Why Lettrism
4
The words we make up during this epoch in the world, unfortunately
tend to limit us. Without a doubt, the term Lettrist is a hard
description for people who have no particular esteem for this kind
of sound effect, and except on the sound track of a few films, have
not made use of it. But the term 'French' seems to give us
exclusive links with this nation and its colonies. Atheism has been
qualified as 'Christian', 'Jewish' or 'Islamic' with disconcerting
ease. And also we are obviously locked within a more or less
refined 'bourgeois' education, if not such ideas, at least such
vocabulary.
Thus a good number of terms will be made guardedly, despite the
evolution of our researches and usage - leading to refinement - of
many waves of followers: Lettrist International, metagraphy, and
other neologisms of which we have remarked that they excite the
fury of all sorts of people. The first condition of our agreement
is to keep such people a long way away from us.
It could be objected that this is, on our part, to propagate an
arbitrary, stupid and dishonest confusion amongst the intellectual
elite; this gives us a subject ready to ask us 'what exactly do we
want' with a concerned and protective air, which immediately throws
it out by doing this. But in the certainty that no literary or
journalistic hack has seriously occupied themselves with what we
have been carrying out for a number of years, we know that any
confusion has in no way been engendered by ourselves. And on the
other hand it pleases us.