52

Photography and surrealism

53
What is a surrealist photograph
by these stories. It vas knovn that Philippe Daudet
had aspired to become a poet, so much so that he had
vritten a collection ot poems in the vein ot Baudelaire
called Les parfums maudits.
77
Also at the same time that
Philippe had asked tor ammunition trom Pierre Ie
llaouter at the bookshop, he had asked tor the book by
Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal. It might then be supposed,
conjectured, that the relations betveen Philippe Daudet
and Germaine Berton as lovers vere joined in death
(like Pomeo and uliet,. Baudelaires motto printed
under the picture ot Germaine Berton thus serves
as a symbolic presence ot Philippe.
78
In other vords,
Baudelaires motto in the montage is not arbitrary, it
signites Philippe, an epigraph as epitaph.
As tor the tunction ot light and darkness ot Woman,
ve only have to reter to light in everyday language,
let alone the iconography ot pictures or the visual
logic ot dreams, to knov that light is associated vith
avakening knovledge and revelation.
79
It has already
been noted that darkness and the night are an uncanny
teature in tales, the (enigmatic, source ot vhich lreud
indicates: the attacks ot night terror accompanied by
hallucinations (pavor nocturnus, vhich are so trequent in
children In this case too it can only be a question ot
sexual impulses vhich have not been understood and
vhich have probably been repudiated.
80
Pequired here, to return to Iaplanches proposal,
is the move trom the enigma of voman (Germaine
Berton, to the tunction ot the enigma in voman. 1his
leads back to the surrealists and their group, the enigma
in Germaine Berton ot her terrible connicts as the light
and dark ot their dreams. Death and love, suicide and
murder (criminality and madness,, these are themes ot
a dialectics ot desire and patriarchal lav vhich governs
them, and all issue torth trom the associative trains ot
thought ot the montage. 1he bleak nocturnal existence
ot primal revenge (seduction, desire, castration, is brought
to the surtace in enigmatic torm, but enlightened by the
acts ot Germaine Berton. It is in a perverse tultlment
ot vishes that Germaine Berton provided the surrealists
vith an allegorical or emblematic image tor liberating
the darkness (and light, ot dreams. In the tatal, almost
tantastic, struggle ot her desire in the real and its tragic
;; Weber, Action Franaise,
p. +;o.
;: lreud notes that vords and
speeches in dreams are not
invented by the dreamer, but
derived trom vords heard the day
betore. lor the dream-vork
cannot actually create speeches
(lreud, The Interpretation of
Dreams, p. ,. In a similar sense
the Baudelaire text vould be
something that had already been
heard by the surrealists.
;, 1his is certainly contrmed
in literature on dreams. lreuds
patients dream at the beginning
ot Chapter ; in the Interpretation
of Dreams has a tather avoken by
the light pouring into his room
and the childs immortal demand-
ing vords: lather cant you see I
am burning (PlI , +,:o,,
p. o:.
:o Ibid., p. ;:.