Texts / Eleonora Duse

Eleonora Duse

Isadora after the death of her children

   She tells me that her little boy and little girl . . . were brought back to the house ... The two little hands were clasped together, and the smile of the child unacquainted with Death, was there, smiling to the mother ...
   She, this mother, spoke of it for hours on end, and her grief was calm, gentle ... and composed.
    To have been with these two children beyond life - to have seen them hand in hand, smiling and dead! and still be able to see them living again!... What courage, what strength, what folly, what nobility, what distress, what error, what magnificent sweetness of heart!...
    Nothing of that which is irreparable is understood by this magnificent and dangerous creature! Her generosity is quite as great as her error of imagination.
    The “irreparable” which nevertheless exalts the tone of life – no - she does not even see it and she wishes to throw herself back into life, bleeding life . . . and see again… What?  - the smile of the dead child in another smile of another child that will be hers!
    Be sorry, my friend, for my littleness, for I understand nothing of that will, of that folly, of that supreme wisdom.
    Isadora Duncan has on her side the Supreme Strength - greater than life itself.

From a letter to Aurélien-François-Marie Lugné-Poë written at Viareggio, Italy, in 1913.