Leonora Carrington - A Tribute - November 2011 -

Tribute: Leonora Carrington

By April Grey

"The men were the stars; the women were the muses." - Leonora Carrington (NY Post 1975)

This past spring Feminist-Surrealist painter and writer Leonora Carrington died at the age of 94. I first learned of this remarkable woman through Gloria Orenstein's book, Theatre of the Marvelous: Surrealism and the Contemporary Stage. Since childhood, I've been drawn to both the fantastic and macabre in writing and art. Works that challenged consensual reality or presented alternate realities also excited me. I eventually chose to write my master's thesis in theatre on Carrington's plays because of their resonance with my own interests; however, her influence has continued beyond my theatre studies and into my work as a writer. Leonora Carrington's biography reads like the synopsis for a romance novel:

Born in 1917 to an affluent British family, Carrington had a nanny who would tell her old Irish folklore. When Carrington was sent to a convent school, she didn't fit in and rebelled. Several schools expelled her before her mother took pity and sent her to Florence, Italy to study art: Carrington's one great love. Presented to the British court at 17, Carrington eschewed being a socialite and, at age 19, she fell in love with Surrealist art. At 20 she went to her father to tell him that she loved Max Ernst, a German Surrealist 26 years her elder. Carrington's father disowned her after telling her that she would die penniless because all artists suffered that fate (her canvases sell in excess of a million dollars each). Ernst eventually divorced his wife for Carrington but they never wed. They lived together in a cottage in southern France where Carrington practiced her art, baked homemade bread and wrote her first novel, La Maison de la Peur (1938) with illustrations by Ernst. Most of her early writings were in French, later translated to English. She has also written in Spanish and English.

Unfortunately, World War II arrived and ended this idyllic time. First, the French arrested Ernst as an undesirable alien. After friends secured his release, Germany invaded France and the Gestapo arrested him. Carrington, now 23 years of age, had an emotional breakdown from the stress of these events, but managed to pull herself together long enough to get to Spain, where she then had a complete mental breakdown. Around 1940 or 1941, her parents took legal control over her and put Carrington into an insane asylum, where the doctors used chemical shock therapy on her and she was otherwise brutalized. (She later writes about this in a 1944 article published in Down Below). A nurse hired by her parents took Carrington to Lisbon. Carrington escaped from the nurse and found refuge in the Mexican Embassy. A marriage of convenience with a diplomat friend, Renato Leduc, liberated her from her family's legal authority. Meanwhile, Peggy Guggenheim, an art patron and founder of the Guggenheim Museum in NYC, helped Ernst flee France. According to one account, Ernst had shown up with Guggenheim (whom he later married) in Lisbon along with an entourage of Guggenheim's ex-husband, Ernst's ex-wife and a collection of children. In a 2007 Guardian profile, Carrington described those weeks where they were all waiting in Lisbon for one of the last boats to America as "very weird." In this light, the fact that the two lovers never reconnect doesn't seem surprising at all.

Carrington and her new husband, Leduc, arrived in New York City where they divorced amiably. Carrington moved to Mexico. A few years later, in 1946, she met and married a Hungarian refugee and Surrealist photographer, Emerico Weisz. She lived in Mexico with Weisz for over six decades until his death in 2007. She continued to make art and write surrealist novels, short stories and plays until her death. She is survived by two sons, Gabriel and Pablo Weisz, and five grandchildren.

I enjoyed discovering all her writings and was delighted to find her artwork was on the cover of The Penguin Book of Modern Fantasy by Women, which included her short story "My Flannel Knickers." Her take on feminism—a spiritual approach where she sees the need for women to recognize their power and claim it—profoundly influences me to this day. The term Orenstein uses to describe Carrington's version of Surrealist Feminism is “Ecofeminism,” a feminism that seeks to find a balance in nature.

Most of Carrington's work involves the interaction between humans and wild animals. For example, regarding her introduction to society, she wrote a short story called "The Debutante" (1938). The narrator is a debutante who makes friends with a hyena in the local zoo. They get along famously and the narrator even teaches the hyena French. When the mother of the debutante arranges a ball, the debutante complains to her friend, the hyena. The hyena says that she envies the debutante's life because the food in the zoo isn't very good. They agree to have the hyena impersonate the debutante for the ball. The debutante brings the hyena home and dresses it in her clothes. Unfortunately, the hyena's face will give the ruse away. In a surreal and violent act, the hyena rips off the maid's face for a mask, and eats the maid. The hyena, now fully disguised, heads down to the ball while the debutante reads Gulliver's Travels. Still, things do not go as intended and the story ends:

My mother came in, pale with fury. "We had just sat down to eat," she said, "when that thing in your place gets up and cries, 'I smell a bit strong, eh? Well I don't eat cake.' Then she tore off her face and ate it. With one bound she disappeared through the window."

(Full text available at http://www.redtidebluefire.com/debutante.html)

Violence juxtaposes with the whimsy of the tale. Animals hold prominent positions in Carrington’s art along with Celtic myth, the Kabala and Alchemy, all of which are paths that women can follow to empower themselves and make peace with nature.

Though the Surrealist male believed women should be femme-enfants (child women) and malleable, Carrington showed herself to be resilient and un-dominated by the men around her. She remained unique and faithful to her own vision and understanding of art.

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“You may not believe in magic but something very strange is happening at this very moment. Your head has dissolved into thin air and I can see the rhododendrons through your stomach. It's not that you are dead or anything dramatic like that, it is simply that you are fading away and I can't even remember your name.” ― Leonora Carrington, The Hearing Trumpet

Sadly, as a director I had little opportunity to pursue my interest in Feminist-Surrealist theatre, not to say that it doesn't exist—plays by Adrienne Kennedy and Tina Howe come immediately to mind (see Lamont, Rosette C. "Tina Howe's Secret Surrealism: Walking a Tightrope." Modern Drama 36.1 (1993): 27-37).

I switched from working in theatre to writing fiction in the late 80s. At first I tried to only write stories that were either surreal or had magic realism in them. Eventually, I wrote in many different genres. Nonetheless, Chasing The Trickster, my urban fantasy novel features an ancient Celtic god, Cernunnos, who finds himself in the New World. It wouldn't have been written without my introduction to Celtic myth through Carrington's work. Though my style has changed, her work still influences my themes of how a woman can empower herself and thereby redeem a world much damaged by human greed and thoughtlessness.

Ultimately, it was Carrington's faith in her own vision that helped me accept myself as a writer. One of the greatest challenges in my writing is the creation of the marvelous in my work. Carrington makes it look so easy. When I look at my own world-building, I see how mundane my worlds are; just a glimmer of magic happens, and then it's gone. I may never have the literary ability of some of the writers I most admire, but I can still write the stories and create the myths that give meaning to my life. This is what Carrington has taught me.

“We went down into the silent garden. Dawn is the time when nothing breathes, the hour of silence. Everything is transfixed, only the light moves.” ― Leonora Carrington

Through writing, we all perform alchemy, transforming ourselves through a crucible of words to evolve from base lead to gold. In her works, the whole world vibrates with meaning and symbols, and great forces summon us to wrestle with our own perceptions.

We are fortunate to have had such a courageous and dynamic artist to show us the way. Through her work and the example of her life, we can summon the courage to dive deep into our psyches and find these important and often surreal images in our minds, releasing them to the world.

Thank you, Leonora. Your art and example will live on.

REFERENCES

Bernstein, A. (2011, May 26). Leonora Carrington, artist and surrealist muse, dies at 94. Washington Post.

Carrington, L. (1944, February). Down Below. VVV, 4. Reprinted by Black Swan, 1972; renewed ed., 1988.

———. (1975, December 6). Interview. The New York Post.

———. (1976). The Hearing Trumpet. New York: St. Martins.

———. (1988). The House of Fear. Trans. K. Talbot and M. Warner. New York: E. P. Dutton.

———. (1996). My Flannel Knickers. In A. Williams and R. Glyn-Jones (Eds.), The Penguin Book of Modern Fantasy by Women. London: Penguin.

Lamont, R.C. (1993). Tina Howe's Secret Surrealism: Walking a Tightrope. Modern Drama, 36.

Moorhead, J. (2007, January 1). Leonora and me. Guardian.

Orenstein, G. (1974, August). Leonora Carrington: Another Reality. MS Magazine.

———. (1975). The Theatre of the Marvelous. New York: New York University Press.

———. (n.d.). The Chrysopeia of Mary the Jewess: Leonora Carrington's Surrealist Alchemical Tractate. Retrieved from http://tetworld.tripod.com/leonora.html

FURTHER READINGS

Aberth, S.L. (2010). Leonora Carrington: Surrealism, Alchemy and Art. London: Lund Humphries.

Carrington, L. (1974). The Oval Lady: Surreal Stories. New York: St. Martins.

———. (1977). The Stone Door. New York: St. Martins.

———. (1988). The Seventh Horse and Other Tales. New York: Dutton.

Leonora Carrington Official Website, http://www.carringtonleo.5u.com/

Moorhead, J. (2010, April 24). Another world. Daily Telegraph.

———. (2011, May 26). Leonora Carrington obituary. Guardian.

April Grey spent twenty years working in the theatre and law firms before marriage and motherhood led her to the more homebound pursuit of writing. She has sold eighteen speculative fiction short stories, which are reprinted in The Fairy Cake Bake Shoppe and 13 Other Weird Tales. Her urban fantasy novel, Chasing the Trickster, is due out this November from Eternal Press. When not writing or taking care of her family, she teaches ESL in NYC. She is a member of Broad Universe and the Horror Writers Association. She can be reached at lorned@nyc.rr.com or visit her website at aprilgreywrites.com.