16
PARTISAN REVIEW
soul has a different view of things: "They tossed them up in the air, then
cockered them under the arms."
Regarding such exercises, the Surrealists say: "Our symposiums are
conducted with the maximum of seriousness and without any thought of
publicity." Nevertheless, it is plain to be seen, they always manage to
attract attention to themselves one way or another. Can it be that they
have succeeded in muddling their own minds with all those paint-tubes
and globules of theirs? No, they are perfectly aware of what they are
after-they propose to be the tainted pheasants for the connoisseurs of
preciosity, and each one does his best in this. regard. Paris is a large city,
with a multiplicity of occupations; and if even a scrap of velvet has a pro–
fession, surely there is one for posturing poets.
In the face of all this, they have the nerve to call the rag they publish
Surrealism in the Seroice of the Revolution.
So, you didn't know what
it was they were up to, with all that talk of glass globules? Well, well,
so it is the revolution they ;Jre serving, is it? The Surrealists realize
that it is getting harder every day to "shock the bourgeoisie." You can't
live on paint-tubes and velvet. Accordingly, they interlard their exercises
with quotations from Lenin. But the bourgeois is not so simple-minded
as all that. He knows that these phosphorescent pheasants are not dan–
gerous. As for the workers, they do not read poems on Japanese paper
and magazines that come in outlandish covers; but; if their eyes should
happen to light on these publications, with their smut and their slurs on
labor, they would not be able to conceive of "service to the revolution"
being associated with such ordinary street hooliganism.
From Arthur Rimbaud, who wrote inspired poems and who fought for
the Commune, to these pitiful degenerates, capable only of triflings, is a
period of sixty years, representing the lifetime of an entire class and the
outcome of a great culture.
Translated from the R.ussian by
SAMUEL PUTNAM
