Salvador Dali's Pleasures
And Poetry of the Little Things
Ants. Pebbles. Bread crumbs. Hairs on the back of the neck. Sewing needles. Record needles. Blackheads. Subatomic particles. Strands of DNA.
Sometimes it’s the little things in life that give us truly great pleasure. In the book Tiny Surrealism, Roger Rothman writes:
Salvador Dalí loved tiny things…if there was one constant in Dalí’s career it was the love of the tiny. His love of little things — of things that exist at the boundary of perception and on the edge of cognition — was a love Dali never abandoned.
In the fall of 1927, Salvador Dalí wrote the following poem in Spanish, also published in Catalan in the August 31, 1928, issue of the journal L’Amic de les Arts (Friend of the arts):
Poema de les cosetes (Poem of little things)
To Sebastia Gasch, with all antiartistic delight
There’s a tiny little thing in a spot up high.
I’m happy, I’m happy, I’m happy, I’m happy.
The sewing needles plunge into sweet and tender little bits of nickel.
My girlfriend’s hand is made of cork full of thumbtacks.
One of my girlfriend’s breasts is a calm sea urchin, the other a swarming
wasp’s nest.My girlfriend has a knee of smoke.
The little charms, the little charms, the little charms, the little charms, the
little charms, the little charms, the little charms, the little charms. . .THE LITTLE CHARMS PRICK
The partridge’s eye is red.
Little things, little things, little things, little things, little things, little things, little things, little things, little things, little things, little things, little things . . .
THERE ARE LITTLE THINGS AS STILL AS A LOAF OF BREAD
In his article "Total Camouflage for Total War", published in Esquire magazine in August 1942, Dali writes:
Always I saw what others did not see; and what they saw, I did not.
It’s a lesson to pay attention, look closely, and observe. So, what are the tiny, small, little things that bring you pleasure? Why don’t you write a poem and see what emerges — send it to me below.
Sometimes, Pleasure Lists come in the form of Against/For lists. You often can figure out what you love, what guides you — by figuring out what you don’t. Below, an illustrated version of Dali’s list, “My Struggle” that was adapted from Ramon Gomez de la Serna’s Dalí.
I encourage you to write one of your and submit it to The Pleasure Lists.
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This Week’s Pleasurable Encounters
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called about her starry Hollywood upbringing- and his snarky, biting reviews of LA food culture in his letter
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