Conversations With Dali – Alain Bosquet

You know that marvelous anecdote: Cézanne’s mother has just died; he dashes off to a provincial painter whom he holds in great esteem and asks him to do a portrait of the deceased. When the other points out that he himself is a painter of no mean reputation, Cézanne exclaims: “But I don’t know how to draw.” Little Cézanne was quite aware that he wouldn’t know how to reproduce his mother’s features.

So what are we to think of this man who spent all his life trying to paint concave apples, and who never got beyond convex ones? Just imagine, apples painted inside out; isn’t that exciting? There is something perverse about being content to paint apples manqués, apples that are awkward and always much too ugly. A. B.: After all this fanfare in honor of Meissonier, let’s pause as a regiment does. Tomorrow we’ll talk about the Impressionists and the moderns. S. D.: Fine. ubuclassics ubu.com Same setting. Almost constant presence of Miodrag Bulatovic.

Novelist Boris Schreiber drops in. So does Pierre Argillet, one of the painter’s chief editors. Dali is wearing a suit that the tailor has not yet finished; its incomplete form is ringed by a whole network of white threads. He looks as if he had just stepped out of a bodygraph ad. The tailor, taking measurements from time to time and making him bend his elbow or his knee, has affixed an excrescence on the left shoulder; Dali cannot help calling this outgrowth on the navy blue cloth magical.

The hubbub is indescribable; at times, some thirty persons are terrorized by one another, admiring the ocelot, but disinclined to go near it. Captain Peter Moore, getting rid of indiscreet visitors, whispers to them politely but slyly: “Dali’s better than a movie, isn’t he?” During an interruption Pierre Argillet says to Alain Bosquet: “Do you know why Dali is against capital punishment?

He told me the other day. He’s actually a partisan of torture, a very long and drawn out torture.” One of the interviews takes place very early in the morning; very early for Dali, that it: at 11:40 A.M. His trousers carelessly undone, he is kneeling before the etchings that Argillet brings him. In thirty-five minutes, he signs 300 of them, breaking five pencils.

A luxury apartment in the Hotel Meurice on Rue de Rivoli above the Tuileries. Salvador Dali, wearing a navy-blue suit with broad stripes, his moustache glossy, with neither part longer than an inch and a half. The furniture is of the neutral and comfortable sort found in sumptuous international hotels. A copper mask on the mantel bears the profiles of the last sovereigns of Spain: Alphonse XIII appears amazingly young; below the effigies, the dates of their visits in the hotel.

Elsewhere, the skeleton of a spoonbill together with a realistic drawing of Dali’s near a mirror. The skeleton of a rattlesnake on the other side of the same mir- ror. Scattered about on the furniture are pieces of plastic material reflecting the superimposed shapes obtained by electronic machines, forms producing unusu- al optical illusions: thus, one has the impression of standing before a very deep mirror with faraway circles and oval forms. Further along, there are egg-like shapes which are projected in front, and at first sight, seem to be almost in the center of the room, whereas in both cases we actually have surface planes.

Dali is signing engravings handed to him by Peter Moore, a young man, thirtyish, whose exact title is Attaché Militaire. From time to time a charming and formi- dable ocelot wearing a muzzle comes strolling in from the next room, making the intruders tremble. One enters Dali’s home as one engages a windmill in Cervantes. Before the interview, Dali prefers to have a few semi-public conversa- tions, hoping that the hubbub will provide him with material for verbal explo- sions.

He adds that he is expecting “atomic scientists, physicists, ballerinas, and, some high-quality bores.” ALAIN BOSQUET: Dali, we’ve known each other for twenty-three years. You’re a holy terror, a monstre sacré1. You’re probably a monster. And yet you call yourself “the divine Dali.” SALVADOR DALI: I was dubbed that by one of the greatest writers in modern Spain. He said that Dali would have to be compared to Raymond Lull,2 and he added that I was the incarnation of Lull.

Now Lull was known as Doctor Illuminatus and as the archangelical scholar. But since the latter epi- thet is too complicated, they finally settled on calling me le Divin. A. B.: Who did? S. D.: The Daliists. A. B.: Who are they? S. D.: The people who latch on to me, ostensibly because I can get them mar- ried to princes, or star them in a movie, or simply have my picture taken with them.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

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