I dream about my two pitiable and almost translucid little baby teeth that I lost so late, and when I wake up I beg Gala to try and reconstruct, in the course of the day, the original effect of those two little teeth with the help of two grains of rice hung from the ceiling by a thread. They will represent the primitive school of our Liliputian debut, which I want to have photographed at any price by Descharnes.
I shall do nothing all day, because this is what I am in the habit of doing during the six months a year that I live at port Lligat. Nothing. Which means that I paint without interruption. Gala is sitting on my naked feet like a space monkey or like a spring shower, or like a tiny basket garlanded with wild myrtle. In order not to waste my time, I ask her if she can draw up a list for me of historical apples. She recites it for me in the form of a litany:
Apple of the original sin of Eve, anatomical Adams apple, aesthetic apple of the judgment of Paris, William Tells apple of affectation, Newtons apple of gravity, Cezannes structural apple
Then she laughingly says to me:
No more historical apples, because the next one will be the nuclear apple that will explode.
Make it explode! I tell her.
It will explode at noon.
I believe her, because everything she says is true. At noon, the short five-yard road at the side of our patio was lengthened by 300 yards because Gala had secretly bought the adjoining olive grove where, during the morning, a very white road had been projected in chalk. The beginning of the road was marked by a pomegranate tree- there was the explosive pomegranate!
Next, Gala, forestalling my wishes, proposed the invention of a box composed of six sides of virgin brass, meant to receive the grapeshot consisting of nails and other cuneiform metal. With the explosion of the pomegranate that would burst in its center, that box would engrave, instantaneously and apocalyptically, the six illustrations of my Apocalypse According to Saint John.
Heart, what do you want? Heart, what would you like? This is how my mother talked to me each time she bent over me with solicitude. To thank Gala for her explosive pomegranate, I repeated to her, Heart, what do you want? Heart, what would you like?
And she answered me with a new present:
A heart made of rubies that beats!
That heart has become the famous jewel of the Cheatham collection, exhibited the world over.
My little space monkey has come to sit on my naked feet to rest from her role of Leda Atomica, which I was busy repainting. My toes felt a gentle warmth that could come only from Jupiter, and I told her of my new fancy, which this time seemed impossible to me:
Lay an egg for me!
She laid two.
That evening on our patio- oh! Garcia Lorcas great wall of Spain!- I listened, intoxicated, with jasmine, to the thesis of Dr. Roumeguere, according to which Gala and I incarnate the sublime myth of the Dioscuri, hatched from one of Lidas two divine eggs. At that moment, as if the egg of our two habitations was being shelled, I realized that Gala had arranged for me in advance still a third habitation, an enormous room that is perfectly spherical and smooth that is being constructed at this moment.
I am going to sleep like an egg filled with satisfaction. While thinking back how, during this day, and without the need for my famous paranoia-critical activity, I have received two new swans (that I forgot to mention), an explosive pomegranate, a heart made of rubies that beats, the egg of the Leda Atomica of our own deification, and all to the purpose of protecting my work with the alchemical saliva of passion. But that was not all!
At half past ten, I am awakened out of my first sleep by a delegation from the mayor of Figueras, my birthplace, that wishes to see me. It was written that the satisfaction contained in my egg would achieve a giant apotheosis. The giants which Gala, some years ago, had invented with Christian Dior for the Beistegui Ball were to materialize that evening in the persons of Gala and myself. Upon which I shall finally be able to go to sleep for good. The two baby teeth of a dubious milky whiteness from my dream of this morning, that I wanted to have precariously suspended from a thread, have transformed themselves on the threshold of the nights dream into the two authentic giants, of a whiteness impeccably certain, that are Gala and Dali. They walk steadily, their four feet on Galas road, carrying very high the paintings of our gigantic works, while we are preparing ourselves to resume and continue our pilgrimage in the world.
And if in our age of quasi-dwarfs the colossal scandal of being a genius permits us not to be stoned like dogs or to starve to death, it will only be by the grace of God.
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Diary of a Genius (September 2, 1958), Salvador Dali
I shall do nothing all day, because this is what I am in the habit of doing during the six months a year that I live at port Lligat. Nothing. Which means that I paint without interruption. Gala is sitting on my naked feet like a space monkey or like a spring shower, or like a tiny basket garlanded with wild myrtle. In order not to waste my time, I ask her if she can draw up a list for me of historical apples. She recites it for me in the form of a litany:
Apple of the original sin of Eve, anatomical Adams apple, aesthetic apple of the judgment of Paris, William Tells apple of affectation, Newtons apple of gravity, Cezannes structural apple
Then she laughingly says to me:
No more historical apples, because the next one will be the nuclear apple that will explode.
Make it explode! I tell her.
It will explode at noon.
I believe her, because everything she says is true. At noon, the short five-yard road at the side of our patio was lengthened by 300 yards because Gala had secretly bought the adjoining olive grove where, during the morning, a very white road had been projected in chalk. The beginning of the road was marked by a pomegranate tree- there was the explosive pomegranate!
Next, Gala, forestalling my wishes, proposed the invention of a box composed of six sides of virgin brass, meant to receive the grapeshot consisting of nails and other cuneiform metal. With the explosion of the pomegranate that would burst in its center, that box would engrave, instantaneously and apocalyptically, the six illustrations of my Apocalypse According to Saint John.
Heart, what do you want? Heart, what would you like? This is how my mother talked to me each time she bent over me with solicitude. To thank Gala for her explosive pomegranate, I repeated to her, Heart, what do you want? Heart, what would you like?
And she answered me with a new present:
A heart made of rubies that beats!
That heart has become the famous jewel of the Cheatham collection, exhibited the world over.
My little space monkey has come to sit on my naked feet to rest from her role of Leda Atomica, which I was busy repainting. My toes felt a gentle warmth that could come only from Jupiter, and I told her of my new fancy, which this time seemed impossible to me:
Lay an egg for me!
She laid two.
That evening on our patio- oh! Garcia Lorcas great wall of Spain!- I listened, intoxicated, with jasmine, to the thesis of Dr. Roumeguere, according to which Gala and I incarnate the sublime myth of the Dioscuri, hatched from one of Lidas two divine eggs. At that moment, as if the egg of our two habitations was being shelled, I realized that Gala had arranged for me in advance still a third habitation, an enormous room that is perfectly spherical and smooth that is being constructed at this moment.
I am going to sleep like an egg filled with satisfaction. While thinking back how, during this day, and without the need for my famous paranoia-critical activity, I have received two new swans (that I forgot to mention), an explosive pomegranate, a heart made of rubies that beats, the egg of the Leda Atomica of our own deification, and all to the purpose of protecting my work with the alchemical saliva of passion. But that was not all!
At half past ten, I am awakened out of my first sleep by a delegation from the mayor of Figueras, my birthplace, that wishes to see me. It was written that the satisfaction contained in my egg would achieve a giant apotheosis. The giants which Gala, some years ago, had invented with Christian Dior for the Beistegui Ball were to materialize that evening in the persons of Gala and myself. Upon which I shall finally be able to go to sleep for good. The two baby teeth of a dubious milky whiteness from my dream of this morning, that I wanted to have precariously suspended from a thread, have transformed themselves on the threshold of the nights dream into the two authentic giants, of a whiteness impeccably certain, that are Gala and Dali. They walk steadily, their four feet on Galas road, carrying very high the paintings of our gigantic works, while we are preparing ourselves to resume and continue our pilgrimage in the world.
And if in our age of quasi-dwarfs the colossal scandal of being a genius permits us not to be stoned like dogs or to starve to death, it will only be by the grace of God.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Diary of a Genius (September 2, 1958), Salvador Dali
VIEW 16 of 16 COMMENTS
eddie:
pebbles:
oh well keep it up and you will for sure be 