Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Literatures

ISSN: 0039-7709 (Print) 1931-0676 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/vsym20

L'Activité surréaliste en Belgique

J. H. Matthews

To cite this article: J. H. Matthews (1980) L'Activité surréaliste en Belgique, Symposium: A

Quarterly Journal in Modern Literatures, 34:2, 180-182, DOI: 10.1080/00397709.1980.10733446

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00397709.1980.10733446

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 180 SUMMER 1980 SYMPOSIUM

MARCEL MARIEN; L'Activite surrealiste en Belgique. Brussels: Editions

Lebeer Hossmann, Collection "Le Fil rouge," 1979, 508 pp.

THE EVENING of June 1, 1934, on the occasion of the first international

surrealist exhibition ever (camouflaged, under the auspices of the magazine
Minotaure, as an "Exposition Minotaure"), Andre Breton delivered in
Brussels a lecture called Qu'est-ce que le surrealisme? He opened with the
words, "L'activite de nos camarades surrealistes en Belgique n'a pas cesse
d'etre paralleles ~ la notre, liee etroitement ~ la notre et je suis heureux de
me trouver ce soir parmi eux." To say the least, the leader of surrealist
activity in France was exaggerating. In fact, he strayed so far from the truth
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that one at least of the Belgians he mentioned by name, Andre Souris, felt
he had been forcibly recruited, in response to Breton's need to create an
international surrealism.
The passage of time has confirmed that Breton's 1934 remarks were
tactically motivated. So has been the general attitude shared by surrealists
in Paris who, in the long run, have found it more to their purpose to down-
play the contribution of surrealism in Belgium than to give a full measure
of attention (let alone praise) to those in Brussels who, as one of them-Paul
Nouge-put it, could be called surrealists "pour les commodites de la con-
versation." Thus Breton alluded in his second surrealist manifesto to reser-
vations forrnu1ated by Nouge about surrealism as defined in the first mani-
festo, without admitting that those objections had been set forth in a
private letter written him by Nouge, who had made clear his firm intention
of keeping his distance from surrealism, as preached in Paris. The three
issues of Distances (February, March, and April, 1929) prove that intention
to have been shared by Marc Eemans, Camille Goemans, Marcel Lecomte,
and E. L. T. Mesens.
Distances is reproduced integrally, in facsimile, by Marcel Marien in a
remarkable collection of texts, covering the first quarter-century of Belgian
surrealist publications. So is the complete run of Correspondance (1924-
1926) of which No. 16 (Apri120, 1925), "Reflexions ~ voix basse," drafted
and signed by Paul Nouge, with a dedication "pour A. R," voices skepticism
about automatic writing. And this is far from being all.
Marien opens his "Sorte d'introduction"- "Un Collage d'idees" -with the
claim that his volume may pass for "une histoire du meilleur aloi, ...
puisqu'elle se contente de reproduire, dans l'ordre chronologique, tous les
documents, manifestes, tracts, articles, qui ont vu Ie jour de 1924 ~ 1950,"
linked by "un minimum de commentaires utile" (p. 9). A participant in
surrealist activity in Belgium since the age of seventeen, Marien has expressed
more than once his hearty contempt (and no one can be more bitingly con-
temptuous than he) for historians, literary and otherwise. This being the
 REVIEWS 181

case, he has no excuse or apology to offer for the flagrant contradiction

noticeable when one turns from the above statement to another, appearing
on the page following his introduction: "Comme toute entreprise, cet
ouvrage presente des lacunes d'importance variable. II implique necessairement
des oublis parmi 1esquels il en est d'inevitables et que1ques-uns de volontaires"
(p. 46). To date, no historian has come forward who is competent to list
authoritatively the omissions to be detected in Marien's collection (like that
of the text of the three issues of Christian Dotremont's magazine Les Deux
Soeurs (1946-1947], for instance), let alone to indicate which have resulted
from voluntary exclusion. There is no alternative but to work with what we
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have, which-thanks to Marien's thoroughness-is magnificent.

Next to Correspondance stand Mesens' (Esophage and Marie (not to forget
Adieu (J Marie). After Distances come the special number of Varihe ("Le
Surrealisme en 1929"), the collective publication Violette Nozieres, the
special issue of Documents 34 ("Intervention surrealiste") and, for good
measure, the surrealist contributions to the second issue of the same maga-
zine. Anyone who has spent years, as I have done, gaining access to this
material will not need to be told what a bargain Marien's book is. Students
of surrealism at last have easy access to Le Couteau dans la plaie, published
in the third Bulletin international du surrealisme (Brussels, August 20, 1935)-
reproduced, like everything else cited, in its entirety (next to Idolatry and
Confusion, put out by Mesens and J .-B. Brunius in London [March 1944],
and the special number of View on "Surrealism in Belgium"). Le Couteau
dans fa plaie was the tract that first brought together the surrealists in
Brussels and another group called Rupture, founded in March of 1934.
Rupture had joined the surrealist movement in April 1934, publishing just
one number of a magazine, Mauvais Temps (Marien, needless to say, repro-
duces its every page), before a split occurred in its ranks from which evolved
the Surrealist Group in Hainaut. In short, Marcel Marien's collection of
materials allows us to complete the history of surrealist activity in Belgium.
And it does more. It contributes to correcting certain unchallenged assump-
tions about the history of surrealism on the international scale.
It is commonly agreed that the Paris exhibition of 1947 was the first post-
war show to evidence regrouping of surrealist forces in Europe after 1945.
Yet Marien proves this supposition to be fallacious simply by reprinting the
catalogue of an exhibition of international breadth, organized by Rene
Magritte, that ran in Brussels between December 15, 1945 and January 15,
1946. More than this, he offers not only the complete text of the dissident
publication Le Surrealisme revolutionnaire (I was lucky enough to acquire
a copy of that publication after a search of only fifteen years) but also the
tract La Cause est entendue (Paris: July 1,1947) opposing the 1947 show
and signed by members of the Surrealisme revolutionnaire group. Breton
 182 SUMMER 1980 SYMPOSIUM

having attacked both Nouge and Magritte in the show's catalogue, Le

Surrealisme en 1947-he objected to Magritte's concept of "le surrealisme en
plein air" -Nouge riposted with "Les Points sur les signes," prefacing a 1948
Magritte exhibit. Bringing all these and other documents together, Marien
affords us an unprecedented opportunity to investigate the important ques-
tion of the divergent evolution of surrealist ideas and ideals in France and
Belgium.
What about Belgian surrealist activity since 1950? No one, it seems, is so
well qualified as Marcel Marien to tell us about it. His first volume, hand-
somely produced, painstakingly thorough, and eminently intelligent in its
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layout, makes us greedy for more.

1. H. MATTHEWS

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