The del Renzio Affair: A leadership struggle in wartime surrealism

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© Silvano Levy, 2005 21 Del Renzio had no idea at the time that Brunius was in London. He first met Brunius through John Banting in the winter of 1942. 22 In conversation with the author, 1996. 23 Letter dated 19 January 1942. 24 Del Renzio in a letter to Maddox, 31 March 1942. 25 Letter from del Renzio to Maddox, 24 July 1942. 26 Jean-Martin Charcot was regarded by the surrealists as the most celebrated investigator of insanity. He had entered the Parisian Salpêtrière hospital in 1848 and had become its principal in 1866. It was under his direction that novel ideas about mental illness and its treatment were first introduced into the medical repertoire, particularly in the sphere of hysteria, which, at the time, baffled medical thinking. Despite having been discredited by the time surrealism saw the light of day, Breton nevertheless considered these ideas as pertinent to the movement’s underlying assumptions. The following provide useful insights: Georges Guillan M.D. J.-M. Charcot. His Life-His Work, London, 1959; Jean Vinchon L’Art et la Folie, Paris, 1924; J. Spector The Aesthetics of Freud, London, 1972, 149; A. R. G. Owen Hysteria, Hypnosis and Healing. The Work of J.-M. Charcot, London, 1971. 27 Letter dated 28 April 1943 from del Renzio to Maddox. 28 New Road 1943, edited by Alex Comfort and John Bayliss, Billericay, 1943. The surrealist section, edited by Toni del Renzio, occupied pages 180 to 230. Del Renzio’s contribution was ‘The Light that will cease to fail’, 180-3. The invitation extended to del Renzio to contribute to the magazine was influenced by a friendship between Ithell Colquhoun, del Renzio’s future wife, and John Bayliss. 29 Email to the author, 2004. 30 Dissatisfaction with Mesens’ leadership is clear in del Renzio’s letter to Maddox dated 28 April 1943. 31 Ivor Jacobs, ‘Auden Aftermath’, Horizon, vol. 8, no. 46, October 1943, 286. 32 J.-B. Brunius, E.L.T. Mesens, Roland Penrose, ‘Correspondence’, Horizon, vol. 8, no. 46, October 1943, 289, recto of back cover. Del Renzio had been shown the letter by Cyril Connolly, the editor, before its publication and had been offered the opportunity to veto its inclusion in Horizon. Del Renzio allowed the letter to be published, believing that it would provoke the intervention of Breton in support of the Arson and New Road 1943 initiatives. 33 Conroy Maddox, ‘From Infiltrations of the Marvellous’, Kingdom Come: The Magazine of Wartime Oxford, vol. 3, no. 11, winter 1942, 16-18. Papers of Surrealism Issue 3 Spring 2005 30
© Silvano Levy, 2005 34 Email to the author, 2004. 35 The letter is dated ‘Wednesday Evening’, but must have succeeded Maddox’s article published in ‘winter 1942’ and preceded the exhibition at the International Arts Centre, which opened on 27 November 1942. 36 Letter from del Renzio to Maddox, 23 October 1943. 37 In a letter to Maddox dated 28 April 1943. It had been Simon Watson Taylor who had persuaded Mesens to allow this. 38 Letter to Maddox dated 23 October 1943. 39 Letter dated 31 October 1943 from del Renzio and published as ‘Correspondence’, Horizon, vol. 8, no. 48, December 1943, 433-4. 40 Vercors was the pseudonym of the novelist and essayist Jean Bruller. He wrote Le Silence de la mer, which launched the Éditions de minuit in 1942. 41 J.-B. Brunius and E.L.T. Mesens, Idolatry and Confusion, March 1944, 6 pages. The tract was written originally for publication in Tribune, but it had been refused. 42 Del Renzio has written of Hawkes: ‘I had come across Ken Hawkes through a little group of radical pacifists with strong anarchist tendencies and we collaborated in various projects. He retained all the prejudices of his petty bourgeois origins and held me responsible for his own failings. As part of the anarchist rent-a-mob that Mesens enlisted he achieved a sort of notoriety and recognition in anarchist circles. He never grasped what Surrealism was, as examination of the few feats he contributed to the publications of the era demonstrates.’ 43 Toni del Renzio, ‘Memories of Polemics Past’, unpublished lecture given at a symposium in conjunction with the exhibition Surrealism in England 1936 and After, Herbert Read Gallery, Canterbury College of Art, 1986, 3. 44 Email to the author, 2004. 45 Isidore Ducasse was born on 4 April 1846 in Montevideo. He subsequently took the pen name ‘Comte de Lautréamont’. 46 Manifesto. Incendiary Innocence. An Arson Pamphlet, London 1944, seven pages, unpaginated. Further unattributed citations from this publication refer to this note. 47 Mesens and Penrose had translated Eluard’s Poésie et vérité and had published it through London Gallery Editions in 1944. Papers of Surrealism Issue 3 Spring 2005 31
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