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1913issue6online

13 enfant-phare : a headlight-child, a lighthouse-child, a star- child; sounding en fanfare: the flying start child to the blast of a brass-band; skirting un enfant fare (it.): have/make a child. A tail in front absorbing and crumbling the road—graphically gold-dust, where behind his back or right in front, Duchamp did not recognize his daughter, Yvonne, born in 1911 to the model Jeanne Serre and later recognized by her second husband, Henri Mayer. In homage to her two adoptive fathers, Yvonne became Yo Sermayer. But Teeny, Duchamp’s second wife, immediately recognized her for his daughter and organized their meeting. We have one recorded rendez-vous in 1966, when our subject was seventy-nine and the daughter fifty-five : “I already had two fathers, so I certainly didn’t want a third.” It was Aristotle who named the star with hair a comet. Was it Aristotle who also came up with the bald syllogism? Socrates is bald; Socrates is a man; therefore all men are bald. It was definitely Aristotle who said, “O my friends, there is no friend” – setting this whole mission in (the paradox of) motion; the asymmetry of our job. For Aristotle, ideal friendship means loving without being loved; while spying is to know without being known. Just an enemy is a just enemy, who, sharing our back, looks out the other way and we say we’re the best of friends. Are we one soul, two bodies? For double agents, cover is two halves of the whole story. Nonetheless, a comet varies according to the exhalation: diffused equally on every side it is said to be fringed; if it stretches in one direction, it is bearded. When it moves we seem to have a shooting-star. Most comets collect in the Milky Way, but for Duchamp, clouds are shaving lather. We’ve had no trouble collecting hairs: In 1907, a cartoon by Duchamp shows an impatient young woman addressing her beau painstakingly parting his hair, “—Ce que t’es long à te peigner.—La critique est aisée, mais la raie difficile.” Criticism is easy but [the p]art is difficult.

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