{"id":1454,"date":"2020-05-11T12:00:40","date_gmt":"2020-05-11T11:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/?p=1454"},"modified":"2020-05-11T12:00:40","modified_gmt":"2020-05-11T11:00:40","slug":"review-nathalie-leger-exposition-and-the-white-dress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/2020\/05\/11\/review-nathalie-leger-exposition-and-the-white-dress\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Nathalie L\u00e9ger, Exposition and The White Dress"},"content":{"rendered":"

Earlier this year, Les Fugitives published the final book in a trilogy of studies by Nathalie L\u00e9ger. The first, Suite for Barbara Loden<\/em><\/a>, translated by Natasha Lehrer and C\u00e9cile Menon, marked the launch of Les Fugitives in 2015 and became the cornerstone of their publishing identity. Exposition<\/em><\/a>, translated by Amanda DeMarco, was published in December 2019, and The White Dress<\/em><\/a>, translated by Natasha Lehrer, in March 2020.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Exposition<\/em>, translated from\u00a0French by Amanda DeMarco (Les Fugitives, 2019)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nathalie L\u00e9ger is a museum curator, and her published works blend biographical study with personal reflection. In the opening pages of Exposition<\/em>, L\u00e9ger recounts her decision to curate an exhibition on the Countess of Castiglione, a young and beautiful Italian aristocrat who was a sensation at the French court of Napoleon III. L\u00e9ger\u2019s determination to curate an exhibition that focuses on a subject rather than on objects is a pattern of hers, and reflects her belief that there are far more stories to uncover about a person than an object. Her exposition of La Castiglione constitutes a discovery of the other that offers a path to discovery of the self, albeit an uneasy one: L\u00e9ger is progressively consumed by her own project, noting that it has \u201calready surreptitiously gobbled me up,\u201d to the point that towards the end of the text when La Castiglione is imagined as saying \u201cc\u2019est moi,\u201d this could also be L\u00e9ger\u2019s own voice.<\/p>\n

La Castiglione is a figure onto whose countenance is projected the image that others have of women, imprisoned in her beauty and the role it forces her to inhabit. Having herself photographed was, L\u00e9ger suggests, not a vanity project, but a means to \u201cconstruct, under the guise of frivolity, what Poe called \u2018the chamber of melancholy.\u2019 To hold on, to silently hold on.\u201d The photographs are an attempt to take control of a life shaped by others, and so the photographer\u2019s studio becomes \u201ca mythical space in which her empire silently expanded and where her legend was written.\u201d L\u00e9ger\u2019s goal \u2013 at least in part \u2013 is to give La Castiglione her own agency, a legend in which she is the subject controlling her image rather than the object reflected in that image.<\/p>\n

The translated title is well chosen by Amanda DeMarco: the French exposition <\/em>means an exhibition but also an exposing, a laying bare, and this is the more important of the two meanings in L\u00e9ger\u2019s narrative: the exhibition is a means to an exposition. She muses on what a photograph can achieve \u2013 does it capture an essence, or just a moment? The countess, L\u00e9ger concludes, is just \u201ca mass of absence\u201d behind the lifelong tableau vivant <\/em>of her captured image. Imprisoned in other people\u2019s perceptions of her, la Castiglione exists only for the gaze of the other, and so her only victory can be that she is not truly there, forever absent from her own image. L\u00e9ger also lingers on representations of women through literary and visual history, and on what it is to be a woman. We witness her reflections on her own relationships and intimacies with women \u2013 particularly her mother, another woman about whom she knows little and who she wants to discover through photographs of times past.<\/p>\n

The White Dress<\/em>, translated from French by Natasha Lehrer (Les Fugitives, 2020)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Is it a coincidence that the first photograph of La Castiglione was entitled The Black Dress<\/em>? Perhaps. But it is a fitting coincidence, as L\u00e9ger ends her triptych with The White Dress<\/em>. This takes as its subject Pippa Bacca, an Italian performance artist who undertook a hitchhike from Milan to Jerusalem wearing a wedding dress. Her journey was part of a \u201cbeautiful, and a little mad\u201d performance for peace in countries affected by war or conflict, Bacca \u201ca bride setting out beneath an overcast sky on an improbable journey to save the world.\u201d Pippa Bacca never finished her journey: she disappeared in Istanbul. She was raped, murdered, and left naked in some bushes, her body already decomposing by the time she was found. Pippa\u2019s story is entwined with a deepened reflection on L\u00e9ger\u2019s fragile and strained relationship with her mother, and the responsibility that L\u00e9ger feels to both women to tell their lives. Pippa\u2019s voice was cut short by her violent end, her murderer even appropriating her gaze by taking her video camera and using it to film his own life; L\u00e9ger\u2019s mother is similarly voiceless, having \u201cnever known how to say what she wanted, rendering daily life an endless struggle.\u201d<\/p>\n

L\u00e9ger plans to interview Pippa\u2019s mother, but struggles with the ethical implications of her own quest, turning back because \u201cI had nothing to offer a mother in mourning, I was only going to take something from her, devour her heartlessly.\u201d Instead she shifts focus from a mother who has lost a daughter to another \u2013 her own \u2013 who sacrificed hers on the altar of her marital abandonment (\u201cwe were dragged along with her in the wake of her sadness.\u201d) For both Pippa Bacca and L\u00e9ger\u2019s mother, the wedding dress symbolises their own personal misfortune, the burden and perils of womanhood, and the pressures of conformity.<\/p>\n

L\u00e9ger struggles with the weight of all this sorrow, as she tries to navigate the horror of Pippa\u2019s final journey and the responsibility of her mother\u2019s never-ending one. She claims that \u201cmy feeble heart means I can\u2019t carry more than one pain at a time,\u201d and yet she manages to achieve just that: L\u00e9ger not only immerses herself in her quest, but in so doing creates a symphony of Pippa\u2019s story and her own life, examining the symbolism of the white dress, and the fate to which the actions of others (usually men) condemn women. Does L\u00e9ger\u2019s mother, denied \u201cwords, attacks, justice\u201d in her divorce case and left with only tears, have any more control over her life than Pippa did? Like La Castiglione, L\u00e9ger\u2019s mother is imprisoned in the way others perceive her, but not truly there: as L\u00e9ger reminded us in Exposition<\/em>, \u201cyou can die a hundred deaths from not being loved.\u201d And is it better to die believing in freedom and peace than to live consumed by resentment, frustration and regret? L\u00e9ger does not offer answers, but rather a meditation; in this respect, The White Dress <\/em>is a culmination of both L\u00e9ger\u2019s project and her pensive style, which is rendered by Natasha Lehrer in a graceful and attentive prose that shifts unobtrusively from the meticulously objective to the intensely personal. The tension between the story of the mother, confined to an unfulfilled life in a stifling home, and Pippa\u2019s fateful wanderings in a dangerous outdoors, shows that women are still not free in any sphere, and makes a quietly valuable contribution to literature, biography and feminism.<\/p>\n

Review copies of Exposition <\/em>and The White Dress <\/em>provided by Les Fugitives<\/h6>\n

While stocks last, order any two books from Les Fugitives to receive a free limited edition copy of the anthology\u00a0Detour\/D\u00e9tours<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Earlier this year, Les Fugitives published the final book in a trilogy of studies by Nathalie L\u00e9ger. The first, Suite for Barbara Loden, translated by Natasha Lehrer and C\u00e9cile Menon, marked the launch of Les Fugitives in 2015 and became the cornerstone of their publishing identity. Exposition, translated by Amanda DeMarco, was published in December […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[79,365,541,645,649],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nReview: Nathalie L\u00e9ger, Exposition and The White Dress - Translating Women<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/2020\/05\/11\/review-nathalie-leger-exposition-and-the-white-dress\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Review: Nathalie L\u00e9ger, Exposition and The White Dress - Translating Women\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Earlier this year, Les Fugitives published the final book in a trilogy of studies by Nathalie L\u00e9ger. 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