Surrealism. Penelope Rosemont

the New York Times on the street. He said it was just about the only job Americans could get in Paris. He added that Green had been through Paris not long before, but hadn’t liked the cold weather and headed down to Tangiers where he had found a good place, a house, and lots of good, cheap hashish. Lester was trying to get together enough money to go and join him. We talked with Lester about the Provos and their activity in Amsterdam. Lester had lived with them for a while and thought they had a fine community going, building an alternative culture and society with great success. We didn’t see Lester again; he was gone, off to Tangiers. We didn’t hear from either him or Green until we got back to Chicago. By then, Green had been deported from Lebanon to the U.S., madly carrying hash while handcuffed to his guard. Apparently, since he was already under arrest, they didn’t search him.

       The Surrealist Café, Le Promenade de Vénus

      At this time, the Surrealist Group met at Le Promenade de Vénus, just outside the Les Halles district at the corner of rue de Louvre and rue de Coquillière. Surrealists began to arrive about 5:30 and went to the rear of the café, partitioned off from the front by a booth that wrapped around the outside wall.

      It was a great walk. To get there Franklin and I passed the ever-busy Les Halles market. Once we walked to Les Halles at 4:00 a.m. and found an incredible beehive of activity. Huge floodlights converted the darkness into daytime, men carrying sides of beef across their backs and rolling huge round cheeses down the street on little carts. You really had to take care and watch your step or be run down by one of hundreds of people pushing, pulling, or carrying the stubborn produce to the huge market called the belly of Paris.

      The Promenade itself stood out with a certain élan and the smell of onion soup gratinée that pervaded the entire neighborhood. With its many paneled mirrors and booths, the café looked as if it had survived from the turn of the century untouched.

      Surrealists arrived individually and in groups as they finished work for the day. Everyone shook hands with everyone present while exchanging greetings. This worked well early on when those present were small in number, but as the group built up to 15 to 20 people, new arrivals caused incredible commotion and completely disrupted conversations being carried on. This, however, didn’t seem to trouble anyone. We came and met all of the surrealists in Paris at that time who attended meetings. Among them, those most prominently active were Jean Schuster, Gérard Legrand, Vincent Bounoure, Jean Benoît, Mimi Parent, Robert Benayoun, Claude Courtot, Konrad Klapheck, and Joyce Mansour. Younger members were Nicole Espagnol and Alain Joubert, who was a poet and champion kickboxer. Joubert put together the best book on those days Le Mouvement des surréalists ou le fin de l’histoire. Georges Sebbag, now a noted scholar, was our age.

      Among other members were Michel Zimbacca, Jehan Mayoux, Toyen, and Elisa Breton. The group was largely made up of people in their thirties or forties, most of whom had been in the group for seven to ten years and had been active in writing for La Brèche, painting, and doing surrealist research. They were diverse in their interests and opinions but held together by their love of surrealism and enormous respect for the genius of André Breton.

      They were full to overflowing with poetry, beauty, humor, excitement, and life. All enthusiasts for the surrealist adventure, they would all talk at once, reminding me of home and my unrestrainable relatives. This unstoppable enthusiasm, however, gave my college French a fatal attack. I went through several degrees of panic as I realized I probably never would be able to keep up with what was being said. My French endured only one person speaking slowly and distinctly. Occasionally Benayoun would translate for us, but he often came late. Then Mimi Parent, a French Canadian who realized our dilemma, came to our rescue and very sympathetically took the time to let us know what was being said in that hubbub of conversation. Benayoun reminded us not to miss seeing Breton’s studio before we left Paris. He said the place was “full of wonderful treasures.” Also, he told us about the Théâtre Universel which was entirely devoted to animated cartoons. We went there whenever the program changed, saw lots of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Tom and Jerry. This theater was wonderful; every city should have one.

      Schuster and Legrand often talked about their projects. Plans for publications, correspondence, and articles were regularly brought in and read and discussed. They wondered about how surrealism was viewed in the U.S. and what was happening there in terms of surrealism. “Was Rosenquist a surrealist?” Konrad Klapheck asked. A few of the surrealists thought he was, but Franklin and I argued fairly convincingly that he was not.

      We discussed pop art and surrealism, especially, since Nicolas Calas, who identified with surrealism, had come out with a book, Pop Art, and was now one of its promoters. We couldn’t see anything revolutionary or even imaginative in copying commercial art and further glorifying the almost deified commodities. Was there humor in the confrontation with an enlarged soup can?

      For me, there was hardly any humor and no confrontation. Everyone was able to experience a painting of a large can of soup quite comfortably while preserving, without challenge, their bourgeois ideas. To me, pop art seemed a pasteurized and commercialized art, a justification and glorification of a reprehensible system, the commodity economy.

      The surrealists we met in Paris in 1965–66 proved to be close and lasting friends and correspondents as well as enthusiastic supporters of the Chicago Surrealist Group. André Breton’s warm encouragement, his friendly questions, and his evident interest and hopes for the beginnings of a new surrealist group in the New World were very important to Franklin and me.

      It showed that despite our youth and our difficulty with French, we were accepted into the surrealist movement that meant so much to us. Several of the younger surrealists, as well as Breton’s wife Elisa, were fluent in English, and helped us understand and participate in the discussions at the group’s daily meetings. I think that André also understood English a little but did not wish to speak it. Either that or he was a good mind reader.

      Only a few of the new surrealist generation in Paris were well known outside of France at that time, but most of them had already made major contributions to surrealism. Individually and collectively they were recognized for their originality and innovation, and increasingly were regarded as equals of the surrealists of earlier years.

      Gérard Legrand, for example, often called Breton’s “right-hand man,” had distinguished himself as a significant surrealist theorist. In addition to collaborating with Breton on the very large and comprehensive book, L’Art magique (1957; revised/expanded 1991), he also published Puissances du jazz (The Powers of Jazz, 1955) and an important philosophical treatise, Preface au système de l’eternité (1971), as well as many articles in surrealist journals.

      Other surrealist theorists in those years included Vincent Bounoure, later co-author of La Civilisation surréaliste with the Czech Vratislav Effenberger. And the old-timers, Jehan Mayoux, and his wife, also well known for their long involvement in French anarcho-syndicalism. In the realms of humor and popular culture, Robert Benayoun published numerous excellent studies of cinema, nonsense literature and animated cartoons (especially the work of Tex Avery).

      Painters: Toyen, Mimi Parent, Jean Benoît, Pierre Alechinsky, Jorge Camacho, Konrad Klapheck, Marianne van Hirtum, and Jean-Claude Silbermann were all very active.

      Joyce Mansour was not only an outstanding poet in the group, but also, according to Benayoun, a champion runner. Later, in the Bulletin de liaison surréaliste, Mansour made it a point to celebrate the Chicago surrealists’ activities and publications. Annie Le Brun became a noted writer (her Castles of Subversion is a classic study of Gothic novels) and effective spokesperson for surrealism.

      Georges Sebbag, one of the few in the group close to our own age, was quiet at meetings, but clearly had a lively intelligence and a good sense of humor. Some years later he published a whole series of large and important books on André Breton and Jacques Vaché—a friend of Breton’s during WWI who was extreme in his hatred for the war and the civilization that created it.

       André and Elisa Breton

      Franklin and I met André Breton on Monday, January 10, 1966. He already knew we were in town