DOG MAN DANDY

–let us not lose sight of the fact that the idea of Surrealism aims quite simply at the total recovery of our psychic force by a means which is nothing other than the dizzying descent into ourselves, the systematic illumination of hidden places and the progressive darkening of other places, the perpetual excursion into the midst of forbidden territory, and that there is no real danger of its activities coming to an end so long as man still manages to distinguish an animal from a flame or a stone–heaven help, I say, the Surrealist idea from beginning to progress without its ups and downs.

Except for that it was automatically the century before this one. Thus we are made aware of the continuity of times that were, and time itself is revealed not as a series of rooms but a single corridor stretching into the truth: an alpine pasture, with a few goats and, in the distance, a hovel. It is high noon.

In the street, stars collide, parts of their bodies breaking off like chunks of salt. Still, you hold her, you’re not letting go. She’s the bright-colored bird with real feathers and a toy heart, or toy feathers and a real heart. When all this started you were lying on a couch. Now your rise through the ceiling, now you’re roiled in a cloud, now you’re rain falling toward its target: a room in flames.

A word and everything is saved. A word and all is lost.

Do you still remember: falling stars, how they leapt slantwise through the sky like horses over suddenly held-out hurdles of our wishes—did we have so many?— for stars, innumerable, leapt everywhere; almost every gaze upward became wedded to the swift hazard of their play, and our heart felt like a single thing beneath that vast disintegration of their brilliance— and was whole, as if it would survive them!