Writers who like to moralise and discuss or
ameliorate psychological bases have, apart from a secret wish to win, a
ridiculous knowledge of life, which they may have classified, parcelled out,
canalised; they are determined to see its categories dance when they beat time.
Their readers laugh derisively, but carry on: what's the use?
There is one kind of literature which never reaches
the voracious masses. The work of creative writers, written out of the author's
real necessity, and for his own benefit. The awareness of a supreme egoism,
wherein laws become significant. Every page should explode, either because of
its profound gravity, or its vortex, vertigo, newness, eternity, or because of
its staggering absurdity, the enthusiasm of its principles, or its typography.
On the one hand there is a world tottering in its flight, linked to the
resounding tinkle of the infernal gamut; on the other hand, there are: the new
men. Uncouth, galloping, riding astride on hiccups. And there is a mutilated
world and literary medicasters in desperate need of amelioration.
….
I destroy the drawers of the brain, and those of
social organisation: to sow demoralisation everywhere, and throw heaven's hand
into hell, hell's eyes into heaven, to reinstate the fertile wheel of a
universal circus in the Powers of reality, and the fantasy of every individual.
Philosophy is the question: from which side shall
we look at life, God, the idea or other phenomena. Everything one looks at is
false. I do not consider the relative result more important than the choice
between cake and cherries after dinner. The system of quickly looking at the
other side of a thing in order to impose your opinion indirectly is called
dialectics, in other words, haggling over the spirit of fried potatoes while
dancing method around it.
If I shout:
Ideal, Ideal, Ideal
Knowledge, Knowledge, Knowledge
Boomboom, Boomboom, Boomboom
I have given a pretty faithful version of progress,
law, morality and all other fine qualities that various highly intelligent men
have discussed in so many books, only to conclude that after all everyone
dances to his own personal boomboom, and that the writer is entitled to his
boomboom: the satisfaction of pathological curiosity a private bell for
inexplicable needs; a bath; pecuniary difficulties; a stomach with
repercussions in tile; the authority of the mystic wand formulated as the
bouquet of a phantom orchestra made up of silent fiddle bows greased with
filters made of chicken manure. With the blue eye-glasses of an angel they have
excavated the inner life for a dime's worth of unanimous gratitude. If all of
them are right and if all pills are Pink Pills, let us try for once not to be
right. Some people think they can explain rationally, by thought, what they
think. But that is extremely relative. Psychoanalysis is a dangerous disease,
it puts to sleep the anti-objective impulses of man and systematizes the
bourgeoisie. There is no ultimate Truth. The dialectic is an amusing mechanism
which guides us / in a banal kind of way / to the opinions we had in the first
place. Does anyone think that, by a minute refinement of logic, he had
demonstrated the truth and established the correctness of these opinions? Logic
imprisoned by the senses is an organic disease. To this element philosophers
always like to add: the power of observation. But actually this magnificent
quality of the mind is the proof of its impotence. We observe, we regard from
one or more points of view, we choose them among the millions that exist.
Experience is also a product of chance and individual faculties. Science
disgusts me as soon as it becomes a speculative system, loses its character of
utility that is so useless but is at least individual. I detest greasy
objectivity, and harmony, the science that finds everything in order. Carry on,
my children, humanity... Science says we are the servants of nature: everything
is in order, make love and bash your brains in. Carry on, my children,
humanity, kind bourgeois and journalist virgins... I am against systems, the most
acceptable system is on principle to have none. To complete oneself, to perfect
oneself in one's own littleness, to fill the vessel with one's individuality,
to have the courage to fight for and against thought, the mystery of bread, the
sudden burst of an infernal propeller into economic lilies.
What I call the I-don't-give-a-damn attitude of
life is when everyone minds his own business, at the same time as he knows how
to respect other individualities, and even how to stand up for himself, the
two-step becoming a national anthem, a junk shop, the wireless (the wire-less
telephone) transmitting Bach fugues, illuminated advertisements for placards
for brothels, the organ broadcasting carnations for God, all this at the same
time, and in real terms, replacing photography and unilateral catechism.
Active simplicity.
Inability to distinguish between degrees of
clarity: to lick the penumbra and float in the big mouth filled with honey and
excrement. Measured by the scale of eternity, all activity is vain - (if we
allow thought to engage in an adventure the result of which would be infinitely
grotesque and add significantly to our knowledge of human impotence). But
supposing life to be a poor farce, without aim or initial parturition, and
because we think it our duty to extricate ourselves as fresh and clean as
washed chrysanthemums, we have proclaimed as the sole basis for agreement: art.
It is not as important as we, mercenaries of the spirit, have been proclaiming
for centuries. Art afflicts no one and those who manage to take an interest in
it will harvest caresses and a fine opportunity to populate the country with
their conversation. Art is a private affair, the artist produces it for
himself, an intelligible work is the product of a journalist, and because at
this moment it strikes my fancy to combine this monstrosity with oil paints: a
paper tube simulating the metal that is automatically pressed and poured hatred
cowardice villainy. The artist, the poet rejoice at the venom of the masses
condensed into a section chief of this industry, he is happy to be insulted: it
is a proof of his immutability. When a writer or artist is praised by the
newspapers, it is a proof of the intelligibility of his work: wretched lining
of a coat for public use; tatters covering brutality, piss contributing to the
warmth of an animal brooding vile instincts. Flabby, insipid flesh reproducing
with the help of typographical microbes.
We have thrown out the cry-baby in us. Any
infiltration of this kind is candied diarrhoea. To encourage this act is to
digest it. What we need is works that are strong straight precise and forever
beyond understanding. Logic is a complication. Logic is always wrong. It draws
the threads of notions, words, in their formal exterior, toward illusory ends and
centres. Its chains kill, it is an enormous centipede stifling independence.
Married to logic, art would live in incest, swallowing, engulfing its own tail,
still part of its own body, fornicating within itself, and passion would become
a nightmare tarred with protestantism, a monument, a heap of ponderous grey
entrails. But the suppleness, enthusiasm, even the joy of injustice, this
little truth which we practice innocently and which makes its beautiful: we are
subtle and our fingers are malleable and slippery as the branches of that
sinuous, almost liquid plant; it defines our soul, say the cynics. That too is
a point of view; but all flowers are not sacred, fortunately, and the divine
thing in us is to call to anti-human action. I am speaking of a paper flower
for the buttonholes of the gentlemen who frequent the ball of masked life, the
kitchen of grace, white cousins lithe or fat. They traffic with whatever we
have selected. The contradiction and unity of poles in a single toss can be the
truth. If one absolutely insists on uttering this platitude, the appendix of a
libidinous, malodorous morality. Morality creates atrophy like every plague
produced by intelligence. The control of morality and logic has inflicted us
with impassivity in the presence of policemen who are the cause of slavery,
putrid rats infecting the bowels of the bourgeoisie which have infected the
only luminous clean corridors of glass that remained open to artists....
But suppleness, enthusiasm and even the joy of
injustice, that little truth that we practise as innocents and that makes us
beautiful: we are cunning, and our fingers are malleable and glide like the branches
of that insidious and almost liquid plant; this injustice is the indication of
our soul, say the cynics. This is also a point of view; but all flowers aren't
saints, luckily, and what is divine in us is the awakening of anti-human
action. What we are talking about here is a paper flower for the buttonhole of
gentlemen who frequent the ball of masked life, the kitchen of grace, our
white, lithe or fleshy girl cousins. They make a profit out of what we have
selected. The contradiction and unity of opposing poles at the same time may be
true. IF we are absolutely determined to utter this platitude, the appendix of
alibidinous, evil-smelling morality. Morals have an atrophying effect, like
every other pestilential product of the intelligence. Being governed by morals
and logic has made it impossible for us to be anything other than impassive
towards policemen - the cause of slavery - putrid rats with whom the bourgeois
are fed up to the teeth, and who have infected the only corridors of clear and
clean glass that remained open to artists.
Let each man proclaim: there is a great negative
work of destruction to be accomplished. We must sweep and clean. Affirm the
cleanliness of the individual after the state of madness, aggressive complete
madness of a world abandoned to the hands of bandits, who rend one another and
destroy the centuries. Without aim or design, without organization: indomitable
madness, decomposition. Those who are strong in words or force will survive,
for they are quick in defence, the agility of limbs and sentiments flames on
their faceted flanks.
Morality has determined charity and pity, two balls
of fat that have grown like elephants, like planets, and are called good. There
is nothing good about them. Goodness is lucid, clear and decided, pitiless
toward compromise and politics. Morality is an injection of chocolate into the
veins of all men. This task is not ordered by a supernatural force but by the
trust of idea brokers and grasping academicians. Sentimentality: at the sight
of a group of men quarrelling and bored, they invented the calendar and the
medicament wisdom. With a sticking of labels the battle of the philosophers was
set off (mercantilism, scales, meticulous and petty measures) and for the
second time it was understood that pity is a sentiment like diarrhoea in
relation to the disgust that destroys health, a foul attempt by carrion corpses
to compromise the sun. I proclaim the opposition of all cosmic faculties to
this gonorrhoea of a putrid sun issued from the factories of philosophical
thought, I proclaim bitter struggle with all the weapons of Dadaist disgust.
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