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lutte" calls for unity of action against fascism and for a general strike.
In an important lecture that June in Brussels, he reviewed the whole
social evolution of surrealism and reaffirmed its materialist position
by stating: "the liberation of the spirit requires as a prior condition
the liberation of man himself." At this point, surrealism had reached
the peak of its activity and its international influence. After the
highly successful visit to Prague in April 1935, Breton and Eluard
accepted an invitation to the Canary Islands and, in the spring of
1936, to London for a huge surrealist exhibit with lectures and
related events.
When announcements went out for the 1935 writers' congress,
the surrealists expressed doubt about the need to defend bourgeois
culture and demanded that the agenda include a discussion of "the
right to pursue, in literature and in art, new means of expression."
They constituted too important a group to be excluded from the Con–
gress. Yet not a single surrealist appeared in the printed program
even though Rene Crevel was an active member of the organizing
committee for the Congress. Everything was obviously up in the air
when, a week before the Congress opened, Andre Breton recognized
Ilya Ehrenburg in the street. An opponent of the Soviets in 1917,
Ehrenburg had changed his mind and had spent most of the last
twenty years in Paris writing for
L 'Humanite
and representing Soviet
~
artistic freedom. In 1934 he published a collection of essays on the
French literary scene, praising Gide and Malraux, criticizing Mau-
riac and Morand, and saving his most concentrated vitriol for the
surrealists.
I don't know if they are really sick or if they are only faking their
craziness . .. These young phosphorescents, wound up in theo–
ries of onanism and the philosophy of exhibitionism, play act at
being the zealots of revolutionary intransigence and proletarian
honesty . .. They have their pastimes . For example, they study
pederasty and dreams.
He worked several pages out of it. Now, if there is one prejudice
Breton imposed on the group around him, it was the exclusion ofho–
mosexuals . (Only Crevel was tolerated.) Fairly early in the game the
surrealists had developed a somewhat violent strain and believed in
what they called "correction." Breton, seeing their slanderer there in
the street, simply raised his arm and slapped him - twice according
to some accounts.
If
Breton knew that Ehrenburg was head of the
