MARK POLIZZOTTI
415
enteen-year-old creature, ideally disheveled, who had come to open the
door," and whom he soon noticed was naked under a shredded evening
gown. "The fascination she exerted on me at that moment was such that
I forgot to ask what she was doing there," he wrote. "No matter: so
long as she was there I cared nothing about her origins; I was com–
pletely satisfied merely to give thanks for her existence.
Such is beauty."
Once back in Mexico City, Breton and Trotsky patched up their
differences, and Breton tried once again to face his manifesto. He la–
bored over the following weeks to shape his and Trotsky's shared ideas
on art and politics into a statement worthy of the great revolutionary
and of his projected federation - although it appears that no real
progress was made until mid-July.
In the meantime, at the beginning of that month, Breton, Trotsky,
Rivera, and entourage spent several days on the isle of Pitzcuaro, in the
state of Michoadn. For the evenings, the three men had planned a series
of talks about art and politics, which they intended to publish jointly
under the title "Conversations in Pitzcuaro." Conflicts again arose when
discussion turned to the society of the future. Breton maintained that
not even a classless society would eliminate conflict (a thesis Trotsky re–
fused
to
hear); and Trotsky, who dominated the conversation, asserted
that in the society of the future art would simply disappear: instead of
paintings or dance, houses would be beautifully decorated and people
would move harmoniously. "Don't you think that there will always be
people who will want to paint a small square of canvas?" a worried
Breton asked Heijenoort after Trotsky had gone to bed. In any case, the
"Conversations in Pitzcuaro" went no further: after the first evening,
Breton came down with a fever and an attack of laryngitis, leaving him
voiceless for several days - by which time an annoyed Trotsky had re–
turned to Mexico City.
The fact was , this was no mere illness, but a manifestation of the al–
most paralyzing awe Breton felt in Trotsky's presence. Breton himself
recognized as much, and in a moving letter to Trotsky written just after
his departure from Mexico, he spoke of the "inhibition to which I've
fallen victim, each time it was a matter of trying to do something along
your lines and before your eyes":
This inhibition is mainly a product, as I'd like at all costs for you to
understand , of the boundless admiration I have for you ... Very of–
ten I've wondered what would happen if, by some impossible chance,
I found myself facing one of the men on whom I've modeled my
thinking and sensibility: Rimbaud , say, or Lautn:amont. All of a sud-
