Tropic of Capricorn

". . . he was not all crazy, and could explain his conduct when occasion required. His actions, none the less, were as disconcerting as Jarry's worst eccentricities. For example, he was barely out of hospital when he hired himself out as a stevedore, and he thereafter passed his afternoons in unloading coal on the quays along the Loire. In the evening, on the other hand he would make the rounds of the cafes and cinemas, dressed in the height of fashion and with many variations of costume. What was more, in time of war, he would strut forth sometimes in the uniform of a lieutenant of Hussars, sometimes in that of an English officer, of an aviator or of a surgeon. In civil life, he was quite as free and easy, thinking nothing of introducing Breton under the name of Andre Salmon, while he took unto himself, but quite without vanity, the most wonderful titles and adventures. He never said good morning nor good evening nor good-bye, and never took any notice of letters, except those from his mother, when he had to ask for money. He did not recognize his best friends from one day to another…"

Do you recognize me, lads? Just a Brooklyn boy communicating with the red-haired albinos of the Zuni region. Making ready, with feet on the desk, to write “strong works, works forever incomprehensible”, as my dead comrades were promising. These “strong works” – would you recognize them if you saw them? Do you know that of the millions who were killed not one death was necessary to produce “the strong work”? New beings, yes! We have need of new beings still. We can do without the telephone, without the automobile, without the high-class bombers – but we can't do without new beings. If Atlantis was submerged beneath the sea, if the Sphinx and the Pyramids remain an eternal riddle, it is because there were no more new beings being born. Stop the machine a moment! Plash back! Flash back to 1914, to the Kaiser sitting on his horse. Keep him sitting there a moment with his withered arm clutching the bridle rein. Look at his moustache! Look at his haughty air of pride and arrogance! Look at his ca

And if they tell you that these things had to be, that things could not have happened otherwise, that France did her best and Germany her best and that little Liberia and little Ecuador and all the other allies also did their best, and that since the war everybody has been doing his best to patch things up or to forget, tell them that their best is not good enough, that we don't want to hear any more this logic of “doing the best one can”, tell them we don't want the best of a bad bargain, we don't believe in bargains good or bad, nor in war memorials. We don't want to hear about the logic of events – or any kind of logic. “Je ne parle pas logique,” said Montherlant, “je parle generosite.” I don't think you heard it very well, since it was in French. I'll repeat it for you, in the Queen's own language; “I'm not talking logic, I'm talking generosity.” That's bad English, as the Queen herself might speak it, but it's clear. Generosity – do you hear? You never practise it, any of you, either in peace or in war. You don't know the meaning of the word. You think to supply guns and ammunition to the wi

Ah yes, if I had known then that these birds existed -Cendrars, Vache, Grosz, Ernst, Apollinaire – if I had known that then, if I had known that in their own way they were thinking exactly the same things as I was, I think I'd have blown up. Yes, I think I'd have gone off like a bomb. But I was ignorant. Ignorant of the fact that almost fifty years previously a crazy Jew in South America had given birth to such startlingly marvellous phrases as “doubt's duck with the vermouth lips” or “I have seen a fig eat an onager” – that about the same time a Frenchman, who was only a boy, was saying: “Find flowers that are chairs” . . . “my hunger is the black air's bits” . . . “his heart, amber and spunk”. Maybe at the same time, or thereabouts, while Jarry was saying “in eating the sound of moths”, and Apollinaire repeating after him “near a gentleman swallowing himself”, and Breton murmuring softly “night's pedals move uninterruptedly”, perhaps “in the air beautiful and black” which the lone Jew had found under the Southern Cross another man, also lonely and exiled and of Spanish origin, was preparing to put down on paper these memorable words: “I seek, all in all, to console myself for my exile, for my exile from eternity, for that unearthing (destierro) which I am fond of referring to as my unheavening … At present, I think that the best way of writing this novel is to tell how it should be written. It is the novel of the novel, the creation of creation. Or God of God, Deus de Deo.” Had I known he was going to add this, this which follows, I would surely have gone off like a bomb… “By being crazy is understood losing one's reason. Reason, but not the truth, for there are madmen who speak truths while others keep silent. . .” Speaking of these things, speaking of the war and the war dead, I ca

Everywhere in all times the same ovarian world a