eroticism found its fodder in three elements: angelicism, i.e., an expression that was seemingly asexual; cold, crude, refined, cruelty that killed sentiment; and a scatology which, as in the paintings of Gustave Moreau, is reflected by the accumulation of jewels, chains, buckles, raiment. Gold and shit, as is well known, represent the same thing to psychoanalysts. A woman in the grip of the shimmering tyranny of jewels is as if covered with excrement, and makes my mouth water.
Two things haunted me, and paralyzed me, at the time. One, a panic fear of venereal diseases. (My father had bred in me a horror of microbes. It is something I have never gotten over, and at times it has led me to fits of madness.) But, more especially, I long suffered from the terrible ache of believing myself impotent. Naked and trying to compare myself to my schoolmates, I found my cock small, pitiful, and soft. I have never forgotten a pornographic novel I once read in which a Don Juan effected new holes in female bellies with ferocious delight, stating that what he loved was to hear women crack open like so many watermelons. I was sure I would never be able to make any woman crack open like a watermelon. And that weakness gnawed at me. I tried to hide this aberration from myself, but I was often overcome by fits of uncontrollable laughter, reaching the point of hysteria, which were like the external sign of the great shifts that were taking place deep inside me. It was time for me to meet Gala.
“REPUGNANCE IS THE SENTRY STANDING RIGHT NEAR THE DOOR TO THOSE THINGS WE DESIRE THE MOST.”
Chapter Six: How To Conquer Paris
I was dreaming not of love but of glory, and I knew that the road to success led through Paris. But in 1927 Paris was far from Figueras, far away, mysterious, and big. I landed there one morning with my sister and aunt, to judge its distance and size, as a boxer does during a round of studying his opponent.
First I discovered Versailles (and continued to like the Escorial better) and the musty Musée Grévin waxworks. My self-confidence increased daily, but nothing essential had been accomplished. What I needed was the accolade of the only Parisian who mattered in my eyes: Pablo Picasso.
I had carefully prepared my way to him. I knew that Picasso had seen one of my paintings in Barcelona, Muchacha de Espaldes ( Rear View Of A Girl ; known in English as Girl’s Shoulder or Girl’s Back), and had liked it: he had mentioned it to his dealer, Paul Rosenberg, who had written me out of the blue to ask for some photographs of my work. I had asked a friend of Lorca’s, the Cuban painter Manuel Angel Ortiz, to take me to Picasso’s studio. As soon as I got to 23 Rue La Boétie, I knew those two jet-black button eyes of his had recognized me. I was “the other one” – the only one able to stand up to him. (In truth, now I know the world was a little too small for the two of us. Fortunately, I was still young!) I respectfully tendered a gift to him, another Figueras muchacha such as the one he had appreciated, and it took me quite a while to extricate it from its mummy’s wrappings; but it was a real live painting that came out of the diapers and it seemed to me that as he looked at it, it took on a sudden new life. Picasso spent a long while, scrutinizing it minutely, and it had never looked finer to me. From that minute on, he was at great pains to dazzle me.
My opening agitation was now replaced by assurance, as he took me into his studio on the floor above and for two hours kept displaying his paintings for me, the largest as well as the smallest, which he put on his easel. He went to and fro, choosing, weighing, setting up, silent and quick, stepping back, carefully inspecting his own genius but dancing his courtship dance for me alone and looking at me with long looks of complicity.
We each knew who we were. Our mutual silence was charged with an electricity of the highest potential. On coming in, I had told him
Two things haunted me, and paralyzed me, at the time. One, a panic fear of venereal diseases. (My father had bred in me a horror of microbes. It is something I have never gotten over, and at times it has led me to fits of madness.) But, more especially, I long suffered from the terrible ache of believing myself impotent. Naked and trying to compare myself to my schoolmates, I found my cock small, pitiful, and soft. I have never forgotten a pornographic novel I once read in which a Don Juan effected new holes in female bellies with ferocious delight, stating that what he loved was to hear women crack open like so many watermelons. I was sure I would never be able to make any woman crack open like a watermelon. And that weakness gnawed at me. I tried to hide this aberration from myself, but I was often overcome by fits of uncontrollable laughter, reaching the point of hysteria, which were like the external sign of the great shifts that were taking place deep inside me. It was time for me to meet Gala.
“REPUGNANCE IS THE SENTRY STANDING RIGHT NEAR THE DOOR TO THOSE THINGS WE DESIRE THE MOST.”
Chapter Six: How To Conquer Paris
I was dreaming not of love but of glory, and I knew that the road to success led through Paris. But in 1927 Paris was far from Figueras, far away, mysterious, and big. I landed there one morning with my sister and aunt, to judge its distance and size, as a boxer does during a round of studying his opponent.
First I discovered Versailles (and continued to like the Escorial better) and the musty Musée Grévin waxworks. My self-confidence increased daily, but nothing essential had been accomplished. What I needed was the accolade of the only Parisian who mattered in my eyes: Pablo Picasso.
I had carefully prepared my way to him. I knew that Picasso had seen one of my paintings in Barcelona, Muchacha de Espaldes ( Rear View Of A Girl ; known in English as Girl’s Shoulder or Girl’s Back), and had liked it: he had mentioned it to his dealer, Paul Rosenberg, who had written me out of the blue to ask for some photographs of my work. I had asked a friend of Lorca’s, the Cuban painter Manuel Angel Ortiz, to take me to Picasso’s studio. As soon as I got to 23 Rue La Boétie, I knew those two jet-black button eyes of his had recognized me. I was “the other one” – the only one able to stand up to him. (In truth, now I know the world was a little too small for the two of us. Fortunately, I was still young!) I respectfully tendered a gift to him, another Figueras muchacha such as the one he had appreciated, and it took me quite a while to extricate it from its mummy’s wrappings; but it was a real live painting that came out of the diapers and it seemed to me that as he looked at it, it took on a sudden new life. Picasso spent a long while, scrutinizing it minutely, and it had never looked finer to me. From that minute on, he was at great pains to dazzle me.
My opening agitation was now replaced by assurance, as he took me into his studio on the floor above and for two hours kept displaying his paintings for me, the largest as well as the smallest, which he put on his easel. He went to and fro, choosing, weighing, setting up, silent and quick, stepping back, carefully inspecting his own genius but dancing his courtship dance for me alone and looking at me with long looks of complicity.
We each knew who we were. Our mutual silence was charged with an electricity of the highest potential. On coming in, I had told him
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