Elena Poniatowska - Leonora

‘Did you go out again after returning home and not finding me here? Have I come back too late? I was so sure that you would be in and now that you’re not I find an immense sadness deep inside me. When I came in the porter gave me a look as if you had told him something about me. Is that true?

‘I am slowly and painfully exploding with the desire to see you, please come back soon. I cannot stretch out on the bed alone, on that devourer of fornicators, only with you there beside me; I don’t dare to lie down alone upon such an object. I am terrified to be here alone, of falling into the chasm. I love you abominably, it’s horrific to be here alone without you, even though I am used to your being away all day long. I loathe New York. I love you and I want to make love to you, to kiss you and lick you. It is getting late and there’s no sign of you. I’m not afraid of anything, for the love of God — or of Satan, better of Satan — come soon, come soon, Renato. I am going mad without you, I need you so much. I am in anguish, and I need you so much. If only you knew how much I need you! I am not going to stop writing until you get back, and that way your absence will feel less terrible. Have you ever felt such strength of emotion? It’s horrible. Tomorrow I’ll go to the Consulate with you, just in order not to be without you. This lost night, night of loss, is truly terrible. I realise I am now becoming hysterical. Do you blame me and is that why you don’t come home? I don’t believe you capable of behaving like this. Luckily, you are not like me. I would be willing to give up the cat, all my hair and my left hand to have you back. I am going to strip myself of every violent emotion in order not to be in a bad mood when you return. It is terrible of me to get annoyed with you. I love you. From time to time I stop writing to see if I can hear your steps on the stairs. If you don’t come soon, I shall have to write a new page, and then another and another, throughout the night. Nothing can be worse than these feelings that suffocate me. The cat suffers along with me when we are alone, they should give him a dose of Cardiazol too, and put him in a seaside asylum.

‘(See I have had to start a fresh page). Now I really am afraid. What can you be doing? Where are you? Are you happy to be without me at this moment in time? RENATO, FOR THE LOVE OF THE DEVIL, COME SOON.

‘I don’t know if I should go out and look for you. In any case, I’ve no idea where to go to look for you … That frightens me. I realise how close I am again to madness: I am sweating and trembling over something that would seem unimportant to most people.

‘Should I go out or not? It’s hard to know. I think I may be starting to write nonsense. RENATO, RENATO, RENATO, you have to hear me, I am shouting so loud from deep inside. Can’t you hear me?

‘If my love for you has turned to drivel, you should learn that one should never fall in love with madwomen, for we are all the same.

‘RENATO.

‘RENATO.

‘RENATO.

‘I can hear a sound on the staircase but it’s not you.

‘NO.

‘I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you. What I’ve been through, when you get back you won’t have any idea of what tempests of fear and sadness I’ve been through. You will be calm as ever.

‘I am tortured, I am dying, I am furious and I know I exaggerate. R E N A T O, if you don’t come before I write four more lines, I shall go out and get drunk. Sadly, totally, and in dignified solitude. My handwriting is truly awful. Come quickly as I am about to go out. I am terrified to be without you. Maybe you are tired of me. Renato, after you have read this letter, I want you to tell me over and over that you love me in order to reassure me, and that you’ll kiss me at least a hundred times over and with great tenderness, for it is vile being the hysteric I am. You must not leave me alone, damn blast bugger and hellFIRE .

‘RENATO, I AM UTTERLY TERRIFIED OF BEING WITHOUT YOU.

‘I am coming downstairs, I love you.’

PEGGY GUGGENHEIM REFUSES to allow her feelings to get in the way of her admiration for Leonora’s paintings, and she includes The Horses of Lord Candlestick in the exhibition she uses to launch the new gallery in Manhattan she calls Art of this Century.

Thirty-one Surrealist women are included, putting their own revolution on show.

Peggy nervously walks through the exhibition halls. Max has installed himself beside the phone, awaiting Leonora’s call since dawn. Djuna Barnes confirms the general observation:

‘The only occasion on which I’ve seen Max show any emotion is when he’s around Leonora. Otherwise, to me he always appears as cold as a reptile.’

In their reunions, Leonora always manages to sit next to Breton. In acknowledging her power, Breton admires the originality of the painter who proves herself capable of coming back from the abyss.

‘After seeing your drawings, I think it’s important that you also write about your madness. When I was a doctor, the French psychiatrist Pierre Janet talked to me about l’amour fou , a study of hysteria in women. He was responsible for discovering both the eroticism and the aesthetics that I converted into Surrealism.’

‘I can’t, André, I can’t for it still hurts me too much.’

‘It’s just that if you did, you might be able to save many others. For more than fifteen years, I’ve protested against locking up the mentally infirm. That’s what the first Surrealist Manifesto is all about. I could have devoted my life to collecting the secrets of the demented and to defending them against the law that judges them for actions that to me are no more than bids for freedom.’

‘What constitutes a bid for freedom, in your opinion?’

‘Challenging whoever confronts you; saying what you think; taking off your clothes whenever it appeals to you; reaching the apex of convulsion through pain or joy …’

So why is Breton himself not possessed of this convulsive beauty, why does it always have to be a woman? Breton does not offer himself as a candidate to wake up in bed of a morning, naked and smeared with his own faeces. What he would prefer is for the woman to return to the abyss, so he can analyse her and so complete his views on the unconscious.

‘There is an abyss between your theoretical concepts and the agony I went through thanks to the Cardiazol.’

‘In spite of your agony, you need to make an effort.’

‘However much of a doctor you are, you talk like a spectator.’

‘I visited numerous French asylums with Pierre Janet, and followed experiments in using hypnosis in the treatment of hysteria.’

‘But for you it was never a lived inner experience; and there’s the difference.’

‘I am a doctor and I love women. I am advising you to write about what you have lived. Your stories are truly excellent; keep writing, Leonora. Or are you regretting something from your past life?’

‘No, I don’t regret a thing.’

Leonora takes great pains in elaborating a version of her experiences in Santander.

‘Show it to me,’ Breton insists.

Jacqueline Lamba and Breton no longer love one another as before, and this has repercussions on Aube. Jacqueline complains that Breton never introduces her as a painter, but rather as a Naiad he has fished out of the Seine. In revenge, Lamba cultivates David Hare, a millionaire admirer, who follows her around everywhere, insisting that she is a genius, and that every one of her brushstrokes is a revelation.

Breton includes Leonora in the Surrealist exhibition held in the Reid mansion, for the benefit of both prisoners of war and French children.