Non Fiction Authors From France

"Received your letter and, almost at the same time, the long text at which I was overjoyed. You no doubt know that you are the only person in the world to have put together the gestation of the glass The Large Glass, circa 1923] in all its detail, including even the numerous intentions which were never executed [by Duchamp]. Your patient work has enabled me to relive a period of long years during which the notes were written for the 'Green Box' [the second of the three Boxes Duchamp created and this one was full of written notes] at the same time as the Glass [= The Large Glass] was taking shape. And I confess to you that, not having read these notes for a very long time, I had completely lost all recollection of numerous points not illustrated on the glass and which are a delight to me now [c. 25 years later]."

"Based on the metaphysical implications of the Dadaist dogma.. ..Arp's Reliefs [carvings] between 1916 and 1922 are among the most convincing illustrations of that anti- rationalistic era.. .Arp showed the importance of a smile to combat the sophistic theories of the moment. His poems of the same period stripped the word of its rational connotation to attain the most unexpected meaning through alliteration or plain nonsense."

"..Yes, indeed, what have we been up to? I feel rather like I've retired to the country, in some remote province, for that's what my life is like in N. Y. I see few people and people don’t try to see me anymore as they know they bore me. I write to the Arensberg's once a year and they do the same. There is a general weariness which, I think, is not confined to our generation. To tell the truth, most people prefer war to peace.. .Well, there you are, my dear Yvonne. Nothing as usual. Chess as much as possible: at least chess players don’t talk -"

"Miro came of age as an artist just at the time World War 1. ended. With the end of the war came the end of all the new pre-war art conceptions. A young painter could not start as a Cubist or a Futurist, and Dada was the only manifestation at the moment. Miro began by painting farm scenes from the countryside of Barcelona, his native land.. .A few years later he came to Paris [circa 1914] and found himself among the Dadaists who were, at that time, transmuting into Surrealism. In spite of this contact Miró kept aloof from any direct influence and showed a series of canvases in which form submitted to strong colouring expressed a new two-dimensional cosmogony, in no way related to abstraction."

"I have forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own tastes."

"The Dada movement was an anti-movement which corresponded to a need born of the first World War. Although neither literary nor pictorial in essence, Dada found its exponents in painters and writers scattered all over the world. Max Ernst's activities in Cologne in 1917 made him the foremost representative of the Dada painters. Between 1919 and 1921 his paintings, drawings and collages depicting the world of the subconscious were already a foretaste of Surrealism.. .In fact his previous achievements had certainly influenced, to a great extent, the literary Surrealist exploration of the subconscious."

"De Chirico [Italian painter, later admired by the Surrealists as 'early Surrealist'] found himself in 1912 confronted with the problem of following one of the roads already opened or of opening a new road. He avoided Fauvism as well as Cubism and introduced what could be called 'metaphysical painting'. Instead of exploiting the coming medium of abstraction, he organized on his canvases the meeting of elements which could only meet in a 'metaphysical world'. These elements, painted in the minutest technique, were 'exposed' on a horizontal plane in orthodox perspective. This technique, in opposition to the Cubist or the purely abstract formula in full bloom at the moment, protected de Chirico’s position and allowed him to lay down the foundation of what was to become Surrealism ten years later."

"You [ Katherine Sophie Dreier; director of the Art Center in New York City; she co-founded with Duchamp and Man Ray the 'Sociéte Anonyme' in Manhattan in 1920] must understand: My attitude toward the book is based upon my attitude towards 'Art' since 1918 – so I am furious myself that you will accept only partly that attitude [in a new publication by Katherine Dreier]. It can be no more question of my life as an artist’s life: [because] I gave it up ten years ago; this period is long enough to prove that my intention to remain outside of any art manifestation is permanent.. .The third question is that I want to be alone as much as possible. This abrupt way to speak of my 'hardening process' is not meant to be mean, but is the result of '42 years of age'.. ..10 000 apologies for this rough letter and affectueusement Dee -"

"I have been wanting to write to you for some time, but never have time, so absorbed I am in playing chess. I play night and day and nothing in the whole world interests me more than finding the right move.. .Nothing transcendental going on here – strikes [in Buenos Aires, where chess competitions were organized that year for not professionals] a lot of strikes, the people are on the move. Painting interests me less and less."

"If a straight horizontal thread one meter long falls from a height of one meter on to a horizontal plane twisting as it pleases [it] creates a new image of the unit of length."

"Painting is over and done with. Who could do anything better than this propeller? Look, could you do that?"

"To be looked at [from the other side of his art-work 'The Glass'] with one eye, close to, for almost an hour."

"They say any artist paying six dollars may exhibit Mr. Richard Mutt [= Long time scholars recognize R. Mutt was Duchamp himself; a growing number attribute credit Elsa Von Freytag-Loringhoven, a bisexual dada artist living in New York who as a woman, needed a pseudonym to get into the Armory Exhibition]. The object was photographed by Alfred Steiglitz before disappearing and was never was exhibited. What were the grounds for refusing Mr. Mutt fountain: 1. Some contented it was immoral, vulgar. 2. Others, it was plagiarism, a plain piece of plumbing."

"Now, if you [his sister, Suzanne Duchamp ] have been up to my place, you will have seen, in the studio, [his former studio in France, probably in Paris] a 'Bicycle Wheel' and a 'Bottle Rack'. [both art-works became later famous ready-mades of Duchamp] – I bought this as a ready-made sculpture [sculpture tout faite]. And I h have a plan concerning this so-called bottle rack. Listen to this. Here in N.Y., I have bought various objects in the same taste and I treat them as 'ready-mades'. You know enough English to understand the meaning of 'ready-made' [tour fait] that I give these objects. – I sign them and think of an inscription for them in English. I'll give you a few examples. I have, for example, a large snow shovel on which I have inscribed at the bottom: In advance of the broken arm, French translation: 'En avance dus bras cassé' – (Don't tear your hair out) trying to understand this in the Romantic or impressionist or Cubist sense – it has nothing to do with all that. Another 'readymade' is called: Emergency in favour of twice possible French translation: Danger \Crise \en favour de 2 fois. This long preamble just to say: Take this bottle rack for yourself. I'm making it a 'readymade' remotely. You are to inscribe it at the bottom and on the inside of the bottom circle, in small letters painted with a brush in oil, silver white colour, with an inscription which I will give you herewith, and then sign it, in the same handwriting, as follows: [after] Marcel Duchamp."

"People talk of Pablo Picasso as the leader of the Cubists but, strictly speaking, he is no longer a Cubist. Today he is a Cubist, tomorrow he will be something else. The only true Cubists are Gleizes and Metzinger."

"I have impressed upon you my preoccupation with earning money so as to have a secure existence over there. That's the way it have to be.. .I am very happy to hear that you Walter Pach sold these canvasses for me and thank you very sincerely for your friendship. But I am afraid of getting to the stage of needing to sell canvases, In a word, of being a painter for a living. – So I'll be leaving probably on the 22nd or rather 29th May [1915], if the police authorities allow me to take the steamer."

"..I am not going to New York, I am leaving Paris. That's quite different. Long before the war [World War 1.] I already had a distaste for the 'artistic life' I was involved in. – It's quite the opposite of what I'm looking for. – And so I tried, through the Library, to escape from artists somewhat. Then, with the war, my incompatibility with this milieu grew. I wanted to go away at all costs. Where to? My only option was New York where I knew you [ Walter Pach, artist and friend of Duchamp] and where I hope to be able to escape leading the artistic life, if needs be through a job which will keep me very busy. I ask you to keep all this from my brothers [all his brothers were artists as well] because I know my leaving will be very painful for them. – the same goes for my father and sisters."

"To practice magic is to be a quack; to know magic is to be a sage."

"There was much talk in the last century about an adept accused of charlatanism, who was termed in his lifetime the divine Cagliostro. It is known that he practised evocations and that in this art he was surpassed only by the illuminated Schroepffer."

"He whom we behold perishing poor and abandoned is Cornelius Agrippa, less of a magician than any, though the vulgar persist in regarding him as a more potent sorcerer than all."

"Judge not; speak hardly at all; love and act."

"They are without fears and without desires, dominated by no falsehood, sharing no error, loving without illusion, suffering without impatience, reposing in the quietude of eternal thought... a Magus cannot be ignorant, for magic implies superiority, mastership, majority, and majority signifies emancipation by knowledge. The Magus welcomes pleasure, accepts wealth, deserves honour, but is never the slave of one of them; he knows how to be poor, to abstain, and to suffer; he endures oblivion willingly because he is lord of his own happiness, and expects or fears nothing from the caprice of fortune. He can love without being beloved; he can create imperishable treasures, and exalt himself above the level of honours or the prizes of the lottery. He possesses that which he seeks, namely, profound peace. He regrets nothing which must end, but remembers with satisfaction that he has met with good in all. His hope is a certitude, for he knows that good is eternal and evil transitory. He enjoys solitude, but does not fly the society of man; he is a child with children, joyous with the young, staid with the old, patient with the foolish, happy with the wise. He smiles with all who smile, and mourns with all who weep; applauding strength, he is yet indulgent to weakness; offending no one, he has himself no need to pardon, for he never thinks himself offended; he pities those who misconceive him, and seeks an opportunity to serve them; by the force of kindness only does he avenge himself on the ungrateful..."

"He looks on the wicked as invalids whom one must pity and cure; the world, with its errors and vices, is to him God's hospital, and he wishes to serve in it."

"To live like an anchorite, without the superstitious ignorance which leads him to such a course of life, this is wisdom indeed, and power is the reward."

"The Magus must have also another avocation than that of magician. Magic is not a trade."

"The most important magical instruments are the wand, the sword, the lamp, the chalice, the altar and the tripod. In the operations of Transcendental and Divine Magic, the lamp, wand and chalice are used; in the works of Black Magic, the wand is replaced by the sword and the lamp by the candle of Cardan.""

"The sorcerer and sorceress were almost invariably a species of human toad, swollen with long-enduring rancours. They were poor, repulsed by all and consequently full of hatred. The fear which they inspired was their consolation and their revenge; poisoned themselves by a society of which they had experienced nothing but the rebuffs and the vices, they poisoned in their turn all those who were weak enough to fear them, and avenged upon beauty and youth their accursed old age and their atrocious ugliness."

"In the “Ritual” it will be our task to estimate the sequence of truly magical ceremonies and evocations which constitute the great work of vocation under the name of the Exercises Of St. Ignatius."

"I will go further and affirm that magical circles and magnetic currents establish themselves, and have an influence, according to fatal laws, upon those on whom they can act. [...] The man who is eccentric in his genius is one who attempts to form a circle by combating the central attractive force of established chains and currents."

"He knows the significance of all symbolisms [sic] and of all religions; he dares to practise or abstain from them without hypocrisy and without impiety; and he is silent upon the one dogma of supreme initiation. He knows the existence and nature of the Great Magical Agent; he dares perform the acts and give utterance to the words which make it subject to human will, and he is silent upon the mysteries of the Great Arcanum."

"ALL religions have preserved the remembrance of a primitive book, written in hieroglyphs by the sages of the earliest epoch of the world. [...] The tradition in question rests altogether on the one dogma of Magic: the visible is for us the proportional measure of the invisible."

"Magic is the divinity of man conquered by science in union with faith; the true Magi are Men-Gods, in virtue of their intimate union with the divine principle."

"The science of spirits is therefore summed up entirely in the science of Jesus Christ. Angels and demons are purely hypothetical or legendary beings; let them remain in poetry, they cannot belong to science."*"Magic, the mere name became a crime and the common hatred was formulated in this sentence: “Magicians to the flames!” – as it was shouted some centuries earlier: “To the lions with the Christians!"

"In Black Magic, the Devil means the employment of the Grand Magical Agent for a wicked purpose by a perverted Will."

"Necromancy, and Goetia, which is Evil Magic, do produce such shells and demons, apparitions of deceit."

"There is a true and a false science, a Divine and an Infernal Magic – in other words, one which is delusive and tenebrous."

"Magic is an instrument of divine goodness or demoniac pride, but it is the annihilation of earthly joys and the pleasures of mortal life."

"The ceremonies being, as we have said, artificial methods for creating a habit of will, become unnecessary when the habit is confirmed."

"Magic, or rather magical power, comprehends two things, a science and a force: without the force the science is nothing, or rather it is a danger."

"[...] the hieroglyphic work of Hermes, being the Tarot or Book of Thoth.""

"The force of itself is blind, but can be directed by the will of man and is influenced by prevailing opinions. This universal fluid [the Astral Light] – if we decide to regard it as a fluid – being the common medium of all nervous organisms and the vehicle of all sensitive vibrations, establishes an actual physical solidarity between impressionable persons, and transmits from one to another the impressions of imagination and of thought.""

"I speak of the imagination, which the Kabalists term the DIAPHANE or TRANSLUCID. Imagination, in effect, is like the soul's eye; therein forms are outlined and preserved; thereby we behold the reflections of the invisible world; it is the glass of visions and the apparatus of magical life. By its intervention we heal diseases, modify the seasons, warn off death from the living and raise the dead to life, because it is the imagination which exalts will and gives it power over the Universal Agent."

"THE GREAT Magical Agent, by us termed the Astral Light, by others the soul of the earth, and designated by old chemists under the names of Azoth and MAGNESIA, this occult, unique and indubitable force, is the key of all empire, the secret of all power. It is the winged dragon of Medea, the serpent of the Edenic Mystery; it is the universal glass of visions, [...] To have control of the Great Magical Agent there are two operations necessary – to concentrate and project, or, in other words, to fix and to move."

"Magic is the traditional science of the secrets of Nature which has been transmitted to us from the Magi."

"Bloody and hideous facts; acts of revolting superstition, arrests, and executions of stupid ferocity. "Burn every body!" the Inquisition seemed to say — God will easily sort out His own! Poor fools, hysterical women, and idiots were roasted alive, without mercy, for the crime of "magic." But, at the same time, how many great culprits escaped this unjust and sanguinary justice! This is what Bodin makes us fully appreciate."

""The sign of the Cross adopted by the Christians does not belong exclusively to them. It is kabalistic, and represents the oppositions and quaternary equilibrium of the elements. We see by the occult verse of the Pater, to which we have called attention in another work, that there were originally two ways of making it, or, at least, two very different formulas to express its meaning — one reserved for priests and initiates; the other given to neophytes and the profane. Thus, for example, the initiate, carrying his hand to his forehead, said: To thee; then he added, belong; and continued, while carrying his hand to the breast — the kingdom; then, to the left shoulder — justice; to the right shoulder — and mercy. Then he joined the two hands, adding: throughout the generating cycles: 'Tibi sunt Malchut, et Geburah et Chassed per AEonas' — a sign of the Cross, absolutely and magnificently kabalistic, which the profanations of Gnosticism made the militant and official Church completely lose."

"Four letters make the Name that rules all names."

"1. All things proclaim an active, thinking cause. 2. The living unity heeds number's laws. 3. That which contains all is by nothing bound. 4. Before all else, He everywhere is found. 5. He, the sole Master—praise to Him alone! 6. To pure hearts His true doctrine He makes known. 7. Faith's works a single guide have, under heaven. 8. So one sole altar and one law are given. 9. What the Eternal founds, forever stays. 10. From high, down to our time, He rules each phase. 11. Great is His mercy, and His wrath severe. 12. He sends a king unto His people dear. 13. The tomb but leads to new lands by and by, Life is immortal, death alone shall die."

""Father, forgive them," said Jesus, "for they know not what they do." – People of good sense, whoever you may be, I will add, do not listen to them, for they know not what they say."

"Progress is a possibility for the animal: it can be broken in, tamed and trained; but it is not a possibility for the fool, because the fool thinks he has nothing to learn. It is his place to dictate to others and put them right, and so it is impossible to reason with him. He will laugh you to scorn in saying that what he does not understand is not a meaningful proposition. 'Why don't I understand it, then?', he asks you, with marvellous impudence. To tell him it is because he is a fool would only be taken as an insult, so there is nothing you can say in reply. Everybody else sees it quite clearly, but he will never realize it.Here then, at the outset, is a potent secret which is inaccessible to the majority of people; a secret which they will never guess and which it would be useless to tell them: the secret of their own stupidity."