Georges HUGNET severely criticizes the legacy of the surrealist movement.

Georges HUGNET (1906.1974)

Signed autograph manuscript.

From France to America

Three quarto pages. No place or name

"They degraded them while trying to elevate them : Sade , Baudelaire, Nerval, Rimbaud, Ducasse." 

A very interesting manuscript by Georges Hugnet, a retrospective critique of the legacy of the Surrealist movement. Mentioning, among others, Picasso, Breton, Éluard, Aragon, Miró, and Ernst, as well as all the inspiring figures of the group such as Rimbaud, Sade, and Freud, the author presents a series of vehement reproaches and invites the reader to definitively bury the movement and take refuge in the only truth: poetry.

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“ Our era thirsts for freedom more than ever , not for that spiritual freedom which is now more or less achieved, despite the fact that this pseudo-freedom is often merely a manufactured product for snobs, and at what cost in terms of constraints, but for a moral and physical freedom that knows no bounds. I mean that schools and groups are giving way to an independent spirit, eager to express itself without restraint, without concern for pleasing or displeasing, and which, while uniting a few men of this same disposition through friendship, admits no regimentation, no yoke. A common path brings these men together almost in spite of themselves, and no one can blame them for it. What matters above all is that no ties impede either their progress or their spirit.” A period similar to that which, in 1905, brought together Max Jacob, Guillaume Apollinaire and Pablo Picasso , without requiring them to adhere to any other rules than a friendship born of their age and their common spirit, seems to be emerging .

We have witnessed the failure of many schools of thought and have measured their weakness; we have witnessed the almost complete ruin of the Surrealist group , the emergence of the neo-Catholic fetus. While the Surrealist group produced men whose importance is undeniable, it was often nothing more than a superfluous display , a prostitution of feelings, attitudes, and reasons for living. If André Breton is a remarkable man, and indeed quite dangerous, we can only regret for him (as well as for Paul Éluard and Louis Aragon) that he could not do without this entourage which, far from elevating him in his own eyes, only diminished him, circumscribed him, and robbed him of the grandeur and rigor of his solitude. I must also say that their theories, whatever they may be and taken together, constitute nothing but the worst kind of aestheticism, precisely what the Surrealists most ardently sought to fight against. They ruined the unconscious and the dream by putting a fairground carousel there, and they gagged freedom. Prisoners of themselves, they could only die, and the worst kind of death: starvation, just like " avant-garde " writer , rightly taken abroad for " the ambassador of French Letters " . therefore not surprising that young people, more or less directly affected by this literary poisoning—for in trying to destroy it, they have introduced into their very being the least authentic of literatures — react against it, not only because its regimentation is a constant attack on individual freedom, but also because its works ( I exclude the works of André Breton, Paul Éluard, Robert Desnos , and Louis Aragon) reveal only emptiness, and an emptiness hidden beneath a poetic rhetoric that denies poetry itself . It must be said that this state of affairs became inevitable because of all the followers, because of all those who vegetate in some kind of shadow, and because it rejects that right demanded : the right to contradiction. Poetry, if it unfortunately becomes so, must not be poetic. And they made poetic feelings that did not deserve that , they degraded them while wanting to elevate them : Sade , Baudelaire , Nerval, Rimbaud, Ducasse.

And the same thing is happening in painting , too, comes the time for liberation. Cubism having long since died, painting is dying. Its last breath will only seem official when the next " Decorative Arts " have consecrated Surrealism as they have already consecrated Cubism. The "Fine Arts" will be Surrealist , and the " Galeries Lafayette " will be decorated by them. I wouldn't want to diminish the value of certain Surrealist painters whom I love and admire : André Masson , Max Ernst, Miró … But what makes them exist is that, before being Surrealists , they are first and foremost painters . Unlike other painters who only because they have Surrealism to inflate their image, I think that Surrealism has actually harmed those I have just named. Surrealist painting has one flaw that condemns it entirely : it is poetic . This flaw is also a trial: a few painters have survived, the others have died. 

Those who see clearly, consciously or unconsciously, who have something to express in one way or another, can only ignore as quickly as possible this poetic cult that destroys poetry, this choice of elements that shrinks the horizon and makes the air unbreathable, this rigidity that is a chain , this restricted and grandiloquent vocabulary, this lifeless matter. Young people now turn away from this graveyard, esteeming men who, whatever their qualities and flaws, have retained a freedom that protects them and makes them victorious: Pablo Picasso, Erik Satie, Max Jacob, Saint-Léger-Léger, Tristan Tzara, Raymond Roussel, Marcel Jouhandeau… esteem these men and fear them. 

It needs another realm, a space denied to it, a youth that both dazzles and invigorates, the need to be naked. We will never be convinced that dreaming is better than life. Let's open our eyes and be free. Let's destroy these rules and this choice that have become nothing more than a new facet of good taste, this revolutionary poetry for the bourgeoisie. Enough of dreams, Freudianism, automatic writing, and murky philosophy. Poetry is everywhere, everywhere we know how to see it, to discover it. It ranges from dream to sleep, from surprise to deliberate action, from birth to death, from love to solitude, from the heavens to the songs of the streets… Greatness has no rules. Poetry is the truth that makes poetry true and unrealistic; I speak of that truth that great poets know how to reveal to us, caught in the trap of their imagination. Poetry is saying: lemon, and let it be magnificent . A formula favored by snobbery and the " in the know, " and adopted by insensitive but highly intelligent individuals, has created a cheap form of genius: everywhere one reads poems that are admirable or considered as such. But which of these poets (do they even deserve the name?) has paid the price for their words? A philosopher said (I quote from memory): " Genius does what it can, talent what it wants . " Talents abound and create an illusion, whereas, as " poetry is what one has earned the right to write " Georges Hugnet.