M9 Georges Henein

Manifesto (1945)

A born agitator with a ferocious mind, Georges Henein (1914–73) was a revolutionary Egyptian poet who established two Surrealist groups in Cairo. The first, which was founded in 1937 and came to be known as Art and Freedom (Art et Liberté), organized exhibitions and events, participated in workers’ strikes and protests, and wrote polemics on the elitist, autocratic nature of Egypt’s cultural institutions. They were provocative and embraced Surrealism’s leftist, anti-imperialist, Marxist agenda. When the Futurist F. T. Marinetti delivered his lecture ‘La Poésie motorisée’ in March 1938 at the Club des Essayistes in Cairo, the Egyptian Surrealists volubly denounced its fascist ideology; and later that year they wrote the manifesto ‘Long Live Degenerate Art’ (‘Vive l’art dégénéré’), in which they voiced solidarity with those avant-garde European artists who were being persecuted in Nazi Germany at the time.

Henein also established the Surrealist Group of Cairo, which took a stand against order, beauty, logic and traditional art, he also helped to publish three Surrealist journals in French and Arabic, which concentrated on political and cultural matters. Throughout the Second World War, both groups remained prolifically active, staging exhibitions and events which were notable for the number of women participants. However, they grew increasingly disillusioned with Surrealism’s steadfast support of Marxism, with Henein sending a letter to the Fourth International (a multinational communist group opposed to Stalinism set up in France in 1938) stating their concerns. Their objections were clarified in the following manifesto, written by Henein in 1945 and, it is thought, first published in Cairo, in the pamphlet L’Enfance de la chose (The Infancy of Things) in 1945. It criticizes the Surrealist leader André Breton’s continuing support of Marxist ideology – particularly its censorship of freedom of speech – and calls for Surrealists to support the creative rights of the individual.

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I have sown dragons, I reap fleas.

– Karl Marx

At the very time when events are sanctioning the partition of the globe into two unyielding fronts, what should our position be towards Marxist doctrine, which one of these two antagonistic blocks would aim to put into practice?

Our position regarding Marxism is the inverted reflection of that adopted by Marxist groups towards the individual, freedom and the activities arising from literary or artistic creation in general. At the stage that is historically considered as that of the struggle for power, Marxists always pursue a policy of systematic opportunism that consists of taking power soon followed by a change in both tone and purpose, that assumes a character of blatant terror. Indeed, it is of primary importance for the Marxist forces, during the difficult period of struggle for supremacy, to unite the most highly developed elements, the greatest minds, and the most representative intellectuals and writers under one flag. Insidious propaganda and outrageous underhandedness have been put into effect for the sake of this plan, and it has been displayed to all that the rights of the individual, respect for mankind, and cultural heritage could be in no safer hands than that of Marxism in practice.

In short, the new society to whose edification they mean to contribute will provide ample leeway for critical judgment as well as inventiveness. Sad to say, the real facts are far from confirming such claims; indeed, they are nowhere near. Let it suffice to mention that, one century after coming into being, Marxism is the sole economic doctrine which immediately considers blasphemous any critical views or any attempt to criticize it, despite the major upheavals that have affected the face and structure of the modern world, whose interpreter Marxism would be. We do not hesitate to hold this type of ‘taboo,’ which has become the ‘sign of the cross’ of so many revolutionaries, as responsible for the foul smell of such wretched infallibility and ‘infallibilism’ pervading the laboratories of both the right and the left and that acts as a common denominator for both Marxist and Fascist parties. The faults of Marxism strike us as being due to a kind of mental rigidity that is unable to adjust to the shifting reality of the world in motion.

Our grievance against Marxism lies not in its leaning towards revolution, but on the contrary, to its taking a starchy, stagnant, reactionary stance towards the revolutionary growth of science and thought. Karl Marx’s ideas may have enlightened the nineteenth century, but for us now, we must understand the crises of Western Civilization as a whole, and they are of no more help to us than the philosophies of Nietzsche or Spengler, to name but two of those necessary adventurers who have penetrated to the very depths of our age. And what can be said about the analysis and the forecasts that Marxists so generously conferred on us between 1920 and 1940? What can be said, indeed, other than that they are as far from our historical evolution as what Marxists in power have brought into being, a far cry from the original socialist ideal of the material and spiritual liberation of mankind.

Faced with such an aberrant state of affairs where, every day, we are mired more and more in the ways of lies and ‘tactics,’ and faced with such a huge detour from initial principles that we end up back at their beginning source and intention, we proclaim that we consider the individual as the only thing of worth, yet today, seemingly, it is under relentless fire from all sides. We declare that the individual is in possession of largely unexplored inner faculties, the most important of which is imagination armed with the most marvelous powers, an untapped force of vigor and spirit.

The individual against State-Tyranny.

Imagination against the routine of dialectical materialism.

Freedom against terror in all its forms.

Georges Henein, Hassan el Telmisany, Adel Amiu, Kamel Zehery, Fouad Kamel, Ramses Younane