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My Life

Isadora Duncan

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Oct 25, 2017 Elizabeth rated it it was amazing

Shelves: europe, autobiographical, france, greece, new-york, nonfiction, dance, albania, san-francisco

I’m trying to figure out what to make of this book. More importantly, I’m trying to figure out if I would have liked this person if I met her in real life. She’s complex. Sometimes she talks out of both sides of her mouth, declaring one thing at one moment in the book and the opposite idea later. But then again, I value the ability to change your mind and evolve.

She’s certainly a product of her time, but ignoring that fact, I have feeling I would have loved her but also found her annoying if I I’m trying to figure out what to make of this book. More importantly, I’m trying to figure out if I would have liked this person if I met her in real life. She’s complex. Sometimes she talks out of both sides of her mouth, declaring one thing at one moment in the book and the opposite idea later. But then again, I value the ability to change your mind and evolve.

She’s certainly a product of her time, but ignoring that fact, I have feeling I would have loved her but also found her annoying if I had met her. Some of her comments are so rash…and she name drops with great frequency. I found her abrupt dismissal of jazz music as un-American simply abhorrent. She also bats down ballet in a few cast-off sentences as coquetry. I wonder if Balanchine’s American version of ballet would have rebutted her declaration: “The real American type can never be aa ballet dancer. The legs are too long, the body too supple and the spirit too free for this school of affected grace and toe-walking.”

In general though she reveals great truths: She's a hopeless romantic and her idea that a woman much choose between art and love resonated. Certainly if one is interested in being a creator, the act of being a mother or a wife/partner takes up an enormous amount of time and creative energy.

“…often wondering if woman can ever really be an artist, since Art is a hard task-master who demands everything, whereas a woman who loves gives up everything to life.”

I remember reading that George Sand gave up her writing at a certain point, to live life fully.

I do think in general, she was quite unhappy. Not surprising, given that she declares that she’s been hoping for a happy ending in life via the avenue of a love affair, and she lost her young children. Comments such as “I have met many great artists and intelligent and so-called successful people in my life, but never one who could be called a happy being, although some may have made a very good bluff at it. Behind the mask, with any clairvoyance, one can divine the same uneasiness and suffering,” reflect her great sadness more than her clarity about others.

Perhaps to further cement that theory, she writes: “Certainly, if suicide pellets were sold in drug stores as plainly as some preventatives, I think the intelligentsia of all countries would doubtless disappear over night in conquered agony.”

Finally, I think this book is incredibly modern. She sounds like a feminist (albeit a bit rash one) . Her attitudes towards marriage and relationships sound much more 2017 than 1917. It’s a little bit surreal. ...more

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Shelves: biography-and-memoir

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