Leonora Carrington

1977

Book, 21.1 x 13.7 cm, 118 p, language: English, publisher: St. Martin's Press, ISBN: 978-0312762100.
Materials:

Collection: Collection M HKA, Antwerp (Inv. no. B 2026/126).

Literary synopsis

"The Stone Door follows a similar structure to that of The Hearing Trumpet—here as well, the rational world gives way to a sort of archetypal hero’s journey. The novel (and its condensed predecessor) is structurally interesting: its narrator loses herself in dreams, a desert is crossed, and the narrator encounters a fallen angel. All the while, references are made to a search for the King of the Jews. Soon after, the narrator herself vanishes from the text, and the narrative it taken over by a young Hungarian boy at a sort of academy or institution who begins encountering a young woman in dreams. It’s vividly written, but the disjointed narrative renders this one of Carrington’s less accessible works. And some of the imagery she evokes here may be, if anything, too potent. Zacharias, the central figure, is a Jewish child sent into isolation, his identity replaced with a number. It isn’t clear if she's alluding to the dehumanizing effects of fascism, or, as in The Hearing Trumpet, simply holding up modernity as the scourge of individuality. But this is one of the few places where one of Carrington’s narratives is unable to bear the weight of the accumulated history, myth, and philosophy in its allusions".

- Tobias Carroll (The Paris Review, August 14, 2013)