

In March 1919, the three begin publication of the Littérature review. The title comes from a pun in the last verse of a famous poem by Paul Verlaine: Et tout le reste es littérature. A pun because of the ambivalence of the statement, or, as Breton retells, the word was adopted as antiphrasis, in a burlesque spirit that had nothing to do with Verlaine. Thus did Littérature com into existence. That same year, it ran Lautréamont’s Poésies and the first three chapters of Les champs magnétiques, the magic book by Breton and Soupault that the former regarded as the first surrealist (in no way Dadaist) work as it is the fruit of the earliest systematic applications of automatic writing.

That was the birth of Surrealism. It is worth emphasizing, to borrow Breton’s own words, it is entirely inaccurate, and chronologically incorrect, to present Surrealism as an offshoot of Dada, or to see in it the resurgence of Dada on the constructive plane. For all of Breton’s -famous words in defining Surrealism, Louis Aragon made the following statement two years after the publication of the first Manifesto:

The addiction called Surrealism is the disorderly and passionate use of the stupefying image, or rather, of unbounded provocation of the image by the image itself and what comes in its wake on the field of the representation of unpredictable disturbances and metamorphoses: for every image, with every blow, forces them to revise the entire Universe. And for every man that is an image to be found that will destroy the Universe.

Although it is frequently said, like Salvador Dalí did, that the Surrealist revolution is first and foremost a moral revolution, the movement made the biggest contribution to the artistic revolution of the 20th century. It has certainly been crucial in the realm of ideas, but no less important in the aesthetic domain, thanks to its techniques and the diversity of the appearances that emerge from the works of countless Surrealist poets and artists. It thus introduced, as Antonin Artaud pointed out, profound changes in the scale of appearances, in the value of meaning, in the symbolism of creation. On the one hand, there is the essential possibility that Surrealism creates to, as Breton put it, escape the limitations weighing on controlled thinking. This is thanks to the introduction of automatic writing and the recording of dream-state activities. One the other hand, one must not forget that the greater emancipation of the spirit naturally corresponds to its formal reach. The permanent renewal of creative risks generates a like contribution as to how these bold realizations are put on display. In this respect, Breton said in an interview to José María Valverde [1] that in the Arts, Surrealism is everything that points to greater emancipation of the spirit along new paths. That is, the new paths cannot be separated from emancipation of the spirit. And the constantly renewed alchemy therein is what makes Surrealism a perennial force that gains increasing weight as the leading character of the past century, one that even now shines its incorruptible light.

Moving from the outset toward its status as an organized movement, Surrealism so branched out across the world that it is only natural for it to show a multitude of states of mind acting as unique inputs to its cultural and artistic manifestations. From the formation of groups in several countries to the individual affirmation of many artists. From the realm of technique – unusual approaches, automatism, dream-state materials, humor, the wonderful – to the acme of a metaphysics that establishes, as Aldo Pellegrini points put it in his Antología de la poesía surrealista (de lengua francesa), [2] a merger of the romanticized notion of sublime love and eroticism. All of this under the essential understanding that one cannot separate art from life.

In different parts of the planet – from the emergence of groups to isolated manifestations – Surrealism gained ground through works, exhibitions, games, reviews, etc., surviving its own mistakes and the contaminating interference of the market, politics and religion. One should not speak nostalgically of the 1920s because Surrealism’s animistic force has since produced new periods of magical precipitation. Even now, one can speak of the dynamics of conferences sponsored by the Madrid Surrealist Group, such as shared actions by poets and visual artists in Chile, and the effort to hold collective showings that Amirah Gazel and Alfonso Peña are making in Costa Rica. A like effort for diffusion takes place in Brazil in the series of 24 bi-weekly issues of Agulha Revista de Cultura, realizing its purpose of celebrating the centennial year of Surrealism in 2019.

Brazilian poet Murilo Mendes (1901-1975) offered a unique reading of Surrealism in one of his Lightning Portraits:

Surrealism, a theoretical enemy of culture, became a cultural fact; and many Surrealists, having overcome the technique of automatism, became willing to work according to a planned method. For this very reason, when Breton made an analytical review of the movement in New York 20 years ago, he grudgingly included Magritte among Surrealist painters, insinuating that his method of composition was not automatic, but entirely deliberate. [3]

The Brazilian author accurately points out that the flood of inaccuracies that automatism produces needs a concrete form to stand before the world. It is precisely this concrete form that goes far beyond time and space in our lives to lend novel worth to the stream of human activity. And one must not forget the clarity with which Aldo Pellegrini defends the movement (in the book mentioned before):

Surrealism is a mystique of rebellion. Rebellion of the artist against conventional society, its fossilized structure or its false values system; rebellion against the meanness and sordidness of the human condition. The artist thereby emerges as the paladin of man in his ardent protest against the world; the protest of man subjected to coercion by those in power, who wish to impose acceptance of coercion as natural order. Surrealism stands as a codification of non-conformism.

This mystique of rebellion can be seen in the fascinating corpus of major Surrealist creations. IN the paintings of Yves Tanguy, the poetry of Benjamin Péret, the prose of André Breton, and on the field of ideas that illustrate authentic renovation through Salvador Dalí’s Paranoiac-Critical method, Georges Bataille’s studies on eroticism, and Antonin Artaud’s dizzying conceptions of representative art – in this way Surrealism created an endless number of new paths for the emancipation of the spirit. All one must do is learn how to read between its lines to understand the true power of the merger of art and life. Just give up on all nostalgia to prepare the present time for new plunges into the belly of the unknown. Just avoid all manner of doctrine without standing away from life itself, so as to help man in his job of baring the absurd. Surrealism reaches its centennial year just as vivid as it was at birth, rising against a time – the present time – that is the repetition to exhaustion of every ill that man has faced throughout history, a history about to fall apart like a rotting corpse roaming the streets with no aim or purpose beyond greed. Here lies the main challenge facing Surrealism today. May its centennial year mean something and may man once again pursue himself in the intimacy of love, of poetry, and of freedom.

NOTAS

Translated by Allan Vidigal.

André Breton’s statements were taken from a series of radio interviews conducted by André Parinaud for Radiodiffusion Française in 1952. Statements by Louis Aragon and Antonin Artaud, dated respectively 1926 and 1927, are quoted by André Pariente in his Diccionario temático del surrealismo (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1996).

1. Correo Literario, Madrid, October 1950. Subsequently included in Entretiens 1913-1952 (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1952).

2. Barcelona: Editorial Argonauta, 1981.

3. São Paulo: Conselho Estadual de Cultura, 1973. Subsequently included in Poesia completa e prosa (Rio de Janeiro: Editora Nova Aguilar, 1994, 4 volumes).

FLORIANO MARTINS (Brazil, 1957). Poet, publisher, essayist, visual artist and translator. Founded Web-based critical review Agulha Revista de Cultura in 1999. Coordinated (2005-2010) the “Ponte Velha” collection of Portuguese authors by publishers Escrituras Editora (São Paulo). Currently runs the ARC Edições label, as well as the “O amor pelas palavras” collection, which is available exclusively through amazon in partnership with Editora Cintra’s Leda Rita Cintra. Curator of the Ceará State International Book Biennial (Brazil, 2008) and jury member of the Casa das Américas Prize (Cuba, 2009), National Poetry Contest (Venezuela, 2010) and Annual Award of the National Library Foundation (Brazil, 2015). Guest lecturer of the University of Cincinnati (Ohio, United States, 2010). Translated works by Federico García Lorca, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Vicente Huidobro, Hans Arp, Alfonso Peña, Juan Calzadilla, Enrique Molina, Jorge Luis Borges, Aldo Pellegrini and Pablo Antonio Cuadra.

ALLAN VIDIGAL (Brazil, 1971). Author, poet and translator. Has had more than 20 business history books published, including some of the biggest corporations in Brazil. Quit counting books translated after reaching one hundred on topics from the Arts to Zoology, through Banking, Computer Science, Design, Economics and so on.

ANTONIA EIRIZ (Cuba, 1929-1995). Se graduó de la Escuela de Bellas Artes de San Alejandro en 1957. Participó en la II Bienal Interamericana de México en 1960 y en la VI Bienal de Sao Paulo en 1961, donde su obra recibió una mención honorífica. De 1962 a 1969 impartió clases en la Escuela de Instructores de Arte y en la Escuela Nacional de Arte, ambas en La Habana. En 1963 ganó el Primer Premio en la Exposición de La Habana, organizada por la Casa de las Américas. Al año siguiente, la Galería Habana presentó su importante exposición “Pintura/Ensamblajes”. En 1966 expuso su obra junto a Raúl Martínez en la Casa del Lago de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, y un año después en el 23 Salón de Mayo en París, Francia. Eiriz tenía una forma muy particular de captar su entorno, optando por retratar las situaciones más dramáticas y grotescas de la condición humana, lo que provocó que su obra fuera incomprendida por el gobierno revolucionario, lo que la llevó a jubilarse anticipadamente. A finales de los años sesenta abandonó la pintura y se dedicó a la promoción de formas de arte popular, transformando su casa en un taller donde enseñaba técnicas como el papel maché y los trabajos textiles a la comunidad local. En 1989 recibió la Orden Félix Varela del Consejo de Estado de Cuba, la más alta distinción del país en el ámbito cultural. En 1991 se realizó una exposición de su obra titulada “Reencuentro” en la Galería Galiano de La Habana y en 1994 recibió una beca de la Fundación John Simon Guggenheim. Después de su muerte en 1995, el Museo de Arte de Fort Lauderdale organizó una retrospectiva de su obra: “Antonia Eiriz: Tributo a una leyenda”. Ahora ella es nuestra artista invitada, en esta edición de Agulha Revista de Cultura.