"I didn't have time to be anyone's muse... I was too busy rebelling against my family and learning to be an artist.”
I
include this Leonora Carrington quote to emphasize, both in her life
and her art, Leonora was forever an extreme rebel with the habit of
refusing the world she was born into.
In addition to her
rebellious nature, forever the outsider, the weirdness of Leonora's
fiction is most understandable when we consider Leonora was held captive
for months in a Spanish mental hospital and subjected to cruelty and
torture, forced to take injections of Cardiazol and undergo electroshock
therapy (ECT).
Regarding art, the Surrealists held the most
appeal for Leonora, beginning when she first saw a surreal painting in
Paris at the age of ten. Then there was that time when she ran away with
Max Ernst. History intervened but Leonora eventually made her escape to
Mexico and herself became a renowned Surrealist painter.
I
mention this since Surrealism is famous for its symbolism. Turning to
Leonora's writing, one could attempt to decipher the symbolism, that is,
say what this or that stands for. Other than mentioning that horses
symbolize freedom and independence for Leonora, I will not do this.
Leonora told an interviewer not to be too intellectual when it comes to
her paintings. Better to simply look at her work and ask yourself how it
makes you feel. I think the same thing can be said for her stories.
Keeping
this in mind, here goes for the pair I've chosen to make the focus of
my review. And since Leonora acknowledges all of her stories contain a
good bit of autobiography, I'll refer to the unnamed narrator as
Leonora.
HOUSE OF FEAR
While taking a midday walk, Leonora
meets a horse who stops her. The horse tells Leonora to come with him,
there's something he wishes to show her. I myself picture the author as
rebellious Leonora in Surrealland.
Leonora tells him she doesn't
have the time but follows him anyway. They come to a door and the horse
knocks with his left hoof. Drat! I wish I had a dream with a talking
horse but, alas, for me its humans all the way.
The door opens,
the two go in and can see a number of creatures in ecclesiastical dress.
They tell Leonora, “Do go upstairs. There you'll see our beautiful
inland floor. It is completely made of turquoise, and the tiles are
stuck together with gold.” I especially enjoy all the bizarre dialogue
in the story since it makes me feel as if I entered a dream – and words
spoken in a dream are always key.
Leonora beckons the horse to
lead the way. They both go up enormously high steps (picture this assent
in your mind's eye – now that would make a great Surreal painting!) and
behold all the dazzling turquoise tiles fitted together with gold
covering the floor of this enormous, empty room. The horse tells her,
“Well, you see, I'm really bored by this job. I only do it for the
money. I don't really belong to these surroundings. I'll show you, next
time there's a party.” I love how the horse admits he's only doing it
for the money – like so many in our workaday world: as Marx would say,
the horse is “alienated from the end of production,” in other words, he
doesn't like his job; he's only chasing a paycheck.
Leonora
recognizes this is no ordinary horse; matter of fact, she feels she
should get to know him better and lets him know she likes him and will
certainly come to his party.
Oh, that party – the far reaches of
Surrealism and the hyperweird, complete with music and dancing. I'll
conclude with Leonora back at home thinking about her highly unusual,
artistic life prior to going to the party with her new friend:
“After
the meal I smoked a cigarette and mused on the luxury it would be to go
out, instead of taking to myself and boring myself to death with the
same endless stories I'm forever telling myself. I am a very boring
person, despite my enormous intelligence and distinguished appearance,
and nobody knows this better than I. I've often told myself that if only
I were given the opportunity, I'd perhaps become the centre of
intellectual society. But by dint of talking to myself so much, I tend
to repeat the same things all the time. But what can you expect? I'm a
recluse.”
UNCLE SAM CARRINGTON
Poor Leonora! Her poor mother
must bear the tremendous suffering of not only having Uncle Sam
Carrington living in her house and forever laughing hysterically at the
full moon but there's Aunt Edgeworth who also laughs hysterically at
sunset. Absolutely terrible, after all, her mother has a certain social
reputation to maintain. Meanwhile, Leonora wonder how she can deliver
her family from such disgrace.
This counts as one of my favorites, a tale containing elements of charm and Mad Hatter madness.
And
off she goes one evening, eight-year-old Leonora with her pot of jam
and fishing hook to see what wonders she can work. She loses her way in a
forest and comes upon two cabbages engaging in a fight to the death.
“Never mind, Leonora thinks, “it's only a nightmare.” But then she
remembers that she never went to bed that night. “How awful!”
But
there's good news. A horse approaches and asks Leonora if she's looking
for something. In the role of Alice in Wonderland (sort of), Leonora
explains the quagmire. The horse, in turn, tells her he knows of two
ladies who can deal with such matters, two ladies who live in a house
surrounded by wild plants and underclothes.
Fast forward to
Leonora climbing on the back of the horse and watching as these two
ladies in their garden work out the solution to her problem: “the
Misses Cunningham-Jones, each armed with a huge whip, were whipping the
vegetables on all sides, shouting, “One's got to suffer to go to Heaven.
Those who do not wear corsets will never get there.”
Oh, my, do
you hear echoes of Leonora despising polite society and being expelled
from more than one Catholic school for her rebelliousness? However,
unlike Leonora's girlhood, in this tale she gives us a happy ending.
Storytelling to the rescue!
The House of Fear also includes Down Below, Leonora's unforgettable account of going insane and her eventual recovery. I'll be writing a separate review for Down Below.
Leonora Carrington, 1917-2011
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