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PARTISAN REVIEW
hole. And this is a really strange thing to do, although I don't think any
of the male reviewers noticed it. I certainly did. I had never seen it done
before, and it's one way of solving this difficult problem of how to recre–
ate lives that have disappeared without apparent or recoverable trace.
After all, half the human race have always been women, they did exist.
How are we to resurrect and revitalize them? I don't know. We've men–
tioned two methods: one was Claire Tomalin's; the other, Victoria
Glendinning's. Both were very successful.
One of the great pleasures for me in writing about Matisse has been
unearthing and exploring the lives of the women who played such an
enormous role in his life. I have done two in my first volume, and there
will be three more extraordinary women, all of whom shared Matisse's
life, all of whom were formidable characters in their own right, because
Matisse, unlike Picasso in this as in much else, didn't like subservient or
passive women. Picasso, as we know, famously defined women as door–
mats or goddesses. Matisse didn't care for either: he liked equal partners
who gave as good as they got. His women were of course always beauti–
ful, but they were strong-willed as well. I considered a lot of things before
I took on this nightmare task, hut I didn't think of the powerful female
partners who have remained more or less invisihle until now. You will find
their existence mentioned in other accounts, but little or no attempt to
treat them as human, or to examine the central roles they played.
Denis Donoghue:
The only part of this I don't much like is the implied
ideological aspect of it. I fully approve of light heing cast upon any life
that is interesting, or suggestive, or far-reaching.
It
is perfectly in order
that Brenda Maddox shou ld have written a biography of Nora joyce,
although Nora joyce's achievement in any puhlic or literary or creative
sense is zero. And it's perfectly in order for Ann Sadd lemeyer to attempt
a biography of Mrs. Yeats-George Yeats. But I don't see the necessity
or the desirability of turning it into an ideological generalization. I think
a man of intelligence would be perfectly capable of writing a good book
on George Yeats, and I doubt if Ann Saddlemeyer would claim that she
can see special things by virtue of the fact that she is a woman.
Chantal Zabus:
They are only interesting insofar as they are the wives
of great men: joyce and Yeats.
Denis Donoghue:
Yes, but if these women are interesting, they are inter–
esting not solely in relation to their more famous husbands. They are
interesting in their own right, and therefore whatever access we have to
