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wildgurl's review against another edition
4.0
Down Below🍒🍒🍒🍒
By Leonora Carrington
1944
Incredibly strange. ...unexpectedly absorbing...
Leonora Carrington was a British born Surrealist painter, and a writer while living in Mexico. This takes place just as WW II is starting, and her lifetime partner, Max Ernst, is sent to a concentration camp. Or so she is told. It spurs her into fits of madness, and she begins performing rituals and talking to inanimate objects, making odd connections between them and herself.....
She is eventually labelled " incurably insane" and institutionalized in Spain. Leonora believes she has been captured and is being held in a concentration camp and is abused, mistreated and over medicated.
p.44 "I believe that I was being put through purifying tortures so that I might attain Absolute Knowledge, at which point I could live down below.....Later, with full lucidity, I would go down under, as the third person of the Trinity."
This is her account of her experiences, as told to a third party. I enjoyed this detailed, raw and lucid account of her long assent into madness....provocative and unforgettable.
This short novel is a must read!!
By Leonora Carrington
1944
Incredibly strange. ...unexpectedly absorbing...
Leonora Carrington was a British born Surrealist painter, and a writer while living in Mexico. This takes place just as WW II is starting, and her lifetime partner, Max Ernst, is sent to a concentration camp. Or so she is told. It spurs her into fits of madness, and she begins performing rituals and talking to inanimate objects, making odd connections between them and herself.....
She is eventually labelled " incurably insane" and institutionalized in Spain. Leonora believes she has been captured and is being held in a concentration camp and is abused, mistreated and over medicated.
p.44 "I believe that I was being put through purifying tortures so that I might attain Absolute Knowledge, at which point I could live down below.....Later, with full lucidity, I would go down under, as the third person of the Trinity."
This is her account of her experiences, as told to a third party. I enjoyed this detailed, raw and lucid account of her long assent into madness....provocative and unforgettable.
This short novel is a must read!!
dayrepresent's review against another edition
2.0
While Leonora Carrington's are is undoubtedly beautiful, this little book isn't.
I appreciate what was done here and the depiction of her mental struggles but I simply cannot say I liked it.
I appreciate what was done here and the depiction of her mental struggles but I simply cannot say I liked it.
aceface's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.0
thisamtheplace's review against another edition
3.0
Leonora Carrington is one of my favourite surrealist artists (and authors), so I was keen to pick up this memoir of her time institutionalised in Spain due to the psychotic break she suffered after her lover Max Ernst was sent to a concentration camp in 1940, and the horrific 'treatments' she endured. It is however, very slim and not as affecting as some of the other classic texts exploring female 'madness' which are numbered amongst my all time favourites (The Bell Jar, I Never Promised You A Rose Garden). I also definitely prefer her artwork and her fiction, as understandably, part of her wit and whimsy is lost with her mental illness. However, her memoir is accompanied by an excellent introduction by Marina Warner, which discusses her life and background alongside the attitudes of the male surrealists of the time, and the way in which they fetishised 'madness' in young women as part of their artistic movement (which still feels relevant today). Whilst they believed that young women were their only means of accessing another spiritual world and surpass/circumvent reason, Carrington's memoir demonstrates that her descent into 'madness' did not enable the discovery they might have expected. In this discussion, Warner makes multiple references to Breton's Nadja, so that will definitely be my next read!
As I have mentioned, this text does not have the same surety and magic as her fiction, however it touches on a range of interesting concepts/ideas -
She internalises the world around her, and in turn identifies with the problems of the wider world and objects she encounters, such as a 'jammed' car. This, hand-in-hand with her developing God complex/chosen one ideology and abandonment of reason, politics, economics, with the line between madness and conspiracy becoming blurred.
She expresses the ignorance of perceiving only one half of reality - macro vs. micro, which ties in well with the surrealist project.
I also think Freud would have found this interesting - there is definitely a disturbed relationship with fathers/paternalism embodied in the text, although the perspective capitulates throughout - distrust of men in general, particularly where they appear to be father-like, denial of her own father, relationshops with much older lovers, (although Ernst is described as a 'baby'), and her self-avowed need of a fatherly man to safeguard her from future bouts of madness.
This is definitely and interesting text and one that I would revisit, however I would recommend starting with her fiction and exploring her artwork first.
"The egg is the macroscosm and the microcosm, the dividing line between the Big and the Small which makes it impossible to see the whole. To possess a telescope without its other essential half - the microscope - seems to me a symbol of the darkest incomprehension. The task of the right eye is to peer into the telescope, while the left eye peers into the microscope."
As I have mentioned, this text does not have the same surety and magic as her fiction, however it touches on a range of interesting concepts/ideas -
She internalises the world around her, and in turn identifies with the problems of the wider world and objects she encounters, such as a 'jammed' car. This, hand-in-hand with her developing God complex/chosen one ideology and abandonment of reason, politics, economics, with the line between madness and conspiracy becoming blurred.
She expresses the ignorance of perceiving only one half of reality - macro vs. micro, which ties in well with the surrealist project.
I also think Freud would have found this interesting - there is definitely a disturbed relationship with fathers/paternalism embodied in the text, although the perspective capitulates throughout - distrust of men in general, particularly where they appear to be father-like, denial of her own father, relationshops with much older lovers, (although Ernst is described as a 'baby'), and her self-avowed need of a fatherly man to safeguard her from future bouts of madness.
This is definitely and interesting text and one that I would revisit, however I would recommend starting with her fiction and exploring her artwork first.
"The egg is the macroscosm and the microcosm, the dividing line between the Big and the Small which makes it impossible to see the whole. To possess a telescope without its other essential half - the microscope - seems to me a symbol of the darkest incomprehension. The task of the right eye is to peer into the telescope, while the left eye peers into the microscope."
margarete's review against another edition
5.0
“Beatifically soaking in the muted sunshine, I felt as though I had left behind me the sordid and painful aspect of Matter and was entering a world which might have been the mathematical expression of Life.”
dichotomy between illness and wellness, lucidity and madness blurs here…so much tenderness woven into carrington’s matter of fact retelling of trauma. my witchy witchy woman
dichotomy between illness and wellness, lucidity and madness blurs here…so much tenderness woven into carrington’s matter of fact retelling of trauma. my witchy witchy woman
magnetgrrl's review against another edition
4.0
The actual part written by Carrington is brief; it's less than 1/2 the book (which is only maybe 160 pages or so). But it's powerful, weird, and amazing. I think this could make a really interesting movie. Definitely wanted to make me look into Surrealism and her paintings more.
emsemsems's review against another edition
3.0
“The room was papered with painted, silvery pine trees on a red background; a prey to the most complete panic, I saw pine trees in the snow. In the midst of convulsions, I relived my first injection, and felt again the atrocious experience of the original dose of Cardiazol: absence of motion, fixation, horrible reality. I did not want to close my eyes, thinking that the sacrificial moment had come and determined to oppose it with all my strength.”
Like a bad psychedelic trip; I'm not sure if I enjoyed the whole experience enough to say that I like it. But the writing is quite glorious, so I'm left quite confused. Perhaps I prefer her painting/art over her writing. Will write a better review later.
subdue_provide75's review against another edition
challenging
dark
fast-paced
1.0
Too stragiht-forward-insane-thoughts for me. The Hearing Trumpet is the version that I find more useful and fun and wondrous. Nice biographical introduction though.