SURREALISM

CONTRE-ATTAQUE

Editore: Contre-attaque: Union de lutte des Intellectuels Revolutionnaires, Paris, 1935

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27 x 21 cm. Independent Leftists and Surrealists formed a new group and distributed on October 7, 1935 this six-point resolution. Following "Mort à tous les esclaves du Capitalisme!" the signatories include Aimery, Ambrosino, Bataille, Blin, Boiffard, Breton, Cahun, Delmas, Dautry, Eluard, Heine, Klossovski, and Peret. Folded. Small stain near top otherwise very good. The close ties between Surrealism and the Communist Party were ruptured when Breton and Paul Eluard (1895-1952) were expelled from the Party in 1933. However, when violence broke out in Paris in 1934, Breton still called for a unified Communistic stance in opposition to Fascism. A document to this effect, 'Appel ala lutte' was signed by members of the Surrealist group in February 1934.59 The signatories included Surrealist members such as Breton, Eluard and Ferdinand Leger (1881-1955), as well as non-members such as Malraux, Leiris, and Dora Maar. Bataille founded the group Contre Attaque late in 1935, a group which included, of all people, Andre Breton. Bataille used a hall in the Rue des Grands Augustins for meetings of the Contre Attaque. The hall was later made available to Picasso for the painting of Guernica. Bataille read a speech 'Front Populaire dans la rue' at the first meeting of Contre Attaque in 1935, calling for the support of the Communists against Fascism. He emphasized force, agitation, and violence against Fascism to such an extent that it implied the exclusion of political and doctrinal debates. By the time the speech was published in the only issue of Cahiers de Contre Attaque in May 1936, Breton and the Surrealist contingent had already dissociated themselves from Contre Attaque. Breton accused Bataille of 'sur-fascisme', 60 an allusion to Bataille's unpublished 'La "vieille taupe" et Ie prefixe "sur" dans les mots "Surhomme" et "Surrealiste'" of 1930. In later years, Bataille did not deny that there was a certain 'paradoxical fascist tendency' in Contre Attaque, and even in himself at the time.61 Although Bataille still supported the Front Populaire early in 1936, he suddenly abandoned Communism after the Front Populaire had come into power in the elections of March 1936. Disillusioned by a mass who has no interest in political theory, he also rejected, subsequentIy, any hope in subversive violence with a revolutionary aim. Instead Bataille turned to the notion of the role of marginal groups in a revolutionary society, originally advocated in his essays on Gnosticism, madmen, knights, and sects of heterodox Christian mystics published in Documents. Instigated by the collapse of Contre Attaque, Bataille rejected a Marxist ideology altogether, and pursued in its place an a-political stance based on the examination of the meaning of mythological structures of thought in Nietzsche's philosophy. The question of violence was henceforth to be emphasized in terms of the meaning of creativity in a given community. Small stain near top otherwise very good. Codice articolo 278

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Titolo: SURREALISM

Casa editrice: Contre-attaque: Union de lutte des Intellectuels Revolutionnaires, Paris

Data di pubblicazione: 1935

Tipologia articolo: Leaflet