Hay que felicitar a Heribert Becker lo más calurosamente posible por la publicación de una bella invectiva contra Desmond Morris, en el número 151 de Infosurr. Invectiva tanto más estupenda cuando surge en una época en que todo el mundo anda con pies de plomo... y la cara escondida.
Con motivo
de la aparición en Dark Window Press del libro colectivo André Breton’s
Arcane 17. A lodestar for the 21st century, hice una
“I remain
intractable in everything that refers to these stupidities that are repeated
again and again against André Breton”.
Su respuesta:
“You seem to
worship Breton as a God, but he was not. He was the genius who masterminded the
surrealist movement and gave it its great impetus. Without his influence it
would never have existed and all of us who were part of that movement (I was
the youngest - a mere a teenager) owe him an enormous debt.
However, despite his brilliance, he also had some very human failings and I find it interesting that someone with such enormous strengths should also have some serious weaknesses. In my new book The Lives of the Surrealists, that will be published in May, and of which there is a Spanish edition, I have written an essay about Breton which discusses both his good points and his bad points. For me, the fact that he had some undeniably bad qualities, does nothing to reduce my admiration and respect for his undeniably great qualities”.
Y yo:
“I do not discover Breton in the vision you give of him, "humiliated" by the story of Kay Sage (to whom he dedicated words in "Le surréalisme et la peinture", and of whom he included a painting in the same work) or by his visit to the new couple Jacqueline / Hare. (I also think that the most interesting thing about Jacqueline Lamba is what she did before she got away from surrealism.)
It is enough to read the recent letters of Breton to Péret to warn that Breton does not fit into this portrait that you give here of him. By the way, Peret did detest Kay Sage. But above all I express my total anger because you say that "the few surrealists that had remained in Paris to fight the Nazis in the French resistance movement, were calling Breton a coward for fleeing the scene". What surrealists? The surrealists who continued to develop a collective surrealist activity in France were those of the group La Main à Plume, and NONE of them never recriminated anything to André Breton. Seven died in the Resistance. Neither were any of the great surrealists who remained there, such as Victor Brauner, Maurice Blanchard (very active in the Resistance) or Joë Bousquet. That is a criticism conveyed by the Stalinists (who would have wanted to be murdered), and it is regrettable to see it channeled into his words.
For me André
Breton is surrealism, although surrealism is not only André Breton. I owe
everything to him and I consider him the main figure of the 20th
century. All my life I have seen how he receives the lowest and unjust
attacks, and with that I have not compromised. I do not see it as a
God. He was wrong in many things, beginning with the whole time he
believed in Soviet communism, which had at least proved what it was since
Kronstadt. He also rectified many times, as seen in Parinaud's interviews”.
Concediéndole
al darwiniano Morris la bondad dudosa (como veremos ahora mismo) de que
intentaba hacer a Breton más “humano” y dada la calidad del personaje (un
artista extraordinario, sin duda, aunque un tarado científico, que en la
entrevista con que comienza el gran libro de Michel Remy, me hizo escribir al
margen “Este es un cretino”, tras leerle, entre otras cosas, que “we shall no
longer be imprisoned by the earth’s surface”), retiré mis comentarios
despectivos de la reseña a que aludo, tras lo cual, ya contento, desapareció de
mis correos, que a veces lamento que, siendo eléctricos, no consigan también
electrocutar.
Ahora
reactivo esos comentarios, tras leer la reseña implacable de Heribert Becker.
Yo ese libro The lives of the surrealists no quise desembolsar ni un
céntimo de euro por él, ya que me temía lo peor, no solo con respecto a Breton
sino a los restantes victimados. Gracias a la reseña descubro la exactitud de mis temores, y que evidentemente Desmond Morris mentía al
decirme que intentaba hacer más “humano” a André Breton. La chismografía por lo
visto se amplía a todos sus biografiados, y en cuanto a los detalles íntimos de
la vida de Breton yo no entendía de dónde se los sacaba, ya que nunca lo
conoció; sospecho que del libraco de Polizotti.
La reseña es
antológica y no resisto a reproducirla aquí. Considérese además que Heribert
Becker, aparte un crítico y divulgador extraordinario y seriecísimo del
surrealismo, es un hombre muy ponderado, lo que añade más fuerza a sus
palabras:
