Interview with Radovan Ivsic


Interview with Radovan Ivsic


Do you not think that it is the greatest novelty of surrealism to have constantly ensured that the living waters of the imagination do not get lost in the rut of forms? Let us say once and for all: there is no surrealist theatre. At most we can speak of surrealism and theatre. Just as Breton took great care to speak of surrealism and painting, never surrealist painting. Surrealism  deserves credit for having asserted and proven that poetry is primarily a way of life...This is why the current and innumerable attempts to reduce surrealism to a pictorial or literary style seem misleading and dangerous. Too many people today are interested in doing away with meaning and pretending that it is not attached to form. This is the most clever way to work towards erasing the memory of the world. It is the most clever way to prepare minds to become more and more blank until it is easy to print anything upon them. this opens the door to all forms of totalitarianism...Today’s attempt to efface meaning, or even diminish its scope, constitutes one of the greatest intellectual dishonesties of the time. For, it must be repeated, it is not a question of aesthetic problems, but of a very real problem, your freedom, my freedom.

Poetry is the standard of human freedom, we do not play with it with impunity, we do not play with it without dangerously darkening the horizon common to all men...Poetry is first desertion. Sensible desertion does not begin until we depart from dominant thought and the beaten trail in discovering our own paths...For it is not only a refusal, but also a an invitation to reinvent our lives here and now, to move bag and baggage onto the side of life. Furthermore, this idea of desertion allows for an end to the image of the accursed poet who consents, in some way, to be a victim to society: by deserting he can no longer be locked into a marginality which can make him lose his individuality. It is the poet cursing each mutilation of the collective body done in the name of law, order and human rights. Against power, the poet works with bare hands to regain lost powers, and that is his most dangerous power.


Translated by Erik Volet Edited by Ron Sakolsky  First published in the Oystercatcher #12 2015  

Collage by Toyen


Comments

  1. Unknown25 February 2021 at 05:22

    Ivsic is perfectly correct in focusing on desertion as a means of revolt not only against apparent forms of coercion but also against the absorption by learned culture of the rich, subversive sensibility that feeds and has ever fed our sense of beauty.

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