artwork by Jessica Jane Charleston
She is famous throughout the world, but how many know her name? You can admire her figure in Washington, Paris, London, New York, Dresden, or Copenhagen, but where is her grave? She was fourteen in the Paris of the 1880s, eking out a living at the Paris Opera as a petit rat. She also worked as a model, posing for painters and sculptors—among them Edgar Degas.
Today we publish Little Dancer Aged Fourteen, Camille Laurens’s highly personal essay about Marie van Goethem, the girl behind Edgar Degas's renowned sculpture. Meticulously researched and delving into the underbelly of the Belle Époque, it is the result of the author's many years of obsession and as such, recentres Marie in her story at a time when art unsettled the hypocrisy of society; Laurens also looks outwards to the sculpture’s legacy.
Photograph by Joshua Logan
'Laurens’ project is not simply a matter of adding another voice to the myriad artistic critiques of Degas’ work. (...) Under the pen of an author intent on uncovering all there is to be known of Marie’s life, Little Dancer Aged Fourteen develops into a curious form of investigative literature, exposing the unspoken moral failings of nineteenth-century culture in its search for Marie. The criticism throughout, if implicit, is certain. (...) Its status as a passion project, though, takes nothing away from the achievement of Little Dancer Aged Fourteen. Reverting to the author’s own life in its closing moments, this book wills its reader to look beyond the surface, to discover the writer behind the writing, and the girl behind the sculpture.' – The Arts Desk
'She has not solved a mystery, but Laurens has done something more challenging: she's captured what it feels like to think. Her enthusiasm, the million little connections that she makes between the dancer, the artist, and her own life, subsume the reader.' – Rumaan Alam, New Yorker
'Little Dancer turns our modern gaze toward the intersections of the art world, the bourgeoisie, and those living in poverty in Paris two centuries ago, and challenges the reader to balance questions about the wealth divide, social justice, and what an artist's role is in articulating "the weight of the real."' – World Literature Today
'Little Dancer pierces through Degas' rose-tinted reputation to depict an artist who is no hero and a subject
who is no ghost.' – Huffington Post
'Sensitive, human, and profound.' – Catherine Hewitt, author of Renoir's Dancer: The Secret Life of Suzanne Valadon
Camille Laurens started publishing fiction and essays in the early 1990s, before turning to autofiction. In 2000, she won France’s prestigious Prix Femina for In Those Arms (2004) which was an international bestseller translated into twelve languages. Her novel Who You Think I Am (2016) was recently released as a film starring Juliette Binoche. In 2020 Camille Laurens became a member of the Académie Goncourt.
There's an exclusive virtual online interview of Camille here (scroll down the page); you can read first pages here and another excerpt on the French Institute's Culturetheque.
Little Dancer Aged Fourteen was translated in to the English by Willard Wood. Wood has translated more than thirty books from the French. His recent books include Constellation by Adrien Bosc and The Goddess of Small Victories by Yannick Grannec.
To celebrate the release of Little Dancer Aged Fourteen we have launched a new book bundle on our website, The Anti-Muse.
We'll leave you with this image of Damien Hirst's sculpture The Virgin Mother (2005), which attests to the influence and legacy of Degas's Little Dancer Aged Fourteen (photographed by Robert McKeever).
Please do support your local indie bookshop in these difficult times, and see if they have a copy in stock
(and if they don't, we do)!
Les Fugitives gratefully acknowledges financial assistance from Arts Council England's
Emergency Response Fund to support the arts during the covid-19 crisis.
