Down Below (NYRB Classics)

Down Below (NYRB Classics)

A stunning work of memoir and an unforgettable depiction of the brilliance and madness by one of Surrealism's most compelling figures

In 1937 Leonora Carringtonâ‚¬"later to become one of the twentieth centuryâ‚¬s great painters of the weird, the alarming, and the wildâ‚¬"was a nineteen-year-old art student in London, beautiful and unapologetically rebellious. At a dinner party, she met the artist Max Ernst. The two fell in love and soon departed to live and paint together in a farmhouse in Provence.Â

In 1940, the invading German army arrested Ernst and sent him to a concentration camp. Carrington suffered a psychotic break. She wept for hours. Her stomach became â‚¬Å“the mirror of the earthâ‚¬Ââ‚¬"of all worlds in a hostile universeâ‚¬"and she tried to purify the evil by compulsively vomiting. As the Germans neared the south of France, a friend persuaded Carrington to flee to Spain. Facing the approach â‚¬Å“of robots, of thoughtless, fleshless beings,â‚¬Â she packed a suitcase that bore on a brass plate the word Revelation.

This was only the beginning of a journey into madness that was to end with Carrington confined in a mental institution, overwhelmed not only by her own terrible imaginings but by her doctorâ‚¬s sadistic course of treatment. In Down Below she describes her ordealâ‚¬"in which the agonizing and the marvelous were equally combinedâ‚¬"with a startling, almost impersonal precision and without a trace of self-pity. Like Daniel Paul Schreberâ‚¬s Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, Down Below brings the hallucinatory logic of madness home.
Country USA
Brand New York Review of Books
Manufacturer NYRB Classics
Binding Paperback
Color Grey
ReleaseDate 2017-04-18
UnitCount 1
Format Illustrated
EANs 9781681370606

Country	USA
Brand	New York Review of Books
Manufacturer	NYRB Classics
Binding	Paperback
Color	Grey
ReleaseDate	2017-04-18
UnitCount	1
Format	Illustrated
EANs	9781681370606

Down Below (NYRB Classics)

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