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
