You have found ridiculous the Prize of the Creators accorded by my friends and I to the Writings of Erik Satie, of which you are the publisher: but the prize was accorded to the writings of Erik Satie that you do not incarnate any more than Hitler and Goebbels incarnated German culture from Goethe to Nietzsche, of which they believed themselves to be the representatives and this despite your attempt to act in a neo-Nazi fashion with respect to the great avant-garde author of modern music.
I send you a text devoted to the liquidation of a reactionary movement, engendered by an ex-Lettrist, of whom you are the publisher and whose turpitudes of passing success have been attacked by my articles since July - August - December 1959.[1]
If the works about or on this tendency still interest the public, and if you believe that one must not censor the opposed conceptions, but must help them to be expressed, my desire would be to gather together the ensemble of my publicized essays and tracts, published or still unpublished, dedicated to this grouping over the last twenty years, in a volume entitled Critique of the Situationist International and to have it published by your house, if not, expecting it to be published by someone else later: thus, the attached article[2] is only part of a finished work, naturally of much greater consequence. If the project of an ensemble of studies, of responses, dedicated to the movement supported by your collaborators interests you, please let me know by letter to my address.[3]
In hoping for a response to my project concerning the printing of the ensemble of texts and tracts, entitled Critique of the Situationist International, receive, Sir, the expression of my sincerest regards.
Isidore Isou[1] For a report about one of these attacks, see Guy Debord's letter to Gianfranco Sanguinetti dated 13 May 1973.
[2] Not attached in the version being translated here.
[3] Gerard Lebovici answered in a letter dated 5 December 1979.
(Published in Editions Champ Libre, Correspondance, Vol II, November 1981. Translated from the French by NOT BORED! June 2007. All footnotes by the translator.)