Dominique Sampiero: L'odalisque.

Meyer, E. Nicole

Paris. Flammarion. 2000. 198 pages 100 F. ISBN 2-08-067816-7

CONSTANT RAIN, shadows, and death form the backdrop of this inventive novel, which re-creates Henri Matisse's friendship with his dear Lydia, first his model and then his assistant. Dominique Sampiero explores the nature of their twenty-two-year friendship, focusing on Matisse's last days in Vence, in 1954.

The prologue sets up the importance of listening and silence for one who creates, and at the same time discreetly discloses the secret of the symbiotic nature of Matisse and Lydia's friendship: "Celui qui ecoute est une mere pour celui qui se tait. Celui qui se tait nous invente." As the novel progresses, we come to understand that Lydia is indispensable in large part because of her comprehension that the artist needs silence. "Je suis taiseux," he states after telling her "j'ai donc choisi de me taire, sauf avec vous, Lydia." He would like to live "comme un moine dans une cellule pourvu que j'aie de quoi peindre sans soucis ni derangement." Lydia devotedly maintains the peace he needs to create while quietly helping him with all the tasks involved in producing his works, whether a glorious painting or a collage.

Sections containing Matisse's thoughts and fears help us understand the importance of his art to his life as well as the difficulty of dealing with the infirmity of old age and impending death. Memories of childhood clash with rainy, sleepless nights. Insomnia weakens his forces, fatigue renders his hands useless. Lydia tirelessly supports him, however, encouraging him to continue to create and to fight back against death.

Lydia's diary entries, which are interwoven throughout the novel, help us comprehend her unusual devotion and the joy she derives from a rather contained life. "Ma vie a un sens," now that she serves him. "Ma place est a ses cotes." She has no other goal in life than to serve him, she states, and thus is much like a blank page, absorbing what he needs to do not only to create but to survive. When he paints her, she marvels: "J'en apprends plus sur moi-meme a travers les portraits qu'il a faits de moi." Perhaps the most innovative feature of the novel is Sampiero's ability to communicate the points of view of both the artist and his "odalisque" so successfully and sympathetically. We come to care for and respect both of them.

The closing section, titled "La bonte de l'ombre," briefly recounts Lydia's remaining forty-four years from the perspective of an impersonal narrator and serves as a homage to her invaluable contributions to Matisse. In these final pages, Sampiero praises her "generosite desinteressee" and declares this selfless generosity, much as her suicide, an act of empowerment, of "conviction." It is this last quality that Lydia shares with the artist and that raises her to his level of total devotion to his craft. E. Nicole Meyer University of Wisconsin, Madison