Bunuel_Luis_My_Last_Breath

Surrealism ( I 929-1 933 ,) 111ence transformed Dali into an "Avida Dollars." A few years later hewas excommunicated.There were several subgroups within the movement, which hadformed according to certain curious affinities. Dali's best friends wereCrevel and Eluard, while I felt closest to Aragon, Georges Sadoul,Ernst, and Pierre Unik. Although Unik seems to have been forgottentoday, I found him a marvelous young man, brilliant and fiery. Hewas also an atheist, despite the fact that his father was a Jewish tailorwho also happened to be a rabbi. I remember Pierre telling his fatherone day of my desire to convert to Judaism. (Clearly explained, itwas to scandalize my family.) But despite his father's willingness tosee me, I backed out at the last minute, preferring to "remain faithful"to Christianity. We spent many long evenings together, withPierre's friend Agnes Capri, a beautiful and slightly lame librariannamed Yolande Oliviero, and a photographer called Denise, talkingendlessly, discussing our answers to surrealist surveys (primarily sexualones), and playing some terribly chaste libertine games. Pierrepublished two collections of poetry and edited the Communist partyjournal for children. I'll never forget the fascist riots on February 6,1934, when he carried in his cap what was left of the brains of aworker whose skull had been crushed. The police took off after him,but he ducked into the subway at the head ofa group of demonstratorsand got away by running on the tracks through the tunnel. Duringthe war, he was in a prison camp in Austria; when he heard that theRussian army was close by, he escaped to join them and was neverheard from again. The report was that he was swept away by anavalanche, for his body was never found.As for Louis Aragon, he had a soul of iron under that ratherprecious and elegant exterior. Once, when I was living on the ruePascal, I received a pneumatique from him at eight in the morning,begging me to come by as soon as possible because he had somethingabsolutely crucial to say. When I arrived half an hour later at hisapartment on the rue Carnpagne-Premiere, he announced that hisgreat love, Elsa Triolet, had left him, that the surrealists had just