Arsenal Surrealist Subversion
My Evil Twin
> A R S E N A L
> Surrealist Subversion
> An International Anthology
> prepared by the
> SURREALIST MOVEMENT
> in the United States
I've been meaning to respond to this for a while. Franklin Rosemont
is a rather humorless idealogue and self-professed card-carrying
Surrealist. He edited a book of translations of Andre Breton's
critical and polemical writings (much of which he translated himself)
entitled *What Is Surrealism?*, to which he wrote a very long
introduction (which I'm currently in the middle of).
In the introduction, his main argument seems to be that Surrealism was
primarily a revolutionary movement, Marxist-Leninist in nature. The
artistic endeavors which most people associate with Surrealism are, in
fact, put forward by craven, bourgeois-stalinist establishment
literary critics *as* Surrealism in order to dupe the proletariat, and
keep it from recognizing its destiny in the class struggle. In point
of fact the artistic/literary work of the Surrealists was, while
important (in fact it was the most important work in the history of
literature), strictly secondary. Oh yes, Andre Breton knew the truth
about Surrealism (thus, about everything), and one can measure how
much of a Surrealist someone is by finding out what Breton thought of
him/her/it.
He may or may not have a point, I haven't decided; but he really does
seem to believe he's writing the *Communist Manifesto*, and the style
is distinctly off-putting.
Anyway, *What Is Surrealism?* came out 12 years ago, and I'm amused
(and somewhat surprised) to see that Rosemont is still keeping the
faith. I've never seen *Arsenal*--I'd love to see a copy.
--
How could I dance with another/when I saw him standing there
--Tiffany
Soren F. Petersen so...@cc.utah.edu
dadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadada so...@UTAHCCA.BITNET dadadadadada