"One night during a concert at the residence of the Princess de Polignac, I was surrounded by a group of elegant ladies, the most vulnerable lucubrations my class. My obsession with Tell me bread led to a dream that crystallized in the project of founding a secret society of bread, which would be aimed at the systematic mass cretinization. That night, between glasses of champagne, I discussed the general plan. (...) I begged them to reveal the secret of the bread. Then he confided that the main event of the bread, the first thing should be done, was baking a loaf of fifteen meters in length. Nothing more feasible on condition that be taken seriously. First you build a big oven to cook sick. This bread should not be unusual in any respect, should be just like any other French bread, except in size. Once made bread should find a place to put it. I was in favor of a site that was not too well known or frequented, so that his appearance was all the more inexplicable, since the insoluble nature and purpose of the act had cretinizador circumstances. I suggested the interior gardens of the Palais Royal. Come the bread in two trucks, and would place him at the designated site, a squad of secret society members dressed as workers, who pretend to want to install a water pipe out. The bread would be wrapped in sheets of newspaper tied with string. After placing the bread, some members of society, which previously would have rented an apartment from where he could be the chosen site, would occupy their posts in order to give a first detailed report on the different reaction to the discovery of bread. Was quite easy to predict the highly demoralizing effect that would produce such an act perpetrated in the heart of a city like Paris. The first question would be what to do with it. The event would have no absolutely unprecedented, and the enormity of the object to act with restraint force. Before doing anything else, would take the bread, intact, to a place where he could be examined. Does it contain explosives? No! Are you poisoned? No! In other words, is it a bread that also has some peculiarities of its excessive size? No, certainly not, nor is it an ad. Then the newspapers, eager insoluble facts, they would act on their own, and the bread would become food for wild born zeal of the disputants. The hypothesis of insanity would be probably one of the first to suggest, but that the theories and differences of opinion would be multiplied to infinity. For one crazy, or even one sane, there would be enough to knead, cook and put the bread where he had been found. The hypothetical madman would have to fend of the complicity of several people co-ordinated practical enough to implement the idea. Thus the hypothesis of a crazy crazy or group would not have a solid foundation. It should therefore be concluded that this was a class act probably a manifestation of a political, perhaps, whose secret will soon be clear. But how to interpret, even symbolically, such a demonstration, which, after an unusual effort cost, stood no chance of efficacy because of the darkness of intention? Its attribution to the Communist Party was excluded. It was precisely the opposite of conventional and bureaucratic spirit. Besides, what they wanted to show by this means? What was needed a lot of bread to feed the world? What was sacred bread? No, no, this was stupid. Could be suspected that all was not a joke perpetrated by students or the Surrealist group, but this assumption, I know, would not completely convinced anyone. Those who knew the disorganization and the inability of the Surrealist group to undertake anything that required a minimum of practical endeavor, aimed not matter what order, they already knew that the surrealists were unable to take seriously the construction of fifty-foot oven indispensable baking bread. As students, was even more childish suspect them, for the means at their disposal were even more limited. Someone would Dali have suspected: the secret society of Dali! But this would be asking too much. All these hypotheses formed randomly around the excitement, in the process of cooling, caused by the event, would, however, swept by the shock of a new act, two, three times more stunning than the first, the appearance in Versailles court of bread than twenty meters long. The existence of a secret society was exposed and everyone, and she began to forget about tedious story of the first occurrence of the pan the audience was suddenly immersed in the moral of this second appearance. At breakfast time the eager eyes of readers were inevitably drawn in search of headlines and photographs heralds the onset of the third pan, which could not be delayed, so that the loaves Dalí were beginning to "eat" the other news about politics, world events and sexual making tasteless and reducing them to a second-rate interest. But instead of the expected third bread, an event that would exceed all bounds of the plausible. The same day, at the same time, hundred-foot rolls appear in public places in the various capitals of Europe. The next day a telegram from America announced the emergence of a new bread of forty and five meters, covering the sidewalk from the Savoy-Plaza until the end of the block where the hotel is St. Moritz. If such an act could be carried out successfully, with rigorous attention to all the important details shown, no one could discuss the effectiveness of poetic act alone, be able to create a state of confusion, panic and hysteria highly instructive from an experimental point of view and able to become the starting point from which, according to the principles of my imaginative hierarchical monarchy could be subsequently systematically trying to ruin the logical significance of all the mechanisms of the practical world rational. "
Salvador Dalí. The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí (1942)
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