In letters, books, paintings,…
In letters, books, paintings, the two sisters never stopped talking to each other, confronting each other, as if through a mirror. “They have always had, since childhood, this fusional and ambiguous bond. » It is this link that the Angoulême author Laura Ulonati has chosen to explore in Double V. She will talk regarding it with the Lilosimages bookstore, at the theater, this Friday at 6:30 p.m.
I asked myself: what does it feel like to be the sister of a genius?
So it is revealed “the most complex aspects of a relationship between two sisters. This particular bond, of sorority, which makes that between women, we help each other or not. A choice that owes nothing to chance. She herself has a younger sister, “which has carried me since childhood”. It was she who introduced him to Vanessa Bell. “One day, at the museum, we come across some of her paintings and she remains frozen in front. » She then immerses herself in her life – or what we know of it. “I asked myself: what does it feel like to be the sister of a genius? It took me 18 months to write. But this is a novel, not a biography. »
The approximately 200 pages of Double V asked him to research. “I had to sort through the eras and their friendships and I focused on the works that touched me, which I quote at the end. I wanted to isolate them both. Vanessa and Virginia. »
A double portrait of sisters
The result: two portraits burning with intensity, between reciprocal admiration, fierce jealousy and feverish love. A relationship that continues to oscillate between love and hate, until death. “The story is constructed like a kind of dream, like a shadow, details Laura Ulonati. By impressionist touch, as Vanessa painted. As if in one sentence, like a ray of light, we saw a facet of their personality incarnate. »
Because it is also this question of incarnation that arises. That of two women, artists, who had to extract themselves from the influence of a father in order to exist. “The father, I did not succeed in moderating him, laughs the author. I wrote it with the anger of a 15 year old girl. But on the question of patriarchy, we are on the crest line. I take sides but Virginia Woolf, from 1911, wrote the rapes experienced in their childhood, it was enormous for the time. »
In the end, what emerges is the love of one sister for another. And the need for the other. A mirror of Laura Ulonati’s relationship to her own sister? “I was jealous of my sister, enormously jealous. As I have been other women. Female rivalry and jealousy are much more complex than we are led to believe. I remember when we were little, I had to stop him from running down the stairs with his tricycle. Of course, I let her do it… But I loved her terribly too, right away. » The book is also peppered with the author’s own reflections or memories. “Since then, our relations have calmed down. Let’s say that this book completes a long deconstruction. Today, no one would come to put a spoke in the wheels of the electric bike of the other. »
“Double V”, by Laura Ulonati, published by Actes Sud, released in early January. Meeting with the author and Lilosimages, Friday February 24, at 6.30 p.m., at the theatre.
