Paranoia and The Double Image
Illuminating Salvador Dalí’s conception of paranoia in his essay “L’Âne Pourri” through Roland Topor’s 1964 novel, The Tenant, as preliminary research for the writing and production of an original film.
Spencer Harrington, 2025
In the first issue of the periodical publication Le Surréalisme au service de la revolution, renowned artist Salvador Dalí wrote an essay titled “L’Âne Pourri” that meditates on the nature of paranoia and the double image it creates. The essay, titled after a Dalí painting of the same name, combines art theory with philosophy, creating a formalized picture of paranoia and how it manifests epistemologically within the paranoid agent. As research for a film I am currently writing, I wish to organize the key features of paranoia as Dalí describes them while both illuminating the picture and showing how it can be applied to fiction writing through the events of Roland Topor’s 1964 surrealist novel The Tenant. We can see Dalí’s idea of paranoia in the The Tenant through the character of Trelkovsky, whose paranoia systematizes his confusion, creates a menacing double image that appears in the diurnal, and asserts the reality of its obsessive idea on the external world.
Dalí writes, “I believe that the moment [of mental crisis] is near when, by a process of a paranoid and active character of thought, it will be possible (simultaneously with the automatism of the other passive states) to systematize confusion and contribute to the total discrediting of the world of reality” (Dalí, 1). Paranoia collects confusions and organizes them in a way that both clarifies their nature and perverts them toward a misrepresentation of the world. In Roland Topor’s The Tenant, Trelkovsky’s paranoid thoughts begin with a confusion and resolve to the power of his paranoia; constructing a false and malicious narrative that eases the confusion. Trelkovsky narrates this process of confusion and systematization when he spills some of his overflowing trash on the way to the shared trash cans and comes back to it having already been cleaned up:
Someone had cleaned it all away. Who? Who had been watching him, waiting until he was outside the door… the neighbors?... No, it was someone else… or something else… Enormous rats creeping out of the cellar or the sewers, in search of food… The mystery of it frightened him.
(Topor, 55)
Trelkovsky’s paranoia twists his confusion of how his trash is already cleaned into a clearer perception or what may have happened, one that both serves to incorrectly represent the world and increase his paranoia.
Still, Trelkovsky’s systematized confusion isn’t wholly clarified until it finds the central paranoid idea that lays at the center of the subject’s anxieties, an idea that seeks to systematize his confusions to a point of ultimate clarity. Dalí calls these ideas simulacra, or double images of the world, writing, “The new simulacra that paranoid thought can suddenly make appear, will not only have their origin in the unconscious, but also the force of paranoid power will be put at its service.” (Dalí, 1). For Trelkovsky, this is his resolution that the strange happenings of his apartment and fellow tenants are a part of a larger plot to kill Trelkovsky by turning him into the former tenant and having him follow suit in her suicide. Topor writes Trelkovksy’s thoughts as he comes to this disheartening realization:
He collapsed on the bed, fighting with all his strength against the explanation that had come to mind. But he knew that it was useless; the truth was there in front of him, bursting across his vision like fireworks in a nightsky. It was their doing. The neighbors were slowly transforming him into Simone Choule!
(Topor, 112-113).
This epiphany is the missing piece for Trelkovsky to explain his confusions and paranoid thoughts. It all makes sense to him now. The organized cult he imagines the community of his neighbors as is the simulacrum of reality his paranoia has asserted to be the truth. Dalí speaks further on this simulacrum, describing the larger process of how the double image comes about and the methods it takes:
The obtaining of such a double image was possible thanks to the violence of paranoid thought, which used, with cunning and skill, the necessary quantity of pretexts, coincidences, etc., taking advantage of them to make the second image appear, which in this case takes the place of the obsessive idea.
(Dalí, 1-2)
Trelkovsky’s acquisition of this final double image of his neighbors is the result of a gradual, cunning, and meticulous driving at his psyche – what Dalí considers the violent nature of paranoia. This idea of the paranoia asserting itself through pretexts and coincidences is at the center of the next feature we will discuss.
Dalí speaks further on how paranoia materializes and manifests in the physical world, writing that it takes a daily appearance, acting skillfully to contort the “controllable and recognizable materials” of our everyday lives into something sinister. He writes, “The simulacra is menacing, and acts skillfully and corrosively, clarifying its paranoia with each diurnal appearance…” (Dalí, 1). Before Trelkovsky’s simulacra take physical forms of grandeur toward the climax of the novel, they first make everyday appearances, such that the confusions onset gradually before they are systematized. We can see this in Trelkovsky’s daily visits to the café that Simone used to frequent. In his first visit, the waiter tells Trelkovsky that Simone Choule used to always order a chocolate and two biscuits, and then proceeds to give him a chocolate instead of the coffee he ordered (Topor, 64-65). During a later visit, after he has made the realization of his simulacra, the waiter automatically brings Trelkovsky two biscuits and a hot chocolate (Topor, 125). After he informs the waiter that he wanted a coffee, the waiter goes and speaks to the owner of the café, whispering to each other and glancing at Trelkovsky for a moment before walking back to inform him the coffee machine isn’t working (Topor, 125). While their whispering was most likely imagined or innocuous, it provides just enough confusion for Treklovsky to come up with his own interpretation in his head. This paranoia about his neighbors turning him into Simone Choule manifests in his daily routine – he can’t even order a drink from the café without them trying something. Those who he perceives to be working against him target their goal in a methodic and gradual way, one that reflects the exact nature of paranoia Dalí is putting forth.
The final key feature of Dalí’s paranoia is one that is at the heart of the novel’s message and ending: The paranoid interpretation of the external world begins to assert itself back onto the external world, solidifying the reality of the paranoid ideas to others. Dalí writes, “It is enough that the delirium of interpretation has managed to connect the meaning of the images of the heterogeneous paintings that cover a wall, so that no one can already deny the real existence of this link.” (Dalí, 1). Dalí is saying that someone’s interpreting the external world in this paranoid manner is enough to make it true that the interpretation exists. While this seems like a tautology, it is relevant when we consider how this paranoid agent acts in light of his paranoid interpretations. Dalí writes further, “Paranoia uses the external world to assert the obsessive idea, with the disturbing particularity of making the reality of this idea valid for others.” (Dalí, 1). The paranoid agent acts in such a manner that their paranoid idea becomes valid to those around them. We can see this in The Tenant when Trelkovsky makes his final act of paranoid defiance, jumping out of the window and horrifying the audience of his neighbors (Topor, 166). As the police try to get him onto a stretcher, he delivers the following speech to his neighbors, directly implicating them in the narrative this simulacrum has constructed:
“You thought everything would happen just the way you wanted it to,” he stammered. “You thought my death would be neat and clean. Well, you were wrong. It’s going to be filthy, it’s going to be horrible! I did not commit suicide. I am not Simone Choule. It was a murder – a hideous murder… You’re a gang of murderers! Assassins!”
(Topor, 167-168)
The idea that Trelkovsky’s neighbors were trying to turn him into Simone Choule is now valid for everyone who has heard this; it now has a place within the ontology of the real external world it sought to misrepresent.
I find Dalí’s ideas of paranoia compelling as it relates to depicting paranoid descent through surrealist literature. The nature of paranoia, or madness generally, being a clarifying force amongst the confusions that seem to create it is especially fascinating to me. I think this fascination would carry over into the film format. There are obvious differences in how this can be depicted in film as opposed to the literary example of the The Tenant (these differences mostly come down to literature’s ability to show what the character is thinking without clunky narration). I will seek to adhere to this conception of paranoia as it relates to the character my screenplay centers on and his moral/psychological dilemma (to the extent that it brings my project closer to its internal philosophical goals). I will most likely write on these ideas again as my film reaches a close, reflecting on how they built toward the final project.
Spencer Harrington
______________________________________________________________________________
Bibliography
Dalí, Salvador. “L’Âne Pourri.” Le Surréalisme Au Service de a Revolution, no. 1, 1930.
Topor, Roland, et al. The Tenant. Valancourt Books, 2020.
