One Thousand Words

The university where I work happens to have a bronze cast of Degas’ “Little Dancer Aged Fourteen”, so before I read Camille Laurens’ book of the same name (recommended by troisoiseaux), I went to have a good long look at the sculpture.

It’s less than life-size - perhaps two-thirds, one-half the size of the actual fourteen-year-old dancer. You can see the bronze creases in her stockings at the ankles and knees, the places where socks begin to wear out. Her forehead slopes back sharply, more sharply really than I think the human forehead can. Her hair hangs down her back in a rope braid, which is tied with a golden satin ribbon. A real ribbon, fabric rather than bronze.

She wears, too, a cloth tutu, and the curator told us (when I visited with my parents months ago) that the tutu has to be replaced every now and then, always to great debate about exactly how it should look, as the tutu on Degas’ original statue (wax, not bronze) was long gone when collectors decided to make a metal cast. How long should it be? What color? What kind of fabric?

The one at my university is about knee-length, much pleated, creamy pale layers of some fabric that might be tulle, the outer layer purposely frayed for the bottom quarter inch or so. The dancer’s feet are in the fourth position, but her hands are behind her back, and seem rather large for her size.

Thus prepared, I dived into Camille Laurens’ Little Dancer Age Fourteen: The True Story Behind Degas’ Masterpiece, translated by Willard Wood. Laurens is attempting to write a biography of Marie van Goethem, the girl who posed for the famous sculpture, but as there is very little material about Marie, it becomes a hodgepodge of other things, including a partial biography of Degas (and indeed it’s filed under his name at my library).

The book is also about the historical conditions of the young dancers at the Paris Opera, who were called rats and generally assumed to offer sexual favors on the side, giving the ballet a scandalous vibe that most 21st century viewers probably don’t pick up from looking at Degas’ pictures, since nowadays ballet is seen as a refined high art. (Is a picture, or a sculpture, worth a thousand words? Or can it tell us anything that we don’t already know?)

And it’s about the initial reception of Little Dancer Aged Fourteen, which more or less universally appalled viewers when it was first exhibited. Was it because Degas modeled the sculpture’s head to fit what was then considered the physiognomy of criminals? (Hence the sharply sloping forehead.) The association of ballet dancers with prostitution, which perhaps becomes a little queasy-making when you look at this flat-chested statue of a child?

Or the fact that the original statue was modeled in grayish wax, so the little dancer must have looked just a little corpse-like? A completely different viewing experience than the bronze cast I studied so carefully.

Degas, Laurens notes, was upset about the restoration attempts on a famous painting in the Louvre, a Rembrandt if I recall correctly. It was not the quality of the attempt that he objected to, but the fact that an attempt was made at all. Art, Degas thought, is a living thing; and like all living things, an artwork has its time to die.

Joan Aiken finished the last two books in the Wolves of Willoughby Chase sequence just before her death in 2004. The penultimate book, Midwinter Nightingale, has certain flaws that indicate a rushed or weary author, but before I discuss these flaws I do want to state that I’m very glad Aiken did write these books, as it seems right and proper that the series should come full circle with Dido and Simon at the end.

The main flaw in Midwinter Nightingale was the pacing, which is usually Aiken’s strong suit: in most of her book she packs so many happenings into a chapter that littlerhymes and I struggled to discuss all the developments. But here, the characters spend the first half of the book wandering more or less aimlessly before the plot really kicks off.

Also, this is petty but I just have to complain, Aiken offers three separate and incompatible lengths for the time that has elapsed since King Dick’s coronation. It happened 15 years ago, as it coincided with his marriage to his (second) wife Princess Adelaide. (As it turns out, Prince Davie who died in the mines was the son of King Dick’s hitherto unmentioned first wife, which means Davie was a teenager when he went to investigate the mines, which is better than going off to investigate at the age of about five as I first thought.)

But it also happened six years ago, because that’s when Dido said she first got back to England, and as we know Dido saved the ceremony which otherwise would have been interrupted by St. Paul’s Cathedral rolling into the Thames. But then Dido mentions her adventures on the island of Aratu, which happened before her return to England, as occurring “two or three years ago.” WHICH IS IT, AIKEN? Please just stop giving us numbers.

However, it is lovely to be back with Dido again. Is is fine but she’s just not the same. I enjoyed the reappearance of Aiken’s trademark ferocious creatures in the form of a moat filled with man-eating fish and crocodiles (although I’m still so sad they killed spoiler redacted and spoiler redacted!), and also the unexpected plot point of two completely non-ferocious bears. They just want Simon to give them head massages to help them cope with the wet cold of England! Who among us has not dreamed of a bear friend?

The next (and last) book is very short, and was in fact published posthumously. I envision Aiken writing it on a legal pad in her hospital bed, and will not hold it against her if it occasionally devolves from prose into a list of bullet points.