Later in life, Stendhal would declare, “The honor of having inspired me with the greatest passion, is to be debated between Mélanie, Alexandrine, Métilde and Clémentine.” Below, Stendhal writes to “Clémentine”—the comtesse Curial, née Clémentine Beugnot—with what certainly seems to … Continued
“It is a most rational justification of a name to my thinking—not that it expresses a quality as emphatically existing at a time when powers are latent, but forecasts the possible growth and fructification of the tendencies and faculties which it signifies.”
My love has made me selfish. I cannot exist without you. I am forgetful of everything but seeing you again—my Life seems to stop there—I see no further. You have asorb’d me.
By noting this difference, modifying it & by a process of elimination, I find not only the amount, but also the degree, of influence you’ve had on me. For a better understanding I’ve created 3 titles under which I’ll enumerate attributes I’ve either gained or developed under you. Also if I’ve enough room I shall speak of the negative points of our relationship. To begin…
“Dalí inspires the same pure emotion (and may God Our Father give me) as that of the baby Jesus abandoned on the doorstep of Bethlehem, with the germ of the crucifixion already latent beneath the straws of the cradle.”
Your little pig found his way to Enfield this morning without his feet, or rather his little feet came first, and as I guessed the rest of him soon followed. He is quite a beauty. It was a pity to kill him, or rather, as Rice would say, it would have been a pity not to kill him in his state of innocence.
I would always park at a LOADING ZONE sign and tell them “It’s okay, because we are going to get loaded” and off we’d pile into the Ritz to drink 3 or 4 or 2 martinis…often, very often, Sylvia and I would talk at length about our first suicides, at length, in detail, in depth—between the free potato chips.
I have your letter this morning & want to thank you profoundly for your telegram & for the money—& for your kind support generally. The money has averted a nasty situation. Your warmth and interest contribute highly to my welfare…
The holiest act is to create, to bring more things into existence.
And yet, there is no escaping the strength of the number three. A triangle is the sturdiest shape in architecture. The Buckminster Fuller geodesic dome, the pyramids, the molecular structure of diamond—all derive their stability from the strength of three. And of course, the Christian Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Ghost—a holy triptych that collapses into one idea: God. The diptych can’t escape this rule of three, and perhaps this is also part of its power. Just as the triptych is secretly a portrait, the diptych is, in a sense, a triptych…
