Women artists’ inner self and Leila’s sane mind
If we assume that the search for woman artist’s inner self and happiness constitutes the fable of Any Woman’s Blues we can once again realize why the re-creation of women artists myth is so significant for E. Jong’s narrative. Leila’s sane mind is given a priority within the text as the ultimate truth-seeker. It is neither Emmie, nor Dart who can advise Leila but the voice within herself. This is the voice that Sybille, Leila’s shrink, calls the voice of her sane mind.
She [Sybille] means the voice of that fierce advocate within myself, the sane centered part of me that is on my own side, that shining nugget of self-love surrounded by fathomless darkness. But I can hear it only intermittently, through the static of obsession. p.80/IV
There is hardly any other attribute of Leila’s inner self that can most fittingly match her but fierceness. It seems that this fierce advocate within herself can guarantee that the tiny portion of self-love will survive. Apparently Leila’s self-love is a brand-new all-round sensation that is very empowering - it can be heard, viewed, felt. It seems to be all around her although the witty contrast of light and tiny /dark and huge in the shining nugget and fathomless darkness is to alarm us how dangerous and haunting an obsession is. Leila knows that in his own way Dart loves her but that isn’t any longer enough for her. She has to love herself.
The witty contrast above is further elaborated on with the metaphor of the good ship Leila who must sail on despite this pirate Dart down in the hold who is ‘punching a hole in the hull’. It is worth noting that E. Jong is extremely fond of water and air imagery. All throughout Any Woman’s Blues we will continue finding various flying and diving metaphors that are strongly associated with women artists’ creativity. E. Jong’s particular emphasis now is on the opposition of good and bad. Yet it is somewhat reversed - the ever bad girl Leila is no longer approving of the pirate treatment of the nice guy. The irony of this reversal of roles is that Leila starts behaving like a good girl. Yet this is not the notion of the traditional good girl. This is something beyond the good girlism myth, something that will eventually prove good and efficient for Leila and misery for Dart. Always before while trying to think of her supreme wish Leila knew that wish has been to keep Dart. Now it is for her. Now instead of worrying about Dart, she could be doing what’s best for Leila. Although Emmie’s advice may be pushing Leila to the extreme, trying to cross over Dart, it is in tune with Leila’s sane mine. Her sanity wishes for the power to keep the clarity brought by the hardworking days of the maenads and crystals - p.112/VI.
Make yourself your first priority - you don’t have to be at the affect of someone else. Seize your life. Dart’s incidental - and boring. p. 138/VII
Apparently this is the clarity of her crystal clear still-lives, the clarity of knowing where exactly one draws the line between forgiveness and self-protection. And Leila’s sane mind is power-generating. Although being far off and barely audible, one can hear it whispering: ‘Leila, you are lovable, you really are. You don’t have to put up with this shit’ p.127,5/VII. It is not only Leila’s sane mind that stirs up this positive pressure and need for self-love but Emmie, too. Leila is strung by the question Emmie raises: ‘Leila, but how much do you love Leila?’ The strong disturbing impact of strung is coupled with the short answer ‘Not much’ , which Leila is able to produce; as well as with the anxiety that springs from the view of Emmie that there is something ‘drastically wrong’, because ‘Leila is lovable’ - p.103/VI. Over and over again the lovely ‘l’-alliteration in lovable Leila will be put to test because Leila is scarcely able to believe she is that lovable. Once again we will deal with watery images instead of flying metaphors. Doubting Leila feels like an octopus cut into bits and tossed into the lagoon to grow again. This is the terrifying life she/E. Jong has chosen for herself - or the muse has chosen for her - to dive to the bottom of the lagoon again and again, seeking skinlessness, seeking self-annihilation - p.310/XIX. The pirate no longer is Dart but Renzo and the Venice lagoon is interiorized by the sane mind of Leila as the image of nonattachment. This is Leila’s ideal alternative to her life of obsessions - nonattachment, as the key to everything in life. Because she wants to feel everything, to get lost in sensation, and yet also wants to be able to give away all of herself and still have some piece of herself to regenerate from - like an octopus.
We can probably review Leila’s engagement to herself not so much as a bizarre whim of a woman artist but as the ultimate expression of Leila’s drive towards nonattachment. We are to witness a weird wedding when Leila Sand is engaged to marry Louise Zandberg. And we are to celebrate not only the comeback of Leila’s true identity (by the respect paid to her real name) but the comeback home of her sane mind.
I belong somewhere other than the floor of my foyer, weeping. My sane mind is back, and welcome to it! p.145/VII
Who is Leila/Louise/Luisa really? Erica Jong is trying to identify Leila with the ‘youness’ of the reader or the hand that grasps the pencil, i.e. with the creativity of the talented people. Jong’s urge to re-claim that these are any woman’s blues, that Leila’s hair, her eyes, her profession, her men, may change for they are all flesh, can only help us build up the high profile of a mythologized heroine - 280/XVIII. At the same time Leila is still obsessed with the ‘towering figure of I’. This is the ‘I’ without which she can hardly be. All throughout the text Leila is trying to ‘abolish the first person’, to get free of the ‘towering shadow of the ninth letter of the alphabet’. But she is destined to search for it and to start loving it.
And what is ‘life’ anyway? Leila Sand’s and any woman artist’s life at its truest and purest, seems to consist of standing before an easel, smelling the turpentine smell and ‘arranging the hues of white on a white canvas before green hills’. This is where Leila could stand for all eternity.
I seem in fact to have been standing here for all eternity. This is your life, Leila Sand, the youness of you. How lucky to have found it, or to have come back to it before it was too late. 184/XI
All in all it seems that art reshapes life even more than life shapes art, that Leila’s personal identity is of a self-empowering woman artist who is a devotee to life’s abundance. Leila’s sexual escapades will shortly prove that to flourish art needs life and love as much as life needs art.
Copyright © : Iliyana Nedkova,1996-7
N.Paradoxa : Issue No.6, 1998