In this month’s “On the Horizon,” devoted to shorter articles on the cultural scene, RICHARD M. CLURMAN discusses the movie “Home of the Brave,” and NICOLAS CLARION reports on a recent French literary phenomenon. Mr. Clurman is editorial assistant on COMMENTARY. He was born in New York in 1925 and attended the University of Chicago, where he was managing editor of the University Observer. Mr. Clarion is a Rumanian-born French journalist now living in this country. He is the author of Le Glacis Soviétique, and has published articles in Commentary, the New Republic, the Reporter, and other periodicals.

_____________

There is not a single habitué of the Parisian literary cafés, and scarcely a single French intellectual, who is not now aware of the existence of Isidor Isou—a young man of twenty-four who came to Paris on foot from Botosani, Rumania, in 1945, penniless, without official papers and barely speaking French, but armed with the unshakeable conviction that he was called upon to “revolutionize”—immediately and on a planetary scale—“art, poetry, literature, and music.”

A coterie of young people, assembled God knows how, accepted with uncontrolled enthusiasm the literary theory of the aposde from Botosani: poetry has nothing to do with literature, and in order to liberate poetry from its chains in this atomic century, it is necessary to destroy not only the verse forms, but the words themselves. “The new art,” declared Isou (his real name is Isidor Goldstein), “accepts as its subject matter the letters reduced to, and become simply, themselves, replacing completely all poetic and musical elements which go beyond the letters in order to shape them into coherent works.” Thus was born Lettrisme, which may be regarded as a resurrection of some old avant-garde theories, or as a postwar symptom comparable to the explosions of Surrealism and Dada after World War I. To the “seven manifestos of Dada,” Isou opposed the thick Introduction à une nouvelle poesie et à unenouvelle musique, which was issued by Gallimard, under threat, in case of refusal, of seeing its publishing house serve as fuel for a bonfire by the enthusiasts of Lettrisme. Among the “classics” of the new art, there is the following poem, which bears the tide “Sabbatical Orchestra of Infernal Spirits During a Sultry Summer Night”:

Bidingili; tingi-tingi!
Vingilingi; clingi-dingi!
Clingilingi; ringi-lingi!
Vou. . . .

Despite such splendid examples of the new poetry, the commercial success of the volume was not sufficient to provide for the material needs of the champion of the “liberation of poetry.” Isidor Isou resigned himself to a bit of “journalism.” He published in a weekly newspaper a series of interviews with André Gide, Jules Romains, François Mauriac, and others. This enterprise suffered a misfortune: Isou had never bothered to ask the persons interviewed to reply to his questions, but, instead, had taken the liberty of answering his own questions for them. The result of this experiment in journalism was that the weekly which had hired him was forced to dispense with his talents.

Poor, but overflowing with certitudes, Isou published a new book: L’agrégation d’un nom et d’un Messie—a “novel” that effaced all distinctions between the Messiah and the founder of Lettrisme. Although the radio and newspapers—above all the witty weekly Le Canard Enchainé—were happy to publicize the astonishing personality of the “Pope of Lettrisme,” Isou still did not succeed in gaining the attention of the public. In an article in the literary magazine Fontaine, he declared himself disabused: “We need a joint stock company . . . partnership, trust, etc. . . . possessing the capital necessary to launch this art as one today launches a cabinet minister, a writer, a new brand of preserves. It is toward this that our efforts are now directed.” But this cry remained without echo, and the capitalists paid no heed to such a promising investment.

_____________

Isou then turned to “Vagitation de quartier.” All along certain streets of the Latin Quarter, he plastered multi-colored posters, announcing in large brush-drawn letters:

12,000,000 youth
are going
to descend into the street
to make
La Révolution Lettriste

The good citizens of Paris, who are not inexperienced in revolutions, passed these posters by with such indifference that Isou decided he would have to “make his killing” outside the sphere of Lettrisme itself. He published, consequently, a brochure with the superbly restrained tide La mécanique des femmes, in the preface of which he declared that he did not believe that the police would arrest him “for this schoolboy exercise,” for he had already made public “a far more dangerous intention,” i.e., “la Révolution Lettriste.” However, it appears that Jules Moch, the Socialist Minister of the Interior, is a man insensitive to subtleties: he ordered Isou arrested for endangering morals—and thereby made the young man’s fortune. La mécanique des femmes is at present being sold under the table at fantastic black-market prices.

Interrogated by Magistrate Baurés as to the reasons that caused him to publish his brochure, Isou declared: “Far from being convinced that this work is amoral, it is my conviction that it can make a useful contribution to the education of youth.” The disbelieving judge dispatched the “Pope of Lettrisme” to a psychiatrist for examination.

Oh, melancholy destiny of the pathbreaker to the future!

_____________