Late modernism's migrations: San Francisco Renaissance, Egyptian anarchists, and English post-Surrealism

Abstract

The New Modernist Studies overlook the relationship between Egyptian radical literature of the 1930s–1940s and what Harper's Magazine called in 1947 ‘The New Cult of Sex and Anarchy’ in California. Both groups share affinities with the anarchist developments of English post-Surrealism after the 1936 London International Exhibition and under the influence of the anarchists Herbert Read and Henry Miller. The link between these groups changes critical conceptions of the internationalism of Late Modernism and its influence on the postwar literary world. Specifically, George Henein and Albert Cossery, two Egyptian authors writing primarily in French, were involved in the anti-fascist, anarchist Egyptian Surrealist movement ‘Art and Freedom’ described in their 1938 manifesto ‘Long Live Degenerate Art!’ Later, George Leite created Circle in California, again an anarchist, anti-fascist project. The remarkable matter is Leite's publication of Henein's anarchist post-surrealist poetry and the first English translation of Cossery's novel Men God Forgot. Behind this literary migration is a dense network of authors and refugees from Cairo and Alexandria who brought their work through Athens, London and New York to finally reach the Pacific coast. Unpacking these relations demonstrates the importance of anarchism to Late Modernism's poetics and aesthetics.