Renée Vivien (born Pauline Mary Tarn; 11 June 1877 – 18 November 1909) was a British poet who wrote in the French language. A high-profile lesbian writer in Paris during the Belle Époque era, she is widely considered to be one of the first noteworthy lesbian poets of the twentieth century. Her work has recently received more attention due to a revival of interest in Sapphic verse. Many of her poems are autobiographical, pertaining mostly to Baudelarian themes of extreme romanticism and frequent despair. Apart from poetry, she wrote several works of prose, including L'Etre Double (inspired by Coleridge's Christabel), and an unfinished biography of Anne Boleyn, which was published posthumously. She has also been the subject of multiple biographies, most notably those by Jean-Paul Goujon, , and . A novel based on her life was written by the Catalan poet Maria Mercè Marçal in 1994, and translated into English in 2020 as The Passion according to Renée Vivien.
Biography
Early life
Renée Vivien was born Pauline Mary Tarn in London, England to , a British farmer who had become wealthy through property investments, and an American mother, . Pauline attended the Belsize College in Hampstead, London, where, in 1883, she was awarded a silver medal by the Alliance française for her study of French. While she was attending school in Paris, her father died in 1886. Upon his death, Pauline returned to London to receive her inheritance from him.
Relationships
Vivien harbored an unconsummated romantic relationship with her childhood friend and neighbor, Violet Shillito, who is thought to be referenced in Vivien’s poems with the words “violet” and “purple.” After Shillito’s death to typhoid fever, Vivien felt a sense of guilt for her relationship with American heiress Natalie Barney, who Shillito had introduced her to the year before, because she felt that she had sidelined Shillito in favour of Barney.
Her Paris home was a luxurious ground-floor apartment at 23, avenue du Bois de Boulogne (now 23, Avenue Foch) that opened onto a Japanese garden. She purchased antique furnishings from London and exotic objets d'art from the Far East. She kept an abundant amount of fresh flowers and offerings of Lady Apples to her collection of shrines, statuettes, icons, and Buddhas.
A public square is named in her honor in Paris: , in Le Marais, central historic district of the French capital.
Illness and death
While visiting London in 1908, Vivien tried to kill herself by drinking an excess of laudanum. As she waited to die, she stretched out on her divan with a bouquet of violets held over her heart. She survived the attempt.
While in England, she contracted pleurisy and continued to grow weaker upon her eventual return to Paris. According to biographer Jean-Paul Goujon, Vivien suffered from chronic gastritis, due to years of chloral hydrate and alcohol abuse. She had also started to refuse to eat. By the summer of 1909, she walked with a cane.
Vivien died in Paris on the morning of 18 November 1909 at the age of 32; the cause of death was reported at the time as "lung congestion", but likely resulted from pneumonia complicated by alcoholism, drug abuse, and anorexia nervosa . She was interred at Passy Cemetery in the same Parisian neighbourhood where she had lived.
Works
Published works
Vivien wrote exclusively in French. She published her first collection of poetry, Études et préludes, in 1901. She would go on to publish 12 more collections of poetry in her lifetime. Contemporary feminists consider her to be one of the first women to write openly lesbian poetry. <sup>[p. 78]</sup> She learned Greek by taking private lessons with a teacher, Gaetan Baron, because she wanted to read Homer in the original Greek.
Vivien also published poetry and prose in collaboration with lover, Hélène van Zuylen using the pseudonym, . The true attribution of these works is uncertain, however; some scholars believe they were written solely by Vivien, as well as some other books published under Zuylen's name.
thumb|Title page for Vivien's biography of Anne Boleyn, published in 1909
During her brief life, Vivien was an extremely prolific poet who came to be known as the "Muse of the Violets", derived from her love of the flower. Her obsession with violets (as well as with the colour violet) was likely a reminder of her beloved childhood friend, Violet Shillito.
She took to heart all the mannerisms of Parnassianism and of Symbolism, as one of the last poets to claim allegiance to the school. Her compositions include sonnets, hendecasyllabic verse, and prose poetry.
Virtually all her verse is veiled autobiography written in the French language, most of which has never been translated into English. Her principal published books of verse are Cendres et Poussières (1902), La Vénus des aveugles (1903), A l'heure des mains jointes (1906), Flambeaux éteints (1907), Sillages (1908), Poèmes en Prose (1909), Dans un coin de violettes (1909), and Haillons (1910).
Her poetry has earned even greater attention with the contemporary rediscovery of the works of Sappho, bringing with it even more acclaim.
List of works
- ; appearing under the name R. Vivien
- ;
- .
- appearing under Pauline M. Tarn
Note: Later books were published published posthumously.
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Collections
Works available in English translation
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Gallery
See also
- List of poets portraying sexual relations between women