BEI TIPI

Eva Besnyö lying on the portraits she has made of a graphologist, Berlin 1932 -by John Fernhout [orig.: Eva Besnyö liggend tussen haar portret van een grafoloog]

Amusia

““from the tensed heart came the gigantic tremor of a powerful, shaking pain, from the whole body a shaking–and with subtle grimaces of face and of body at last with the difficulty of an oil ripping open the ground -came at last the great dry sob, a wordless sob without any sound even for herself, the one she hadn’t suspected, the one shed never wanted and hadn’t foreseen- rattled like the strong tree that is more deeply shaken than the fragile tree- at last pipes and veins were burst, then she sat down to rest and was soon pretending that she was a blue woman because the dusk later on might be blue, pretends she’s spinning sensations with threads of gold, pretends that childhood is today and silver-plated with toys, pretends that a vein hadn’t opened and pretends that from it in whitest si- lence scarlet blood isn’t pouring, and that she isn’t pale as death but this she was pretending as if it really were true, amidst the pretending she needed to speak the truth of an opaque stone so it could contrast with the glinting green pretending, pre- tends that she loves and is loved, pretends that she doesn’t need to die of longing, pretends that she’s lying in the transparent palm of the hand of God, not Lóri but her secret name that for the time being she still can’t enjoy, pretends she’s alive and not dying since in the end living was no more chan getting ever closer to death, pretends she doesn’t drop her arms in confu- sion when the threads of gold she’s been spinning get tangled.”

Jules Laforgue (1886) – Camille Bryen, L'Imitation de Notre-Dame la Lune. Illunée de gravures de Camille Bryen, Binding by Monique Mathieu, Jean-Pierre Ollivier, Paris, 1974, Edition of 17

Marcel Duchamp – Man Ray, Rrose Sélavy et moi estimons les ecchymoses des esquimaux aux mots exquis, [1924] [© Adagp, Paris]