Zelda Sayre

If the moon smiled, she would resemble you

you leave the same impression

of something beautiful but annihilating

- Sylvia Plath

Posthumously, after a fire claimed her life, Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald was coined as being most remembered for her defeats, portrayed as a victim of an over-bearing husband and then heralded a feminist icon.  It is quite a legacy for one woman, an emblem of the Roaring Twenties and the Jazz Age – full of youth, apparent wealth and beauty.

Most know Zelda from being the spirited partner of literary superstar, F. Scott Fitzgerald but together the two of them left quite a carnival of monkeyshines behind.  F. Scott dubbed Zelda ‘the first American flapper’ and after the success of his first novel, they became rapid celebrities.  The pair rubbed elbows with other literary giants like Ernest Hemingway, were party darlings riding on top of taxi cabs and infamously jumping in the Union Square fountain together; the golden couple of a golden age. 

Theirs is a long and complicated history, their relationship has been debated just as much as that of Plath and Hughes.  Their marriage was a byzantine tangle of jealousy, antipathy and acrimony.  Zelda’s audacious behavior and F. Scott’s wily ways became a great subject of gossip.  They fought passionately, broke up frequently but married in 1920.  F. Scott would often use the details of their personal lives as raw material for his writing.   It is also said that he was so in awe of Zelda’s writing style and voice, he would sometimes rifle through her diaries and letters in search of anything new and fresh and uncommon to infuse into his own work.

Zelda had a passion for dance, for painting and writing.  She possessed an illustrious, tactile vernacular.  Her prose, like her artwork was lush, extravagant and acutely original.  Her language bountiful and her descriptions were often saturated with sensual, visual metaphors.  Zelda wasn’t content to be idolized but she did garner a fierce talent all of her own that was overcast by her famous husband and was never really truly credited for her own art or identity.

The party life took its toll on them.  F. Scott was consumed by his alcoholism and Zelda began her slow agonizing descent into schizophrenia, compounded by the sheer isolation and boredom she endured when her husband was hunkered down writing.  At the end of the Jazz Age, F. Scott mused, ‘Sometimes I don’t know whether Zelda and I are real or whether we are characters in one of my novels.’  They certainly had a larger than life presence together.

My first introduction to F. Scott Fitzgerald was of course in high school when I protested against doing my paper on the Roaring Twenties, opting to explore the world of Dylan Thomas instead.  It was later, on my own that I discovered Zelda and that she wasn’t just the wife of a famed writer but an artist in her own right and while it certainly wasn’t behavior akin to receiving company in my bath, choosing to write about Dylan Thomas instead of the Jazz Age was a very Zelda Sayre thing to do.

She was a fascinating figure often overlooked artistically in favor of F. Scott’s literary success but she was an extraordinary writer.  Her novel Save Me The Waltz rivaled her husband’s work.  It is said he was furious with her for using bits and pieces of their lives in her book when he was to do the very same thing with his work Tender Is The Night. The two pieces of writing stand as divergent renderings of a doomed marriage.

Zelda was indeed the wife of a literary darling but she truly deserves that title all on her own as well.  She was a vivacious, coquettish woman, whose vibrant personality influenced her partner’s writing.  She was a mother, ballerina, writer and painter.  While her written word lives on, much of her artwork has been lost.  Either misplaced or destroyed by her family.

I have a fantastic book called Zelda: A Life Illustrated that by all accounts is difficult to find these days.  It holds a prestigious place on my bookshelf.  Its pages are full of high quality depictions of her paintings and sketches and a warm (biased perhaps) biography written by her grand-child.  I pull it down now and then to peruse her strange and unique style of painting; paper-dolls, Alice in Wonderland, fairy-tales, mothers with babies, cityscapes and sometimes gruesome depictions of dancers.  Upon buying, devouring and securing a home for its pages in my book collection, I wrote this for her:

Tiny Dancer

Zelda Sayre

climbed

the royal

staircase

&

jumped

just to see

how far she

could fall

for

spinach

&

champagne.

One can surmise

so much from her

candy-coated

courage.

Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald symbolized the freedom of the Jazz Age.  She wrote in part to combat her restiveness while F. Scott was immersed in his own writing.  Zelda was diagnosed with schizophrenia and hospitalized after a breakdown in 1930 and spent the rest of her years in sanatoriums until a hospital fire claimed her life in 1948.  It wasn’t until the 1960s when her work began to gain recognition and studied seriously outside of her husband’s looming shadow.

Sometimes the most talented are the most tortured.

(SIDENOTE:  When I pulled my book down off the shelf last night to prepare my noodle for this blog entry I happened upon a few mementos from someone I used to know.  When the worn white sheets of paper slid from the inside cover into my lap I felt my heart break a little bit.  It’s been a good while since I happened upon these pages and in all honesty I thought I had disposed of them.  I am known to be a touch sentimental so I wasn’t surprised to discover I hadn’t thrown them away after all; two pages of writing, two pieces that when they were given to me, it meant everything just to be trusted enough to share their words.  I know how difficult that can be.  I read both of the poems and then I tucked them back into the tome for safe keeping and eased my harried heart to its common measure.  I am notorious for placing things inside my books, notes, letters and scribbled bits of writing.  You never know what you might find if you borrow something of mine.)

I will leave you with a favorite quote of mine, courtesy of Zelda:

‘Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold.’

In propinquity,

Nic