MISIA: The Life of Misia Sert

by Arthur & Robert Fizdale Gold ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 11, 1979

Misia Godebska Natanson Edwards Sert--""not only a patron of the arts but a muse, an inspiration to artists""--is most often encountered, off to one side a bit, in studies of Diaghilev and his colleagues; here she gets a book all to herself, a skin-deep, gossip-filled, fitfully evocative story ""as unofficial as Misia herself."" Working from Misia's fanciful France-published autobiography and from the memoirs and letters of her many famous friends, Fizdale and Gold do a graceful, sometimes precious job of sorting through Misia's loving, hating, and kibbitzing--but too often they end up merely recounting events treated more fully and squarely in Richard Buckle's Diaghilev (p. 968). In fact, the best of this book comes before Misia meets her legendary soulmate, since her early years read like a cross between Feydeau farce and Sardou melodrama. Polish, part Jewish, motherless, a talented pianist raised in French convents, independent young Misia explored London and Paris on her own, quickly marrying wealthy, unexciting, culturally connected Thade‚e Natanson. In no time she had a salon--Bonnard, Verlaine, Mallarm‚ (he read to her, she played him Schubert)--but then newspaper tycoon Alfred Edwards, a demonic coprophiliac, laid siege to Mme. Natanson. . . and finally, scandalously, won. Divorces, marriage, and an ironic 1908 replay--as Edwards dumped clinging Misia for a bisexual actress (whose advances Misia declined). Only then did Diaghilev appear, as did intense Spanish painter Jos‚-Maria Sert; and the next 20 years saw Misia as go-between, adviser, plotter, chastiser, patron, confidante--for Stravinsky, Satie (""What a bitch!""), Cocteau. . . . But here, too often, Misia slides away from center-stage, leaving slightly skewed rehashes of Diaghilev lore (""The story goes. . .""); worse yet, when Misia is the center, the tone frequently descends to the gossip-trivial (in flurries of back-and-forth feuding letters). And, after Diaghilev's death, Misia sinks fast into a morphine-addicted drear only somewhat spiced up by her friendship-rivalry with Coco Chanel (her own memoir of Coco is published here for the first time) and by yet another lurid triangle--husband Sert's desertion of Misia for a young Russian virago. All in all, then, this biography succeeds neither as close-up drama/personality-study--despite a stab or two at psychology, Misia remains unsympathetic and enigmatically motivated--nor as solid cultural history. But, with all that high-toned tattle (Renoir begging model Misia to expose her breasts, for instance)--flavorful enough entertainment for an arts-wise yet distinctly dilettante-ish audience.

Pub Date: Feb. 11, 1979

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1979

Categories: NONFICTION