The Thirteenth Belvedere

Nuclear weapons are useless in war, except as objects of fantasy. Two nuclear powers attack Iran, and Iran emerges victorious. As for Ukraine, it takes on the world's greatest nuclear power, and Russia does not use its deterrent weapon.

No fiction here, but raw reality.

AI has reconstructed it with Lego. These joints spin like hilarious trolls, and the animation spreads at the speed of sound, rapped American-style — under a rain of missiles and evaporated dead little girls. Iran sets the tempo* with disassemblable soldiers — just like those toys of yesteryear.

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Games of massacre. Mandiargues, the author of The Third Belvedere, who now fears the light, would turn in his grave.**

It is David who slays Goliath: barefoot soldiers against marines driven back to the sea. The myth of the nuclear shield is cracking. That of the Iron Dome has collapsed. Israel is counting its days.

The Persian Letters have imposed themselves; they reveal to us who the barbarians are. Here is Usbek arriving from Isfahan on Rue Saint-Honoré. He says: Paris is a beautiful city by day when there are ugly things by night. As I enter Europe, into the land of the profane, I become profane myself. I expose my flank to spies by eating and drinking at their tables. To betray with a glance is already to betray with a kiss. In The Thirteenth Belvedere, Judas pays for it by hanging.

What will Netanyahu die of, then, after all? What will become of the Americans after this rout? Will they call upon God to protect them or, ultimately, to judge them?

They never believed in humanism, nor in the equality of races and human beings. But can one change one's nature overnight? Surrealism is a trompe-l'oeil. Hearts are not purified by prayer or by a noose. Time must do its work. They will remain what they are for a long time yet.

Can one leap from one body to another, from a man to a woman? No. A redemption is necessary, and redemption takes time. It must be said again: one does not peddle one's heart or mind artificially, through a profession of faith, baptism, or scientific exfoliation.

The same holds true for nations and their collective consciousness. If America were suddenly to become aware of its embarrassment, it would take generations to recover. One does not become another man by changing one's clothes, nor another country by changing its flag. Karma has its laws. Nature too, and death passes through there, undeniably. To incarnate into another form of life requires preparation and mental disposition: intense effort, pain. Said roughly, the soul does not enter a dog's body as it enters a woman's.

Everyone — I mean the entire world — remembers what men who called themselves Jewish did in Gaza. To resist is an act of subversion, especially since, in this case, the devil hides in negotiations' opportunities. Terror and its hideous masks must go home.

It is also about restoring words to their true meaning, especially when one knows that for the complexed mind, the barbarian is always the other.

In short, this tragedy is a dreadful mystery of this early millennium. —War being the greatest manifestation of life in the world that men and women who want a country of their own can offer, at all costs.— This is what Emilio Gentile wrote in The Fascist Religion (2002).

This mystical quest for identity and the land of the ancestors bears, unmistakably, a resemblance to a dark comedy whose last word is left to death — hence the tragedy. For, as Primo Levi wrote, our language lacks words to express this insult: the demolition of man.

And ethnic cleansing or genocide — live. From our living room.

I have painted here an almost surrealist picture of geopolitics and human 'instincts' as they unfold before our eyes. We may bite into it according to our dispositions or tastes. Just as in Ernst's painting, The Gathering of Oranges: they will be sweet or bitter.

There are also persistent desires that become beliefs and are fabrications of the mind. Conspirators and publicists know how to exploit them. The masses are fertile ground where utopias grow. Many want to go to the Moon, yet they do not know how to gain height. Few are those who doubt by the light of a streetlamp when, for them, night replaces day.

Tonight, there is a rare solar eclipse. I watched it indirectly, sideways, through the window, while doing the dishes, because I am wary of it. My zodiac sign is Leo, according to Hindu astrology. Otherwise, I am Libra. This leaves me indifferent, by the way. According to the Hindus, one should not watch this phenomenon as one would go to a show: it is a very bad omen. I have seen others at my age. In Canada, for example, in 1999, I believe. Glasses were distributed by the government so that everyone could experience it, so that everyone could see night in broad daylight. That desire, Max Ernst had painted it without using words: his Rue de Paris la nuit was already an eclipse of the soul.

Thus ends my short poetic essay on The Thirteenth Belvedere. ■

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* Wordplay. Timpo Toys is a historic manufacturer of toys and miniature plastic or metal figurines.

  ** André Pieyre de Mandiargues wrote Troisième belvédère, published by Gallimard, the first text of which is devoted to the painter Max Ernst, in the light of their phantasmagorical imaginings.

  Painting: Watercolour by Max Ernst imagining a Paris street at nightfall, 1912, one year before he went there.