The Secret Life of Salvador Dali (34 page)

But a new and even more anguishing factor appeared, weighting those two ill-fated canvases with an admixture of horror and displeasure such that I could no longer look at them. I had been forced from the beginning, not only to turn them against the wall but to shut them up in the wardrobe so as not to see them. And even so their invisible presence continued to annoy me! The second factor of anguish was the following: The little girl who served as a model had a very perfect face and a delightful pink body, like a lovely porcelain. While I was painting her she suddenly evoked for me the image of myself when as a child I would stand naked before a mirror, with my king’s ermine cape over my shoulders. As I have already related at the beginning of my childhood memories, I would sometimes conceal my sexual parts by holding them between my thighs so as to look as much as possible like a little girl. During the whole painful process of working on those two uncompleted canvases, executed from the model of that disquieting double of myself as a child-king, I would spend my whole time mentally evaluating the relative beauty of these two kings, the one in the memories of the
past, the other in actuality, posed before me on a platform, the two bitterly struggling in jealous competition. In this competition I felt that the real absence of the male sex organs in the idealized Dali (whom I
saw come to life again before me) constituted one of his most advantageous attributes, for I have desired ever since to be “like a beautiful woman,” and this in spite of the fact that since my first disappointed love for Buchaques I have continued to feel a complete sexual indifference toward men. (No! Let there be no misunderstanding on this point—I am not a homosexual.) But where the rivalry between the two kings reached its peak, as an esthetic revenge to which I was entitled, was in the white satin fabric, taken from the stock-room, which I compared to the ermine the little model ought to have worn. That naked and hairless little body, had it been draped in ermine, would have appeared to me as one of the most desirable and most truly exquisite things that one could have “seen.” I suggested this to the professor, who shrugged his shoulders and declared that fur was not pictorial!

I thereupon began to build the fantasy of hiring the little model for myself and going to look for an ermine cape in the shops supplying theatrical costumes. No, two ermine capes! And I began an exhausting and persevering revery which it seemed to me that nothing could stop or deflect from its course. Two ermine capes, one for her and the other for me! At the beginning I would have her hold a normal pose. But for this I needed a studio, for I could not bring her to the Students’ Residence—I would not have dared—and besides, the atmosphere of my room did not lend itself to the mood of my incipient revery. Hence I had to imagine exactly how the studio in which all this was to take place “would be.” I was already beginning to see it. It was very large, it looked a little like. . .

But suddenly I felt that I could not go any further, could not continue to imagine. There was in fact something that did not work, for naturally it would be necessary to find money for this. How could I explain to my father the sudden expense of renting a large studio, a model, ermine capes? I was marking time in my revery, and I felt that I could not advance a single step without having first solved this grave financial question which had interrupted everything. And above all I was feverishly looking forward to the erotic scenes that my reveries had made me glimpse, flashing before me in lightning succession samples of vivid images, each more desirable than the last, like the previews of films calculated by a series of brief, incoherent shots selected from the whole to give you an irresistible desire to plunge yourself into the complete contemplation of something that makes your mouth water in mere anticipation.

But as method is everything in life, so it is in revery, and I said to myself, “Salvador, do begin at the beginning. If you go step by step without haste, everything will come in due time. If you do otherwise, if you rush in and start snatching and gluttonously peeling the images which seem the most captivating at first sight, you will find that these images, not having a solid basis, not possessing a tradition, will be mere copies; they will be forced, like slaves, to resort to other similar situations in your memory that you have already exhausted. It will be a
pathetic plagiarism,
³
and not ‘invention,’ ‘novelty’—which is after all what you are after. But what will happen to you will be worse than this: your little bits of images, though flashing, will not be able to resist that constant need of ‘fetishistic verification’: when you ask for it they will not be able to show you that passport which you yourself, the supreme chief of the police of your spirit, have constantly given and checked for each of those short little voyages—not possessing the complete
dossier
of their public and secret life they will be unable to produce it. You will no longer be able to give them your confidence, and either you will banish them as intruders and agents of disorder, paid by the propaganda of the external world, who come and disturb the peace and prosperity of the imaginative climate in which you live, or else you will simply throw them into the prison of your subconscious. Therefore, if you want to follow the course of your revery through to the end, go back a little, and before minutely imaging the neurotic setting of your studio, where you will see your little model with her hairless body come in every evening, undress and afterward drape herself with malicious modesty in her ermine cape—before all this find the money you need to make the adventure of your studio plausible, to make you believe it!”

In order to bring all this about I had to find a friendly painter who was already in possession of that studio. He had to have unqualified admiration for me, and be about to leave for Catalonia . . .No, Paris would be better—he would leave for Paris. Then he would say to me, “Come to the studio whenever you want, here is the key; and no one needs to know anything about what goes on here.” I knew no one in Madrid, and the course of my revery was becoming unsatisfactory, when all at once I remembered the photograph of a well-known painter in
Barcelona. At this moment my revery was brusquely interrupted by the professor’s arrival. I got up. He simply said to me, “Don’t disturb yourself, I’ll come back later.” But he had already disturbed me, and how! I felt that I was in the midst of thinking about something highly desirable, the only thing I would like to be able to think about again. But I tried in vain!

There is no greater anguish and bitterness than to run madly from one idea to another without being able to find again that most magic of all spots “where you were so comfortable” before you were interrupted. Everything is insipid, everything around you is worthless. But suddenly you find it again! Then you feel that the rediscovered train of thought, though agreeable enough, is not so marvelous as you had thought before you found that “thing,” so greatly desired.

Nevertheless I have found it again, and I can continue my revery. Let’s go ahead; it will last four or five hours. And perhaps I can continue it the next day, and at the same time perfect it. Good heavens, what a prodigious worker you are, Salvador Dahl But I overcome my temptations, and right here I shall stop describing my revery, for even though it is one of the strangest my brain has produced, it would make us lose the thread of the interpretation of the dream of the “plaster inundation,” which we were discussing before we were distracted by these general considerations on the course of the river of “Revery,” always so instructive.

So let the reader try to remember (by going back a little) that I had more than sufficient reasons to detest the two abortive paintings of the young girl. These canvases which I had temporarily hidden I intended, as I have already said, to paint over. As soon as this was possible I decided one morning to prepare the two canvases together, and I put them next to each other on the floor so that I could paint them both together, covering them with a coat of white color diluted with glue. This coat dried fast, but I was very much dissatisfied with the result, for the two frightful botched pictures of the little girl-model could be seen standing out very sharply through the transparent color. Then, deciding to resort to desperate measures, I prepared a large pot of white paint and poured it over the two canvases. The paint flowed over the edges and spread on the floor, but, as usual in such circumstances, far from being discouraged or stopping because of this incident, I decided that the damage was already done, and that a little more or less no longer made the slightest difference. I would clean it all up later. But for the moment I wanted to take advantage of the “inundation” to pour still another pot of paint over the canvas, this time making the paint even thicker. It would cover the two coats that were already there and would form a new one that not only would make the two detested pictures completely disappear but also and especially would cause my two canvases to acquire very thick and smooth surfaces, as though they were “covered with plaster.” I poured out the second pot of paint with such lack of concern
over spilling it that it was now spreading across the floor of the room like a flood. The sun poured in through the windows, and the dazzling white consciously reminded me of the town of Figueras covered with snow, at the period of my false memories.

Having finished the story of my canvases, let us now undertake the analysis of the dream of the plaster-flood which, as we shall see, is a dream which by its blinding symbols betrays my ambitious autocratic desires of “absolute monarchy” to which I have already alluded, and which constituted the continuous desire of my whole early childhood. What did these two paintings represent for me? First of all, the double and jealous image of myself as king and as young girl. This is even illustrated materially by the fact that the two paintings representing the same subject are considered by me as two kings. This conflict of the two kings broke out on the occasion of His Majesty’s visit to the Academy of Fine Arts. In fact I immediately noticed that he had singled me out among all the others. This distinction, in the unconscious, meant: he had recognized that I was a king. It is quite natural that the effect produced on my imagination by the real encounter with His Majesty Alfonso XIII should have awakened in my mind the violent royal feelings with which I had lived during my whole childhood. The King’s presence revived in my mind the King I bore within my skin! During the entire visit to the school I had this impression, which did not leave me a single moment, that the two of us were uniquely and continually isolated from all the rest.

But this dualism finally disappeared, for at the moment when I made my genuflection before him I felt myself agreeably but totally depersonalized: I was completely identified with him! I was he, and since he was the real thing, all my autocracy was directed against the false one. The false king was the one I had painted on the two canvases. There the rivalry was flagrant because of the desire to have the sex organs that were the contrary of my own. When I spilled the plaster and inundated the sculpture class I realized the same symbol as I had realized in pouring the paint over my two canvases. “I effaced the rival false king.” This plaster, and this paint, of an immaculate white, was the ermine mantle of the absolute monarchy which unifies all, covers, makes occult, and dominates all “majestically.” It was exactly the same ermine mantle which in my memories covered the hostile reality of the town of Figueras with a shroud of snow. It was the same purifying mantle which, as it covered and hid the Academy of Fine Arts, also covered the two paintings made in this Academy, representing for me the sum of the most painful experiences suffered in this place of spiritual degradation. The plaster flood was thus nothing other than the ermine mantle of my absolute monarchy solemnly spreading from above, from the summit of the tower of the sculpture class, over everything that was “below.”

Misunderstood king! Dali, for your twenty-one years you were assimilating your readings wonderfully well! I congratulate you! And now, continue,
go right on telling us things and things about yourself; it fascinates us more and more! Go to it! Here we are, listening to you. Wait, wait, let me drink a glass of water! . . .