I have just received all that you sent me. Thanks again. We have now written to the Post Office to annul the change of address, which almost did not function (I believe that this has become the general rule). Thus, I ask you to continue to go once a week to [the post office box at] rue Saint-Martin, and send me everything you find there. Before leaving Paris, you might give 10 francs on our behalf to the neighborhood concierge, since she already has our address. I have also communicated my current address directly to Florence and Lisbon, that is to say, to the most urgent.
I have received very good news from friends in Lisbon. It is still not May '68 there, but it has many of its traits; and all this can even go still further, if the Stalino-Spinola repression -- which has clearly begin -- does not succeed in destroying the entire movement. Before leaving Paris, I sent down there several theses on what has could happen;[1] and you can rightly suspect that no one was spared, except the revolutionary proletariat.
All this has produced a superb poster,[2] pasted on the walls of the town by the "Conselho para o desenvolvimento da revolucao social"[3] -- thus, here is the new flag, or title, of "our party" in the current period. One hears that Spinola has begun to tap [his fingers] on the table, and to admit that henceforth the absence of censorship at first and especially means the prohibition of calling for strikes.
In Portugal, the edition of [The Society of the] Spectacle, which sold poorly the previous two years, has sold-out in a few days in May.
The film [version] will be released in September by the distributor N.E.F. -- I do not know if you know them; I do not -- in the provinces and perhaps in Paris as well. To interrupt the exclusive showing [in Paris], the old whores of the Git-le-Coeur have taken into account a very bizarre fall [off] of ticket-sales in the fifth week (real or falsified?), which placed them below the minimum customarily anticipated by contract (and imprudently accepted by Lebo[4]), which had accounted for each period from Wednesday to Sunday (1,800 tickets) but without reporting the "excess" of the previous ticket sales. In any case, it was no doubt better to finish with such a hostile environment, which had, on the first day, produced two threats to withdraw the film: on the part of the house [the Git-le-Coeur studio] and on the part of the production [Simar Films]! I wonder if the absence of the title for two weeks from Le Monde had not been provoked by the house itself (perhaps you can see if was also absent, during the same period -- starting 22 May -- , from France-Soir and other newspapers? If so, the house signaled the coup).
Lebo has sent me the article by "the anonymous person" who expresses very well the jealous rage of the Mitterandist majority of Charlie Hebdo.[5] Here is a cunt, so as to show that I am behind the "present" of his anonymity, who rejects nothing less than Marx, Hegel, History, theory, the past of the revolution, and the cinema as a whole. This would, all the same, be quite impressive, and one would -- with a certain curiosity -- hope to see the follow-up that he prepares, if this awkward little person did not avow the "new" traits of the future by giving publicity to Professor Lyotard and the economist Castoriadis,[6] who exhausted their firepower before 1960, without exciting their century. Remove your moustache, we have recognized you! (It would be useful to discretely seek out the identity of this person . . .).
At the Actualities bookstore, rue Dauphine, I saw a pirate reprint of Contre le Cinema.[7] Can you buy one and send it to me? I do not have the original here with me.
I have a record-player, send me the disk on May[8] (and, of course, your disk, as soon as possible).[9] As for the pseudonym,[10] Alice and I find Vanessa Hachloum very beautiful and cruel: it is among the little flowers of hachloums that one gives such distinguished first names.
As poor Monique[11] must remain as distressed as distressing, there is a chance that time will arrange all things, if you hold firm to the two or three things that she has not willingly admitted.
See you soon: this country is magnificent. We embrace you.[1] See the letter to Afonso Monteiro dated 8 May 1974.
[2] Aviso ao proletariado portugues sobre a possibilidade da revolucao social. [Translator's note: "Notice to the Portuguese proletariat on the possibilities for social revolution."]
[3] Translator's note: Council for the Development of the Social Revolution.
[4] Translator's note: Gerard Lebovici.
[5] Translator's note: the name of a weekly newspaper; see issue dated 13 March 1974.
[6] Jean-Francois Lyotard and Cornelius Castoriadis, former members of Socialisme ou Barbarie. [Translator's note: Guy Debord briefly belonged to this group in the early 1960s.]
[7] Translator's note: Guy Debord's Against the Cinema was published by the Situationist International in 1964.
[8] A 45 rpm recording: the Barricaders sing "Carmela" (i.e., "The Commune Isn't Dead," written in June 1968); "The Cannons" ("Song of the Council for Maintaining the Occupations"); and "I Vote," a song falsely attributed to the CMDO.
[9] Translator's note: Pour en finir le travail (1974).
[10] Under contract, the singer Jacqueline Danno could not appear under her own name.
[11] Monique G., companion of Jacques Le Glou.
(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, except where noted.)