Mysore Mallika Part 1

Jean Benoit (August 27, 1922 to August 20, 2010), Tribute Joel Gayraud poet to one of the last great surrealists

GREET FOR JOHN BENEDICT

From the work of John Benedict , which I consider one of the most flamboyant surrealism ever given in the last fifty years, I will not, and many exhibition catalogs and newspaper articles or dictionary have more or less happiness, realized. But despite all the talent and the power of imagination it clear, from the LBS than air, combining the grace and tenderness to the darkness, the work gave way to man and loss, always irreparable, is by far exceeded that .

Possessed of presence and spontaneity of a sovereign, in gestures like the words, John was the very figure of excess. But the excess sensitivity, without gravity and without asking. No assignment was increasing the virulence of his hatred nor the insolence of his provocations delicious. He could say in all candor that the only dream that could not achieve was that of "killing a missionary," and it is with the same sincerity in his voice than leaning on the hand of a stranger to drop a kiss, he did not forget him say: "My homage disrespectful, miss." Nothing and nobody could prevent him or make him delude remonstrate. And that, without inflation of the ego, without pruritus power, he was content to live and walk in life daydreamer, he was a free cause.

I met him there for nearly thirty years, in a cafe where the surreal mind throwing a few lights still shy time from a particularly hostile. It imposed no win, his laughter could be heard from the entrance, was the more certain demonstration of its presence. I was not part of the circle of his intimate friends, but we have not stopped to see us over the years, intermittently, most often by chance, thanks to an opening, or when he longed to come and greet friends gathered in a particular pub. One day he invited me to visit him, and since then I've ridden several times in his studio in the Rue de la Cossonnerie then in the Rue de la Tour d'Auvergne, usually with a friend, he courted immediately. With him, drank a lot, and he spoke more, the only time I went in his apartment in the rue des Grands-Champs, the fields which he played the same key, we went down within hours of a bottle Chivas: yet he had 85 years, and half a dozen infarction behind him. At these meetings, he showed me the famous roller where he slept on paper the labyrinth of a lifetime magnetized by love me and read as many other visitors, some passages, but especially he often spoke to me, to my great delight, his stays in the sixties, among the Papuans of the Sepik River and the island New Ireland, which remained in his memory as the model of a free and happy.

Some compared him to a Canadian logger, while I saw him rather as a tree ineradicable. Alas, in June 2009, when stood a large exhibition of his work and that of Mimi Parent, he was struck by a stroke which paralyzed the right side and deprived of speech. I went to the Tenon Hospital where he was supported and we are able to communicate through a system of questions and answers that he replied by gestures indicating yes or no. He was obviously very unhappy, and wanted to get it over with a situation where, by a cruel paradox, it became trapped in a body for which he had always claimed the supreme freedom. I left the hospital in tears, and never saw him again.

There was a mythical dimension in John Benedict, who sparkled in his unfailing love for women, always renewed, always amazed. Solar had its eroticism clear vision of children. No fascination for him in the throes of transgression, it was immediately beyond. It was quite pagan in total harmony with these islands preadamites happy where he discussed just before they succumb to vile illusions of civilization.

With the disappearance of John Benedict, a new page is turning, this timeless treatise on the passions and writes decrypted only by the poets and dreamers. Our Dionysos mask feather lyre is gone, the day of Venus, on the boat malangan on the other side of his legend.