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The Complete Stories of Leonora Carrington. Inroduction by Kathryn Davis. Translations from the French by Kathrine Talbot (and Marina Warner), and from the Spanish by Anthony Kerrigan. St. Louis: Dorothy, a publishing project, 2017.
Published on the occasion of the centenary of the birth of Leonora Carrington (April 6, 1917-May 25, 2011).
As the back cover quip by surrealist Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel notes of Leonora Carrington's stories: "Her delirious fantasy reveals to us a little of the secret magic of her paintings."
The collection is divided into three main sections:
THE HOUSE OF FEAR (six stories)
THE SEVENTH HORSE (sixteen stories)
PREVIOUSLY UNPUBLISHED (three stories)
These strange tales are made stranger still by Carrington's understated approach to the macabre. We are invited into her dreamscape and become as if characters in her visual art. Is this a dream or a nightmare?
Here's a brief snippet from "Monsieur Cyril de Guindre." Make of it what you will:
'"Precious mummy," he murmured, laughing. "Who knows? Won't you have fun after all?"
Slowly he went down the marble staircase.' (page 82).
One of the eeriest stories is "Pigeon, Fly!" There is supposed to be a song with this title, but so far all I can find along these lines is Elton John's (and Bernie Taupin's) "Skyline Pigeon." I'll keep looking.
But here is a sentence from the story version: "I followed the enormous walking wig like a sleepwalker." (page 66). Who knows? Maybe soon, you will, too.
Today's Rune: Flow.
In Down Below (1943, 1987, 2017), Leonora Carrington (1917-2011) provides a vivid and harrowing account of the artist's descent into madness in the wake of the German occupation of France in 1940, which also brought about the end of her most intimate time spent with German artist Max "Loplop" Ernst (1891-1976), who in the middle of all this ditched his wife and her and the oncoming Nazis for Peggy Guggenheim (1898-1979) and New York City. Leonora eventually settled in Mexico, where she expanded her surrealistic vision.
"Note on the Text" (page 69). Carrington wrote up the original draft in 1942 in New York City; the draft, apparently lost or destroyed, was first translated into French by one person and then translated back into English by another. Finally, in 1987, this third variation of the original text was "reviewed and revised for factual accuracy by Leonora Carrington . . ."
Down Below, at 68 pages, is a fast and furious read -- just what the Surrealist doctor ordered. It should be noted that Carrington's ordeal was made much more agonizing by the treatment she received at the hands of various and sundry "mental health workers."
Leonora Carrington, Down Below. Introduction by Marina Warner. New York: New York Review of Books, 2017.
Today's Rune: Journey.