![]() ![]() The Old Princess, whose story closes the book, finds her life slipping along, without her ever truly grasping it. Was she ever there at all? The titular story of this collection is given the alternative name, The Invention of Cubism, bringing to mind images which flatten, dissect and rearrange women and Picasso’s two categories for female existence, ‘goddesses and doormats.’ Diski reminds us that some forms of representation feel more like erasure. Feature by feature she is completely obscured. Just as she is beginning to think, ‘perhaps I am here’ the men begin to scratch her portrait over her image in the glass. ![]() Yet this is not a tale of self-actualisation. ‘That is you’ he explains, revealing her reflection. A second soldier gifts her a calendar and a mirror. The princess has never eaten food before, but it’s the soldier who derives the most pleasure from these morsels he simply loves to watch women eat. One brings delicacies, wrapped in white cloth. She spends her days reading books, with the occasional glance through the window at a world which does not interest her. In fact, she has never even considered it. ![]() We can’t call her imprisoned as she has never attempted to leave. ![]()
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