Portrait of Michel Leiris by Francis Bacon (1978)

"I am the Volcano," a bearded man on the pier announces by way of introduction. We have just landed on Santorini. Its volcano, very active at the moment, rises out of the water in the center of the nearly perfect ring that constitutes the inhabited portion of the island.

The individual who has thus announced himself (we almost had to pinch ourselves to make sure we weren't dreaming) is a Frenchman whose beard is of a very rich color, although not quite flaming red. He turns out to be the proprietor of the Volcano Hotel, which is where we end up staying.

During dinner, having partaken of "Vulcanic Port Wine," we play our little part in a domestic farce whose major scenes take place in the wings: the proprietor of the hotel accuses his daughter of being a slut (she must have stayed out all night or have gotten pregnant), the mother wails, the girl gets fresh, the father rants and raves, periodically interrupting his performance to come into the dining room to see if we are satisfied with our meal.

Before dinner, we have no trouble finding a boat to take us to the erupting volcano, even though the area has been placed off-limits by the authorities. We walk around the tiny island; the water surrounding it is very hot and the island itself is grumbling and sputtering. We feel the burning ground underfoot and, somewhat apprehensive, observe the crevasses, the lava, and the eruptions of sulphur all around us.

All this naturally makes us think of the war which, from the stray bits of news we hear, seems all the more threatening.

We decide to beat a quick retreat: there is a rumbling underground more powerful than anything we've heard so far and it is so close to us that we feel it--or believe we feel it--right under our feet.

--Michel Leiris--

EDITOR'S NOTE

Leiris was one of the Surrealists, and his dreams show it. Oddly, so does his waking life; I wanted to present at least one example. If this were one of his bizarre dreams, if even half of it (the hotel scene or the volcano scene) were a dream, we'd all see the parallel between the two kinds of heat and venting as dream symbolism. It's not subtle; this particular volcano, Santorini (also called Thera or Thira), drowned the Minoan civilization in a tsunami some 3700 years ago, leaving us the legend of Atlantis... just as European civilization was about to destroy itself along with half the world.

Volcano reads exactly like such a warning dream, one that somehow knew, a generation before archeologists and vulcanologists did, that he stood on the rim of a civilization-killer. But what is it, when the prophecy enacts itself around you--real people, real fire?

--Chris Wayan--

SOURCE: Nights as Day, Days as Night by Michel Leiris (1961; 1987 translation by Richard Sieburth) p.105-6. I added title to aid searches (though subtitle "Real life" is Leiris's), and added the surreal portrait by Francis Bacon... just because.

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