After Sappho by Selby Wynn Schwartz

Author:Selby Wynn Schwartz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Text Publishing Company
Published: 2022-06-02T00:00:00+00:00

ISADORA DUNCAN, 1913

Isadora Duncan had two children. She did not say their names in public, perhaps because they were very young or perhaps because they were illegitimate. But in 1913 a car went off a bridge into the Seine, taking with it the lives of the children and their governess.

Immediately the newspapers were ravenous. The death of a child makes a barbaric sound, even in print. Isadora fled the words that had been the names of her children.

First Isadora fled to Penelope in the remote village of stone ruins. But Penelope and her child were coughing stone dust and specks of blood. Isadora could not bear to hear that little voice gasping, ragged of breath. She fled to the coast of Liguria, to the seaside villa where Eleonora Duse was convalescing.

Eleonora Duse had been so many women that she could understand any sorrow: an actress is someone who carries ghosts for a living. Even when she is tired and ill, she remains a prism of other selves. In 1913 Eleonora Duse was still Ellida who stands at the edge of the sea serene in her own life, a beacon for women everywhere. Isadora Duncan could see her at a great distance.

But there is no art to losing a child, Isadora said bleakly to Eleonora. I know, my sweet, Eleonora replied, stroking the head that rested on her shoulder. There is always this risk, in life, that we have our parts in a tragedy and we do not know it.

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