[SURREALIST PROTESTATION]: [ARAGON LOUIS]: (1897-1982) French poet, one of the leading voices of the surrealist movement in France & [BRETON ANDRE]: (1896-1966) French writer and poet, the co-founder, leader and principal theorist of surrealism. Protestation, an original printed broadside, two pages (recto and verso), 8vo, n.p. (Paris), 18th May 1926, printed entirely in red and issued on the occasion of the Paris premi?re of Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes production of Rom?o et Juliette. The uncompromising manifesto, signed in type at the conclusion by Louis Aragon and Andr? Breton, denounces the participation of the Surrealist artists Max Ernst and Joan Mir? in the production, declaring ?Il n'est pas admissible que la pens?e soit aux ordres de l'argent? (Translation: ?It is unacceptable that thought should be at the command of money?), and further asserting that their participation in the Ballets Russes ?ne saurait impliquer avec le leur le d?classement de l'id?e surr?aliste. Id?e essentiellement subversive, qui ne peut composer avec de semblables entreprises? (Translation: ?cannot entail, along with their own fall in status, the degradation of the Surrealist idea. An essentially subversive idea, it cannot compromise with enterprises of this kind?). Aragon and Breton proceed to condemn such enterprises for having ?toujours ?t? de domestiquer au profit de l'aristocratie internationale les r?ves et les r?voltes de la famine physique et intellectuelle? (Translation: ?always sought to domesticate, for the benefit of the international aristocracy, the dreams and revolts born of physical and intellectual hunger?). The authors specifically address Ernst and Mir?'s collaboration with Serge Diaghilev, acknowledging that the artists may have considered it justified by the precedent of Pablo Picasso, although declaring that it nevertheless obliges them ?de d?noncer, sans consid?ration de personnes, une attitude qui donne des armes aux pires partisans de l'?quivoque morale? (Translation: ?to denounce, without regard for individuals, an attitude which provides ammunition to the worst advocates of moral ambiguity?). The tract concludes with an emphatic affirmation of the increasingly revolutionary position of the Surrealist movement: ?Qu'on nous fasse l'honneur de croire qu'en mai 1926 nous sommes plus que jamais incapables d'y sacrifier le sens que nous avons de la r?alit? r?volutionnaire? (Translation: ?Let us be accorded the honour of believing that, in May 1926, we are more incapable than ever of sacrificing to them our sense of revolutionary reality?). Some light overall creasing and minor age wear, about VG

A rare and significant document in the history of Surrealism, issued by Aragon and Breton in protest against Max Ernst and Joan Mir?'s collaboration with Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes for the 1926 production of Rom?o et Juliette. Ernst and Mir? had been commissioned to create the sets and costumes for the ballet, a collaboration which Aragon and Breton regarded as fundamentally incompatible with Surrealism's revolutionary and anti-bourgeois principles. Particularly provocative was their association with Diaghilev, whose internationally fashionable Ballets Russes was characterised in the tract as serving an aristocratic elite.

The protest came dramatically to life on 18th May 1926 at the Paris premi?re of Rom?o et Juliette at the Th??tre Sarah-Bernhardt. Surrealists and their sympathisers disrupted the performance, shouting and whistling and showering copies of the present tract (very few of which survived) upon the audience; the disturbance became sufficiently serious for the police to intervene. The incident vividly demonstrated the tensions within Surrealism over the relationship between artistic creation, commercial patronage and revolutionary commitment.

Aragon and Breton pointedly acknowledge the precedent of Pablo Picasso, who had previously collaborated extensively with Diaghilev, but refuse to accept it as justification for Ernst and Mir?. Their declaration that ?thought should not be at the command of money? encapsulates the ideological issue at stake. Appearing at a crucial moment in the increasing politicisation of the Surrealist movement, the tract concludes by affirming the authors' allegiance to ?revolutionary reality?. The text was subsequently reproduced in La R?volution surr?aliste, no. 7, 15th June 1926.