place of suicide in the French avant-garde of the inter-war period, The

Romanic Review, May 2000 by Livak, Leonid

From Theory to Practice

As with any "lived poem," Jacques Rigaut's suicide required the participation of an audience that would "read" his act of self-destruction as the gesture of an avant-garde artist. The dadaist-surrealist suicide myth could inform any such act, notwithstanding the actor's original motives and the circumstances of his death.10 But to use it as an interpretive paradigm, "readers" had to be versed in the myth, whose presence in contemporary literary texts testifies to the cultural institutionalization of the avant-garde deathstyle in inter-war French artistic circles.

Since Rigaut had long cultivated the reputation of a dandy awaiting the inspiration for an "accidental suicide,"" his death was found surprising in that it left no doubts as to its nature. "Je m'etonne que celui-ci ne soit pas mort exactement de la meme maniere que Vache, c'est-a-dire de telle facon qu'il soit interdit d'affirmer qu'il s'est suicide," wrote Victor Crastre, "Sans doute a-t-il compris que ces sortes d'accidents ne trompent plus personne" ("Jacques Rigaut" 253). Indeed, the formation of a model avant-garde deathstyle contradicted the spontaneity and gratuity expected from a "lived poem." This may have made Rigaut alter his suicidal script: like Soupault's Julien and Gide's Boris, he shot himself.

The "cortege des suicides" (Aragon, Traite du style 88) went on after Rigaut's death. In 1933, Julien Torma disappeared during a mountain promenade (Conover 10). Like Rigaut, Torma took part in the dadaist movement and shared the self-effacing attitude that marked the myths of its "precursors." Torma's mysterious disappearance, construed as an "accidental suicide," was followed by Rene Crevel's and Boris Poplavsky's suicides in 1935. If Crevel's death left no doubts about its self-inflicted nature, Poplavsky arranged his demise as a group "accidental suicide" a la Jacques Vache. Notwithstanding the differences in circumstances, the deaths of Rigaut, Torma, Crevel, and Poplavsky were interpreted similarly. Informed by the paradigm of the Vache-Cravan suicidal model, these events were "read" as the artists' attempts to live up to the ideal of self-effacement in art and life and as ultimate proofs of artistic "sincerity.""

All four men were linked to the ancestors of Dada and surrealism not only through their common fate but thanks to their lifestyles and anti-artistic attitudes. The split between the surrealist stance admitting artistic creation and the dadaist ideal of complete silence was the reason for which Rigaut and Torma did not fully integrate themselves into Breton's group, which seemed too "literary": "Vous etes tous des poetes et moi je suis du cote de la mort," wrote Rigaut to surrealists (Ecrits 109). Suicide provided a concrete mode of action for those who strove to implement literally the ideal of artistic and existential renunciation.

Rigaut continued writing until his death, but stopped publishing after 1923. He argued that he had no literary ambition and was more interested in boxing.13 Expressing contempt for traditional art, the combination of poetry and boxing drew on the myth of Arthur Cravan, an amateur boxer whose leaflet Maintenant (March-April 1915) contained the text "Arthur Cravan. Poete et Boxeur" (87-91). Thus, the surrealist Jacques Baron, "a poet better known as a boxer," went by the nickname "Baron le boxeur" (Aragon, Paysan 24); Soupault's protagonists, Julien (En Joue!) and Jean X. (Le Bon Apotre), claimed to be more interested in boxing than in literature. Torma also insisted that literature was of no interest to him and that the publication of his only book of poetry happened "by accident" (Conover 92, 133). After 1926 he "fell silent" and led a nomadic life. His trajectory is unknown except for one place, where he took pains to be noticed,-Charleville, Arthur Rimbaud's birthplace. Although Crevel and Poplavsky rallied for surrealism and continued publishing, Crevel modeled his suicide in the novel La Mort difficile, blurring the lines between experiments in surrealist transcendence and physical self-destruction. Poplavsky, when he did not claim indifference to literature, presented himself as a "poet and boxer" (Livak 130). In his theoretical writings, the emigre poet argued that "art was unnecessary" and that full selfexpression was possible only by way of "perishing, dying, disappearing" (Neizdannoe 96; "O misticheskoi atmosfere" 309, 311).