Immortal Muse (64 page)

Except for one. The Frenchman named as “Etienne” in the section where Camille walks around early morning Paris and encounters Etienne feeding the birds in the Tuileries—
he
is based on a real person. Denise and I encountered him in Paris, sitting on a chair in the Tuileries and feeding the birds as I describe him in the book. No, I didn't talk to him, and I don't know his story or his real name. I watched him for a long time and took a few photographs. He wa
s the kind of character that you see, and who immediately starts you imagining what his life might be like and why he's doing what he's doing. I knew I would use that imagined person in a story or a novel one day . . . and now I finally have. Here he is, as I saw him that day many years ago:

Books and major articles read in the course of writing this novel which have brought light and vision to the proceedings:

THE LIVES OF THE MUSES: Nine Women and the Artists They Inspired
by Francine Prose.
Perennial, 2003. A lovely book about a few of the women who inspired (and were inspired by) artists: well-written and well-researched, and worth your effort to find and read! While I didn't actually use any of the muses Ms. Prose outlines, I took away from the book many ideas and a sensibility.

PARIS IN THE MIDDLE AGES
by Simone Roux,
translated by Jo Ann McNamara. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009. An entrancing look at Paris in the 13th–15th centuries, in the middle of which Nicolas and Perenelle Flamel were living.

LOST CRAFTS: Rediscovering Traditional Skills
by Una McGovern.
Chambers Harrap Publishers, Edinburgh, 2008. This is an essential research book for anyone writing of past times, if you want to know how things were actually done “back then.”

A DISTANT MIRROR
by Barbara W. Tuchman.
Albert A. Knopf, New York, 1978. A re-read, actually, since I read this one ages ago. But since a portion of the book is set at the end of the 14th century, and Tuchman was such a wonderful writer, I read it again, especially the section discussing Étienne Marcel.

ARTEMISIA
by Alexandra Lapierre.
Translated by Liz Heron. Grove Press, 2000. A book on the life of the Italian painter Artemisia Gentileschi. Even though this is subtitled “A Novel,” the book is intensely researched and heavily annotated by the author's reading of original texts as well as scholarly research on the life of Artemisia. Essentially, the author has written a biography, but has fictionalized some of the scenes—it reads somewhere between the two genres. Well worth picking up if you're interested in Artemisia.

However, even though a few scenes with Artemisia were written, and though Artemisia is one of the most fascinating artists of the Italian Renaissance, I made the decision to cut her from the book. Still, I'd urge you to google Artemisia and check out some of her paintings. I've always found her “Judith Decapitating Holofernes” (http://www.shafe.co.uk/crystal/images/lshafe/Artemisia_Gentileschi_Judith_Decapitating_Holofernes_c1618.jpg) to be incredibly striking, and far superior to Caravaggio's depiction of the same scene.

And hey, while in London, I was surprised and delighted to find her famous self-portrait in the Georgian apartments of Hampton Court.

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF ANTONIO LUCIO VIVALDI
by Jim Whiting.
Mitchell Lane Publishers, May 2004. A biography of Vivaldi that gives a good look at the details of his life.

HAWTHORNE: A LIFE
by Brenda Wineapple.
Random House, 2004. Exactly what you think it is: a biography of Nathaniel Hawthorne, and a fascinating look at an American author who's more complex (and darker) than I realized. The first draft of this novel contained a long (and complete) Hawthorne section with Perenelle as his wife Sophia, but that was abandoned during revision, as it no longer fit.

INTO THE DARKNESS LAUGHING: The Story of Modigliani's Last Mistress, Jeanne Hebuterne
by Patrice Chaplin.
Virago Press Limited, 1990. The tragic story of Jeanne Hébuterne and Amadeo Modigliani is more tragic than any fiction—I urge you to look it up, even though in the end I deleted my fictionalized version of it. For what it's worth, it was a picture of Jeanne that was the initial impetus for the idea that would eventually become this novel. (That story's here: http://sleigh.livejournal.com/303541.html)

I had to search a bit to find this one . . . The book is less a biography of Jeanne than the author's search for her own obsession, but it's still an interesting volume and a fascinating glimpse of the Jeanne/Modi relationship. As I said above, it was a picture of Jeanne that first sparked the long cascade of serendipitous connections that would lead to this novel.

“Missing Person in Montparnasse: The Case of Jeanne Hebuterne” by Linda Lappin,
Literary Review,
Summer 2002. A long, well-written, and interesting article on Jeanne and her life with Modigliani. A different perspective from the Chaplin book.

A photograph of Jeanne is here (http://esquimalenator.wordpress.com/), and one of Modigliani here (http://cortomalteze.wordpress.com/2007/07/14/amedeo-modigliani/), and an array of pictures of both of them here (http://community.livejournal.com/retroaesthetics/4419.htmlcutid2). Modigliani painted at least two dozen portraits of Jeanne. If you google “Modigliani & Jeanne” you'll come up with tons of images . . .

GUSTAV KLIMT: Painter of Women
by Susanna Partsch.
Prestel Publishing, New York, NY, 2006. A gorgeously-illustrated short book that contains many of Klimt's paintings and drawings of women, along with a detailed biography of the painter as well as that of several of the women who served as his models, especially Emilie Flöge, who was certainly Klimt's primary muse. I was tempted to have Perenelle be Emilie, except that for the purposes of that section, I needed someone who vanishes quickly and none of the models that Klimt used who are identified really fit the fictional needs—Emilie lived long after Klimt, staying very visible in Vienna. Therefore, I invented a model who could serve as Perenelle. And since Klimt died young and suddenly, it seemed only logical to make him another of Nicolas' subjects for the flawed elixir.

A NERVOUS SPLENDOR: Vienna 1888/1889
by Frederic Morton.
Atlantic—Little, Brown, 1980. I've used this book as reference material twice before with other novels, and when I decided to use Gustav Klimt, well, there it was once again, since Klimt is mentioned several times in the text. I love this book, which is an utterly fascinating view of
fin de siècle
Vienna, with some gorgeous touches of atmosphere. You feel as if you're there, walking along the Ringstrasse.

VIENNA MODERNISM 1890 – 1910
by Isabella Ackert.
Federal Press Service, Vienna, Austria, 1999. This is available on the internet as a PDF, and covers Gustav Klimt as well as several other artists, writers, musicians, architects, and thinkers responsible for the flowering of “Vienna Modernism” at the turn of the century. The short book is interesting for its glimpses into the personalities of the era and its speculations as to why such a movement coalesced in Vienna.

TO PAINT HER LIFE: Charlotte Salomon in the Nazi Era
by Mary Lowenthal Felstiner.
University of California Press, 1997. An intense biography of Charlotte Salomon, murdered in a Nazi death camp, but who left behind a tremendous magnum opus entitled
Life? or Theatre?
Felstiner supposedly dedicated ten years to researching and writing this book—while I wish (for my purposes) that it had been a more straightforward biography, it's a worthwhile read on its own.

I also spent a substantial amount of additional research time on the various historical eras and characters depicted in the book, the majority of that research web-based. The list, I'm afraid, is far too long to give here (even if I could remember it all myself).

CHARACTERS—IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE, BY SECTION

(* indicates a genuine historical character,
bold
indicates an identity used by Perenelle,
italics
an identity used by Nicolas)

—•——•— TODAY—1: CALLIOPE—•——•—

INTERLUDE ONE, Perenelle & Nicolas Flamel

—•——•— TODAY- 2: POLYHYMNIA—•——•—

INTERLUDE TWO, Perenelle & Nicolas Flamel