Paintings & portals

It was fascinating to read Dean Ballinger’s exploration of Salvador Dalí’s La Gare de Perpignan and Patrice Chaplin’s writings on portals [ FT404:56-57]. As I’ve

written before, Chaplin’s autobiographical books are all partly fictionalised, and her novels are all partly autobiographical – an interesting if confusing way to write, which prompts discussion on the nature of Reality and the distinction between Facts and Truth – a fortean topic indeed!

Patrice Chaplin contributed a story on Dalí’s experience of the Perpignan station portal, “The Mountain Wind”, to my SF/alternative history anthology Tales from the Vatican Vaults (Robinson 2015; see FT342:63).

It places Dalí’s experience in an historical context with accounts of similar experiences, including an 18th-century member of the Habsburg family seeking a portal on the peak of Mount Canigou; a 19th-century British missionary encountering a group of scientific investigators who claimed to have located a portal in the Pyrenees; the inevitable interest of Hitler, Himmler and Otto Rahn; and culminating in Dalí’s story and painting. How much of this comes from Chaplin’s researches, and how much is the creation of her imagination, who can tell? David V Barrett

London