Questioned by the article entitled “The Centenary of Charleville” (Combat, 21 October), we communicate to you the following specifications.
There hasn’t been any “difference of opinion” between surrealists and lettrists over the scandal at Charleville.[1] Simply the belated defection of the entirety of the surrealists, and the renunciation by some of them of their signatures, which had previously been attached to a text, indeed Marxist.
We do not want to play the role of entertainer at this regime’s special occasions, literary or otherwise. Surrealism has in fact exploited this vein too much. We no longer enjoy the charms of inoffensive disturbances. To this extent, it is necessary to agree that we have [indeed] “forgotten Rimbaud.”
“Cry loudly, scream, rage,” counsels the author of this article to the “too self-admiring spoilsports” that we are, but we know the amiable ineffectiveness of such outbursts.
The festival continues, and we are sure to someday participate in an even more serious interruption of it.
For the Lettrist International,[1] Translator: the birthplace of Arthur Rimbaud.
(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! February 2011. Footnotes as noted.)