renée vivien project

a blog dedicated to charting my research and translation work with the forgotten poetry of renée vivien // un blog dédié à la documention de ma recherche et traduction avec la poésie oubliée de renée vivien  help me with books! // aidez-moi avec des livres !

[yekkes]

These r all too gay but I want them on my wall anyways

[violentwavesofemotion-deactivat]

I felt myself becoming almost transparent with the subtle intensity of living.

Renée Vivien, tr. by Jeanette H. Foster, from “A Woman Appeared To Me,”

[divanviolets]

Renée Vivien, circa 1900. [Image No. SIA2015-006913] from the Smithsonian Institution Archives, acc 96-153.

[divanviolets]

Mais je ne tentai point de révolte farouche : Le baiser fut le seul blasphème de ma bouche

"But I never attempted rebellion: a kiss Was all the blasphemy upon my lips”

"Ainsi Je Parlerai..." by Renée Vivien (1906)

[divanviolets]

Friendship is more dangerous than love, since its roots are stronger and go deeper than the roots of love. The anguish of friendship is more bitter than the anguish of love. Certain souls love friendship as others love love; they suffer through friendship as others through love. They have in their lives only one friendship as others have but a single love. It is when they lose friendship that they despair hopelessly.

Renée Vivien, A Woman Appeared to Me (1904)

[oikabooks]

[Sappho] lived c. 612–558 BC, and was a renowned poet in her own lifetime, to the extent that statues were erected to honour her and coins—some of which were collected by Renee Vivien during her pilgrimage to Lesbos with Natalie Barney (Livia 1993)—struck bearing her portrait: ‘No woman of her time was more celebrated’ (Klaich 1985). Socrates and Plato were both fulsome in her praise, Plato naming her the tenth Muse. She performed some kind of leadership/teacher function to a group of girls and young women from wealthy families and appears to have run some sort of establishment for them on Lesbos, one of the larger Aegean islands.   Her writings, which were proclaimed as the zenith of the poetic arts in her lifetime, have suffered extensively from the ravages of social upheaval through the centuries. They were publicly burned in the Christian attempt to suppress paganism in the Eastern Roman Empire c. AD 380, and again by Pope (later Saint) Gregory VII (1073–1085) in Rome, along with many other ancient writings. It was not until the early Renaissance that Sappho was rediscovered, in the frustrating form of quoted extracts in classical Greek and Latin texts, by Italian scholars fired by the enthusiasm for the classical pagan world which fuelled the Renaissance. Translated into English, the fragments (only one or two entire poems were found) were forcibly reshaped to construct a heterosexual Sappho, a misreading which went unchallenged until two Oxford University scholars excavated an ancient rubbish heap at Oxyrhynchus (now called Behneseh) in Egypt and unearthed, among other marvels, discarded papyrus scrolls of Sappho’s verse. The scrolls were all that remained of pagan libraries, trashed in favour of Christian literature, and had been torn into strips before being consigned to the scrap heap, but enough had been preserved in the dry Egyptian climate to dispel the myth of an unproblematically heterosexual Sappho. Many were unambiguously erotic and clearly addressed to women.

Tamsin Wilton, Lesbian Studies: Setting an agenda

[divanviolets]

your laugh is clear, your caress is deep, your cold kisses love the bad they do; your eyes are blue like a lotus on the wave and the lilies of water are less pure than your brow. your form leaks, your gait is fluid, and your hair is a light web; your voice drips just as a perfidious flood; your supple arms are like reeds. at the long reeds of rivers, whom the embrace entangles, suffocates, strangles skillfully, at the bottom of waves an extinguished agony in a cruel fainting spell.

Undine by Renée Vivien, from Etudes and Preludes (1901)

[divanviolets]

the flight of the bat, torturous, anxious, bizarre, with the fluttering of bruised wings, come back and go away and go astray. did you not feel that a moment, drunk with her vain sufferings, my soul was going madly against your dear distant lips?

Song by Renée Vivien, from Etudes and Preludes (1901)

[divanviolets]

i despise you finally, passing suffering! i lifted the brow. i finished crying. my soul is stamped, and your light form in the nights without rest no longer comes to brush. today i smile at the love that hurts me oh come vast seas, who, without flower’s scent an acrid smell of salts revives my weakness oh seaward wind! (vent du large) always taking away the pains! taking the pains far away, in a heartbeat, so that the joy explodes, triumphant, in our hearts where the divine pride renews, turned towards the sun, the songs and perfection.

Aurora on the Sea, from Etudes and Preludes, 1901

[divanviolets]

the light agonizes and dies on your lap come, oh you, whose impenetrable and soft front wears denunciation of its heavy years: painful, and the traits fatally fade, come, without other perfume in your long, folded dress the breath of flowers has long since withered. come, without makeup, at your lips where my desire burns without rings, –the ruby, the opal and the sapphire dishonor your milky fingers like the moon,– and exile from your eyes the reflections of the mirror… here is the very simple hour and the very chaste evening where the color oppresses, where the luxury importunes. deliver your grief from the eternal smile, exhale your suffering and a profound call: the things of other times, if cruel and crazy, leave then at the silence, in the distance, at its death… in the dream that knows the consolation of effort, we forget this ancient fever of words. i will kiss your hands and your divine bare feet, and our hearts weep from being misunderstood, they will cry the vile words and the infamous gestures. flights will linger in the peace of paths you will join the mystic purity of your hands, and i will adore you, in the shadow with the souls.

Evening, from Études and Préludes, by Renée Vivien, to her girlfriend (1901) 

[divanviolets]

the sunset softens the smile of the sky the night comes gravely, as does a priestess. the breeze unfolded, with a gesture of a caress your blonde hair of maize and honey. Your lips kept the line of the promise to whom my attentive dread has long enchanted me. a voice of suffering and of ecstasy sung in the shadow where the white flower's incense flies away. your dress has shivers of sumptuous feasts, and under the majesty of noble adornment, adorned with flowers, enveloped with breaths of lust, unholy lilies, your body pale and voluptuous. your fresh blue irises languish and swoon. i see, in your looks like the sad heavens, in this last purity of your eyes, the aching form and weary soul. over there, at last, the gold swarm of the bee-eaters subsides… against the dead rhythms and extinguishing splendors, you brush against the frail hyacinths without seeing them they die of love, having touched your feet.

The Setting Sun, by Renée Vivien from Etudes and Preludes (1901)

[divanviolets]

your voice is a learned poem... fragile charm of the spirit, desperation of the soul, i love you like a carnal pain that we cherish. in your long and pallid grace, you come back, from the depths of long ago oh my white and distant friend, i adore you, like the lilies! we say that a memory dulls, but how to never forget that your voice was very soft when you told me that you loved me?

Song by Renée Vivien, in Etudes and Preludes (1901)

[divanviolets]

the day no longer pierces from arrogant arrows the woods full of tepid shade and faded rays, and it is the troubled hour where the Bacchants dance amongst the dejection of draining rhythms their hair weepingly tangles the blood of vines, their bright feet are light like the wings of winds, and the pink of the flesh, the suppleness of lines fill your forest of shifting smiles. the youngest has chants that resemble the groan: her lover’s throat is heavy with sobs. she is not the same as the others– she is pale, her brow has the bitterness and the storm of waves. she is half drunk, but her drunkenness is sad, without dazzling dreams of love: the wine of crimson and gold, where the sun persists, the wine of old singers leaves her with a feverish taste. everything in her is wary of false joys. the mordant salt of tears, that is desolate and bruised, only corrupts the flame and honey of caresses: at the feasts, she alone is somber when we laugh. because she remembers kisses that are forgotten, she will not learn desire without pain, the one who always sees with melancholy in the depths of the evening orgies, agonize the flowers.

Sad Bacchants (Bacchants were women who “celebrated the mysteries of Dionysus”, often half clothed with tiger skins, ivy, and thyrsusi in Greek mythology) from Etudes and Preludes, by Renée Vivien (1901)

[minniti]

Des roses sur la mer, des roses dans le soir, Et toi qui viens de loin, les mains lourdes de roses ! J’aspire ta beauté. Le couchant fait pleuvoir Ses fines cendres d’or et ses poussières roses… Des roses sur la mer, des roses dans le soir. Un songe évocateur tient mes paupières closes. J’attends, ne sachant trop ce que j’attends en vain, Devant la mer pareille aux boucliers d’airain, Et te voici venue en m’apportant des roses… Ô roses dans le ciel et le soir ! Ô mes roses !

Roses du soir dans Evocations, de Renée Vivien (1905)

[divanviolets]

when you came, with reflective steps, into the mist the sky mingled with gold crystal and bronze your body surmised, uncertain undulation more flexible than the wave and more cool than the foam the summer evening seemed an oriental dream of rose and sandalwood. i trembled. long religious and pallid lilies died in your hands, like cold church candles. the last breath of your perfume escaped from your fingers in the pleasured breath of supreme anxieties. your light clothes exhaled at every turn the agony of love. i felt trembling on the mute lips. the sweetness and the terror of your first kiss. under your steps, i heard lyres break crying to the heavens the bored pride of poets amongst floods of sounds languidly fading, blonde, you appeared to me. and the spirit hungry for eternal, impossible, infinity, i wanted to modulate widely a hymn of magic and of wonder. but the stanza was puerile and painful, a mediocre and poor effort filled with vanity towards your divinity.

Dédicace de Renée Vivien, dans Études et Préludes (1901)

[minniti]

The evening, open to the wind its wings of moth, Evokes a fragile rosy memory, The memory, touching like a broken Saxon, Of your fresh naivete of porcelain. Our room yesterday, where the marjoram dies, Will not have your eyes full of slate sky, Neither your puerile and cunning astonishment… Oh thrills of your neck where my breath burned! And my heart, whose peace no longer fears your return, Don’t weep his miserable love anymore, Frail apparition that the silence awakens! Far from the sincere April of venoms and honeys, You smile, bringing me the flowers of your basket, Precious flowers of artificial fields

Porcelain Sonnet from The Venus of the Blind, by Renée Vivien (1904)

[minniti]

Le soir, ouvrant au vent ses ailes de phalène, Évoque un souvenir fragilement rosé, Le souvenir, touchant comme un Saxe brisé, De ta naïveté fraîche de porcelaine. Notre chambre d’hier, où meurt la marjolaine, N’aura plus ton regard plein de ciel ardoisé, Ni ton étonnement puéril et rusé… Ô frissons de ta nuque où brûlait mon haleine ! Et mon coeur, dont la paix ne craint plus ton retour, Ne sanglotera plus son misérable amour, Frêle apparition que le silence éveille ! Loin du sincère avril de venins et de miels, Tu souris, m’apportant les fleurs de ta corbeille, Fleurs précieuses des champs artificiels.

Sonnet de Porcelaine dans La Vénus des Aveugles, de Renée Vivien (1904)