 | |
| Author | Leonora Carrington |
|---|---|
| Country | Mexico |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Surrealism |
Publication date | 1974 |
| Pages | 224 pages |
| ISBN | 978-1878972194 |
The Hearing Trumpet is a 1974 surrealist novel by Mexican-British author Leonora Carrington. It follows the hard-of-hearing nonagenarian Marian, who is sent off to a peculiar old-age home by her family.
92-year-old Marian Leatherby lives in Mexico with her son Galahad, his wife Muriel, and her grandson Robert. Upon being gifted a hearing trumpet by her friend Carmella, Marian discovers that her family is planning to put her in an institution, which indeed happens. At the institution Marian finds herself drawn into surreal and occult intrigue, conspiracy and adventure.
According to the introduction to the 2005 version by Ali Smith, the novel was first published in French translation in 1974, as Le Cornet Acoustique, and first published in the original English version in 1976. [1] According to American art historian Susan L. Aberth The Hearing Trumpet was completed in 1950. [2]
The novel was reprinted by New York Review Books in 2021. [3]
In his review for The New York Times American novelist Blake Butler referred to the novel as "[...] as something at last truly radical, undoing not only our expectations of time and space, but of the psyche and its boundaries". [4] Ali Smith called the book "One of the most original, joyful, satisfying and quietly visionary novels of the twentieth century." [5] Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel wrote: "Reading The Hearing Trumpet liberates us from the miserable reality of our days." [6]
Carrington had a relationship with German artist Max Ernst. Renée Riese Hubert has pointed out some influences Ernst may have had on The Hearing Trumpet, though she argues that the defining influences on the novel were "[...] certain traditions in British literature [...Carrington's] familiarity with Mexican culture and myths, and [...Carrington's] enthusiasm for Eskimo and Asian cultures [...]". [7]
Ali Smith regards the book as "a statement on maturity, and the meanings of maturity" [8] and states: "Fundamentally, The Hearing Trumpet is a book about profound disconnection; at its centre are people unable to hear each other, or unwilling to." [9]
Max Ernst was a German painter, sculptor, printmaker, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was a primary pioneer of the Dada movement and Surrealism in Europe. He had no formal artistic training, but his experimental attitude toward the making of art resulted in his invention of frottage—a technique that uses pencil rubbings of textured objects and relief surfaces to create images—and grattage, an analogous technique in which paint is scraped across canvas to reveal the imprints of the objects placed beneath. Ernst is noted for his unconventional drawing methods as well as for creating novels and pamphlets using the method of collages. He served as a soldier for four years during World War I, and this experience left him shocked, traumatised and critical of the modern world. During World War II he was designated an "undesirable foreigner" while living in France.
María de los Remedios Alicia Rodriga Varo y Uranga was a Spanish surrealist painter working in Spain, France, and Mexico.
Charles Henri Ford was an American poet, novelist, diarist, filmmaker, photographer, and collage artist. He published more than a dozen collections of poetry, exhibited his artwork in Europe and the United States, edited the Surrealist magazine View (1940–1947) in New York City, and directed an experimental film. He was the partner of the artist Pavel Tchelitchew.
Unica Zürn was a German author and artist. Zürn is remembered for her works of anagram poetry and automatic drawing and for her photographic collaborations with Hans Bellmer. An exhibition of Bellmer and Zürn's work took place at the Ubu Gallery in New York City in the spring of 2012.
Mary Leonora Carrington was a British-born, naturalized Mexican surrealist painter and novelist. She lived most of her adult life in Mexico City and was one of the last surviving participants in the surrealist movement of the 1930s. Carrington was also a founding member of the women's liberation movement in Mexico during the 1970s.
Lise Deharme was a French writer associated with the Surrealist movement.
Pedro Friedeberg is a Mexican artist and designer known for his surrealist work filled with lines colors and ancient and religious symbols. His best known piece is the “Hand-Chair” a sculpture/chair designed for people to sit on the palm, using the fingers as back and arm rests. Friedeberg began studying as an architect but did not complete his studies as he began to draw designs against the conventional forms of the 1950s and even completely implausible ones such as houses with artichoke roofs. However, his work caught the attention of artist Mathias Goeritz who encouraged him to continue as an artist. Friedeberg became part of a group of surrealist artists in Mexico which included Leonora Carrington and Alice Rahon, who were irreverent, rejecting the social and political art which was dominant at the time. Friedeberg has had a lifelong reputation for being eccentric, and states that art is dead because nothing new is being produced.
Chloe Aridjis is a Mexican and American novelist and writer. Her novel Book of Clouds (2009) was published in eight countries, and won the Prix du Premier Roman Étranger. Her second novel, Asunder was published in 2013 to unanimous acclaim. Her third novel, Sea Monsters (2019), was awarded the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 2020. She is the eldest daughter of Mexican poet and diplomat Homero Aridjis and American Betty F. de Aridjis, an environmental activist and translator. She is the sister of film maker Eva Aridjis. She has a doctorate in nineteenth-century French poetry and magic from the University of Oxford.
The Art of This Century gallery was opened by Peggy Guggenheim at 30 West 57th Street in Manhattan, New York City on October 20, 1942. The gallery occupied two commercial spaces on the seventh floor of a building that was part of the midtown arts district including the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, Helena Rubinstein's New Art Center, and numerous commercial galleries. The gallery exhibited important modern art until it closed in 1947, when Guggenheim returned to Europe. The gallery was designed by architect, artist, and visionary Frederick Kiesler.
Bridget Bate Tichenor was a British surrealist painter of fantastic art in the school of magic realism and a fashion editor. Born in Paris, she later embraced Mexico as her home.
Women Surrealists are women artists, photographers, filmmakers and authors connected with the surrealist movement, which began in the early 1920s.
Valentine Penrose, was a French surrealist poet, author, and collagist.
Kati Horna, born Katalin Deutsch, was a Hungarian-born Mexican photojournalist, surrealist photographer and teacher. She was born in Budapest, at the time part of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, lived in France, Germany, Spain, and later was naturalized Mexican. Most of her work was considered lost during the Spanish Civil War. She was one of the influential women photographers of her time. Through her photographs she was able to change the way that people viewed war. One way that Horna was able to do this was through the utilization of a strategy called "gendered witnessing". Gendered witnessing consisted of putting a feminist view on the notion that war was a predominantly masculine thing.
The Temptation of Saint Anthony is a 1945 painting by the German artist Max Ernst. It depicts the desert father Anthony the Great as he is tormented by demons in Egypt. The painting is located at the Lehmbruck Museum in Duisburg, Germany.
Agnieszka Taborska is a Polish writer, art historian, specialist in Surrealism, translator, and educator.
How Doth the Little Crocodile is both a painting and an outdoor bronze sculpture by British-born Mexican surrealist artist Leonora Carrington.
Self-Portrait is a painting executed by artist Leonora Carrington and is currently in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She began the painting in London in 1937 and completed it in Paris in 1938. It is one of her most recognized works and has been called her "first truly Surrealist work." The presence of horses and Hyenas soon became a common feature in her work.
Hebdomeros is a 1929 book by Italian painter Giorgio de Chirico. Chirico did not produce any other long-form writing. The book is narrated in the third person and loosely concerns the movement of a man, Hebdomeros, westward. Writing in The Kenyon Review, Alan Burns referred to the text as a "surrealist dream novel".
Margaret Hooks (1945–2021) was an Irish-born author and journalist, best known for her books and writing about women, art and photography, including a celebrated biography of the Italian-born photographer Tina Modotti, and books and articles about Surrealism and artists related to the Surrealist movement.
Abigail Susik is an American art historian, art critic, curator, and theorist of avant-garde and contemporary art. Susik's scholarly research purview includes surrealism, dada, photography, experimental film, animation, protest art, erotic art, new media art, and projection mapping. Susik primarily writes about transnational surrealism, countercultural resistance movements, and anti-work or abolitionist theories including the history and theory of strike and sabotage.She is a Joint Editor of the Bloomsbury Publishing Transnational Surrealism Book Series and a Board Member of Charles H. Kerr Publishing. Susik is best known for her book Surrealist Sabotage and the War on Work, published in 2021 by Manchester University Press, which has been reviewed by Michael Löwy, Joseph Nechvatal, Paul Buhle, and others.