Penelope Rosemont, January 12, 2022

Dawn at Midnight

“Call every day not danced a wasted day, call every truth without laughter false.”

                                — Ikbal el Alailly

        “Ibis mummy perfection calling on the incessant fusion of imperfect creatures.”

— André Breton 

Other places, other times, in search of the gold of time, for me, the golden riches of images,  words, individuals, experiences and visions. My essay “The Revenge of the Ibis” appeared in Arsenal, 1973, inspired by an unusual building in Egyptian style on Clark Street, extraordinary amid the ordinary. It concluded, “words and images once created have the power of actualizing themselves, becoming eternal through the medium of desire.” By chance, things happen, especially to surrealists beginning to write, and here are Michael Richardson’s wonderful thoughts, his “Entry of Ancient Egypt into Surrealism ”  (Contemporary Africa) recently published. 

In it, one discovers many new aspects of Egypt and surrealism.  A beautiful discussion of Breton’s Fata Morgana, poem of resistance;   information about how surrealism crossed King Tut’s path; and surrealist thoughts on the film The Mummy with its theme of deathless love. 

Richardson points to an entry in Breton and Eluard’s “Dictionaire Abrégé du Surréalisme, 1938 defining Metamorphosis,  “I arrive as a sparrow hawk and leave as a phoenix”  – Spell 122, Book of the Dead. 

Breton in Fata Morgana finds links to the ibis, the protector spirit.  Surrealists choose their ancestors: one is the Ibis. Richardson also finds, “The transformative aspect of ancient Egyptian culture,  the emphasis it placed on the process of transformation,  and the possibilities it offers to the heart of  surrealist interest, and is what especially  drew Breton to utilize the elements of Egyptian myth.”

Situationists predicted surrealist images had become part of the spectacle,  but the spectacle has only spread the surrealist image. It did not destroy its power. Still it remains a constant struggle against the pervasive miserablism and a constant struggle against the slimy grasp of religion and advertising. 

But in ads one only remembers “the Ostrich driving the car,”  not the product.  It is through collage and painting we take back the image, give it new life, collecting it like Isis did Osiris. 

These images become the monsters of surrealist consciousness with the power to disrupt the complacency and boring order of daily-life. 

Joyce Mansour writing in Paris, 1965 on how to view the “L’Ecart absolu”  exhibition points out, “It is necessary for visitors as well as those who embrace  “absolute divergence”  to embroider without end onto these canvases, to trace their own paths as they please. Certain places,  certain times push our imagination into contortions normally impossible.” 

Transforming the world has been slow, fighting with a chimera, but we must pick up the pieces of our dreams and continue. 

In 1957 Egyptian surrealist Georges Henein wrote,  “If poetry is slow to be made by all, at least let it be lived by some.”

Ikbal El Alailly, Georges Henein, Ramses Younane and others in Egypt’s Art & Liberty group lived in crisis times. Henein wrote in the “Long Live Degenerate Art”  1939 Manifesto,  “Thinkers, artists, writers: Let us stand together and accept the challenge! We must align ourselves alongside this “Degenerate Art” for in such art reposes  the hopes of the future!” Amazingly the degenerate art treasures survived the war. This demonstrates the vitality and the survival value of the image. 

I think of Arturo Schwarz’s magnificent books devoted to surrealism, his Milan gallery,  his surrealist collection. He himself was imprisoned and expelled from Egypt in 1949.

A misuse of technological development is destroying our old world  and the physical threat of rampant viruses make our meetings in cafes,  galleries, and jobs, very difficult.

Hard to say if anything but mega-chains will survive, at the same time physical letters on paper are rare,  and printed on paper journals and books are difficult and expensive. 

But new possibilities have opened to us. Surrealist friends communicate from all over the world instantly.  There are Zoom events. Impossible to find documents are on the internet.  This new global network brings many promises that we cannot ignore.  The International Surrealist Exhibition in Cairo, Egypt/Saint-Cirq-Lapopie, France  (Saint-Cirq-Lapopie was the residence of André Breton) is the first of its kind, organized largely over the Internet. 

Consider The Room: Surrealist Magazine, seeking to  “plant the seeds of the surrealist storm in Africa;” of Sulphur: Surrealist Jungle;  of Mohsen Elbasy and his friends organizing the gallery, playing surrealist games. 

What has been seen on the internet is magnificent and we are eager to see it all, and we are eager to see it all and more. Those of us who have been surrealists for a long time should remind all that surrealism began in 1924, it has a history of criticism of Western civilization, it has been passionately involved in the exploration of the mind, in political engagement, in public manifestoes from the days of protesting the Colonial Exhibition to the Declaration of the 121 to the Defense of First Peoples in Canada. What is done in the name of surrealism is always under the banner of Poetry , Love, and Freedom. Freedom above all! 

Penelope for the anthology of the exhibition