Where Renée Vivien Lived in Paris
Renée Vivien was a British-born poet that lived most of her life in Paris, France. Born Pauline Tarn, she changed her name once she permanently relocated to Paris, believing that this new beginning was the equivalent of a rebirth. She wrote almost exclusively in French, stating that she refused to speak in her mother's language, as her mother made clear attempts to inherit Vivien's father's fortune. These attempts included declaring her daughter mentally deranged and trying to commit Vivien to a mental institution, only for her to lose custody of her daughter. Vivien became a ward of the royal court and inherited her father's fortune. Vivien was fond of Paris, as she went to boarding school there and moved to Paris permanently when she turned twenty-one. Vivien's Paris home, the second place in France she lived in, was a luxurious ground-floor apartment 23, avenue du Bois de Boulogne (now 23, Avenue Foch) that opened onto a Japanese rock garden that housed her pet frogs and snake. As described by Colette in her book, The Pure and the Impure, Vivien kept her home dark with thick, heavy curtains covering her leaded glass windows; the air was thick with the smell of incense. She wrote some of her poetry on a notepad while curled up on her divan. The furnishings in her home were constantly changing, except for her several large Buddha statues. As Colette writes, some of her décors included Japanese folding screens, "glass cabinets of exotic butterflies and other insects,...[and] a miniature garden of bushes having leaves of crystal and fruit of precious stones." Her home was lit only by three tall taper candlesticks on a low, imported table in her parlor. She served her guests sashimi, foie gras, and shrimp on jade, gold vermeil, and porcelain plates, along with imported Russian, Greek, and Chinese alcohols. Unfortunately, Vivien's guests had difficulty seeing the expensive tastes of their hostess in her dimly lit home. Text Source:Wickes, George. “A Natalie Barney Garland.” The Paris Review, 1975. https://www.theparisreview.org/letters-essays/3870/a-natalie-barney-garland-george-wickes.Image Source: “Renée Vivien.” In Prabook, 2021. https://prabook.com/web/renee.vivien/3778564.
Where Violet Shillito Lived
Violet Shillito was also an expatriate, like Renée Vivien and the other wealthy lesbians she associated with. Shillito was neighbors with Natalie Barney, one of Renée Vivien's lovers, and both of their families settled in Paris around the same time, moving between the United States and France for business. Similar to Vivien, Shillito was educated at a boarding school in France, exposing them both early on to the Parisian life that they would both later seek out. Living at 23 Avenue Foch, Shillito was close to Vivien, as she also lived there during her teenage years. They had what was described as an "ambiguous and intense romantic relationship." Vivien despaired when Violet died of typhoid fever in Cannes in 1901, which contributed to her split with Natalie Barney in the same year. Thereafter, Vivien would use imagery of violets throughout her poetry, which is thought to be a tribute to Shillito. Vivien was even given the nickname "the Muse of the Violets" due to their frequent appearance in her work. Text and Image Source: Rolle, Elisa. “Violet Shillito.” Queer Places. Accessed December 15, 2021. http://www.elisarolle.com/queerplaces/uvwxyz/Violet%20Shillito.html.
Where Colette Lived When She was Neighbors with Vivien
Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, also known as Colette, is well-remembered for her writings, specifically those about the French lesbian literary salons in Paris at the turn of the 20th century. Colette lived next to Vivien at 44 Rue Paul Valéry from 1906 until 1908, shortly before Vivien's death in 1909. In her book, The Pure and the Impure, Colette expresses concern for Vivien's worsening addiction to alcohol, detailing that Vivien would drink copious amounts but eat no more than a few pieces of fruit and some rice when Colette visited her. After imbibing several glasses of various alcohols, Vivien would rush to her bathroom to gargle perfumed water in an attempt to mask the stench of alcohol on her breath. Other worrying behavior that Colette recounts in her book include the trips that Vivien would take on short notice for days, with Vivien leaving just as guests arrived for dinner in her home and returning exhausted later in the week. Some biographers note that these trips were long sexual escapades that were hazardous to Vivien's health. At this point, Vivien engaged in more self-destructive behavior, the culmination of many disappointments and losses in her personal life and with the reception of her work. Text Source: Wickes, George. “A Natalie Barney Garland.” The Paris Review, 1975. https://www.theparisreview.org/letters-essays/3870/a-natalie-barney-garland-george-wickes.Image Source: Atlas, Nava. “9 Facts about Colette, Prolific and Passionate French Author.” Literary Ladies Guide (blog), September 24, 2018. https://www.literaryladiesguide.com/literary-musings/10-facts-about-colette-prolific-and-passionate-french-author/.
Where Barney Lived in Paris Before Opening Her Famous Salon in 1909
Natalie Clifford Barney was Renée Vivien's childhood friend and was introduced to her through mutual friends at a theatre box in Paris. They connected over their shared intellectual passions. One of their main activities together was learning Greek in order to translate Sappho's work into French. Vivien in particular is known for being the first to translate Sappho's poetry in an explicitly lesbian manner. They wrote plays about Sappho based on their translations of her work, performing for their friends at Natalie's home at 56 Rue de Longchamp. The third attached photo showcases a regular evening of entertainment at Barney's home, with guests dressed in Ancient Greek fashion and acting out one of Barney and Vivien's plays. This was often accompanied by the playing of musical instruments, as pictured here. These performances later led Natalie to turn her next home into a lesbian literary salon for elite and mostly expatriate women. Vivien and Barney's relationship was turbulent, as Vivien staunchly believed in monogamy and Barney wanted a more open relationship. This was the main reason for their split in 1901, but Barney would try to win Vivien back for the rest of Vivien's short life. One memorable stunt was when Barney asked one of her friends, mezzo-soprano singer Emma Calvé, to sing underneath Vivien's window and to throw a poem tied to a bundle of flowers up to her. This attempt failed, as Vivien's governess intercepted the poem and flowers. There was some reconciliation later, as the two traveled to the island Lesbos, in Greece and Vivien purchased a house in Mytilene. This was in an attempt to set up their own lesbian colony in 1904, inspired by the academy Sappho created on the island. Vivien left Barney early into this trip after receiving a letter from her lover, wealthy baroness Hélène de Zuylen de Nyevelt, with the intention of breaking up with her. Vivien did not return to Lesbos and stayed together with the baroness until she left Vivien for another woman in 1907. In a final attempt to rekindle their relationship, Barney purchased a house at 20 Rue Jacob, promising that she and Vivien would live there together. Unfortunately, Vivien died the day before they were supposed to move into their new home in 1909. Barney's new home would become the famous salon that she is well-known for, which included a Masonic temple in the backyard where she would host elaborate gatherings, including dances, performances of the plays she and Vivien wrote, and entertainers on horseback. Text Sources: Ayachi, Janette. “Jealous Love: Natalie Barney & Renée Vivien • Poetry School.” Poetry School, September 14, 2015. https://poetryschool.com/theblog/jealous-love-natalie-barney-renee-vivien/.Hepburn, Lauren. “Renée Vivien: Sappho’s First Lesbian Translator.” Peter Harrington Blog (blog), February 10, 2021. https://www.peterharrington.co.uk/blog/renee-viviensapphos-first-female-translator/.Piepenbring, Dan. “Love Is a Bohemian.” The Paris Review (blog), June 11, 2015. https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/06/11/love-is-a-bohemian/.“Renée Vivien.” In Prabook, 2021. https://prabook.com/web/renee.vivien/3778564.Rolle, Elisa. “Violet Shillito.” Queer Places. Accessed December 15, 2021. http://www.elisarolle.com/queerplaces/uvwxyz/Violet%20Shillito.html.Image Sources: "A Gathering of Women Including Eva Palmer, Natalie Barney, and Liane de Pougy in Barney's Garden." Smithsonian Institution Archives, Accession 96-153, Alice Pike Barney Papers.“Barney,” 2018. https://www.messynessychic.com/2018/07/06/the-forgotten-lgbt-queen-of-paris-and-her-secret-masonic-temple/."Vivien's Translations of Sappho's Poetry, 1903," Peter Harrington Blog (blog), February 10, 2021. https://www.peterharrington.co.uk/blog/renee-viviensapphos-first-female-translator/.
Where Vivien's Publisher, Alphonse Lemerre, Had a Library
Alphonse Lemerre was a well-known publisher for many of the Parisian writers in the 19th and early 20th centuries. He was one of the only publishers located in Paris during Vivien's life, and was known for his ambivalent personality and paternalistic nature. He owned a bookshop that he later converted into a library at 23 Pass. Choiseul that was stocked with works that he published. He published Vivien's works of poetry from 1901 until 1908, when Vivien became very distressed over a gossip column that exposed one of her lesbian loves and in response she quickly removed many of her works from circulation. Thereafter she became more secluded and less optimistic about her writing and its impact, as Colette notes in her writings. Vivien was very meticulous as a writer, writing her publisher changes that she wanted to make to her poetry even while on her deathbed. Text Sources: Hepburn, Lauren. “Renée Vivien: Sappho’s First Lesbian Translator.” Peter Harrington Blog (blog), February 10, 2021. https://www.peterharrington.co.uk/blog/renee-viviensapphos-first-female-translator/.Onge, Ruth-Ellen. (2011). "A Banquet for Alphonse Lemerre, the Poets’ Publisher." Mémoires du livre. 3. 10.7202/1007580ar. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/271352251_A_banquet_for_Alphonse_Lemerre_the_poets'_publisher/citation/download. "Vivien, Renée 1877-1909. Encyclopedia.com. https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/vivien-renee-1877-1909.Image Source: “Alphonse Lemerre (1838-1912), ‘l’éditeur des poètes.’” Billet. DEF19 (blog), October 15, 2020. https://def19.hypotheses.org/1914.
Alphonse Lemerre owned a bookshop here and published Vivien's works here
Alphonse Lemerre was Vivien's publisher in Paris from the turn of the 20th century until 1908. In addition to the library that he owned with Vivien's works, he also owned a bookshop where he published most of her works. Here at 25 Rue des Grands Augustins, Lemerre published Vivien's first poetry books, including Études et Préludes and Cendres et poussières. Vivien published her books under the names of Renée Vivien, René Vivien (the masculine form of Renée) Pauline Tarn (her birth name), Paul Riversdale (these works she wrote in collaboration with Hélène), and Hélène de Zuylen de Nyevelt (one of her lovers). Her books of poetry are described as revolutionary for the time, as they are explicitly lesbian, many of them heavily influenced by the poetry that she translated by Sappho. One such poem, translated from French into English by Melanie Davis, is included here: NIGHT The light, in throes of agony, dies at your knee, Come, o you whose guarded face, so lovely to see, Carries dejection from years heavy and jaded: Come, with your deadly welts turning pale, in distress, With no other scent in the long folds of your dress Than the breath of flowers which have long since faded. Come, with your unrouged lips that ignite my desires, Without rings, - neither rubies, opals, nor sapphires Dishonoring your fingers, milky as the moon, - And from your eyes put mirrored reflections to flight... For it is here: the simple, chaste hour of the night When hues can oppress, and luxury importune. Yield up all your chagrin to eternal delight, Exhale in a profound cry your suffering blight, All those events of the past, so cruel and senseless, Leave them to death, to the distance and to silence... In the dream which to strife gives such sweet condolence; To the ancient fever of speech: forgetfulness. I will kiss your hands and your divine naked feet; Our hearts will cry out for the neglect that they meet, Will decry the vile words and base gestures anew... These flights will linger in peaceful security.... You will join your hands in their mystic purity, And, in the soul-filled shadows, I will adore you.Most of Vivien's work was published posthumously and one of her biographers, Jean-Paul Goujon, believed that the reason for her large output of work was to prevent her memory from being completely destroyed and forgotten. Perhaps influenced by the fact that only fragments of Sappho's poetry have survived of the nine books that she wrote, Vivien was worried that her work would similarly be lost in time. Vivien received a lot of pushback while she was alive, as French poetry anthologies didn't include her work and her poetry was banned from some poetry readings in Paris. Text Sources:Davis, Melanie. “The Renée Vivien Translation Project.” Accessed December 10, 2021. https://www.valkyria.ca/renee_vivien_page.html.Engelking, Tama. “Renée Vivien’s Sapphic Legacy: Remembering the ‘House of Muses.’” Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture & Social Justice 18, no. 1 & 2 (1993 1992): 126–127. https://journals.msvu.ca/index.php/atlantis/article/view/5174/4372. "Vivien, Renée 1877-1909. Encyclopedia.com. https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/vivien-renee-1877-1909.Image Source: "Cover of Études et Préludes, Published in 1901." Accessed December 10, 2021. https://www.valkyria.ca/renee_vivien_page.html.
Where Edward Sansot's publishing house once stood; He was Vivien's second publisher
Edward Sansot was another well-known publisher in Paris at the turn of the 20th century. He lived at 53 Rue Saint-André des Arts. From 1908 onward, Sansot published Vivien's works. At this point, Vivien's poetry shifts from optimistically examining themes similar to Sappho to becoming more pessimistic, running parallel to her deteriorating health, caused by her alcoholism and anorexia. Vivien published her books at her own expense, doing so only to please herself, as she had enough money to do so. During this time, however, she withdrew her books from circulation, perhaps reflecting the loss of faith she had in her work. The negative responses that she was getting to her work distressed Vivien, as she was fighting ideas that homosexuality was a mental illness and included disgusting and degrading acts. So, she only printed a few copies of her final works of poetry to distribute to her close friends. At this time, she becomes more of a recluse, as Colette describes in her book, The Pure and the Impure, where Colette notes that Vivien shrouds herself in darkness, from her darkly-colored clothes to her heavily-curtained windows. Text Sources: Engelking, Tama. “Renée Vivien’s Sapphic Legacy: Remembering the ‘House of Muses.’” Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture & Social Justice 18, no. 1 & 2 (1993 1992): 127–133. https://journals.msvu.ca/index.php/atlantis/article/view/5174/4372. "Vivien, Renée 1877-1909. Encyclopedia.com. https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/vivien-renee-1877-1909.Wickes, George. “A Natalie Barney Garland.” The Paris Review, 1975. https://www.theparisreview.org/letters-essays/3870/a-natalie-barney-garland-george-wickes.Image Source: “Edward Sansot's Publishing Mark.” Accessed December 10, 2021. https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3048663.
Where Renée Vivien is Buried
Born Pauline Tarn in London in 1877, Renée Vivien was born to an English father and an American mother. Vivien inherited her father's fortune at the age of nine, allowing her to permanently move to Paris at twenty-one when she was able to access the trust with her father's fortune. This vast wealth allowed Vivien to travel great distances to fulfill her various whims, including setting up a lesbian colony on the island of Lesbos with Natalie Barney and traveling to Turkey (then still part of the Ottoman Empire) to rendezvous with one of her lovers, the wife of a diplomat. Vivien's inherited fortune also allowed her to hire tutors to learn Greek to translate Sappho's poetry into French. Vivien's biographers mention that if she was not happy with some of her published books that she would remove them from circulation entirely, so the works she made public were nothing short of perfect. She did not rely on her art as a source of income so she could labor over it for as long as she wanted and if she wasn't happy with it, she could simply throw it away or ensure that it never reached the public eye. Vivien is not only known for her translations of Sappho's poetry but also her own poetry, heavily inspired by Sappho's. Vivien is praised for writing explicitly lesbian poems at the turn of the 20th century in Paris, France. Drawing from Sappho's works, Vivien sought connections to the past and continuity from the past to her present. Her life was short-lived, however, as she died at thirty-two from pneumonia after suffering for many years from alcoholism and anorexia nervosa. Her life was described as a long suicide by those close to her, as she romanticized death in her life and her works of poetry. Tex Sources:Engelking, Tama. “Renée Vivien’s Sapphic Legacy: Remembering the ‘House of Muses.’” Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture & Social Justice 18, no. 1 & 2 (1993 1992): 138. https://journals.msvu.ca/index.php/atlantis/article/view/5174/4372. Rodriguez-Hunter, Suzanne. Wild Heart: A Life: Natalie Clifford Barney and the Decadence of Literary Paris. HarperCollins e-books, 2009. https://silo.pub/wild-heart-a-life-natalie-clifford-barney-and-the-decadence-of-literary-paris.html. Image Sources: “Photo of Renée Vivien at Her Burial Site in Passy Cemetery,” September 15, 2014. http://tonyshaw3.blogspot.com/2014/09/cimetiere-de-passy-7-renee-vivien.html. “Renée Vivien's Epitaph at Passy Cemetery,” September 15, 2014. http://tonyshaw3.blogspot.com/2014/09/cimetiere-de-passy-7-renee-vivien.html.“Renée Vivien's Mausoleum at Passy Cemetery,” September 15, 2014. http://tonyshaw3.blogspot.com/2014/09/cimetiere-de-passy-7-renee-vivien.html.
Place Renée Vivien
This location is a small area with benches that commemorates Renée Vivien's life, but doesn't appear to mention any details about her work or personal life. It is easy to miss, in large contrast to the space Renée Vivien occupies in lesbian history, especially the importance of her translations of Sappho's poetry. Renée Vivien is remembered in France for her command of the French language as an expatriate, especially the techniques she used in writing her poetry, even if those who remember her objected to her lifestyle or of the subject matter of her poetry. Information about the life Vivien lived could be censored, in exchange for a greater focus on her great skill in writing poetry. This historical censorship was combated against in the latter part of the 20th century, particularly in the United States. In the 1970s and 1980s in the U.S., lesbian feminists had a renewed interest in finding historical lesbians, and many lesbian feminist presses took interest in Renée Vivien's openly sapphic works. In a 1976 edition of "Lavender Woman," translator Margaret Porter (who published her work under the pen name Gabrielle L'Autre) mentions that she's translated over 100 of Vivien's poems since the 1960s and was originally introduced to Vivien's work while visiting France, finding that through the dead poet she could discuss lesbian themes without it being considered out of the ordinary. Text Source: Lornita Watkins, Renee Vivien, Gabrielle, Margaret A. Porter, J.R. Roberts, Inara Cedrins, Cynthia Carr, et al. “Lavender Woman.” Lavender Woman 5, no. 1 (July 1, 1976): 1–21. https://jstor.org/stable/community.28039127. Image Sources: 1976 Edition of Lavender Woman. Lavender Woman 5, no. 1 (July 1, 1976): 1–21. https://jstor.org/stable/community.28039127. Place Renée Vivien. Français : La Place Renée Vivien à Paris, Vue de l’angle Des Rues Du Temple et Des Haudriettes. September 19, 2010. Own work. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Paris_place_renee_vivien.jpg.
