We thank you for the documents and the books by Nougé[2] – almost impossible to find in France – the interest of which will not escape us.
Les levres nues appears to us represent the best current formula for a journal. A text like “Moscow poetry” marvelously illustrates the “avant-garde propaganda” that we also defend.
The Breton-Rimbaud-Lettrist affair[3] is agitating the newspapers in Paris quite a lot. All the notoriously reactionary elements support Breton. The Aragon Press[4] has kept an amiable silence.
Forced to choose by the despicable act, Breton made a brilliant choice. It will now be difficult to ignore the diversionary role that his movement assuredly plays among a certain youth.
Just yesterday we happened to see the [various] responses to an inquiry made by Magritte this past June, among which ours figures.[5] The “majoritarian” tone of this collection surprises us. Magritte was different when we met him in 1952.
Fonds regards,P.S. Concerning the Notre Dame scandal, we inform you that Serge Berna, one of the organizers,[6] was excluded from the Lettrist International last year for flexibility of conscience. This ending, coming after the lucrative [religious] conversion of Michel Mourre, unfortunately gives this manifestation a quite suspect history, and so we have had to withdraw our support from it since then.
[1] Marcel Marien (1920-1993), a Belgian surrealist and editor of the journal Les Nevres nues, founded in Autumn 1953.
[2] Paul Nougé (1895-1967), a Belgian surrealist and co-founder of Les Nevres nues. He proposed that Debord and Wolman contribute essays to it.
[3] Cf. Guy Debord, Oeuvres, Gallimard, 2006, pp. 157-163. [This appears to be a reference to the disruption of the centenary of Arthur Rimbaud in 1954.]
[4] Translator: possibly a reference to Louis Aragon.
[5] La carte d’apres nature, June 1954 (the first issues were published as postcards).
[6] Along with Michel Mourre (a former Dominican and the author of a historical dictionary in the 1960s) and Ghislain de Marbaix (a friend of Guy Debord and a future assistant on one of his films).
(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 by the publisher, except where noted.)