Word: gaudier
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...have probably heard little if anything of Henri Gaudier; you have doubtless heard nothing at all of Sophie Brzeska (pronounced "B'jeska"). After reading Savage Messiah you will wonder...
Death, as to many a young soldier, came to Henri Gaudier in 1915, when he was 23. He was good at fighting and had risen to be a sergeant. Far from being a professional soldier, he was an artist, a radical who had left France to escape his military service. But he was a whole-hogger: when he did anything he did it like St. Michael chasing Lucifer from heaven...
...Gaudier's father was a carpenter who was pleased when his son won scholarships, not so pleased when the scholarship led to garrety art instead of clerkly business. At the Paris library where Henri studied in the evenings he met a gaunt Polish woman of 38, Sophie Brzeska; talked to her hungrily, fell in love. He was 18. Sophie believed she was destined to be a great writer, but she had had nothing but hard knocks. Her family joined the majority of her acquaintance in disliking her. She had been as far as the U. S. (as a governess...
Biographer Ede says it was a purely platonic relation, and most of Gaudier's letters in this book bear him out. After reading them you can believe it. Sophie was a neurotic, Henri a genius (super-neurotic). They had a hard time in other ways too. Sophie cooked whatever food there was on Monday, they ate it cold the rest of the week. They were both nearly always ill, largely from undernourishment. Their lodgings were always depressing, dirty. Sometimes Sophie put cotton in her ears, sat down facing the wall, shut her eyes and sang...
Whether or not he was selling anything Gaudier worked like a demon, sometimes made 150 drawings in an evening. Gradually he met some useful friends: Frank Harris, Paul Morand, Jacob Epstein, John Middleton Murry. But he quarreled bitterly with Murry because Katherine Mansfield did not like Sophie. Nobody liked Sophie. Gaudier himself quarreled with her constantly. Frequently he tried to get her to become his mistress but she always refused, though she was not pleased when he went to other women...