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Sofija Ž. Milenković
THE LETTER OF ANDRÉ BRETON – HIS RESPONSE TO THE SURVEY ON DESIRE
A whole century has passed from the time when the Manifesto on Surrealism was published in Paris in 1924, and the powerful echoes of its influence on further development of literature, European thought and art in general. This important jubilee is an opportunity to indicate the importance of surrealism and re-examine its current influence today and here. On the eve of, during and even after the First World War, when the spirit of Europe was in a deep crisis, the world of ideas was overwhelmed by the wave of radical new currents, preparing changes for the extant world, oblivion or final retaliation. Those were demonstrated in artistic movements such as futurism, cubo-futurism, Dadaism, Suprematism, constructivism and surrealism, presently recognised as the historic avant-garde. The real experience of a discontinuity of the past and present deepened the non-conformist spirits of men and one of them, whose embodiment most profoundly shook the European tradition, was André Breton, the main ideologue of surrealism.
The entire movement was founded in fact on his definitions of surrealism as „pure psychic automatism by which it is intended to express, whether verbally or in writing or in any other way, the real process of thought, free from any control by the reason and by any aesthetic or moral preoccupation“. That definition was the expression of his desire to penetrate the irrational, the „authentic“ reality of human life free from the unconscious residing in dreams, madness and some other process of thought not controlled by reason.. Its non-doctrinal character enabled a polymorphic acceptance of surrealism in literature and theoretic theses, and its polycentric appearance enabled its appropriation in painting, photography, fashion, theatre and all other branches of art. At the same time, this definition inspired a search for irrational ways of knowledge in automatic writing, in dreams, mental breakdowns, surrealistic metaphors and objective causes. The most frequent outcome of these, conditionally named methods, forms and ways of demonstration were poetic texts, poems, collages, drawings, photograms, cadavre exquis.
The cynical reaction against the world capable of drastic destruction which had unhinged the belief in the previous system of values the pre-war society was founded on, was a necessary condition for the birth of surrealism in Serbia. Apart from that, the French cultural influence and alliance of the two countries both in the First World War and during the inter-war period, enabled the penetration of modern ideas to the Balkans; owing to their French bursaries and education in Paris, the main agents were future intellectuals and writers Aleksandar Vučo, Milan Dedinac, Mladen Dimitrijević (Dimitrije Dedinac), Dušan Matić, Stevan Vane Živadinović-Bor – the future core of the surrealist movement. An important personality during the studies in Paris was also Rastko Petrović, the initial intellectual connection with France; his poetry had a far-reaching influence on the development of surrealism in Serbia, although officially he did not belong to the movement.
The surrealist movement had an international character – it developed in Belgium, Spain, Czechoslovakia, England, Switzerland, Portugal, Germany, and also in other continents; however, from the very beginning it was present in Serbia. The major part of the movement outside France was active only after 1930, while the French and Serbian surrealists developed synchronically for a whole decade between 1922 and 1932. The evolution of surrealist thought from Dadaism in France, and pre-surrealist phase in the local, developing-modernist context, just as the flow of radical ideas from the Parisian centre to Yugoslav periphery, one can simultaneously follow in the magazine Littérature (1919-1924) and Putevi (1922-1924), where future surrealists were both editors and contributors.
Already in 1923, the first issue of the new series of Putevi, following the French Littérature, published the translation of a some of Breton’s essays (Clairement, Marcel Duchamp, Les mots sans ride) and Gide’s Lafcadio’s Adventures; in Matić’s text on Freud’s Psychoanalysis, one could discern the direction in which the future avant-garde thought would be developing. Although the journal was fundamentally modernist, the poetic and prose works by Marko Ristić, Aleksandar Vučo, Milan Dedinac and Dušan Matić endowed it with a new, radical tone, and the text Battle over the Wall (Bitka oko zida), published in the last, triple, issue announced their final surrealist decisions. Towards the end of 1924 the Surrealist Manifesto was published in Paris and soon after that the first issue of the journal La Révolution Surréaliste (1924-1929) was published. The corresponding development in Belgrade was the first issue of the journal Svedočanstva (1924-1925) with the text Surrealism (Nadrealizam) by Marko Ristić, including the definition and explanations of ideas expressed in Manifesto. The period after the formation of an official Belgrade group was full of exquisite individual engagement. Soon afterwards there was the publication of the most important poetic work of Serbian surrealism – the poem Public Bird (Javna ptica) by Milan Dedinac, as well as Ristić’s anti-novel Without Measure (Bez mere).
Their joint activities in Belgrade were made official with the publication of the text “with the meaning of a real manifesto” in the daily Politika on 14 April 1930. The group consisted of thirteen surrealists: Marko Ristić, Milan Dedinac, Mladen Dimitrijević, Dušan Matić, Vane Živadinović-Bor, Konstantin Koča Popović, Petar Popović, Radojica Živanović-Noe, Branko Milovanović, Aleksandar Vučo, Đorđe Kostić, Đorđe Jovanović and Oskar Davičo. The foundation was followed by an almanac in two languages Nemoguće – L’Impossible, while the text about the foundation of the Belgrade group was translated and published in the French journal Le Surréalisme au service de la révolution (1930-1933); this officially represented the group in France. Although there was only one issue of the almanac, the joint venture was continued through the paper Nadrealizam danas i ovde (NDIO – Surrealism Today and Here).
It is important to mention that at the same time several publications were issued in Belgrade under the sign of “Surrealist Editions” (Nadrealistička izdanja). They represented a common and unique publishing endeavour of the Belgrade surrealist movement. Besides the poetic, prose and theoretic issues, where particular attention was paid to co-authored poetry, as a specific surrealist practice, the group published also advertising-propaganda material, such as, pamphlets, brochures, posters, plaques, and the first among them was the poster Four Sides – And So On by Đorđe Jovanović, Đorđe Kostić and Oskar Davičo, printed in 1930. Books were actively published under the same denomination until 1933, and the last “Surrealist Edition” was published after a five-year break in 1938:
The strengthening of the Sixth-of-January Dictatorship in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and clashes with the leftist movements and parties brought about the arrest of Kostić, K. Popović, Jovanović and Davičo in 1932, who were accused of communist activities. Because of this event, but also because of former misunderstanding within the movement, the Belgrade surrealist group ceased to exist that very year.
