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Reading Sapphic Modernism: Belle époque poésie and Poetic Prose Catherine Olevia Clark A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English and Comparative Literature. Chapel Hill 2010 Approved by: Erin Carlston Eric Downing Dominique Fisher Diane Leonard Philippe Barr ©2010 Catherine Olevia Clark ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii - ii - ABSTRACT CATHERINE CLARK: Reading Sapphic Modernism: Belle époque poésie and Poetic Prose (Under the direction of Erin Carlston) This study builds on current trends in queer and gender theory by re-evaluating the presence of Greek poet Sappho’s fragments in nineteenth and twentieth century poetry and poetic prose. In particular, I unravel the conflation of the “Sapphic” and “lesbian” (conceived by 1980's feminists) and instead engage Sappho's lyric as a particular model of creative awareness rather than as an expression of sexual preference. I draw on W.E.B. Du Bois's and Jack Winkler's definitions of “double consciousness” to define a “Sapphic consciousness” that negotiates a lyrical space between queer and normative expression. Sappho’s poetry resists normative discourses of power by occupying multiple perspectives within one poem, often engaging in a kind of lyrical cross-dressing or transvestism. This often results in a confusion of lyrical subject and object, destabilizing definitions of a marginalized “other.” Both Sappho’s poetry and the selected Modernist texts evoke fluid identities that are tied to gender roles and performance. Modernism's particular evocation of this Sapphic style was fueled by historical, aesthetic, and social factors at the turn of the century during a surge of artistic movements in the midst of continued industrialization and a sense of alienation expressed by growing expatriate communities. The Sapphic voice exists as a palimpsest within Modernism, creating a space where writers found new iii - iii - modes of expression. By contextualizing the Modernist movement within a Sapphic tradition, I interpret the texts through the critical lens of contemporary theorists (Walter Benjamin, Judith Butler, and Michel Foucault) and classical scholars (Ellen Greene and Page duBois). My research opens up the field of Sapphic Modernism by sidelining questions of authorial influence and pursuing fresh transnational comparisons among the works of modernist poets, male and female, such as Emily Dickinson, Charles Baudelaire, Colette, Anna de Noailles, Guillaume Apollinaire, Djuna Barnes, H.D., and W.B. Yeats. iv - iv - To my sisters, Elizabeth and Margaret, who share my breath, my love, and my life. Τάδε νῦν ἐταίραις ταῖς ἔµαισι τέρπνα κάλως ἀείσω. (Sappho, Fragment 11) Today is far from Childhood – But up and down the hills I held her hand the tighter – Which shortened all the miles – (Emily Dickinson) v - v - ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, to my director, Erin Carlston, who took a chance on an unknown graduate student: I am indebted to her for tirelessly reading and rereading every line of this project, for accepting my patchwork writing process, and for her unwavering high standards that pushed me to achieve academic quality that I would never have reached or recognized on my own. To Eric Downing, who is directly responsible for my love affair with Sappho, and who has been an invaluable source of practical and scholarly advice throughout my graduate school years. To my brilliant and beautiful colleagues, Ania and Rania, who have traveled this road with me. They have kept me honest and inspired. To Kara, for her intelligent and much-appreciated feedback on my work. To Mike, for making me laugh and taking care of our home during this process, for loving and supporting me during the last eight years, even when he had no idea what I was working on (or why it was taking so long). To my parents, who taught me to pursue what I love, and who have picked me back up after every stumble and trip along this journey. To Marie, my constant companion and training partner, for sharing all the gossip, fun, and pain, and without whom I would be much less sane today. And to Joseph, who always knew what Sappho wanted. vi - vi - TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER I. Exploring Sappho’s Identities and Defining the “Sapphic” ………… 1 Moving Sappho into Modernism: A Historical Perspective …… 2 Interlude: Sappho’s Poetry ……………………………………… 20 Definitions of Sapphic Modernism: Critical Approaches ……… 23 Sapphic Consciousness ………………………………………… 29 Establishing a “New” Sapphic Modernism …………………… 33 II. Poetic Forerunners of Modernism and fin de siècle poésie: Charles Baudelaire and Emily Dickinson …………………………………… 40 Baudelaire, la modernité and Sappho …………………………… 43 Dickinson’s Sapphic Modernism ………………………………… 64 III. Sapphic consciousness in Modernist poetry ………………………… 84 Entering Modernism: Renée Vivien ……………………………… 86 H.D. and the Sapphic Modernists ……………………………… 94 Guillaume Apollinaire’s Sapphism ……………………………… 124 IV. Sapphic Poetic Prose and Hybridization of Genres ………………… 132 Colette and the Problem with Purity…………………………… 141 Borderlands: Djuna Barnes’ Nightwood ………………………… 153 Conclusion: Sappho’s Final Leap ……………………………… 163 APPENDICES ………………………………………………………………… 170 WORKS CONSULTED ……………………………………………………… 191 vii - vii - CHAPTER ONE Exploring Sappho’s Identities and Defining the “Sapphic” The nineteenth century marked a transmission of Sapphic scholarship and interpretation from German philologists to French writers. Charles Baudelaire’s work Les Fleurs du mal (1857) defined European notions of modernité, dominating creative conceptions of sixth century poet Sappho, shifting popular interest in her corpus from the “science of antiquity” to fictional texts, from the scholarly to the aesthetic. A few decades earlier, Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker’s 1816 treatise, Sappho von einem herrschenden Vorurteil befreyt, was a high point of German classical scholarship in the early nineteenth-century. Welcker redefined, or “vindicated,” Sappho’s homoerotic reputation, along with that of her fellow ancient Greeks, in order to prop up a nationalistic crusade that promoted his countrymen as the modern Greeks. Welcker relied on the representation of Sappho’s restored sexual purity and Greece’s lauded military power in order to establish a connection to the new German state through careful redefinitions of male pederastia promoting “chaste” masculine camaraderie.1 By the late nineteenth century, Henry T. Wharton’s 1885 translation and compilation of Sappho’s works into English was closely followed by a French translation by André Lebey in 1895. While both volumes were definitive editions for decades to follow (both academically and popularly), Wharton’s translation became the new 1 For Sappho’s reinvention and transmission under nineteenth century German philology, see Joan DeJean’s article “Sex and Philology: Sappho and the Rise of German Nationalism” in Representations 27 (Summer, 1989), 148-171. authority over Sappho’s works in the English-speaking sphere at the dawn of Modernism (a translation that remained authoritative until Page and Lobel’s scholarly edition in 1955, subsequently usurped by David A Campbell’s Greek Lyric: Sappho, Alcaeus, 1982). Reconsiderations and translations of Sappho and her corpus of work continue to this day. However, the second half of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries saw a particularly renewed interest in concepts of Sappho and the “Sapphic,” fueled by a variety of historical, aesthetic, social and political factors. This Introduction will try to do them justice. Moving Sappho into Modernism: A Historical Perspective Μνάσεσθαί τινά φαµι καὶ ὔστερον ἄµµεων.2 In 1896, Bernard Grenfell and Arthur Hunt, two fellows of Queen’s College, England, began excavating an ancient rubbish dump in Oxyrhynchus south of Cairo, an archeological find to which they would devote the rest of their lives. Egyptian farmers had begun turning up papyrus pieces while plowing new fields, and western countries (France, Germany and England) quickly sent excavators to the region. Among the mounds of preserved papyri scraps, they uncovered at least a dozen lost fragments by the Greek poetess Sappho, including some of the most substantial additions to her existing œuvre.3 Several of these verses became vital to the emergence of new Sapphic “voices” 2 “Someone, I say, will remember us in the future.” (Campbell frag. 147) All Greek translations are from David A Campbell’s Greek Lyric: Sappho, Alcaeus vol. 1 (Harvard University Press: Cambridge MA, 1982) unless otherwise noted. 3 The excavations of Sappho’s fragments in Egypt are detailed in: Ellen Greene’s Re-reading Sappho: Reception and Transmission (University of California Press: Berkeley, 1996), Margaret Reynolds’s The Sappho Companion (Palgrave: New York, 2000), Willis Barstone’s Sweetbitter Love: Poems of Sappho (Shambhala: Boston, 2006) and David Campbell’s Greek Lyric: Sappho, 2 - 2 - from across time and beyond the grave, including Fragment 16 (“Some say a host of cavalry…”) and Fragment 44 (“Hector and Andromache…”). These findings sparked a myriad of new interpretations and translations, encouraging a new understanding of Sappho’s voice. This discovery (and subsequent publication of the recovered poetry starting in 1910) coincided with several other conditions at the end of the nineteenth century that made European Modernists re-evaluate, reconsider, and often strongly identify with Sappho’s lyrical style and character.