The exemptness of Leila Sand
We can also detect some of the ‘evergreen’ claims of Romanticism in this artist as Leila Sand is depicted as a deviant or extraordinary person, someone privileged and excluded from the ordinary people. In her self-definition, she as a woman artist is not like other women. She has ‘always thought herself exempt to the fate of most women’ (p.64/III). However there are moments when she begins to feel like a victim, and then like most other women. Yet her identity as an artist is enough for her to distinguish herself from the rest of the world. Her prevailing style in speaking of her self is 'always' and 'never' like other people:
Is this where my life will take me - to a church basement, listening to platitudes. I am an artist. My life has never been like the other people’s. 96/VI
The 12 cliches, or rules, of the Anonymous Alcoholics Meetings become platitudes which seem to apply to everybody else but Leila. We are made to hear even her mother’s voice saying: ‘Louise, you always think the rules that apply to other people don’t apply to you’ (p. 84/V). However Leila’s sane mind is nowhere in sight to argue her case for this statement and hence we are led to believe that the woman artist is a rare character, immune to the ordinary buzz and bustle of life. Moreover this lady artist is convinced that God is also involved in her elected, elevated being, and that God had put her there for a purpose. She had merely to honour the praising breath within her and to carry it forward into the universe. To destroy it or to deny her unique status, would be ‘great a heresy as destroying her paintings or strangling her twins’ (135,6/VIII). In a strange way through this blasphemous simile of heresy we are to deal with the positive notion of woman artist that life is a supreme gift, and that her life has been given to her. She had only to say yes to the gift. This is a great life in which paintings, children and breath are equally cherished. Yet it takes more courage to lead a great life. It’s not easy to do what Leila Sand has undertaken. Sybille, Leila’s shrink, appropriates Leila’s sane mind, once again foregrounding the enormous creative merits of women artists and their chances to survive and achieve in our contemporary world.
Leila, you are singled out somehow to make pictures of the world. In another age, you’d be dead in childbirth, you’d be stoned as a witch. You are given a rare talent. All you have to do is protect it - even when you least want to. (219/XIII)
Protecting her artistic self seems to be very hard job for Leila who is aware that she is her own guardian angel. There is no one around to protect her but her own sane mind. Perhaps that is why her identity is so fragile and vulnerable.
Copyright © : Iliyana Nedkova,1996-7
N.Paradoxa : Issue No.6, 1998