Caroline Blackwood: England broke me like this

They say that childhood is the garden that nourishes an artist's imagination. Perhaps that's true, except that in the short stories collected in Not a Word, by English writer Caroline Blackwood , that garden appears as a swamp filled with a mist as bitter as it is enveloping. Blackwood was born in 1931 in London, into British nobility, and at the same time heiress to the Irish Guinness family's brewing empire. When she was 14, her father, Basil Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, the fourth Marquess of Dufferin and Ava, died, and the teenager was left at the mercy of her mother, a dazzling beauty whose greatest aspirations were to play cards and attend royal balls.

The three Blackwood siblings were left adrift, with no family members willing to take them in, and they suffered the torturous treatment of sadistic nannies. In fact, Caroline recounts one of these experiences in "Not a Word," the opening text of the anthology. Her sentences have a chilling ability to expose the decrepitude of the human spirit and the fragility of a childhood completely exposed to the evils of the world.

Leaving childhood behind brought her no relief either. During World War II, Caroline entered the nearest school, a boys' institution that embodies all the horrors of a British elite accustomed to an unfathomable emotional void. This is the origin of her vocation, as her experiences led her at that time to write her first story, "Pig," in which she exposes the exploits of a teenager who faces abuse with stoicism. The text reveals the birth of a gloomy imagination, as gothic as it is audacious. Some stylistic traits, such as repetition, dislocated syntax, and a fondness for contempt, would become hallmarks of her more mature writing.

There's a resounding malicious pleasure in the characters of all the stories in this selection. This insistence, which could render the whole thing monotonous, provokes a certain fascination. From story to story, the expectation of a malice that, despite being anticipated, goes beyond any proportion is generated. This is particularly strongly felt in the first fiction, "The Interview." It addresses the dialogue between the widow of a famous artist and a journalist after attending the premiere of the painter's biopic. It's inevitable to associate the story with the author's biography.

At a party, Blackwood met the then virtually unknown painter Lucian Freud , and they eloped to Paris. Despite her mother's systematic plotting to destroy their relationship, their romance flourished. They married, and their five years together included infidelity, financial difficulties, and tensions over Freud's maniacal ego. Even so, they fostered the young woman's artistic development; she befriended Francis Bacon, discovered the world of London bohemian life, and discovered alcohol, which would become one of her addictions.

It wasn't until fifteen years later that Blackwood began to write. In the meantime, she had left Freud; distressed by the breakup and overwhelmed by his attempts to get her back together, she took refuge in an aunt's Roman villa. There she fell in love with the screenwriter Ivan Moffat , whom she later followed to California to venture into acting. She didn't have the success she had hoped for and moved to New York. She had a brief romance with the photographer Walker Evans, and soon married the pianist Israel Citkowitz, a promising musician who devoted himself to caring for his wife and two daughters.

Blackwood 's third marriage began with an unbridled passion for the poet Robert Lowell , which soon descended into emotional chaos, as both suffered from psychological disorders (he was bipolar and she suffered from chronic alcoholism). The drama worsened with the birth of their only child. And the misfortunes followed in a sinister chain: the nanny took Carolina's three children for a walk and a car hit them; the couple went out in a car and had an accident; one of the girls went to the kitchen to get some cookies and dropped a kettle full of boiling water on her face.

In particular, this last event is depicted in the story "Burn Unit," which narrates the writer's experience in the hospital while her daughter was hospitalized. What's more, after seven turbulent years, Lowell decided to return to his former wife, but he never reached his destination: he suffered a heart attack in the taxi taking him back to his ex-wife's home in New York, while carrying a portrait of Caroline painted by Freud. Just a few months later, Blackwood's eldest daughter also died of an overdose.

Beyond the tragic succession, that period contributed to Blackwood 's vocation as a writer. In the ten years that followed, she published four novels (some dark, like The Stepdaughter , or the more gothic Great Granny Webster , inspired by her family), three essays, two collections of short texts, and a recipe book.

Even so, only now has a selection of his most notable stories been translated into our language, and together they constitute an extraordinary journey through the captivatingly somber territory of his poetry. Indeed, in tune with the lavishness of the settings, the language is sophisticated; his metaphors find a way to portray the sordid with sinister elegance. The men, women, and even the children who inhabit the scenes view each other with distrust and resentment, and act to harm one another in an endless chain. The scenes manage to capture the most abysmal dimension of the wound of loneliness and the capacity for self-flagellation that only calms when another is hurt.

Not a word , Caroline Blackwood. Translated Damián Tullio. Chai Editora, 212 pages.