Bunuel_Luis_My_Last_Breath

to Marcel Proust. Despite its rarity, Tual lent it to me. It was arevelation. Up until then, I'd known nothing of de Sade, althoughthe professors at the University of Madrid prided themselves on thefact that they never hid anything from their students. We readDante, Camens, Homer, Cervantes, so how was it that I knewnothing about this systematic and magistral exploration of society,this proposal for such a sweeping annihilation of culture? When Icould bring myself to admit that the university had lied, I foundthat next to de Sade, all other masterpieces paled. I tried to rereadThe Divine Comedy, but now it seemed even less poetic than the Bible.And as for Carnons's Luslads and Tasso's Jerusafem Delivered, the lesssaid the better. Why hadn't someone made me read de Sade insteadof all these other useless things?When I tried to get hold of de Sade's other books, however, Ifound they had all been rigorously censored and were available onlyin very rare eighteenth-century editions. Breton and Eluard, both of \whom owned copies, took me to a bookstore on the me Bonapartewhere I put my name on a waiting list for Justine (which neverarrived). And speaking ofJ&e, when Renk Crevel committed suicide,Dali was the first to arrive at his apartment. In the chaos thatfollowed, a woman friend of Crevel's from London noticed that hiscopy of Justme had vanished. Someone had obviously swiped it-Dali? Impossible. Breton? Absurd; he already had one. Yet it musthave been one of Crevel's close friends, someone who knew his librarywell.I also remember being struck by de Sade's will, in which he askedthat his ashes be scattered to the four corners of the earth in the hopethat humankind would forget both his writings and his name. I'dlike to be able to make that demand; commemorative ceremoniesare not only false but dangerous, as are all statues of famous men.Long live forgetfulness, I've always said-the only dignity I see is inoblivion.If today my interest in de Sade has waned somewhatÑafte all,passion is an ephemeral thing-I'm still profoundly impressed by