Yesterday I received your letters of the 7th and the 9th. (And, before that, I received the photos, which faithfully render the beauties of the via delle Caldaie.[2]) I am a little worried by the absence of Florentine letters in my mailbox: Francoise[3] and [Jean-Jacques] Raspaud, at least, wrote more than three weeks ago. The loss of these letters would be unimportant, but the symptom is not completely negligible.
In the coincidence of the three headings and even in the choice of words, the horoscope is of an extraordinarily drole pertinence.
Still more drole is the story, quite similar to that of Buchet in its origins and results, of the night-club[4] to which you sent the police for nocturnal uproar!
I have begun the film. There was some delay in the assembling of the material, but qualitatively my team has worked very well, and I will make use of truly beautiful film-clips (even a little more than I could hope for).
[Isidore] Isou and his poor group, exasperated by the small comic success of the Chinese film subtitled -- "detourned" -- by [Rene] Vienet,[5] have published an absolutely lunatic tract of four pages (pasted upon Editions Champ libre) that attacks me for this fact. One can read in it that Debord, "the aggressive and dangerous lunatic . . . and several of his acolytes insult the best guides and leaders of the working class, past and present, from Lenin and Trotsky to Mao Tse-Tung and Fidel Castro. . . ." In it, one speaks of us, when one is the most polite, in these terms: "The crooks and assassins of the youth revolt of May 1968, that is to say, the situationist neo-Nazis. . . ." The only thing that remains obscure is if we assassinated the May movement ourselves or if we made use of other people to assassinate it. In any case, I note now that Isou has been spared [from attack]. One cannot think of everyone at the same time.
Several unknown pro-situs went off to break the jaw of the journalist Francois George and stole from his place what little he had. This cretin telephoned [Michelle] Bernstein to demand that I confirm that it was not me who sent them (he would surely have been pursuaded: does he still merit being thought about?). He wanted to use the incident to renew relations. Of course, I did not respond. I do not disavow the pro-situs when they mistreat someone probably worse than themselves.
We were happy to learn the news, relatively good, concerning Celeste[6]: one surrenders oneself more easily to familial sequestration than to psychiatric sequestration.
I hope that you will be in a situation in which you can tell Leonor[7] all the good things that I think of her.
I now expect Mignoli.
Best wishes,P.S. Your Seigneuries have no doubt learned of the death of Asger [Jorn], which is regretted by everyone here.[8]
[1] Note at the top: "Expedited to Lisbon."
[2] The domicile of Guy and Alice Debord in Florence.
[3] Francoise, called Zyl, a friend of Alice.
[4] Situated on the ground floor of the Palazzo Bardi.
[5] Can the Dialectic Break Bricks?
[6] The famous "Celeste."
[7] Leonor G., from Lisbon.
[8] Detournement of the post script to an official letter from Machiavelli, announcing the death of his hero, Jean di Medici (called the Black Band).
(Published in Guy Debord Correspondance, Vol 5: Janvier 1973-Decembre 1978 by Librairie Artheme Fayard, 2005. Translated from the French by NOT BORED! March 2007. Footnotes by Alice Debord.)