The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí (Dover Fine Art, History of Art)

modesty is not my specialty.

My parents baptized me with the same name as my brother–Salvador–and I was destined, as my name indicates, for nothing less than to rescue painting from the void of modern art, and to do so in this abominable epoch of mechanical and mediocre catastrophes in which we have the distress and the honor to live.

My brother died at the age of seven from an attack of meningitis, three years before I was born. His death plunged my father and mother into the depths of despair; they found consolation only upon my arrival into the world. My brother and I resembled each other like two drops of water, but we had different reflections.

he had the unmistakable facial morphology of a genius.1 He gave signs of alarming precocity, but his glance was veiled by the melancholy characterizing insurmountable intelligence. I, on the other hand, was much less intelligent, but I reflected everything. I was to become the prototype par excellence of the phenomenally retarded “polymorphous perv