CA COMMENCE BIEN!/FAMILIERS DU GRAND TRUC. 1954.

n.p. (Paris): s,p. (Internationale Lettriste/le Moucement Surrealiste, n.d. (October 1954)

30.8 x 23.8cm, 2pp. Black on green (Ca commerce bien!) and red on white (Familiers¦) – a double sided tract. The rare re-issue of this attack on the bourgeois appropriation of Rimbaud by critics on the centenary of the poet’s birth as signed by Bedouin, Benayoun, Dax, Flamond, Goldfayn, Hantai, Lebreton, Legrand, Mitrani, Paalen, Peret, Pierre, Reigl, Schuster, Seghers, Toyen and Valore for the surrealist group (mostly those around Phases) and Michele Bernstein, Mohamed Dahou, Guy Debord, Jacques Fillon and Gil Wolman for the International Lettristes.

The original publication of the tract was produced only a few months beforehand but the surrealists had second thoughts and immediately withdrew their support for the text  (which had been originally written by one amongst their own number and signed as an act of solidarity by Debord etc). The surrealists apparently felt the text to be too leftist despite the original being from their own hand! Hence the reissue here by the the Surrealist Group with an additional printing on the back of the text: “Familiers du grand truc”  where many of the same signatories (now with Breton’s name significantly added along with Meret Oppenheim and Nora Mitrami amongst others) denounced their former signatories in harsh terms (suggesting scandalously that they were Stalinists and future participants in Moscow show trials).

One closed paper tear (0.6 x 0.8cm) bottom right which does not affect the texts on either side and wear and tear around margins.

This is a rare publication in any condition from the early debates that led clearly to formation of the International Situationists after the splits of the 50s and 60s within the avant garde.