The zig zag life of the fabulous Maryse Choisy

 

There are some people who live lives of such zigs and zags that one feels, summing them up, that they could not have been real. These ziggers and zaggers seem to come out in the great decades – for instance, the 20s and the 60s of the twentieth century. I don’t really have to point out, do I, that the twenty first century still hasn’t had a great decade?

There are still many many undiscovered lives, undiscovered zig-zags, that ran through the 1920s. Among them, the fabulous Maryse Choisy.

She is forgotten now, for the most part. In the U.S., as far as I can tell, only her reportage on life in the brothels (she’d taken a job as a manager in a famous maison close, I believe the Sphinx), A month with the girls, has been translated. Translated in 1960. The book came out in 1929 came out. But this is a bullet point of her life up to then:

- become one of the first women at Oxford to take away a degree in Sanskrit

-moved to India and taught Sanskrit

- moved to Vienna to become a psychoanalyst with Freud. Disagreed with Freud

-returned to France and became a lion tamer

- became a reporter – in the great reporter tradition. After reporting on brothels, she went to Mount Athos and reported on monks. Closed societies, if you will.

This is quite the life. She went on to become a novelist, report regularly on politics and finance, get a degree in psychoanalysis in the United States, create the psychoanalytic journal Psyche,  fall under the influence of Teilhard de Chardin, become a guru, wrote about feminism in the 1970s and voyaged to Tibet for Le Monde to write a series of article about the Dalai Llama.

I’m especially impressed with the part where, arguing with Freud, she returned to France and took some circus training to become a lion tamer. Take that, Wilhelm Reich! She wrote an account of lion taming for Gringoire (this was before Gringoire became the infamous anti-semitic porn sheet). 4 September 1931 was a coup issue for the Gringoire. A story by Marcel Ayme. A column by G. de Pawlowski, Gaston Pawlowski, known to scifi buffs for his Voyage to the Land of the Fourth Dimension. And Choisy’s memoire of working in a “foire menagerie” – a traveling circus zoo.

This is how she begins (oh autofictional muses, gather round!):

“I appeared with my legs naked, a bit of cocotterie, an evening dress that was very low cut, in crepe Georgette. The least paw sweep would be noticeable on my skin. My robe was a bit long. Frank Henry claimed that I needed a train, that would go well with the supple grace of the panthers. Me, I am of the short skirt generation. But as long as, in closing the door behind me, I didn’t get it caught in anything. As long as, in dodging a panther’s leap, my feet didn’t get entangled in the train, and my nose in the sand. Panthers are like men: they’ll fall on you when you are down.  As long as… I advanced three steps. Took six steps backwards. Panther on my right. Stool on my left. “

This is the voice of a woman who is only scared of what she chooses to be scared of. That is the thing with zigzagging – you get tired, but you find that fear is not something that need surprise you – you can surprise it. Scare yourself.

The zig zag life is opposed, in its very essence, to the credentialed life. Later, when Choisy chose to become a psychoanalyst, and even found one of the big psychoanalytic journals, she had an advantage: she’d been breathed on by the big cats.

Oh, as a ps - I found a documentary has been made of Un mois avec des filles. HereHere.