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A review by thisamtheplace
Down Below by Leonora Carrington
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."