Original linen-backed lithograph, featuring a large portrait of Liane de Pougy by A. Gallice after a photograph by Léopold-Emile Reutlinger ("cliché Reutlinger" stated on the plate). Printed by G. Bataille. Horizontal and vertical fold marks, discreet traces of rolling at the hem of the dress, four pasted and stamped tax stamps, and a shadow in the left margin.
Exceptionally rare original poster advertising a performance by the dancer and courtesan Liane de Pougy, renowned for boldly displaying her beauty on stage and for the openly sapphic loves recounted in her writings (Idylle saphique, 1901). This unrecorded document is the only copy we can trace.
First edition, complete with all 12 issues of this luxurious and short-lived review founded and directed by Jacques d'Adelswärd-Fersen, one of the exceedingly rare copies on japon, the only deluxe paper, with four states of the colour engravings.
Bound in half sand-coloured cloth, morocco lettering pieces, marbled paper boards, spines and wrappers preserved for each issue, a fine copy with wide margins.
Our copy indeed contains the four colour states reserved for the deluxe issue, printed on various papers, of each of the 23 photogravures in Arts & Crafts, Symbolist, Renaissance, Art Nouveau, and Classical styles, after Maxwell Armfield, Henri Saulnier Ciolkowski, Léonard Sarluis, Bernardino Luini, Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, Gustave Moreau, Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Pollaiolo, Correggio, Piero della Francesca, Rubens, Jose de Ribera, Francisco Goya, Mederhausen Rodo, Cardet, and statues and steles from the museums of Naples and Athens.
The elegant cover design is by George Auriol, master of Art Nouveau typography.
Contributions by Laurent Tailhade, Émile Verhaeren, Renée Vivien, Colette Willy, Joséphin Peladan, Jean Moréas, Henri Barbusse, Arthur Symons, Jacques d'Adelswärd-Fersen, J. Antoine-Orliac, Paterne Berrichon, Jules Bois, Jean Bouscatel, Tristan Derème, Léon Deubel, André du Fresnois, Maurice Gaucher, René Ghil, Henri Guilbeaux, J.-C. Holl, Tristan Klingsor, Ernest La Jeunesse, Gabriel de Lautrec, Abel Léger, Legrand-Chabrier, Louis Mandin, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Francis de Miomandre, John-Antoine Nau, Maurice de Noisay, Julien Ochsé, Edmond Pilon, Ernest Raynaud, André Salmon, Valentine de Saint-Point, Robert Scheffer, Tancrède de Visan...
A very handsome and extremely rare copy on japon, of the first French homosexual review.
First edition following the unobtainable mimeographed version produced by the author.
Inevitable minor wear along the edges of the covers and spine, restoration to the upper left corner of the front cover, newspaper clipping laid in. Barnes & Noble price sticker affixed to the front cover.
Commentary by Paul Krassner.
This incendiary pamphlet, issued by the marginal and modest Olympia Press, newly re-established in New York, was printed in only a small number of copies.
Gender discrimination, hate speech and incitement to genocide, a violent and unrepentant attempted murder of one of the most celebrated artists of the twentieth century, the advocacy of anarchic violence in a grotesque burst of laughter, the elimination or humiliation of half of humankind...
In her misandrist pamphlet, Scum Manifesto (« Society for Cutting Up Men »), Valerie Solanas shows no empathy, grants no room for moderation or reconciliation, and makes no exception in her plan to eradicate men save for « the men who methodically work towards their own elimination [...] [such as] the transvestites who, by their splendid example, encourage other men to demasculinize themselves and thus render themselves relatively harmless ». The first manifesto of radical feminism is not addressed solely to women, but also embraces in its struggle the sexual identities cast aside by the phallocratic society Solanas sought to destroy with unprecedented rage for such a cause.
« Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex. »
In 1971, Emmanuèle de Lesseps, taking on a French version, translated this opening as:
« Vivre dans cette société, c'est au mieux y mourir d'ennui. Rien dans cette société ne concerne les femmes. Alors, à toutes celles qui ont un brin de civisme, le sens des responsabilités et celui de la rigolade, il ne reste qu'à renverser le gouvernement, en finir avec l'argent, instaurer l'automation à tous les niveaux et supprimer le sexe masculin. »
At once an insurrectionary political programme, a paranoid delirium and a poetic text, Solanas's manifesto unsettles by refusing to be confined to any single genre—serious, utopian, or satirical. The real question posed by such a work may not be one of morality, but of the author's right to claim excess. Published after her attempted murder of Andy Warhol, Solanas’s manifesto is the literary and literal assertion that men hold no monopoly on violence.
Though presented as an urgent cry of anger, SCUM was in fact the product of two years of thought and writing before Solanas, lacking a publisher, mimeographed it herself in 1967 and sold it on the street (1 for women and 2 for men), meeting no success.
Seeking recognition, Valerie Solanas moved in New York’s underground scene and became close to the pope of counterculture, Andy Warhol, frequenting the Factory. Unable to have her manifesto published—« the best piece of writing in all of history, which will be surpassed only by my next book »—Solanas turned to her first literary work: Up Your Ass, a play she hoped her mentor would produce. Unfortunately, Warhol rejected the piece and lost the only manuscript. In compensation, he offered her roles in two of his films. Dissatisfied with this minor artistic recognition, on 3 June 1968 she fired three shots at Warhol, gravely wounding the artist and achieving instant notoriety. She made no secret that her murderous act, more than a personal vendetta, was above all a political necessity and an artistic means to secure circulation of her work. Questioned on her motives, she offered this laconic reply to the courts and the press: « Read my manifesto, you’ll know who I am. »
Maurice Girodias, the notorious publisher of Olympia Press, repeatedly condemned, notably for issuing Lolita and Naked Lunch, had already noticed Solanas the previous year. Though he had rejected her manifesto, he offered her a contract for future works. After the attack, he decided finally to publish the feminist pamphlet of this atypical criminal who proclaimed women’s omnipotence and the toxicity of the male sex. In a final provocation, Girodias reproduced on the back cover the front page of the New York Post reporting Warhol’s tragic hospitalisation.
Is Solanas’s book the work of a sick woman—abused as a child, prostituted as a student, diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, repeatedly confined in asylums, and who would die in poverty and solitude? Or is such an interpretation itself proof of the refusal to allow a woman the extremes of delirium and anarchist utopia that men have long claimed?
In 1968, in the midst of the interminable Vietnam War, violence was no longer the sole prerogative of oppressors, and the rising anger of minorities against endemic discrimination in the United States manifested itself in violent clashes and the rise of radical groups such as the Black Panthers. Yet women remained excluded from these struggles and their rights denied by both sides, as Angela Davis and Ella Baker also denounced.
Unlike them, however, Solanas adhered to no emancipatory struggle and rejected every utopia then in vogue, which, in her view, liberated only men, leaving women at best as rewards:
« Le hippie [...] est follement excité à l'idée d'avoir tout un tas de femmes à sa disposition. [...] L'activité la plus importante de la vie communautaire, celle sur laquelle elle se fonde, c'est le baisage à la chaîne. Ce qui allèche le plus le hippie, dans l'idée de vivre en communauté, c'est tout le con qu'il va y trouver. Du con en libre circulation : le bien collectif par excellence ; il suffit de demander ».
« Laisser tout tomber et vivre en marge n'est plus la solution. Baiser le système, oui. La plupart des femmes vivent déjà en marge, elles n'ont jamais été intégrées. Vivre en marge, c'est laisser le champ libre à ceux qui restent ; c'est exactement ce que veulent les dirigeants ; c'est faire le jeu de l'ennemi ; c'est renforcer le système au lieu de le saper car il mise sur l'inaction, la passivité, l'apathie et le retrait de la masse des femmes ».
A true detonation in activist circles, S.C.U.M. split the emerging feminist movements such as NOW and Women’s Lib and gave birth to radical feminism. Yet Solanas refused all affiliation and even rejected the support of activist lawyer Florynce Kennedy, pleading guilty at her trial even as Warhol refused to press charges against her: « Je ne peux pas porter plainte contre quelqu'un qui agit selon sa nature. C'est dans la nature de Valerie, alors comment pourrais-je lui en vouloir ». (A fascinating testimony to the psychological hold these two opposites exerted on one another).
In a fireworks display of obscenity and mocking extremism, Solanas’s work nonetheless dismantles the arguments of progressive intellectuals while exposing the inescapably patriarchal structure of a falsely modern society. « S.C.U.M. stands against the entire system, against the very idea of laws and government. What S.C.U.M. wants is to demolish the system, not to secure certain rights within it. »
Fifty years on, Solanas’s manifesto retains its biting acuity, and the delirious energy of her prose cannot justify the progressive erasure of her place in social history—mirrored by her own mother’s destruction of all her manuscripts after her death.
Outraged, convinced, or stunned by the cathartic violence of the text, no reader emerges unscathed from the S.C.U.M. experience. This is doubtless due to the literary force of Solanas’s prose—almost Céline-like in its vitriol—but also to the undeniable relevance of her revolt today:
« Celles qui, selon les critères de notre « culture », sont la lie de la terre, les S.C.U.M. ... sont des filles à l'aise, plutôt cérébrales et tout près d'être asexuées. Débarrassées des convenances, de la gentillesse, de la discrétion, de l'opinion publique, de la « morale », du « respect » des trous-du-cul, toujours surchauffées, pétant le feu, sales et abjectes, les S.C.U.M. déferlent... elles ont tout vu - tout le machin, baise et compagnie, suce-bite et suce-con - elles ont été à voile et à vapeur, elles ont fait tous les ports et se sont fait tous les porcs... Il faut avoir pas mal baisé pour devenir anti-baise, et les S.C.U.M. sont passées par tout ça, maintenant elles veulent du nouveau ; elles veulent sortir de la fange, bouger, décoller, sombrer dans les hauteurs. Mais l'heure de S.C.U.M. n'est pas encore arrivée. La société nous confine encore dans ses égouts. Mais si rien ne change et si la Bombe ne tombe pas sur tout ça, notre société crèvera d'elle-même. »
Autograph letter signed by Paul Verlaine to Anatole Baju, one page in ink on a watermarked leaf. Two small discreet adhesive reinforcements to verso. Published in Correspondance Verlaine, vol. III, CDLIII, p. 26–27.
An important letter by Verlaine, the most Decadent of poets, to the editor-in-chief of the journal Le Décadent, which published many of his poems. The poet announces the forthcoming release of a collection entitled Amis, a provocative allusion to the scandalous sapphic poems he had privately printed in 1867 under the title Amies.
Autograph letter signed by Jean Cocteau, marked with his famous star, addressed to his great love, the actor Jean Marais. One page penned in black ink on a single sheet.
Traces of folds, horizontal creases inherent to mailing, two ink spots on the blank verso not affecting the text.
A magnificent love letter from Cocteau to Marais, who together formed one of the most iconic artistic couples of the 20th century. Set against the backdrop of turmoil and the German Occupation, their unbreakable bond is embodied in this letter of the writer, filled with desperate tones.
Original photo - Christopher Street Liberation Day March, New York - "The Kiss, Judy Bowen and Philip Raia""On June 28, 1970, I attended the first New York Gay Pride March. The date marks the first anniversary of the Stonewall riots, which launched the LGBTQ+ liberation movement in the U.S. We left from Christopher Street, a gay cultural mecca in Greenwich Village, and walked up 6th Avenue to Central Park. To end the day, a kissing contest was held in the middle of the park! It was a great moment of joy, love and freedom. This couple, who kissed for hours under an umbrella, obviously didn't care about photographers" (Interview with Clément Thierry, 2021)
First edition on ordinary paper.
Spine creased as often, otherwise a pleasant copy.
Illustrated.
Inscribed and signed by Jean Marais to Madame Romanini.
Autograph letter dated from Liane de Pougy to the French archaeologist, curator of the Musée de Saint-Germain and professor of art history at the École du Louvre, Salomon Reinach, 56 lines written in blue ink on one double-sided sheet, written from her property at Clos-Marie in Roscoff where the famous courtesan stayed until 1926.
A small tear in the right-hand margin of the letter, inherent in the enveloping of the missive; another slight tear at the foot, without affecting the text.
Liane de Pougy marvels at the youthful vigor of Reinach, who had just turned 65: ' Many happy returns for your 65 years, which find you so young, so fresh, so green, with such playful (studious) feelings. My friend, your youthful morals hold the secret of your physical youth—as Rosa Josepha said, one sustains the other, one preserves the other—and this, seen head-on. ', while magnifying his radiant intelligence: 'To no longer produce, but to sit atop the high throne of your trophies, formed by all you have wrested from instinct to sacrifice to intellectuality. Why do people always say a well of knowledge instead of a luminous column, a sky, a sun, a star, etc.—in short, something that makes us lift our heads?'
She is waiting for her friend and former lover, the terrible and unfaithful Natalie Clifford-Barney: 'Natalie plans to come to Clos at the end of September. She has a wound to heal here—time, fortunately, has already done part of the work! I have sensitive feelings and, like a musketeer, a good heart but a bad temper. This is the 1st time the amazon has truly aimed at me... Let us speak of it no more'. Liane firmly expresses her wish not to be pitied or consoled for her romantic troubles: 'I have suffered in silence but without resignation. Do not speak of this to Nathanaël... Nathanaël means Philippe, Max Jacob claims, who lives and works near us in the most fascinating way... '.
A beautiful letter by the celebrated courtesan, actress, and writer Liane de Pougy, recounting with restrained candor her romantic disappointments with Natalie Clifford-Barney.
First edition, one of 20 numbered copies on hollande, the only deluxe issue (grand papier) after 10 copies on japon.
Bound in gray half morocco in panels, smooth spine, gilt date at foot, abstract decorative paper boards, black onionskin pastedowns and flyleaves, original wrappers preserved, pastedown bookplate, top deckled edge gilt, binding signed Boichot.
Small tears with small lacks of paper to the margin of an endpaper and on the front cover.
The work is dedicated to Paul Verlaine who wrote the preface "which was a way of advertising to gay readers" (Graham Robb, Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century, p. 210).
Precious signed and inscribed copy to Catulle Mendès who will go on to write six years later "the first description of a male homosexual orgasm" (Graham Robb) in his novel La Maison de la Vieille.
This novel, although still tinged with a moralistic, guilt-ridden view of homosexuality, features the first gay sex scene in a French novel. It takes place near the Opera, in a palatial Turkish bath house, one of Paris' most famous cruising spots at the time when the influence of the Arabian Nights and the prospect of hedonistic pleasures were all the rage: "In this overheated atmosphere, Jacques savors the pleasures of body reflection and massage. Then comes the 'unpleasant brusqueness of the shower' before entering the steam bath, where several bodies lie naked and immodest. Suddenly, a young man of twenty appears with 'an aristocratic bearing, a blond head, the fat, bulging chest of the Capitoline Antinous statue'. It was love at first sight. Jacques looks out for him, follows him 'panting' and thus succumbs to 'unnatural vice'" (François Buot, Gay Paris, Une histoire du Paris interlope entre 1900 et 1940).
Neil Bartlett even suggests Oscar Wilde might have read the novel based on the plea he wrote to the Home Secretary from Reading Gaol, which features a similar description of his erotomania (Paul Hallam, The Book of Sodom, 1993).
This deluxe copy is exceptionally inscribed to Catulle Mendès, who also pioneered the writing of novels centered around gay and lesbian protagonists.
Provenance: library of Comte René Philipon, specialist in occult sciences, collector, entomologist and patron of the arts, with his pastedown bookplate featuring the Rosicrucian symbol of the Phoenix rising from the ashes.
An Annotated Bibliography of Homosexuality, II, 6694.
Autograph letter by Jean Cocteau, signed with his famous star, addressed to his great love, the actor Jean Marais. Dated by the author July 1940. One and a half pages in black ink on a sheet.
Two small marginal tears not affecting the text. Traces of transverse folds inherent to posting.
Magnificent love letter from Cocteau to Marais, who formed one of the most legendary artistic couples of the 20th century. Against the backdrop of defeat and German Occupation, their unbreakable bond is embodied in this letter from the writer with its desperate accents.
Published in the Lettres à Jean Marais, 1987, p. 157.
This missive from a love-stricken Cocteau was written shortly after the Armistice of June 22, 1940 marking the end of the French defeat. Marais, mobilized, had joined the front in May 1940 while Cocteau had taken refuge in Perpignan. Communication in these troubled times proved difficult: "Mon Jeannot, j'attends toujours ta réponse, mais avec une confiance absolue. Ce n'est pas pour rien que notre étoile nous a rapprochés l'un de l'autre, et sans doute, fallait-il que mes lettres ne t'arrivent pas et que je souffre de mon silence" ["My Jeannot, I am still waiting for your response, but with absolute confidence. It is not for nothing that our star brought us closer to one another, and no doubt, it was necessary that my letters not reach you and that I suffer from my silence"] "Tu es né chef, je suis né chef. Et sous notre étoile rien de ce que nous [...] ne peut s'annexer ni se perdre. Le principal est de se taire et d'attendre. [entre guillemets :] les choses ont une manière à elles d'arriver." C'est à nous de le savoir et de les laisser faire [...]" ["You were born a leader, I was born a leader. And under our star nothing of what we [...] can be annexed or lost. The main thing is to remain silent and wait. [in quotation marks:] things have their own way of happening." It is up to us to know this and let them do so [...]"]
The Cocteau - Marais partnership would soon return to Paris, and endure the torments of the German occupation which would ban the revival of their scandalous play Les Parents terribles, which had enjoyed great success in 1939.
Original photo from Christopher Street Liberation Day March, New York - "Master and Slave""On June 28, 1970, I attended the first New York Gay Pride March. The date marks the first anniversary of the Stonewall riots, which launched the LGBTQ+ liberation movement in the U.S. We left from Christopher Street, a gay cultural mecca in Greenwich Village, and walked up 6th Avenue to Central Park. To end the day, a kissing contest was held in the middle of the park! It was a great moment of joy, love and freedom. This couple, who kissed for hours under an umbrella, obviously didn't care about photographers" (Interview with Clément Thierry, 2021)
Original photo from Christopher Street Liberation Day March, New York - "Perverts' Union for Gay Liberation""On June 28, 1970, I attended the first New York Gay Pride March. The date marks the first anniversary of the Stonewall riots, which launched the LGBTQ+ liberation movement in the U.S. We left from Christopher Street, a gay cultural mecca in Greenwich Village, and walked up 6th Avenue to Central Park. To end the day, a kissing contest was held in the middle of the park! It was a great moment of joy, love and freedom. This couple, who kissed for hours under an umbrella, obviously didn't care about photographers" (Interview with Clément Thierry, 2021)
Original photo from Christopher Street Liberation Day March, New York - "Activist in a Wheelchair""On June 28, 1970, I attended the first New York Gay Pride March. The date marks the first anniversary of the Stonewall riots, which launched the LGBTQ+ liberation movement in the U.S. We left from Christopher Street, a gay cultural mecca in Greenwich Village, and walked up 6th Avenue to Central Park. To end the day, a kissing contest was held in the middle of the park! It was a great moment of joy, love and freedom. This couple, who kissed for hours under an umbrella, obviously didn't care about photographers" (Interview with Clément Thierry, 2021)
"On June 28, 1970, I attended the first New York Gay Pride March. The date marks the first anniversary of the Stonewall riots, which launched the LGBTQ+ liberation movement in the U.S. We left from Christopher Street, a gay cultural mecca in Greenwich Village, and walked up 6th Avenue to Central Park. To end the day, a kissing contest was held in the middle of the park! It was a great moment of joy, love and freedom. This couple, who kissed for hours under an umbrella, obviously didn't care about photographers" (Interview with Clément Thierry, 2021)
First edition of the French translation established by Emmanuelle de Lesseps.
Handsome and very rare copy.
With a presentation by Christiane Rochefort.
Gender discrimination, hate speech and calls for genocide, violent action with a furious, premeditated and unrepentant murder attempt on one of the most famous artists of the 20th century, promotion of violent anarchy with great scatological laughter, programmed elimination or humiliation of half the human race...
In her misandrist pamphlet, Scum manifesto ("Society for Cutting Up Men"), Valerie Solanas shows no empathy, leaves no room for moderation or reconciliation, and grants no exception to her project of eliminating all men except for "men who methodically work toward their own elimination [...] [such as] drag queens who, by their magnificent example, encourage other men to demasculinize themselves and thus render themselves relatively harmless." The first manifesto of radical feminism addresses not only women but also encompasses in its struggle the sexual identities rejected by the phallocratic society that Solanas wants to bring down with unprecedented rage for such a battle.
"Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex."
An introduction that in 1971, Emmanuelle de Lesseps, undertaking a French version, would translate as:
"Vivre dans cette société, c'est au mieux y mourir d'ennui. Rien dans cette société ne concerne les femmes. Alors, à toutes celles qui ont un brin de civisme, le sens des responsabilités et celui de la rigolade, il ne reste qu'à renverser le gouvernement, en finir avec l'argent, instaurer l'automation à tous les niveaux et supprimer le sexe masculin." ["Living in this society means, at best, dying of boredom. Nothing in this society concerns women. So, to all those who have a bit of civic-mindedness, a sense of responsibility and of fun, there remains only to overthrow the government, finish with money, establish automation at all levels and eliminate the male sex."]
At once an insurrectional political program, paranoid delirium, and poetic text, Solanas's manifesto disturbs through its refusal to be confined within a genre—serious, utopian, or satirical. For the question posed by such a work may not be that of its morality, but of its author's right to claim excess. Published after her murder attempt on Andy Warhol, Solanas's terrible manifesto is the literary and literal assertion that man does not have a monopoly on violence.
Although it presents itself as a cry of anger written in urgency, SCUM is in reality the fruit of two years of reflection and writing before being, for lack of a publisher, mimeographed by Solanas in 1967 and sold in the street ($1 for women and $2 for men), without meeting any success.
Seeking recognition, Valerie Solanas then moves in the New York underground milieu and befriends the pope of counterculture, Andy Warhol, whose Factory she frequents. Unable to get her manifesto published, "the best text in all of history, which will only be surpassed by my next book," Solanas tackles her first literary work: Up your Ass, a play she wants her mentor to produce. Unfortunately, Warhol refuses the play and loses the unique manuscript. In compensation, he offers his friend a role in two of his films. Solanas is not satisfied with this small artistic success and, on June 3, 1968, fires three times at Andy Warhol, seriously wounding the artist and achieving fame at the same time. The young woman does not hide that her murderous gesture, more than revenge against the artist, is above all a political act and an artistic necessity to allow her to disseminate her work. Thus, questioned about the motivations of her criminal attempt, she submits to justice and the media this laconic response: "Read my manifesto, you will know who I am."
Maurice Girodias, the sulfurous publisher of Olympia Press, condemned several times notably after the publication of Lolita and Naked Lunch, had already noticed Solanas the previous year. He had then rejected her manifesto but had offered her a contract for her future works. After the attack, he finally decides to also publish the feminist pamphlet of this atypical criminal who declares the omnipotence of women and the harmfulness of the male sex. The height of provocation, Girodias reproduces on the back cover the front page of the New York Post, relating Warhol's tragic hospitalization.
Is Solanas's book the work of this sick woman, a violated child, a prostituted high school and university student, an adult diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, escaped from several asylums, and who would end her days in extreme solitude and poverty? Or is this interpretation precisely the demonstration of the prohibition for a woman to claim all the extremities of anarchist delirium and utopia that are granted to men?
In 1968, at the heart of the interminable Vietnam War, violence is no longer the preserve of oppressors and the rising anger of minorities against the endemic discrimination of the United States manifests itself through violent confrontations and the birth of radical groups such as the Black Panthers. But women remain excluded from demands and their rights are denied by both camps, as Angela Davis and Ella Baker would also denounce.
However, unlike them, Solanas adheres to no emancipation struggle and refuses all fashionable utopias which, according to her, only liberate man; woman remaining, at best, a reward:
"Le hippie [...] est follement excité à l'idée d'avoir tout un tas de femmes à sa disposition. [...] L'activité la plus importante de la vie communautaire, celle sur laquelle elle se fonde, c'est le baisage à la chaîne. Ce qui alléche le plus le hippie, dans l'idée de vivre en communauté, c'est tout le con qu'il va y trouver. Du con en libre circulation : le bien collectif par excellence ; il suffit de demander." ["The hippie [...] is wildly excited at the idea of having a whole bunch of women at his disposal. [...] The most important activity of community life, the one on which it is based, is chain fucking. What attracts the hippie most in the idea of living in community is all the cunt he's going to find there. Freely circulating cunt: the collective good par excellence; you just have to ask."]
"Laisser tout tomber et vivre en marge n'est plus la solution. Baiser le système, oui. La plupart des femmes vivent déjà en marge, elles n'ont jamais été intégrées. Vivre en marge, c'est laisser le champ libre à ceux qui restent ; c'est exactement ce que veulent les dirigeants ; c'est faire le jeu de l'ennemi ; c'est renforcer le système au lieu de le saper car il mise sur l'inaction, la passivité, l'apathie et le retrait de la masse des femmes." ["Dropping out and living on the margins is no longer the solution. Fucking the system, yes. Most women already live on the margins, they have never been integrated. Living on the margins means leaving the field free to those who remain; it's exactly what the leaders want; it's playing into the enemy's hands; it's strengthening the system instead of undermining it because it relies on the inaction, passivity, apathy and withdrawal of the mass of women."]
A true explosion in protest circles, S.C.U.M. divides emerging feminist movements like NOW or Women's Lib and gives birth to radical feminism. Yet, Solanas refuses any affiliation and even rejects the help of militant lawyer Florynce Kennedy by pleading guilty at her trial while Warhol did not want to press charges against her: "I cannot press charges against someone who acts according to their nature. It's in Valerie's nature, so how could I hold it against her." (A fascinating testimony to the mutual psychological hold these two contrary beings had on each other).
In a great fireworks display of obscenity and laughing extremism, Solanas's work nevertheless methodically deconstructs the propositions of progressive intellectuals as much as it reveals the irremediably machistic structure of a falsely modern society. "S.C.U.M. stands against the entire system, against the very idea of laws and government. What S.C.U.M. wants is to demolish the system and not obtain certain rights within the system."
Fifty years later, Solanas's manifesto remains bitingly acute, and the sometimes delirious verve of its author cannot justify the progressive erasure of her memory in social history, like her own mother destroying all her manuscripts upon her death.
Outraged, convinced, or stunned by the cathartic violence of the text, no one claims to emerge unscathed from the S.C.U.M. experience. This is undoubtedly linked to the almost Célinean literary force of Solanas's pen but perhaps also to the undeniable relevance of her revolt:
"Celles qui, selon les critères de notre « culture », sont la lie de la terre, les S.C.U.M. ... sont des filles à l'aise, plutôt cérébrales et tout près d'être asexuées. Débarrassées des convenances, de la gentillesse, de la discrétion, de l'opinion publique, de la « morale », du « respect » des trous-du-cul, toujours surchauffées, pétant le feu, sales et abjectes, les S.C.U.M. déferlent... elles ont tout vu - tout le machin, baise et compagnie, suce-bite et suce-con - elles ont été à voile et à vapeur, elles ont fait tous les ports et se sont fait tous les porcs... Il faut avoir pas mal baisé pour devenir anti-baise, et les S.C.U.M. sont passées par tout ça, maintenant elles veulent du nouveau ; elles veulent sortir de la fange, bouger, décoller, sombrer dans les hauteurs. Mais l'heure de S.C.U.M. n'est pas encore arrivée. La société nous confine encore dans ses égouts. Mais si rien ne change et si la Bombe ne tombe pas sur tout ça, notre société crèvera d'elle-même." ["Those who, according to the criteria of our 'culture,' are the scum of the earth, the S.C.U.M. ... are comfortable girls, rather cerebral and quite close to being asexual. Rid of conventions, kindness, discretion, public opinion, 'morality,' 'respect' for assholes, always overheated, bursting with fire, dirty and abject, the S.C.U.M. surge forth... they have seen everything - the whole thing, fucking and company, cock-sucking and cunt-sucking - they have been both ways, they have done all the ports and have done all the pigs... You have to have fucked quite a bit to become anti-fuck, and the S.C.U.M. have been through all that, now they want something new; they want to get out of the mire, move, take off, sink into the heights. But S.C.U.M.'s time has not yet come. Society still confines us in its sewers. But if nothing changes and if the Bomb doesn't fall on all this, our society will die of itself."]
Handwritten signed letter addressed to Docteur Francis Mars: "j'ai du mal à vous pardonner le mal que vous vous êtes fait à vous-même !” “I find it difficult to forgive you for the harm you have done to yourself!”
Paris 17 November 1966, 20.7 x 13.5 cm, one page on a leaf, envelope attached
Handwritten letter signed by Natalie Clifford Barney addressed to Doctor Francis Mars, a few lines written in black in on a leaf of headed paper from 20 rue Jacob (Paris VIe), envelope attached. Central fold from having been sent.
"Cher ami Francis, j'ai du mal à vous pardonner le mal que vous vous êtes fait à vous-même ! Natalie (PS: Je ne serai à Nice que vers le 5 déc.)” “My dear friend Francis, I find it difficult to forgive you for the harm you have done to yourself! Natalie (PS: I will not be in Nice until around 5 Dec.) ”
Francis Mars, from Nice, was a mutual friend of Natalie Clifford Barney and her companion, the artist-painter Romaine Brooks. The two women, who had been in a relationship for almost fifty years, did not live together: Natalie lived in Paris and only joined Romaine in Nice for the winter.
