Artemisia by Anna Banti

It happens more than it should

It happens more than I’d like

I read something and realise that there would have been a time when this would have been something I would have loved

When I read a text that may well have been a phenomenal version of a type of book, but it is a type of book of which I’ve had my fill…

–///–

Artemisia by Anna Banti was originally published in Italian in 1953, and this edition – in a translation bizarrely credited to “University of Nebraska Press, 1988” rather than to an individual – is a 2020 Small Axes edition published as part of a series of progressive or revolutionary or forgotten-slash-neglected writers and/or novels, and here features an introduction by Susan Sontag, dated to 2004, so perhaps produced for a different edition?

This confusion of dates and textual journey is apt, for the text of the novel itself is (or is, as a conceit, maybe not as a reality???) similarly of mixed construction, with the novel opening with a present tense Anna Banti looking down on the war-ravaged Firenze (Florance) in the dying days of Italy’s involvement in World War Two, lamenting that she has lost in the bombings a manuscript she had been working on about the late Renaissance (or early whatever came next) painter, Artemisia Gentileschi, who was – shockingly – a woman.

Banti laments that in war much is destroyed, many potentials are lost, many futures can no longer exist.

Of course, a work of historical fiction is not much compared to a life (or is it?), but Banti presumes her work will remain always in the rubble, until she finds herself unable to forget, and returns, later, to write the life of her artist…

–///–

This, then, forms a tonal consistency across the book, the narrator who is author writing of a lost text, that the novel we read is but an imitation of..

though at the very end of the novel, there is a date of composition listed as 1944-47, so either Banti is counting contemplation as part of the writing process, or she did indeed consider the Artemisia that was published the same Artemisia that was lost.

Or no Artemisia was lost at all, and that is merely an encasing flourish.

Sontag, in the introduction, also certainly seems to imply that the conceit is truthful, so I suppose here at TriumphOfTheNow.com we’re going to believe in it too.

Faith, innit.

–///–

This post is very disjointed and, yes, it has taken me over a week to read and then comment on a single 262 page historical novel, but that is because – as regular readers may know, but might not because I do try not to talk about it as it’s not very interesting for me – I work in events at the moment, and December is literally eventful.

Today, for example, I am (it is 5.45am) on my way to the first of six events I am working on/at/around today, and in the moments around/between/beside I’m at those six locations, I will be trying to finalise the arrangements for three to five more events occuring in the next week.

Which obviously limits reading and blogging time.

I’ve also been working on arrangements for shooting the first proper XXXmas spectacular music I’ve been able to make for years, which

All

Contributes

To

Reduced

Reading

Reduced

Bloooooogs

–///–

More days have passed

Shit

Sorry

–fuck

Iiiiii

It

AHH

–///–

If you don’t know who Artemisia Gentileschi was, then head over to Wikipedia as this website is not that website.

If you can’t be arsed to do that, then the previous content should have clarified anyway.

A woman working as an artist in the seventeenth century. There weren’t many and she’s a famous example, also famous for being a victim of sexual assault and making multiple paintings using classical and/or Biblical imagery of post-assault violent revenge.

Baroque is one of the words used to describe the work of Caravaggio, an artist Gentileschi is often associated with (both spent time in Naples, both received great acclaim in their lifetimes and both considered outsiders/taboo as artists (one a woman, the other queer)), but Modernism is definitely the only suitable word for this novel.

The text slips from war ravaged Florence (seated in Boboli Gardens at sunset, as I’m sure we all have (if you haven’t, you should)) and the first person perspective of the author, to a tight third person of this Renaissance (¿or later?) painter, but often too into her thoughts, but time accelerates and concertinas…

consequences are followed by their causes …

Banti writes reaction without its equal and opposite action …

Intentional and complex ….

Modernism…

As Artemisia Gentileschi travels across Italy and then across France to London, so too does Banti in reflection, memorialising trips and travel she made before the war, with a melancholy implying they will never happen again, yet the book’s publication makes clear that the the the the the

Internationalism of the pre-war Europe resumed

Eh

eh

It –

–///–

Christ

I’m sorry

I’m distracted. I don’t feel… right…

I

Huh

–///–

It’s an interesting novel, but it’s a type of novel, the modernist piece of literature about a visual artist, that I’ve met before and – I dunno, maybe there aren’t too many in the world, but maybe there are more than I need…

And

Ya

And

and though of course this one absolutely is valuable as one discussing a woman rather than a man painter and explores serious weighty topics around life and death and gender and sex and sexuality and assault and abuse and regret and shame and parenting and family and ambition and creativity and travel and selfhood and

It’s good, yeah, I think, I think it’s very good

–///–

My busiest week, my too busy week, is nearly done. Hopefully time will return to me.

Maybe it won’t.

Ah

Ah

Ok

I need-

Order Artemisia by Anna Banti direct from Small Axes here