Here’s a mini-lesson in classical literature: Zeus, the Greek supergod, had nine daughters with Mnemosyne, goddess of memory. The daughters became the Muses who ruled over all arty and intellectual pursuits.
Flash forward to the 21st Century and Francine Prose’s new book “The Lives of the Muses: Nine Women and the Artists They Inspired,” (HarperCollins, $25.95), a hefty examination of the relationship between male artists and their female muses. Prose, the author of a dozen works of fiction, found examples from the 18th Century through the 20th Century. Included are Alice Liddell and Lewis Carroll; Gala and Salvador Dali; Yoko Ono and John Lennon.
In each case, the woman is the muse. It raises the question: Where are the guy muses?
“I thought about doing male muses for the book and I only came up with a few possibilities,” said Prose in an interview before her appearance at the recent Humanities Festival. Women artists are more likely to have psychiatric nurses, Prose said, pointing to Virginia Woolf as an example.
An informal survey on this end turned up very little: Women artists who are supported by wealthy spouses is a pretty narrow definition of having a male muse.
Prose said she figured that among the many talents a muse possesses is the ability to make the artist feel as though no one else has ever understood him so completely. If there were a job description for muse, being a patient listener would be at the top of the list.
“It’s not a role men have been eager to fill,” Prose said.
In areas other than art, however, men seem to be more visible. Prose, who lives in New York, has seen her share of dads out for the day with their small children. “You see these guys with their strollers one day or afternoon off … they are so proud of their strollers and they have no compunction about taking up the entire aisle of the bus,” she said.
The point is, the fathers appear to be so high on the novelty of their moment in public with their offspring, one wonders if they have considered that mothers have to do this stuff everyday–juggle tasks, bags of groceries and children through crowds.
Prose agreed with the contention that perhaps men becoming muses is not a solution; perhaps roles need to be equalized rather than reversed. “It’s about redefining roles. That is when it is going to get more interesting,” Prose said. “The old ways don’t really work really well for anyone.”
Prose wrote “The Lives of the Muses” when she received a fellowship at the New York Public Library Center for Scholars and Writers in 1999. Invitation to the program is coveted by writers and academics.
During her research, Prose came across a letter that Samuel Johnson had written ending a platonic relationship with Hester Thrale.
“It was passionate,” she said. “And I thought, it’s hard to believe this is platonic, and what does it mean to be someone’s muse?”
So she set out to find what it meant, starting with a long list of names.
“I would research and write a chapter and research and write a chapter because my memory is so bad,” she said. “I was looking for stories that were different from the others.”
Some, like Alma Mahler, wife of composer Gustav Mahler, and artwife supreme Lee Krasner (Jackson Pollock) had been written about enough.
” I was just looking for the widest possible range of women,” she said.
Prose was also interested in illuminating the balance of power in relationships between men and women.
Yoko Ono seemed to be the one who fought the most for her right to be an artist as well as for her right to have her own muse. John Lennon didn’t seem to mind, but it was a messy, inconclusive process, Prose said.
“I was filled with admiration for her because I think she has had a difficult life and a courageous life. She was a serious artist when it was even rarer to be a serious artist,” said Prose of Ono. “She didn’t seem to be the easiest person.”
But not being an easy person seems part of the terrain of artistic genius.
Artists are not famous for being the best parents or spouses or having the healthiest or happiest lives. While on her book tour, Prose said she was often asked which of the women she would like to be.
“None of these lives are exactly enviable,” she said. “There wasn’t a single one I would like to trade my life with.”
At least two of the women in the book were great artists in their own right: the ballerina Suzanne Farrell (George Balanchine) and photographer Lee Miller (Man Ray). An argument could be made for choreographer Balanchine acting as Farrell’s muse. Certainly, they were true collaborators. In doing research, Prose found plenty of examples of artistic collaboration–like furniture designers Charles and Ray Eames.
“You just hope there will be more and more of that,” she said.
Perhaps it also takes a certain aesthetic sympathy to be a muse, and that sympathy exists because the muse, on a basic level, is really an artist. So is a muse an antiquated notion? And if the Greeks hadn’t invented the Muses, would contemporary society have done so?
“One of the things I say in the book is that the experience of making art and the process is so mysterious, even when I am writing a novel there are so many moments when I think, `Yikes, where did that come from?’,” she said.
“The urge to figure out where it comes from is a very human one.”
