Seeking Transcendence: Death, Rebirth and Transformation in the Poetry of Renée Vivien (1877-1909)
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TITLE OF THESIS: Seeking Transcendence: Death, Rebirth and Transformation in the poetry of Renée Vivien (1877-1909) Name of Author: Vivien Hennessy Student number: 0717029 PhD Thesis in Arts (French Studies) Department of French Studies Mary Immaculate College University of Limerick Internal Supervisor: Dr. Loïc Guyon Internal Examiner: Dr. Mairéad Ní Bhriain External Examiner: Professor Diana Holmes Submitted to Mary Immaculate College: 5th June 2015 i Abstract Renée Vivien, born Pauline Mary Tarn in England in 1877, moved to Paris at the age of twenty-one, where she pursued a literary career. Between 1901 and 1909, when she died at the age of thirty-two, Vivien published over thirty volumes of poetry, several short stories, translations of Sappho’s fragments, and a novel. Vivien chose to write exclusively in French, and her proficiency in that language is evidenced in her adherence to the strict conventions of French prosody. She was also a Classics scholar, and her knowledge of Greek facilitated her translation of Sappho into French. Vivien was a familiar member of the lesbian community of Paris, known as ‘Paris Tout Lesbos’. Paris at the turn of the century was known for its relaxed moral attitudes, and lesbianism was fashionable amongst the bohemian and literary circles of the Belle Époque. However, while these circles enjoyed sexual and cultural freedoms, an undercurrent of misogynistic and anti-feminist sentiment prevailed in French society. Such misogyny found expression in the medical discourse of the period and was articulated in literature and the popular press. Vivien’s poetry and prose, influenced by decadent and symbolist writing, challenged and subverted the androcentrism of these genres, confronting their anti-feminist/lesbian bias. Contemporaneous criticism of her work, focused on her image as a doomed and tragic lesbian, infamous for her hedonistic lifestyle, while modern critics pointed to her Decadent influences as an example of the anti-feminist aesthetic at play in her poetics. This thesis however aims through a close analysis of Vivien’s poetry to demonstrate the proto-feminist rhetoric of Vivien’s writing, and through the prism of the themes of death, rebirth and transformation, to reveal Vivien’s quest for transcendence. ii Acknowledgements I would like to take this opportunity to thank Dr. Loïc Guyon for his invaluable insight, advice and wisdom in the supervision of this thesis as well as Professor Melanie Hawthorne of Texas A & M University for her guidance. I would also like to thank all those in the French Department of Mary Immaculate College, for their kind encouragement. To my parents, Derry and Dolores, my sister Fiona, and my brothers Neil and Ronan, I would like to express my sincere gratitude for your support. Above all, this project is dedicated to my four children, Dolores, Hema, Ciara and Fionn; who remain as always my greatest sources of inspiration. iii Dedication À mes enfants et toute ma famille iv Declaration I hereby declare that this dissertation is entirely my own work and has not, in full or part, been submitted to any other institutions. Signed: ……………………………………………………….. Vivien Hennessy June 2015 Parts of this thesis have been presented as papers at various conferences as listed below: ‘Reinventing Poetic Desire: Diversity, Sapphic Discourse and Feminist Decadence in the works of Renée Vivien (1901-1910)’. New Voices 2013: “Diversities in Literary and Cultural Studies.” 13th- 15th June, 2013, NUI Maynooth. ‘The femme-fatale as proto-feminist symbol: Renée Vivien's not so damned women.’ Third Annual Limerick Postgraduate Conference. “Developing a culture of research.” 29th of May, 2014, Limerick Institute of Technology. ‘Death and the Poet: From Decadent Symbol to Subjective Experience, Grief and Mourning in the poetics of Renée Vivien’. The Literature of Loss, International Conference. 20th of February 2015, Mary Immaculate College, Limerick. ‘Gender Identity in Conflict and Crisis: Renée Vivien's poetic vision and re-vision of the New Woman.’ Society of dix-neuviémistes 13th Annual Conference, “Conflicts/Le Conflit”, University of Glasgow, 13th- 15th April 2015. v Table of Contents Abstract……………………………………………………………………………ii Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………..iii Dedication………………………………………………………………………….iv Declaration…………………………………………………………………………v Introduction………………………………………………………………………..1 Part I: Death Chapter1: Eros and Thanatos ...................................................................................18 I.1.1 Fatal Desire..................................................................................…….22 I.1.2 Pleasure and Pain...................................................................................25 I.1.2 Surrender and Loss ...............................................................................29 I.1.3 Love: La bête sournoise ........................................................................37 I.1.4 Death as Transcendental Desire: Homosexuality in opposition to Heterosexuality .............................................................................................39 Chapter 2: La Femme Fatale ..................................................................................44 I.2.1 Delilah, Vampires and Witches .........................................................46 I.2.2 Deathscapes and Nightvisions .....................................................60 Chapter 3: Death and the Poet.................................................................................66 I.3.1 Grief, Mourning, and the Romantic Tradition.………………………..70 I.3.2 In the Garden of Remembrance.............................................................76 I.3.3 Final Resting Places.…………………………………………………..79 Part II: Rebirth Chapter 1: Return to Mytilène ……………………………………………...............90 II.1.1 Psappha Revit........................................................................................93 II.1.2 Mytilène and other Utopian Returns………………………………….102 II.1.3 Ressouvenirs.………………………………………………………….106 Chapter 2: To Name and Rename …………………………………………………..110 II.2.1 Sappho 1900……………………………………………………………112 II.2.2 ‘The love that dare not speak its name’……………………………….114 II.2.3 Friends and lovers; named, renamed and unnamed…………………..116 II.2.4 Identity / Self (re)-incarnations.............................................................123 Chapter 3: New Women from Old ..........................................................................133 II.3.1 Mythological and Hellenic New Women...........................................135 II.3.2 Rebellion………................................................................................142 II.3.3 Perversion and Transgression……………………………………….143 II.3.4 Souveraines ……................................................................................149 vi Part III: Transformation Chapter 1: Metamorphosis ...................................................................................158158 III.1.1 The Siren Call................................................................................159159 III.1.2 Anthropomorphism, shape-shifting and the transformative effect of Sapphic sensuality..............................................166166 III.1.3 Metamorphosis as artistic imperative.............................................174174 Chapter 2: Seeking the Divine ..............................................................................178178 III.2.1 Revision of Pagan, Abrahamic, Marian, and Christian Divinity...180180 III.2.2 Sacred Androgyny.........................................................................195195 III.2.3 Lesbian sexuality as religious experience......................................199199 Chapter 3: Re-transformations .............................................................................204204 III.3.1 Self-reflection and authorship.......................................................206206 III 3.2 Journey and Flight.........................................................................214214 III.3.3 Surviving love: Amatory and Ideological conclusions..................215215 Conclusion............................................................................................................227227 Bibliography.........................................................................................................232 vii Introduction Born in Paddington, London on the 11 June 1877, to an American mother and British father, Pauline Mary Tarn moved to Paris with her family a year after her birth. The family were to remain in Paris until shortly after the death of John Tarn, when around the age of nine, Pauline, her younger sister Antoinette and her mother all returned to England. Showing a precocious interest in French literature from an early age the young Pauline began to write in both French and English throughout her childhood. Her relationship with her mother was a fractious one and as soon as Pauline turned eighteen, and had legal access to her inheritance, she left England for France where she settled permanently in Paris in 1898. Here she rejoined her childhood friend Violette Shillito and was introduced to Natalie Barney. She quickly became part of that community of women writers and artists known collectively as Tout Lesbos in Paris at the turn of the century. Vivien’s first collection of poetry, Études et préludes published in 1901 by Alphonse Lemerre, was written under the nom de plume R. Vivien, a pseudonym which eventually became Renée Vivien by the time Évocations was published