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[Breton] had seen Dali’s arrival in Paris six years earlier as just what the surrealists needed. They were by then already running dry of ideas. But Breton and Louis Aragon saw themselves as sophisticates in charge of a motley amalgam of foreign buffoons, including the original “Andalusian dogs”, Dali and Luis Bunuel. Dali in particular oozed warped pathologies, and his surrealism, it’s been noted, “was dangerously total”.
“The Enigma of William Tell” so infuriated Breton that on February 2 he’d sought to destroy it at the Exposition du Cinquantenaire in the Salon des Indépendants at the Grand Palais, a show the other surrealists boycotted, but it was hung beyond his reach.
Dali challenged Breton to convene the group for an emergency meeting “at which the mystique of Hitler shall be debated”, and Breton scheduled the duel for four days later.
Dali showed up with a thermometer in his mouth, claiming he felt ill, and while Breton reeled off his accusations, Dali kept checking his temperature.
When it was his turn to present his case, he began to remove his clothing piece by piece, while reciting a prepared speech in which he explained that his obsession with Hitler was at heart apolitical, and that he could not be a Nazi “because if Hitler were ever to conquer Europe, he would do away with hysterics of my kind, as had already happened in Germany”.
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