Hans BELLMER. Correspondence with Gisèle and Mario Prassinos - Lot 45

Hans BELLMER. Correspondence with Gisèle and Mario Prassinos. Berlin, Carlsruhe, March 3-December 23, 1935. 6 autograph letters signed on fine pink paper totaling 7 pages in-4, envelopes. Very interesting correspondence from the year in which Hans Bellmer came into contact with the Surrealists, after the publication of the photographs of La Poupée in the magazine Minotaure. It was prompted by the discovery of texts by the very young Gisèle Prassinos, revealed by the Surrealists in the magazine Minotaure in 1934. I was deeply captivated and interested, all the more so as it was the first time I had found such a singular and personal verbal expression of the world of the child and the young girl; a world which, for me, has always been one of the most mysterious and charming. The color and subjects of these little stories correspond to a high degree to my own occupations [...]. It is superfluous to tell you that I am infinitely curious about the 'novel'. I'm sure I'll find the time to translate it carefully, just as I occupied myself last night, with great delight, with the written translation of 'Les Nouveautés de Bois' (March 3). On May 25, 1935, he didn't dare promise a tribute drawing to Gisèle Prassinos for an edition by Guy-Levis Mano. He found himself "deep in his sculptural work, which is not likely to benefit from an interruption" and was "a little afraid of being able to match only partially the color of this story (so that it should be a very free recipient variation of the leitmotif). Material like that of the two beggars, which, as I've written to you, made my day, would have been much more in keeping with what I'm primarily concerned with". On August 3, however, Une demande en mariage, illustrated with one of his drawings, was about to be published. In the same letter, referring to a work by Dalí, Bellmer expresses himself, in his "not very flexible" French, on the Surrealist movement and its theoretical and historical foundations: It is superfluous to say that, of all the Surrealist painters, it was Dalí (not only because he was unknown to me) who touched me most, and in an individually very given way. Every branch of his work, as I get to know him, is such as to enchant me and exasperate my unreserved admiration. If I can speak of 'reservations', they come from the historical-ethical side, a coherence in which my competence - I fear - is limited to those artistic apparitions, whose fertility in the service of the future proves as primordially negativist, and whose very possibilities of development remain in clear contradiction with the wishes of reconstitution of the class to which they are linked. [...] I don't know enough about all the nuances of Dalí's spiritual work to know in what proportion one would be entitled to discover in his intentions of 'confusion' and 'discredit' insofar as they are not of unilateral sociological significance, Flaubert's legacy of 'ne pas conclure', which, in short, is responsible for an unkind generation. [...] You will rightly assume that in the ethical domain, one will have every cause to express oneself very modestly, especially where it is a question of finding a rare point where the ethical idea is gifted with a little authenticity. So, as for 'discrediting' and what it will need to balance out ethically : the question becomes burning, to what degree will this discrediting intention include its author and to what degree would such an observation or confession, cynical, painful or even proving bad taste, be capable in the desert of perversion, of that little honesty available, of constituting a real oasis of credulity, authentic and rare, something like an idol of 'disinterested dishonesty', but desirable, under some inner or outer pressure, as unambiguous before the future. Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with either Sade's or Lautréamont's work, nor with the debates no doubt developed on these subjects within Surrealism. However, in the books, articles or speeches by André Breton that I have come across, I have not found any discussion of the question of negativism in the sense of tragic or cynical 'confession', as I have sought to unfold with this rough sketch. It's natural, moreover, from the point of view of Surrealism's defense against assaults from all sides, but would it be too absurd to want to see in this problem a certain burning actuality? Bellmer asks about left-wing attacks on André Breton's speech at the International Writers' Congress in Defense of Culture. Nothing interests him more "than being able to enrich my knowledge of the nuances of the attitu