[SURREALIST MANIFESTO]

[SURREALIST MANIFESTO]: An original printed broadside entitled Au Feu!, two pages (recto and verso), 4to, n.p. (Paris), May 1931, printed in black on striking pink paper, the violently anti-clerical manifesto written by Louis Aragon and André Thirion in response to the burning of churches and convents following the proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic. The tract, signed in type at the conclusion by twelve leading Surrealists comprising Benjamin Péret, René Char, Yves Tanguy, Louis Aragon, Georges Sadoul, Georges Malkine, André Breton, René Crevel, André Thirion, Paul Éluard, Pierre Unik and Maxime Alexandre, together with ´dix signatures de camarades étrangers´ (Translation: ´ten signatures of foreign comrades´), opens with an ironic quotation on religious tolerance by the French statesman Paul Doumer before addressing the anti-clerical violence which had erupted in Spain from 10th May 1931. Referring to the destruction of churches and convents across Madrid, Seville, Málaga and numerous other Spanish cities, the authors provocatively declare ´Opposant à tous les bûchers jadis dressés par le clergé d'Espagne la grande clarté matérialiste des églises incendiées, les masses sauront trouver dans les trésors de ces églises l'or nécessaire pour s'armer, lutter et transformer la Révolution bourgeoise en Révolution prolétarienne´ (Translation: ´Against all the pyres formerly erected by the clergy of Spain, the masses will set the great materialist illumination of the burning churches, and will know how to find in their treasures the gold necessary to arm themselves, fight, and transform the bourgeois Revolution into a proletarian Revolution´). In still more uncompromising terms the manifesto calls for the destruction of religion ´par tous les moyens´ (Translation: ´by every means´), and declares ´Le front antireligieux est le front essentiel de l'étape actuelle de la Révolution espagnole´ (Translation: ´The anti-religious front is the essential front of the present stage of the Spanish Revolution´). Turning its attention to France, the tract calls upon French atheists to support the Spanish revolutionaries and concludes with the revolutionary assertion that the proletariat alone ´saura balayer Dieu de la surface de la terre´ (Translation: ´will know how to sweep God from the face of the earth´). One light central horizontal fold, and a small tear to the lower edge, VG

A rare and important Surrealist political tract, written by Louis Aragon and André Thirion and issued in May 1931 in direct response to the wave of anti-clerical violence which followed the establishment of the Second Spanish Republic. Beginning on 10th May, churches, convents and other religious buildings were attacked and burned in Madrid before the disturbances spread to other parts of Spain. Far from condemning the destruction, the Surrealists interpreted it as an expression of revolutionary struggle and here offered their unequivocal support.

The tract vividly demonstrates the increasingly revolutionary and Communist orientation of French Surrealism at the beginning of the 1930s. Its signatories constitute a remarkable roll-call of the movement, including Breton, Aragon, Éluard, Char, Péret and Tanguy, while the text explicitly connects anti-clericalism with class revolution, arguing that the Church, private property and the bourgeois state were mutually sustaining institutions.

Particularly striking is the deliberate juxtaposition of the manifesto with a quotation from Paul Doumer advocating religious tolerance: ´Sois tolérant. Garde fermement ta foi ou ta conviction, mais admets qu'on ait une foi ou une conviction différente´ (Translation: ´Be tolerant. Hold firmly to your faith or conviction, but accept that another may have a different faith or conviction´). Against Doumer's moderate appeal, Aragon and Thirion set an extraordinarily militant programme of revolutionary anti-clericalism, making Au Feu! one of the more provocative political declarations issued by the Surrealist group during the period between the wars.

The historical importance of the tract has subsequently been recognised institutionally: the Bibliothèque nationale de France preserves examples and describes it as a Surrealist tract supporting the anti-religious struggle of the Spanish revolutionaries, while an example was included in the Museo Reina Sofía exhibition Surrealism in Spain: Documents, where Au Feu! was singled out among the proclamations illustrating the relationship between Surrealism and Spain.