A short spell in Surrealism: Selection #6

I noticed the Café Dante was straight ahead. A kid hawking papers: ONE DOESN'T BECOME ONE IS. I knew where I was. Just beyond were the green double doors of the Gun Club. I plucked the strings of my gone shoes smack into love.

Not long ago I had a dream. If one must call certain experiences dream. In Thomas’ Field on a clear autumn afternoon. On this patch of land, seemingly abandoned, while my brother and sister sat watching in wordless admiration, I leapt suspended a few feet above the ground. I did not fly but hovered, like a saucer, like Nijinsky, and somehow it seemed in its simplicity all the more miraculous. Still not a word was spoken, as was common between us. A communion bred of love and innocence.

Patti Smith, Woolgathering, 1992

That night after the party I had a dream. I dreamt that writing on paper was false, that to tell the truth one must write on a strand of hair which comes directly from the brain, long phrases inscribed on the hair like Chinese characters, wonderful phrases I could not remember. This dream came also after John Slocum, literary agent, told me he could not do anything for my writing.

Anaïs Nin, Diary, 1934-1939

I had the sudden urge to unburden all, to be nothing. I wanted to cry out but I couldn't. My breath formed language, but no sound, while the clear sky crisscrossed the fading remnants of  prayers and poems trailing as though from the prop plane of Apollinaire.

Je passe à proximité d'une charmante usine que traverse un fil télégraphique dirigé perpendiculairement à la voie et situé à cinq ou six mètres du sol. Un homme de ma taille tend à deux reprises, très énergiquement, le bras vers le fil sur lequel, sans aucun mouvement de lancement, il réussit à placer en équilibre, à égale distance de l'usine et des rails, deux verres vides du type gobelet. « C'est, dit-il, pour les oiseaux ».

We then find ourselves at the Batignolles fair which is, incidentally, on the Avenue de Clichy. We want to enter an anatomical museum, but the crowd is so large that we can’t see anything. I want to purchase candy, but what I took for eucalyptus lozenges are crystals of a recently discovered metal. At that moment P. reproaches me for not writing to him, and I immediately find myself alone on a street where the traffic jam is terrible. The crowd shouts, “It’s the priests who are blocking the streets.” However, I don’t see any. I try in vain to cross the street. A woman takes my arm and says, “Hypercomplex matrix.”

A face at the end of the day
A cradle in day’s dead leaves
A bouquet of naked rain
Every ray of sun hidden
Every fount of founts in the depths of the water
Every mirror of mirrors broken
A face in the scales of silence
A pebble among other pebbles
For the leaves last glimmers of day
A face like all the forgotten faces.

Paul Éluard, "Belle et Ressemblante" [Lovely And Lifelike], La vie Immobile, 1932

Dream: I found my bed at the top of a great waterfall with D. H. Lawrence. We wonder whether to throw ourselves in or not. We do not jump. We look clown and see Lady Chatterley swimming by in the ocean. We watch terrified while she swims from one ocean to another.

Anaïs Nin, Diary, 1966-1974

I reach an isolated castle, very old and ravaged. It has many rooms locked with huge keys. The rain is pouring in through broken windows and the floor is rotting. I open all the rooms. I come upon a room and through a glass door I see a man sitting with his back turned, sitting in an absolutely empty room. He is blond. I get panicky and I run away, carrying one of the keys. When I join the others, the manager of Helba has decided I am to dance an Indian dance with my body painted in gold and feathers. I say to Gonzalo: “I think Helba would do this far better than I.” Gonzalo agrees. A man says: “If you got inside of that castle, can you prove it?” I say: “I have one of the keys.” “Then you are a hysterical woman,” he answers. Cocteau, Chirico, and Dali!

Anaïs Nin, Diary, 1934-1939