Zelda :The Other Fitzgerald

"My few friends admire or love me not for what I've accomplished, but for what they think I might have done. And ultimately a work of art that does not exist is the most beautiful work of all--it's a rich blend of nostalgia, stoicism, and futility."-Colin McPhee

There are a thousand, a million, uncountable Zelda Fitzgeralds. Every time that her husband F. Scott hijacked her look, her words, her mannerisms, her sentiments--sometimes dipping into the sacred vessel of her diary--part of her was spun off, and a new incarnation was born. The famous flapper grows a new persona every time we, the public, thrusts a projection onto her. She is a member, however unwilling, of that most elite of groups: the perennial star.

She manages a most difficult feat, that of being spectacularly of her time and yet engagingly modern. However watered-down and cliched our repetitive analysis has made her personality, she is not a cardboard creation like so many of her contemporaries. This may very well be due to F. Scott's pilfering of her most private being. What we can trace back to him, we know to be a genuine, though skewed,portrait of his wife's vulnerable elan vital

Over the years, several writers and historians have made a case for or against Zelda Fitzgerald, the artist. This war is not confined to the merit or potency of her work. Rather, it begins--and for some, ends--with whether or not she may be called artist in the first place.

Art is, as life is: entirely subjective. It is not necessary to agree with, like, or even understand a painting, a meal, or a pair of shoes for it to exist as such, exactly as it was intended: as a painting, meal or pair of shoes. Stealing someone's right to call themselves an artist simply because you do not like what they create or, worse, because you do not think that they, because of who they are, even have the right to make the attempt, is elitist bullying. That is a treatment that Zelda Fitzgerald has received from many people who should know better.

Many couples have created art, if not exactly side-by-side, while engaged in intimate relationships. In all of the examples one could put forth, there is not one instance of them achieving, or maintaining, equal stature. One is bound to soar higher than the other.

Going into their relationship, F. Scott was the creator, Zelda the carefree debutante. A ballerina in her youth, by the time she met her future husband she had ceased her studies; her dancing was limited to social occasions. After their marriage, when literary acclaim was already his to hold, she was asked, doubtless tongue-in-cheek, to review his latest book. It was her first published piece, revealing a fluid vocabulary and a style distinct from her husband's.

The bulk of her writing career consisted of magazine articles. Her only finished novel, "Save me the Waltz", was published in 1932, when she was living in a sanatorium. As autobiographical as anything written by F. Scott, "Save me the Waltz" is laden with lovely, masterful language and the voice is certainly her own.

Her artistic aspirations were not limited to words. She was widely ridiculed for a last-ditch attempt at a ballet career, begun at 27, an age far from realistic for any chance of success. She had talent, and there were those who believed in her, but her timing was sadly amiss.

The pursuit to which she devoted the most time, over the greatest number of years,and with the largest output, was painting. She painted during the long years spent in the sanatorium, until her death in 1948, as a result of a fire.

Zelda Fitzgerald the woman, in life and death, is doomed to an impossible comparison. She is held to the mirror of both her fictional counterparts and the mythos built up around her real-life exploits. Zelda Fitzgerald the artist is doomed to an even more futile, fruitless comparison, to her husband. A war of creativity waged between them when they were married; they both were losers, as individuals, artists and partners.

The slivers of artistic vision which she was able to develop reveal a gift of singular sensibility, her raw ability yielding under a surprisingly effective command. Zelda Fitzgerald is best known as an ultimate liver of life, a rare talent at which she excelled with panache, humor and fortitude. She was also a creator, of things beautiful, witty, complex and sensual. How much was left unrealized, we will never know: that answer died with her.

The greatest work of art that it is in our limited power to create is that which we fashion, edit and salvage from the raw material of our lives. Zelda Fitzgerald, in potential and adversity, made much of what she was given, as a human being and as an artist.