Isidore Isou & Lettrism: The "Artist" and The Dismantling of Words    view entire page From Isidore: A Commonplaces about Words Pathetic I The flourishing of bursts of energy dies beyond us. All delirium is expansive. All impulses escape stereotyping. Still I An intimate experience maintains curious specifics. Pathetic II Discharges are transmitted by notions. What a difference between our fluctuations and the brutality of words. Transitions always arise between feeling and speech. Still II The word is the first stereotype. Pathetic III What a difference between the organism and the sources. Notions - what an inherited dictionary. Tarzan learns in his father's book to call tigers cats. Naming the Unknown by the Forever. Still III The translated word does not express. Pathetic IV The rigidity of forms impedes their transmission. These words are so heavy that the flow fails to carry them. Temperaments die before arriving at the goal (firing blanks). No word is capable of carrying the impulses one wants to send with it. Still IV WORDS allow psychic alterations to disappear. Speech resists effervescence. Notions require expansion to equivalent formulas. WORDS Fracture our rhythm. by their Assassinate sensitivity. mechanism, Thoughtlessly uniform fossilization, tortured inspiration. stability Twist tensions. and aging Reveal poetic exaltations as useless. Create politeness. Invent diplomats. Promote the use of analogies Substitute for true emissions. Pathetic V If one economizes on the riches of the soul, one dries up the left-over along with the words. Still V Prevent the flow from molding itself on the cosmos. Form species in sentiments. WORDS Destroy sinuosities. Result from the need to determine things. Help the elderly remember by forcing the young to forget. Pathetic VI Every victory of the young has been a victory over words. Every victory over words has been a fresh, young victory. Still VI Summarize without knowing how to receive. It is the tyranny of the simple over the long-winded. WORDS Discern too concretely to leave room for the mind. Forget the true measures of expression: suggestions. Let infrarealities disappear. Sift without restoring. Pathetic VII One learns words as one learns good manners. Without words and manners it is impossible to appear in society. It is by making progress in words that one makes progress socially. Still VII Kill fleeting evocations. Slow down short-cuts and approximations. SPEECH Is always vice-versa for not being identical. Eliminates solitary individuals who would like to rejoin society. Forces men who would like to say "Otherwise" to say "Thus." Introduces stuttering. Pathetic VIII The carpentry of the word built to last forever obliges men to construct according to patterns, like children. There is no appreciation of value in a word. Still VIII Words are the great levellers. Pathetic IX Notions limit opening onto depths by merely standing ajar. Still IX Words are family garments. Poets enlarge words every year. Words already have been mended so much they are in stitches. Pathetic X People think it is impossible to break words. Still X Unique feelings are so unique that they can not be popularized. Feelings without words in the dictionary disappear. Pathetic XI Every year thousands of feelings disappear for lack of a concrete form. Still XI Feelings demand living space. How remarkable the poet's disheartened absorption in words. Things and nothings to communicate become daily more imperious. Pathetic XII Efforts at destruction witness to the need to rebuild. Still XII How long will people hold out in the shrunken domain of words? Pathetic XIII The poet suffers indirectly: Words remain the work of the poet, his existence, his job. B Innovation I Destruction of WORDS for LETTERS ISIDORE ISOU Believes in the potential elevation beyond WORDS; wants the development of transmissions where nothing is lost in the process; offers a verb equal to a shock. By the overload of expansion the forms leap up by themselves. ISIDORE ISOU Begins the destruction of words for letters. ISIDORE ISOU Wants letters to pull in among themselves all desires. ISIDORE ISOU Makes people stop using foregone conclusions, words. ISIDORE ISOU Shows another way out between WORDS and RENUNCIATION: LETTERS. He will create emotions against language, for the pleasure of the tongue. It consists of teaching that letters have a destination other than words. ISOU Will unmake words into their letters. Each poet will integrate everything into Everything Everything must be revealed by letters. POETRY CAN NO LONGER BE REMADE. ISIDORE ISOU IS STARTING A NEW VEIN OF LYRICISM. Anyone who can not leave words behind can stay back with them! C Innovation II: The Order of Letters This does not mean destroying words for other words. Nor forging notions to specify their nuances. Nor mixing terms to make them hold more meaning. But it does mean TAKING ALL LETTERS AS A WHOLE; UNFOLDING BEFORE DAZZLED SPECTATORS MARVELS CREATED FROM LETTERS (DEBRIS FROM THE DESTRUCTION); CREATING AN ARCHITECTURE OF LETTRIC RHYTHMS; ACCUMULATING FLUCTUATING LETTERS IN A PRECISE FRAME; ELABORATING SPLENDIDLY THE CUSTOMARY COOING; COAGULATING THE CRUMBS OF LETTERS FOR A REAL MEAL; RESUSCITATING THE JUMBLE IN A DENSER ORDER; MAKING UNDERSTANDABLE AND TANGIBLE THE INCOMPREHENSIBLE AND VAGUE; CONCRETIZING SILENCE; WRITING THE NOTHINGNESS. It is the role of the poet to advance toward subversive sources. the obligation of the poet to advance in the black and burdened depths of the unknown. the craft of the poet to open one more treasure-room door for the common man. There will be a poet's message in new signs. The ordering of letters is called: LETTERISM. It is not a poetic school, but a solitary attitude. AT THIS MOMENT: LETTERISM = ISIDORE ISOU. Isou is awaiting his successors in poetry! (Do they already exist somewhere, ready to burst forth into history through books?) EXCUSES FOR WORDS INTRODUCED INTO LITERATURE There are things which are existent only in the strength of their name. there are others which exist, but lacking a name are unacknowledged. Every idea needs a calling card to make itself known. Ideas are known by the name of their creator. It is more objective to name them after themselves. LETTERISM IS AN IDEA THAT WILL BE LAMENTED BY ITS REPUTATION Letterics is a material that can always be demonstrated. Letterics seeds already existing: NONSENSE WORDS; WORDS WITH HIDDEN MEANINGS IN THEIR LETTERS; ONOMATOPOEIAS. If this material existed before, it didn't have a name to recognize it by. Letterics works will be those made entirely out of this element, but with suitable rules and genres! The word exists and has the right to perpetuate itself. ISOU IS CALLING ATTENTION TO ITS EXISTENCE. It is up to the Letterist to develop Letterism. Letterism is offering a DIFFERENT poetry. LETTERISM imposes a NEW POETRY. THE LETTERIC AVALANCHE IS ANNOUNCED. 1942.

The New Amplic Phase in Poetry

Letterism intends to introduce this beauty, which is limited in the present system of oral communication by lack of rules and even of letters. This is why it is necessary to regulate the stability of auditory frequencies by constructing elements specially designed for the purpose. It is a matter of enriching the possibilities for denoting the changes that occur between sound values. These particles of language, still inferior and unexpressed, must acquire proper signs so that they can develop in their own category, the auditory.

The author - or another person in the role of performer, with a suitable voice - leans on the expression and the linguistic inflections. A new manner of reading aloud is to be created, putting it in conflict with the reader.

In the chiseling period, the reader tended to meditate on the meaning. forced to read internally, focusing on what the author wanted to express. In the new amplic phase external focus is exalted, relying on the material, conceived by the voice and vocal interpretation. Poetry receives the stamp of whoever reads it and that person's dramatic talent, not of their intellectual understanding. In Letterism, effects are established by the expression of the existing verse and by its coloring. This is just as in music, where the symbols on a score are devoid of meaning. The notes sound false when there is a correct understanding but an erroneous interpretation. Henceforth the poem remains in a book only in gloomy inactivity. It acquires its value in performance, and each repetition imprints its value on it. The written poem - impounded in words - has no more meaning than a dead letter.

The destruction of musicality by musicians themselves continues up to the orchestra of pure and monotone sounds created by Russolo. The Italian futurist no longer seeks to evoke any emotions. His effort was to work with the huge number of sounds that did not yet exist as music and to make them musical. It is against music apparently to call on mechanical means. But these sounds were prior to mechanics, in primitive shouts. His ensemble of noise-makers is the anti-orchestra. The howlers, groaners, cracklers, shriekers, buzzers, gurglers, shouters, whistlers, croakers, and rustlers who made up the rumorharmonium can be classified in the same shrinking pathway that is pushing back towards its origins: the voice and noise.

In justifying this work, music today can be said to be in a phase of plodding in place. Just as with poetry, with music too people no longer know how to go forward nor what goal to go after in following this golden line which is the line of progress and artistic revolution. All that is needed now is to take the final step, which is the most difficult but the most substantial and rich in promise. Take up the shout and the voice which are at the origins of music as the primordial elements of art. After Satie, Schoenberg and jazz 1O the next step is easy.

Excerpts from "The Force Fields of Letterist Painting"

I had been wondering how a letter could be just as beautiful as a figurative or non-figurative object in art, and how a work composed of Roman letters could touch or even overwhelm an ordinary viewer as much as the mass of works based on real "things" or qualities conventionally accepted in the minds of the refined.

For months at the beginning my whole concrete system consisted of the most banal alphabetic writing. This could naturally be raised up easily in theory - as was the case later with my first manifesto - by deep, provocative considerations or by metaphors, but in practice it was nevertheless limited to being a printer's specimen book or just pages filled with words - bound together by some theme, critical or poetic or whatever, which ignored my artistic effort.

No concern for the composition of the line of vowels and consonants, no care for the arrangement of sentences on the page, and naturally no interest in color - an easy and underhanded secondary value in my definition of painting - were present to disrupt my limited task as scribe, my arid research on the emotive powers of letters, pure letters, letters ripped out of all context, unimproved by extrinsic values.

For a certain period of time the only innovation came from my poetry, because instead of transcribing word-texts, I copied phonetic verses, which allowed me to put my arrangement in the middle of the page instead of filling up the whole page, isolating certain phonemes or clusters of phonemes according to the oral impulse, then adding some new signs from the Greek alphabet or my imagination, which corresponded to sounds that did not exist in the Roman alphabet. Naturally when I exhibited these pages and called them "works of art" all I got was disdainful or knowing smiles, as if I had pulled off a good joke. Not only in Bucharest, but even in Paris the defenders of "figurative" and "abstract" modern art always assured me that these creations "were not paintings." . . .

Metagraphics or post-writing, encompassing all the means of ideographic, lexical and phonetic notation, supplements the means of expression based on sound by adding a specifically plastic dimension, a visual facet which is irreducible and escapes oral labelling. . . .

Even from my first metagraphic efforts - because examples can be found in The Diaries of the Gods and then more conclusively in the self-portrait and painted photos of Amos - I had noticed that when held up among former 11 objective" or "non-objective" forms my original form was stronger, since it assimilates all the others.

Experiments on "the test of forms" demonstrate that the particles of the Letterist domain are stronger and more important than the particles of the figurative and non-figurative domains.

If one places an abstract composition - which is simply a fragmentary purification of the former object - in (or alongside) a figurative structure, this second composition digests the first one - transformed into a decorative motif - and then the whole work becomes figurative. However if one places a letterist notation on (or beside) a realist "form," it is the first one which assimilates the second to change the whole thing into a work of hypergraphics or super-writing.

Pursuing the experiments on the "test of the force of elements" one can affirm that "a little bit," or "a few drops" of figuration placed anywhere on a canvas can transform an entire abstract mass into a figurative work and that "a little bit," or "a few drops" of Letterism placed anywhere on any canvas metamorphose a whole figurative or abstract composition into a Letterist work.

Why Lettrism?

It seems necessary to define the curent period in Europe as one of a generalized failure of attempts at change, in the realm of emotions as much as in the political realm.

At the same time that spectacular technical inventions are multiplying the chances of future constructions as well as the dangers of still unresolved contradictions, one witnesses a stagnation of cultural thought, and, on the mental level, a complete reaction against the movements of discovery that culminated around 1930 in the association of the broadest expectations with the practical means of imposing them.

The exercise of innovative means has been deceptive and the regression of hopes linked to them has been inevitable.

Abstract painting -- a simple moment of modern pictorial evolution in which it only occupies a very meager place -- have been presented by all the publicity machines as the basis of a new aesthetic. The alexandrine is dedicated to a  renaissance, in which we will become outmoded as a cultural form just as the quadriga and trireme have become outmoded as means of transport. The by-products of writing that caused indignation, and that had not been ready,  getting an ephemeral but resounding affirmation: the poetry of Prevert or Char, the prose of Gracq, the drama of the atrocious cretin Pichette, and all the others. The cinema, in which the various arrangements of scenarios are used as if they were harmonies, proclaimed its future lies in the plagiarism of De Sica, and found novelty -- and, above all, exoticism -- in various Italian films in which poverty has imposed a style of camerawork little different from the habits of Hollywood, but so long after S. M. Eisenstein. Furthermore, it is known that the scholars who otherwise do not dance in caves have given themselves up to laborious phenomenological refinements.

Confronting this dismal and profitable mess, in which each repetition has its disciples, each regression its admirers, each remake its fans, a single group shows universal opposition and complete contempt in the name of the historically necessary supercession of old values. A kind of inventive optimism has taken the place of refusal, affirming itself beyond refusal. It is necessary to recognize the healthy role that Dada assumed in another epoch, despite its very different intentions. We may be told that it is not a very intelligent project to restart Dadaism. But it is not a matter of re-doing Dadaism. The very serious setback of avant-garde politics, linked to the glaring weakness of the working-class aesthetic promoted by the same retrograde phase, has lead to confusion in every field, a confusion that will soon have raged for thirty years. On the spiritual level, the shopkeepers are always in power. After several serious crises,  monopoly is even more extended than before: everything that is actually imparted to the world -- whether it is shopkeepers' literature, Stalinist literature, a false formalist avant-garde that lives on forms that have fallen into the public domain, or wormy and theosophical agonies of certain movements of recently arrived emancipators -- entirely nurtures the shopkeeping spirit. Under pressure of the realities of the epoch, it is necessary to finish with this spirit. The outrageous provocations that the Lettrist group has carried out or prepared (poetry reduced to letters, metagraphical recital, cinema without images) unleashes a fatal inflation in the arts.

We therefore joined them without hesitation.

While always exercising a praiseworthy intolerance toward the outside world, around 1950 the Lettrist group fostered a fairly serious confusion of ideas among its members.

Onomatopoeic poetry itself, having appeared with Futurism and much later reaching a certain perfection with Schwitters and some others, no longer was of interest as the absolute systemization that was presented as the only poetry of the moment, and so condemning all the other forms to death and giving itself a short shelf-life. Meanwhile, the consciousness of the true role we were allotted to play was neglected by many in favor of an infantile conception of genius and fame.

The tendency still in the majority saw the creation of new forms as the highest value of all human activity. This belief in formal evolution without cause or end, other than in-itself, is the basis of ridiculous idealism in the arts. (The imbecilic belief in immutable conceptual categories lead some ex-members of the group to an Americanized mysticism.) Drawing conclusions that an idiot such as Malraux didn't dare or know how to draw from essentially similar premises, the Lettrists' rigorous application of the benefits of experience brought about the definitive collapse of this formalist demeanor by taking it to its limit, the giddy acceleration of evolution around emptiness, in a clear break from all human needs.

The usefulness of destroying formalism from within is clear: it does not leave any doubt that the intellectual disciplines, whatever interdependence they share with the rest of the movement of society, are subject to the relatively autonomous crises arising from the discoveries necessitated by their proper determination as technique. To judge everything as a function of content, as we are being invited to, is to return to judging acts as a function of their intentions. If it is certain that the explanation of the normative character and persistent charm of various aesthetic periods must always be looked for alongside the content -- and the change in the times, or of contemporary necessities, makes other contents touch us, leading to a revision of the classification of the "great epochs" -- it is no less certain that the power of a work during its own time would not solely depend on its content. One can compare this process with that of fashion. After half a century, for example, all costumes belong to equally outdated fashions, from which contemporary sensibility can rediscover all sorts of appearances. But everyone notices the ridiculousness of the feminine bearing of 10 years ago.

Thus the "precious" movement, despite being obscured by the scholastic lies of the Seventeenth Century -- and just as the forms of expression that they had invented, which are as strange as can be to us today, are coming to be recognized as the principal current of ideas of the "Grand Siecle" as a result of the need that we feel for the constructive overhaul of all aspects of life -- uncovers the way that emergent Capital contributed to this development through behavior and decor (conversation and strolling as activities of the privileged, and, in architecture, the differentiation between living places, changes in the principles of decoration and furniture). On the contrary, when Roger Vailland wrote "Beau Masque" in a Stendalian tone, despite its almost estimable content, it had only a passing chance of pleasing as a prettily-made pastiche. That is to say, he, no doubt contrary to his intentions, addressed himself to intellectuals with outdated tastes. And the majority of criticism that foolishly attacked the content, praised the prose style.

We will return to this historical anecdote.

From this fundamental opposition -- which is definitely the conflict of a sufficiently new way of living one's life against an ancient tradition of alienating it -- there arise antagonisms of all sorts, which are provisionally smoothed out in view of general action that is amusing and that, despite its awkwardnesses and insufficiencies, is positive.

Certain ambiguities also arise from the humor that some people place (and others do not place) in their chosen affirmations for their stupefying aspect. Although completely indifferent to any nominal survival through this or that famous literature, we write so that our works -- which are practically nonexistent -- remain in history, with as much certainty as those histrionic people who would become "eternal." What's more, we declare on all occasions that we are beautiful. The baseness of arguments that are presented to us in the film clubs and elsewhere do not give us the opportunity to reply seriously. Elsewhere we continue to have plenty of them.

The crisis of Lettrism, announced by the semi-open opposition of the old farts to the experimental cinematography, which, to their discredit, they judged to be "unstylish", broke out in 1952 when the Lettrist International (which regrouped the extreme faction of the movement in the shadow of a magazine of the same name) distributed injurious texts at a press conference held by Chaplin. The aesthetic Lettrists, now in the minority, were not in solidarity with this action -- leading to a break that their lame excuses did not succeed in postponing or subsequently healing -- because, according to them, the creative role carried out by Chaplin in the cinema placed him beyond criticism. The rest of "avant-garde" opinion reproached us once again, because the work and person of Chaplin still appeared to them to remain in a progressive perspective. Since then, many of these people have revised this illusion.

To announce the senility of doctrines or the people who have given their names to them is an urgent and easy task for those who have retained the taste for resolving the most alluring questions posed by our day and age. Whatever the impostures of the Lost Generation, which showed itself between the last war and today, it is condemned to debunk itself. Nevertheless, having recognized the bankruptcy of the critical thought that these frauds have found before them, Lettrism has contributed to their more rapid oblivion. It is by no means strange that the presentation of an Ionesco, re-making several scenic excesses of Tzara thirty years later and twenty times more stupid, does not get a quarter of the distracted attention. There are several years to go before we reach the exaggerated corpse of Antonin Artaud.

The words we make up during this epoch unfortunately tend to limit us. Without a doubt, the term "Lettrist" is a difficult description for people who have no particular esteem for this kind of sound effect, and, except on the soundtrack of a few films, have not made use of it. But the term "French" seems to give us exclusive links with this nation and its colonies. Atheism has been qualified as "Christian," "Jewish" or "Islamic" with disconcerting ease. And we are obviously locked within a more or less refined "suburban" education, if not such ideas, then at least such vocabulary, as well.

Thus a good number of terms will be used guardedly, despite the evolution of our researches and our usage (leading to refinement) of many waves of followers: Lettrist International, metagraphy and other neologisms that excite the fury of all sorts of people. The first condition of our agreement is to keep such people a long way from us.

It could be objected that we are propagating an arbitrary, stupid and dishonest confusion among the intellectual elite. We are confronted by people ready to ask us, "What exactly do you want?" with a concerned and protective air that is immediately destroyed by such a question. But, in the certainty that no literary or journalistic hack has seriously occupied him or herself with what we have been carrying out for a number of years, we know that any confusion has in no way been engendered by ourselves. And, on the other hand, it pleases us.

Insofar as this "intellectual elite" of modern Europe has at hand today an approximation of intelligence and a modicum of culture, the confusion of which we have spoken no longer holds sway. Those of our companions from years gone by who try once again to draw attention to it or simply to live by their pens have become idiotic in order to fool the world. They sadly ruminate upon the same attitudes that will be re-used more quickly by others. They don't know how a method of renewal refreshes life. Ready to abandon everything to appear in the "New New French Review" -- like clowns kindly presenting their tricks because their quest never leads anywhere -- they lament the fact that they never find a place in this swamp, such as that of Etiemble (the consideration that has even been granted to Caillos) or the appointment of Aron.

There is even cause to believe that their last ambition will be to found a little Judeo-plastic religion. With a bit of luck they will wind up as some sort of Father Divine, as Mormons of aesthetic creation.

Let's pass on from these people who have amused us in the past. The amusements that overtake a person are an exact measure of his or her mediocrity. Baseball or automatic writing, what does it matter? The idea of success, when it is not tied up with the most simplistic desires, is inseparable from a complete overhaul at the global level. The remnants of successful breakthroughs always strongly resemble worse blocks. What we find more valuable in our actions is to succeed in undoing our many habits and ingrained associations. It could be said that it is rare enough for people to set their life (that part of their life in which they are allowed a choice) in harmony with their feelings and views. It is good to be fanatic about certain things. At the beginning of the year, an orientalist-occultist magazine spoke of us as "the most misty spirits, anemic theoreticians of the virus of 'supercession,' otherwise purely of a verbal effect." It is good that the effect of those who embarrass these creeps is not merely verbal. Naturally, you do not have to dynamite the bridges of the Ile de Louis to accentuate the insular character of this locality or, on the opposite bank, to complicate and embellish the brickwork of the Bernard quay. We do what is most urgent with the limited resources we have at the moment. Thus, by contradicting various meatheads who approach us, by putting to a quick end the confusionist attempts at "joint action" with us, by completely doing without indulgence, we prove to those same individuals the necessary existence of the virus in question. But, if we are ill, our detractors are dead. While on this subject, let us clarify an attitude that certain people, among the most avoidable, have reproached us for: namely the expulsion of not a few participants in the Lettrist International and the systematic allure obtained by this kind of penalty.

In fact, we find it appropriate to take positions rather close to all the aspects of life that present themselves to us. Among all the positions that we take, some of them are held dear by us, just as some of our lines of research are held dear. All other modes of friendship, of worldly relationships, or even of good manners leave us indifferent or disgusted. Objective shortcomings in this sort of agreement can only be sanctioned by a break. It is better to change one's friends than one's ideas.

In the final analysis, judgment is made according to the life that is led. The promiscuities that the expelled people have for the most part accepted or accepted again, and the generally dishonest arrangements that in extreme cases have been underwritten, give the exact degree of gravity to our quickly resolved disagreements and perhaps to the importance of our pact with each other as well.

Far from defending ourselves from making of these hostilities personal matters, we declare on the contrary that the idea that we have human relations obliges us to make these issues personal in nature and determined by definite questions of ideas. Those who resign from the Lettrist International condemn themselves: we have nothing to rage about and nothing to excuse.

The Lettrists who have been cast aside begin to make quite a large number. But there are infinitely more people who live and die without ever having a chance to understand and take part. From this point of view, each person is responsible for whatever talents they have. Should we put up with pathetic individual resignations out of sentimental considerations?

From the above, one will understand that our business is not a literary school, a new form of expression, or a modernism. We are concerned with a way of living that will take place through explorations and provisional formulations, which are themselves only exercised in a provisional way. The nature of this enterprise forces us to work in a group and to show ourselves a little. We wait for many people and events that will come. We also have another great force: we no longer wait for a mass of known activities, for individuals and institutions.

We have a lot to learn and we must experiment as much as possible with forms of architecture as well as with rules of conduct. Nothing agitates us less than the elaboration of a doctrine: we are sufficiently far from explaining ourselves, let alone explaining those things that would support a coherent system that would integrate the novelties that appear to us worthy of giving passion.

However it is put, it will be understood that we must start with everything. It has also been said that humanity has never posed problems that it cannot resolve.

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