---

THE GENIUS AND THE DIVINE

By Salvador Dali

Member of the Alexander Order

God and genius--that is an inseparable unity. There is a man of genius! There is Dali!

Bust of Salvador Dali by Arno Breker, 1979
Infinitely, like the divine spirit, the man of genius exists. If the divine Dali--who is also a tool of eternity--through his cometlike course over the earthly existence--taught the privileged ones a new dimension of seeing his brilliant works, then that is a splendid achievement. And these find their reflections in other highlights of the art of all centuries and millennia. For me the man of genius who manifests himself among the sculptors is especially Arno Breker, as also perhaps Michelangelo. Who says: "Dali has never known Michelangelo and known Breker too late?" Wrong! Dali met Michelangelo in the flame of genius, which surrounds him also with Breker and which continues to glow in the painting of Ernst Fuchs. We are the GOLDEN TRIANGLE -- Dali-Breker-Fuchs. No matter how one may turn us, we are always on top.

The genius is immortal and so is also the work of Arno Breker. He who does not comprehend his work has no relationship with the divinity of man. Poverty of soul! What a curse!

Dali and Breker understand each other, because they have so much in common and yet are so different. I myself am delighted when I am attacked, because I stir up the envy of these people. Bravo! The jealousy of the discontented is the barometer of success. Breker detests hate and infamy, because he would like to see the human energy and the force of the spiritual universe being used only for the Divine. I say: No! Because the less the others show divinity, the greater is my own monument.

The divine Dali loves Gala, Dali, and dollars. I also love the beauty and perfection in their diversity and can never get enough of them. Dali loves the divine in the sculpture of Breker and personally requested Arno Breker to make a portrait of him. No other sculptor would be worthy to cooperate on my immortality except Breker. Breker's portrait of me, created together with my highest spiritual inspiration, proves it. Breker has captured the essence of my soul.

If one day Paris builds me a monument--as I have already suggested years ago, with a cosmic rhinoceros at the Trocadero--then Breker's magnificent portrait should be the crowning piece. Naturally, in monumental size, so that it also crowns the Trocadero. I and Breker have already decided upon the material during our sessions: it must be white marble from which the head will be chiseled, bald like an egg of Dali which adorns my residence in Port Llegat. And the corona of hair--which Breker formed as a symbiosis of the sea waves of Cadaques and, to Dali most beautifully befitting laurel wreath--should be set upon the head in gold-plated bronze, like a halo.

Arno Breker and Salvador Dali, 1975

And when some day America builds me a monument, then it should be another exemplaire of this art work. It should greet the universe from a skyscraper in New York City, high above the Statue of Liberty. Dali's ideas and Breker's work would find in it the most congenial union. In Arno Breker there is an exaggeration toward surrealistic reality, in which Breker likes to make and makes the perfection of the sculpture, with explosive impulse, even more perfect. And thus he succeeds in creating a miracle which words cannot reach.

The insecurity, which arises in the confused brains, arouses then lightning bolts of defamation, thunder of envy and a violent storm of jealousy. This chaos is for me an occasion for amusement; for such a storm can never reach the genius. The genius is a sun. And among the sculptors of this century, Arno Breker is the sun of the suns, which beams forth its radiant light into the coming millennia.

 

To this
never ending Light
this adoration is dedicated by

Gala
and
Dali

Related articles:
The Great Magician Takes His Leave, by Arno Breker
Salvador Dali - The Magician of Color, by H.R.H. Felipe of Asturias, the Crown Prince of Spain
My Friend Salvador Dali, by Arno Breker

We recommend these books:

Arno Breker: His Art and Life, by B. John Zavrel

Collected Writings of Arno Breker, by Arno Breker

Living with the Himalayan Masters, by Swami Rama

Alexander the Great, by Robin Lane Fox

Primer for Those Who Would Govern, by Hermann Oberth