Natalie Clifford Barney
Natalie Clifford Barney | |
---|---|
Born | Dayton, Ohio, US | October 31, 1876
Died | February 2, 1972 Paris, France[1] | (aged 95)
Burial place | Passy Cemetery |
Known for |
|
Natalie Clifford Barney (October 31, 1876 – February 2, 1972) was an American writer who hosted a literary salon at her home in Paris that brought together French and international writers. She influenced other authors through her salon and also with her poetry, plays, and epigrams, often thematically tied to her lesbianism and feminism.
Barney was born into a wealthy family. She was partly educated in France, and expressed a desire from a young age to live openly as a lesbian. She moved to France with her first romantic partner,
Barney hosted a salon at her home in Paris for more than 60 years, bringing together writers and artists from around the world, including many leading figures in French, American, and British literature. Attendees of various sexualities expressed themselves and mingled comfortably at the weekly gatherings. She worked to promote writing by women and hosted a "Women's Academy" (L'Académie des Femmes) in her salon as a response to the all-male
Barney had a wide literary influence. Remy de Gourmont addressed public letters to her using the nickname l'Amazon (the Amazon), and Barney's association with both de Gourmont and the nickname lasted until her death. Her life and love affairs served as inspiration for many novels written by others, ranging from de Pougy's erotic French bestseller Idylle Saphique to Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness, the most famous lesbian novel of the twentieth century.[2]
Early life
Barney was born in 1876 in
When Barney was five years old, she encountered Oscar Wilde at a New York hotel. Wilde scooped her up as she ran past him fleeing a group of small boys and held her out of their reach. Then he sat her down on his knee and told her a story.[7] The next day he joined Barney and her mother on the beach, and Wilde inspired Alice to pursue art seriously, which she did despite her husband's disapproval.[8]
Like many girls of her time, Barney had a haphazard education.[9] Her interest in the French language began with a governess who read Jules Verne stories aloud to her, so she would have to learn quickly to understand them.[10] She and her younger sister Laura attended Les Ruches, a French boarding school in Fontainebleau, France, founded by feminist Marie Souvestre.[11] As an adult, she spoke and wrote French fluently.[12]
When she was ten, her family moved from Ohio to the Scott Circle area of Washington D.C., spending summers at their large cottage in Bar Harbor, Maine.[4] As the rebellious and unconventional daughter of one of the wealthiest families in town, she was often mentioned in Washington newspapers. In her early twenties she made headlines by galloping through Bar Harbor while driving a second horse on a lead ahead of her, riding astride instead of sidesaddle.[13]
Barney later said she knew she was a lesbian by age twelve,[14] and she was determined to "live openly, without hiding anything".[15]
Early relationships
Eva Palmer
Barney's earliest intimate relationship was with Eva Palmer. They became acquainted during summer vacations in Bar Harbor, Maine, and began a sexual relationship during one such trip in 1893. Barney likened Palmer's appearance to that of a medieval virgin.[16] The two remained close for several years. As young adults in Paris they shared an apartment at 4 rue Chalgrin and eventually took their own residences in Neuilly.[17] Barney frequently solicited Palmer's help in her romantic pursuits of other women, including Pauline Tarn.[18] Palmer ultimately left Barney's side for Greece and eventually married Angelos Sikelianos. Their relationship did not survive this turn of events: Barney took a dim view of Angelos and heated letters were exchanged.[19] Later in their lives the friendship was repaired through correspondence and reunions in New York.[20]
Liane de Pougy
In 1899, after seeing the
Barney stood to inherit some family wealth held in trust if she either married or waited for her father's death.[23] While courting de Pougy, Barney was engaged to Robert Cassat, a member of another wealthy railroad family.[24] Barney was open with Cassat about her love of women and relationship with de Pougy.[23] In the hopes of securing the Barney trust money, the three briefly considered a rushed wedding between Barney and Cassat and an adoption of de Pougy.[25] When Cassat ended the engagement, Barney attempted unsuccessfully to persuade her father to give her the money anyway.[26]
By the end of 1899, the two had broken up after quarreling repeatedly over Barney's desire to "rescue" de Pougy from her life as a courtesan.[27] Despite the breakup, the two continued having liaisons for decades.[28]
Their on-and-off affair became the subject of de Pougy's tell-all roman à clef, Idylle Saphique (Sapphic Idyll). Published in 1901, the book and its sexually suggestive scenes became the talk of Paris, reprinted more than 70 times in its first year.[29] Barney was soon well known as the model for one of the characters.[30]
Barney herself contributed a chapter to Idylle Saphique in which she described reclining at de Pougy's feet in a screened box at the theater, watching Sarah Bernhardt's play Hamlet.[31] During intermission, Barney (as "Flossie") compares Hamlet's plight with that of women: "What is there for women who feel the passion for action when pitiless Destiny holds them in chains? Destiny made us women at a time when the law of men is the only law that is recognized."[32] She also wrote Lettres à une Connue (Letters to a Woman I Have Known), her own epistolary novel about the affair. Although Barney failed to find a publisher for the book and later called it naïve and clumsy, it is notable for its discussion of homosexuality, which Barney regarded as natural and compared to albinism.[33] "My queerness," she said, "is not a vice, is not deliberate, and harms no one."[34]
Renée Vivien
In November 1899, Barney met the poet Pauline Tarn, better known by her pen name
Vivien saw Barney as a
In 1904 she wrote Je Me Souviens (I Remember), an intensely personal prose poem about their relationship which was presented as a single handwritten copy to Vivien in an attempt to win her back. They reconciled and traveled together to
Vivien's health declined rapidly after this. The author Colette, who herself had an affair with Barney in 1906, was Vivien's friend and neighbor.[41] According to Colette, Vivien ate almost nothing and drank heavily, even rinsing her mouth with perfumed water to hide the smell.[42] Colette's account has led some to call Vivien an anorexic,[43] but this diagnosis did not yet exist at the time. Vivien was also addicted to the sedative chloral hydrate. In 1908 she attempted suicide by overdosing on laudanum[44] and died the following year. In a memoir written fifty years later, Barney said, "She could not be saved. Her life was a long suicide. Everything turned to dust and ashes in her hands."[45]
In 1949, two years after the death of Hélène van Zuylen, Barney restored the
Olive Custance
Barney purchased and read Opals in 1900, a debut collection of poems by Olive Custance. Responding to the lesbian themes in the poetry, Barney began corresponding with Custance and exchanging poems.[54] The two met in 1901 at Barney and Vivien's home in Paris, and they soon began a short romantic relationship. While Barney's infidelity aggravated Vivien, Custance was also pursuing a relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas, who she would later marry.[55]
Poetry and plays
In 1900, Barney published her first book, a collection of poems called Quelques Portraits-Sonnets de Femmes (Some Portrait-Sonnets of Women). The poems were written in traditional French verse and a formal, old-fashioned style since Barney did not care for free verse. Quelques Portraits has been described as "apprentice work", a classifier which betrays its historical significance. According to biographer Suzanne Rodriguez, the collection's publication meant that Barney became the first woman poet to openly write about the love of women since Sappho.[56] Her mother contributed pastel illustrations of the poems' subjects, wholly unaware three of the four women who modelled for her were her daughter's lovers.[57]
Reviews were generally positive and glossed over the lesbian theme of the poems, some even misrepresenting it. The Washington Mirror said Barney "writes odes to men's lips and eyes; not like a novice, either".[58] However, a headline in a society gossip paper cried out "Sappho Sings in Washington" and this alerted her father, who bought and destroyed the publisher's remaining stock and printing plates.[59]
To escape her father's sway Barney published her next book, Cinq Petits Dialogues Grecs (Five Short Greek Dialogues, 1901), under the pseudonym Tryphé. The name came from the works of Pierre Louÿs, who helped edit and revise the manuscript. Barney also dedicated the book to him. The first of the dialogues is set in ancient Greece and contains a long description of Sappho, who is "more faithful in her inconstancy than others in their fidelity". Another argues for paganism over Christianity.[60] After the death of Barney's father in 1902, his approximately $9 million fortune ($317 million in 2018[61]) was left in trust with annual income to be split equally between Barney, her mother, and her sister. His death and the money freed her from any need to conceal the authorship of her books; she never used a pseudonym again.[62] She considered scandal "the best way of getting rid of nuisances" (meaning heterosexual attention from young men).[63]
Je Me Souviens was published in 1910, after Vivien's death.[65] That same year, Barney published Actes et Entr'actes (Acts and Interludes), a collection of short plays and poems. One of the plays was Équivoque (Ambiguity), a revisionist version of the legend of Sappho's death: instead of throwing herself off a cliff for the love of Phaon the sailor, she does so out of grief that Phaon is marrying the woman she loves. The play incorporates quotations from Sappho's fragments, with Barney's own footnotes in Greek, and was performed with ancient Greek-inspired music and dance.[66][67]
Barney did not take her poetry as seriously as Vivien did, saying "if I had one ambition it was to make my life itself into a poem".[68] Her plays were only performed through amateur productions in her garden. According to Karla Jay, most of them lacked coherent plots and "would probably baffle even the most sympathetic audience".[69] After 1910 she mostly wrote the epigrams and memoirs, for which she is better known. Her last book of poetry was called Poems & Poemes: Autres Alliances and came out in 1920, bringing together romantic poetry in both French and English. Barney asked Ezra Pound to edit the poems, but ignored his detailed recommendations.[70]
Salon
For over 60 years, Barney hosted a literary salon, first in Neuilly but mostly at her home at 20, Rue Jacob, in Paris.[71][72] Her salon was a weekly, Friday gathering at which people met to socialize and discuss literature, art, music and any other topic of interest. Though she hosted some of the most prominent male writers of her time, Barney strove to shed light on female writers and their work.[73]
In addition to its focus on women, Barney's salon was distinguished by its deliberately international character.
In the 1900s Barney held early gatherings of the salon at her house in Neuilly. The entertainment included poetry readings and
During World War I, the salon became a haven for those opposed to the war. Henri Barbusse gave a reading from his anti-war novel Under Fire and Barney hosted a Women's Congress for Peace. Other visitors to the salon during the war included Oscar Milosz, Auguste Rodin and poet Alan Seeger, who came while on leave from the French Foreign Legion.[84]
Ezra Pound was a close friend of Barney's and often visited. The two schemed together to subsidize
In 1927 Barney started an Académie des Femmes (Women's Academy) to honor women writers. This was a response to the influential Académie Française (French Academy) which had been founded in the 17th century by Louis XIII and whose 40 members included no women at the time. Unlike the French Academy, Barney's was not a formal organization but rather a series of readings held as part of the regular Friday salons. Honorees included Colette, Gertrude Stein, Anna Wickham, Rachilde, Lucie Delarue-Mardrus, Mina Loy, Djuna Barnes and posthumously, Renée Vivien.[87] The academy's activities wound down after 1927.[88]
Other visitors to the salon during the 1920s included French writers
For her 1929 book Aventures de l'Esprit (Adventures of the Mind) Barney drew a social diagram which crowded the names of over a hundred people who had attended the salon into a rough map of the house, garden and Temple of Friendship. The first half of the book had reminiscences of 13 male writers she had known or met over the years and the second half had a chapter for each member of her Académie des Femmes.[92]
In the late 1920s Radclyffe Hall drew a crowd reading her novel The Well of Loneliness, recently banned in the UK.[93] A reading by poet Edna St. Vincent Millay packed the salon in 1932. At another Friday salon in the 1930s Virgil Thomson sang from Four Saints in Three Acts, an opera based on a libretto by Stein.[94]
Of the famous Modernist writers who spent time in Paris, Ernest Hemingway never made an appearance at the salon. James Joyce came once or twice but did not care for it. Marcel Proust never attended a Friday but did come once to talk with Barney about lesbian culture whilst doing research for In Search of Lost Time, though he ended up too nervous to bring up the subject.[95]
Epigrams and novel
Éparpillements (Scatterings, 1910) was Barney's first collection of pensées—literally, thoughts. This literary form had been associated with salon culture in France since the 17th century, when the genre was perfected at the salon of
Her literary career got a boost after she sent a copy of Éparpillements to
Barney obliged in 1920 with Pensées d'une Amazone (Thoughts of an Amazon), her most overtly political work. In the first section, "Sexual Adversity, War, and Feminism", she developed feminist and pacifist themes, describing war as an "involuntary and collective suicide ordained by man".[100] In war, she said, men "father death as women mother life, with courage and without choice".[101] The epigrammatic form makes it difficult to determine the details of Barney's views; ideas are presented only to be dropped, and some pensées seem to contradict others.[102] Some critics interpret her as saying that the aggression that leads to war is visible in all male relationships. Karla Jay, however, argues that her philosophy was not that sweeping, and is better summed up by the epigram "Those who love war lack the love of an adequate sport—the art of living."[103][100][101]
Another section of Pensées d'une Amazone, "Misunderstanding, or Sappho's Lawsuit", gathered historical writings about homosexuality along with her own commentary.[104] She also covered topics such as alcohol, friendship, old age, and literature, writing "Novels are longer than life"[105] and "Romanticism is a childhood ailment; those who had it young are the most robust."[106] A third volume, Nouvelles Pensées de l'Amazone (New Thoughts of the Amazon), appeared in 1939.
The One Who is Legion, or A.D.'s After-Life (1930) was Barney's only book written entirely in English, as well as her only novel. Illustrated by Romaine Brooks, it concerns a person who committed suicide, known only as A.D., who is brought back to life as a genderless, hermaphroditic being and reads the book of their own life. This book-within-a-book, entitled The Love-Lives of A.D., is a collection of hymns, poems and epigrams, much like Barney's own other writings.[107][108]
Major relationships
Despite several of her lovers' objections, Barney practiced, and advocated, non-monogamy. As early as 1901, in Cinq Petits Dialogues Grecs, she argued in favor of multiple relationships and against jealousy;[109] in Éparpillements she wrote "One is unfaithful to those one loves in order that their charm does not become mere habit".[110] While she could be quite jealous herself, she actively encouraged at least some of her lovers to be non-monogamous as well.[111]
Due in part to Jean Chalon's early biography of her, published in English as Portrait of a Seductress, Barney had become more widely known for her many relationships than for her writing or her salon.
Élisabeth de Gramont
Élisabeth de Gramont, the
The poet Lucie Delarue-Mardrus introduced Barney and de Gramont in 1909 or 1910.[119][118][120] The couple shared academic interests and attended Remy de Gourmont's salon together.[121] Barney wrote an unpublished novel inspired by their early relationship, L’Adultère ingénue (The Adulterous Ingénue).[122]
De Gramont accepted Barney's nonmonogamy—perhaps reluctantly at first—and went out of her way to be gracious to her other lovers,[123] always including Brooks when she invited Barney to vacation in the country.[124]
Though the two conducted their affair clandestinely, de Gramont's husband found them out and attempted to stop them from seeing each other.[121] He was unsuccessful, and he divorced de Gramont in 1920 after a period of separation.[125] In 1918 she and Barney wrote up a marriage contract stating: "No one union shall be so strong as this union, nor another joining so tender—nor relationship so lasting".[126] The relationship continued until de Gramont's death in 1954.[127]
Romaine Brooks
Barney's longest relationship was with the American painter Romaine Brooks, whom she met around 1915.[128] Brooks specialized in portraiture and was noted for her somber palette of gray, black, and white.[129] During the 1920s she painted portraits of several members of Barney's social circle, including de Gramont and Barney herself.[130]
Brooks tolerated Barney's casual affairs well enough to tease her about them, and had a few of her own over the years, but could become jealous when a new love became serious. Usually she simply left town, but at one point she gave Barney an ultimatum to choose between her and Dolly Wilde—relenting once Barney had given in.[131] At the same time, while Brooks was devoted to Barney, she did not want to live with her as a full-time couple; she disliked Paris, disdained Barney's friends, hated the constant socializing on which Barney thrived, and felt that she was fully herself only when alone.[132][133] To accommodate Brooks's need for solitude they built a summer home consisting of two separate wings joined by a dining room, which they called Villa Trait d'Union, the hyphenated villa. Brooks also spent much of the year in Italy or travelling elsewhere in Europe, away from Barney.[134] Their relationship lasted for over fifty years.[135]
Dolly Wilde
Dolly Wilde was the niece of Oscar Wilde and the last of her family to bear the Wilde name. She was renowned for her epigrammatic wit but, unlike her famous uncle, never managed to apply her gifts to any publishable writing; her letters are her only legacy. She did some work as a translator and was often supported by others, including Barney, whom she met in 1927.[136]
Barney's support of Wilde included occasional permission to stay for a few weeks at Rue Jacob. Brooks' disapproval of the relationship increased over the years, aggravated by Wilde's presence in Barney's home. Wilde, the only of Barney's loves to share her enthusiastic rejection of monogamy,[137] strove conscientiously but futilely for Brooks' favor. This culminated in Brooks' ultimatum, delivered in 1931, in which she described Wilde as a rat "gnawing at the very foundation of our friendship".[138] Barney chose Brooks and separated from Wilde; Brooks later allowed Wilde to return and became less critical of Wilde's ways.[139]
Like Vivien, Wilde was intensely self-destructive and struggled deeply with mental illness. She attempted suicide several times, and spent much of her life addicted to alcohol and heroin. Barney, a vocal opponent of drug use and alcoholism, financed drug detoxifications several times; to no avail. Wilde even emerged from one nursing-home stay with a new dependency on the sleeping draught paraldehyde, then available over-the-counter.[140]
In 1939, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and refused surgery, seeking alternative treatments.[141] The following year, World War II separated her from Barney; she fled Paris for England while Barney went to Italy with Brooks.[142] She died in 1941 from causes never fully explained; with one of the most common speculations being a paraldehyde overdose.[143] Her will, written in 1932, named Barney as her only heir.[144]
World War II and after
Barney's attitudes during World War II have been controversial. In 1937,
Nevertheless, she believed
It is possible that the anti-Semitic passages in her memoir were intended to be used as evidence that she was not Jewish;[149] alternatively, she may have been influenced by Ezra Pound's anti-Semitic radio broadcasts.[150] Whatever the case, she did help a Jewish couple escape Italy, providing passage on a ship to the United States.[148] By the end of the war her sympathies had again changed, and she saw the Allies as liberators.[151]
Villa Trait d'Union was destroyed by bombing. After the war, Brooks declined to live with Barney in Paris; she remained in Italy, and they visited each other frequently.
The salon resumed in 1949 and continued to attract young writers for whom it was as much a piece of history as a place where literary reputations were made. Truman Capote was an intermittent guest for almost ten years; he described the decor as "totally turn-of-the-century" and remembered that Barney introduced him to the models for several characters in Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time.[154]
Alice B. Toklas became a regular after her partner Stein's death in 1946. Fridays in the 1960s honored Mary McCarthy and Marguerite Yourcenar, who in 1980—eight years after Barney's death—became the first female member of the French Academy.[155]
Barney did not return to writing epigrams, but did publish two volumes of memoirs about other writers she had known, Souvenirs Indiscrets (Indiscreet Memories, 1960) and Traits et Portraits (Traits and Portraits, 1963). She also worked to find a publisher for Brooks's memoirs and to place her paintings in galleries.[156]
In the late 1960s Brooks became increasingly reclusive and paranoid; she sank into a depression and refused to see the doctors Barney sent. Bitter at Lahovary's presence during their last years, which she had hoped they would spend exclusively together, she finally broke off contact with Barney. Barney continued to write to her, but received no replies. Brooks died in December 1970, and Barney on February 2, 1972, aged 95, from heart failure.[157] She is buried at Passy Cemetery, Paris, Île-de-France, France.[158] She left some of her writing, including more than 40,000 letters, to the Bibliothèque littéraire Jacques-Doucet in Paris.[159]
Legacy
By the end of Natalie Barney's life her work had been largely forgotten. In 1979, Barney was honored with a place setting in Judy Chicago's feminist work of art The Dinner Party. In the 1980s Barney began to be recognized for what Karla Jay calls an "almost uncanny anticipation" of the concerns of later feminist writers.[160] English translations of some of her memoirs, essays, and epigrams appeared in 1992, but most of her plays and poetry are untranslated.
Her indirect influence on literature, through her salon and her many literary friendships, can be seen in the number of writers who have addressed or portrayed her in their works. Claudine s'en va (
Barney appears in Hall's The Well of Loneliness as the salon hostess Valérie Seymour, a symbol of self-acceptance in contrast with the protagonist's self hatred.[163][164] Hall wrote: "Valérie, placid and self-assured, created an atmosphere of courage; everyone felt very normal and brave when they gathered together at Valérie Seymour's."[165] According to Lillian Faderman, "There was probably no lesbian in the four decades between 1928 and the late 1960s capable of reading English or any of the eleven languages into which the book was translated who was unfamiliar with The Well of Loneliness."[166]
Lucie Delarue-Mardrus wrote love poems to Barney in the early years of the century, and in 1930 depicted her in a novel, L'Ange et les Pervers (The Angel and the Perverts), in which she said she "analyzed and described Natalie at length as well as the life into which she initiated me". The protagonist of the novel is a hermaphrodite named Marion who lives a double life, frequenting literary salons in female dress, then changing from skirt to trousers to attend gay soirées. Barney is Laurette Wells, a salon hostess who spends much of the novel trying to win back an ex-lover loosely based on Renée Vivien.[167] The book's portrayal of her is, at times, harshly critical, but she is the only person whose company Marion enjoys. Marion tells Wells that she is "perverse ... dissolute, self-centered, unfair, stubborn, sometimes miserly ... [but] a genuine rebel, ever ready to incite others to rebellion .... [Y]ou are capable of loving someone just as they are, even a thief—in that lies your only fidelity. And so you have my respect."[168]
After meeting Barney in the 1930s, the Russian poet
Barney and the women in her social circle are the subject of Djuna Barnes's
On October 26, 2009, Barney was honored with a
Barney's French novel, Amants féminins ou la troisième, believed to have been written in 1926, was published in 2013. It was translated into English by Chelsea Ray and published in 2016 as Women Lovers or The Third Woman.[175]
Works
In French
- Quelques Portraits-Sonnets de Femmes (Paris: Ollendorf, 1900)
- Cinq Petits Dialogues Grecs (Paris: La Plume, 1901; as "Tryphé")
- Actes et entr'actes (Paris: Sansot, 1910)
- Je me souviens (Paris: Sansot, 1910)
- Eparpillements (Paris: Sansot, 1910)
- Pensées d'une Amazone (Paris: Emile Paul, 1920)
- Aventures de l'Esprit (Paris: Emile Paul, 1929)
- Nouvelles Pensées de l'Amazone (Paris: Mercure de France, 1939)
- Souvenirs Indiscrets (Paris: Flammarion, 1960)
- Traits et Portraits (Paris: Mercure de France, 1963)
- Amants féminins ou la troisième (Paris: ErosOnyx, 2013)
In English
- Poems & Poèmes: Autres Alliances (Paris: Emile Paul, New York: Doran, 1920) – bilingual collection of poetry
- The One Who Is Legion (London: Eric Partridge, Ltd., 1930; Orono, Maine: National Poetry Foundation, 1987) facsimile reprint with an afterword by Edward Lorusso
English translations
- A Perilous Advantage: The Best of Natalie Clifford Barney (New Victoria Publishers, 1992); edited and translated by Anna Livia
- Adventures of the Mind (New York University Press, 1992); translated by John Spalding Gatton
- Women Lovers, or The Third Woman (University of Wisconsin Press, 2016); edited and translated by Chelsea Ray
See also
- LGBT culture in Paris
- Renée Vivien Prize
- Lesbian Poetry
Notes
- ^ "Natalie Barney". Brooklyn Museum. Retrieved March 25, 2023.
- ^ Barney's roles in Sapphic Idyll and The Well of Loneliness are discussed in Rodriguez 2002, pp. 94–95, 273–275; regarding the fame of The Well, see Lockard 2002
- ^ Schenkar 2000, p. 177.
- ^ a b Rodriguez 2002, p. 44.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, pp. 1–14.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, pp. 10–14.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, p. 31. Barney recounted this incident in Adventures of the Mind, p. 31.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, pp. 30–31.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, p. 62.
- ^ Secrest 1974, p. 262.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, p. 39.
- ^ Robinson 2001, p. 38.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, pp. 59–60, 191.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, p. 52.
- ^ Benstock 1986, p. 272.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, pp. 56–58.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, p. 150.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, pp. 149, 164–165.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, pp. 169–171.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, pp. 308, 330.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, pp. 88–93.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, pp. 87–88, 92.
- ^ a b Souhami 2005, p. 18.
- ^ Souhami 2005, p. 12.
- ^ Souhami 2005, pp. 18–19, 21.
- ^ Souhami 2005, p. 21.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, pp. 91, 95–97, 102–103.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, pp. 103, 264–266.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, pp. 91, 93–94.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, p. 95.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, p. 97.
- ^ As translated in Wickes 1976, p. 40.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, pp. 95, 101.
- ^ As translated in Souhami 2005, p. 57.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, pp. 105–106.
- ^ Barney 1992, p. 15.
- ^ Jay 1988, pp. xii–xiv.
- ^ Jay 1988, pp. 63, 67.
- ^ Barney 1992, pp. 19, 24–25.
- ^ a b Jay 1988, pp. 11–15.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, pp. 131, 186.
- ^ Colette 2000, pp. 87, 95.
- ^ Jay 1988, p. 19.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, pp. 116, 186–187.
- ^ Barney, Souvenirs Indiscrets, quoted in Souhami 2005, p. 52.
- ^ Grindea, Miron, ed. (1962). "Combat with the Amazon of letters". ADAM International Review. 29 (299). London, UK: 5–24. Retrieved October 17, 2015.
As to the moving tributes by Yanette Deletang-Tardif, Anne-Marie Kegels and Lucienne Desnoues they represent the admiration of three of the more interesting laureates of the Prix Renee Vivien which, since 1949, the Amazon has awarded to women poets writing in French
- ISBN 9780671216955. Retrieved April 27, 2016.
In 1949 she would endow a Renée Vivien Prize for women poets
- ^ Wickes 1976, p. 198.
- ^ Barney 1992a, p. 262.
- ^ Tyler-Bennett, Deborah (October 1993). "4. Barnes Among Women 1920–39: Ladies Almanack and Biography" (PDF). 'A foreign language which you understand': The art and life of Djuna Barnes 1892–1982 (Ph.D.). University of Leicester. Docket U058027. Archived from the original (PDF) on November 1, 2018. Retrieved April 10, 2016.
The salon, which had altered from the days of the tableaux, still held its own in the literary world, and the Prix Renée Vivien (of 500,000 francs) enable young writers such as Marguerite Yourcenar to establish themselves.
- OCLC 751644475. Retrieved April 10, 2016.
En souvenir de son amie, Miss Barney a fondé le " Prix Renée Vivien " que décerne la Société des Gens de Lettres
- OCLC 465578548. Retrieved April 10, 2016.
A rétabli le prix Renée Vivien dont elle est la Présidente (depuis 1950) à la Société des gens de lettres
- ISSN 0028-7806. Retrieved April 10, 2016.
As recently as 1950, 41 years after Miss Vivien's death, she endowed a Renee Vivien poetry prize and became chairman of a committee of the French Society of Men of Letters which awards it
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, p. 119.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, pp. 125–127.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, p. 115.
- ^ Kling 1994, p. 137.
- ^ Washington Mirror, March 9, 1901. Quoted in Rodriguez 2002, p. 121.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, p. 123.
- ^ Wickes 1976, pp. 50–52.
- ^ 1634–1699: McCusker, J. J. (1997). How Much Is That in Real Money? A Historical Price Index for Use as a Deflator of Money Values in the Economy of the United States: Addenda et Corrigenda (PDF). American Antiquarian Society. 1700–1799: McCusker, J. J. (1992). How Much Is That in Real Money? A Historical Price Index for Use as a Deflator of Money Values in the Economy of the United States (PDF). American Antiquarian Society. 1800–present: Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. "Consumer Price Index (estimate) 1800–". Retrieved February 29, 2024.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, pp. 150–151.
- ^ Secrest 1974, p. 275.
- ^ Dorf 2019, pp. 57–60.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, pp. 203–204.
- ^ Benstock 1986, p. 291.
- ^ Dorf 2019, pp. 57–64.
- ^ Barney 1992, p. 19.
- ^ Jay 1988, p. 53.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, pp. 255–256.
- ^ Schenkar 2000, p. xiii.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, pp. xvi, 154, 177.
- ^ Schenkar 2000, p. 12.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, pp. 180, 183.
- ^ Schenkar 2000, pp. 174–175.
- ^ Schenkar 2000, p. 165.
- ^ Schenkar 2000, p. 164.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, p. 183.
- ^ Schenkar 2000, p. 144.
- ^ Dayton Journal, November 14, 1909. Quoted in Rodriguez 2002, p. 172.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, p. 177.
- ^ Schenkar 2000, p. 195.
- ^ Wickes 1976, pp. 108–109.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, pp. 221–223.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, pp. 243–250.
- ^ Conover 2001, pp. 2–3.
- ^ Wickes 1976, pp. 153, 167.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, pp. 255.
- ^ Hawthorne 2000, pp. 69–74.
- ^ Claridge 2016, p. 139.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, pp. 246–247.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, p. 260.
- ^ Flanner 1979, p. 48.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, pp. 249–50, 301.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, pp. 250–251.
- ^ Conley 2002, p. 20.
- ^ Barney 1992, p. 97.
- systemic lupus erythematosus, the disease now commonly known as lupus.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, pp. 191–196, 199–201.
- ^ a b Benstock 1986, p. 296.
- ^ a b Jay 1988, p. 29.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, pp. 257–258.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, p. 257.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, p. 259.
- ^ Barney 1992, p. 118.
- ^ Barney 1992, p. 123.
- ^ Benstock 1986, pp. 298–299.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, p. 303–304.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, p. 139.
- ^ Barney 1992, p. 103.
- ^ Schenkar 2000, p. 360.
- ^ Livia 1992, p. 181. "I would be asked at dinner parties what I was working on and, replying, 'Natalie Clifford Barney,' I expected the usual post Jean Chalon response, 'What? The lesbian Don Juan?'"
- ^ Schenkar 2000, p. 156 and Rodriguez 2002, p. 298 give slightly different accounts of this list.
- ^ Wickes 1976, pp. 9, 87.
- ^ Flanner 1979, p. 43.
- ^ Rapazzini 2005, pp. 7–8.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, pp. 196–199.
- ^ a b Rapazzini 2005, pp. 8–10.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, pp. 197–199.
- ^ Sources differ on the year of their meeting. Jay, Rodriguez, and Souhami place the meeting in 1910 (Rodriguez says "probably"). Rapazzini says 1909, producing a letter from the Bibliothèque littéraire Jacques-Doucet's collection of Barney material.
- ^ a b Rapazzini 2005, p. 11.
- ^ Rapazzini 2005, p. 12.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, pp. 227–228.
- ^ Secrest 1974, p. 138.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, pp. 198–199.
- ^ Rapazzini 2005, pp. 6–7.
- ^ Rapazzini 2005, pp. 7, 24.
- ^ The exact date of Barney and Brooks' first meeting is uncertain. Jay 1988, p. 29 says "probably... on the eve of war"; Rodriguez 2002, p. 223 puts it "around the start of the war"; Souhami 2005, p. 137 says 1915; Wickes 1976, p. 145 says "probably in 1915"; and Rapazzini 2005, p. 17 says October 1916.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, p. 224.
- ^ Jay 1988, p. 31.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, pp. 295–301.
- ^ Souhami 2005, pp. 137–139, 146.
- ^ Secrest 1974, p. 277.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, pp. 227, 295.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, p. 223.
- ^ Schenkar 2000, pp. 7–14, 359.
- ^ Jay 1988, p. 32.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, pp. 280, 299.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, pp. 300–301.
- ^ Schenkar 2000, pp. 280–293.
- ^ Schenkar 2000, p. 269.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, p. 318.
- ^ Schenkar 2000, pp. 37–48.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, pp. 323–324.
- ^ Souhami 1999, p. 332.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, p. 311.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, p. 324.
- ^ a b Livia 1992, pp. 192–193.
- ^ Livia 1992, p. 191. Rodriguez 2002, p. 315 calls this a plausible theory.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, p. 317.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, pp. 326–327.
- ^ Secrest 1974, p. 368.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, pp. 341–344.
- ^ Wickes 1976, pp. 255–256.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, pp. 336, 353–354.
- ^ Souhami 2005, p. 194.
- ^ Rodriguez 2002, pp. 362–365.
- ^ Hawthorne 2012, p. 91.
- ^ Jay 1988, p. xiii.
- ^ Jay 1988, p. xv.
- ^ Wickes 1976, p. 98.
- ^ Jay 1988, pp. 9, 13.
- ^ Stimpson 1981, pp. 369–373.
- ^ Love 2000, pp. 115–116.
- ^ Hall 1981, p. 352.
- ^ Faderman 1981, p. 322.
- ^ Livia 1995, pp. 22–23.
- ^ Delarue-Mardrus 1995, pp. 80–81.
- ^ Castle 2003, p. 658.
- ^ Barnes 1992, p. 6.
- ^ Barnes 1992, pp. 9, 34.
- ^ Weiss 1995, pp. 151–153.
- ^ Barnes 1992, pp. xxxii–xxxiv.
- ^ The Columbus Dispatch 2009.
- ^ Barney 2016.
References
Books about Natalie Barney
- Jay, Karla (1988). The Amazon and the Page. Bloomington: ISBN 0-253-20476-3.
- Rodriguez, Suzanne (2002). Wild Heart: A Life: Natalie Clifford Barney and the Decadence of Literary Paris. New York: ISBN 0-06-093780-7.
- Souhami, Diana (2005). Wild Girls: Paris, Sappho, and Art: The Lives and Loves of Natalie Barney and Romaine Brooks. New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-34324-8.
- Wickes, George (1976). The Amazon of Letters. New York: Putnam. ISBN 0-399-11864-0.
Other references
- Barnes, Djuna (1992). Ladies Almanack. New York: New York University Press. ISBN 0-8147-1180-4.
- Barney, Natalie Clifford (1992a). Adventures of the Mind. Translated by Gatton, John Spalding. New York: New York University Press. ISBN 0-8147-1178-2.
- Barney, Natalie Clifford (1992). Anna Livia (ed.). A Perilous Advantage: The Best of Natalie Clifford Barney. Norwich, VT: New Victoria Publishers Inc. ISBN 0-934678-38-3.
- Barney, Natalie Clifford (2016). Women lovers, or The third woman. Translated by Ray, Chelsea. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press. pp. xviii. OCLC 956320847.
- ISBN 0-292-79040-6.
- Castle, Terry (2003). The Literature of Lesbianism. New York: ISBN 0-231-12510-0. English translations of Tsvetaeva's Letter to the Amazon can be found in Castle's anthology and in Tsvetaeva, Marina; trans. Sonja Franeta (October 31, 1994). "Letter to an Amazon". The Harvard Gay & Lesbian Review. 1 (4): 9.
- Claridge, Laura P. (April 12, 2016). The lady with the Borzoi : Blanche Knopf, literary tastemaker extraordinaire (First ed.). New York. )
- Colette (2000). The Pure and the Impure. Translated by ISBN 0-940322-48-X.
- "Lesbian literary figure honored with Ohio historical marker noting sexual orientation". The Columbus Dispatch. Archived from the original on June 29, 2012. Retrieved October 26, 2009.
- Conley, John J. (2002). The Suspicion of Virtue: Women Philosophers in Neoclassical France. Ithaca: ISBN 0-8014-4020-3.
- Conover, Anne (2001). Olga Rudge and Ezra Pound: "What Thou Lovest Well...". New Haven & London: ISBN 0-300-08703-9.
- Delarue-Mardrus, Lucie (1995). The Angel and the Perverts. Translated by Anna Livia. New York: New York University Press. ISBN 0-8147-5098-2.
- Denkinger, Marc (December 1937). "Remy de Gourmont Critique". PMLA. 52 (4). Modern Language Association: 1147–1160. S2CID 163530219.
- Dorf, Samuel N. (2019). Performing Antiquity: Ancient Greek Music and Dance from Paris to Delphi, 1890-1930. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780190612092.
- Faderman, Lillian (1981). Surpassing the Love of Men. New York: William Morrow & Co. ISBN 0-688-00396-6.
- Flanner, Janet (1979). Paris was Yesterday: 1925–1939. New York: Penguin. ISBN 0-14-005068-X.
- Gogibu, Vincent (January 2005). "Sur la correspondance inédite Gourmont / Valéry". Bulletin des études valéryennes (in French) (98–99): 235–247. JSTOR 44858430.
- Hall, Radclyffe (1981). The Well of Loneliness. New York: Avon. ISBN 0-380-54247-1.
- Hawthorne, Melanie (2000). Contingent loves: Simone de Beauvoir and sexuality. U of Virginia P. pp. 69–74. ISBN 978-0-8139-1974-4.
- Hawthorne, Melanie (2012). "You are Here". Dix-Neuf. 16: 87–111. S2CID 218770922.
- Kling, Jean L. (1994). Alice Pike Barney: Her Life and Art. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. p. 24. ISBN 1-56098-344-2.
- Livia, Anna (1992). "The Trouble with Heroines: Natalie Clifford Barney and Anti-Semitism". A Perilous Advantage. pp. 181–193.
- Livia, Anna (1995). "Introduction: Lucie Delarue-Mardrus and the Phrenetic Harlequinade". In Delarue-Mardrus (ed.). The Angel and the Perverts. pp. 1–60.
- Lockard, Ray Anne (2002). "Brooks, Romaine". glbtq: An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Culture. Archived from the original on March 8, 2007. Retrieved September 21, 2006.
- Love, Heather (Summer 2000). "Hard Times and Heartaches: Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness". Journal of Lesbian Studies. 4 (2): 115–128. S2CID 147760713.
- Rapazzini, Francesco (Fall 2005). "Elisabeth de Gramont, Natalie Barney's 'eternal mate'". South Central Review. 22 (3). S2CID 170974270.
- Robinson, Christopher (2001). "Barney, Natalie Clifford". In Aldrich, Robert; Wotherspoon, Garry (eds.). Who's who in Gay and Lesbian History: From Antiquity to World War II, Volume 1. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-15982-2.
- Schenkar, Joan (2000). Truly Wilde: The Unsettling Story of Dolly Wilde, Oscar's Unusual Niece. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 0-465-08772-8.
- Secrest, Meryle (1974). Between Me and Life: A Biography of Romaine Brooks. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. p. 275. ISBN 0-385-03469-5.
- Souhami, Diana (1999). The Trials of Radclyffe Hall. New York: Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-48941-2.
- Stimpson, Catharine R. (Winter 1981). "Zero Degree Deviancy: The Lesbian Novel in English". Critical Inquiry. 8 (2): 363–379. S2CID 162249181.
- Weiss, Andrea (1995). Paris Was a Woman: Portraits From the Left Bank. San Francisco: Harper San Francisco. ISBN 0-06-251313-3.
Further reading
- Bonnevier, Katarina (2007). Behind Straight Curtains: towards a queer feminist theory of architecture. Stockholm: Axl Books. ISBN 978-91-975901-6-7.
- Broe, Mary Lynn (1993). Women's writing in exile. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 9780807818497.
- Chalon, Jean (1979). Portrait of a Seductress: The World of Natalie Barney. New York: Crown Publishers. ISBN 0-517-53264-6.
- Inness, Sherrie A. (October 20, 2005). "Novel: Lesbian". glbtq: An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Culture. Archived from the original on September 1, 2006. Retrieved September 19, 2006.
- Orenstein, Gloria Feman; Cleyrergue, Berthe (1979). "The Salon of Natalie Clifford Barney: An Interview with Berthe Cleyrergue". Signs. 4 (3): 484–496. S2CID 144214812.
External links
- The Temple of Friendship at ruevisconti.com (French language, dozens of photos)
- Djuna Barnes Papers (102 linear ft.) are housed at the University of Maryland
- Romaine Brooks Papers, 1940–1968 (1.1 linear ft.) are housed at the Smithsonian Institution Archives of American Art
- When Natalie Barney met Oscar Wilde
- Letter from Natalie Clifford Barney to Liane de Pougy (in French)
- Works by Natalie Clifford Barney at Project Gutenberg
- Works by Natalie Clifford Barney at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)