Your letter [to Cannes] followed me to Paris. Here’s the latest news about the enfants terribles.
Asger [Jorn] had said that he would be returning to Liguria the day after his private showing. But, when that day came, Michele [Bernstein] met him by chance on the street, in the company of a friend whom Asger presented as Christian Dotremont.[1] He then announced that his departure had been delayed for several days.
For several hours, Asger also insisted that corrections had to be made to Michele text’s on [Giuseppe] Gallizio.[2] She only accepted a small number of corrections, but too many, in fact, because the style was sabotaged and the ideological basis – which had been proposed three weeks earlier by Asger himself – seriously falsified. All of Asger’s argumentation was founded on the imperative necessity – for him – of “pleasing Gallizio.” (Naturally, Michele was unaware that we had been told Asger’s intentions concerning the two monographs[3] while in Albisola.) On the other hand, he found my text, the one intended for your monograph,[4] to be very good. This explains itself. Asger no longer desires to please you; rather, he hopes that you will be unhappy with me (since I speak of the game, and not your paintings, in this text). Finally, those tiny, pictural, Milanese impoverishments[5] will [only] go on to the extent we do not become stronger.
Ralph [Rumney], on the other hand, appears excusable: he’s sent me a notice concerning an exhibition of his paintings, which is being held right now in London. He said that he will soon come to Paris. We will see.
I will telephone [Yves] Klein today.
I hope that, in two or three days, I will be able to send you a first copy of my Report.[6] I await the texts that I must translate [from the Italian] into French. (It will be good to attach to it the theoretical text on music that [Walter] Olmo has spoken to me of.)
Best wishes to Elena [Verrone] and you.[1] Translator: for Debord’s criticisms of Dotremont, see his letter to Jan Kotik dated 28 December 1956.
[2] In Praise of Pinot Gallizio, by Michele Bernstein. [Published as part of L’oeuvre peint de G. Pinot Gallzio, published by Asger Jorn’s Bibliothetque d’Alexandrie in July 1960.]
[3] Translator: one monograph was to be about Gallizio; the other about Piero Simondo.
[4] A monograph that never appeared; what remains are the notes “On Chance” (cf. Guy Debord, Oeuvres, Gallimard, 2006, p. 296).
[5] Translator: it appears that the editor(s) of this volume did not know to whom Debord was referring; we certainly don’t.
[6] Translator: Report on the Construction of Situations and the Conditions for the Organization and Action of the International Situationist Tendency, which was printed in Brussels.
(Published in Guy Debord Correspondance, Vol "0": Septembre 1951 - Juillet 1957: Complete des "lettres retrouvees" et d l'index general des noms cites by Librairie Artheme Fayard, October 2010. Translated from the French by NOT BORED! March 2011. Footnotes by the publisher, except where noted.)