Why Lettrism
3
From this fundamental opposition which is definitively the conflict
of a sufficiently new way of conducting one's life against an
ancient tradition of alienating it, there arises antagonisms of all
sorts, provisionally smoothed out in view of general action which
is amusing and that, despite its awkwardness and insufficiencies,
we still maintain today is positive.
Certain ambiguities also arise from the humour that some place, and
others do not place, in their chosen affirmations for their
stupefying aspect: although completely indifferent at any nominal
survival through this or that famous literature, we write so that
our works - practically non-existent - remain in history, with as
much certainty as those histrionic people who would become
"eternal". What's more, we declare on all occasions that we are
beautiful. The baseness of arguments that are presented to us in
the film clubs and elsewhere do not give us the opportunity to
reply seriously. Elsewhere we continue to have plenty of charm.
The crisis of Lettrism, announced by the semi-open opposition of
the old fogeies to the experimental cinematography, which to their
discredit they judged as 'unstylish' violence, broke out in 1952
when the Lettrist Internationale, which regrouped the extreme
fraction of the movement in the shadow of a magazine of this title,
threw out damaging texts at a press conference held by Chaplin. The
aesthetic-Lettrists, now in a minority, were not in solidarity with
this action, leading to a break which their lame excuses did not
succeed to postpone or subsequently heal - because according to
them, the creative role carried out by Chaplin in the cinema makes
him above criticism. The rest of 'revolutionary' opinion reproached
us once again at this time, because the work and person of Chaplin
still appeared to them to remain in a positive perspective. Since
then, many of these have changed their opinion.
To denounce the senility of doctrines, or the men who have given
their name to them, is an urgent and easy task for those who have
retained the taste for resolving the most alluring questions posed
by our day and age. Whatever the trickery of the lost generation
who showed themselves between the last war and today, they are
condemned to debunk themselves. Nevertheless, having recognised the
bankruptcy of critical thought that these frauds have found before
them, it can be seen how Lettrism has contributed to their more
rapid oblivion; and that it is by no means strange that the
presentation of an Ionesco, remaking several scenic excesses of
Tzara thirty years later and twenty times more stupid, does not get
a quarter of the distracted attention. There are several years to
go before the exaggerated corpse of Antonin Artaud.