Beschreibung:

Journal intime. Hazelwood, St Martin d'Ardèche, 1er janvier 1935 - 21 juillet 1939. Manuscrit autographe de 43 pages in-8 (200 x 120 mm), sur un fragment d'agenda britannique pour l'année 1935. Précieux journal intime autographe de Leonora Carrington illustré de 11 croquis et d'un beau dessin à pleine page à l'encre. Il est d'une écriture très lisible. Touchant témoignage des tourments d'une jeune rebelle, future muse des Surréalistes et compagne de Max Ernst Commencé à l'âge de 17 ans dans la demeure familiale de Hazelwood, le journal traduit les doutes d'une jeune fille et illustre la naissance d'une vocation artistique : Being a letter to my self Jan 3. 1935 Hazelwood Dear Mary Leonora. You have had a bloody hell of a year. You have been in love during 1934 - with - Jean de Botton, Christopher Glencower, John Burgess François Owen-Jean, [...] which makes a round dozen. What an impossible person you are. Most of them you tired of in a week [...]. Give up dreaming & become a true artist, no matter how bad - but be an artist. Forget men & your own vanity. Make an effort & be great - you could be great - perhaps only as an illustrator. You have too much imagination & not enough poetry. You are not an aesthete. Try to forget men. Put your sex into your work. Give up posing & be sincere. Good luck Mary Leonora Le journal s'interrompt à la date du 15 janvier 1935 pour ne reprendre que le 28 mars 1939, après son installation à Saint-Martin d'Ardèche avec Max Ernst auquel la jeune femme avait été présentée en 1937. Son existence avait alors pris une tournure toute autre : That makes four years that I have touched my diary & I am pleased to say that my uneventful & torpid existence at Hazelwood is finished for ever. I am finished with sitting in the billiard room & gorging chocolates & chocolates. Cette seconde partie du journal témoigne de sa passion dévorante pour Max Ernst exclusive et obsessionnelle : I am in my house with Max. For 2 years I have been desperately & ragingly in love with Max, I paint still but only to stop myself going mad. Every second of the day I want to be with him. I want him to live only while he is with me. I want him to have no past. I want him forever. I want to be the same person so that we will always be together. I care for nothing but our life together. I can't breathe without him. [...] I shall still be in love with Max when I am dead. Une scène est retranscrite en français : Je ne veux pas que tu vis après moi. Ca veut dire que tu aura une vie amoureusement après ma mort. Alors il dit - «Tu veux que je me suicide ?» Moi. «Amoureusement oui. Je veux l'amour absolu.» Le journal offre également quelques incursions dans la vie artistique de l'époque, évoquant notamment le passage de Man Ray avec Adrienne Fidelin, surnommée Addy, le 13 avril. Ou le récit d'un vernissage dans une galerie parisienne qui tourne mal : There were cocktails & champagne + I (in a new hat + leopard skin dress) was much admired. Max was met by a bearded doctor of piles + ruptures. He started on the hated topic + I caught the name of the shit of my lips. Heated with champagne I flew at him angrily. He talked of having but his money or something. Any how he said “C'est la jalousie de femme” enraged I shouted “Jalousie de merde !” [...] I waited for him to come out. When he arrived I stopped him amidst a crowd of fashionable trolops + said : Monsieur, je vous annonce que vous etes un merd.” I was too excited to listen to his feeble expostulations + continued to stamp + cry: Merd! de toute façon vous êtes une merd!”. [...] Max was angry that night but I was + am glad. Max will never understand the maddening sick rage... I really hate people. I dispute most of the human race so much that at times I feel sick. What would I say about Max's virtues ? I do not know or do I care about, virtue. He is mine and I dispute him jealously to his past. - to any part of him that has not happened with me. Leonora Carrington évoque sa vie à la ca