Renee Vivien's Sapphic Legacy
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Renee Vivien's Sapphic Legacy: Remembering the Tama Lea Engelking "House of Muses" Cleveland State University ABSTRACT Sappho represents both a powerful female precursor and an example of how women's writing has been censored. She nevertheless felt certain that "Someone in the future will remember us." Renee Vivien (1877-1909), lesbian poet and translator of Sappho, felt the full impact of this mixed sapphic legacy and, like her principal muse, she became more and more concerned about her future readers to whom she left her own mixed legacy. Despite the tragic aspects of her life, Vivien's sapphic legacy to modem-day readers is positive since it emphasizes a woman-centred lyric tradition that constitutes the "House of Muses." RESUME Sapho represente a la fois un precurseur feminin puissant et un exemple de la censure levee contre l'ecriture des femmes. Cependant, elle etait certaine que «Quelqu'un se souviendra de nous dans l'avenir». Renee Vivien (1877- 1909), poete lesbienne et traductrice de Sapho, a ressenti la pleine force de ce legs mixte saphique et, comme sa Muse principale, elle s'occupait de plus en plus de ses lectrices et de ses lecteurs futurs auxquels elle a laisse, elle aussi, un legs mixte a assortir. Malgrd les aspects tragiques de sa vie, le legs saphique de Vivien aux lectrices et aux lecteurs d'aujourd'hui est plutot positif puisqu'il fait ressortir une tradition lyrique gynocentrique qui constitue «La Maison des Muses». £ £ OMEONE, I BELIEVE, WILL REMEM- calls a "fantasy precursor" par excellence. ber us in the future." This verse, Since so little is actually known about her, she ^—* written by Sappho in the sixth cen• can function as a blank page on which women tury B.C., is among the few fragments that writers are free to project a powerful literary have survived from the nine books of divine foremother and trace the beginnings of a fe• verse she is known to have written. While male literary tradition.2 On the other hand, Sappho correctly predicted the immortality of Gubar reminds us that Sappho represents "all her work, she could not have guessed how the women of genius in literary history, espec• centuries of repression, combined with neglect, ially all the lesbian artists whose work has would leave it in tattered bits for "someone" to been destroyed, sanitized, or heterosexual- assemble.1 The bits and pieces of her life and ized," — deliberately censored or conveniently work have been woven into numerous and of• misread when their work (and sexual orienta• ten contradictory sapphic fictions — a mixed tion) challenged the dominant ideology (46). legacy for women writers for whom her exam• ple is both empowering and disquieting. On Perhaps no one has felt the impact of the one hand, Sappho is what Susan Gubar Sappho's mixed legacy more strongly than the lesbian poet and translator of Sappho's poems, of a Sappho who wrote unambiguously for and Renee Vivien (1877-1909). An Anglo-Ameri• about women. Her recuperation of Sappho ex• can whose real name was Pauline Tarn, Vivien tends to all the genres she practised, from her was independently wealthy; therefore, she was translations and expansions of Sappho's frag• free to escape, by going to Paris, her family ments, to her novel and numerous original and the restrictions of her Victorian poems. In "Psappha Revit," the poem that is upbringing. There she pursued her studies of considered Vivien's creed of sapphic love, she Greek and wrote lesbian poetry in French.3 A specifies that, as a modern-day follower of Greek scholar, lesbian and poet, Vivien Sappho, her role is to conserve the rites of seemed ideally suited for re-membering Sap• Lesbos.6 The prefix "re-" occurs frequently in pho's fragmented verses which she translated Vivien's poems about Sappho because she into French and then elaborated, weaving Sap• imagines them as revival and continuation of pho's words almost obsessively into the fabric Sappho's ideal of love poetry as it was prac• of her own poems. Her original poetry is so tised on Lesbos. "Douceur de mes chants" saturated with sapphism that it is often dif• (Evocations, OPC 91) and "En Debarquant a ficult to know where Sappho ends and Vivien Mytilene" (A Iheure, OPC 268), for example, begins. She was so close to her principal muse both invite her readers on a voyage to eternal that Andre Billy called her "Sapho 1900, Sa- Lesbos "a travers les siecles disparates" where pho 100%."4 It was not a particularly accurate Sappho neither forgets nor is forgotten (268). description of Vivien who saw herself more as In the first, Vivien imagines herself greeted by one of Sappho's faithful disciples than a fin- the silent ghost of Sappho whose muteness re• du-siecle incarnation of the tenth muse, but his quires someone to speak in her place. This is label does point to the ways she would subse• confirmed in the final verses: "Et nous re- quently be read. Literary history makes it all dirons a la terre enivree / L'hymne de Lesbos" too clear; a fantasy collaboration with Sappho (91). In the second poem, the poet talks of re• may empower the woman writer, but such a discovering and recovering Mytilene, of mak• close identification might also mean sharing ing it "l'autel aujourd'hui des ivresses d'hier." her legacy as "la grande Meconnue et la The emphasis is on continuity, connection and grande Calomniee" (38) as Vivien put it in her community, and it is in this spirit that Vivien autobiographical novel, Une Femme consistently links her revival of Sappho's cult m 'apparut.5 to the line "Someone, I believe, will remember us in the future." If Vivien returned to these words again and again, it was as if, by so Vivien, for her part, understood this better closely collaborating with her ancient Greek than most of her idealistic contemporaries. mentor, she could become one of "us" and Ironically, while her acute awareness of how thus ensure that her own work would be re• male perspectives dominated and shaped Sap• membered by future readers. pho's place in literary tradition may have inspired her efforts to recuperate Sappho as a lesbian poet, it also fuelled her fears for the That Vivien wanted her poems to be read future of her own work. She devoted an enor• by future generations is beyond question when mous amount of creative energy to clearing up we examine the relationship that she spells out the core of traditional misunderstandings about with her readers in several key poems as well Sappho — namely, her sexual orientation — as the development of her career. Her biogra• by generating and promoting her own "fiction" pher Jean-Paul Goujon believes that the main motivation for Vivien's prolific literary output fate of her own work occupied her to the point — over 20 volumes of poetry, short stories, that she also began preparing a new edition of prose poems and one novel in 10 years — was her complete works of poetry. In a revealing a desire to leave an oeuvre for the future letter to her editor written when she was se• (Preface OPC, 10). As one of the first modern verely ill, Vivien confuses the two projects, women poets to write openly about love be• suggesting how closely their fates were inter• tween women, Vivien was naturally concerned twined in her mind (see Tes blessures 413). about how posterity would treat her work, es• Equally telling is Vivien's conversion to Ca• pecially when she began seeing a definite bias tholicism in the final days before her death. It against her work then. A 1908 anthology of seems she looked to the Christian God as well French poetry, for example, contained none of as her pagan muse Sappho in a last desperate Vivien's poems and, according to Paul Lorenz, attempt to reflect the finality of death, for both her works were also banned form the after• held out the promise of an immortality of noon poetry readings presented by the actors sorts. of the Comedie francaise. Vivien's earlier opti• mism, connected to the most prolific period of So overwhelming were Vivien's fears for her career when she was closest to Sappho, the future of her work that one can easily was eventually overshadowed by growing imagine her dying with this question on her fears and mistrust of the reading public, and lips: "How will I be remembered?" Looking at by morbid and self-destructive tendencies the reception of Vivien's work both in the which seem to have been part of Vivien's psy• U.S. and in France, we can see that her reputa• chic make up. Sappho remained central to tion is shaping up along lines similar to her Vivien's poetic vision until 1907; her disap• ancient model and mentor. Like Sappho, she pearance from Vivien's works coincides with has left her readers a mixed legacy to sort out, a marked decline in the quality of her poems and the widely divergent interpretations of her which deteriorated along with her health until, work are also reminiscent of Sappho's place in in 1909, at the age of thirty-two, Renee Vivien literary history. Take, for example, Salomon died from pneumonia, complicated by the Reinach, an early Vivien admirer whom Nata• damage she had wreaked on her body through lie Barney called her "posthumous lover." alcoholism and anorexia. Reinach took it upon himself to collect many of Vivien's personal papers which he sealed in Significantly, the last project Vivien un• the Bibliotheque Nationale until the year 2000.