The Lives of the Muses: Nine Women and the Artists They Inspired
448
The Lives of the Muses: Nine Women and the Artists They Inspired
448Paperback(Reprint)
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Overview
In a brilliant, wry, and provocative book, National Book Award finalist Francine Prose explores the complex relationship between the artist and his muse. In so doing, she illuminates with great sensitivity and intelligence the elusive emotional wellsprings of the creative process.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780060555252 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HarperCollins |
| Publication date: | 10/07/2003 |
| Edition description: | Reprint |
| Pages: | 448 |
| Sales rank: | 587,617 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.40(w) x 10.88(h) x 1.08(d) |
About the Author
Hometown:
New York, New YorkDate of Birth:
April 1, 1947Place of Birth:
Brooklyn, New YorkEducation:
B.A., Radcliffe College, 1968Read an Excerpt
Hester Thrale
On a spring morning in 1766, Henry and Hester Thrale visited Dr. Samuel Johnson in his rooms at Johnson's Court.
The lively, attractive young couple had known the famous writer since 1764, when the playwright Arthur Murphy had brought Johnson to dinner at the Thrales' estate in Streatham Park, a few miles from central London. Since then, he had been a regular guest at Streatham, and at the Thrales' city place in Southwark, on the grounds of their profitable brewery. But lately, Johnson's visits had tapered off, and the Thrales had reason to suspect that he was suffering from one of the profound and terrifying fits of melancholia that had plagued him for most of his fifty-seven years. Already, they had grown close enough for Johnson to have confided his fears about "the horrible condition of his mind, which he said was nearly distracted."
Unlikely on the surface, the friendship was a tremendous coup for the socially ambitious Thrales. Johnson was famous not only for having written the Dictionary, the Rambler essays, The Life of Savage, and Rasselas but for his witty conversation. Among fashionable Londoners, watching the doctor talk had become a sort of spectator sport; at parties, guests crowded, four and five deep, around his chair to listen.
Johnson brought his own celebrity talking-and-sparring partners -- David Garrick, Oliver Goldsmith, Sir Joshua Reynolds -- along with him to Streatham, possibly because brisk repartee was not his host's strong suit. Well meaning and personable, properly insistent on his masculine right to overeat, hunt, and cheat publicly on his wife, Henry Thrale lacked,according to Johnson, the finer social skills. "His conversation does not show the minute hand; but he strikes the hour very correctly." He was the sort of rich, dull, solid fellow -- "such dead, though excellent, mutton," to quote Virginia Woolf's wicked assessment of Rebecca West's husband -- who turns up, with surprising frequency, in the lives of the muses.
Johnson liked the wealthy brewer; he admired the manly way he ran his household, and enjoyed the benefits of his expensive tastes in food and wine. Driven by an increasing horror of solitude and a craving for human companionship, the writer was drawn to the vibrant domesticity of Streatham, and especially to his hostess, a slight, dark-eyed Welsh fireball, who was disputatious, flirtatious, quick, well educated, and (unlike many of their contemporaries) unafraid of a man whom she described as having "a roughness in his manner which subdued the saucy and terrified the meek; this was, when I knew him, the prominent part of a character which few durst venture to approach so nearly."
Chroniclers of the period record the sparkling sorties that flew back and forth across the table between Samuel Johnson and Mrs. Thrale. And her own Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson, LL.D., published in 1785, functions as a compendium not only of the writer's witticisms, but also of their exchanges on subjects ranging from faith to incredulity, from ghostly apparitions to the value of everyday knowledge, from marital discord to convent life, from the pleasures of traveling by coach to the rewards of reading Don Quixote, from the correct way to raise children to the necessity of constantly measuring one's minor complaints against the greater sufferings and privations of the poor.
The Thrales were tolerant of the writer's notorious eccentricities. Eventually, they would assign a servant to stand outside his door with a fresh wig for him to wear to dinner, since he so often singed the front of his wig by reading too close to the lamp. Nearly blind, disfigured by pockmarks, Johnson suffered from scrofula and a host of somatic complaints, as well as an array of psychological symptoms that, today, would virtually ensure that he was medicated for Tourette's, obsessive-compulsive disorder, bipolar disorder, to name just the obvious syndromes. (The ongoing discussion of Johnson's "case" in medical literature has made him one of those figures, like Van Gogh and Lizzie Siddal, whose health care improved dramatically after death.) Happily, Samuel Johnson's own more permissive era was sufficiently enchanted by his intelligence, humor, and unflagging energy to overlook his rocking from foot to foot, mumbling, twitching, emitting startling verbal outbursts, obsessively counting his footsteps, touching each lamppost in the street, and performing an elaborate shuffle before he could enter a doorway.
The Thrales were used to the doctor's tics. Yet nothing could have prepared them for the scene they found on that May morning when at last they were admitted to the writer's rooms at Johnson's Court. His friend John Delap was just leaving, and it must have been instantly obvious -- from how pathetically he begged Delap to include him in his prayers -- that the great Samuel Johnson was veering out of control.
Left alone with the Thrales, Johnson became so overwrought, so violent in his self-accusations, so reckless in alluding to the sins for which he said he needed forgiveness that Henry and Hester were soon caught up in the general hysteria. "I felt excessively affected with grief, and well remember my husband involuntarily lifted up one hand to shut his mouth, from provocation at hearing a man so wildly proclaim what he could at last persuade no one to believe; and what, if true, would have been so very unfit to reveal."
It was an extraordinary scene: the handsome brewer clapping one hand over the mouth of London's most celebrated literary figure, while his agitated wife looked on in dread and horror. Something irreversible was happening to their friendship! The balance of power and need was being tipped forever by what Johnson was letting them see. They'd arrived as friends and hosts flattered by the doctor's affections, but uninvited, and perhaps a bit uncertain about their welcome and the future of their friendship. And now they had been drawn into this theatrical, eroticized tableau, from which they would emerge as guardians, saviors, confessors ...
The Lives of the Muses. Copyright © by Francine Prose. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.What People are Saying About This
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Reading Group Guide
Introduction
Tracing the paths of nine women who became counterparts to some of the world's most intriguing creative geniuses, National Book Award finalist Francine Prose has crafted a unique work of biography, history, cultural commentary, romance, literary criticism, and wry humor. The profiles presented in The Lives of the Muses inspire lively conversation: the bittersweet affection between Alice Liddell and Alice in Wonderland author Lewis Carroll; the impact of progressive novelist and essayist Lou Andreas-Salomé on Nietzsche, Rilke, and Freud; soul mates Suzanne Farrell and choreographer George Balanchine, whose unconsummated affair could only manifest itself through ballet; Yoko Ono, the impetus behind John Lennon's musical and emotional liberation.
Each of Francine Prose's subjects dispels the stereotype of muse as passive beauty. Ranging from ethereal to pragmatic, but always charismatic and gifted, the women featured in The Lives of the Muses are all singular geniuses in their own right, challenging all who read about them to reconsider the qualities required for celebrity, and the conventional definitions of talent.
Discussion Questions
- In her introduction to The Lives of the Muses, Francine Prose discusses the complex Greek mythology surrounding the original muses. Do these narratives from Classicism, which weave deities, mortals, noble causes, and emotional melodrama, have any role in shaping contemporary creativity? How does twenty-first-century society explain the mystery of intellect and artistic inspiration?
- Describing the photograph of Lou von Salomé with philosophers Paul Reéand Friedrich Nietzsche that appears in chapter four, Francine Prose refers to Salomé's "ability to make others see the world as she does and maintain the faith that this vision is a dream that they have always shared, and are inventing, minute by minute." Does this definition of musedom lend itself to vocations not traditionally associated with philosophy, such as politics or technology? Who assumes this role in your professional and social circles?
- Discuss the spectrum of sexual intensity reflected by the collaborations in The Lives of the Muses. To what extent were love and eroticism distinct from the creative process? In which cases were they indistinguishable from it?
- In terms of attention, proximity, and affection, Hester Thrale was never completely available to Samuel Johnson. Was this inaccessibility an aspect of their mutual influence over one another, or do you believe that their literary careers would have been better served by a bona fide partnership between them?
- The young age at which Alice Liddell exerted her influence sets her apart from the other muses in the book. In what ways did youth make her an ideal muse? In what ways did her youth hinder her? Are there any parallels in the substantial age difference between Alice Liddell and Charles Dodgson and that of Suzanne Farrell and George Balanchine? How might age have affected Lou Andreas-Salomé's influence over Rainer Maria Rilke, who was twelve years younger than his muse?
- What does Elizabeth Siddal's experience indicate about the role of social rank and status in the balance of power between muse and artist? In what ways does she embody many of the contradictions of Victorian society?
- The many men with whom Lou Andreas-Salomé formed liaisons include philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (early in her life), linguist Friedrich Carl Andreas (whom she married), poet Rainer Maria Rilke (whom she re-named), and Sigmund Freud (whose daughter Anna found a kind of surrogate mother in Lou). What do these relationships reflect about the various stages of Lou's life?
- What do you consider to be the nature of Gala Dalí's power over Salvador? What did you discover about the realities versus the myths of their marriage? Was the relationship steeped in the dynamics of their art, or vice versa?
- Did Lee Miller and Man Ray use the medium of photography to achieve opposite ends? To what extent were her experiences in World War II the embodiment of Surrealism? What might have revitalized her journalism career?
- With the publication of Through Another Lens in 1998, Charis Weston captured the stages of a muse's role in an artist's life, including the dissolution of the arrangement. Discuss Charis's journey from muse (and model) to "art wife" and eventually memoirist for Edward Weston. What seem to be the determining factors in the longevity of a muse, ranging from Alice Liddell's incomparable summer with Charles Dodgson to Gala and Salvador Dalí's decades of marriage?
- Suzanne Farrell became not only George Balanchine's muse, but also his protégé and successor. Theirs is also the only medium in the book that calls for physical motion. In what way did ballet itself become an active "participant" in their relationship?
- Yoko Ono's participation in John Lennon's medium was not matched by his hand in her art, though his presence in her life has likely left vicarious imprints on her work. Does the presence of Yoko's voice on recordings with John elevate her to a level other than muse or wife? What distinguishes muse from artist? Did Yoko's approach set a new standard that might have improved the lives of muses existing in less enlightened times?
- Is it possible to construct a composite muse from the nine women presented by Francine Prose? Do certain media require particular skills in their muses (visual art versus poetry, or philosophy versus dance and music)? Why might ancient Greeks have imagined all nine muses as female?
- With which muse could you most easily identify? Which one would you prefer to have as your muse? What aspects of your life would most benefit from the presence of a muse?
About the Author
Francine Prose is the author of a several highly acclaimed works of fiction, including Bigfoot Dreams, Household Saints, Hunters and Gatherers, Primitive People, Guided Tours of Hell, and the National Book Award Finalist Blue Angel. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, the Atlantic Monthly, GQ, Harper's Magazine, the New York Times Magazine, and the Paris Review. The recipient of numerous grants and awards, including Guggenheim and Fulbright Fellowships, Francine Prose was a Director's Fellow at the Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. She Lives in New York City.