No Name - No History
1
When I was 16, I began to learn about mortality. I learned to draw at the Schuler School of Fine Art, in downtown Baltimore. I was never any good at drawing, but Hans Schuler taught me. He hung a cast of a young sleeping girl on the wall for me to draw. Hans adjusted the lights and began to tell me the story of her, L’Inconnue de la Seine. “This is a death mask.” He said. “She was pulled from a river in France when she was your age.”
I drew her beautiful face and the experience has stayed with me ever since.
My drawing was pretty good. My mother and I later became inspired to cast my face that same year. A drawing of her sleeping form hangs on the wall in my studio as a reminder of her tragedy and of my ephemerality. She may have taken her own life when she was just sixteen. She may have been murdered. L’Inconnue de la Seine represents the best and worst of humanity. On one hand, she is a reminder of the tragedy that can befall any of us. On the other hand, she represents the resilience of the human spirit in simulacra.
Many years later I learned more about her story. Her repose became a
popular fixture to have in your art studio in the late nineteenth century. By 1930 her face became the face of Rescue Annie, a CPR training doll. “The most kissed woman in the world.” This “woman” has always been a girl to me. She has no name and no history. Her face, an enigma, washed clean of any
identifying marks. The water took her identity away. She was just a girl, short-lived and forgotten, but in death she achieved a certain immortality. Even I got to meet her.
L’Inconnue de la Seine has become a part of me. I think of her often and sometimes she reminds me of the impermanence of life. I am just like her, a nameless body with a fleeting existence. Someday I will be gone and all that will be left of me is a picture, if that. I am haunted by the realization of my own end. I am but a fading dream, a shadow, one of many. I am nothing more than a memory, waiting to be forgotten. My name will fade. I am just a temporary
resident on this earth, and one day I will return to the dust from whence I came.
Sometimes there is a sobering thought in the realization that one day I will be gone. That my body will be not, just like hers. There is a strange comfort in
knowing that I will live on in some sort of way. I am not just my body. I am more than that. I am my memories, my experiences, my loves and my losses. I am the sum of all of those things. I think of her often, this girl who died young and whose
story will never be known. I think of her when I look in the mirror and see my own face staring back at me. I wonder what my own story will be. I wonder if anyone will ever wonder about me the way I wonder about her. I think of her when I face the
realization that one day I will die. I think of her and I am filled with a sense of
peace. Her body was taken to a morgue where they cast her death mask. She died in unclear circumstances. She was just a girl like me and yet, she is famous. Her death has served a purpose. Her likeness has been used to teach people how to save lives. To think that this unknown girl, who may have died in despair, is now known around the world as the ‘CPR training doll’ is both tragic and inspiring. She is a powerful symbol that everyone’s life has value and that even in death, we can serve a greater purpose.
L’Inconnue de la Seine is a mnemonic that in death, our identity will change.
What does it mean to be mortal?
To be mortal is to be subject to death. It is to be temporary, to have an ending. It is to be like the leaves of autumn, falling and withering away.
What does it mean to realize one’s mortality?
To realize one’s quietus is to come to terms with the fact that death is inevitable. It is to accept that life is finite and that one day, we will all meet our end. It is to face the fact that we are not immortal and that our time on this earth is limited.
What does the realization of namelessness mean to you?
What does it make you feel?