Notes.

Henry Street

Pink lights at Henry Street (a la Firebird) reminding one of brothel and driving one cuckoo.

A la Proust: desire to retain Joan attempt coincidentally to prevent others from capturing.

Study of Joan asleep--see passage in Proust.

Anagram conversations, also anacoluthons: where important, mysterious, secretive affairs were concerned.

Joan priding herself on never making slip regarding the one important secret --THE GRAND MYSTERY OF HER LIFE--which nobody knows and I will never know...I least of all. The psychology of such a conceit, such a desire, such a wilful division of affection, etc. The deepfelt need to be constantly looked upon as one possessing such dark secrets: always cropping up when some penetration has been made in the natural armament (armor). The grand Russian joke might well be that there is nothing to this.

Proust's remark concerning "need to break from view of world as realm of possibilities, and importance, under similar circumstances, of becoming the master strategist, diplomat, spy, detective. (see passage in "Captive")

Likewise, his stuff on procrastination--even in matter of jealousy. How the attacks are warded off, lulled, shifted to other more interesting grounds. etc.

Dictionary discussions of an afternoon with Harides: beginning through casual question in conversation at table, lasting whole hours, ranging from anacoluthon, necropolis, epicure, sophists, to substantives, substituent, rediscount rates, plebiscites, mandates, Hindu curse words, word for I and me, the Great I Am, etc. etc. (The dictionary itself--how it came into my possession, talk with Vizetelly are Vocabularies of great men, his letter to father, etc.)

Le Theatre de la Cruaute de M. Antonin Artaud
(From "Comoedia Sept. 21, 1932)

"Je concois le theatre comme une operation ou
une ceremonie magique et je tendrai tous mes ef-
forts a lui rendre, par des moyens actuels et
modernes, et autant qu'il se pourra comprehensibles
a tous, son caractere rituel primitif. Il y a dans
tout cote deux choses, deux aspects.

1. Aspect physique, actif, exterieur, qui se traduit par des gestes, des sonorites, des images, des harmonies precieuses. Ce cote physique s'adresse directement a la sensibilite du spectateur, c'est a dire a ses nerfs. Il a des facultes hypnotiques. Il prepare l'esprit par les nerfs a recevoir les idees mystiques ou metaphysiques qui constituent l'aspect interieur d'un rite, et dont ces harmonies ou ces gestes ne sont que l'enveloppement.

2. L'aspect interieur, philosophique ou religieux, en entendant ce dernier mot dans son sens le plus large, don son sens de communication avec l'Universel.

Mais que le spectateur se rassure, car tout
rite est a trois degres. Et apres le cote physique
destine a envelopper et a charmer a l'instar de
n'importe quelle danse et de n'importe quelle
musique, l'apparait le cote feerique et
poetique du rite, sur lequel l'esprit peut sarr-
eter sans aller plus loin. A ce degre, le rite ra
conte des histoires et fournit des images mer-
veilleuses et tres connues, de meme qu'en lisant
l'Iliade, on peut s'arreter sur les avatars matrim
oniaux de Menelas sans se precouper des idees
profondes ou terribles qu'ils renferment, et sont

(continued page 12-A.)

2.1. [ sic ] "ravings" of insane negro present cancer (a Greek myth!)" (Keatsling)
Use this as basis for departure.
my ravings, my monologue —
what lies there in vault or tank?

"the subject-matter of a book is spiritual
about as important as it is in abstract writing" (Keatsling) - Basis of departure.

"chaos in creative activity to-day bears
caste-mark (hall-mark?) of the transition"
(Keatsling). Fraenkel on fragment
diary, subject-in creative suicide, etc.
Emerson's words (from Lewisohn) on
"if only a man can recognize that
which is the truth" etc.

"J. C. K.

"Bringing on my illness!" Junes remark — a fine cut-line — one) those expressions like "love everything that flows" — "Lake Titicaca" etc. which reminds up world(s) of the images, a guy flies by these crazy expressions that obsess + release, that inflame + open up fissures in the brain, etc. etc.

"You haven't much to do now have
you?" (Kalwe) — pushes button +
would collapse around my
shoulders — because he negotiates
my value — great blow at, e.g.
I will give you a dose of
OK? I will give you a dose of
who gives faith to men whose insides
are full of ashes.

MILLWARD'S BOSWELL.

3. Scheme for Brochure

Part 111. Function of Art

The Eternal Conflict (Art is war and war is
love and love is god--Faure)

Artist as Hero (Rank & Faure)

Pscyhologism versus Naturalism

Form & Language

The Grand Style

Content--Drama--Humanity

"Extra-temporal symbols" (Proust)

Post-war Regoltuion (Dadaism & Surrealism--
against art, literature, aestheiticsm)

Fraenkel on artist's goal to-day ("to go mad")

Obscenity (Machen on Rabelias)

Tropis of Cancer (3.) 12-A.
Furched out cent - equals sign-zero!
(see notes)

Bulesque - Izzie the gallery god -
seen novel - comrad h. y. " Paris
Bld." de la chapelle, etc. (see notes)

Stick the arm in up to eyes !!!

Proust - two men on flagstones!

Whitman on making Bibles (Faure)

Childhood Diseases - "Heart of Boy"
"Grimm's Farm Jules" (see notes)
"Prime Reality" Reality Prime. "mental climate"

Little homo excellences - Costean
walk along Lervallios - Penet street

"Some day added centunés to his life!"
(see notes)

"Not going to polish!" (See notes)
-if we had more of Dostoevski ...

my book is its own esthetics

"The cent here keeps her permanent
anate solution in a wine bottle.
The other night I was so thirsty
that I almost drank it off. But
looks like wine, even better. Some
might I may get so thirsty as
to forget myself. To die
thirst. Creatively. Nothing but
perm anganate left. Oi' yoi!"

WHOLLY'S DOSTOEVSKI.

## 2. Theatre de la Cruaute....

charges de dissimiler.

Mais en même temps qu'il retrouve les pouvoir d'actions directe sur les nerfs et la sensibilité, et par la sensibilité un esprit, le théâtre abandonne l'usage du théâtre parle, dont la clarte et la logique excessive sont une gene pour la sensibilité. Il ne s'agit pas d'ailleurs de supprimer la parole, mais d'en reprendre considerablement l'emploi, ou **il** de s'en servir dans un sens in cantatoire oublie ou meconnu. Il s'agit surtout de supprimer un certain cote purement psychologique et naturaliste du théâtre et de permettre a la poésie et a l'imagination de reprendre leurs droits.

Mais, et c'est ici la nouveauté, il y a un cote virulent et je dirai même dangereux de la poésie de l'imagination a retrouver. La poésie et une force dissociatrice et anarchique, qui par l'analogie, les associations, les images, ne vit que d'un bouleversement des rapports communs. Et la nouveauté sera de bouleverser ces rapports non seulement dans le domaine extérieur, dans le domaine de la nature, mais dans le domaine inter- ieur, c'est a dire, dans celui de la psychologie.

(Comment, c'est mon secret.)

Dans ce nouveau langage, les gestes valent des mots, les attitudes ont un sens symboliquement profond, sont prises à **l'etat d'hieroglyphes** et le spectacle tout entier, au lieu de viser à l'effet et au charme, sera pour l'esprit un moyen de renommance, de vertige et de rev- elation.

(continued - p. 24)

Nicolas BATATOFF et Ludmilla SEMENOVA dans Trois dans un sous-sol.
Film russe de A. ROOM.

Schme for Brochure. Dec. 1932.

## Part 1. The Malady

- Disintegration of Ego
- Hamlet-Faust Cycle
- Bankruptcy of Idealism

- Morality-Instinctivism
- Blood Consciousness
- Universe of Death
- Death & Violence

- Psychologic Interpretation of artist &
- American Literature seen thru Sex (Lewisohn)
- The Machine (smash!)

- No Salvation in Economic R evolution
- Restore to men their souls!

- New Middle Ages (rather <u>Dark</u> Ages)
- The Great Myth of Science

- Study J. A. Symonds' "Study in Greek Ethics"

Tropicof Cancer-Insert.

2.

"Uncreated conscience of race"--Joyce. (Bah!) Only individual conscience. My love will come later, etc. Too much first to attack. Make it so hot for myself that there will only be a square foot left for me to stand on, etc. I don't ask to put my poor tired ass somewhere. Girl in subway, attractive, looking at me fearfully--Fraid I might admire her or annoy her. No, I am not thinking of you, I am admiring image of myself which I see in your eyes. If you knew who I was maybe you'd lift your dress a little, etc. Expand to limit. Drinking aperitif at bar, thinking of examples of lost ones, beaten ones, who compromised with America--Jack London--no, I won't let them do that to me. And how little phrases, little insults and injuries stick and open up big wounds and nourish me perennially--like Bruce Barton's letter saying "It is obvious you will never be a writer, not your forte, etc." recall all these things: advertising man, Ned's boss, handing back my "Diary of a Futurist" with shrug of shoulders, not finishing it, don't know what it means, etc. And I wrote his stuff for him in Ned's name, the bastard! And the big asthmatic guy from Florida, bunge dealer, who spoke many languages and sang beautifully--opening window on me without asking, etc. And Stevenson E. Ward going down elevator, questioning me sarcastically about Mietasche and Rabelias, as if tailor's son could not fathom such things. And Paul Poindexter offering to instruct me in books, mentioning all those things I had known by heart-- Epictetus, Aurelius, Spender, etc. And Bruere who wouldn't lie for me to save my life, and his Columbia professors who looked at my torn shirt and questioned my intelligence, and Ziemand who said "you want to absorb too much" --borrowing from him and taking it out of him with bitter words. And Karsten'

2. Scheme for Brochure

Part 11. Man as Universe

The Sacred Body

The Individual Soul

Man as Macrocosm

Revolution & War
of

Magic & Sex --role & function (Lady Chatterley

Homosexuality (disintegration)

Soul & Conscience

(Break once and for all nexus of treadmill
of moralities, ideals, totems & taboos.

Keyserling's spiral evolution of man--
"history only begun"--Spengler's cycles
were on the flat.)

Love--Polarity

Primitivism--False Hedonism

Tropic of Cancer --Insert.

3.

Purity of obscenity when it reaches boiling point of violence and rage. Walk
in Levallois-Perret, everything coming clear. Above all no piety, no reverence.
Lost on B'way, adding up lights, zero in crowds, everybody reducing everybody
to nothingness, all overawed and squashed by products we built--lights, build-
ings, bridges, etc. Burlesque, restoration to self, accent on body, smut for
own sake, religion of carnality, oodles of flesh, Marle Pennetti and Cleo
(see MSS. on this for Iazy the gallery god scene, for picture of Ghetto, etc.)
Swinging doors Blvd. La Chapelle, rue de la Goutte d'or and re d e la Char-
boniere (Irene)--impreszon in early evening, Whores at doors with cigarettes
calling to passers-by-red glow. Thinking of Cocteau's feeble drug dreams, his
feeble homosexuality, his feeble brilliancy, etc.--prefer Goya's stuffed dolls,
skeletons in lace, etc. to women of Lawrence & Gide. Osborn's mantic talk,
his volcanic flow, his having something even it enfeebled, etc. Zest and gusto
for life, which a Ladkine couldn't see, which Paula ridiculed, which Nichols
alone made something of. His New England winter scenes, his Dickens' Christ
mas feeling, his Cemetery reminiscences, ancestral theme, old age, grandmother
in wheel-chair dominating family circle, father bringing him into world alone.
His relish for Wilke, Shngai, Le Havre, white whales, Melville, Conrad--ig
norence of danger, self-obsession, whole drama with Jeanne very interesting
and hideous and last letter reveals worlds on this subject. Mss. lost or
scattered--containing worlds--good as Rimbaud or Velaine. Why did no one per-
ceive what I had, except Ronald Miller? Stick the arm in up to your and
waddle them ferociously--razy, metallurgical eyes, nonsense, monster. Thoughts
when June says "you're a saint...you're the most honest person...Jeanne theme."
And then about the mystery--"you're not a great person, I would never explain"
Effect of this now. Steel walled. Untouchable, unassailable--Proust after Al-
bertine's death, and pages on sorrow and retropection, etc. Elsa Von Bernburg.
Several refrains to repeat--"fucked out cunt", "poor tired ass", "sorry for self

4. Scheme for Brochure

Part iv. Man as History

World & Reality (Jung & Freud)

Destiny (Spengler)

Man as Microcosm (Rank)

History versus Nature

Metaphysics--Religion

Tragic Sense of Life (Faure & Unamuno)

Time & Space (Relativity & Absolute)

On Being (Keyserling)

Need for great Men

Automatism--Biologic Death

Time irreversible, not chronological

Novel as History (Unamuno)

SELBSTPORTRAIT FÜR CHARLIE CHAPLIN, 1919

Lithographie

2.

keep maintained--to keep alive. This book is to
destroy the balance of the world, to give man a
vertigo of such magnitude that he might realize
once the insanity of existence and the fecundity
the world of sanity and Christianity have conceal
ed from us. La maladie du monde--lucidity--the
knowledge that man is beaten by himself only,
that art is only a compensation, wisdom and
evasion, sanity a compromise, and that by vision
alone can we enlarge our vision to the measure of
a universe we have sought to minimize in order to
rule.

This is chaos--the ultimate courage. It is
to make man humble and less afraid. After this
there is no more horror, no more unknown horror.
M. has given us the last frisson. Pain has no
more secret recesses. "The tombs are open".

The scar upon the world.....

Violence as necessary as that of the man who
initiates a virgin--our timorousness, our ignor-
ance, our feeble hold on experience, our refusal
to look on the face of reality, to relate our
life to animals and animals to astrology--to let
life intergrow, expand, flow--danger & knowledge
--death and vision--sex and the liberation.

Nothing unexplored, unnoticed, disdained.
No squeamishness, portentous furies preceding clair
voyance--lumbering phrases shattering and deliver-
ing one intact prophecy--the blind gmpkm grappling
which is necessary to mysticism--no evasions, no
hypocrisies. A man without vanity, morality, or
wholeness--who has embraced the universe, who has
not detached experience from its imperfections, or
the writer from the man. Hampered, over sincere to
the point of falseness, straining inflated life--
emphasized and magnified beyond any hope of escape.
The grand fresco of an epoch, strident, loud, hamme
strokes. Resonances illimitable. Explosivism,
impetuosity, all to restore to our mentalized
life an impetus--to reassert blood over our
analytical and critical arrest. We have stood and
analyzed ourselves into paralysis. H. M. says
fall, break your head, but the falling in the
act of falling--that second of frenzy is life.

Rocks the world effluvias--elemental catastrophe. Reestablish currents--as by a war. All war is an invasion which gives birth to civilization. War alone can annihilate war--not thinking.

3.

Anais' Notes on "Tropif of Cancer".

Life cannot be thought out, apprehended
imagin tively, it must be burned through....

Enclosing roughly written careless notes on
your work done in the train two months ago. When
I have time I will make a better job. This is to
amuse you......Bonaparte (Marie) last night was
psycho-analysis at its worst. Barren, precise,
arid, clinical. Created a revolt in me. Point
was that Poe's mother died of consumption when
he was three. He sought the image of her in several
other women, including the consumption, the linger-
ing death, etc. The dying women haunt his work,
dominate it. [Perhaps as cruel women have
haunted and dominated you.) Dying women arrested
the living flow of his sensuality. His sensuality
became necrophilis. Et puis apres?

Tell me this, however; what were your mother's
dominant traits? (I should say off the bat--sev-
erity, hypocrisy, ridicule, cruelty, ignorance).
As far as I can see, criticalness, sharpness, hard
ness, tyranny?---

Anyway, it's all necrophilis.---Mme Bonaparte
too. I agree with you more and more. Wherein I
don't agree is that the study of necrophilis for
people like you and me is a great incentive to
become more and more Dionysian. I'm absolutely
brimming with effervescence though I can't move an
inch.

Seems to me you have escaped the fatality of
repetition in form of your destiny by escaping
cruelty in woman. As I escaped mine by finding
you in place of my former penchant for dead or
half-dead men!

A.

### 3. Theatre de la Cruaute....

C'est a dire que la poesie s'installe dans les objets exterieurs et que de leur assemblage et de leur choix elle tire des consonnances etrangees et des images, que tout dans le spectacle vise a l'expression par des moyens physiques qui engagent aussi bien l'esprit que la sensibilite.

C'est ainsi qu'apparait une certaine idée alchimique du theatre ou a l'inverse du theatre habituel, chez qui l'eparpillement analytique des sentiments correspondent a l'etat grossier de la chimie scientifique (laquelle n'est qu'une branche degenere de l'Alchimie) les formes, les sentiments, les paroles; composent l'image d'une sorte de tourbillon vivant et synthetique, au mil ieu duquel le spectacle prend l'aspect d'une veritable transmutation."

(Finis.)

GROUPE D'ÉTUDES PHILOSOPHIQUES ET SCIENTIFIQUES
POUR L'EXAMEN DES TENDANCES NOUVELLES

(fonde en 1922)

SORBONNE : 46. Rue Saint-Jacques (V)

Le Groupe d'Etudes Philosophiques et Scientifiques pour l'examen des Tendances Nouvelles a l'honneur d'inviter

aux Conférences suivantes :

16 Février 1933, 21 h. Amph. Michelet, 46, r. Saint-Jacques, Conférence de M. Silvio TISSI, de Milan :

Nécessité de la Contradiction dans l'art et la pensée.

27 Février, 21 h. Amph. Descartes, 17, r. de la Sorbonne, XXVIIIe Concert de Musique Moderne,

(organisé par Mme Jane BATHORI)

2 Mars, 21 h. Amph. Michelet, Conférence de Mme Marie BONAPARTE.
Edgar Poe (Etude Psychanalytique).

9 Mars, 21 h. Am. Michelet, Conférence de Mme Marie BONAPARTE.
La pensée magique chez le primitif.

16 Mars, 21 h. Amph. Michelet, Conférence du Dr R. LAFORGUE
La pensée magique dans la religion.

23 Mars, 21 h. Amph. Michelet, Conférence du Dr LEBAS
La pensée magique chez le névérose.

27 Mars, 21 h. Amph. Descartes, XXIXe Concert de Musique Moderne,
(organisé par Mme Jane BATHORI)

30 Mars, 21 h. Amph. Michelet, Conférence de René DAUMAL.
La "Pataphysique" ou l'Impasse de la Science.

6 Avril, 21 h. Amph. Michelet, Conférence d'Antonin ARTAUD
Le Théâtre et la Peste.

27 Avril, 21 h. Amph. Michelet, Conférence du Dr H. CODFET.
La pensée magique dans la vie quotidienne.

4 Mai, 21 h. Amph. Michelet, Conférence du Dr A. BOREL.
La pensée magique dans l'art.

11 Mai, 21 h. Amph. Michelet, Conférence du Dr THOORIS
L'Instabilité biologique.

18 Mai, 21 h. Amph. Michelet, Conférence du Dr S. NACHT
La pensée magique dans le rêve.

7 Juin, 21 h. Amph. Michelet, Conférence de Mme Dr S. MORGENSTERN
La pensée magique chez l'enfant.

15 Juin, 21 h. Amph. Michelet, Conférence du Dr ALLAIX
La Magie et la Science.

Imp. P. Brüder, 36, rue Pinel - Paris

PARIS, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 19, 1931

LA VIE DE BOHÈME

(As Lived on the Left Bank)

BY WAMBLY BALD

The birth of *The New Review* in Mont-
parnasse started something six months
ago. It dared to peep with clarity at the
new possibilities and the old horses
neighed their disapproval. All the more
fun!

But Montparnasse is on its toes now.
They are getting hot. The third number
of *The New Review* (whose major con-
tributors are Parnassians) is the talk of
the Quarter.

Well may it be. The articles which
constitute half the magazine are the
weakest gibberish of this decade. Berl,
with his outmoded "Unconscious" and
tardy annihilation of Bergson, makes one
giggle. Ferrero's absorption in the prob-
lem of art is too collegiate for comment.
And Bodenheim will be a social climber.

Very sorry is the exhibition of Una-
mung whose *How To Write A Novel* is
merely a diary charged with hysteria. We
have no patience with an inflated lyric
embedded in cement. Such naked screams
should make you blush. Such bubble pro-
tests of neurasthenia are immodest.

Saddest of all is the contribution of
André Bély, the Russian, whom some-
body dubbed the Russian Joyce. That

somebody should be condemned to remain
a frustrated critic until the end of his
decline. Bély is a corrupt Dostojewski
who was confused by metapsychics and
sank into the more comfortable medium
of literature. He screams on the brink
of an era of epilepsy and sadism. His
colonial mysticism is the fantasy of a
padded cell. He couldn't even write
editorials for a small town newspaper.
No one is interested in that man's
elusive soul. The other little essays are
waste.

And yet the third number of *The New Review* is the best to date. It is carried by its fiction. The short stories and chapter extracts of novels have brought to the fore a number of brilliant young writers, each of whom shows astonishing fertility and inventiveness. Most interesting of all is the range. The gap between James Farrell's *Jewboy* and Richard Thoma's *Tragedy In Blue* is wide. The former is a slice of life by an

(O. Blakeston Photo)

Primitive Emotion.

artist whose work shows crudity at its
best. The latter stands head over heels
above the other contributors of *The New
Review*.

PROGRAMME.

1er Au point de vue du fond

c'est-à-dire des sujets et des thèmes traités :

Le Théâtre de la Cruauté choisira des sujets et des thèmes qui répondent à l'agitation et à l'inquiète caractéristiques de l'époque.

Il compte ne pas abandonner au cinéma le soin de dégager les Mythes de l'homme et de la vie moderne. Mais il le fera d'une manière qui lui soit propre, c'est-à-dire que, par opposition avec le glissement économique, utilitaire et technique du monde, il remettra à la mode les grandes préoccupations et les grandes passions essentielles que le théâtre moderne a recouvertes sous le vernis de l'homme faussement civilisé.

Ces thèmes seront cosmiques, universels, interprétés d'après les textes les plus antiques, pris aux vieilles cosmogonies mexicaine, hindoue, judaïque, iranienne, etc.

C'est-à-dire qu'il renoncera à l'homme psychologique, au caractère et aux sentiments bien tranchés; et que c'est à l'homme total, et non à l'homme social, soumis aux lois et déformé par les religions et les préceptes, qu'il s'adressera.

Et dans l'homme il fera entrer non seulement le recto mais aussi le verso de l'esprit; la réalité de l'imagination et des rêves y apparaîtra de plain-pied avec la vie.

En outre, les grands bouleversements sociaux, les conflits de peuple à peuple et de race à race, les

forces naturelles, l'intervention du hasard, le magné-tisme de la fatalité, s'y présenteront, soit indirectement, sous l'agitation et les gestes de personnages grandis à la taille de dieux, de héros, ou de monstres, aux dimensions mythiques, soit directement, sous forme de manifestations matérielles obtenues par des moyens scientifiques nouveaux.

Ces dieux ou héros, ces monstres, ces forces naturelles et cosmiques seront interprétés d'après les images des textes sacrés les plus antiques, et des vieilles cosmogonies.

2re Au point de vue de la forme

Cette nécessité pour le théâtre de se retremper aux sources d'une poésie éternellement passionnante et sensible pour les parties les plus reculées et les plus distraites du public, étant réalisée par le retour aux vieux Mythes primitifs, nous demanderons à la mise en scène et non au texte le soin de matérialiser et surtout d'actualiser ces vieux conflits, c'est-à-dire que ses thèmes seront transportés directement sur le théâtre et matérialisés en mouvements, en expressions et en gestes avant d'être coulés dans les mots.

Ainsi, nous renoncerons à la superstition théâtrale du texte et à la dictature de l'écrivain.

Et c'est ainsi que nous rejoignons le vieux spectacle populaire traduit et senti directement par l'esprit, en dehors des déformations du langage et de l'écueil de la parole et des mots.

man

Le monde. Le dirigée dans l'ense sans le et le cinéma et éveillés tion de deux alouie. Mais Subissez-les affabulation uvre favorise

VITRAC.

faire quelque
las l'esprit de

cinéma dont
voie où, fata-
L'auteur de
core inconnue
ontre : « pure-
ur les yeux.»
Volonté.

portant, c'est
ui cherche la
passions, tous
esprit et le tor-

les crimes qu'il est possible
ment. L'image a été souvent impuissante à rendre la pensée d'Antonin
Artaud, il y a des liaisons qui manquent, des ruptures, mais cela n'empêche
point que le film, tel qu'il est, est un poème cinématographique soutenu
par une pensée directrice aboutissante, et c'est ce qui a presque toujours
manqué aux poèmes cinématographiques vus jusqu'à ce jour.

BOISYVON (Intransigeant).

(1) Ce scénario a été publié dans la Nouvelle Revue Française, le 1er novembre 1927.

C'est dire que nous comptons baser le théâtre
avant tout sur le spectacle et que dans le spectacle
nous introduirons une notion nouvelle de l'espace
utilisé sur tous les plans possibles et à tous les degrés
de la perspective en profondeur et en hauteur,
et à cette notion viendra s'adjoindre une idée
particulière du temps ajoutée à celle du mouve-
ment :

« Dans un temps donné, au plus grand nombre
de mouvements possibles, nous joindrons le plus
grand nombre d'images physiques et de signi-
fications possibles attachées à ces mouvements.

Les images et les mouvements employés ne seront
pas là seulement pour le plaisir extérieur des yeux ou
de l'oreille, mais pour celui plus secret et plus profi-
table de l'esprit.

Ainsi l'espace théâtral sera utilisé non seulement
dans ses dimensions et dans son volume, mais, si
l'on peut dire, *dans ses dessous*.

Le chevauchement des images et des mouvements
aboutira, par des collusions d'objets, de silences, de
eris et de rythmes, à la création d'un véritable
langage physique à base de signes et non plus de
mots.

Car il faut entendre que, dans cette quantité de
mouvements et d'images pris dans un temps donné,
nous faisons intervenir aussi bien le silence et le
rythme, qu'une certaine vibration et une certaine
agitation matérielle, composée d'objets et de gestes
réellement faits et réellement utilisés. Et l'on peut
dire que l'esprit des plus antiques hiéroglyphes
présidera à la création de ce langage théâtral pur.

— 6 —

N'importe quel public populaire a toujours été
friand d'expressions directes et d'images; et la parole
articulée, les expressions verbales explicites inter-
viendront dans toutes les parties claires et nettement
élucidées de l'action, dans les parties où la vie se
repose et où la conscience intervient.

Mais, à côté de ce sens logique, les mots seront pris
dans un sens incantatoire, vraiment magique, —
pour leur forme, leurs émanations sensibles, et non
plus seulement ou leur sens.

Car ces apparitions effectives de monstres, ces
débauches de héros et de dieux, ces manifestations
plastiques de forces, ces interventions explosives
d'une poésie et d'un humour chargés de désor-
ganiser et de pulvériser les apparences, selon le
principe anarchique, analogique de toute véritable
poésie, ne posséderont leur vraie magie que dans
une atmosphère de suggestion hypnotique où
l'esprit est atteint par une pression directe sur les
sens.

Si, dans le théâtre digestif d'aujourd'hui, les nerfs,
c'est-à-dire une certaine sensibilité physiologique
sont laissés délibérément de côté, livrés à l'anar-
chie individuelle du spectateur, le Théâtre de la
Cruauté compte en revenir à tous les vieux
moyens éprouvés et magiques de gagner la sensi-
bilité.

Ces moyens, qui consistent en des intensités de
couleurs, de lumières ou de sons, qui utilisent la
vibration, la trépidation, la répétition soit d'un
rythme musical, soit d'une phrase parlée, qui font
intervenir la tonalité ou l'enveloppement communi-

— 7 —

man

a monde. Le
dirigées dans
sense sans le
et le cinéma
res et éveillés
tion de deux
alosie. Mais
Subissez-les
affabulation
uvre favorise

VITRAC.

faire quelque
as l'esprit de

cinéma dont
voie où, fata-
. L'auteur de
core inconnue
ontre : « pure-
ur les yeux ».
Volonté).

portant, c'est
qui cherche la
passions, tous
esprit et le tor-
turent. L'image a été souvent impuissante à rendre la pensée d'Antonin
Artaud, il y a des liaisons qui manquent, des ruptures, mais cela n'empêche
point que le film, tel qu'il est, est un poème cinématographique soutenu
par une pensée directrice aboutissante, et c'est ce qui a presque toujours
manqué aux poèmes cinématographiques vus jusqu'à ce jour.

BOISYVON (Intransigeant).

catif d'un éclairage, ne peuvent obtenir leur plein effet que par l'utilisation des dissonances.

Mais ces dissonances, au lieu de les limiter à l'emprise d'un seul sens, nous les ferons chevaucher d'un sens à l'autre, d'une couleur à un son, d'une parole à un éclairage, d'une trépidation de gestes à une tonalité plane de sons, etc., etc.

Le spectacle, ainsi composé, ainsi construit, s'étendra par suppression de la scène, à la salle entière du théâtre et, parti du sol, il gagnera les murailles sur de légères passerelles, enveloppera matériellement le spectateur, le maintiendra dans un bain constant de lumière, d'images, de mouvements et de bruits. Le décor sera constitué par les personnages eux-mêmes, grandis à la taille de mannequins gigantesques, par des paysages de lumières mouvantes jouant sur des objets et des masques en perpétuel déplacement.

Et, de même qu'il n'y aura pas de place inoccupée dans l'espace, il n'y aura pas de répit, ni de place vide dans l'esprit ou la sensibilité du spectateur. C'est-à-dire qu'entre la vie et le théâtre, on ne trouvera plus de coupure nette, plus de solution de continuité. Et qui a vu tourner la moindre scène de film, comprendra exactement ce que nous voulons dire.

Nous voulons disposer, pour un spectacle de théâtre, des mêmes moyens matériels qui, en éclairage, en figuration, en richesses de toutes sortes, sont journellement gaspillés pour des bandes, sur lesquelles tout ce qu'il y a d'actif, de magique dans un pareil déploiement, est à jamais perdu.

— 8 —

Le premier spectacle du Théâtre de la Cruauté s'intitulera :

## La Conquête du Mexique

Il mettra en scène des événements et non des hommes. Les hommes viendront à leur place avec leur psychologie et leurs passions, mais pris comme l'émanation de certaines forces et sous l'angle des événements et de la fatalité historique où ils ont joué leur rôle.

Ce sujet a été choisi :

1. A cause de son actualité et pour toutes les allusions qu'il permet à des problèmes d'un intérêt vital pour l'Europe et pour le monde.

Au point de vue historique, la Conquête du Mexique pose la question de la colonisation. Elle fait revivre de façon brutale, implacable, sanglante, la fatuité toujours vivace de l'Europe. Elle permet de dégonfler l'idée qu'elle a de sa propre supériorité. Elle oppose le Christianisme à des religions beaucoup plus vieilles. Elle fait justice des fausses conceptions que l'Occident a pu avoir du paganisme et de certaines religions naturelles et elle souligne d'une manière pathétique, brûlante, la splendeur et la poésie toujours actuelle du vieux fond métaphysique sur lequel ces religions sont bâties.

2. En posant la question terriblement actuelle de la colonisation et du droit qu'un continent croit avoir d'en asservir, un autre, elle pose la question de la supériorité, réelle, celle-là, de certaines races

man

de la monde. Le dirigees dans
sens sans le
et le cinéma
res et eveillés
tion de deux
calusie. Mais
Subissez-les
affabulation
uvre favorise

VITRAC.

faire quelque
s l'esprit de

cinéma dont
voie où, fata-
l. L'auteur de
core inconnue
contre : « pure-
pour les yeux. »
Volonté).

portant, c'est
pu cherche la
passions, tous
sprit et le tor-
turent. L'image a été souvent impuissante à rendre la pensée d'Antonin
Artaud, il y a des liaisons qui manquent, des ruptures, mais cela n'empêche
point que le film, tel qu'il est, est un poème cinématographique soutenu
par une pensée directrice aboutissante, et c'est ce qui a presque toujours
manqué aux poèmes cinématographiques vus jusqu'à ce jour.

BOISYVON (Intransigeant).

48.

52.

sur d'autres et montre la filiation interne qui relie le génie d'une race à des formes précises de civilisation. Elle oppose la tyrannique anarchie des colonisateurs à la profonde harmonie morale des futurs colonisés.

Ensuite, en face du désordre de la monarchie européenne de l'époque, basée sur les principes matériels les plus injustes et les plus épaiss, elle éclaire la hiérarchie organique de la monarchie Aztèque établie sur d'indiscutables principes spirituels.

Du point de vue social, elle montre la paix d'une société qui savait donner à manger à tout le monde, et où la Révolution était, depuis les origines, accomplie.

De ce heurt du désordre moral et de l'anarchie catholique avec l'ordre païen, elle peut faire jaillir des conflagrations inouïes de forces et d'images, semées de-ci de-là de dialogues brutaux. Et ceci par des luttes d'homme à homme portant en eux comme des stigmates les idées les plus opposées.

Le fond moral et l'intérêt d'actualité d'un tel spectacle étant suffisamment souligné, on insistera sur la valeur spectaculaire des conflits qu'il mettra en scène.

Il y a d'abord les luttes intérieures de Montézuma, le roi déchiré, sur les mobiles duquel l'histoire s'est montrée incapable de nous éclairer.

On montrera de façon picturale, objective, ses luttes et sa discussion symbolique avec les mythes visuels de l'astrologie.

Enfin, en dehors de Montézuma, il y a la foule, les couches diverses de la société, la révolte du peuple contre le destin, représenté par Montézuma les clameurs des incrédules, les arguties des philosophes

et des prêtres, les lamentations des poètes, la trahison des commerçants et des bourgeois, la duplicité et la veulerie sexuelle des femmes.

L'esprit des foules, le souffle des événements se déplaceront en ondes matérielles sur le spectacle, fixant de-ci de-là certaines lignes de force, et sur ces ondes, la conscience amoindrie, révoltée ou désespérée de quelques-uns surnagera comme un fétu.

Théâtralement, le problème est de déterminer et d'harmoniser ces lignes de force, de les concentrer et d'en extraire de sugestives mélodies.

Ces images, ce mouvement, ces danses, ces rites, ces musiques, ces mélodies tronquées, ces dialogues qui tournent court, seront soigneusement notés et décrits autant qu'il se peut avec des mots et principalement dans les parties non dialoguées du spectacle, le principe étant d'arriver à noter ou à chi弗r, comme sur une partition musicale, ce qui ne se décrit pas avec des mots.

Antonin ARTAUD.

OPINIONS DE LA PRESSE
sur les premières réalisations scéniques
d'Antonin ARTAUD

M. Antonin Artaud a monté quatre spectacles avec le Théâtre Alfred Jarry :

Ventre brûlé, d'Antonin Artaud.

Les Mystères de l'Amour, de Roger Vitrac, au Théâtre de Grenelle, les 2 et 3 juin 1927.

les crimes qu'il est capable de commettre. Mais l'image a été souvent impuissante à rendre la pensée d'Antonin Artaud, il y a des liaisons qui manquent, des ruptures, mais cela n'empêche point que le film, tel qu'il est, est un poème cinématographique soutenu par une pensée directrice aboutissante, et c'est ce qui a presque toujours manqué aux poèmes cinématographiques vus jusqu'à ce jour.

BOISYVON (Intransigeant).

man

Le monde. Le dirigée dans pense sans le et le cinéma et éveillés tion de deux salousie. Mais Subissez-les affabulation livre favorise

VITRAC.

faire quelque ns l'esprit de

cinéma dont voie où, fata- L'auteur de core inconnue contre : « pure- pour les yeux. » Volonté).

["Victor ou les Enfants au Pouvoir, de Roger Vitrac :", "Ce fut la représentation la plus curieuse qu'il me fut donnée de voir pendant mes huit années d'après-guerre à Paris.", "Paul BLOCH (Berliner Tageblatt).", "## BASES FINANCIÈRES DU THÉÂTRE DE LA CRUAUTÉ", "Le côté commercial du théâtre nous tenons à le préciser, a été l'objet des soins les plus minutieux. En effet, une entreprise artistique, quelque intérêt qu'elle puisse présenter en elle-même, n'est point viable si l'on n'a pas étudié jusque dans ses moin-dres détails l'importante question de son organisa-tion matérielle et financière.", "Aussi, afin de pouvoir offrir le maximum de sécu-rité aux actionnaires futurs, avons-nous décidé d'adopter pour son exploitation la forme de la société anonyme ; le capital a été fixé à la somme de 650.000 fr. On trouvera un bref exposé des bases sur lesquelles cette société sera constituée, dans un prospectus spécial.", "Voici, d'autre part, quelques données sur ce que l'on est en droit d'espérer de l'exploitation :", "La réalisation de « La Conquête du Mexique » sera fort onéreuse, vu l'importance du spectacle et le nombre des figurants. Nous calculons donc d'une façon très large les frais de la mise en scène, ainsi que la rémunération des acteurs pendant une période", "— 14 —", "de répétitions d'environ trois mois. Notre devis comporte : l'achat des costumes, la rémunération des acteurs, la location ou l'achat (selon le cas) de tous les accessoires scéniques, la location d'une salle de spectacle, la rétribution d'un personnel administratif, la publicité, les frais de consti-tution de la société elle-même, et une marge suffi-sante de disponibilités pour couvrir tous les impré-vus.", "Cette première mise de fonds se monte à une somme globale de 650.000 francs et représente, en plus des frais envisagés ci-dessus, les frais de repré-sentation du spectacle pour une période de trente jours.", "Si on ne table que sur un modeste succès, c'est-à-dire une salle de mille places aux trois quarts pleine, on devrait arriver à reconstituer intégralement le capital engagé avant la cinquième représentation. Les bénéfices, une fois ce cap franchi, atteindraient aisément 25.000 francs par semaine.", "Au cas où le premier spectacle ne donnerait pas entière satisfaction au point de vue matériel, les recettes provenant du premier mouvement de curio-sité donneraient la possibilité de monter un deuxième spectacle, sans que l'on se trouve pour cela dans la nécessité de chercher des capitaux nouveaux.", "Un échec de ce genre n'est toutefois pas à craindre, car l'on se souviendra certainement du succès incroyable que rapporta en 1931 le Théâtre Bâli-nais à l'Exposition Coloniale. Ce spectacle a été lancé sans la moindre publicité et, pendant des mois,", "— 15 —", "## man", "Le monde. Le dirigée dans l'essence sans le récit et le cinéma des acteurs et éveillés à la réflexion de deux élogeux. Mais Subissez-les affabulation et l'ouvre favorise", "VITRAC.", "faire quelque uns l'esprit de", "cinéma dont voie où, fata- L'auteur de ce core inconnue contre : « pure- pour les yeux. » Volonté).", "apportant, c'est-à-dire, la possibilité de se passionner, tout en prenant le tort qui cherche la passsion, tout en prenant le tort

Excerpt from Anais' Diary : read to
me at the Viking......

"His life...the underworld...Carco violence...ruthlessness...acrid savours...morbid interests...monstrosity...sinking...gold-digging...debauch. I read, I read his notes avidly, with horror and fascination. For years, in semi-solitude, my imagination has had time to grow beyond measure, to expand, to become inflamed, distorted; when a torrent of bestial life is poured over me--such facts! such facts! --my imagination, delimited, enormous, monstrous is frenzied, haunted, maddened. At night, in a fever, all his words, descriptions, scenes press in on me, like a sensual attack. My body is caught, caught, invaded, taken, seared.. life, all life possesses me because my body is sensual, my body surrenders to flames, to fire, to obscenities, to images, to sensations. In the night I sink, I burn, I toss, I surrender.. Hands..the movement of hands, feeling, his words, his phrases, lava, lava...his violent, aggressive, overwhelming, searing manhood pursuing--lascivious--bestial. What hotness... in the night...I sink with my body. I taste with my mouth, with my womb, with my frenzied moisture, that violence....Low, low, low, on the very entrails of the earth, annihilated, with the man over me, possessed, until I want to shriek! I shriek in the night--I cry--

Excerpt from "Tropic of Capricorn"

"The long interim in which I wrote nothing culminated to-day in the library, where I felt ill at ease, a little ridiculous, in fact. I had come to read about the Tropic of Cancer, what in means in scientific language, and I found that cancer (which was once written chancre, too!) goes back to the Greek meaning "crab". And while I was thumbing the pages of the encyclopaedia a man suddenly tapped me on the shoulder, and lo, it was my friend the astrologist (Eduard). What are the signs and the constellations that play a part in my horoscope? Capricornus, the goat, Scorpio, the scorpion, Libra, the balance, all of which you will find on the outer rim of the great circle of the northern hemisphere. And there is Saturn, too, the great dolorous planet which augurs poverty and melancholy, the whole nexus of woes and miseries. With the great dates of my life--the grand conjunctions-- in my hand I survey from a new altitude the fatalistic course I am pursuing. Cancer, the crab, and Capricornus, the goat--the northern and southern limits, as it were, of the sun's orbit, the two points in the heavens at which the great ball of fire arrests its course and with a crab-like movement turns back on its path. I know nothing yet about astrology. I do not profess to be talking the language of this ancient wisdom. I am simply attracted by the nature of these symbols, the correlations between their significances and the deep laws of my being. At the most important date in my life, without having dreamed a word of all this, I commence to write the "Tropic of Capricorn". More than this, stranger than the choice of titles, was the inner illumination,

No 701. (Am. 524. Ser. I. 3206-81.)

2. Excerpt from "Tropic of Capricorn"

the conviction that took root at the moment of
the book's inception that I was making a big
swing backward or forward, to retrace the path
which I had covered from the other important
date in my life. I have the possibility, says
the horoscope, to become either a person of
great eminence or a great destructive force, a x
sexualist, a degenerate. Through the
great oscillations which describe my orbit there
is Saturn the pole star with its weight of grief
and melancholy, the great inert drag of failure
and misery. But there is also Libra, the
balance, the sign by which I rise and fall, so
that when I have reached the tipmost end of Cancer
or I swing away again through the far-reaching
splendor and drama of the stars to the tipmost
end of Capricorn. And there comes a point in
my trajectory when the night equals the day,
when the balance is at rest, and all the signs
are for a brief solstice equalled out. Observe
now the significance of my words, words from
my novel, which I inserted under an hallucinator
spell. See how they parallel this wisdom of the
stars, how without even the most rudimentary
instruments I was piloting my course, charting
my destiny....." (What follows is that passage
--"What he remembered of his life were the
shocks, etc." Can't recall now whether I wrote
this at #2 Rue Auguste-Bartholdi, when living
with Osborn, or here at Clichy. I think I
began it at Osborn's, but wrote the best and
final part after Fraenkel left for America.)

Reserve for chart of
Horoscope drawn by Hugo!

troubled malady Total
intellg. Mercury
gets buried by everyone Sun

Jupiter & Moon conjunct
other a bi-sexual issue
(I have that too)

Mars affords, overshadows
Neptune (mystical) except
when in connection with
Neptune an (Aerial)
develops (secret) powers

very high ascensions -
triumphs and
very very low - challenges
contestaphes

troubles - malfic influence
of Saturn

All tendency: interesting horoscope
but unfortunate

our Mars in harmony
our intellects -

On the back of Airis adds:
"Mars is the planet that
has only one friend - Venus!
My ruling planet is Venus,"

Horoscope, drawn by Hugo, based on
correct hour of birth, as given by father;
Allendy assists and gives synthesis.

**Aries:** The celestial sign Aries rising upon the eastern horizon gives a fiery, active, energetic and somewhat restless body. The disposition is impulsive, enthusiastic, courageous, frank and enterprising. Persons born under this sign will always be able to hold their own in all positions of life, being ambitious, undaunted and independent. **Good fortune will generally come through adventure and confidence in their ability to succeed.** Most of the misfortunes will arise through hasty judgment and impulsive action; but in **every respect they are pioneers. They will be impulsively generous and liberal, also very responsive and alert, but somewhat changeable.** The instincts are, more or less, **martial,** the ruling planet being Mars.

**Mars in the Ninth House:** Mars is hot, dry and barren. Color red, metal iron; **day, Tuesday.** In the body it rules the head, forehead, nose, left ear, muscle, urino-genital organs. **Its occupations** are those of surgeon, dentist, chemist, soldier, sailor; dealer in iron and sharp tools, gunnersmith, butcher, engineer; undertaker, coroner; **also all those** who work with fire, acids, poisons, strong chemicals or explosives; to some extent lawyers

### 3. Horoscope according to Hugo.

Sun in good aspect with Uranus: sextile. Originality, independence, enterprise, ambition, makes the mind active and clear. Suitability for public life. (but see bad aspect with moon above.) Good for general success. Health and vitality.

**Passive side of nature.** Inclination to honesty, sincerity, humanity, sociability, good nature, devoiton and religion. Inclination towards friends good will. Inclinations toward domestic life and the mother. Inclination for travelling. Vitality and fertility of mind and body. (possibilities) Moon in Trine with Jupiter.

Mars in quadrature with Jupiter: extravagant, rash, indiscreet, extreme in opinions, unorthodox or irreligious. Tendency to disease from fever, functional over-activity or excess. May suffer from dishonesty of others.

Mars in opposition with Neptune. Liability to excess. Self-indulgence, coarseness, danger from the water, liquid and poisons. In any case, considerable self-sufficiency and some tendency to self-florification.

BOOKS
FROM
PARIS

BOOKS
FROM
PARIS

PARIS

Durch Hilboten
Expres s.

Frankreich

L'île du Montbéliade
15 RUE BOISSONNADE
Seine et Oise
Paris

Express

OSTERREICH

4. Horoscope according to Hugo.

Mars in sextile with **Saturn**: ambition, courage, determination, **love of mastery**. Good for public life.

Venus in quadrature with **Uranus**: trouble through the opposite sex. **Scandal threatened**. **Imprudent engagement or marriage**. Love matters hindered or broken off.

Venus in bad aspect with Mars: (semi-square):
trouble in love and marriage and through the
opposite sex generally. Liasons. Loose moral-
ity. Danger of separation from or danger of
the marriage partner. Loss of legacy or money
through marriage or partnership. Extravagance.
Popularity lost. Flase friends. Quarrels.
(offset to a certain extent by Venus in House
of Success.)

The Sun in semi-square with moon: Bad for
general success. Parental and family disharmony.
Bad for health and vitality. Trouble with super-
iors. And in the occupation! Offset by sun
in mid-heaven giving hope that strength of gen-
eral faculties may prevail over this unfortunate
aspect. As regards health, unfortunate aspect
here offset by basic vitality in rising sign.

Finis.

(72)

Excerpt from letter to Anais Sept. 29th '32
regarding interpretation of strange dreams.

Going home in the train had a tremendous surge of ideas, caused by seeing the houses lit up in early evening; their bleak barren ugly qualities impressed me, and yet the sort light, often in a red-papered room, with people quietly sitting at the window--like souls exposed (where were the curtains....why hadn't the French used curtains?) affected me strongly, affected me with the sense of drama, universes of drama in a short stretch between train stops. Got to thinking of the complications in peoples' lives, of how mysterious and baffling it was to them and how easily solved by strangers, by psychologists, for instance, and then to the thought that the poor psychologist was too easily satisfied, too quickly impressed, his answers too ready-made, everything in the nature of a problem viewed from the angle of how to put it in a pattern (of his own making!); from this to the fact that a writer could completely baffle a psychologist, not only that, but that he was more of a psychologist than the other since he ramified the mysteries, extended them, developed them, and left the answers to go hang, because the answers weren't important, it was the drama, the mystery, the undecipherable pattern that was vital. And by a quick flight, as again with the Lewisohn problem, to a realization that the spychologists were more right than I was--that it was ineluctable--the fact of there being but a few fundamental patterns to the whole

Now that I have cleared the deck with these practical ex- planations (and hell how I de- test them!) let me make other apologies—and then to more interesting matter. First, excuse the paper. I have good typewriter paper which I am holding in reserve and if you do not mind the lack of formality why not. Maybe the random notes on the reverse side will titillate you. Hey, are of no use to me any more. Secondly, excuse the absence of salutation. I haven't yet learned to call you by your first names, and Mr. & Mrs. Guiler sounds so stiff, like an invitation to tea. I should like to say Simply, Hugh and Anais, but it takes time. (As soon, for instance, is still as soon, and will be as will.)

How Germanic this is!
Well, that's me! At any rate, I assume you are non- together in Switzerland—here goes

Belitho: "Lrelre Against the Godo'
"in the mineralized Europe"
infusoria & Gulf of Mex, co
neither a bilber (?) nor a gigolo
in the rise & his trajectory
Sombre depar

"refinement & a card sharper seasoned with
sincerity and human logarithms" (Casanova)

"the moribund perfumes of musk & civet"

"nothing more degenerate than a rich composite

"mysterious laws of fatal fallacies"

"morse confusion of Asiatic courts"

"a mine of thirteen"

"tousrel & the minor orders"

"the chthonian (?) mind (Transition)

"She detected not only an uncommonplace
imagination but the rare glint of auto-sug-
gestion, self-belief, which is the radium of
imaginative life."

"Sitting on the lips of Baroque fountains"

"I truly it is from this time that I felt myself
aged" (Casanova at 38)

"My son Theodore has mesmerized her
and I let her dimh. ass's milk"

"that little Persian gazelle Roxana"

Casanova: "I have always believed that when a
man gets it into his head to do something, and
when he exclusively occupies himself in that
design, he must succeed whatever the diff-
iculties. That man will become a Grand
Vizier or Pope. He will upset a dynasty,
provided he starts young and has the brain
and perseverance necessary."

2. Letter re Dreams.

ground-work of human behavior. That life's
problems were too limited, that it was a pity,
that the function of an artist was to increase
these problems, to cause upheavals in the brain,
to make people wild and free so that there would
be more drama to their lives, more windows to
look into, more of that red glow in riding a
train. That the only excuse I had for writing
was to write something so disturbing, so volcanic
that America or Europe would not be the same
after it--and then how to do that....was I do-
ing enough...could I make them hate me suffici-
ently? (Fear, no doubt, behind the thought,
that my first book would not create a stir, that
it might be considered entertaining or merely
risque.) Remembrance of Krans' words --"not
uplifting for mankind"--and being unduly in-
censed about it--not because of those words, or
their implication, but that it did not rock him
the least little bit. (He never read it, of course)
Thinking to myself that my first impression was
right, that I always make a mistake when I re-
tract my first judgment, when I modify it thru
deeper contact---because what they reveal to me
at first glance contains nothing that I have
loaned them--afterwards, I am looking at my own
reflections in people---I have given them a little
warmth, a little spark of enthusiasm and they
come to me constantly to have me fan MM it.).....

....This neighborhood, Williamsburg, seemed to
me always as representatively American--and yet
outwardly, physically, it is the nearest ap-
proach to the dirty sections of Paris which I

COMITÉ DE DEFENSE DES LOCATAIRES
DES IMMEUBLES NEUFS DE CLICHY

Siège Social : 115, rue du Bois - Clichy

PERMANENCE TOUS LES MERCRÉDIS, de 20 h. à 22 h.

AUX LOCATAIRES
de l'Avenue Anatole France

Un certain nombre de locataires viennent de recevoir par la
Compagnie Foncière du Champ de Mars de Neuilly et de Clichy,
leur congé par huissier, sans motif valable.

Il est vrai qu'un grand nombre de réclamations parviennent
chaque jour au Comité de Défeuse.

Nous résumons les revendications :

1° Amélioration du Chauffage Central ;

2° Diminution du prix abusif de l'eau chaude ;

3° Remboursement du dépôt de garantie ;

4° Diminution de 25 pour cent sur tous les loyers.

Pour toutes ces raisons, le Comité de Défense vous invite à
assister à la

RÉUNION

qui aura lieu le

Lundi 16 Janvier 1932, à 21 heures
Café BLANC, 28, rue des Cailloux

LOCATAIRES! Adhérez au Comité de Défense. C'est une
sécurité contre les abus des gérants et des propriétaires.

Lycee Carnot
Le Veilleur de nuit — the type red
desecures so well! His french, so easy,
vowels accented - Italian — his soluti-
tude, coming for wine to table every
evening. The dead palm tree in
front with wisps of hair, gray
scragons soft trunk. The bending
crowd of houses opposite with bal-
comes, as in Stillo's pictures
couple going home, very slow
well dressed, feeling each other
up, when out of sight, listening
for the interruption of their steps.
Strange impression made by
well-dressed couples in deserted
town — anachronistic.

Loveliness is good for one — a
winter. Beautiful thoughts on
passing St. Michel. Marvellous
approach — like on a plan showing
principal moments. How mar-
vellous in medieval times when
surrounding building were
very low — as some still are.
When the cathedral dominated!
The little garden with brook
+ fountain in center.

The plunge into blackness
when porter opens door with
lantern big heads in hand —
like going into old fortress.

Since I shall not be back to en-
gage in long discussions (except
perhaps during Easter — or will you
be going away then?) why let's
thrash things out by letter.
The notes I send you — after
you read them, please hold
them. As I said, so much
was left out of the novel. I
want to return to it, supplements
by incorporating some of my
material in this present book,
Naturally, you have divined how
precious this "Albertine" must
be for me. Is not June very
similar — perhaps much
more complicated, orchestrated
as it were? How many more
enigmas are there for me to
solve than was presented by
Albertine? How much more
I know, have lived, have
endured, suspected, discovered
— and yet, how vast the
unknowable! That is why
reading Proust is a form
of ecstatic suffering. And
then beyond June — the whole
area of my private experiences

Letter to Tribune under name Mark Reardon.

111 Route d'Orléans, Montrouge

Nov. 17th, 1932.

"The caustic comments on the members of the Tribune staff, while thoroughly refreshing and well-directed, impress me as emanating not from the "constant reader" but from the staff members themselves--a grand hoax, in other words. So far as his daily pap is concerned, the American in Paris finds himself obliged to steer between Scylla and Charybdis, that is, between the tepid yellow journalism of the "Tribune" and the disguised Oriental passivism of the Herald. The so-called constant reader, it seems to me, is an individual who being obliged to inform himself about boat sailings or stock market ups and downs is diverted from his serious purpose now and then by the maunderings of those signing themselves Alex Small, Sally Cooperman, Wambly Bald, Waverley Root, Louis Atlas, Irving Schwerke, May Birkhead, Herol Egan, etc. (Incidentally, is there really an individual on the staff owning to the name of Wambly Bald...is there a Louis Atlas? These names sound as if they were derived from an almanac. ) In any case....

The individual calling himself Alex Small,
and who holds such a big opinion of himself,
deserves credit for his originality; he is one
of the reasons why one never reads the "De-
cline and Fall of the Roman Empire" or "Pil-
grim's Progress"; after glancing at his col-
umn, Frou-Frou seems like an illumination.

# The Femininity Of D. H. Lawrence Emphasized By Woman Writer

BY WAVERLEY LEWIS ROOT

D. H. LAWRENCE: An. Unprofessional Study, by Anais Nin. E. W. Titus, Paris.

That a woman should undertake to interpret D. H. Lawrence is not surprising; there was a great deal of the woman in Lawrence, e. as Miss Nin points out in this book. There must be something of the man in Miss Nin also, for she acquires herself with credit of the male task of analysis and comprehension from the male intellectual angle rather than from the female intuitive side.

Nevertheless there remain faults in her work (or, rather, Incanae) which are probably to be explained by the fact of her sex. She dissects Lawrence's work, and puts before us the diverse elements of his writing and of his being; but the task of synthesis has been too much for her. Perhaps, being a woman, she saw

no need for it. Certainly there is no indication in her book that she felt it necessary to unite all of her details into one whole which should give us the unity that is D. H. Lawrence. A man would have felt that need and would have tried, rather successfully or not, to fill it.

If the more limited talents of woman fail when she tries to attempt the work of the male, it is equally true that a man who has an ad-mixture of feminine traits can always beat woman at her own game. Thus Lawrence. He was, as Miss Nin points out, feminine at many points.

He was fundamentally intuitive as women are, and sensitive in a woman's way to the world about him—feeling that is before he comprehended. But he had the advantage of being, at the same time, thoroughly male. He did not stop, as the woman would, with the simple intuition. His feeling probed deeper, or, more exactly, it was multi-dimensional. A woman's intuition goes quickly to the point and seizes the uncomprehended essence of the phenomenon to which it applies itself. But a man questions what intuition tells him. He realizes the existence of plural truths, he knows that no question is so simple as to have only one answer, and at the same time that intuition may carry him to a perception of an essence, he feels other approaches to that essence, feels even the simultaneously-existing contradictions of it. In terms of mental geometry, woman's mind measure planes, man's mind solids. That is because man doubts. Doubting Thomas was a male. Woman never doubts. That is her weakness in living, and her strength in argument. A woman would not have touched the wound of Christ. She would have believed in his resurrection and been sure of her belief, or she would have derided him and been sure in her derision.

D. H. Lawrence

## 2. Letter to Tribune.

Waverley Root, who must be a personage, if not a personality, judging from his incessant use of the personal pronoun, would be an amusing critic if he had nothing but pornographic books to review; his flatulence comes largely from ennui, his wisdom smells of the campus. Sally Cooperman drives one to desperation--she is a telephone operator who has come down in the world. As for Schwerke, who is probably a Croat or a Latvian masquerading under a pen-name, his English is a blatant relief from the Surrealistic screams of the headlines. Egan, thank God, seems to be the only man on the Tribune; he has a fine, boozy breath and his columns are liberally sprinkled with the sawdust of the bars, to say nothing of Biblical saws with which he hacks his way through training quarters and foggy streets.

I say nothing of Louis Atlas and Wambly Bald--they belong in a special category-- their very existence is questionable. But the editorials! What a flavor they have! Written doubtless by brilliant old college men four thousand miles away, they have all the timeliness and raciness of Marcel Proust. They mock the ravings of the dipsomaniac who covers the inside of the back page. And occasionally there appears one of those flaming Cotex orations signed by the god-head itself, righteous and militant as a cracked record. The most brilliant writer on the staff, May Birkhead, is relegated to the Society Column, where, with the most delicate, refined fingers imaginable,

A Newspaperman
Looks At Death.

The death of Charles Terront, champion bicycle rider, the other day brought forth a flood of eloquence from sport writers. One writer, scorning the usual stereotyped form of obituary, launched into a maze of words which appeared in this order:

"But Charles Terront was, for this epoch of which I speak, a type, gigantic and incommensurable. He was among the greatest, emotion inspiring, the most imposing, the most magnificent and the most tragic. He was something so emotional, so imposing, so magnificent, so tragic that death, coagulating, immobilizing forever that being, we now have the impression that it is an epoch which is disappearing, that a legend itself is disappearing from our horizon, that we have no more forefathers, no more traditions, and that we are condemned henceforth to navigate in scratch meets, six day bicycle races, omniums and 50 kilometers behind automobiles."

Liberté, commenting on this passage, finds it almost worthy of Bossuet.

3. Letter to Tribune.

she washes the dirty linen of the "upper classes". Along with the partition of Austria-Hungary, the invention of the Polish corridor, the discovery of "unknown soldiers" (I suggest "unidentified" instead), and the establishment of Franco-American amity, we have another fruit of the World War--the Tribune! My suggestion is that the Tribune and the Herald consolidate and organize a safe and sane bordello with shower-baths and billiard parlor.

The American Aid Society might take care of the starving reporters."

Finis.

Letter of dismissal
from "Nitine".
Jules rubs it
in for no good
reason.

at Johnny's Bar,
when I accuse
him of injustices,
he hangs his
head and apologizes
in his usual
feeble way.
Root, the bastard,
always at his
elbow.

an obliterated fact, an orgiastic fête champêtre with rum and Mar-
scellaises à discrétion, doses of clap and syphilis during the inter-
nameless period, nameless for lack of a prefix, that the New In-
stinctivism was born. The croquemorts of the post-war iconology
Cavell or the destruction of Louvain, nor for the mouldering slain
COAST ARE EASILY ACCESSIBLE... One of the most
bloody. There may not be any unknown soldiers. Even the Red
chocolat or hot milk. She will discuss literature with you, if Claude
plainly marked «Guaranteed against dirt and infection». With
priced establishment is the «Sphinx» on Boulevard Edgar-Quinet.
Anything he might say, or leave unsaid, we subscribe to with a
Antheil. We are against young geniuses, or old geniuses like
Shortly afterwards Messrs. S. and R. quarreled. Later they died.
Schrecklichkeit, than which there are four out of five. The movies
is in the throes of didacticism. She is altogether absorbed in shak-
ing the cob-webs out of her brains. For those who have no
Fifty dark patches between the legs gleaming like Thanksgiving
.. Pourtant, cette question me travaille. Suis-je contre vous ?
Et si je n'étais pas contre vous, serais-je pour vous ? Suis-
enforce it both in letter and spirit.» (News item.)
stink. This is Gaumont shit. Everything marked with the label
The shit-heels who will go to this palace will get a belleyful of shit
men, should have a sense of responsibility. A hero who would
purpose, some reason of state, some religious significance.
le pont d'Austerlitz... Là, il y a toujours du vent, des odeurs de
forest, who curves the light in order to reveal the keyboard of
portfolio of a busy century. Into what distant corners has he not
do in a case like that? Well, France laughed. Her laughter
belongs there. From the beautiful towers of Notre-Dame down to
funny kepi and big moustaches à la Bouif, a carbonated cigaret butt
an Avenue des Champs-Elysées, à Louvre, or just an Eiffel Tower,
underwear.

Caveau of the destruction of Louvain, nor for the mouldering slain
who fell at Ypres, Gallipoli, or Saint-Mihiel. The war was a joke
that ended too soon. We are in need of a war that will really
destroy, that will wipe out once and for all every civilizing influence.

A proclamation of rebellion against the puerilities in the arts
and literatures, a manifesto of disgust, a gob of spit in the cuspidor
of post-war conceits, a healthy crap in the cradle of still-born deities.

The New Instinctivism is nothing more *and nothing less* than :
being FOR or AGAINST — instinctively. A NEW instinctivism be-
cause man's original instincts have been murdered, because every
time an instinct threatens to be born again civilization with its steril-
ized, nickel-plated instruments and its superannuated obstetrical
buggery slaughters it, or else culture elephantizes it into a monstrous
dwarf. The old instinctivism has died away together with our appetite
for raw meat and fig leaves and caverns and fear of gods.
A NEW instinctivism because nothing is really old enough not to
deserve the label NEW.

To mention immediately a few of the things we are *against*: die
neue Sachlichkeit und die neue Herzlichkeit, neo-naturism, white
magic, black magic and polychrome magic, the new Middle Ages and
the old Middle Ages, the mummification of corpses, such as Dadaism,
Futurism, Cubism, Expressionism, und so weiter. We are *against* all
the apparently dead movements and all the apparently alive movements,
against Scheintod and Scheinleben (Surrealism). We are
*against* all the sesquipedalianisms... instinctively we are even against
the New Instinctivism.

For two thousand years we have been using Jesus-Christ as a
mouth-wash; worst of all, we have been using him calendrically.
Since the advent of the last war, which was not a world war since
only a few million were killed and maimed, B. C. and A. D. have
ceased to orient us, be it chronologically, metaphysically, psycholo-
gically, or esthetically. The parvenus of to-day disdain anything
and everything that cannot be postulated as pre-war or post-war.

What about the period *during* the war? For this most important
lapsus, this period which refuses to be hyphenated, we are left with
an obliterated fact, an orgiastic fête champêtre with rum and Mar-
seillaises & discrétion, doses of clap and syphilis during the inter-
missions, heroes decorated with lice and medals. It was during this
nameless period, nameless for lack of a prefix, that the New Inf-
tinctivism was born. The *croquemorts* of the post-war iconology
found only the rotting cadavers of *ismus*. They were afraid to
recover, to tamper with, to approach the steel tabernacle containing
the sacred, explosive essences of destruction.

«Before I stop», said Mr. Humhal, «I'd like to say that faultless
cut and fit does not suffice; the proof of good tailoring is seen in
the wearing. A suit must bend to the body yet keep its line when
the wearer is walking or sitting.»

(From an interview with Mr. Humhal, of Vienna.)

The war was a failure, not because it failed to bring peace and
good-will (what can we do with peace and good-will?), but because
it failed to liberate the element of violence in man without which
he ceases to be creative. Man's docility, his placid, bovine acquies-
cence, his abject surrender to creeds and codes andisms is precisely
what pains us most. We have no tears for the murder of Edith
Cavell, or the destruction of Louvain, nor for the mouldering slain
who fell at Ypres, Gallipoli, or Saint-Mihiel. The war was a joke
that ended too soon. We are in need of a war that will really
destroy, that will wipe out once and for all every civilizing influence.

patronized by the literati and front page men (we are against front page men, incidentally) is the type par excellence whom we despise and detest. A Mlle. Claude, for instance, is sure to employ with her clientele the odious politenesses that begin with Monsieur and end with Merci. She is the type who changes her underwear daily, perhaps twice a day, whose speech, so gentle and refined, reminds one continuously of a lady who has come down a little in the world. A Mlle. Claude will not get out on the street and solicit, as a whores should. She prefers to sit on her can all night in a café and drink chocolat or hot milk. She will discuss literature with you, if Claude Farrère and Maurice Dekobra be considered contributors to literature. On entering your room her first act is to pull the curtains to. Then she will try the hot water faucet to see if it is of a temperature sufficient to sterilize. Her stockings she will carefully roll down to prevent runs. And as if all this were not exasperating enough she will fold her garments carefully and drape them over the furniture...

This is not all, of course. There is her manner of giving herself. She offers herself like a chocolate bar. Break a piece off. Save the rest for to-morrow. All wrapped in tinfoil and on the label it is plainly marked «Guaranteed against dirt and infections». With Mlle. Claude you are not obliged to use a *preservatif*. She takes her injections morning and night. If, by chance, she gets a dose, she lays off for a while.

And then there's this business of climbing over the bidet before and after... Not satisfied with destroying all the fine body odors and juices, Mlle. Claude always insists on rinsing the bidet well. This infuriates us more than anything. After she leaves we invariably piss in the bidet — out of contempt.

We said that she offers herself like a chocolate bar. Just so. If you want another hunk, you can take it. The tariff diminishes in proportion to your appetite. And no matter how much you handle the bar, it never gets soft and spongy. Always, cool, firm, brittle. Each piece protected by a silyer wrapper. The worst you can get is a belly-ache.

When she's used up all your *serviettes*, climbed into her harness and powdered her nose, she will sit on the bed and talk to you for a few minutes, as though she had dropped in expressly to have a chat with you. It's then you'll get an earful about Maurice Dekobra, or Mme. Chrysanthème. Or worse still, Aziadye. Before she leaves she'll make sure that you're tucked in comfortably, that the alarm is properly set for the morning, and that the match-box is on the little table beside the bed, together with your cigarettes. If you have a plate of false teeth she'll put them in the tumbler for you...

A few words that are missing in Webster's International Unabridged Dictionary: endocrine, toughra, condom, cunnilingus.

Definition of prick: something that stands erect — said of an ear.

We believe that the municipality is over-stepping the mark in its zeal to combat *les maladies vénériennes*. The warnings in the *pissotières* and in the Metro constitute a slander against the whores of this great city. It is ridiculous to expect to extirpate syphilis and gonorrhea in a people as civilized as the French. The genius of France is 100 % syphilitic. The whores of Paris are nurturing

= ed /

the very traditions of the race. Every time you fuck a whole
you're furthering the cause of civilization in France. Insist on a
whore! Accept no substitutes. (Note: A good and moderate-
price! establishment is the «Sphinx» on Boulevard Edgar-Quinet.)

An excellent clap remedy is «Injection Venetienne» (10 frs.)
Shake well before using. Instructions inside. Preferred by sailors
and longshoremen.

We wish to announce that a new Bible (the Instinctivist Bible)
will be ready for publication September 1945.

We are against the photographing of hands, particularly photos
of poets' hands.

We are against admirals. We like only rear-admirals.

We are for the Church because being for it does more harm
than being against it.

We are very much in favor of the third degree, the guillotine,
the electric chair, flags and convents. We are against work,
however, and wages; also the 23rd Psalm, the Red Cross, the
Salvation Army, the American Hospital and the Colonial Expo-
tion. We like the King and Queen of England; we like the way
they attend the races and the deep concern they show when there
is an explosion in a coal mine. The other day at the Derby (news
item) «heavy rains began to fall, much to the surprise of the King
and Queen ». We are against Gold Star mothers and all unknown
soldiers everywhere. Against war heroes — especially blind heroes.
A hero must not necessarily be blind. A hero must be able to play
the accordeon. The accordeon must be capable of being out of
tune. At the same time we are antagonistic to the new orthography
which is springing up in Germany and America. We are against
the agglutination of words. We are against newspapers, least
however, against the French newspapers, because they are smaller.
We are against half-Jews, and books like «New-York». We are
absolutely for Duhamel, first because he gave us Salavin and
secondly because he stands with Europe against America. We did
not read M. Duhamel's latest book but we endorse it unqualifiedly.
Anything he might say, or leave unsaid, we subscribe to with a
full heart. We are also in favor of Hilaire Belloc, not only because
he wrote the «Path to Rome», but because in an age of robots he
stands out as an individual, because he knows how and what to
drink, whom to worship, and because with the same charm, wisdom
and fluency he can write on anything or on nothing. We put on
the marble such men as Robinson Jeffers, Andrei Biely, James
Joyce, etc. They have been set up too soon. We are also against
the American Aid Society and the sale of poppies. Against Avenue
Hoche, Avenues Friedland, George-V, and Henri-Martin. We are
against fat people and impotent people who live in apartments
and studios.

We are against the use of preservatives and would rather any
day have a dose of clap than use a condom. We are against Les-
bians and fairies, but not against pimps. The pimp is more
important to society than the statesman or the soldier. The pimp,
at least, has a useful function. He does not make speeches that
are full of bull-shit. We are against all the caterwauling idiots
who decorate graves and pin medals on heroes and cripples.

«I have heard the President criticized for not being human

enough. How does that sound about the man who fed all Europe?»

We are against farmers and too healthy people, especially when they go in for beards and flowing ties, or refuse to spell correctly. We refuse to support a man who sees anything commendable in the work of James Farrell or Bob McAlmon. And, if we must choose, we prefer Irving Berlin or Bach, or even Mozart, to George Antheil. We are against young geniuses, orild geniuses like Brancusi, or forgotten geniuses like Barbellion and Remarque. We are sure that Coolidge was never a genius, and is not now, but that does not imply that we admire him. If he had lived long enough and written more Dickens might have been a genius. As for Ezra Pound, we are certain that he is not a genius; he is not even capable of writing a good letter to the newspapers. He has talent, Ezra Pounâ, — the talent for backing the wrong horse.

«What would Washington say if he could see his old home on the Potomac exactly reproduced here on the shores of the Seine amid the splendors of these colonial structures; could listen to the speeches in praise of his country and himself; could glance along this platform and recognize the grandsons of men who fought with him in Virginia; could see the distinguished soldiers who gave to the men of our army on the banks of the Marne the same stirring acclaim with which he hailed the soldiers of Rochambeau and de Grasse at Yorktown?

«Who can fail to appreciate the thrilling romance of history as such thoughts as these surge unbidden through our consciousness? It was a fine conception that made out contribution to this great exposition take a form which inspires a proud remembrance in every American heart, and revives for Frenchmen the memory of a man who has passed into history as the very embodiment of those virtues and those principles in aid of which the French nation so gallantly came to the rescue in an hour of direct need...»

(From address of General Pershing.)

La calomnie adhère au sol à la façon de certains gaz mortels : on a beau la fouler aux pieds, elle n'en accomplit pas moins, sourdement, ses tristes ravages. Mais il est une chose qui peut la tuer : c'est le ridicule. Or, n'est-elle point ridicule, cette rumeur, lancée par on ne sait quels ennemis mystérieux de la grande manifestation de Vincennes, et selon laquelle des cas de lèpre se seraient manifestés parmi les visiteurs de l'Exposition Coloniale! Des démentis catégoriques ont été publiés. Ils ont paru ici-même. Mais il paraît que cela ne suffit point et que de bonnes gens trop crédules se murmurent encore, de l'un à l'autre : « Qui sait ? ».

Voici deux déclarations officielles qui les rassureront. La première émane du professeur Jeanselme, dont les études sur la lèpre sont universellement connues.

« ...La lèpre, a dit l'éminent savant, est une maladie peu contagieuse, qui n'est contractée qu'après un contact long et prolongé avec les malades. Même en pays indigènes la contamination est extrêmement rare, à plus forte raison dans la métropole. Au surplus, le temps qui s'écoule entre le moment où un individu est exposé à la contagion jusqu'au moment où elle se réalise est toujours fort long. C'est cinq ou dix ans après s'être exposé à la contamination qu'apparaissent sur le sujet les premiers symptômes de la maladie. Il est matériellement impossi-

ble d'admettre que quelques jours de distance soient suffisants pour l'incubation. Il faut donc reléguer parmi les fables l'histoire du chat siamois ou du marchand de tapis ou de colliers qui transmettraient la lèpre du jour au lendemain. »
Le docteur Mourier, directeur général de l'Assistance publique, nous a dit de son côté :

« ...Vous pouvez opposer le démenti le plus formel aux bruits selon lesquels un ou plusieurs visiteurs de l'Exposition Coloniale auraient été atteints de la lèpre. Je tiens à affirmer qu'aucun cas semblable n'est parvenu à la connaissance des services de l'Assistance publique, qui en auraient forcément été avisés si le fait s'était produit. »
Voilà deux déclarations qui, je pense, ne sont point sujettes à caution. Et maintenant, il ne reste plus qu'à s'en remettre au bon sens de chacun. — E. R.

We are against sprudel baths, the fango pack, broad-hipped fillies, morganatic marriages and novels over 500.000 words long.

We forgot to say a while back that War debts should be paid in full. Absolutely. We insist on it. Otherwise we refuse to lend our support to another War.

The semi-colons in General Pershing's speech are ours. We assume full responsibility for them.

We have been asked if we are against the Barnes Foundation? We are against all foundations, particularly the Guggenheim and the Carnegie.

Are we against America? No, but we are against the American Express.

We have also been asked are we against Chirico? The answer is no, we are merely against his last three paintings. There is not enough Chirico in them.

«I sink into my morning chair, a blotter on my knee, the last words or deed of some character in ink before my eyes, a pen in my hand, a pipe in my mouth and nothing in my head. I sit. I don't intend; I don't expect; I don't even hope. I read over the last pages. Gradually my mind seems to leave the chair, and be where my character is acting or speaking, leg raised, waiting to come down, lips opened ready to say something. Suddenly, my pen jots down a movement or remark, another, another, and goes on doing this, haltingly, perhaps, for an hour or two.»

(From a lecture delivered at Oxford recently by John Galsworthy.)
Mr. R. was in a maudlin mood. If he hadn't been too weak he would have wept. He was lying on his deathbed, resigned to the atonement of his platitudinarian sins. It was then that Mr. S. came to his rescue.

Mr. S. was cracked. He made his proposition. Mr. R. said yes. Mr. R. was merely a dumbbell. Things had gone pretty far. The occasion necessitated speed.

The contract was signed in a minute, or perhaps a minute and a half. Blood transfusion. Both felt rather weak as they issued their first manifesto. There was much talk about a soluble fish. The menagerie caught fire and the lions cooled down.

O. K.

For a time they formed a sort of solivagous entity, gathering

strength. Gathering strength. An order of wingless insects they were, of small size, undergoing no metamorphosis, the abdomen concealing peculiar structures resembling abortive limbs.

When they had recovered a little they began to shout. For a long time no one would pay any attention to them. So they changed their policy and sold cheap spirits and other comforts, somewhat after the fashion of the vivandières in sixteenth century armies.

That drew. Soon they were marching with a corps. After they had given away — à titre de réclame et de publicité — great quantity of cheap liquor, no one could see anything phoney about the solubility of a fish.

The fish was solved. So were Messrs. S. et R. They were soluble and solvent. They prospered plethoretically and opened the lid. But they had no registre de commerce.

One day a guy said, «Zigaboo» and he was proclaimed a genius. The next day a guy said, «Zogibee» and was burned in effigy. Messrs. S. et R. opened the lid a little more and whistled.

A painter who had heard the call approached splay-footedly. He was carrying a dozen canvases between his legs. He spread the canvases on the pavement and Messrs. S. and R. performed a strange dance on them, a sort of rhomba-bomba without accompaniment. The lid being open, they naturally spilled some of their fish solution over the canvases. As soon as the canvases had dried they were smeared over the walls of a gallery in the Rue Callot. A holiday was declared.

There was some more solved fish left. So Messrs. S. and R. whistled again. Hearing the signal a sculptor came running up, panting, gasping, coughing. He had a pocketful of pipes and a cane for every day in the week. He denied that he was Jewish. He had with him, at that moment, a huge block of gneiss. Messrs. S. and R. pissed on the rock, and all the quartz and feldspar it contained melted away. Osmosis set in.

There was only mica left. The mica they rolled up conically, carefully marking the elliptic, parabolic and hyperbolic sections. Then they stuck the pointed end of the cone in a box of Camembert cheese (triple crème) and exhibited the whole in the Rue du Cherche-Midi under the title «Beach Scene in Normandy». It was convincing. A brief twilight sleep ensued. They used only words like mulberries and Guadeloupe.

When Messrs. S. and R. grew older they suffered from lippitude. The fish solution was evaporating. They were obliged to ration the portions. At first there was enough for once a week — every Friday. (Wambly Bald's day off.) Later they were constrained to cut the rations down to once a year — Good Friday. (Wambly Bald's day off.) There was no fresh supply to be had anywhere, neither in the Tropie of Cancer nor in the Tropie of Capricorn. They waded up to their ears in the mouth of the Orinoco. No luck.

The last ration was kneaded into a bomb, about the size of a liver pill, together with stale shit, uric acid, green ink distilled from the leaves lying in front of the Café Cosmos, and the spermato-blastic properties of Messrs. S. and R's testicles. The bomb was introduced into the muzzle of a derringer and fired by means of electrolysis. Aimed at M. Jean Cocteau it hit an innocent little

girl named Gertrude Stein.

Shortly afterwards Messrs S. and R. quarrelled. Later they died. They had no registre de commerce.

«The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its ability to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour. Sobriety diminishes, discriminates and says no; drunkenness expands, unites and says yes. It is in fact the great exciter of the Yes-function in man. It brings its votary from the chill periphery of things to the radiant core. It makes him for the moment one with truth. Not through mere perversity do men run after it. To the poor and unlettered it stands in the place of symphony concerts and literature; and it is a part of the deeper mystery and tragedy of life that whiffs and gleams of something which we immediately recognize as excellent should be vouchsafed to so many of us only in the fleeting earlier phases of what in its totality is so degrading a poison. The drunken consciousness is one bit of the mystical consciousness.»

(Courtesy of the Barnes Foundation.)

HEADLINE: WET SON OF DRY SENATOR FELLS POLICEMAN, LOSES TEETH, PAYS FINE AND VOWS VENGEANCE

We are against the exhibition of freaks either for profit or public instruction; particularly such as La Belle Camille de Monvielle, the celebrated Parisian double — sex and double — bodied woman who had an extra body growing directly from her pelvis, the normal body being male, the abnormal body female. We are against the morbid interest of the public in hermaphrodites.

Sex pervades all Nature. The world of botany tells us that the trees, the flowers, the lily of the valley, the clinging ivy, and the blood-red rose of lust are hermaphroditical, containing within the one calix the organs of self-generation. Therefore, we must concede to the human individual a like consideration, but in a lesser degree. Some of our leading physicians deny the existence of hermaphroditism in the human family, simply from the reason that it would be impossible for the human being to be self-generative. This we will admit, but it does not necessarily follow that a word so often used to designate a duality of sexes would not be proper to designate these deviations from the established laws of Nature.

Are we against necking in public? Generally speaking, yes. Exceptions: Café de la Liberté, Cimetière Montparnasse, the Nord-Sud, Cinéma Vanves, the Etruscan room of the Louvre.

Did we say that we are against the chthonian mind? This is very important. We are.

P. S. — It is impossible to be violent and take a foot-bath every day.

The cinema is not dead. It is suffering from hemiplegia. On the paralyzed side is contained all that has existed up to now — that is, up to Bunuel. The side which is alive and squirming, the worm on the hook, is Bunuel, and nothing but Bunuel. The others have gasped their last. Bunuel is the only alive and crawling thing in the sphericity of filmatology. And he is dangling on the hook, gasping with a dying strength. If he expires, the cinema is finished.

What has brought about this lop-sided condition, this crab-like movement toward the light? Hollywood principally, with its fetichisms, its taboos, its unicellular, microcosmic organism. Chaplin, too, with his music-hall stunts, his Mack-Sennett idées fixes, his mob suffering and defeatist complex. There was a chance once for Chaplin to become great — not simply to dominate the screen, but to invigorate it. Unfortunately he was taken up too soon by the advance guard, by the Elie Faures of Europe, by the shit-heels of the Dial and the New Republic, by the statistical buggerers who compile time-tables proving that the Jews are a-gifted people. We have been against Chaplin ever since he commenced his career. His career ends where it began — in burlesque. He belongs to the Bowery of forty years ago. He's a little Christer who gets himself crucified over and over — for the pleasure of it. We have not seen his «City Lights» but we are prepared to state in advance that it is N. G. We know that everything he does is N. G. Must be N. G. because we are against him. So much so that we wouldn't have a pair of his old shoes even if they could be bought for a sou.

Another pain in the ass is Jannings. Jannings is the last laugh. The laugh was so tremendous that lock-jaw set in. Jannings is old age masquerading as art. Jannings is Germany as she is, has been and always will be: scrupulous, myopic, tedious and flatulent. Jannings is the eternal student with suds on his moustache and a big sausage in his hand. The curse of Germany is halitosis, *die neue Schrecllichkeit*, than which there are four out of five. The movies can hope for nothing out of Germany but squeaks and farts.

Nor is Russia of any use. Russia has gone sociopedicfrantic. Instead of art she offers us polemics, utopias, panaceas — cathartic cachets to be swallowed at one gulp, without water. Russia is in the throes of didacticism. She is altogether absorbed in sha—ling the cob-webs out of her brains. For those who have no cob-webs — no snow, lice, epilepsy, troikas, balalaikas — Russia offers nothing. What Russia needs is more czars — a long, uninterrupted orgy with all the brass buttons, schizophrenics, steppes, tundras and frozen mastodons. Russia is sorely in need of more, rear-admirals and Generals Ivolgin, of cherry orchards and Fillipovna women, of Tatars and Jew-haters, of blight and ignorance, of lechery and sadism, of poverty and mysticism. We do not for a moment believe that Communism will produce a good picture because Communism is nothing but a Hammurabic Code in extenso. You saw the «Ten Commandments? » Excelsior!

The 14-karat stars we pass over in silence. (This includes the great Garbo.) For Lil Dagover and Olga Tchekowa we own to a strong affection. We like their middle years, their pre-war womanliness, their essential femaleness...

She is a great throbbing womb of love — one of those quiet, Mongol types who, in the mere act of leaning against a wall to stifle a sob, produces cataclysms in the human heart. She is a star with a voluptuous torso, sinuous and gravid, a navel big as a silver dollar. Near the crotch the flesh unloosens when she runs; a twist and her torso fleshes into long, snaky rolls. Her buttocks joggle a little, too, but the legs are smooth, strong, shapely. And the breasts! Ah, the breasts! Heavy as gourds, taut, swelling at a

breath, glowing, glowing... flowing over with the milk of human passion.

The young lover is on his knees, crawling after her, begging, imploring her. She, frightened, excited, pulling away from him, trying to push him off. One only sees his head uptilted and a hand flashing now and then beneath her dress, but her one sees vividly, all of her, dishevelled, breathing like a locomotive, working away with her elbows, pushing his hands down, twisting her trunk, squirming, squirming out of his clutch. He unhitches her garters while she slides against the wall in a drunken stupor, rubbing herself against the door knob like an animal in heat.

The maid pours champagne down her throat. It runs down her bosom and trickles into her navel, the big, silver-dollar navel that once connected her with another world. The music blares. The show is on. Out front a circle of blubber-mouthed blacks waiting for her to move in. The music is playing a break-down. She goes on like an automaton, each drunken lurch moving the audience to a white frenzy. When the music stops she faints. They pick her up and carry her off on a platter of palms. She lies limp, her legs wide apart, her brassiere slipping down over the white caps, her stomach twitching like a frog under the scalpel.

Moving toward the wings the big, white-washed mouths, lick the dressing from the lobster salad. Something pre-Wagnerian about it. Maenads expiring in orgies of lust. Grinning sockets from which the eyes have been expunged. Dulcima smears and hammer rhythms. A convulsive, nightmarish dream of paint and lace. Chorus girls standing in the wings, bouncing like sawdust dolls, like the women of Esra tasting apocalyptic grief. All the niggers homos, and not one of them black.

She comes out again, her legs looking a little frailer now than before, her navel deeply rouged, her hips swaying with a dying fever. Fifty legs swinging to a syncopating rhythm. Fifty bellies heaving in unison. Fifty pairs of teats doing the Olga-Volga. Fifty dark patches between the legs gleaming like Thanksgiving turkey. Fifty gee-strings strangling them in the crotch.

About Bunuel, something later — something private. Bunuel is an *acte gratuit*. This is not the place for an *acte gratuit*.

...Suis-je contre Jean Cocteau ? Voici la question que me pose un monsieur qui prétend être mon ami. J'ai refusé de lui répondre. D'abord, cela ne le regarde pas ; et puis, c'est une question idiote... Comme je crains fort de ne pas être un idiot assez intelligent, ma réponse aurait été tout ce qu'il y a de plus bête. Et j'ai peur de toute hâtise — à moins qu'elle ne soit vraiment bestiale...

...Pourtant, cette question me travaille. Suis-je encore contre vous ? Et si je n'étais pas contre vous, serais-je pour vous ? Suis-je contre vous parce que ?... Ou bien, serais-je pour vous à condition que ?... La question m'assomme malgré moi. Je la tourne, l'habille, la déshabille, la rhabille... je la projette en l'air. L'atrape en plein vol, je la laisse glisser entre mes doigts, la déchire, la raccommode, je jongle avec elle, me la pose de mille façons différentes...

...Jean Cocteau, vous êtes devenu une obsession, un cauchemar, un démon, un dieu, — un monstre qui se nourrit du sommeil d'au-trui... Je vous en veux ! Il faut que je vous expulse de mon sang

de mon système nerveux...

...J'ai signé votre mandat d'arrêt ; instruit l'information ; vous ai jugé, condamné : interdiction de séjour.

Allez-vous en !

Vous y êtes toujours ? Bon. Restez !

Quand j'étais tout petit, je n'osais pas regarder la lune par un télescope. J'y devinais des choses affreuses qui m'auraient ému- rée, épouvantée, poussée à la folie. Le microscope a toujours été pour moi un instrument de suprême torture... Eh bien, Jean Cocteau, je n'ai jamais lu un seul mot de ce que vous avez écrit ! Pouvez-vous comprendre cela ? La couverture de vos livres me communique essentiellement la même sensation de peur — en- fantine, soit — que j'éprouve en face d'un télescope dirigé vers un astre, ou d'un microscope suspendu au-dessus d'une goutte d'eau. C'est fascinant et effrayant à la fois...

...Et puis, il y a autre chose aussi : je suis contre le canniba- lisme. Ce n'est pas bien clair, mais, voyez-vous, c'est encore une réminiscence d'extrême jeunesse... Quand j'étais un tout petit gar-çon — il y a presque vingt-cinq ans de cela — j'étais témoin d'une scène horripilante. A Vienne. Un matin, ma gouvernante, une nurse mal nourrie, se promenait au Prater, me tenant en laisse... J'ai vu, mal dissimulés dans un buisson, deux hommes... Enfin, l'un d'eux buvait le sang de l'autre. C'était cruel. Je ne crois pas que je me sois jamais remis de ce choc. Un complexe s'était formé.

Qu'est-ce que c'est qu'un complexe ? Je m'en fiche. Mais que je m'en fiche jusqu'à la démence, ils sont là, les complexes, tous, qu'ils aient été formés il y a mille ans ou il y a cinq minutes. Ils travaillent en nous, s'entre-dévorent, s'équilibrent, s'accouplent en mille positions perverses, produisent une progéniture hideuse ou angélique, nous affollent, écrasent nos entrailles, nous tuent. Je peux bien me ficher d'eux ; ils se fichent royalement de moi... Assez !

J'ai voulu dire que j'ai une idyosincrasie contre le canniba- lisme. Or, lire vos œuvres constituerait une espèce de cannibalisme psychique. Que tout cela doit sonner formidablement prétentieux dans vos oreilles ! Je n'y puis rien ! Dans les profondeurs les plus profondes de mon Moi, là où les pierres ne touchent plus, où il n'y a plus de vibrations, je sens qu'il existe, entre nous deux, une fon- damentale affinité élective.

...Non, Jean Cocteau, je ne suis pas contre vous ! Je ne suis pas non plus contre mon appendice — ceci en guise de simple préci- sion... Mais j'ai horreur de vous connaître, comme j'aurais horreur de connaître mon appendice. Et pourtant, je vous connais ! Donc, j'ai horreur de connaître ce que mon Moi connaît déjà — a tou- jours connu...

En ce qui vous concerne, Jean Cocteau, je suis réduit à une simple antenne réceptrice. Mes nerfs savent ce qu'ils peuvent atten- dre de vous. Mon point central vous devine comme certaines plan- tes devinent la tempête. L'idée de vous recevoir me terrifie. Je me cache derrière la structure poreuse de mon réseau vital, vous ob- serve, prends note de vous ; je vous aperçois tantôt vaguement, né- buleusement, tantôt en une densité magnifique — comme à tra- vers un voile tissé des mondes atomisés d'un univers atavique. Vous m'apparaissez fier, sublime, glorieux dans votre bagne aristof

cratique auquel les démons de votre sang vous ont condamné à la
réclusion perpétuelle — ce bagne terrible et divin, gardé par les
dénosaures de votre fantaisie, et dont vous ne vous évaderez jamais.
Un nuage magique de parfums subtils distillés exclusivement des
fleurs et des herbes noires descend sur moi, m'enveloppe, m'enivre,
déclenche mes réflexes... La lecture du *Grand écart* me laisserait,
j'en suis instinctivement certain, la même sensation délicieusement
horrible que j'éprouverais en buvant votre sang — le tout trans-
posé sur un plan psychique...

Je vous déteste, Jean Cocteau, d'être condamné à être perpétuel-
lement votre *doppelgänger* lilliputien ! Je vous haïs ! Je vous
dêdaigne ! Mon sang rejette avec dégoût le fluide abominable qui
émane de vous, mais, hélas ! ce fluide, le voici qu'il retombe sur
mon âme ! Et dans mon âme, il y est... il y reste. Aucun soufre
psychique ne peut le chasser des coins et des niches de ces laby-
rinthes lointains où il se cache, collé contre, dissout avec, les mem-
branes mucifiques de mon être quintessentiel, plus fort, plus ter-
rible, plus belliqueux que les minotaures de mon âme... Vous êtes
en moi, Jean Cocteau ! Barbare ! Attila de mes terrains sacrés !
Vous ravagez mon subconscient, vous infectez mon sang, vous dé-
truisez les cellules de mon cerveau, vous êtes infiniment plus cruel
que la syphilis, la lèpre, la peste ! Je suis à votre merci. Je vous
déteste ! Je vous hais !

Que tout cela est bête ! Je ne vous déteste nullement, je n'ai
aucune raison de vous haïr... Au contraire, je vous aime, vous et
vos œuvres, même si je ne devais les lire que trop tard dans ma
vie... C'est moi qui ai pitié de vous, une pitié énorme qui émane de
je ne sais quelle immense piété, vague, obscure, mais, ni mysté-
rieuse, ni énigmatique. Je vous plains de tous les secrets inexplo-
rés de mon cœur, mais je ne peux rien faire pour vous, rien —
sauf être votre frère spirituel, votre tout petit frère... votre frère
embryonnique. Qu'il me soit permis de m'envelopper dans votre
ombre, ou une petite part de votre ombre, — je m'en ferai faire,
chez un tailleur de grand luxe, un minuscule manteau d'oblivion
invisible...

...Et tout cela parce qu'un monsieur qui prétend être mon ami me pose une question absurde. M'aurait-il demandé si j'acceptais Jean Cocteau, j'aurais pu répondre d'un petit signe de tête.

Je ne joins à cette lettre — mettons entrouverte — aucun tim-
bre-poste de réponse.

Mon cher Luis,

Hier ou avant-hier, ou y a-t-il un mois, un an de cela ? — je
ne me souviens plus — j'ai écrit, sur du papier timbré, une lettre.
Cette lettre était adressée à Jean Cocteau et contenait le compli-
ment le plus haut et le plus bas qu’un homme puisse faire à un
homme. Je lui ai dit que j’avais peur de lui...

Ce compliment, par la présente, je le retire. Je n'ai plus peur
de personne.

C'était une mauvaise lettre assez bien écrite ; c'était une lettre
préc-Bunuelesque, née en dehors de la marge du programme de
l'Acte gratuit. Elle s'est passée avant le 14 juillet de mes nerfs, avant
l'heure d'été de mon âme ; elle s'est passée avant vous...

Luis Bunuel, vous vous êtes attaqué aux tissus. Vous avez accom-

pli cette chose énorme que l'humanité ne saura jamais vous par-
donner : vous avez anéanti une vision fade qui, jusqu'ici se faisait
par l'intermédiaire de « grands yeux noirs », des « yeux d'an bleu
limpide », ou bien des « yeux couleur Côte d'Emeraude », et vous
l'avez remplacée par la vision gratuite.

Vous êtes fort, Luis Bunuel !

Vous avez saisi la plaque si lourde qu'elle ne pesait presque
plus rien, vous l'avez savonnée, trottee et pole ; transformée en
miroir. Et ce miroir, vous l'avez soulevé de vos bras, et suspendu au-
dessus de ce monde que vous n'avez pas inventé, qui existait tou-
jours, et cela si bien que personne ne pouvait le voir. C'est en ce
miroir que désormais se refléteront toutes les choses qui étaient
gratuites avant que les hommes eussent conçu la férocité de les faire
coter en Bourse.

Vous êtes fort, Luis Bunuel.

J'entrevois vaguement l'image du Grand Ecart qui ne pourra
plus me faire de mal, toutes les couleurs qui ne sont pas aveuglées,
l'huître qui s'est close sur les horreurs extrinsèques, elle qui, hélas !
n'a pas voulu, et puis, l'autre qui, hélas ! a voulu... et toutes les
choses qui refusent de s'embrasser, les vieilles chaussettes qui ne
veulent pas se faire, tous les lendemains qui viennent en retard,
les météorites qui étincellent à travers les espaces sans me faire
frémir de désirs, l'homme qui ne naîtra pas, la femme morte dans
un pays lointain, le chien Andalon qui a négligé de m'aboyer, des
rats, des souris et toutes les fourmis, et la dernière violette rouge
coulant du sein de la déesse lassée de vivre...

Tout ce monde gratuit, vous m'en avez fait cadeau ! Quand j'ai
commencé cette lettre, j'ai pleuré de gratitude. Maintenant, ma
gratitude est sèche, j'en ai cristallisé les sels qui coulent finement
par les appertures de mon horloge d'heures. La futilité même ne
m'effraie plus. C'est vous, Luis Bunuel, qui l'avez conquise. Au con-
traire ! je l'aime maintenant, cette futilité baillante, elle m'appa-
rait splendide, grandiose, l'acte le plus merveilleusement gratuit
qui soit. La futilité, c'est l'apothéose finale, têlestique de la gra-
tuité, dépassant tout, la cloche fabriquée de merde rassise
S. G. D. G., la pluie qui tombe sur les cendres violettes des vierges
brulées vives, les poisons qui nous attendent avec une patience
féline et la mort qui, désormais, ne pourra plus nous arracher que
l'avant- dernier mot.

Vous avez assassiné la littérature, qui n'a plus de raison d'être,
puisqu'il n'est plus nécessaire de dire « J'ai faim » et ce pauvre
million de mots qui faisaient la joie des siècles passés se sont re-
froidis dans la morgue glaciale du monde à venir. Ils attendent à
ce que vous les ressuscitiez pour recommencer leur danse orgiaste
au travers de nos membranes tymphaniques mais, touchés par votre
bâton magique, ils ne seront plus de simples mots, mais des actes
condensés, un peu sourds, un peu muets, et très gratuits.

« Avranches, Normandy. July 15... Funeral eulogies are
forbidden in all Catholic churches of Western Normandy, according
to a pastoral letter just issued by the Bishop of Avranches. He
intimates that good persons need no eulogy, while the bad ones
do not deserve it. So he prohibits them all.

«No funeral eulogy», he writes, «no matter how short, should
be pronounced at interments. Article 261 of the Synodal Statutes
has never been abrogated; all priests are asked to observe and

enforce it both in letter and spirit.» (New item.)

The worst shit in the world is the shit that pretends not to stink. This is Gaumont shit. Everything marked with the label «Gaumont» is shit — pretentious shit. And to harbor this pretentious shit a palace is being erected on the Boulevard de Clichy. The shit-heels who will go to this palace will get aKelleyful of shit matinee and evening. And they will like it. If they don't like it they'll be shit out of luck. But they will like it. The Gaumont organization has arranged it all before-hand.

It was Gaumont that gave to the world Quatre de l'Infanterie. Of all the crap that has come out of the ass-hole of creation Quatre de l'Infanterie is the crappiest. The war itself was crap, but it was unadulterated crap. Gaumont has chosen to deodorize this crap, to perfume it. Herr Direktor Pabst worked the shit-pump. Another gentleman belched *émouvante... emouvante* as an introduction to the fracas. The big guns flashed and tried to roar, but they sounded like wet farts. There was an evacuation on all fronts but it didn't even leave a bad taste in one's mouth.

Then there was a hero who, upon arriving home, finds his wife in bed with another man. This stale joke is supposed to give us the *émouvantes*. What right has a hero to sneak up on his wife, instead of giving her due and proper notice? A hero, above all men, should have a sense of responsibility. A hero who would deprive his wife of her natural functioning while he's away getting himself killed or wounded is no hero. A hero should remain a hero even when he's caught with his pants down. All other heroes are full of shit. Pabst is full of shit...

After seeing a Gaumont film we recommend SEDUSOL. The advantages of SEDUSOL are explained in the folder:

«It is not only in Mexico and what might be called Bolshevika that persecutions are carried on. It is claimed in Italy that the persecutions are not against the Church, but nevertheless they are conducted against the most exquisite parts of the Church. It is claimed that they are not against the Pope, but they are against the very heart and eyes of the Pope.»

(Note: We are absolutely against persecutions directed against the most exquisite parts of things.)

We have been asked if we are against puncutation marks. Not entirely. We are against hyphens and semi-colons.

We are against the indiscriminate use of words ending in it, ick, ock, unt and uck. We beg to call attention to the fact that we have never used shit when merde would do, or vice versa. When it has been necessary to distinguish we have used vulva instead of cunt. We have always kept in mind, too, that con resembles cunt but we have never implied that a cunt was a vulva. Even when dealing with bull-dykers we have paid scrupulous attention to gender — la bite for the male organ, le con for the female organ. (We are against using the word organ to designate the sexual parts. An organ is an instrument capable of producing the noblest music; its meaning should be kept pure.)

Likewise we are against the use of stars or asterisks to describe the sexual act, or the euphemistic language employed by modern novelists. There are times when nothing else will do but the word fuck. «I want to fuck you!» Not — «I want you, cherie.»

Nor do we approve of this business of «faire l'amour». Only
titutes talk about fairing l'amour. Real women talk like Mrs Bloom
of the last chapter.

San Sebastian, June 11th... A traveled English novelist, whose
works have been translated in nearly every language, once men-
tioned that Spain is a tourist's paradise. One of America's more
rugged realists in the literature line would also agree with him.
One loves Spain for its imposing architectural monuments, its
rich historical lore. The other observes with awed eyes, the
curious folkways of a people who turn an ordinary bullfight into a
colorful event lasting seven full days without stop, the trout
streams in the mountains and the sandy beaches along the coast
which makes swimming and lolling a perpetual delight. Incident-
ally both agree on the fine yellow sands of the coast beaches...

(Chicago Tribune.)

We are against les cabinets à siège. Exception must be made
in the case of the Brasserie Dumesnil. Here one will find an airy,
comfortable toilet with the most charming porcelain bowls deco-
rated with pale blue flowers. The toilet paper is abundant and of
fine quality. The roof is made of translucent glass; one may sit
and dream in these pleasant surroundings while listening to the
strains of the orchestra. The attendant, a pleasant woman of
advanced years, is always there with a cordial greeting. There is
nothing more lenitive than a warm greeting before taking the
stool.

Barring the Brasserie Dumesnil, then, we are against les cabi-
nets à siège. We are in favor of the hygienic toilets such as one
sees, for instance, in French newspaper offices or in the Grand
Guignol. For the dissemination of political propaganda there is
no place like the hygienic toilet. Nor is there any better use for
newspaper that we know of. We are absolutely against the practise,
which the Americans have fostered, of visiting the Dome and the
Coupole in order to steal toilet paper. We are against the Anglo-
Saxon obscenity which mars the walls of these lavabos. We are
against all obscenity which has not for its ultimate goal some high
purpose, some reason of state, some religious significance.

I find myself in a world so natural, so complete, that I am lost.
It does not appear to me that I am viewing an exhibition but that
I am immersed in the very plexus of life, that I am focal from
whatever point I view this organization of paint.

If feel intensely again the spell of Balbec, the light-splintered
dining room and the blood-flecked tips of the waves beating
insouciantly on ribbons of gold; the figure of Albertine mysterious
and quick, diving into the shadows, and with the closing of day
pacing rising like a mist from the earth, sorrow closing in, shuttering
the brilliant vistas of beach and sea.

When I look into the eyes of Matisse I find there, as in Salavin,
completeness. No searching for formulae, no experimentation, no
compulsion other than to create, to express, to give of what one
has.

When Salavin passes the Pont d'Austerlitz he says: « Le pont
d'Austerlitz est un beau pont. Il s'élance au milieu d'un grand
espace blanc. Dès qu'il y a un peu de clarté sur Paris, c'est pour
le pont d'Austerlitz... Là, il y a toujours du vent, des odeurs de

voyage, des bateaux laborieux, des marchands de riens... Je ne me
rappelle pas avoir passé jamais le pont d'Austerlitz en état de
honte ou de colère. Ça compte, des choses comme ça. »

Salavin is right. They count, these things. They are all that
matter. I feel this poignantly when I stroll along the boulevards
and the whores rustle beside me, when just to glance at them causes
me to tremble. Is it because they are beautiful? No, rarely do I see
a beautiful woman here in France. I have learned to despise this
feminine beauty which has us by the balls in America. I do not
find the women of Matisse beautiful. But I find in Matisse these
women of the boulevards, these more than beautiful creatures
whose existence is inseparable from the background against which
they move. I find it beautiful to look upon a woman who is
offering herself outside a urinoir where there is advertised cigarette
papers, rum, and all the attractions of the theatre, where the heavy
foliage of chestnut trees veils for a moment the clouded sky and
the ragged outlines of crumbling walls. All these odalisques one
will find in Paris, and walls reeking with violence, and carpets
stained with lust.

Has this to do with Matisse? Yes. Matisse is the sum of
modern painting. Matisse is the epiphenomenon of the new phen-
nomenology. Matisse is the wobbly axis which gives core to the
revolutions in plastic, the hub of the wheel which is falling apart,
which will keep on rolling when all that has gone to make up the
wheel has disintegrated. The wheel has already rolled over a good
portion of the globe; it has gathered up slime here and there, a
little from India, a little from China, some more from Persia, mi-
croscopic particles from Beluchistan, Timbuctoo, from Somaliland,
Angkor, Tierra del Fuego. The homely women of France have
become transmuted into odalisques framed in mihrabs studded with
chalcedony, malachite, jasper; their gowns are veiled with a thou-
sand eyes, perfumed eyes that have rolled in the sperm of whales,
the white jelly cooled in the breasts of pigeons rutting in the ice
of the Himalayas.

It is unimportant to me whether he is French or not, Matisse.
He is a painter who touches me profoundly. He is a sage, a seer
who has closed all the fractures of our modern life, who with a
sweep of the brush harmonizes the discordances, unifies the var-
ieties, integrates the brash individualism which sets us whirling
in futile orbits. He it is, it seems to me, who knows where to
dissolve the figure, who sacrifices the line for the murmur of the
forest, who curves the light in order to reveal the keyboard of
color. And through all the minutiae of life he is constantly and
forever aware of the pattern, the woof that binds the object to the
deed, the thought to the action.

If, however, he seems to give the impression of creating and
abiding in a very real world, it is none the less an incomplete world.
It is a world in which science attempts vainly to give solidity to
nothingness. The skepticism which logic introduced has ushered
in a faith of incomprehensible proportions. The hypotheses of
science are impossible to digest: they rest like heavy stones in the
belly of our thought. Formulae are dispensed like pharmaceutical
prescriptions. We slide from one axiom to another in a saxophone
smear. «Is everybody happy?» wails the saxophone, and the

answer is lost in a snuffle of adenoids.

Most obviously everybody is not happy, neither the men of science nor the men of action, neither the philosophers nor the aestheticians. The picture of the world has grown blurred and rheumy; articulation we can detect here and there, but at the periphery the light-waves bend and the suns bleed. Even the aureole which hung for so many centuries about the drama of the ancient world has begun to dissolve. Historians arise who assert solemnly that they are better informed about the battle of Thalamis than the men who engaged in it. The long perspective of the Hindu calendar is corrected by the opticians of mythology. The diaspora is made into a jewel to light the way to Zionism. A homosexual interprets for us the soul of Myshkin. The epileptics explain our dreams, and the defeated unravel our complexes. More and more the world becomes an entomologist's dream, an insectivorous nightmare in which while we fornicate we consume one another, while we take flight we drop our entrails, while we dive deeper into the manure pile we uncoil a continuous tape of excreta, which is simply shit and nothing else.

There is no longer any reality in the fucking going on. The wall-paper is the reality, the ugly, inescapable reality. The cunt which the scientists have been unable to fathom a painter plumbs with his brush. Gone the pastoral days of the 18th century. No more fucking in the Bois. Men and women, I see you standing now in the Metro, genitals to genitals, the world sitting by dreaming of Europa and the bull. I see you leaning against the high walls of the cemetery, glued to the trees, your blood beating with the planturous murmur of the sap, while Baudelaire, prone and mummy-swathed grows thinner and thinner. In the dusky corners of the cafés I see your hands locked, your loins flather-flecked, the garçon waiting for the intermission to fall upon his wife and gouge her. I see nothing going on in Paris but these organic unions, the air itself sperm-colored, the walls drenched with leucorrhea, the trees tangled like hair. I see the taxis rubbing against each other in rut, their brakes groaning, their klaxons sobbing, their gears goring the rubber hymen of the asphalt.

And in all this I see Matisse peering with his blue eyes into the portfolio of a busy century. Into what distant corners has he not thrown his long, slanting gaze. Looking down the vast promontory of his nose he has beheld everything which the show provides : the Cordilleras falling away into the Pacific, the history of the Jews done in yellum, shutters fluting the frou-frou of the beach, chameleons truned static under the press of wine, seraglios expiring in oceans of carpets, music issuing like fire from the chromosphere of ecstasy, bordellos vomiting their spawn...

You ask me to praise the shit out of France. Is it really necessary? I wish I could say something about France that hasn't been said before by Frenchmen or by intelligent foreigners. To say that I love France is perhaps not exactly in favor of the country. France is a strange country situated in the margin of an otherwise deplorable universe. It belongs less to this world than a gold tooth in the mouth of a crocodile. This is a bad comparison because France really belongs to this world; it is the world which doesn't belong to France. Let me see...

The world is jealous of France. For the past three or four hundred years the world has been trying to imitate the French. When finally the utter hopelessness of this was realized another policy was adopted — France was calumniated. What does one do in a case like that? Well, France laughed. Her laughter shook the whole world until the world, too, had to laugh. Only France's laughter was genuine. The world has not succumbed yet. It takes a long while to die from laughter.

It was proclaimed that France is decadent. Ha-ha-ha! Yes, France is decadent. O. K. And what of it? Let's admit that France is decadent, has been decadent ever since Jeanne d'Arc, including Jeanne d'Arc. (What about Charlemagne?) But in that case decadence is something wonderful, grandiose, sublime! French decadence has lifted us to the highest peaks of culture and refinement, has revealed to a gaping world the miracles of humaneness. The moral decadence is responsible for the finest poets of all time; to the ethical decadence we owe the falling of the mask of hypocrisy; national decadence created the overwhelming beauty of Paris. Vive la décadence! The grandeur of our decadence (I say «cour» decadence because at this moment I am French) accounts for the superiority of France over the world. Through our decadence there runs a fresh current, a life-affirming impulse. Our decadence has stormed the Bastille, put Napoléon on the throne, produced a Villon, a Pasieur, a Voltaire. Yes, we are decadent, and we are proud of it! At our frontiers stands the world, observing, watching us, commenting on us. After having ignominiously failed to imitate us, they lie in wait for the first visible symptoms of weakness to throw themselves upon us like a pack of hungry wolves. And that day, no doubt, will come. When? What matter? But even then our decadence lying in the last convulsions of agony will flash up once more and the resplendent shine of the setting sun, the French Sun, will be a spectacle so infinitely beautiful that the anaemic pallor of the coming world's dawn will forever be forgotten. Après nous le déluge !

As far as I am concerned there is nothing wrong and nothing right with France. Maybe there is, but I don't care. All I can say is that I accept the country and its people as they are. I will have nothing changed in France. Whatever there is in France be'il on there. From the beautiful towers of Notre-Dame down to the Americans in Montparnasse, via the vin rouge ordinaire, the gauloises bleues and les heures d'affluence in the métro, I'm all for France. Even the 10 % income tax. I would miss all these things, pleasant or annoying, if they were suddenly to disappear. I am all for France. I don't merely accept it, as I intimated before. I cling to it! The French visa on my passport has turned from a blade of grass into a rope-ladder. After having drifted over all the world I was finally rescued by the French Consul General at Berne. I climbed up the rope-ladder to that beautiful and comfortable ship that «wavers but never sinks».

When I entered France there was a customs officer standing at the frontier. A short, rather ridiculous looking guy, wearing a funny kepi and big moustaches & la Bouif, a carbonated cigaret but dangling from the left corner of his mouth. The first Frenchman I had seen in France, looking dumb, half-witted, insignificant. I

love that fellow now that I know him! He was one of those forty
millions who made the country what it is. He shrugs his shoulders
in a silly, helpless way, and builds you the loveliest garden. And
all the other dumb-looking Frenchmen, with their Bouif mous-
tachios and carbonated gauloise mégots stand around or walk about
Paris, and — believe it or not — they build you a Place des Vosges,
an Avenue des Champs-Elysées, a Louvre, or just an Eiffel Tower,
like that, or else they paint you a picture that makes you piss
in your pants, write you a book that can never be forgotten, win
you a war that no one else could have won, or a peace that no one
else can lose. Just take a good look at that guy, Aristide Briand.
Can you imagine an American flapper falling for him? Looks
like an organ grinder, with his short legs, unkempt hair, celluloid
collar and dirty cigaret butt glued to a corner of his half-parted
lips. Ought to sell peanuts in the street with a face like that.
N'est-ce pas? No sir, you are wrong! That guy, Briand, is the
best man in the world, a super-Mahatma, the holiest representative
of a race which would be less white if he weren't there. The best
heart, the finest mind, the highest intelligence, the subtlest wit are
(Franç)h — French of necessity. And there are thousands like him!
They don't look it, we will admit, but they are so rich underneath
their sillily-cut suits adorned with idiotic blue ribbons and red
rosettes — the best hearts in the world beat under unhygienic
underwear. Wait a little while. Qui vivra verra.

LIST OF CHOICE

ENGLISH BOOKS

Privately Printed Limited Editions

FOR

— — — Bibliophiles — Students — —

-:- Travellers and Membres of the Learned -:-

Professions

* * *

You can buy these books with your eyes shut

LIBRARY DES PRINCES

5<sup>bis</sup>, Boulevard des Italiens — PARIS

(sur les Grands Boulevards)

**The Perfumed Garden** A manual of Arabian Erology, by the Shaykh Nefzawi, Complete Edition.

The stout volume is a complete text-book of oriental erotic manners and customs, and from an ethnographical point of view is unvaluable unveiling as it does the iden't voluptuous mysteries of the jealously guarded harems of the East.

One volume, Price...... £ 1. 5.0.

**The Hindu Art of Love or Ananga Ranga** (Stage of the bodiless one)
Translated from the Sanscrit of Kalyana Malla and anoted by A.F.F. et R.F.B.

Dedicated to that small portion of the British Public which takes enlightened interest in studying the manners and customs of the olden East.

One volume, Price..... £ 1. 0. 0.

**The Kama Sutra**, of Vatsyayana
The Hindu Manual of Erology.

A Complete and unexpurgated Edition of this celebrated Hindu treatise on Love,

One volume, Price...... £ 1. 0. 0.

**The Diary of a Masseuse by La Vrille**

A romance translated from the French.

One volume, P... Shillings 10 "

Miss Bellasis. Birched for Thieving.

**The Mysteries of Verbena House, by « Etoniensis »**

Price ................... £ 2. 0. 0.

A Study in Eroto-Pathology.

**The Crossways of Sex,**

By Doctor Jacobus X..., late French Army Surgeon,

Author of: *Untrodden Fields of An-thropology, Genital Laws, The Bassis of Passive! Psychology, etc., etc.*
Complete in two volumes.

Price ................... £ 3. 0. 0.

In this pitiless and painstaking collection of authentic erotic errors and weaknesses will be found the most interesting, valuable and useful data, touching boldly, not only upon the outskirts of the forest and tangled undergrowth of sexual deviations, but also penetrating to the very depths of the abyss of mental maladies and wiful perversities of sex.

It is the most remarkable work in existence on the subject, and contains full information concerning the great army of sexually disherited men and women. An important chapter is devoted to Hermaphrodites; another to Eunuchs; a long one to Lesbians, Tribades, Fricarelles, and Saphists; others to Masculine Prostitution and Blackmail, etc.

## Human Gorillas.

*A Study of the Ravishment of Women: concerning Rapes by Men on Women and by Women on Men.*

By Count Roscaud.

Fine Edition. — Complete in one vol, containing over 280 pages. Fifty two illustrations.

Price £ 3.0.0.

## Whipped Women,

The Confessor, Procured by a Whipping, Victims of Love, Daughters to Marry, The Colonel and his Cook.

By Jean de Villiot.

Price £ 3.0.0.

## The Old Man Young Again or Age.

**Rejuvenescence,** In the Power of Concupiscence, Literally Translated from the Arabic.

By An English « Bohemian ».

With Translator's Foreword numerous Important Notes, illustrating the Text, and an Excursus on the History, Nature and Uses of Aphrodisiacs.

Price £ 2.0.0.

« Les Cent Nouvelles »
(Louis XI).

## One Hundred Merrie and Delightsome Stories,

Right Pleasaunte to Relate in all Goodly Compagnie by way of Joyaunce and Jollity.

Done now for the first time into English by Robert D. Bruce.

Fifty Coloured Illustrations by Léon Lebègue, the whole strongly bound in English water-coloured Silk Cloth.

Price £ 4.0.0.

### Flagellation in Germany.

## Nell in Bridewell,

Reinhard's powerful Romance of Woman-flogging in German Prisons.

One stout volume, on hand-made paper (310 p.).

Price £ 2.0.0.

## Aphrodisiae, by Pierre Louys ill.

Price £ 2.0.0.

## The Grip of Desire, the Story of a Paris Priest.

Price £ 3.0.0.

## Physiology of Vice, Dr. Jaf.

Price Shillings 8 »

## The Vice of Woman, Dr. Jaf.

Price Shillings 7 »

## Sweet Sixteen, by Sadies Blackeyes.

Price £ 1.0.0.

## Miss, by Sadie Blackeyes.

Price £ 1.5.0.

## Lovely Lisette, by Sadie Blackeyes.

Price £ 1.0.0.

## The Sweet Games of Love.

Kisses! Caresses! Love! — A new and celebrated Kama-Soutra.

Price Shillings 10 »

## The School of Love,

Or how to become a perfect lover — A fin art book illustrated with photographs taken from life.

Price Shillings 10 »

## The Feminine Vices,

By Raphaël Viau — Some charming girls with all the cynical and jaded views attributed to modern youth.

Price Shillings 10 »

## Study of Love.

The Practice, The Theory — A fine art book.

Price Shillings 10 »

## The Wedding Night,

You must read this book, the most famous !

Price Shillings 12 »

## The Chaser of Girls,

Or a devil in spite of himself. — Translated from the celebrated french romance. The right one.

Price Shillings 8 »

## Behind the Screen of Married life,

Nightly Performances of an amoorous woman. A fine art book with photographs taken from life.

Price Shillings 8 »

## The Memoirs of Alfred, a Valet.

I have seen a lot of celebrated women among whom very few were honest. A lot more were wicked and debauchees.

A fine art book, illustrated.

Price Shillings 8 »

## Love Without Risk,

By Doctor Saldo. — We have dealt, said doctor Saldo, with that all important subject in a very simple and intelligible style, devoid of scientific terms.

Price Shillings 5 »

## The Genital Laws their Observance and Violation,

Being a supplement to the *Ethnology of the Sixth Sense*.

By Dr. Jacobus X...

Complete in one volume.

Price £ 1.0.0.

## Orange Blossoms,

The Story of a Beautiful Marchioness under the Second Empire.

Issue strictly limited to Two hundred copies.

Price £ 2.0.0.

## The Bride's Confession,

Contained in a letter to her Friend, Bella. Otherwise entitled « The Bridal Night.

A Poem attributed to Lord Byron preceded by Miss Pilton and her Spiritual adviser.

And followed by The reprisals : a crazy Tale.

Price Shillings 15 »

## The Analysis of the Sexual Impulse, by Doctor Havelock Ellis.

Studies in the Psychology of Sex. Printed for The Society of Psychological Research.

Unbound £ 1.0.0.

Bound £ 2.0.0.

## The Beautiful Flagellants of New York, by lord Dryalis,

The work complete in three volumes.

Granting, as I do, it was a weakness In me, but incident to all our sex...

A complete story of the flagellation, a passion which counts numerous volumes all over the world; such penalties are generally put down as bordering on weird insanity, but when voluptuous flagellation is brought into play, it is nothing more than a sublime exacerbation of tender affection, forcing a fervent lover to reach the highest pitch of adoration for the weaker sex.

The ecstacy of a loving woman is none the least radiant: she feels unspeakable happiness at her knowledge that she has enslaved her lover. She forces her power upon him, destroying his superior strength that slowly fades when he is on his knees before her. Carried away by spirit-stirring fever, she causes to arise in his being a new pleasure: the voluptuousness of pain, and this violence forcing her perturbed blood to boil, she accomplishes the act of loving adoration, pouring out her ibation to Venus by the fact of searing her lover's flesh.

Elegantly printed on handmade paper and strictly limited to two hundred and fifty copies, all the bibliophiles will be charmed with its freshness, originality and eroticism.

Three volumes in-8°, on dutch paper, well printed, fine edition.

Price £ 4.0.0.

## A Strange Passion (Flagellation, as practised at the present day, Studies, Documentary evidence, Anecdotes), by P. Guénolé, with 6 engravings.

Price £ 1.0.0.

The Vice of Women, by Dr. Cau-
feynon.

Price .................... Shillings 10 》

Before, During, After, by Dr. Cau-
feynon.

Physiology of Vice, by Dr. Jaf.

Secret Love, by Dr. Jaf.

The Humiliations of Miss Madge,
by A. Van Rod, with 7 engravings.

Price .................... Shillings 18 》

Stays and Gloves, by lord Kidrod-
stock.

Education anglaise; with engravings.
Figure-training and deportment by
means of the discipline of tight cor-
sets, narrow high-heeled boots, clin-
ging kid gloves, combinations.

Price .................... £ 2. 0. 0.

Some Yarns,

Love and laugh — a pocket full of
funny, nutty, risky, spicy, naughty
stories.

These yarns have been collected to
bring fun in your eye, delight in your
heart, to be the cause of spending a
few gay, healthy and exilarating hours..
Price .................... Shillings 8 》

A Little Trottin, or Yvette's passion.

A real story on a thrilling subject
passion of the moderne young girls for
the sport of flagellation.

A fine art book with a fascinating
cover jacket in full color by Edouard
Bernard.

Price .................... Shillings 7 》

Silk Stockings,

A true story showing the strange and
secret psychology of the lovers of the
birch.

Followed with two curious letters
written on the same subject a fine art
book with a cover jacket in full color
by Edouard Bernard.

Price .................... Shillings 6 》

A Pretty Parisienne.

Followed by a Naughty girl. Transla-
ted from the french.

Price .................... Shillings 5 》

Loulou and her husband.

Or a strong woman, followed by
Pleasure of love and the charms of
conjugal love. Translated from the
french.

The Sorceress,

A Study in Middle Age Superstition,
Black Masse, the Witche's Sabbath,
and Diabolic Possession.

Price .................... £ 1. 2. 0.

The Dialogues of Luisa Sigea

(Aloisio Sigea salira sotadica de
arcanis Amoris et Veneris).

Literally translated from the Latin
of Nicolas Chorier. — Paris, Lisieux,
1890.

Price .................... £ 3. 0. 0.

Zola (Emile).

Various works (3 volumes). — A
Love Episode. — The Fortune of
the Rougons. — The Soil (La
Terre), a realistic novel, Paris.
Chaque volume, .. Shillings 3 》

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# THE FREE-LANCE HUMORIST

By A. G.

ALMOST everyone has a different idea as to what is or is not funny. Incidents which reduce Mr. Brown to tears of laughter often fail to raise a smile from Mr. Smith, while it is a well-known fact that women have a different sense of humour from men. A joke printed in an American paper might be considered absurdly feeble by an English or German reader, and an American might pass with hardly a smile a quip that has caused all England to rock with laughter. It is all a matter of individual outlook.

This being so, it is easy to understand the difficulties that beset the professional humorous writer. He has to please all classes and, if he intends to write for the American and other foreign markets, all nationalities. The fashion in humour changes almost yearly, and the humorist must keep right up to date if he is to succeed. He must keep his finger upon the national "funny-bone" and, above all, be topical.

It is impossible to teach a person to be funny; the humorist is born, and not made. Nevertheless it is possible to indicate the sources from whence a born humorist can obtain material for amusing stories and articles. These sources are mainly: Home life, food, clothing, crime, love, sport, and mechanics. In taking an inventory of all the articles and stories published in the recognized humorous journals of the day, it is found that 90 % of them are based upon one or another of these subjects. They are the modern humorist's stock-in-trade.

The majority of successful humorous writers are men and women with unusual powers of observation. They view life from the funny side, and, by keeping their eyes skinned, extract material for their writings from even the most ordinary, everyday occurrences, such as a strap-hanger darting from one end of the tube car to the other in his efforts to capture a seat before a rival strap-hanger; or a chance word, let drop in a crowded restaurant, concerning a prize gooseberry.

It is a surprising fact that many really witty men and women have failed to succeed as humorous writers; surprising, that is, until one has been priviledged to read some of their work. Then the reason for their failure is made quite clear. Without any particular style of their own, they have compounded a pie without meat or fruit.

I do not think the Editor of the *Passing Show* will quarrel with me if I repeat advice he gave me several years ago when I was in despair at not being able to meet his requirements. In a few words he told me that, while my work was quite good in a sense, it contained no "meat." The crust was nicely browned, but the pie was empty!

## TYPES OF HUMOUR

Humour can be divided into the following categories:

1. The humorous story with a definite plot.

2. The light article.

3. Humorous verse.

4. Light, snappy paragraphs upon current topics of the day.

5. Music-hall sketches.

6. Play-length comedies.

7. Humorous books.

Of these, the most popular are the light article and the humorous verse. This is because they are easily and quickly read and are therefore more likely to raise a laugh than a long story or book.