Chimera, the figure of the Surreal Muse
Continuing the theme of objets trouvé and hasard objectif (objective chance) that we discussed in the previous lesson, next week we’ll be talking about Leonora Carrington and her text Down Below. First written in 1942, it has undergone several changes over the course of more than 40 years. It was published in Portuguese by Snob in 2022 and translated by Leonor Castro Nunes as part of the Baldio collection, which in turn was based on the 1988 edition published by New York Review Books.
We’ll talk about Leonora Carrington as a femme-enfant figure. The realization of Surrealism and its center of creation. The figure of a woman as a Work and its event. On the other hand, the emergence of Fear as a character, as a house, a shelter, a space and, at the same time, a body-liberation.
For a better understanding of the subject, we suggest reading the Preface, pages 11 to 54, where the contextualization of Leonora Carrington’s life events is described by Marina Warner, available here.
