Vivien, Renée 1877-1909

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VIVIEN, Renée 1877-1909

PERSONAL: Born June 8, 1877, in London, England; died November 18, 1909, in Paris, France; daughter of John Tarn and Mary Gillet Bennett.

CAREER: Poet and prose writer.

WRITINGS:

Cendres et poussières: poèmes, A. Lemerre (Paris, France), 1902, reprinted, R. Deforges (Paris, France), c. 1977.

Du vert au violet, A. Lemerre (Paris, France), 1903.

La Vénus de aveugles, A. Lemerre (Paris, France), 1904.

Études et préludes, A. Lemerre (Paris, France), 1903, reprinted, 1976.

Evocations, A. Lemerre (Paris, France), 1905.

A l'heure des mains jointes, A. Lemerre (Paris, France), 1906, translated by Sandia Belgrade as At the Sweet Hour of Hand in Hand, Naiad Press (Weatherby Lake, MO), 1979.

Flambeaux éteints, Sansot (Paris, France), 1908.

Silages, Sansot (Paris, France), 1908.

Poèmes en prose, Sansot (Paris, France), 1908.

Anne Boleyn, A l'écart (Muizon, France), 1909.

Le vent des vaisseaux, Sansot (Paris, France), 1910.

Dans un coin de violletes, Sansot (Paris, France), 1910, translated by Margaret Porter and Catharine Kroger as The Muse of the Violets, Naiad Press (Bates City, MO), 1977.

Hallions, Sansot (Paris, France), 1910.

Femmes sans tain, B. Letu, 1975.

Poèmes de Renée Vivien, Arno Press (New York, NY), 1975.

A Woman Appeared to Me, translation by Jeannette H. Foster, Naiad Press (Reno, NV), 1976.

La dame à la louve, R. Deforges (Paris, France), 1977.

Une femme m'apparut, R. Deforges (Paris, France), c. 1977.

Le jardin turc: prose inédite, A l'Ecart (Muizon, France), 1982.

The Woman of the Wolf and Other Stories, translated by Karla Joy and Yvonne M. Klein, Gay Presses of New York (New York, NY), 1983.

Poésies complètes, R. Deforges (Paris, France), 1986.

Lettres de Renée Vivien à Kérimé, HB Éditions (Aigues-Vives, France), 1998.

SIDELIGHTS: French writer Renée Vivien was considered a "feminine modernist." According to Elaine Marks, a reviewer in Yale French Studies, Vivien "has been placed within a variety of traditions, French and comparative, including a Baudelarian tradition, a Lesbian tradition, a tradition of significant women writers . . . and a tradition of turn of the [twentieth] century minor French women poets."

Vivien was born Pauline Mary Tarn in London, England in 1877 to an English father and an American mother. Near 1900 Vivien fled to Paris where she "became a spirited and often scandalous" figure. Henk Vynckier wrote in Encyclopedia of Women Writers that Vivien's significance as a writer "resides in her ability to transform standard decadent and symbolist myths and themes in terms of her female and lesbian sensitivities and eroticism." Alice Parker said in Aspects of Fantasy that in Vivien's "earliest books of poetry, published in 1901 (she) had evoked mournful landscapes . . . frightful voices weeping horribly from the depths of silence . . . and tortuous, anguished flights of bats with bruised wings." Susan Gubar, in Journal of Women in Culture and Society, said Vivien "implicitly reveals the centrality of the lesbian in decadent poetry to claim the image for herself." Parker, this time in Aspects of Fantasy, wrote that "although Vivien decided quite young to become a poet, it was Natalie Barney, the great passion of her life, who introduced her to Sappho and to Greek, who was the indispensible muse."

Vivien and Barney returned to the island of Lesbos (Mytilene) to reclaim it from the colony of misogynist writers established there. They experienced a degree of success in pursuing their utopian dream in 1904.

Less than five years later, Vivien died of self-inflicted starvation. In her last decade she produced nine volumes of poetry, two novels, and two short stories. Vynckier wrote, "although Renée Vivien has never gained widespread acceptance of her . . . talents or . . . views on the role of women, she has increasingly been the object of attention of both gay and feminist intellectuals and . . . scholars."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

books

Aspects of Fantasy: Selected Essays from the SecondInternational Conference on the Fantastic in Literature and Film, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 1986, pp. 7-15.

Encyclopedia of Continental Women Writers, edited by Katharina M. Wilson, Garland (New York, NY), 1991, pp. 1308-1309.

Encyclopedia of Homosexuality, edited by Wayne R. Dynes, Garland (New York, NY), 1990, p. 1377.

Women Writers and the City: Essays in Feminist Literary Criticism, University of Tennessee Press (Knoxville, TN), 1984, pp. 45-67.