“I would like to get up from the grave every ten years and buy a few newspapers”
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50 years ago, on September 15, 1972, Luis Buñuel’s The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie premiered in France. The film, about a group of friends trying in vain to find a proper place to dine, did not offend anyone’s feelings, was praised by critics and won numerous awards, including an Oscar. Buñuel claimed that such a warm welcome was due to the fact that his film was not well understood, but the Oscar still took it. We re-read his memoirs to understand how the rebel got along with the respectable bourgeois in him.
one
I mortally hate banquets and prize giving. These ceremonies sometimes ended in embarrassment. In 1978, in Mexico City, the Minister of Culture presented me with the National Prize of the Arts, a beautiful gold medal engraved with Bunuelos, which means “patties” in Spanish.
2
According to the latest data, we now have so many atomic bombs that it is possible not only to destroy life on Earth, but also to force the Earth out of orbit, sending it, empty and cold, forever into infinity. One thing is now quite clear to me: science is the enemy of man. It flatters our desire for omnipotence, which dooms us to self-destruction.
3
Nothing seems to me more repulsive than the senseless and recent abuse of coarse language in the books or conversations of our writers. Such imaginary emancipation of morals is just a pathetic parody of freedom. Therefore, I reject all sexual insolence and all verbal exhibitionism.
four
With the exception of a few “live pictures” in Paris, I seem to have seen only one porn film in my entire life with the charming title “Sister Vaseline”.
5
I looked quite elegant: I wore leggings, a vest with four pockets, a bowler hat. The appearance without a headdress threatened with reprisals and the nickname maricon (“faggot”). Once I put my hat on the pavement on the boulevard Saint-Michel and crushed it with my heel. So I finally said goodbye to her.
6
Dressing up is amazing. I recommend to try. It allows you to see a different life. If you are a worker, you are mechanically given the worst matches. They don’t give way. Girls don’t look at you. As if this world is not for you.
7
Going to Segovia or Toledo, I invariably follow one path. Stopping at the same places, watching, eating the same things. If I am offered a trip to distant places, say Delhi, I invariably refuse and say: “What am I to do in Delhi at three in the afternoon?”
eight
Reading newspapers is the most disturbing evil in the world. If I were a dictator, I would allow the publication of only one newspaper, one illustrated magazine, and under the supervision of strict censorship. Moreover, censorship would be in charge of information only, without encroaching on freedom of opinion.
9
Newspaper headlines are nauseating. How many exclamations about poverty – and all in order to sell more paper. In addition, one news quickly crowds out the other.
ten
Despite all my hatred of newspapers, I would like to get up from the grave every ten years, go to the kiosk and buy a few newspapers. I don’t ask for anything more. With newspapers under my arm, pale, clinging to the walls, I would return to the cemetery and there I would read about the misfortunes of the world. After that, peacefully, he would fall asleep again under the reliable cover of his gravestone.
eleven
All my life, like many others, I imagined myself elusive and invisible with unfailing delight. This miracle made me the most powerful and invulnerable person in the world. Such fantasies haunted me, in various variations, throughout the Second World War.
12
Usually they were talking about an ultimatum. My invisible hand held out to Hitler a sheet of paper in which he was ordered to shoot Goering, Goebbels and the entire clique within 24 hours. Otherwise, he is in danger. Hitler called the servants and yelled: “Who brought this paper?” Unseen, sitting in the corner of the study, I became a witness to his impotent fury.
13
Over the last ten years, I have also imagined how I would rid the world of oil, another source of our troubles, by detonating 75 atomic bombs underground in the places of its greatest deposits. A world without oil seemed to me – and still seems – a kind of paradise created by my medieval imagination. It seems, however, that the explosion of 75 atomic bombs will create many practical problems and it is better to do without it.
fourteen
I am panicking in the face of the population explosion that is so detrimental to Mexico. I imagine calling a dozen biologists to my office and giving the order – without the right to discuss it – to poison the planet with a terrible virus that will free it from two billion inhabitants. I tell them courageously: “Let this virus hit me too.”
fifteen
But then I secretly do my best to avoid my own death, making a list of people to save, family members, my best friends, families and friends of my friends. And I can’t stop now. And I’m dropping this.
16
In the past, when we were informed of the arrival of the Grand Symphony Orchestra of Madrid in Zaragoza, everyone was overcome with excitement, the sweetness of expectation. On the evening of the concert, everyone experienced incomparable joy. Today, it is enough to press a button to immediately hear any music at home. I can clearly see what we have lost. And what did they win?
17
I mortally despise Steinbeck. In particular, for one article written in Paris. In it, he – quite seriously – told how he saw a French boy who, passing by the Elysee Palace, saluted with an hour loaf of bread. Steinbeck found the act “exhilarating”. Reading this article made me wildly furious. How can you show such shamelessness?
eighteen
Steinbeck would be nothing without American guns. And at the same time I can name Dos Passos and Hemingway. If they were born in Paraguay or Turkey, who would read them? The fate of writers is decided by the power of their country.
19
I call a crowd any gathering of more than six people. I remember the famous photo of Vigi – the beach on Coney Island on Sunday, the darkness of people. Such gatherings make me feel astonished and horrified.
twenty
Dr. Alexander watched The Andalusian Dog and wrote that he was mortally scared, or, if you like, terrified, and would not want to have any relationship with a man named Luis Buñuel. I ask a simple question: should a psychologist behave like this? Is it possible to initiate him into your life if he is horrified by the film? Is it serious?
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