This is how it started.
During one of my most tranquil summers.
Tonight, I feel
half asleep in some sort of sweet reverie,
still very uncommon though, because my brain seems to be
completely submerged in a kind of half-sickening melancholy.
I can't tell if it's the moonlight or the dawn,
but in my mind everything is blurred
and an irresistible laziness pushes me up slowly towards my studio.
I think I'll be going to sleep very early.
Then suddenly at the door's entrance,
I see my everyday objects.
And all of a sudden I see a little postcard,
one of my adolescent obesessions.
Why not find in there something demonic;
if I could manage to tranform it,
so that this dying moonlight
could become one of the most violent images
my paranoid brain could ever possibly provoke.
The bells are always a bad omen where I live.
I decide to set
the postcard, enlarged, at the far end of a chapel,
it will be some sort of unusual exorcism.
In summary: the moon, the tip of the nose,
to the left the shaggy moustache,
constant tragedy of the human face
and the boat, the little boat
but of course
it could only be the contour of the nose.
Yes, yes and yes, fix your eyes,
spread your eyes wide before this limpid water
and suddenly from this tranquility,
arises the fierce face,
nietzschean,
catastrophic,
which always preceeds
the most calm idyllic moments...
One, two, three, four, five!
Hitler will arise...
See the cruel mouth of Hitler!
See the eyes,
especially his right eye,
this kind of abominable tear,
personified by the ridiculous petit pierrot
who strolls along the quays
imbued with the grievous ideologies
of Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
who has caused the misfortunes of all revolutions
Teatro Museo Dalí presents
Impressions of Upper Mongolia
Hommage to Raymond Roussel
A film by Salvador Dalí
Directed by José Montes Baquer
And now
we turn to the tranquility, this time it is classic
rather than romantic;
the classic tranquility of the studio
where I am painting, patiently
and stereoscopically
the portrait of Gala and myself.
It is precisely in this supreme and immutable tranquility of the Port Lligat
that as a way to reward
- REWARD, REWARD! -
Gala for her love and patience,
I decided to send
a team of explorers,
to illustrate, to rightfully recompense her,
so she could see the land
we had so greatly desired, of Upper Mongolia,
where my explorers will go to seek out the pure white mushroom,
the hallucinogenic mushroom
which posseses all the geological virtues,
for geology is in itself a total LSD trip.
Enter the museum, enter the Dali theater-museum,
this consists of entering through the printed circuit boards,
that is to say, the circuits printed in gold
of the most intimate interior
of the brain of Salvador Dalí.
In Vermeer, the backgrounds are always
mysterious maps
and it turns out to be a Dalinian Paradox
to see in these Vermeers,
the two essential elements:
the letter, set against itself from very far
explaining some sort of unbelievable fairytale
and behind it, the geographical possibility,
the fetishistic verification of the possibilty to go there.
It is more precisely, through a letter
that I learned about the existence of a hallucinogenic civilisation
in Occidental Upper Mongolia
and it is exactly in this map,
mysterious, surely,
that we discovered the existence of this strange geographical sector
where the famous white mushrooms exist,
soft,
hallucinogenic:
champlinclis histratatus domus biancus.
Behold the great soft mushroom;
now it is moving
because we have filmed in an accelerated manner.
I think we will soon see the island
which is the protagonist of the birth of this strange mushroom
which has given birth to a whole oneiric civilisation.
There we are.
Now we see the tip of the island,
a piece of the island,
and then, another which is much more limpid and blue
and the island itself is already disquieting.
Now I see some sort of vegetation
which seem like warriors busy devouring one another
and which ressemble very much prehistoric sketches
describing battles.
The "morros de cony",
this mimetic insect
which grows, precisely in this mushroom,
which could have very well been ripe, but is all moldy.
These insects carry on their backs
the eggs which contain all the hallucinogenic products
which are themselves pentagonal or hexagonal.
It is LSD without the LSD
and instead of producing concrete images,
celestial images;
as the angels of Elche descended from his famous aracoelli,
I conceived the celestial cupola of Emille Piñeiro.
Once again
the obsession over these eggs
found by my explorers in Mongolia,
which crystallize, by way of a paranoiac-critical prophecy,
crystallize in the cupola,
that will for the same price immortalize
our great architect Emilio Piñeiro
and it is nothing other than the geodesic cupola
terrifying with its beauty,
apotheosic,
once again,
we can say, in an absolutely categorical manner,
folklore cuckolded by the universality
of the expedition to Upper Mongolia.
Just as I was saying, hypocritcally and precisely,
this oriental screen, which is very beautiful but banal,
so there is no contrast with the other,
dates from the dynasty of the hallucinogenic princess.
If the first document would arrive,
a wonderful portrait, a precious box.
They seem to be true printed circuits containing the egg
which grows within the great soft mushroom.
The great Mongol
is holding the flower which preceeds this mushroom
and in his hand
is the precious box, which we can barely see,
but which we have just appraised for all its worth.
An instant...
one of the chairs - which is not a chair, but really a throne,
the throne of the princess,
who is responsible for this hallucinatory dynasty.
Warriors,
which seem to be warriors but are the vegetation moving in the rain.
The famous mummy of the princess.
She is covered in six million little plates of jade,
each of these plates contain miniature letters
which reveal the secret of this dynasty,
the most mysterious of all;
each of these plates have been analyzed
and we discovered that
many of these plates contain the screen
which we will see integrated in the film of our expedition.
As a result, during my visit to Cadaques
and in the intimacy of my work,
typical, archetypical of Vermeer of Delft,
the explorers were searching
for the fabulous hallucinogenic white mushroom
which they brought to me from Upper Mongolia,
this mushroom, did nothing other than
truly, inescapably determine
all the styles of the Dalí Museum in Figueres
and the proof is that this ceiling,
which was intended to be the Palais del'Empordà
that is to say, an almost folkloristic ceiling,
becomes universal
because it will be, ultimately,
a premonition
of the hyperesthetic, hallucinogenic images
of my illustrious, minimal, little ballpoint pen.
Open up your eyes,
because all that you are about to see
is the work the of paranoiac- critical interpretation
of the brain of your modest and proud servant.
Immediately after
the appearance of these strange capsules
which contain so many mysterious things;
we can see the lift-off, the shadow of lift-off
of the planes; one of them transports the photographic material,
the other, all the gathered information
this other carries scientists and geologists.
The aurora.
We are surprised by the beauty of colors
which seem like a multitude of gems and precious stones.
Below is a city with electric lights
for this place has already been modernized.
On the horizon, radars,
an unknown city,
we have passed it quickly
because this flight is almost clandestine
and everyone is asking themselves
when we will see the first regions of the island.
Here now is the island.
It is on this island that the mushrooms are born,
the mushrooms which are the object of our expedition.
Here now is the sea,
or rather a lake...
one of the most important lakes.
It is full of vegetation;
our contraption is approaching
and we see one of these strange lands, which is composed of white spots,
which are like fleas;
you can see what seems to be little grains of penicillin,
of white mold,
those are gigantic mushrooms
and these mushrooms need six years to form.
The largest one found was eighteen meters,
this one,
eighteen meters high
and with the sole subtance of this mushroom, reduced to powder
a whole civilisation of Upper Mongolia was completely stupefied.
For these people could no longer distinguish
reality from their visions.
From time to time we have this extraordinary thing
between the rocks, ultramarine water,
pure with profundity,
where
the fish has just been brought to us.
The other island, the second island
much smaller,
but it seems that this island is completely sterile,
there are no more mushrooms.
Nevertheless, in the background,
white spots persist
because it is as if this landscape were granulated,
garnished with possibilities of pagodas.
And here they are.
This is the land
where we discovered little constructions,
the reddish thing is a temple,
above, it is all red
because the mountains are full of shrubs
which at sunset truly seem to be fire.
The cliffs,
these cliffs are sandy
and it is possible that the sand of these cliffs
is nothing but the finest powder
from thousands of gigantic mushrooms.
We live in a place
which is pulverised with substances,
a thousand times more powerful than LSD and which
the caravans of the desert come to find
with the most painful and rudimentary means, on the back of camels
and here I requested that the photograph be amplified
because I would like to see the type of people who are mounted on the camels.
Now we can see the caravan,
moving towards the place where the grand princess can be found
and who is now reduced to the most luxurious and refined mummy that exists in this world.
We now see a kind of landscape which we could almost say is from Cadaqués,
little rustic houses,
I see cypress, in the center the Great Mongol
who holds in one hand the precious chest,
a very pointed hat,
and in the other hand a flower that blossoms
every six years at the top of the hallucinogenic mushroom.
Here now, one of the protagonists of the film,
now we see the Great Mongol.
He is even carrying, I can see, a lace frill,
we see the box, we see his gesture,
he is the criminal responsible for this civilization
for these people burst with the satisfaction
of the excess of images,
for their brains weren't able to endure it
and produced this extraordinary shock,
this catastrophy which we will soon see,
a kind of apocalypse of rocks
and stones to be analysed.
Here begins a screen,
produced by the brains of people who were completely drugged
by the soft, white mushroom from before.
You can see that the sky is covered by kinds of objects,
pieces, fragments of falling geology,
but what is truly important here is the center.
The great tamer who carries a horizontal bar
and who is, like Orpheus, directing the chaos we are seeing:
beings made of stones, animals
with several scattered limbs, shredded by the preciosity of their matter.
At the very center is the mummy.
The head of the mummy, when she was alive.
There is a kind of mad warrior
who is in the middle of battling another who is falling with a decapitated head
while before the horizon, at every corner,
floats this kind of cataclysm we are seeing.
Look, as always, at the serenity of this face
in combination with the total indifference of the Great Mongol.
Now this is simply
the most interesting part of the film,
they are pieces of maps.
The same thing Vermeer did in his paintings,
of which never before had we seen an explosion of bizarre objects,
each consisting of ultra concrete images.
You can see here people who are giving each other gifts, who are on their knees,
to the right now will appear a big spider,
mutilated, without legs,
like a kind of Bourgogne snail,
with a long aggressive antenna.
But it is simply because someone has just mutilated this spider,
and cut off all her legs.
And that is why there are people floating, and fighting and walking,
half in sky, half underground,
half in the heights which are still very hard,
and in the milieu amédiste
once again this spider will disappear,
because all that we are seeing is from Upper Mongolia,
but at the same time high cruelty.
The deep sea
which emerges, finally, into quotidian reality
of fishermen of pearls and unknown shells.
In the background, there is the port, all the sails and all the boats
and in the foreground of this pile,
worthy of Leonardo da Vinci,
and the skies of an iridescent beauty which remind us of the dreams of Bizet
who would have been enchanted to put here
the famous pearl fishers of his prelude.
We see suddenly from this image
so much dawn in this land
before the hallucinogenic invasion of the princess,
it seems impossible that the battle would arise again.
Another grand mural, dating almost from
we could say, the prehistoric era,
in which we see beings that are running,
beings that are crying
beings that are fighting
and which are a truly visceral dawning
because all great paradise or all great apocalypse, all great nirvana
is always commanded by a war.
Here is the horse,
which seems to be from the battle of Tétuan,
thanks to our specialists
we are able to spring from this last battle,
which diminishes in intensity,
until the apparition
of the most tranquil lakes,
the mauve lake, surrounded by green.
And suddenly...
Coup de théatre!
No, not coup de theatre: Coup de cinéma!
For this little subliminal object,
this ballpoint pen from the Hotel Saint Regis, which I kiss,
contains in its little, minute, metallic section
all the film, all the hallucinogenic images
which Dalí has just imposed on your brain.
Which... if we were not in this dreadful time of pornography
I would slowly lower the ballpoint
down to the level of my little sex
and I would pour a few minute drops of uric acid,
which, having eaten away the small, divine and glowing part,
provoked the structures that your humble and proud servant
has provoked, for you must know that Dali is an agent provocateur,
and I repeat: has provoked this
during this whole time which your brain
has been shook by this marvelous hommage to Upper Mongolia.
Long live this rare ballpoint!
War, war!
And triumph to the power of imagination!
This ballpoint
contains the whole hommage to Raymond Roussel,
the whole voyage, the whole expedition to Upper Mongolia,
and the microstructures
which my team filmed in a castle in Germany,
a castle worthy of the alchemists of the middle ages,
this is what you have just seen.
Translation: Colombina Zamponi (2008)