PARIS LETTER
105
itarianism and unity. And if, on the one hand, of the two former leaders of
the Stalinist
professor~,
MM. Baby and Husson, the .first has been expelled
and
the second has res1gned, on the other there is formed a new organization,
L'Union des Intellectuels Franctis,
under the aegis of the Stalinists and some
of the anti-Daladier Radical-Socialists, to "restore French honor after the
Diktat of Munich" or something. Actually, however, such an organization
is about on a par with the other Stalinist "Lithuanian Singing-Societies for
Peace and Democracy" and "Vegetarian Sun-lovers' Fronts against War and
Fascism" with which credentials committees in any cultural united front in
England or the States have had long and amused familiarity. The simple
fact is that the French educational and professional world, completely un–
certain
what
to do to stop fascism abroad without falling into it at home, is
keeping very quiet and doing very little.
Though it is not possible to report any more spectacular breakings-away
of outstanding figures from the flesh- (or rather ink-) pots of literary Stalin–
ism, the
Federation Internationale de l'Art Independant Revolutionnaire
re–
cords a steady and gratifying growth, with, at present writing, no schisms-–
rare indeed in a country where literary movements live usually an amoeba–
like life of perpetual self-divisions and fusions, unamoeba-like enough, how–
ever, in the violence of diatribe which usually attends them. To offset the
strictures in the last "Paris letter" regarding Andre Breton's sectarianism in
injecting into his initial manifesto a spot of
reclame
for the
surrealiste
tenet
of psychoanalysis, it is only just to report his principled, firm, and courageous
stand toward a little
chantage
on the part of those English
surrealistes
who
were loath to leave the cozy ambience of
Sflrrealiste
success and Popular–
Front high-life for the cold exterior world of revolutionary art (which, by
the way,
s11rrealisme
itself had been in the years before they got in on its
later glory) . A letter to these hesitants from the main
Surrealiste
Group in
Paris concludes (the thought is Breton's, though the words another's):
"... Nous ne sommes pas dupes des mots et des etiquettes,
pas plus de !'etiquette 'surrealiste' que des etiquettes 'communiste'
ou 'URSS'.
"Bien entendu, il ne s'agit pas davantage de nous opposer aux
conquetes revolutionnaires du proletariat russe que de nous opposer
aux conquetes dans le domaine de
I'
Art de nos camarades de
Londres.
"II s'agit pour nous de continuer a mener un mouvement revo–
Iutionnaire
sur tous les plans,
et s'il le faut, malgre un patti com–
muniste ou un groupe surrealiste.
"Contl'e ertx-memes si cela est necessaire."
The last sentence merits attention. For the founder and chief of
s11rrealisme
to be
willing if necessary to break it up just at the moment when its exhibi–
tions are a
sllcces-fou
and it is beginning to win important .financial support
is,
in
the opinion of this writer, an action which deserves signalization.
Just out is the first number of
Cle,
the FIARI's monthly bulletin. Open–
ing with a striking manifesto, "Pas de Patrie!" (in defense of that freedom
of asylum which has been one of the principal causes _of France's hegemo.ny
in so many arts, against the new
d~c.ree-laws
of Dalad1er and
Reyna~d,
w1th
their savage measures against polit?cal refugees),
foll~ed
by
~rtlcles.
on
politico-artistic subjects by Jean G10no, Georges Henem, Maunce Heme,
