A Dream

After a long walk I find myself in a third class compartment, where there are other travelers I can barely make out. Just as I’m about to fall asleep I notice that the regular jolts of the train are chanting a word, always the same one, and which is more or less “Adéphaude.” The “adéphaude” is a precious yellow stone that I see sitting in the mesh bag next to a poorly wrapped package, enveloped in wrapping fabric with a railroad label on it bearing the inscription “Rhodes 1415,” which I am convinced is an error. It is impossible for me to place the battle in question despite the basket weavers I question one after the other along the interminable marsh I am crossing with the air of a vagabond. I have arrived at a second class wagon. I sardonically make the observation that there are now in the mesh bag two packages bearing the mention “Rhodes no date.” At that moment I notice in the opposite corner a young woman who is speaking agitatedly to a companion who is at first invisible and who could be me, or some distant relative of a certain Lady Carnegie who I think I knew when I was young. The young lady is dressed with great elegance. I am only able to make out a few words of conversation: “…lacking lacquer…” It is obviously a question of the packages which, in fact, look extraordinarily scaly. I turn my eyes towards the lady’s interlocutor and I see that he is covered in armor, which completely hides him. I stand up, indignant. At my feet are the remains of a cold meal. The lady wipes her hands with a lace handkerchief. We are in the middle of the countryside, near an embankment. It’s the evening of the battle of Marignan.

by Louis Aragon

La Révolution Surréaliste, 3 yr, No. 9-10, October 1927

Translated by Mitchell Abidor