Born in Paris, Desnos was
author in 1922 of Deuil pour
deuil.
Noted for his automatic writing,
his 'sleep period' saw some superbly
successful examples of his verbal and graphic work. Pure psychic
automatism
was considered by the early Surrealist group the direct way to
expression
of desire: '...by which an attempt is made to express, either verbally,
by writing or in any other way, the true functioning of thought. The
dictation
of thought, in the absence of all control by the reason, excluding any
aesthetic
or moral preoccupation.' (First
Manifesto [of Surrealism],
1924).
Borin has written a review of the Autumn 2001 Tate Modern exhibition
'Surrealism:
Desire Unbound'; for the full text see the Freelance
website listed in our Links
In 1929 he was among those whom the Second
Manifesto separated from
Surrealism. During the Occupation of France by the Nazis he was
deported
to Buchenwald, then to Terezin in Czechoslovakia where he died of
typhus.
It was a group portrait photograph by Man Ray which inspired this large
painting. The louche features of Desnos stare insolently out directly
at
us from the centre of a small group. It was the decadent, positively
wasted
character of the features which attracted me. I tackled the work in,
for
me, a unique manner (I certainly don't intend to repeat the
experience):
by priming a board with blackboard paint, so that the dark depth of the
piece was there from the start. The face is in sharply lit detail at
the
tip of the nose and rapidly recedes and softens, blurring at the
modelling
of the ears, throat and pomaded hair and disappearing into shadow.
Largely
monochrome, the eyes and lips are accentuated and the surrounding gloom
suffused with indigo. The intense absorbancy of the ground sucked up
the
plasticity of the oil paint, vehicle and medium, causing drag and great
difficulty in blending and modelling surfaces. However, the end result
is
a testimony to the life of one of the lost victims of Nazi persecution.
At the core of the Paris Surrealist group which was born out of Dada
(and
thus the horrors of the Great War), Desnos has left us some beautiful
verse
as an epitaph.
I'VE DREAMED OF YOU SO MUCH
I've dreamed of you so much that you're losing your
reality.
Is it already too late for me to embrace your literal, living and
breathing
physical body
and to kiss that mouth which is the birthplace of that voice which is
so
dear to me?
I've dreamed of you so much that my arms - which have become accustomed
to lying crossed
upon my own chest after attempting to encircle your shadow - might not
be
able to unfold again
to embrace the contours of your literal form, perhaps
So that coming face-to-face with the actual incarnation of what has
haunted
me and ruled me
and dominated my life for so many days and years
Might very well turn me into a shadow.
Oh equilibriums of the emotional scales!
I've dreamed of you so much that it might be too late for me to ever
wake
up again.
I sleep on my feet, body confronting all the usual phenomena of life
and
love and yet
when it comes to you - you, the only being on the planet who matters to
me now -
I can no more touch your face and lips than I can those of the next
random
passerby.
I've dreamed of you so much, have walked and talked and slept so much
with
your
phantom presence that perhaps the only thing left for me to do now
Is to become a phantom among phantoms, a shadow a hundred times more
shadowy
than that shifting shape which moves and which will go on moving,
stepping lightly and happily across the sundial of your life.
Translated by Michael Benedikt
IF YOU ONLY KNEW
Far from me and like the stars, the sea and all the other traditional
trappings
of poetic mythology
Far from me yet present nonetheless although you're unaware of it
Far from me, and even more silent than you are distant, since I keep on
endlessly imagining you
Far from me, my gorgeous mirage and my perpetual dream, in ways you
just
can't know.
If you only knew.
Far from me and perhaps all the more so because you not only ignore me,
but ignore me more each day.
Far from me because undoubtedly you don't love me or, what amounts to
the
same thing,
because I doubt so strongly that you do.
Far from me because you so methodically ignore my each and every desire.
Far from me because you're so cruel.
If you only knew.
Far from me, O blissful as a flower dancing in a river at the tip of
its
underwater stem, O melancholy
as 7 pm and sunset in a mushroom-cellar.
Far from me and therefore still more silent than if you were actually
present,
yet more blissful still
than some lucky, stork-shaped hour that falls down from above.
Far from me at that moment when the stills are singing, at that moment
when
the silently foaming sea
curls back up on its white pillows.
Far from me, O my ever-present, constant torment, far from me and lost
in
the magnificent noises of
oyster-shells, crushed by footsteps of some night-owl at the
harborside,
passing cafe-doors at dawn.
If you only knew.
Far from me, O my deliberate, material mirage.
Far from me there's an island turning around as ships pass.
Far from me, a herd of docile cattle wanders off a path, then
obstinately
stops at the edge of a steep cliff,
far from me, O cruel one!
Far from me a shooting star lands in the poet's nightly bottle. He
promptly
corks it up again, and for a
long time afterwards gazes through its glass at the captive star,
glimpsing
constellations
forming within its walls, far from me, you're that far from me.
If you only knew.
Far from me a house long under construction has just finally been
completed.
At the top of a scaffold a bricklayer in dusty white overalls sings a
sad
little song to himself and then, in the
leftover cement in his mortar tray, sees the entire future of the
house:
the kisses the lovers and the
suicide pacts, nakedness in the bedrooms of beautiful strangers and
their
most intimate midnight
dreams, together with various voluptuous secrets caught in the act and
revealed
by squares of polished
parquet.
Far from me,
If you only knew.
If you only knew how I love you and - even though you don't love me -
how
happy I've become,
how empowered and proud, for being able with your image in my mind to
step
out into this world,
and able even to step out of this entire universe,
And for being so happy, moreover, even to die for this.
If you only knew how I've conquered the world.
And you, so beautiful, and so seemingly unconquerable too, how
completely
you've become my prisoner.
Oh you, who from so far away, completely conquer me!
If you only knew.
Translated by Michael Benedikt
>Goya