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320 pages, Unknown Binding
First published January 1, 2019
She and Damienne defended themselves against the ravening, mad beasts forever attacking them, steadfast with their guns and the dead man’s sword, and with the arquebus, which by then she could so skillfully wield that she once shot three bears in a day. And the last bear — this, she told (Thevet) — was “as white as an egg”.
From that day on I couldn’t stop thinking about her. This period now seems almost like a delimited space in time, those first years with a husband and three children — and her entry into my life right then. It wasn’t so much the thoughts in my head — they weren’t particularly developed as far as I recall — but more how I pictured her. She seemed so close, as though she and I were in the same room, or as if the distant place where she was were materializing here: her body clad in bearskin and a tattered, high-necked dress; or naked, her skin’s every extravasation exposed, beaten, dirty and blushing, pale against the darkness, the ground, the mountain and earth.
For the most part, I resist critical interpretations of a text based on the author’s biography — possibly too much. It’s probably because I have a persisting suspicion that this type of interpretation affects women who write differently than it does men, because what men write about is considered universal, whereas women ostensibly only write about themselves.
I never really wanted to commit my research to paper. Instead I imagined immersing myself in the material, becoming one with the facts, then all I’d have to do was write. I wanted her to arise in me. I had no desire to see that we were two separate people, and her continued subjugation was the link that spanned the time between us; here I was, a person in a position to exert power over her. Yet another one.