Читать книгу Anthology of Black Humor - André Breton - Страница 20

When you want to make a 16 into a 9 (pay attention now), you must take two death’s heads (two, do you hear; I could have said six, but, although I served in the Dragoons, I’m modest: so I’ll just say two) and, while I’m in the garden, you’ll have all that arranged in my room, so that I’ll find the decoration all ready when I come in. Or else you’ll tell me I’ve just received a package from Provence, one that has already been signed for: I’ll open it eagerly… and it will be that—and I’ll get quite a scare (I’m really quite timid by nature, as I’ve proved two or three times in my life).

Ah, good people, good people! believe me, do not invent anything, for it isn’t worth the effort to invent things that are so flat, so stupid, so easy to guess. There are so many better ways to spend your time than inventing, and when you don’t have a mind for invention, you’re better off making shoes or cannulas, than inventing heavily, clumsily, and stupidly.

The 19th, sent on the 22nd.

By the way, hurry up and send me my linens; and tell those who judge that I couldn’t care less, that they judge very badly, for M. de Rougemont, the director, who judges very well, has just judged that my stove was due for some serious repairs, and he’s having them done. And so, for once in your life, if it’s possible, pull the cart together; for however horrid you all may be, you should still try not to be so horrid that one of you is pulling to the right while the other is pulling to the left. Pull like M. de Rougemont, the director; there’s a man with good common sense, who always pulls straight—or who has himself pulled when he isn’t doing the pulling. My valet commends himself to you so that the magistrate’s wife won’t forget that if he indeed gave the signal, she had promised to have his son made a sergeant.

* Cf. Maurice Heine on “the case of the Marquis de Sade’s ‘Spanish-fly’ candies” (Hippocrate, March 1933) and on “Rose Keller, or the Arcueil affair before the Parliament” (Annales de Médecine légale, March 1933).

* L’Evidence poétique.

* Hey! double against simple: that’s a good one. Don’t you wish you’d thought of it? [Sade’s note]