Este magnífico manifiesto de Ron Sakolsky acaba de ser difundido.
HANDS OFF THE WORD “SURREAL”!
The enemies of poetry
have always been obsessed with making it a slave to their immediate ends. They
see jet bombers without thinking of Icarus.
Benjamin Péret
On December 19, 2016, the gatekeepers of
discourse at Miriam-Webster Dictionary named “surreal” as its Word of the Year.
Far from taking this dubious distinction as a
compliment, the living surrealist movement is appalled by Webster’s simplistic,
distorted and one-dimensional characterization of the term “surreal” as being
relegated to descriptions of disaster situations. As surrealists, we must speak
for ourselves to provide a larger surrealist context for understanding the
deeper questions of why such disasters happen in the first place and how to
transform the present reality of which they are the inevitable byproduct.
According to the Dictionary’s editor, Peter
Sokolowski, “Miriam-Webster, which first began tracking [computer] search
trends in 1996, found a spike for the word after the 9/11 attacks. We noticed
the same thing after the Boston Marathon bombings and the shootings at the
Pulse nightclub in Orlando. The single biggest spike in look-ups came the day
after Donald Trump’s election. Surreal has become the sort of word that people
seek in moments of great shock and tragedy.” To situate the term “surreal”
exclusively among the disquieting deeds mentioned above is to do the English
language a grave disservice. Surrealism remains the sworn adversary of all
forms of authoritarian orthodoxy rather than merely acting as their expressive
dimension.
If “surreal’ is to be remembered as the “go-to”
word for 2016, let it be recalled for all of its many wonders rather than being
stereotyped as merely a descriptor for the malaise associated with terrorism
and electoral politics and the terrorism of electoral politics. It is true that
the word “surreal” brilliantly evokes that visceral sense of the uncanny
associated with such strangely unsettling events, but it is capable of doing so
much more. Sokolowski demonstrates his ignorance of surrealism by saying, “I
believe there are words such as surreal or love that help us grapple with
things difficult to understand”. If he had spent any time at all attempting to
understand the subversive qualities of the “surreal” rather than concentrating
his attention on mitigating the horrors of the real, he would not have
juxtaposed surrealism and love. Love is not foreign to surrealism, but is one
of its guiding inspirations along with Liberty and Poetry.
Hands off the word “surreal”! Release it from
the miserabilist Procrustean chopping block where Webster has editorially
imprisoned it, and let its convulsive beauty illuminate not only the dystopian
nightmare but the utopian dream of a world in which we can all live more poetic
lives. And rest assured that what we surrealists call the Marvelous will be the
playing field for our passional attractions not just for the year 2016 but for
the entirety of the 21st century.
Ron Sakolsky, Inner Island
Surrealist Group