I’m far from confident in the French language, in ordinary reality. Yet in my dreams and in half-dream states, I often compose or receive poems in the French. Here’s one I rediscovered today that carries a thrill for me:
Par ce qu’il visitait la lune au fond de la mer
Par ce qu’il se consolait avec le char de l’ abîme
Par ce qu’il se montrait dans les couleurs de ses rêves
Parce ce qu’il fit sauter les coeurs des filles dormantes
Laissez-passer
entre le monde mondaine
et le monde-montagne
The first four lines appeared, one by one, as captions under four small images set like postage stamps on a piece of paper under the silhouette of the pyramids at Giza. As I studied the document, I realized it was a laissez-passer (safe-conduct, travel permit) of a special kind, a license to travel between worlds.
I came upon this most interesting document when two young men appeared in a dream to escort me to a private showing of an exhibition. They spoke of this exhibition as a revolutionary event, one that was going to shake up people’s understanding of reality.
The exhibition included surrealist machines – for example, an old-fashioned gramophone with the stiletto heel of a woman’s shoe as the stylus – serial pictures developing certain themes, little sepia pictures and black-and-white photographs with poetic captions.
My excitement was only fully roused when I realized what the laissez-passer contained. Then I observed a lovely little faerie flying about the space on butterfly wings, and knew her name was Marquisite.
A rough translation of the poetic text of my dream laissez-passer:
Because he visited the moon at the bottom of the sea
Because he consoled himself with the chariot of the abyss
Because he showed himself in the colors of his dreams
Because he made the hearts of sleeping girls leap
ALLOWED TO PASS
between the worldly world
and the world-mountain
Salvador Dali, Aphrodisiac Telephone (1936)
