#albert cossery

[wellconstructedsentences]

I only know two things: first, the world has been taken over by a bunch of bastards and murderers, and second, we shouldn't take it seriously because that's what they want.

The Jokers by Albert Cossery

[tri-ciclo]

Cossery Albert Les Faineants dans la vallee-fertile, 1948 Edition originale

[thinkingimages]

Art and Liberty, 1941. Front row left to right - Jean Moscatelli, Kamel el Telmissany, Angelo de Riz, Ramses Younan, Fouad Kamel. Back row left to right - Albert Cossery, unidentified, Georges Henein, Maurice Fahmy, Raoul Curiel, via u-in-u.com

The Emergence of Egyptian Surrealism

In a Cairo on the verge of World War II and under British colonial occupation by 140,000 troops, a rising Fascist ideology that debated values of democracy became a major preoccupation of artists and writers. “We find absurd, and deserving of total disdain, the religious, racist, and nationalist prejudices that make up the tyranny of certain individuals who, drunk on their own temporary omniscience, seek to subjugate the destiny of the work of art”, wrote 37 Egypt-based artists and writers in their 1938 manifesto Long Live Degenerate Art, marking a beginning of the Art et Liberté, an avant-garde movement that cannot be subsumed by the master narrative of the Western Surrealists.[1] Initially founded to protest the highly conservative annual Salon du Caire that classified artists according to nationality, they rejected the conflation of art with national sentiment and the notion of art for art’s sake, dismissed the popular aesthetic currents, ranging from Symbolism to Naturalism, and became globally engaged in its defiance of Fascism, nationalism, and Colonialism. Aligning themselves with Breton and Leon Trotsky’s 1938 manifesto For an Independent Revolutionary Art, they at the same time insisted that the movement had native roots in folk tales and crafts as well as in Coptic religious art. Providing a restless generation of creatives, intellectuals and political activists with a heterogeneous platform for cultural and political reform, Art et Liberté evolved its own definition of the movement, believing that its fundamental mission was “social and moral revolution”.

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[gregor-samsung]

“ – Non vedo in cosa questo matrimonio sconvolgerebbe la nostra vita, disse Serag. – Come fai a non capire! Questa donna può rovinarmi. Una donna vuole sempre vestiti, gioielli, e chissà cos’altro ancora! Un giorno può credersi posseduta dal demonio e voler organizzare una seduta d’esorcismo. Ci vedi a dormire in mezzo a tutte queste ballerine frenetiche? Serag si mise a ridere. L’idea di Rafik lo divertiva come uno scherzo formidabile. – Non ridere, disse Rafik, severo, è molto grave. Tuo padre può perdere sino al suo ultimo millesimo in quest’avventura. Forse saremo obbligati a lavorare! – Ebbene! disse Serag, non chiedo di meglio. – O idiota! Ti pentirai di queste parole. – Te l’assicuro, Rafik, voglio lavorare. – Vuoi lavorare! Mi domando come una tale idea abbia potuto germogliare in te. Sei probabilmente un mostro o un imbecille. In ogni caso, sicuramente non sei della famiglia. – Voglio lavorare, disse Serag con accento disperato. E anche andarmene da questa casa. – Sul mio onore! Sei un ingrato. Se non fossi mio fratello, ti avrei lasciato fare questa follia. Ma ho pietà di te. A proposito, a che punto sta la tua fabbrica? – La fabbrica sta sempre allo stesso punto, rispose Serag. Sono stato a vederla di nuovo stamattina. È come se nessuno volesse finire di costruirla. – Allora finiscila tu stesso, disse Rafik. Ecco un lavoro eccezionale. Di che ti lamenti? – Mi prendi in giro, maledetto! – Ascolta Serag, non ti prendo in giro. Cerco solo di allontanarti da una cattiva strada. Credimi, il lavoro non fa per te, né per nessuno di noi. – Forse, disse Serag. Ma non posso piú continuare a vivere cosí. – Sei giovane. Ho veramente pietà di te. Non sai ancora cosa sia una fabbrica. – E tu, lo sai? – Sí, disse Rafik. Quando studiavo per fare l’ingegnere, ci hanno fatto visitare delle fabbriche. Erano grandi edifici insalubri e tristi. Vi ho passato i momenti piú penosi della mia vita. Ho visto gli uomini che lavorano in quelle fabbriche; già non erano piú uomini. Tutti portavano l’infelicità impressa sul viso. Se ho abbandonato i miei studi, è unicamente per non essere a capo di una tale orda di moribondi. A sentire questa evocazione lugubre, Serag rabbrividí. Chiuse gli occhi; vedeva il suo romantico sogno di lavoro crollare, sprofondare nel dedalo di un dolore incommensurabile. Il lavoro dunque non poteva essere che dannazione e sofferenza. Serag taceva: era in preda a una sorda inquietudine. “

Albert Cossery, I fannulloni della valle fertile, traduzione e cura di Giuseppe A. Samonà, Einaudi (Collana Letture n° 69), 2016¹; pp. 59-61.

[1ª Edizione originale: Les Fainéants dans la vallée fertile (roman), Éditions Domat, Paris, 1948]

P.S.: Devo ringraziare per il piacere di questa lettura sorprendente @dorettaus, sempre attenta ed interessante nei suoi suggerimenti.

[driftingisland]

a beggar who sets his/her own conditions

[irresolu]

Le Globe était un café assez prétentieux, situé non loin de la corniche, dans une des rues les plus élégantes du quartier européen. Il était renommé pour sa terrasse devant laquelle se déroulait sans discontinuer la plus sensationnelle exhibition de jolies filles. La plupart des consommateurs — on pourrait dire presque tous — passaient leur temps à expertiser d’un œil concupiscent la variété des formes féminines défilant sur le trottoir à un rythme vertigineux. Les robes légères que portaient généralement ces divines créatures rendaient leur tâche aisée et captivante. Certains clients — et non des plus jeunes — restaient attablés une journée entière, dans l’espoir d’observer de près le galbe pur d’une belle jambe ou le mystère ondoyant d’une croupe anonyme. À vrai dire, l’intérêt que prenaient les filles à cette passionnante observation de leurs charmes n’était pas moindre ; on racontait que parmi elles, il se trouvait quelques vicieuses qui sortaient tout exprès sans culotte pour le malin plaisir d’exciter plus fortement les malheureux voyeurs. Aussi la terrasse du Globe ne désemplissait-elle jamais ; sauf aux heures caniculaires de l’après-midi, car ces demoiselles, selon l’usage, se livraient à la sieste. Quant à l’intérieur, il était presque toujours vide ; on y voyait parfois deux ou trois vieillards, en instance de départ vers l’au-delà, s’intéresser d’une manière abstraite à une partie de dominos dont le résultat risquait d’être posthume. De temps en temps, attirés malgré eux par les exclamations admiratives des clients de la terrasse, ils lançaient à travers la baie vitrée un regard éteint sur l’objet de tant de convoitise ; puis, défaillants d’émotion, ils retombaient dans leur jeu sénile. — Albert Cossery, La Violence et la Dérision

[les-toupies-h]

«Je ne peux pas écrire une phrase qui ne contienne pas une dose de rébellion. Sinon elle ne m'intéresse pas. » Albert Cossery

[oumcartoon]

How to Curate a Revolutionary Movement

In the Los Angeles Review of Books, Surti Singh and I consider the legacy of Egypt’s Art and Liberty Group:

“WE FIND ABSURD, and deserving of total disdain, the religious, racist, and nationalist prejudices that make up the tyranny of certain individuals who, drunk on their own temporary omniscience, seek to subjugate the destiny of the work of art.” So wrote 37 Egypt-based artists and writers in their 1938 manifesto Long Live Degenerate Art, expressing solidarity with their counterparts in Europe suffering under fascism. This was the beginning of the Art and Liberty Group, an avant-garde movement also known as Egypt’s Surrealists.

“Modern art in Egypt was always a pale copy and a delayed copy,” says the contemporary Egyptian painter Adel El Siwi, “but for the first time in our history, we have this very rare moment where what was going on in Paris was in parallel to other things going on in Cairo.” The Art and Liberty Group forged connections with Surrealists and Trotskyists abroad while shaping their own identity. Working in tandem with their European peers, they also grappled with the circumstances of an increasingly militarized Egyptian capital, where trends in art and publishing remained conservative. They responded to the fault lines of interwar Cairo and were of a piece with them.

We go on to discuss two major exhibitions about Egyptian Surrealism, which dig up incredible new details and long-lost works—but fail to connect the revolutionary group to current art practice and activism in Egypt.

But what does this have to do with comics? As I have written before, Art and Liberty Group affiliates toyed with uninhibited drawing and radical publishing in turn producing proto-alt-comics. In fact, many of their drawings from the 1930′s and 40′s look strikingly similar to the comics being published in the Levant and Maghreb today, another example of the dynamic relationship between fine art and comics.

For more, read our full essay, “The Double Game of Egyptian Surrealism: How to Curate a Revolutionary Movement,” in LARB.

Fouad Kamel, Untitled, 1942. 

Top image: Ramses Younane, Cover illustration for Albert Cossery’s novel “The Men God Forgot,” 1944.