Surrealism. Penelope Rosemont

about to shake hands when, with a very elegant gesture, he lifted my hand and kissed it. “Ah, anarchiste!” he smiled at the political button I was wearing which read, “I am an Enemy of the State” and asked if we had been to the surrealist exhibition. We replied we had already been there several times. He smiled, pleased. He asked if we had come from the U.S. to see the exhibition, but we replied that we had not yet heard about it in the U.S., that we had come by chance—the surrealist method.

      Elisa Breton was with him. She spoke excellent English and was graceful and gracious, with sparkling eyes that laughed beneath her bangs as she greeted us. Breton didn’t come to the café very often, especially since the arrival of snow and cold weather, as he was bothered by asthma. At this time, Breton was “a magnificent old lion” as Benayoun had called him. He looked like the photos I had seen, but was even more grand and inspiring. We went over and sat near him so we could hear what he was saying. There was plenty of room, as most of the surrealists hadn’t arrived yet. In fact, Benayoun, who had hoped to introduce us and help translate, arrived late that day and sat at the far end of the room, occasionally smiling with amusement at our predicament.

      That day, Breton had come to go over the plans with surrealist friends for making a movie of the L’Écart absolu exhibition. We were able to follow his elegant and careful French and listened with pleasure to the animated discussion.

      When Benayoun had arrived, he had handed us a letter from Chicago. It was from Franklin’s mother. She enclosed a review of the L’Écart absolu Exhibition from the New York Times. No one in the group had seen it yet, but they were all very interested, and so we were glad to be able to pass it around and talk about it.

      Elisa often asked us how we were and what we were doing. When we mentioned we visited the zoo, she said it was the first place she and André usually visited in every city. Once she asked us, “Are there surrealists in the U.S.?” “Well,” Franklin replied, “there’s the two of us and several of our friends. We plan to form a group when we get back.”

      I asked if she had ever been to Chicago. She said she and André had been in Chicago on their way to Reno to get married and they had stayed at a hotel that had doors like a bank vault, six inches thick of steel, from the “gangster period.” For all that, they had forgotten to lock the door, and someone employed by the hotel came by in the evening and admonished them. (I concluded it was Al Capone’s old hotel near Roosevelt Road.) They stayed for a couple of days and told us they found Chicago much more interesting than New York.

      They saw the Field Museum and especially admired its fine New Guinea and Oceania art works, particularly two masks from the Sepik River, for decades hidden in a corner of the basement. They were still there in the same place when we got back to Chicago. I must admit I liked the old Field Museum the way it was. There was something good about being able to find the objects that I loved as old friends, year after year in their same place. The new concept of museum as “sideshow” is a failure as far as I’m concerned.

      Elisa gave me their phone number and said we should get together. As we had no phone I would call her a couple of times a week, to talk, to tell her about what we were doing and to see if it was a good time to get together.

      One day, we came into the café when André was already seated precisely with his back to the door. Astonishingly, he got up just at the right instant to turn and greet us! We were both surprised, a bit confused. Wondering how he did it; it was only later we realized he had seen us enter in the mirror he faced.

      Another time, perhaps a month later, Breton was at the café. The group was discussing the new magazine they were planning. They still hadn’t completely settled on a name for the journal that would be L’Archibras. I managed to get so excited by the discussion, I pitched in my suggestion. I said in modest French, “How about Tamanoir (Great Anteater)? It would be good to have a journal named after an animal.” Well, of course, I thought no one had heard me. The discussion went on as full high-speed French. But André had heard me, so he quieted everyone and said, “What did you say? What was your suggestion?” I repeated it, probably blushing at the sudden quiet. André smiled and said, “Yes, it’s a good suggestion. It’s one of the ones we will consider.” The group finally settled on L’Archibras, a wonderful word image that I, of course, had never heard of; they had to explain it. That was a very funny discussion. It was very hard to explain. It was a Fourierist term, an eye on a prehensile tail, or a prehensile eye.

      Issue two (October 1967) of the Paris Surrealist Group’s magazine L’Archibras, in which Penelope and Franklin Rosemont’s essay “The Situation of Surrealism in the U.S.” appeared.

      Franklin recalls my commenting after meeting Breton, “You almost never get to meet the people who write the books you love!” Things like that are truly a life-changing experience. And besides this André had warmly welcomed us into his circle of friends, a circle like Freud’s, one that included some of the most brilliant minds of the 20th century. A circle that had transformed modern concepts of beauty and freedom forever, expanding them, overthrowing them, seeking to discover the true nature of creativity and freedom. A circle of friends that could truly be called magical. So you see magic circles do exist. And their effects are lasting.

      I’m not quite sure where I acquired my obsession with the mystery of the printed word, but I am a worshipper of its delights, fascinated by books, bookstores, and the ability to put thoughts, feelings, and scenes into words that will be meaningful to oneself and remarkably, even to others. As a child, it seemed an impossible dream to meet someone who had actually mastered the arcane science of making poems and books, an idea that seemed as remote as taking a journey to Uranus. No one I knew had known anyone who had done such a thing. Not only do you meet the great minds of history when you read their words, but you carry on a dialogue with them and their thinking.

      Even now I’m amazed at the ability of the word to conjure up images, images leading to thoughts, to ideas, to states of mind, to a whole psychic chain of perception that, in fact, is capable of renewing the world. Thoughts that were created and written down 7,000 years ago can enter our minds today and we can experience their meaning. Perhaps in a way that is historically bound, but this exists actually as a window in time, a time machine. Words spin webs of connections that persist, create anger and joy, set worlds into motion, conjure futures, waterfalls of words cascade around us, we exist in a whirlpool of words. The vortex becomes a vertigo, a vast luminous ocean of words.

      The next time we saw Benayoun after the New Year’s Eve party, he asked how we got home. We described our walk through Paris and of seeing working people queuing up at the Metro entrances before dawn. He said it was not very long ago when the paramilitary groups would go to those Metro entrances, pull the Algerians out of line, take them away, beat them, shoot them, and throw their bodies in the Seine; there many were found floating. I had read about the Algerian war, its horrors and tortures, but hadn’t realized the extent of this fascist activity in Paris.

      Benayoun, who was Moroccan himself, told us at length about the “Declaration of the 121,” an important document signed by the leading French intellectuals denouncing the war and the government’s fascist policies. The Surrealist Group, he explained, had a leading role in initiating, proposing, writing, and gathering signatures for this document. The role of the surrealists was certainly not well known in the U.S., although the declaration did appear in Evergreen Review, and was noted in the Industrial Worker. Oddly in the U.S. this document became associated with Sartre and the Existentialists.

      Benayoun told us that André Breton liked to be called André, not Monsieur Breton, and that he didn’t like to autograph books, that his asthma was bothering him very much, and that he generally was moody around the time of his birthday on February 18 and rarely came to meetings at that time. We wondered what he must think of us; but what could he possibly think? We were so young, had so few accomplishments, and barely spoke French.

      I talked with Elisa often but the cold weather