Identity of Images
by
Robert Desnos Translated by
Louis SimpsonI am fighting furiously with animals and bottles
In a short time perhaps ten hours have passed one
after another
The beautiful swimmer who was afraid of coral wakes
this morning
Coral crowned with holly knocks on her door
Ah! coal again always coal
I conjure you coal tutelary genius of dreams and my
solitude let me let me speak again of the beautiful
swimmer who was afraid of coral
No longer tyrannize this seductive subject of my
dreams
The beautiful swimmer was reposing in a bed of lace
and birds
The clothes on a chair at the foot of the bed were
illuminated by gleams the last gleams of coal
The one that had come from the depths of the sky and
earth and sea was proud of its coral beak and great
wings of crape
All night long it had followed divergent funerals toward
suburban cemeteries
It had been to embassy balls marked white satin gowns with
its imprint a fern leaf
It had risen terribly before ships and the ships had not
returned
Now crouched in the chimney it was watching for the
waking of foam and singing of kettles
Its resounding step had disturbed the silence of nights
in streets with sonorous pavements
Sonorous coal coal master of dreams coal
Ah tell me where is that beautiful swimmer the swimmer
who was afraid of coral?
But the swimmer herself has gone back to sleep
And I remain face to face with the fire and shall remain
through the night interrogating the coal with wings of
darkness that persists in projecting on my monotonous
road the shadow of its smoke and the terrible
reflections of its embers
Sonorous coal coal pitiless coal
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...But none could embroider his
dreams like Desnos! He would go off into a transport, his protuberant eyes taking on a strange light, while the account of his marvelous chimeras gushed from his lips. There were the pursuers and the possessors; visions of the Apocalypse and the procession of its prophets; scenes of mythical violence filled with anguished cries; and "wizards" who now assumed the shape of "Fantomas" (as in the serial thriller of the movies) or now that of
Nicholas Flamel, the thirteenth-century alchemist. How like an acrobat, with the greatest of ease, Desnos swung from one millennium to another, or from one continent to another. (Someone in the room was taking it all down stenographically, so that these dreams could be printed afterward.) Whereas the dream recitals of others were mostly boring, Desnos' seemed to come out of a real trance, and were narrated In reality, he had no need of the mesmerist or the turning table in a dark room, for he had other means of stimulating himself to a condition of autohypnosis and uninhibited improvisation. A regular dosage of
opium--and an audience of at least one--was all this highly narcissistic personality required in order to function. (The truth about his drug addiction came out some years later, in 1929, on the occasion of a resounding public quarrel between him and his once-beloved master, Breton, to whom he had confessed his private vices.) For all his vices and his periodic outburts of violence, Desnos was one of the most lovable and entertaining of men.
http://www.redcat.org/season/0809/cnv/weber.php
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