Death Sentences (15 page)

But he had lost consciousness. All trace of consciousness had completely left him.

In his fist, Artaud was gripping a letter of about ten pages, filled with writing in a fine hand.

5

The fate that befell Arshile Gorky was too cruel to describe as bad luck.

After losing well over thirty works to a fire in his studio in January 1946, Gorky was informed the following month that he had colon cancer and underwent an operation.

Fortunately, the operation was successful, but thereafter he had to live with all manner of special equipment for cleaning and relieving himself, such as an artificial bladder tied to his side that continually emitted gurgling sounds.

But Gorky rose to the situation.

Upon his release from the hospital, he immediately picked up his paintbrushes, and in the late summer and early fall, on a farm in Hamilton, Virginia, he made sketches for more than three hundred works. To continue his work, he returned to Sherman, Connecticut, and rented a barn not far from the studio that had burned down.

Yet he continued to be deviled by misfortune.

Some two years after his operation, on June 26,1948, he was involved in a car accident when gallery owner Julien Levy and his wife were driving him home from New York. He suffered a fractured back and neck, which rendered him impotent and made it impossible for him to use his right arm and thus to paint.

Gorky fell into a profound spiritual depression as a consequence.

Having already reached the limits of her tolerance, his wife finally left him. She felt that it would be better for their two daughters to avoid being swept up by Gorky's misfortunes any further.

Alone, broken physically, shattered emotionally, he dragged himself back to the converted barn in Sherman that was his studio.

During his absence, dust had covered everything in the room.

When Gorky finally managed to get himself into a chair, he noticed an envelope covered with fine dust on the desk.

The address was written in exceedingly clumsy letters.

The sender's name meant absolutely nothing to him.

Due to the paralysis of his arm, Gorky used his teeth to tear open the envelope.

A sheaf of papers was enclosed.

As Gorky smoothed out the folds of the pages on the desk, tears came to his eyes.

(Who May ...)

It was a name dear to him.

Two years previously, the young man had given solace and encouragement to Gorky in his time of great loss.

It was the surrealist David Hare who had introduced him to Gorky. The young man had shown a more profound understanding of Gorky's art than even Hare had.

The young man stayed at Hare's house for some time. During his stay, he frequently came to keep Gorky company in his studio.

The young man was writing poetry.

He had shown one of his poems to Hare. It was written in French. But Gorky nonetheless understood something of it. Or, rather, for Gorky it was less a matter of understanding it than one of feeling that the strange words were speaking to him from the beyond.

(Dobaded.)

He remembered it still. Along with the strange words, he recalled Who May's beautiful countenance with those oversized eyes.

He had later returned home to France.

Gorky had received one letter from him, which had included a request for the address of Andre Breton.

Andre Breton-!

The prince of surrealism. Gorky had had enough of surrealists. He couldn't help thinking that his association with them had brought tragedy upon him.

He had once explained it to a fellow artist, Saul Schary: "It was a great mistake to associate with the surrealist crowd. They're a terrible lot. They're the sort who think nothing of sleeping with each other's wives. It was a horrible mistake to let my wife associate with that crowd."

Of course, Breton had praised his work. Yet that hadn't been for Gorky's sake.

Breton had merely used Gorky for the sake of surrealism, that is, for the sake of Breton himself.

At the time Gorky hadn't seen it, though.

He had been blinded by flattery.

(Andre Breton ...)

He could easily imagine how advantageous Who May might prove as an offering on the altar of surrealism.

He considered warning Who May.

But then he reconsidered.

Who May's life was his own. He should be the one to determine how to live it.

Gorky telephoned David Hare, requested Breton's address, and sent it to Who May. In the letter, he also asked him to tell Breton to come visit again.

Gorky wished by all means to show Breton the artificial bladder hanging at his side.

How would Breton react to that? Would he make a show of sadness? Or would he just laugh? Or maybe he would come up with some pithy remark such as "your very existence is now surrealism"?

As he had expected, however, Breton never contacted him.

He had had no news from Who May in quite a while either.

Gorky had begun to forget him. There had been other things on his mind.

(Who May ...)

Gorky slowly perused the densely written letter, word by word. The writing was not Who May's.

Had Who May had someone write for him?

But-why?

Could it be that Who May had suffered a similar fate to Gorky? Gorky mused.

(If that's the case, surrealism must be to blame.)

As he pondered, Gorky continued to read.

He understood. It was clear to him.

It was probably not Who May who had written out the words. But there was no doubt that the words on the page had been written by Who May.

And then-it was nightfall.

Before he knew it, the morning sun was streaming into the barn.

Just before dawn in mid-July-

The ring of the doorbell awoke Isamu Noguchi at home in bed on MacDougal Alley, Greenwich Village.

Rubbing his eyes, he went through the garden to the front door, and there stood Arshile Gorky.

He had clasped in his arms, as if dear to him, a dirty old rag doll and an equally soiled and shabby envelope.

The tears that suddenly began to stream from his eyes took Noguchi by surprise, and he brought him directly into the house.

But Gorky refused and raised his voice as if agitated.

"This is all there is. This is all that is left to me in the world! All there is!-"

Once Gorky had calmed down, he asked Noguchi to take him back to the converted barn in Sherman, Connecticut.

Noguchi called Wilfredo Lam and put Gorky in the car. On the way, he stopped with him at a psychiatric clinic, and after Gorky underwent electroshock therapy, Noguchi drove him home.

Gorky held on tightly to the doll and envelope the entire time.

Some days later, on July 20-

Gorky's oldest friend, the artist Saul Schary, decided one night after dinner to call on him to see how he was doing.

Schary later gave the following description of Gorky at that time: "He was extremely agitated. His eyes ... were deep in color but glazed over as if flashing with light, and his face was splotched with red and white patches. He was very irritable, as if something was hounding him."

Gorky chatted with Schary for a couple of hours that night.

Schary finally excused himself late at night, but, exhausted from the hours of talking, he forgot his glasses at Gorky's house.

In the next morning, Schary rang Gorky to ask if he could come and collect his glasses.

"Of course. Come over immediately."

So Schary set off.

Gorky was as irritable as the night before. Yet at the same time he looked rather happy.

Gorky retrieved Schary's glasses, and as he handed them to him, he spoke resolutely.

"Schary, my life is over. I'm not going to live anymore. There's no need to."

Startled, Schary tried going inside to cheer him up. But Gorky cut him short.

"Schary, would you mind leaving now? There's something I have to do alone. Just once more, that ..."

With these words, Gorky led Schary to the door. He walked out to the car with him. He then took Schary's hand and said with great affection, "Good-bye, Schary."

Schary felt obliged to drive off.

Gorky's condition continued to bother him nonetheless.

So he stopped off at Peter Blume's house on his way home.

Blume, who had just gotten out of bed, was shaving.

Schary told Blume about how Gorky had seemed to him.

"It's possible that he means to kill himself."

The word spread quickly among the other artists in the Sherman area.

Upon hearing this news from the Blumes, Yves Tanguy's wife, Kay, became worried and called Malcolm Cowley. Cowley rushed over to the Blumes' house.

Finally, after a brief discussion, they all decided to go check on Gorky.

They all went in Cowley's car.

They arrived at Gorky's place close to noon.

But the place was silent. No one was there.

In the barn, they found a rope hanging from the rafters. But that was all. There was no sign of Gorky.

They split up and broadened their search.

Nearby were the remains of a site that had been prospected for uranium. They walked the temporary roads that had been carved out.

As they were passing by one of sheds where there was a stone crusher for uranium ore, a small dog dashed out barking.

It was one of the two dogs that Gorky kept.

Attracted by the barking, they hurried into the shed beside the stone crusher. They peered inside.

Gorky was hanging there by the neck, dead.

One of the group who found him, Malcolm Cowley, later said that he looked like a wax doll.

At Gorky's feet, a crate lay overturned, which he had stood on to hang himself. There was a stack of similar crates nearby, and on one of them he had written, "Good-bye my loves."

Someone telephoned for the state troopers.

Someone else went into his studio to see if he had left anything behind before deciding to kill himself.

There was a painting that looked pretty much complete. At the corner of the canvas, he had written the title "Last Painting," but with a knife he had slashed the surface of the painting this way and that.

On his desk, a shabby doll and an envelope had been neatly placed.

Kay Tanguy reached for the envelope. She thought it might be a will.

Her husband Yves stopped her.

"Better to not touch anything until the police arrive."

6

The day of the funeral-

Arshile Gorky's sister Vartoosh had flown in from Chicago with her husband, Moorad Mooradian.

But among those who attended the funeral there was not a single face familiar to her.

Due to Breton's endorsement, the surrealists had flocked around Gorky.

They had largely driven away his old friends and acquaintances.

This was still a source of unhappiness for Vartoosh.

She finally spotted Saul Schary in the crowd.

Schary was one of the few friends who had remained close to him to the end. Naturally, Vartoosh had also known him a long time.

Vartoosh approached Schary, crying. She hugged him and then asked, "Where have all of his friends gone, Saul? You're the only one here that I know."

Schary placed a hand on her shoulder and told her in great detail everything that he knew about Gorky's last few days.

"On the desk was a tattered doll and an envelope containing some sort of poem. Beyond that, we didn't find anything resembling a will or testament."

"A poem, you say?"

Her voice became slightly shrill.

"Is it something written by one of those surrealists?"

Saul Schary shook his head.

"I'm not sure. It's in French. I can't read a word of it. Apparently, however, your brother read it repeatedly just before he died. The pages and the envelope were quite worn and dirty. I wonder what it's about."

"French? That definitely sounds like the surrealist crowd. Probably one of these surrealists wrote it. I'll bet that they were writing something nasty about my brother."

"I don't think so. I don't think it's like that at all."

Aware of the surrealists around them, Schary lowered his voice.

"I think it's some kind of literary work. In English, the title would be something like `Gold of Time.' If you'd like to read it, I'll get it to you. Yves Tanguy has it right now."

But Vartoosh vehemently refused the offer.

"I have no desire to read it, none at all. Please pass it along to the surrealists."

Schary followed Vartoosh's advice.

After the funeral, Schary called on Yves Tanguy and told him that Gorky's family wished to have the poem sent to the surrealists in Europe.

Tanguy took Schary's request to heart.

His understanding was that Gorky's family wished to share with his surrealist "companions" a work that Gorky had enjoyed reading till the day he died. So Tanguy set to work.

Tanguy typed up a number of copies of the poem and sent them to all the surrealists he knew.

In late 1948, Sylvia Carney, a female surrealist who had met Tanguy during his exile in America, was found dead in her bathtub.

The police made inquiries to determine whether it was suicide, murder, or death by natural causes, but ultimately the cause of death remained uncertain.

The following year the poet Rene Malle hung himself.

In 1952, Pierre Mabille, a doctor who joined surrealism in the field of art criticism and devoted himself to anthologizing obscure "arcane" works, died in Paris.

In the same year, Roger Vitrac, a poet and playwright who introduced surrealist humor into the world of theater, also died in Paris.

Also in the same year-

A leader of the surrealist movement, hailed as one of its great poets, Paul Eluard, died in Paris.

In 1953-

The Czech poet Jindrich Heisler, acclaimed for his delicacy with words and images, also died in Paris.

In the same year, poet and painter Francis Picabia, who had been at the forefront of Dada and surrealism, died in Paris.

In 1955-

The well-known surrealist artist Yves Tanguy, born in Paris but naturalized in America after taking refuge there during the war, died in Woodbury, Connecticut. Paper was found rolled into his typewriter, apparently to type poetry.