newyorker--2020-09-28--A Fuller Picture of Artemisia Gentileschi

The story of Susanna and the Elders , related in the Book of Daniel , was a popular subject for artists in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries , and no wonder .
Susanna , a virtuous , beautiful young woman , is bathing in her garden while two older men spy on her .
The men suddenly accost her and demand that she submit to rape ; if she resists , they warn , they will ruin her reputation by claiming that they caught her with a lover .
The tale offered painters an irresistible opportunity to replicate a similar @ @ @ @ @ @ @ scene several times ; in a version painted in the fifteen-fifties , which hangs in Vienna ’ s Kunsthistorisches Museum , he portrayed Susanna as serene and abstracted , towelling a raised foot and regarding herself in a mirror , unaware of a bald man who is concealed behind a rose trellis and peering between her parted thighs .
In a treatment by Rubens from half a century later , on display at the Borghese Gallery , in Rome , Susanna is shown reaching for a shawl , realizing with horror that she @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Sometimes the violence threatened against Susanna is indicated in the tableau : in a version by Ludovico Carracci that hangs in the National Gallery in London , one of the elders is tugging at Susanna ’ s robe , pulling it off her body .
Giuseppe Cesari ( known as Cavaliere d ’ Arpino ) made a painting that enlists the viewer ’ s participation in the lasciviousness it represents : its naked subject looks almost seductively out from the canvas , coolly brushing her golden hair .
A very different Susanna @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was born in Rome in 1593 , and who painted the scene in 1610 , when she was seventeen .
In her version , two men emerge from behind a marble balustrade , violently interrupting Susanna ’ s ablutions .
Her head and her body torque away from the onlookers as she raises a hand toward them , in what looks like ineffectual self-defense .
Strikingly , her other hand shields her face .
Perhaps this Susanna does not want the men to identify her or see her anguish ; it ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to lay eyes on her persecutors .
In its composition , execution , and psychological insight , the painting is remarkably sophisticated for a girl in her teens .
As the scholar Mary Garrard noted , in a 1989 appraisal titled “ Artemisia Gentileschi : The Image of the Female Hero in Italian Baroque Art , ” the painting represents an art-historical innovation : it is the first time in which sexual predation is depicted from the point of view of the predated .
With this painting , and with many other works @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s resistance of sexual oppression as a legitimate subject of art .
As one of the first women to forge a successful career as a painter , Artemisia was celebrated internationally in her lifetime , but her reputation languished after her death .
This was partly owing to fashion : her naturalistic mode of painting went out of style , in favor of a more classical approach .
Seventeenth-century scholars barely mentioned her .
When she registered , it was as a footnote to her father , Orazio Gentileschi , a well-regarded artist @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and mythological scenes in vogue at the time .
( Academics tend to refer to Artemisia by her first name , in order to distinguish her from her father . )
Her work received little substantial critical attention until the early twentieth century , when Roberto Longhi , the Italian art historian , wrote a grudging assessment , calling her “ the only woman in Italy who ever understood what painting was , both colors , impasto , and other essentials.
” In the second half of the twentieth century , Artemisia was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ inclusion of half a dozen of her works , among them the 1610 “ Susanna and the Elders , ” in a landmark survey , “ Women Artists : 1550-1950 ” ; curated by the art historians Ann Sutherland Harris and Linda Nochlin , it opened at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1976 , later travelling to the Brooklyn Museum .
Although individual works of Artemisia ’ s had been on view in museums , this was the first time they were seen as a group , their cumulative power @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Artemisia has come to be counted among the most important Baroque artists , especially after a 2001 show at the Metropolitan Museum in New York , which explored her work alongside that of her father .
This October , a retrospective exhibition at the National Gallery in London will bring together about thirty of her pieces , from museums and private collections across Europe and the United States .
The show , whose opening was delayed by the coronavirus pandemic , is organized in broad chronological order , and features Artemisia ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a hundred and thirty works have been ascribed to her hand , but only about half that number are universally agreed to be hers . )
Among the paintings included is “ Self-Portrait as St. Catherine of Alexandria , ” from the National Gallery ’ s collection , in which the subject gazes at the viewer , her brow dimpled in concentration , while wearing a gauzy turban and other finery .
The painting , recently rediscovered , was acquired by the museum in 2018 , for nearly four and a half million @ @ @ @ @ @ @ work by a female artist to enter the gallery ’ s collection .
The reëvaluation of Artemisia ’ s work has included a newfound appreciation of her technical skill , especially her command of chiaroscuro—a heightened juxtaposition of light and shadow .
Chiaroscuro is most commonly associated with Caravaggio , who was an acquaintance of Artemisia ’ s father , and whom she may have encountered as a young adolescent .
( Caravaggio notoriously fled Rome in 1606 , after killing another man in a duel . )
One of Artemisia ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Maidservant with the Head of Holofernes ” ( completed in the sixteen-twenties , and now owned by the Detroit Institute of Arts ) , offers a masterly execution of the technique , with its subjects illuminated , mid-action , by raking lamplight .
In the background are virtuosic examples of still-life painting : a burnished brass candlestick , a draped velvet curtain .
Letizia Treves , the curator of the forthcoming National Gallery show , notes , “ In Artemisia ’ s lifetime , she had a kind of pan-European celebrity that places @ @ @ @ @ @ @ such as Rubens or Van Dyck.
” Treves cautions , however , against overstating Artemisia ’ s place in the Baroque pantheon .
Artemisia was an artist who adapted to fashion rather than setting it .
“ I can ’ t name a single Artemisia follower , ” Treves says .
Of course , this may well have been connected to her gender : what male artist of the period would have acknowledged being her disciple ?
Artemisia ’ s reëmergence is also tied to a greater awareness of her life story , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that of Caravaggio .
In 1611 , the year after she painted “ Susanna and the Elders , ” Artemisia was raped by a friend of Orazio ’ s : the artist Agostino Tassi .
The assault has inevitably , and often reductively , been the lens through which her artistic accomplishments have been viewed .
The sometimes savage themes of her paintings have been interpreted as expressions of wrathful catharsis .
The fascination with her work on these terms is understandable , given the continued prevalence of sexual violence against women , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ accounts of it .
In 2018 , when Brett Kavanaugh was elevated to the Supreme Court despite the testimony of Christine Blasey Ford , who said that Kavanaugh had assaulted her when they were both teen-agers , a particularly bloody work by Artemisia— “ Judith Beheading Holofernes , ” which hangs in the Uffizi Gallery , in Florence—was widely shared on the Internet , as commentary .
It shows the Biblical heroine with her sleeves rolled up over muscular arms , her mouth set , deftly butchering the Assyrian general .
Artemisia ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one fictional reimagining , beginning in 1947 , with a work by Anna Banti—the pen name of the Italian novelist and critic Lucia Lopresti , who was married to Roberto Longhi .
( Susan Sontag , in an admiring essay from 2004 , wrote that Banti ’ s protagonist is “ liberated by disgrace.
” ) A 1997 film , by the French director Agnès Merlet , made the questionable suggestion that Tassi was a partially welcome seducer .
Five years later , the American writer Susan Vreeland published a novel that hewed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s rape as a defining trauma .
( “ I stepped up two steps and took my usual seat opposite Agostino Tassi , my father ’ s friend and collaborator .
My rapist .
.
.
.
His black hair and beard were overgrown and wild .
His face , more handsome than he deserved , had the color and hardness of a bronze sculpture.
” ) Joy McCullough ’ s 2018 novel , “ Blood Water Paint , ” captured Artemisia ’ s perspective in charged language :

The story of Susanna and the Elders, related in the Book of Daniel, was a popular subject for artists in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and no wonder. Susanna, a virtuous, beautiful young woman, is bathing in her garden while two older men spy on her. The men suddenly accost her and demand that she submit to rape; if she resists, they warn, they will ruin her reputation by claiming that they caught her with a lover. The tale offered painters an irresistible opportunity to replicate a similar kind of voyeurism. Tintoretto depicted the scene several times; in a version painted in the fifteen-fifties, which hangs in Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum, he portrayed Susanna as serene and abstracted, towelling a raised foot and regarding herself in a mirror, unaware of a bald man who is concealed behind a rose trellis and peering between her parted thighs. In a treatment by Rubens from half a century later, on display at the Borghese Gallery, in Rome, Susanna is shown reaching for a shawl, realizing with horror that she has been exposed to two leering men. Sometimes the violence threatened against Susanna is indicated in the tableau: in a version by Ludovico Carracci that hangs in the National Gallery in London, one of the elders is tugging at Susanna’s robe, pulling it off her body. Giuseppe Cesari (known as Cavaliere d’Arpino) made a painting that enlists the viewer’s participation in the lasciviousness it represents: its naked subject looks almost seductively out from the canvas, coolly brushing her golden hair.
A very different Susanna is offered by Artemisia Gentileschi, who was born in Rome in 1593, and who painted the scene in 1610, when she was seventeen. In her version, two men emerge from behind a marble balustrade, violently interrupting Susanna’s ablutions. Her head and her body torque away from the onlookers as she raises a hand toward them, in what looks like ineffectual self-defense. Strikingly, her other hand shields her face. Perhaps this Susanna does not want the men to identify her or see her anguish; it’s equally likely that she does not want to lay eyes on her persecutors. In its composition, execution, and psychological insight, the painting is remarkably sophisticated for a girl in her teens. As the scholar Mary Garrard noted, in a 1989 appraisal titled “Artemisia Gentileschi: The Image of the Female Hero in Italian Baroque Art,” the painting represents an art-historical innovation: it is the first time in which sexual predation is depicted from the point of view of the predated. With this painting, and with many other works that followed, Artemisia claimed women’s resistance of sexual oppression as a legitimate subject of art.
As one of the first women to forge a successful career as a painter, Artemisia was celebrated internationally in her lifetime, but her reputation languished after her death. This was partly owing to fashion: her naturalistic mode of painting went out of style, in favor of a more classical approach. Seventeenth-century scholars barely mentioned her. When she registered, it was as a footnote to her father, Orazio Gentileschi, a well-regarded artist who specialized in the kind of historical and mythological scenes in vogue at the time. (Academics tend to refer to Artemisia by her first name, in order to distinguish her from her father.) Her work received little substantial critical attention until the early twentieth century, when Roberto Longhi, the Italian art historian, wrote a grudging assessment, calling her “the only woman in Italy who ever understood what painting was, both colors, impasto, and other essentials.”
In the second half of the twentieth century, Artemisia was reconsidered. A turning point was the inclusion of half a dozen of her works, among them the 1610 “Susanna and the Elders,” in a landmark survey, “Women Artists: 1550-1950”; curated by the art historians Ann Sutherland Harris and Linda Nochlin, it opened at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1976, later travelling to the Brooklyn Museum. Although individual works of Artemisia’s had been on view in museums, this was the first time they were seen as a group, their cumulative power recognized. In the years since, Artemisia has come to be counted among the most important Baroque artists, especially after a 2001 show at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, which explored her work alongside that of her father. This October, a retrospective exhibition at the National Gallery in London will bring together about thirty of her pieces, from museums and private collections across Europe and the United States.
The show, whose opening was delayed by the coronavirus pandemic, is organized in broad chronological order, and features Artemisia’s most significant achievements. (More than a hundred and thirty works have been ascribed to her hand, but only about half that number are universally agreed to be hers.) Among the paintings included is “Self-Portrait as St. Catherine of Alexandria,” from the National Gallery’s collection, in which the subject gazes at the viewer, her brow dimpled in concentration, while wearing a gauzy turban and other finery. The painting, recently rediscovered, was acquired by the museum in 2018, for nearly four and a half million dollars. It is only the twenty-first work by a female artist to enter the gallery’s collection.
The reëvaluation of Artemisia’s work has included a newfound appreciation of her technical skill, especially her command of chiaroscuro—a heightened juxtaposition of light and shadow. Chiaroscuro is most commonly associated with Caravaggio, who was an acquaintance of Artemisia’s father, and whom she may have encountered as a young adolescent. (Caravaggio notoriously fled Rome in 1606, after killing another man in a duel.) One of Artemisia’s greatest paintings, “Judith and Her Maidservant with the Head of Holofernes” (completed in the sixteen-twenties, and now owned by the Detroit Institute of Arts), offers a masterly execution of the technique, with its subjects illuminated, mid-action, by raking lamplight. In the background are virtuosic examples of still-life painting: a burnished brass candlestick, a draped velvet curtain.
Letizia Treves, the curator of the forthcoming National Gallery show, notes, “In Artemisia’s lifetime, she had a kind of pan-European celebrity that places her on a level with later artists such as Rubens or Van Dyck.” Treves cautions, however, against overstating Artemisia’s place in the Baroque pantheon. Artemisia was an artist who adapted to fashion rather than setting it. “I can’t name a single Artemisia follower,” Treves says. Of course, this may well have been connected to her gender: what male artist of the period would have acknowledged being her disciple?
Artemisia’s reëmergence is also tied to a greater awareness of her life story, which was at least as eventful as that of Caravaggio. In 1611, the year after she painted “Susanna and the Elders,” Artemisia was raped by a friend of Orazio’s: the artist Agostino Tassi. The assault has inevitably, and often reductively, been the lens through which her artistic accomplishments have been viewed. The sometimes savage themes of her paintings have been interpreted as expressions of wrathful catharsis. The fascination with her work on these terms is understandable, given the continued prevalence of sexual violence against women, and the dismissal of women’s accounts of it. In 2018, when Brett Kavanaugh was elevated to the Supreme Court despite the testimony of Christine Blasey Ford, who said that Kavanaugh had assaulted her when they were both teen-agers, a particularly bloody work by Artemisia—“Judith Beheading Holofernes,” which hangs in the Uffizi Gallery, in Florence—was widely shared on the Internet, as commentary. It shows the Biblical heroine with her sleeves rolled up over muscular arms, her mouth set, deftly butchering the Assyrian general.
“You really think they’ll come back to the hill after they’ve gotten used to working remotely?” Cartoon by Kendra Allenby Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop
Artemisia’s life story has inspired more than one fictional reimagining, beginning in 1947, with a work by Anna Banti—the pen name of the Italian novelist and critic Lucia Lopresti, who was married to Roberto Longhi. (Susan Sontag, in an admiring essay from 2004, wrote that Banti’s protagonist is “liberated by disgrace.”) A 1997 film, by the French director Agnès Merlet, made the questionable suggestion that Tassi was a partially welcome seducer. Five years later, the American writer Susan Vreeland published a novel that hewed to the feminist line of Artemisia’s rape as a defining trauma. (“I stepped up two steps and took my usual seat opposite Agostino Tassi, my father’s friend and collaborator. My rapist. . . . His black hair and beard were overgrown and wild. His face, more handsome than he deserved, had the color and hardness of a bronze sculpture.”) Joy McCullough’s 2018 novel, “Blood Water Paint,” captured Artemisia’s perspective in charged language:
the woman in the bath
is no exalted doll.
She is all light and terror,
the Susanna I finally summon
from stories,
from first fire,
and finally,
from paint mixed with
my own sweat.
A raft of recent papers by academics, however, have objected to portraying Artemisia as if she herself were a two-dimensional mythological figure—a victim exacting revenge through brushwork. As more of her personal history is unearthed by scholars, a more complex picture emerges. And Artemisia’s art is increasingly being appreciated for the knowingness with which she made use of elements of her life—not just sexual violation but also motherhood, erotic passion, and professional ambition. Artemisia recognized that being a woman offered her a rare perspective and authority on many artistic subjects. “You will find the spirit of Caesar in the soul of a woman,” she once assured a patron. Such insight makes Artemisia feel, four hundred years after she lived, like one of our more self-aware contemporaries.
Artemisia had a sheltered childhood, in the most literal sense of the term: as a girl, she spent most of her time within the walls of her family home, as Rome’s streets were not considered a safe or appropriate space for her to journey through alone. She was the eldest child in her family, with three younger brothers; at the age of twelve, she became their principal caregiver when her mother, Prudentia di Montone, died, in childbirth. Artemisia received no academic education and was functionally illiterate until her twenties, when she finally had the opportunity to learn to read and write—the latter never without error. But as a child she was allowed to draw, and her gifts were noted early on. As Orazio wrote to one of his patrons, the Grand Duchess of Tuscany, in 1612, she “has in three years become so skilled that I can venture to say that today she has no peer.”
Artemisia served an apprenticeship in her father’s studio, with his paintings as her primary exemplars. Unlike male aspiring artists, she was unable to visit many of the churches and public buildings where the work of contemporaries had been commissioned, but in her local church, Santa Maria del Popolo, on the Piazza del Popolo, she would have seen two remarkable Caravaggio paintings: “Crucifixion of St. Peter,” in which the elderly martyr is being raised, upside down, on a cross, and “Conversion on the Way to Damascus,” in which a young, muscled St. Paul is sprawled on the ground after receiving a heavenly vision. Artemisia had access to Orazio’s materials and to his models. She is thought to have sat herself for Orazio’s “Young Woman with a Violin (St. Cecilia),” painted around 1612, which shows a musician with a cleft chin, a rounded cheek, and an alert expression.
She would have learned to reproduce her own features, too, with the use of a mirror. The fact that Artemisia’s female characters often are, like her, russet-haired, with full cheeks, has led many of her paintings to be described as self-portraiture. Even Artemisia’s male figures have sometimes been linked with the female visage characteristic of her work. In 2018, a painting that shows David sitting triumphantly next to Goliath’s severed head—long attributed to the Baroque artist Giovanni Francesco Guerrieri—came to auction. A collector at an auction in Munich acquired it for just a hundred and nineteen thousand dollars; in a subsequent forensic examination of the canvas, the London-based conservator Simon Gillespie discovered Artemisia’s signature on the hilt of David’s sword. Given Artemisia’s recent auction history, the work is now likely worth several million dollars. In an essay published this past March in the arts journal The Burlington Magazine, the scholar Gianni Papi suggests that the figure of David “projects the distinctive proud and cool virility we find in so many of Gentileschi’s heroines,” and persuasively compares the defiant expression of the Biblical hero to that of an apparent self-portrait that can be found in the Palazzo Barberini, in Rome.
Letizia Treves, of the National Gallery, told me that Artemisia’s face “has been read into every heroine she ever painted,” adding, “I don’t think she’s every Judith or Susanna.” Treves argues that it is Artemisia’s depiction of female bodies, rather than her replication of her own face, that most strongly expresses her understanding of what it was like to be a woman. “The way she portrays the female body is very naturalistic—more so than her father’s,” Treves said. “This is someone who really knows the hang of a woman’s breast—who has a real sense of how a woman’s body behaves.” In a pioneering 1968 essay, the art historian R. Ward Bissell wrote of the “uncompromising sensuality” of the recumbent nude depicted in “Cleopatra” (1611-12), describing the figure’s physique as “almost animalistic.” Treves particularly admires Artemisia’s representation of the nude female body in “Danaë” (c. 1612), which is now in the St. Louis Art Museum. Creases around the figure’s armpits and swells in the stomach reveal an awareness of the way a woman’s flesh settles and subsides. By contrast, Orazio’s “Danaë and the Shower of Gold,” painted in the early sixteen-twenties and now at the Getty, features bed linens so realistic that the viewer feels she could climb between them, but the princess’s breasts defy gravity with an almost comical perkiness.
Although the young Artemisia remained largely cloistered in her father’s studio, she was nonetheless vulnerable to attack there by Tassi, a successful artist; some scholars suggest that Orazio had engaged him to tutor Artemisia on perspective. (In “Blood Water Paint,” McCullough plausibly suggests that Artemisia was, in part, a victim of her father’s professional opportunism: Orazio hoped that Tassi would bring him in on a commission.) The decision to publicly accuse Tassi of rape was made not by Artemisia but by her father, who sought to force Tassi to marry her. The official record of the trial, which is housed at the Archivio di Stato, in Rome, includes Artemisia’s vivid account of her ordeal. Tassi, she claims, pushed her inside her bedroom and locked the door. “He then threw me onto the edge of the bed, pushing me with a hand on my breast, and he put a knee between my thighs to prevent me from closing them,” reads a translation provided by Mary Garrard in her 1989 book. Tassi placed a hand over Artemisia’s mouth to stop her from screaming; she fought back, clawing at his face and hair. In the struggle, she grabbed Tassi’s penis so roughly that she tore his flesh. Afterward, she grabbed a knife from a table drawer and said, “I’d like to kill you with this knife because you have dishonored me.” Tassi opened his coat and taunted her by saying, “Here I am.” Artemisia hurled the knife at him. “He shielded himself,” she tells her interrogator. “Otherwise I would have hurt him and might easily have killed him.”
The Roman archive contains trial transcripts for other women who were raped. Elizabeth Cohen, a scholar who has examined the transcripts, argues that the crime of rape had a different cultural connotation than it does now, and was understood less as a violent act against a woman than as a besmirching of her family’s honor. Cohen contends that characterizations of Artemisia as an outraged proto-feminist, with even her early art expressing enraged resistance, are anachronistic. A seventeenth-century woman would not have conceived of her body with the “corporeal essentialism” that a woman does today, Cohen writes: “Artemisia spoke of her body during the trial, but as the material upon which a socially significant offense had been committed.” According to the transcript, at least, Artemisia’s outrage is couched in terms of having been dishonored, rather than having been assaulted. After Tassi raped her, he immediately assured her that he would marry her, and she reports that “with this good promise I felt calmer,” and confirms that, believing his nuptial pledge, she consented to have sex with him on numerous occasions thereafter.
Orazio’s goal of coercing Tassi into making good on his word to marry Artemisia would be unthinkable in a rape trial today. Artemisia’s testimony was, for the most part, by the book: she knew, or had been instructed on, which points she needed to make in order to meet the standards for conviction. Like other unmarried accusers of rapists, she was obliged to undergo examination by a midwife, to verify that she was no longer a virgin. Nonetheless, the force of Artemisia’s character emerges. At the time, to insure that rape accusations were truthful, alleged victims were required to submit to a form of torture: cords were wrapped around their hands and tightened like thumbscrews. “It is true, it is true, it is true,” she repeated as the cords were tightened. The transcript notes that she interrupted her litany to address Tassi directly, with a mordantly ironic reference to the bindings around her fingers: “This is the ring that you give me, and these are your promises.”
Tassi was found guilty but he was sentenced only to a brief period of exile, which he ignored. He did not have to marry Artemisia—it emerged in the courtroom that he had already married someone else. During the trial, her father arranged for her to marry Pierantonio Stiattesi, a minor artist in Florence. Stiattesi was the brother of Giovanni Battista Stiattesi, a friend of Orazio’s who had testified against Tassi in the trial, asserting that he had confessed to having taken Artemisia’s virginity. Artemisia apparently found her husband something of a nonentity, and after about a decade together they separated; most traces of Stiattesi have since been lost. Nevertheless, the betrothal, intended to remove her from the city of her scandalous past, was the making of Artemisia. It gave her an opportunity to establish herself as an artist independent of her father, and her status as a married woman offered her something she had never truly experienced: liberty.
Arriving in Florence in the winter of 1612-13, Artemisia initially set up her studio in the house of her father-in-law, a tailor. Over time, she seems to have established a studio apart from the family home, where, among other things, she could more easily work on large-scale canvases. Embarking on a period of abundant creativity, she executed several of the paintings for which she served as her own model—among them “Self-Portrait as a Lute Player,” which hangs in the Wadsworth Atheneum, in Hartford, Connecticut. Some art historians believe that this work was commissioned by the Grand Duke Cosimo II de’ Medici, in whose collection it was later recorded. The Duke’s eye would have been drawn to the sensitivity and animation of the face, but also to the delicacy and articulation of the hands, shown mid-strum on the instrument.
In July, 1616, Artemisia became the first woman to be admitted to the prestigious Accademia delle Arti del Disegno. With the respectability of marriage guaranteeing her the freedom to circulate socially, she got to know intellectuals, performers, and other artists, including Galileo and the poet Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger, a great-nephew of the Renaissance master. The poet commissioned her to paint part of the ceiling in a gallery dedicated to Michelangelo at the family estate. Her contribution, “Allegory of Inclination,” depicts a female nude sitting on a tuft of cloud.
Around the time she moved to Florence, she made her first iteration of Judith beheading Holofernes, which can now be seen in the Capodimonte Museum, in Naples. In this version and in the one at the Uffizi, a maidservant, Abra, forcefully holds Holofernes down while Judith confidently hacks away at his neck. Treves says of the paintings, “Artemisia is subverting a well-known traditional subject and empowering the women in a way that hasn’t been done before.” (The painting at the Uffizi, now prominently on display there, was for decades hidden from public view, presumably on the ground that it was distasteful. The nineteenth-century art historian Anna Brownell Jameson wrote of wishing for “the privilege of burning it to ashes.”) Treves says that Artemisia’s renderings of the tale offer “a picture of sisterhood—of these two women doing this extraordinary thing.” By contrast, Caravaggio’s treatment of the story, in a work that hangs in the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica, in Rome, focusses on the horrified face of Holofernes, and depicts Judith as a pallid girl gingerly holding a sword and grasping her foe’s curly hair at arm’s length. She hardly seems to have the oomph required for decapitation.


newyorker--2020-09-28--Biden Can Rise to the Challenge of Our Climate Emergency

It is no exaggeration to say that what the next President does—or doesn ’ t do—on climate change will affect the world for millennia to come .
Joe Biden has said that , on Day One of his Administration , he will rejoin the Paris climate accord .
That ’ s an important first step .
It would signal that the United States intends to become , once again , a responsible member of the global community .
At the same time , it would commit the White House to delivering a plan to substantially reduce America ’ s emissions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that the Obama Administration submitted in the lead-up to Paris , in 2015 . )
The new Administration should immediately issue an executive order rescinding a stack of Trump ’ s executive orders .
These include one that directed federal agencies to review any rules that “ potentially burden ” oil , natural-gas , and coal companies , and another that opened millions of acres of U.S. waters to potential oil and gas drilling .
( A few weeks ago , in a naked bid for votes , the President declared a moratorium @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Republican-led states : Florida , Georgia , and South Carolina . )
Another executive order should direct the Secretary of the Interior to halt the sale of leases for oil and gas drilling on public lands .
A Biden Administration should also move to restore key Obama-era regulations that the Trump Administration has been scrapping .
Among other things , these regulations were aimed at limiting greenhouse-gas emissions from power plants , cars and light trucks , and leaky oil and gas wells .
The process of rewriting the regulations , as the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ patience and discipline.
” That ’ s in part because , even as the Trump Administration was gutting the rules , it was gutting the agencies responsible for formulating them .
The death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg may make the task even more difficult , as a more right-leaning Supreme Court could overturn the key decision , Massachusetts v .
E.P.A.
, from 2007 , on which the regulations are based .
In July , Biden offered a plan for tackling climate change and promoting environmental justice .
As many commentators pointed out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a good deal more aggressive than the one he offered during the primary campaign , and credit for this goes to the young activists who pushed him to be bolder .
( The Washington Post called it the “ most ambitious blueprint released by a major party nominee.
” ) Several of its key elements can be accomplished by executive action .
These include : directing agencies to promote clean energy through their purchases of vehicles and equipment ; establishing more rigorous efficiency standards for household appliances ; creating a new Environmental and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ; and convening a climate summit of world leaders .
Biden should take all these steps expeditiously .
Much of Biden ’ s plan will require congressional support , and it ’ s here that a new Administration would have to show even more discipline and focus .
The coronavirus pandemic , for all the death and destruction it has caused , will likely give the new Administration an opportunity to spend a great deal of money , in the form of another stimulus package .
Biden must be clear—and adamant—about his priorities @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for new infrastructure be targeted at projects that will reduce greenhouse-gas emissions , and that stimulus money not go to projects that will , either directly or indirectly , encourage fossil-fuel use .
( According to a recent analysis by the Rhodium Group , a private research organization , only one per cent of the $ 2.4 trillion in U.S. stimulus spending that it evaluated has been earmarked for projects that could remotely be counted as green . )
Spending should be aimed at five broad goals : decarbonizing the power sector , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , accelerating the transition to electric vehicles , improving building efficiency , and reducing emissions from manufacturing .
And stimulus money needs to be spent not just effectively but equitably .
Communities most vulnerable to climate change should see the greatest benefits , in the form of projects that create jobs or more resilient neighborhoods , or , optimally , both .
Biden ’ s most explicit goal is also the most difficult to attain : eliminating carbon emissions from electricity production in the U.S. by 2035 .
( As an analyst recently @ @ @ @ @ @ @ achievable and aspirational.
” ) Currently , just seventeen per cent of the country ’ s electricity is generated from renewable sources—mostly wind and hydro—and another twenty per cent comes from nuclear plants .
Electrifying the nation ’ s cars and buses will put considerable new demands on the grid , meaning that much more carbon-free power will be needed .
In 2009 , when Biden became Vice-President , the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress .
The Obama Administration decided to take on health care first ; the thinking was that climate-change @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fight over Obamacare consumed so much of the new President ’ s political capital that there was no “ next , ” and the Democrats lost control of the House in 2010 .
So much has gone wrong since then on so many fronts that it ’ s easy to imagine climate change again being relegated to the to-do list .
But there isn ’ t time for that .
For the past thirty years , the fossil-fuel industry and its allies have blocked efforts to address climate change .
Their claim—sullied by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t afford to do what it would take to make a real difference .
That claim has never made any sense : drowned cities and ruined croplands aren ’ t exactly good for business .
This fall ’ s devastating wildfires in the West further illustrate how high the costs of failing to deal with climate change will be .
At this peculiar and desperate moment , it ’ s just possible that some of the tired old arguments in favor of inaction have also been reduced to ashes .
At least , @ @ @ @ @ @

It is no exaggeration to say that what the next President does—or doesn’t do—on climate change will affect the world for millennia to come. Joe Biden has said that, on Day One of his Administration, he will rejoin the Paris climate accord. That’s an important first step. It would signal that the United States intends to become, once again, a responsible member of the global community. At the same time, it would commit the White House to delivering a plan to substantially reduce America’s emissions. (Donald Trump shredded the plan that the Obama Administration submitted in the lead-up to Paris, in 2015.)
The new Administration should immediately issue an executive order rescinding a stack of Trump’s executive orders. These include one that directed federal agencies to review any rules that “potentially burden” oil, natural-gas, and coal companies, and another that opened millions of acres of U.S. waters to potential oil and gas drilling. (A few weeks ago, in a naked bid for votes, the President declared a moratorium on drilling off the coast of three Republican-led states: Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina.) Another executive order should direct the Secretary of the Interior to halt the sale of leases for oil and gas drilling on public lands.
A Biden Administration should also move to restore key Obama-era regulations that the Trump Administration has been scrapping. Among other things, these regulations were aimed at limiting greenhouse-gas emissions from power plants, cars and light trucks, and leaky oil and gas wells. The process of rewriting the regulations, as the Times noted recently, will “take patience and discipline.” That’s in part because, even as the Trump Administration was gutting the rules, it was gutting the agencies responsible for formulating them. The death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg may make the task even more difficult, as a more right-leaning Supreme Court could overturn the key decision, Massachusetts v. E.P.A., from 2007, on which the regulations are based.
In July, Biden offered a plan for tackling climate change and promoting environmental justice. As many commentators pointed out at the time, the plan was a good deal more aggressive than the one he offered during the primary campaign, and credit for this goes to the young activists who pushed him to be bolder. (The Washington Post called it the “most ambitious blueprint released by a major party nominee.”) Several of its key elements can be accomplished by executive action. These include: directing agencies to promote clean energy through their purchases of vehicles and equipment; establishing more rigorous efficiency standards for household appliances; creating a new Environmental and Climate Justice Division in the Justice Department; and convening a climate summit of world leaders. Biden should take all these steps expeditiously.
Much of Biden’s plan will require congressional support, and it’s here that a new Administration would have to show even more discipline and focus. The coronavirus pandemic, for all the death and destruction it has caused, will likely give the new Administration an opportunity to spend a great deal of money, in the form of another stimulus package. Biden must be clear—and adamant—about his priorities. It’s essential that funding for new infrastructure be targeted at projects that will reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, and that stimulus money not go to projects that will, either directly or indirectly, encourage fossil-fuel use. (According to a recent analysis by the Rhodium Group, a private research organization, only one per cent of the $2.4 trillion in U.S. stimulus spending that it evaluated has been earmarked for projects that could remotely be counted as green.) Spending should be aimed at five broad goals: decarbonizing the power sector, expanding the nation’s public-transportation systems, accelerating the transition to electric vehicles, improving building efficiency, and reducing emissions from manufacturing. And stimulus money needs to be spent not just effectively but equitably. Communities most vulnerable to climate change should see the greatest benefits, in the form of projects that create jobs or more resilient neighborhoods, or, optimally, both.
Biden’s most explicit goal is also the most difficult to attain: eliminating carbon emissions from electricity production in the U.S. by 2035. (As an analyst recently observed, this goal “teeters between achievable and aspirational.”) Currently, just seventeen per cent of the country’s electricity is generated from renewable sources—mostly wind and hydro—and another twenty per cent comes from nuclear plants. Electrifying the nation’s cars and buses will put considerable new demands on the grid, meaning that much more carbon-free power will be needed.
In 2009, when Biden became Vice-President, the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress. The Obama Administration decided to take on health care first; the thinking was that climate-change legislation would come next. But the fight over Obamacare consumed so much of the new President’s political capital that there was no “next,” and the Democrats lost control of the House in 2010. So much has gone wrong since then on so many fronts that it’s easy to imagine climate change again being relegated to the to-do list. But there isn’t time for that.
For the past thirty years, the fossil-fuel industry and its allies have blocked efforts to address climate change. Their claim—sullied by blatant self-interest—is that the country can’t afford to do what it would take to make a real difference. That claim has never made any sense: drowned cities and ruined croplands aren’t exactly good for business. This fall’s devastating wildfires in the West further illustrate how high the costs of failing to deal with climate change will be.
At this peculiar and desperate moment, it’s just possible that some of the tired old arguments in favor of inaction have also been reduced to ashes. At least, so let us hope. ♦


newyorker--2020-09-28--“I Sit Outside in Low Late-Afternoon Light to Feel Earth Call to Me,” by Tracy K. Smith

I wish it would grab me by the ankles and pull .
I wish its shadow would dance up close , closing in .
When I close my eyes a presence forms , backs away .
I float above a lake , am dragged back from a portion of sky .
Down , down , the falling doesn ’ t end .
Every marked body must descend .
Is the world intended for me ?
Not just me but the we that fills me ?
Our shadows reel and dart .
Our blood simmers , stirred back .
What if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ backs ?
The world has never had—will never have—our backs .
Our blood simmers , stirred back .
What if the we that fills me , our shadows real and dark , is the world intended for me ?
Not just me but every marked body must descend from a portion of sky .
Down , down , the falling doesn ’ t end .
I float above a lake , am dragged back when I close my eyes .
A presence forms , backs away .
I wish its shadow would dance @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wish it would grab me by the ankles and pull .

Audio: Read by the author.
I wish it would grab me by the ankles and pull.
I wish its shadow would dance up close, closing in.
When I close my eyes a presence forms, backs away.
I float above a lake, am dragged back
from a portion of sky. Down, down, the falling doesn’t end.
Every marked body must descend.
Is the world intended for me? Not just me but
the we that fills me? Our shadows reel and dart.
Our blood simmers, stirred back. What if
the world has never had—will never have—our backs?
The world has never had—will never have—our backs.
Our blood simmers, stirred back. What if
the we that fills me, our shadows real and dark,
is the world intended for me? Not just me but
every marked body must descend
from a portion of sky. Down, down, the falling doesn’t end.
I float above a lake, am dragged back
when I close my eyes. A presence forms, backs away.
I wish its shadow would dance up close, closing in.
I wish it would grab me by the ankles and pull.


newyorker--2020-09-28--Controlling the Pandemic Is the First Step Toward Rescuing a Failed System

The top priority for the next President is clear : control the pandemic .
This isn ’ t just a matter of containing an ongoing threat .
It ’ s also a crucial step toward addressing the larger failures of the nation ’ s health-care system .
Since January 20th , when the first COVID-19 case was identified in the United States , President Trump has squandered every opportunity to fight the coronavirus .
This country ’ s public-health expertise is unparalleled , and one would have expected it to have helped lead the global response , as it did @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has promoted quack cures , mocked mask-wearing , committed to withdrawing from the World Health Organization , and demanded that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration show fealty to him rather than to science .
Between Memorial Day and Labor Day , the number of confirmed cases in the U.S. quadrupled , from one and a half million to more than six million .
In parts of the country , infections continue to spread unabated .
By Inauguration Day , our one-year coronavirus anniversary , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ thousand .
We know what measures are needed to combat the virus : a national mask mandate ( we should get mask-wearing , which remains lax in many states , above eighty per cent ) ; investment in making testing free , timely , and widely available ; and the mobilization of public-health teams to trace , test , and isolate contacts of positive cases .
( Reopening bars and other high-risk settings must be the last step , not the first , where infection rates are high . )
Once clinical trials @ @ @ @ @ @ @ effective , the President must be trusted to distribute it on the basis of need , not political caprice .
And , critically , we need to assemble a modern public-health infrastructure that can support testing , treatments , and supplies not only for this pandemic but for the next one .
Joe Biden has committed to doing exactly this .
To reëstablish pandemic management as a national function instead of one carried out disjointedly among the states , he would launch a Pandemic Testing Board and a P.P.E.-production program to insure plentiful @ @ @ @ @ @ @ vaccine approval and distribution ; and expand the C.D.C.
’ s scientific team that tracks outbreaks around the world , including in China .
The deeper dysfunctions of our health-care system would have an equally urgent claim to the attentions of a Biden Administration .
The pandemic has clearly shown that the entire country is weakened when large segments of the population lack adequate medical coverage .
This country can not continue to tolerate the severe disparities we have—based on neighborhood , education , or skin color—in life expectancy , medical debt , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the ability to fill prescriptions , having a regular doctor , or simply having enough to eat .
The Affordable Care Act reduced the number of uninsured by forty per cent , but twelve states , including Texas and Florida , still refuse the Medicaid funding that the bill provided to cover uninsured residents living in poverty .
Even before the pandemic , forty-five per cent of working-age Americans either had no insurance or had insurance that carried deductibles and copays so high that they couldn ’ t afford medical care anyway .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ been attaching our health care to where we work .
A company-sponsored insurance plan for a family adds an average of fifteen thousand dollars to the annual cost of employing a worker—effectively levying a fifty-per-cent tax on a fifteen-dollar-an-hour position .
We ’ re all but paying employers to outsource or automate people ’ s jobs .
The result is to make both work and health care less secure and more fragmented—and to deepen our inequalities .
That ’ s visible in the tragic increase , during the past few decades , in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and alcohol-related disease—which have produced an unprecedented decline in life expectancy for non-college-educated whites .
Trump vowed to address opioid deaths , but fatal overdoses hit a record high last year , and have continued to climb since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic .
This trend appears to reflect a generational loss of stable work and earnings for people without a four-year degree—a situation that our broken health system has gravely exacerbated .
Fixing economic and racial inequality isn ’ t possible without fixing health care .
Our major health-policy issues @ @ @ @ @ @ @ next four years .
A fractious Democratic Party has temporarily united in an effort to defeat Trump , but it remains divided on health care .
Many Democrats would jettison Obamacare in favor of Medicare for All ; Biden ’ s plan would build on Obamacare by lowering the Medicare eligibility age to sixty , and providing a public option enabling people to obtain coverage from a government plan .
The Republican Party has developed no health-care strategy except to attack any solution that would deliver on the guiding tenet of medicine , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that all lives have equal worth .
Yet progress must be made .
During the pandemic , we have seen a frightening willingness to regard some people as expendable , including the elderly and many essential workers , who are disproportionately Black , Latino , and low-income .
The Obama Presidency launched with the swelling hope of a country finally unified in the belief that we are all created equal ; a Biden Presidency would begin with a more sober sense of the opposition that meaningful reform must overcome .
But this realism @ @ @ @ @ @ @ advancement .
Repairing our systems of medical care and public health isn ’ t an elective procedure .
The afflictions of our body politic threaten the well-being of us all .
♦

The top priority for the next President is clear: control the pandemic. This isn’t just a matter of containing an ongoing threat. It’s also a crucial step toward addressing the larger failures of the nation’s health-care system.
Since January 20th, when the first COVID-19 case was identified in the United States, President Trump has squandered every opportunity to fight the coronavirus. This country’s public-health expertise is unparalleled, and one would have expected it to have helped lead the global response, as it did with Ebola. Instead, the President has promoted quack cures, mocked mask-wearing, committed to withdrawing from the World Health Organization, and demanded that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration show fealty to him rather than to science. Between Memorial Day and Labor Day, the number of confirmed cases in the U.S. quadrupled, from one and a half million to more than six million. In parts of the country, infections continue to spread unabated. By Inauguration Day, our one-year coronavirus anniversary, the death toll will likely exceed three hundred thousand.
We know what measures are needed to combat the virus: a national mask mandate (we should get mask-wearing, which remains lax in many states, above eighty per cent); investment in making testing free, timely, and widely available; and the mobilization of public-health teams to trace, test, and isolate contacts of positive cases. (Reopening bars and other high-risk settings must be the last step, not the first, where infection rates are high.) Once clinical trials establish that a vaccine is safe and effective, the President must be trusted to distribute it on the basis of need, not political caprice. And, critically, we need to assemble a modern public-health infrastructure that can support testing, treatments, and supplies not only for this pandemic but for the next one. Joe Biden has committed to doing exactly this. To reëstablish pandemic management as a national function instead of one carried out disjointedly among the states, he would launch a Pandemic Testing Board and a P.P.E.-production program to insure plentiful supplies; adhere to transparent criteria for vaccine approval and distribution; and expand the C.D.C.’s scientific team that tracks outbreaks around the world, including in China.
The deeper dysfunctions of our health-care system would have an equally urgent claim to the attentions of a Biden Administration. The pandemic has clearly shown that the entire country is weakened when large segments of the population lack adequate medical coverage. This country cannot continue to tolerate the severe disparities we have—based on neighborhood, education, or skin color—in life expectancy, medical debt, access to mental-health or dental care, the ability to fill prescriptions, having a regular doctor, or simply having enough to eat. The Affordable Care Act reduced the number of uninsured by forty per cent, but twelve states, including Texas and Florida, still refuse the Medicaid funding that the bill provided to cover uninsured residents living in poverty. Even before the pandemic, forty-five per cent of working-age Americans either had no insurance or had insurance that carried deductibles and copays so high that they couldn’t afford medical care anyway.
The central error of our system has been attaching our health care to where we work. A company-sponsored insurance plan for a family adds an average of fifteen thousand dollars to the annual cost of employing a worker—effectively levying a fifty-per-cent tax on a fifteen-dollar-an-hour position. We’re all but paying employers to outsource or automate people’s jobs. The result is to make both work and health care less secure and more fragmented—and to deepen our inequalities.
That’s visible in the tragic increase, during the past few decades, in so-called deaths of despair—from suicide, opioids, and alcohol-related disease—which have produced an unprecedented decline in life expectancy for non-college-educated whites. Trump vowed to address opioid deaths, but fatal overdoses hit a record high last year, and have continued to climb since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. This trend appears to reflect a generational loss of stable work and earnings for people without a four-year degree—a situation that our broken health system has gravely exacerbated. Fixing economic and racial inequality isn’t possible without fixing health care.
Our major health-policy issues will not all be solved in the next four years. A fractious Democratic Party has temporarily united in an effort to defeat Trump, but it remains divided on health care. Many Democrats would jettison Obamacare in favor of Medicare for All; Biden’s plan would build on Obamacare by lowering the Medicare eligibility age to sixty, and providing a public option enabling people to obtain coverage from a government plan. The Republican Party has developed no health-care strategy except to attack any solution that would deliver on the guiding tenet of medicine, not to mention of the Constitution: that all lives have equal worth.
Yet progress must be made. During the pandemic, we have seen a frightening willingness to regard some people as expendable, including the elderly and many essential workers, who are disproportionately Black, Latino, and low-income. The Obama Presidency launched with the swelling hope of a country finally unified in the belief that we are all created equal; a Biden Presidency would begin with a more sober sense of the opposition that meaningful reform must overcome. But this realism may yet provide the basis for lasting advancement. Repairing our systems of medical care and public health isn’t an elective procedure. The afflictions of our body politic threaten the well-being of us all. ♦


“Rainbows”

I came to this country—from Ireland , at the age of twenty-three—unaware of the existence of mentors .
I ’ m certain that I had never heard the word “ mentee.
” The words in Ireland were not exactly the same as the words in America .
When a classmate told me that she was going to meet her “ mentor , ” I had to ask her to explain .
In America , she informed me , there was a social practice in which an older , experienced person donated time and knowledge to a younger , relatively foolish @ @ @ @ @ @ @ better understand the world ’ s perils and pathways .
I was filled with a suspicion that bordered on disbelief .
I probably said , “ Ah , go away.
” Ireland has changed , everyone tells me , and maybe this sort of suspiciousness is no longer current .
I doubt it , however .
I audited an undergraduate class in anthropology .
I needed a break from the dreariness and difficulty of my master ’ s degree , which was in applied analytics .
The class was titled Animals & People @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the hunting asset , livestock , the endangered animal : we investigated the social and ideological aspects of these phenomena .
I found it interesting .
I may not have been an anthropologist , but I did own a kitten .
The professor whose class this was , Paola Visintin , became my mentor .
Let me say that Paola was my elder by almost twenty years but was cool in a way that made professors closer to me in age seem gauche and youthless .
Her style was important to me .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ She wore her brown hair in a slightly scruffy shoulder-length cut , with bangs , and she casually wore clothes by Martin Margiela—including a deconstructed gray wool jacket that I thought about for years with a feeling of bitter loss .
Margiela , a recluse of great mystique , was rumored to be Paola ’ s personal friend , and that was about the coolest thing possible .
Mystique was important to me at that time , and some nationalities had more mystique than others .
Paola was Italian , from Trieste—a city @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that still belonged to an invisible Austria-Hungary .
She was left-wing to a degree that seemed almost unlawful .
She emanated a worldliness in which significant intellectual and sexual powers converged .
She spoke with a strong and beautiful Italian accent .
She was unafraid .
Our relationship began when I asked if it would be O.K .
for me , a mere auditor , to see her during “ office hours ” ( another new concept ) .
She agreed , on the condition that we meet at a coffee shop on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ her apartment , the precise location of which , it was somehow understood , would never be mine to know .
Of course , I found out .
We met about six times over the course of two years , always at my instigation , always at the same coffee shop .
We sat at a particular table in the smoking section .
I was honored that she made time to see me , and I speculated that the honor had to do with a shared European identity .
Paola seemed to be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , she once told me , that was incomparably supplied with rainbows .
Exactly what we discussed I no longer recall , but I have a surviving sense of the excitement I felt when travelling to those meetings from Brooklyn .
Many quandaries and crossroads characterized my life in those days , and I took pleasure in telling Paola about them .
There was a lot to talk about , it seemed to me .
I had not yet found a career , or love , or a home , or money .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ it , even the departure from Ireland—for some reason fills me with shame .
The meeting that I think about was our last one .
Paola was already at the coffee shop when I arrived .
She immediately asked , “ What has happened ?
” With tears in my eyes , I outlined the events of the night before .
Certain details were too embarrassing and awful to relate , especially the details of how I ’ d come to find myself in the situation that produced what had happened , details @ @ @ @ @ @ @ my personal weakness but also at my naïve and counterproductive upbringing in rural County Limerick .
Paola wasn ’ t one to offer solutions .
Her conversational practice was austere and consistent : she listened , she asked specific questions , and she took seriously what one had to say .
When she lit a cigarette , it usually meant that she was about to offer her thoughts .
These were always brief .
She seemed to have disdain for her own opinions .
More than once she cast doubt on the very @ @ @ @ @ @ @ seem wiser than ever .
Therefore I put my question to her with no real expectation of receiving an answer .
“ Should I report him ?
” I asked .
“ The authorities ?
” I had the impression that a private joke was passing through her thoughts .
“ I have a better idea , Clodagh , ” she said , stubbing out her cigarette .
“ Now , listen to me very carefully.
” She looked squarely into my eyes .
“ Are you listening ?
” I nodded .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ She said , “ Get over it.
” My kitten grew into a cat , turned into an old lady , died .
The obstetrician lifted a red-blue creature from behind a blue paper curtain—and , flash , the creature , Aoife , turned eighteen .
This last milestone was reached in the final semester of her senior year , in January .
One Monday evening in February , my husband , Ian , became aware that our daughter was involved in a prolonged phone drama in her bedroom .
He knocked on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , who had been crying , told him that a boy at her school was harassing her .
Harassing as in doing what ?
Ian asked .
Aoife told him harassing as in direct-messaging her on Instagram after she ’ d told him more than once to stop , harassing as in following her around at school all day long and making her dread going anywhere .
Following you around ?
Ian asked .
Why ?
Dad , he ’ s obsessed , Aoife said .
Ian asked Aoife if she wanted him @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , James .
Aoife told him that she did not want him to do that .
I ’ ll take care of it , Aoife said .
O.K.
, Ian said .

Audio available Listen to this story Audio: Joseph O’Neill reads.
I came to this country—from Ireland, at the age of twenty-three—unaware of the existence of mentors. I’m certain that I had never heard the word “mentee.” The words in Ireland were not exactly the same as the words in America. When a classmate told me that she was going to meet her “mentor,” I had to ask her to explain. In America, she informed me, there was a social practice in which an older, experienced person donated time and knowledge to a younger, relatively foolish person in order to help the latter better understand the world’s perils and pathways. I was filled with a suspicion that bordered on disbelief. I probably said, “Ah, go away.” Ireland has changed, everyone tells me, and maybe this sort of suspiciousness is no longer current. I doubt it, however.
I audited an undergraduate class in anthropology. I needed a break from the dreariness and difficulty of my master’s degree, which was in applied analytics. The class was titled Animals & People. The pet, the pest, the hunting asset, livestock, the endangered animal: we investigated the social and ideological aspects of these phenomena. I found it interesting. I may not have been an anthropologist, but I did own a kitten. The professor whose class this was, Paola Visintin, became my mentor.
Let me say that Paola was my elder by almost twenty years but was cool in a way that made professors closer to me in age seem gauche and youthless. Her style was important to me. She was thin, of course. She wore her brown hair in a slightly scruffy shoulder-length cut, with bangs, and she casually wore clothes by Martin Margiela—including a deconstructed gray wool jacket that I thought about for years with a feeling of bitter loss. Margiela, a recluse of great mystique, was rumored to be Paola’s personal friend, and that was about the coolest thing possible. Mystique was important to me at that time, and some nationalities had more mystique than others. Paola was Italian, from Trieste—a city, she once suggested to me, that still belonged to an invisible Austria-Hungary. She was left-wing to a degree that seemed almost unlawful. She emanated a worldliness in which significant intellectual and sexual powers converged. She spoke with a strong and beautiful Italian accent. She was unafraid.
Our relationship began when I asked if it would be O.K. for me, a mere auditor, to see her during “office hours” (another new concept). She agreed, on the condition that we meet at a coffee shop on West 141st Street. This was near her apartment, the precise location of which, it was somehow understood, would never be mine to know. Of course, I found out. We met about six times over the course of two years, always at my instigation, always at the same coffee shop. We sat at a particular table in the smoking section. I was honored that she made time to see me, and I speculated that the honor had to do with a shared European identity. Paola seemed to be well disposed toward Ireland, a country, she once told me, that was incomparably supplied with rainbows. Exactly what we discussed I no longer recall, but I have a surviving sense of the excitement I felt when travelling to those meetings from Brooklyn. Many quandaries and crossroads characterized my life in those days, and I took pleasure in telling Paola about them. There was a lot to talk about, it seemed to me. I had not yet found a career, or love, or a home, or money.
Simply to think about the foregoing—all of it, even the departure from Ireland—for some reason fills me with shame.
The meeting that I think about was our last one.
Paola was already at the coffee shop when I arrived. She immediately asked, “What has happened?”
With tears in my eyes, I outlined the events of the night before. Certain details were too embarrassing and awful to relate, especially the details of how I’d come to find myself in the situation that produced what had happened, details that made me furious not only at my personal weakness but also at my naïve and counterproductive upbringing in rural County Limerick.
Paola wasn’t one to offer solutions. Her conversational practice was austere and consistent: she listened, she asked specific questions, and she took seriously what one had to say. When she lit a cigarette, it usually meant that she was about to offer her thoughts. These were always brief. She seemed to have disdain for her own opinions. More than once she cast doubt on the very idea of wisdom, which made her seem wiser than ever.
Therefore I put my question to her with no real expectation of receiving an answer. “Should I report him?” I asked.
“Report?”
“Yes,” I said. “To the authorities.”
“The authorities?” I had the impression that a private joke was passing through her thoughts. “I have a better idea, Clodagh,” she said, stubbing out her cigarette. “Now, listen to me very carefully.” She looked squarely into my eyes. “Are you listening?” I nodded. She had never been so definite. She said, “Get over it.”
My kitten grew into a cat, turned into an old lady, died. The obstetrician lifted a red-blue creature from behind a blue paper curtain—and, flash, the creature, Aoife, turned eighteen. This last milestone was reached in the final semester of her senior year, in January.
One Monday evening in February, my husband, Ian, became aware that our daughter was involved in a prolonged phone drama in her bedroom. He knocked on her door and went in. Aoife, who had been crying, told him that a boy at her school was harassing her. Harassing as in doing what? Ian asked. Aoife told him harassing as in direct-messaging her on Instagram after she’d told him more than once to stop, harassing as in following her around at school all day long and making her dread going anywhere. Following you around? Ian asked. Why? Dad, he’s obsessed, Aoife said. Ian asked Aoife if she wanted him to call the parents of this boy, James. Aoife told him that she did not want him to do that. I’ll take care of it, Aoife said. O.K., Ian said.
I was in Columbus, working, when Ian reported this conversation. I told him, “I don’t know any James. Keep an eye on her. I’ll handle it tomorrow.” By the time I landed in New York, early on Tuesday evening, there had been further developments. In the taxi home, I called Ian and learned that our daughter had not gone to school that day. She had contacted the school to explain her absence and stated that she felt fearful about going in so long as James Wang was there.
“James is James Wang?” I said.
The school had asked Aoife if she wished to file a complaint.
I said, “A complaint? What kind of complaint?”
“There’s a complaints procedure, apparently,” Ian said. “There are regulations.”
“Go on,” I said.
After consulting with a friend—
“Which friend?” I asked.
“Some friend, I don’t know,” Ian said.
“Go on,” I said. Ian didn’t keep track of the friends. I did. My money was on Mei.
—Aoife had told the school that, yes, she wished to file an official complaint for harassment and intimidation against James Wang. She wouldn’t go to school unless he was stopped.
I was nearly home. “I’ll talk to her,” I said.
“I’m not sure she wants to discuss it right now,” Ian said.