Antonio Beneyto
Seven days in Paris
In December of 1977 I spent 7 days in Paris, wandering like a
flâneur, lost in the city streets, escaping from those
ghosts that tried to corner me...
...now that I'm ready to publish this diary-collage, I hurriedly
write this note of introduction that can perhaps be used as a
pre-drawing or/and a pre-collage... (I remember that in Paris
day after day, I used to buy doubles of the same postcard. I
don't know the reason for this mania, and I wrote on them, drew
on them and manipulated them with tea and coffee. And, at the
same time, made a drawing on extra paper that I carry in very
frugal belongings.)
Besides the things I say and the ones that I needed to say in
the postcards, very little else happened to me. All the more,
remember a conversation I had with Severo Sarduy, and I also
remember that morning that I went drinking coffee at Arrabal's
house. And meeting again with André Pieyre de Mandiargues
y Bona followed by a visit to the Jean Chauvelin Gallery where
a show of the works of suprematist painters were on exhibit.
Or the encounter or misencounter with the poet Henri Michaux...
And how not to remember my visit to the second hand book stores,
where I found a beautiful and rare demoniac dictionary, that
as soon as I arrived in Barcelona, a friend-poet-editor, borrowed
it from me and never returned it even after I tried with all
means to get it back.
And, I have nothing more to say, except what's in the postcards,
the drawings that crawled over my skin like reptiles in those
7 days that I strolled Paris.
December 14, 1977
At the "La Gentil Hommiere" café.
Antonio Beneyto