Introduction

Abstract

Introduction Melanie Hawthorne (bio) It is tempting to look for a date in the life of American expatriate heiress Natalie Clifford Barney that would make this special issue of South Central Review an anniversary of some aspect of her life and work, but the truth is that no such pretext is necessary for commemorating her. When she died in Paris in 1972 at the age of ninety-four, Barney was rightly celebrated for her left bank salon that had been the center of a vibrant literary culture between the two world wars in Paris, as well as for her own literary contributions, and there has been steady and continued appreciation ever since. In the three decades following her death, her reputation has ebbed and flowed in the mainstream on both sides of the Atlantic, but a steady flow of re-editions of her work and critical works about her and her role in the lives and careers of others has ensured that her name, while not on everyone's lips perhaps, has been constantly uttered by those in the know. A survey of some recent publications by and about her, including some by contributors to this special issue, will give current readers a sense of why she is still savored by those already familiar with her work and discovered with pleasure by those who come across her for the first time. Some of her writing, such as the aphorisms of works such as Traits et portraits (Mercure de France, 1963) and the sketches and essays of Aventures de l'esprit (Emile Paul Frères, 1929), have remained relatively accessible, but much of her work remains unpublished or hard to find. Thus it was a treat for bibliophiles and fans of Barney's work to have access to a new edition of her first (1900) collection of poetry, now a rarity, all the more so since the republication of Quelques portraits-sonnets de femmes by Francesco Rapazzini, a distinguished contributor to the present volume, comes in the form of a facsimile edition with corrections and emendations in Barney's own hand (Verona [Italy]: L'Amazone Retrouvée, 1999). Rapazzini has also made Barney the subject of a novel. Barney's birthday fell on Halloween, October 31, and it became her custom to throw a birthday party for all her "Scorpio" friends on this date, an occasion that serves in the novel Un soir chez l'amazone (Paris: Fayard, 2001) as the setting for imagining what might have transpired [End Page 1] at one of these gatherings. Rapazzini's contribution to the present volume is based on his recent book Elisabeth de Gramont, avant-gardiste (Paris: Fayard, 2004). In "Elisabeth de Gramont, Natalie Barney's 'eternal mate,'" he offers an important reassessment of Barney's affective life. Barney's relationships with the poet Renée Vivien (Pauline Tarn, 1877–1909) and the painter Romaine Brooks (1874–1970) have long received the lion's share of attention, but here Rapazzini makes the case that biographers and critics have overlooked a relationship that was just as important as these others, perhaps even more so. That relationship was with Elisabeth de Gramont (1875–1954), the Duchess of Clermont-Tonnerre, nicknamed "the red duchess" for her left-wing sympathies. Based on entirely new research (access to letters and other private documents, interviews with family members, and so on), Rapazzini shows that Barney and Gramont considered their relationship a marriage, although a somewhat unconventional one (and not only because it was between same-sex partners). The public debate concerning gay marriage is of recent vintage in the United States, but it is a hotly contested issue, and it may be instructive for all parties to consider the example of one relationship that chose this commitment—albeit without legal sanction—nearly one hundred years ago. The article certainly challenges biographers and critics to reassess their view of Barney's life. Some of Barney's unpublished work is also the basis for a critical evaluation by Chelsea Ray of Barney's debt to decadent poetics, most notably the work of poet Charles Baudelaire, in her article "Decadent Heroines or Modernist Lovers: Natalie Clifford Barney's Unpublished Feminine Lovers or...