Hearing Trumpet Idea of Magic

             This week I am discussing the book we read entitled The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington.  This book was very different to read because of the way that Carrington narrates the book.  Her language seems very dreamlike and the why in which she describes things reminds of me talking to my grandma, which makes sense because the main character Marian is really old.  One of my favorite parts of the book is when Marian arrives at her new home- what the reader would think of as a nursing home.  However it’s much different than the usual nursing homes we would think of today.  That’s where the element of magic and make believe come into play.  The bungalows where the ladies stay are each a different shape. Within its high walls, "the main building was in fact a castle, surrounded by various pavilions with incongruous shapes. Pixielike dwellings shaped like toadstools, Swiss chalets, railway carriages, one or two ordinary bungalows, something shaped like a boot, another like what I took to be an outsize mummy."  Marian’s bungalow specifically is a lighthouse shaped tower.  There was little furniture in the room because most of it was painted onto the wall.  Therefore creating a one-dimensional living space.  This part of the book really shows the imagination of Carrington when creating this scene.  

            My response to this book was that it’s a very different read and at times I had a hard time following what was going on and if it was reality or fairytale.  Another aspect I noticed was that this book is not a chapter book; rather it is formed into one gigantic long story.  This form makes it a little bit harder to read because everything is condensed together instead of splitting it up into sections.  As a reader the magic element helped me to see the book as a fun read, and not a deep dark heavy read.  I think it creates a little bit of a fairytale for the reader because of her use of magic and imagination.              

Young Girls Desire

            Dark Spring by Unica Zurn has some very interesting themes that deal with surrealism, most specifically desire.  The young girl in the book wants to feel desired not only by her family, but also by other men.  This is weird because she is only 12 years old and already wants to feel desired by older men.  The reason for this is because she is neglected as a child and has no love by her parents or her brother.  She sees her father with other women, along with he mother with other men, and therefore knows that desire between a man and a woman exists and she wants to feel that for herself.

            Lonely and hurt, she then indulges in a world of sexual and masochistic fantasies, masturbating and discovering the pleasures of her own body as a means of coping with the pain of feeling unloved and insignificant. At one point in the narrative she dreams of being kidnapped by a group of “dark men” and tied to a black slab of marble, where she is subsequently gang-raped, her throat cut at the moment of sexual climax. She indulges in such fantasies throughout the work but continually acknowledges that imagined sensual pleasure does little, if anything, to fill her emotional vacancy: “She searches for something that would really complete her and she cannot find it. everything is false.”

            The young girl is trying to fulfill her desire with sexual pleasure, however this doesn’t give her the full desire everyone needs in life, which is to be loved. She is still empty inside and believes it’s her purpose to find something that will fill her up and complete her.  She finds that what completes her is her fantasy and love of the older man she sees at the pool.  By going to talk to him she is fulfilling her desire to meet him and have him give her attention.  Attention is her ultimate desire.  She feels complete that she was able to interact with someone she desires, unlike her father who she desired but he ignored her. 

            Another more unfortunate desire of hers is at the end of the novel when she wants to end her life.  It’s interesting because she is happy and feels complete after leaving the mans home, but then after finding out she can never go there again, or even out in the world again as he punishment, she immediately forgets her happiness and goes right into contemplating her death.  She doesn’t have it in her anymore to fight the battle of being lonely and undesired. 

           

            This book was enjoyable to read, and was very different from any book I have read before.  There are many more elements to this book that can be looked at as well.  

Rene Magritte

The artist I chose to write about this week is Rene Magritte.   I have not had the privilege of viewing his art before talking about him in class this past week.  His paintings are very unique because he uses the idea of illusion in his work. As someone viewing the painting questions come into mind such as, what part of the painting is actually real and which part is just an illusion?  Where does the illusion begin and end?

            Another part of Magritte’s artwork that is hard for me to explain because I don’t want to make it sound like his work is random, but in some of his paintings such as The Son of Man, and La Chateau des Pyrenees, the objects put into the painting really do seem random.  Like why is that even there? Or What was he thinking when making this? 

 One picture that I picked to analyze is the picture called La Seize Septembre.  The reason I picked this painting is because it’s simple but yet it shows illusion.  Clearly this picture is representing nighttime however what is interesting about it is the position of the moon.  If we were actually standing in front of this tree looking at it we would be seeing the moon through the branches of the tree, and we would only see parts of the moon because the branches would be in the way of the full view.  However Magritte decides to place the moon in the top middle of the tree.  The illusion in this picture is the placement of the moon.  Clearly we would not be able to see the moon that perfectly unless there was some sort of hole in the tree.   

            One other painting of Magritte’s that I really like is Le Blanc-Seing.  This picture is a much more complex version of illusion.  The horse is seen walking through the woods however we all know a horse and person cannot walk through a tree so one would think to go around the tree.  However Magritte paints the picture of the horse and rider as if they are one with the tree.  Another way to look at it is to see the horse emerging or sneaking out from the forest/trees because there is a gap that connects the horses head and front part to the rest of its body. Looking at this photo just makes me want to sit and figure out how he drew this and to figure out the allusion because there are so many ways to look into this painting.