The Nymph and Satyr Series
After the incident with Dart, Renzo arrives and this is where the 'Nymph and Satyr' Series begins. For ‘alone and elated’, Leila goes to Venice to look at the Old Masters drawings. Here is another chance for Erica Jong, the narrator, to get in and elaborate on the misconception of the primacy of the painting, as opposed to drawing, praised in the conventional art history books. For the woman artist drawings have an immediacy that paintings lack. What is worth seeing in the drawings from her modern point of view is the process, the artist’s mind at work, the line itself, the play of the mind. (p.346/XX) Eventually Leila is to enclose a drawing of hers to end the story.
Firstly we will follow Leila’s trip around the museum. She dwells for a while on the unanswerable questions of male and female struggle for power: ‘Love or murder? Mayhem or merging?’ before a Domenico Campagnola drawing of a struggling couple which seemed ‘forever and forever arrested in the moment before male blade pierces female flesh’. Then Leila prefers to ignore the centuries of man’s obsession with depicting the eternal Christian myths of ‘sketchy Virgins with sketchy Children, the warm-ups for ceiling goddesses, the Abrahams sacrificing Isaacs, the old men, the knights, the Bacchuses’. And finally Leila is free and ready to head towards her new maenads and crystal period - the 'Nymph and Satyr' Series, to draw her way back to sanity. Her impetus for a new life seems as ancient as the Giovanni Batista Tiopolo’s version from mid-18C. This is odd enough but here comes the only complete description of a work of an artist other than Leila’s:
I come to a Veronese nymph pursued through leafy woodland (with baby dragons underfoot) by a determined satyr (who looks, of course, exactly like my Renzo). And here, limpid and relaxed after love, are a faun and fauness drawn by Tiepolo. He kisses the top of her human brow; she closes slanted eyes in ecstasy. Her hooves are as hairy as his, but she has human breasts and a human heart, and he is melted, for a moment by the Land of Fuck. The artist has raised her right hand, then scribbled it out, as if not knowing whether or not to give her that power. p.347/XX
Leila is certainly so excited as to take out her little notebook with the marbled paper cover and to draw ‘quickly’ her own version of the Tiepolo scene. Her fauness lingers as languidly as his, but the hand she raises wields a drawing pen. ‘As she dreams against her faun’s rough hairy shoulder, she translates this fleeting scene of lust, of love, for future eyes to see.’ Back home from the mythically inspiring Venice Leila plans to do a nymph-and-satyr series. She is absolutely determined to do it once she holds the answer, i.e. the drawing pen in her hand. Neither the Trobriands with Julian, nor Venice with Renzo provides the answer. Here comes the drawing of Leila Sand that closes the story convincingly since it is supposed to be drawn by Leila/Tiepolo.
Once again the readers can enjoy the dance of the maenads, the dance
of the sex-pursuit, the retreat-of nymph and satyr, faun and fauness, that
has been going on for thousands upon thousands of years. The dancing Leila
is celebrating her new self, her ever creative personality and the evidence
of her ever ‘limning’ identity of a woman artist:
And I am hardly the first to want to capture it on paper. As long as flesh exists, someone will rise from the warmth of the huddle in the cave and struggle to her - or his knees - to scribble pictures - or words - on the wall of the cave, to please - or irk - the gods and goddesses. We go on revealing our hearts in the hope that they never stop beating. Vain hope. As long as I live, I know I will hold the pen that limns this satyr, this nymph, this dark, bedragoned wood. p.348/XX
This is the celebration of Leila Sand, of women artists professional identity, that goes through the hardships of her current everyday life and the eternity tests as if only to reach this happy-ending of her story.
Copyright © : Iliyana Nedkova,1996-7
N.Paradoxa : Issue No.6, 1998
