This was apt, as the book is a marvelous reworking of the frequently too-romanticized Surrealist female madness narrative.Īfter unsuccessfully begging for Ernst’s freedom, Carrington developed an intense connection with the society, despite her having been removed from it. And I would say: Who am I, while thinking: Who am I to you? He would leave without answering, completely disarmed.”Īndré Breton encouraged her to write the book, believing that her plummet into madness demonstrated one of the most desirable forms of Surrealism. When will you stop playing with me? He would stare at me in amazement at finding me lucid, then laugh. She suffers sadistic and cruel treatments, often denying her own experience in the world as a result, she creates her own to inhabit in the confines of the hospital. When she wakes up at the asylum, she is not told where she is or what is to be done to her, and she assumes that she too must be in a concentration camp. Carrington and Ernst created a world of painting together at a farmhouse in Provence, until Ernst was arrested and taken to a concentration camp in 1940.ĭown Below follows Carrington’s psychotic break following Ernst’s arrest and her own imprisonment in an insane asylum. As a 19-year-old art student in London, she fell in love with Max Ernst at a dinner party, and subsequently ran away with the Surrealists. The Milk of Dreams, Carrington’s book for children, has also just arrived.īorn to a highbrow family in Britain, a young, rebellious Carrington envisioned a different life for herself.
Both texts are striking introductions to her dreamlike world, and complement each other well when read together.
Carrington’s autobiography, Down Below, is the latest release from New York Review Books Classics, while the small press Dorothy, a publishing project, houses her collected short fiction. WHILE LEONORA CARRINGTON is best known for her gothic Surrealist paintings, her writing is no less enchanting and luminous.
The Strange, Irreverent Worlds of “Down Below” and “The Complete Stories of Leonora Carrington”
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