If humour, refutation of reality, grandiose affirmation of the pleasure principle, is indeed the product of a sudden transfer of the psychic accent from the ego onto the superego, and if the superego is indeed the intermediary necessary for the humorous attitude to be triggered, then we can expect the latter to play a functional role, to behave more or less consistently in mental states that are determined by a progressive arrest of the personality in the stage of the superego. These states exist: they are the ‘paranoiac’ states that correspond, in Kraepelin’s definition, to ‘the insidious development of a permanent and unshakable delusional system, resulting from internal causes, which is accompanied by perfect preservation of clear and orderly thinking, willing, and acting.’ Furthermore, we know, thanks to Bleuler, that paranoiac delusion originates in a chronic emotional state (based on a complex) that favours the coherent development of certain errors to which the subject shows a passionate attachment. In the final analysis, paranoia supposes an emotional investment in the ‘morbid circle of ideas’ characterized by the constancy of its reactions and a deviation of the logical function from its usual paths.
Like the paranoid, artists display a fair number of these predispositions, which come from their fixation on the period of secondary narcissism (reincorporation of a certain portion of the libido – and, consequently, of part of the external world – into the ego, this portion of the libido having already been projected onto objects endowed with subjective value; in other words, essentially onto parental objects, whence alleviation of repressive constraints, conciliation with the self-punitive mechanism of the superego). It is no doubt the artist’s ability to reproduce and objectify, through painting or other means, the external objects whose constraints he endures that allows him to escape more or less from the tyranny of these objects and avoid tipping into actual psychosis. Sublimation, which operates in such cases, seems to be the simultaneous product, brought on by a trauma, of the need for (anal-sadistic) narcissistic fixation and of the social instincts (erotization of fraternal objects) that one must observe during such a period.
Salvador Dalí’s great originality is to have been capable of participating in this process at once as an actor and as a spectator; to have served as both judge and judged in the trial brought by pleasure against reality. Paranoia-critical activity, as he has defined it, consists of ‘a spontaneous method of irrational knowledge based on the interpretive and critical association of delirious phenomena.’ Dalí has maintained the balance within and without himself between a lyrical state based on pure intuition, such that he can stand to go only from climax to climax (conception of artistic pleasure eroticized to the maximum), and a speculative state based on reflection, which metes out satisfactions of a more moderate nature, but which is peculiar and fine enough to allow the pleasure principle to find its place. It goes without saying that with Dalí we’re dealing with a latent paranoia of the most benign sort, a paranoia with isolated delusional forms (to borrow Kraepelin’s terminology), whose evolution is immune to confusional accidents. In him, an intelligence of the highest order excels in reestablishing the connections between these forms immediately after the fact, by progressively rationalizing the distance covered. The actual visionary experiences, the meaningful tricks of memory, the ultrasubjective erroneous interpretations that form the clinical portrait of paranoia furnish him with the raw materials for his work; he views and presents them as the mother lode. But starting with them, he undertakes a methodical effort of organization and exploitation, which tends to gradually reduce the hostile aspects of daily life and overcome this hostility on a universal scale. Indeed, Dalí never forgets that the human drama mainly emanates from, and is exacerbated by, the contradiction between natural necessity and logical necessity – two necessities that manage to fuse only in rare flashes and that in the dazzling glare of that flash reveal the country (no sooner lit than dark again) of ‘objective chance’: ‘Paranoia-critical activity is a force that organizes and produces objective chance.’
The external object, which for Dalí, as we have seen, is arrested in the stage of the superego and is wholly satisfied to remain there, is endowed with a symbolic life that overshadows all others and that makes it the concrete vehicle of humour. This object is, in fact, diverted from its conventional meaning (utilitarian or otherwise) to be bound tightly to the ego, in relation to which it has a constituent value. ‘Be assured that Salvador Dalí’s famous melted watches are nothing other than the tender, extravagant, solitary paranoia-critical camembert of time and space.’ In New York, Dalí exhibited a red-painted telephone whose handset was formed by a live lobster (in which we can progressively trace the self-punishing mechanism of ear-cropping – since Van Gogh, for instance – back to its artistic obviation). His attitude toward what he calls the ‘foreign bodies’ of space is indicative of the infantile lack of distinction – a state in which he remains – between familiarity with objects and familiarity with living creatures, and is characteristic of the ‘moral aerodynamism’ that has allowed him to realize this rare, spectacular fantasy: ‘Rent a clean little old lady in the final stages of decrepitude and exhibit her dressed as a toreador, after having placed atop her previously shaven head a herb omelette, which the little old lady’s constant trembling will make jiggle. One could also place a twenty-franc coin on top of the omelette.’1
BIBLIOGRAPHY: La Femme visible, 1930. L’Amour et la Mémoire, 1931. Babaouo, 1932. La Conquête de l’Irrationnel, 1935. Métamorphose de Narcisse, 1937. Le Mythe tragique de l’Angélus de Millet, 1963.
BIBLIOGRAPHY IN ENGLISH: The Conquest of the Irrational.
The weight of ghosts
For some time now, and increasingly so with each passing year, the idea of ghosts has been turning suave, growing heavy and rounded with its persuasive weight, with the plump stereotype and the analytic, nutritive contour that is characteristic of sacks of potatoes seen against the light, which, as everyone knows, are precisely the ones that François Millet, who unwittingly painted the most important ghosts, had the insistent indulgence to transmit to us by capturing them in his immortal, majestically executed canvases, with all the emotional baseness a painter can be capable of and all the concrete and unique shiftiness thanks to which every one of us has, and has had for some time now, the luxury of being horrified.
The reasons for the alarming increase in weight, the compact heaviness, the realistic and extra-soft sagging of today’s ghosts derive only from the primary and original notion of the materialization of the idea of ghosts, which, as we shall quickly see, resides in the feeling of ‘virtual volume.’
The reason for the obesity of ghosts
The ghost materializes through the ‘simulacrum of volume.’ – The simulacrum of volume is the envelope. – The envelope hides, protects, transfigures, incites, tempts, gives a misleading notion of volume. – It makes one ambivalent about volume and causes it to become highly suspect. – It favours the emergence of wild theories about volume. – It provokes the intoxication of ideal knowledge of volume. The envelope dematerializes the content, the volume; weakens the objectivity of volume; makes the virtual volume distressing.
Fat is the distressing element in the concrete volume of meat, and we know that human libido makes distress anthropomorphic, that it personifies the distressing volume, that it transforms the distressing volume into concrete flesh, that it transforms metaphysical distress into concrete fat.
For what is the terrifying fat of the flesh?
Isn’t it precisely what envelops, hides, protects, transfigures, incites, tempts, gives a misleading notion of volume? It makes volume highly suspect, it favours the emergence of wild theories about volume, it provokes intoxications of nutritive, ideal knowledge of volume, it provokes gelatinous representations of volume, extra-fine, ‘virtual,’ distressing representations of volume.
The worst occurs, then, when behind the linens of ghosts who have still ‘kept their figure,’ the ‘virtual’ volumes begin to take on that increasingly serious demeanour that forms the weight – which cannot be mistaken – of reality and substantial fat. But even worse is the moment when this same linen, as it falls, leaves uncovered volumes in its place, which are made suspect by virtue of their analytical, heavy, massive, and endearing appearance (characteristic of the deplorably obese state of our ghosts today) – leaves uncovered, I say, the minuscule albeit monumental nurse who has recently begun appearing in my paintings, and who remains immobile despite a torrential spring shower, sitting in the posture of a person knitting, in a puddle of water, skirts unpleasantly and utterly drenched, back arched, Hitlerian, soft, and tender. This small, large, and authentic ghost of a nurse sits still, while in the land where things get wet, between the Boecklin cypress and the Boecklin storm cloud, the ‘iridescent spectre’ surges, more beautiful and terrifying than the white death’s-head truffle: the rainbow.
It is here that the poverty of supposed synonyms runs up against the most irreducibly specific antagonisms; for, how can we not see as specifically different, on the one hand, the considerable volume of the nurse sitting in water, and on the other, the illusionistic and ephemeral virtuality of the sun’s rays broken down by water?
‘Sex appeal’ will be ‘spectral.’
I am proud to have predicted in 1928, at the height of functionalistic and practical anatomy and amid the most mocking scepticism, the imminence of the round, salivary muscles, terribly gluey with biological afterthoughts, of Mae West. I hereby announce that all the new sexual attractiveness of women will come from the potential use of their spectral resources and capabilities; in other words, from their possible carnal, luminous dissociation and decomposition. The iridescent spectre stands in opposition to the ghost (still depicted by the nostalgic small-town pharmacist whom that other prosaic and diabetic ghost called Greta Garbo so desperately resembles).
The spectral woman will be the woman who can be dismantled.
How does one become spectral?
Utopian anticipations – Woman will become spectral by the disarticulation and distortion of her anatomy. The ‘body that can be dismantled’ is the aspiration and verification of female exhibitionism, which will become furiously analytical. It will allow her to show each part separately, to isolate (in order for each to be fed discretely) anatomical parts mounted on claws, atmospheric and spectral like the spectral anatomy of the praying mantis, also mounted on claws. This will soon be realized through the perverse refinement of aerodynamic costumes and irrational gymnastics. Corsets of all types will be updated to meet extra-fine ends; new and uncomfortable anatomical parts – artificial ones – will be used to accentuate the atmospheric feeling of a breast, buttock, or heel (false breasts, extremely soft and well moulded, though slightly drooping and growing out of the back, will be indispensable city wear). Spectral smiles will be artificially provoked by the vibratory metallic fibres on hats. But, until further notice, the indisputable model, the sensational forebear of spectral costumes will always be Napoleon’s. I especially wish to draw attention to Napoleon’s good trousers (good to eat), which render obvious and suave the superfine, tender, and confused volumes that you know as well as I do, and this thanks to the following elements: abdomen and thighs that can be ‘dismantled,’ that are set apart, isolated, atmospheric and spectral, superfinely white and framed in black, as well as the ghostly silhouette of the rest of his costume (hat included), which is quite familiar to everyone.
Large automobiles will become serene.
Through the dazzling and extra-rapid luminosity of the spectral sex appeal of people flayed alive, the monumental prosaicness of large automobiles, ironing boards, and tender nurses will become ghostly and serene.
– first published in Minotaure
1. It goes without saying that the present article applies only to the early Dalí, who disappeared in around 1935 to make way for the personality better known as Avida Dollars, fashionable portraitist recently converted to the Catholic faith and to ‘the artistic ideals of the Renaissance,’ who today boasts of receiving congratulations and encouragements from the Pope (December 1949).