Renée VIVIEN

"Sappho 1900", the "Muse of violets", "Baudelaire's daughter"... so many nicknames that bear witness to the indelible imprint that Renée Vivien left on French literature and the Paris of the Belle Époque.

Born to an American mother and a wealthy English father, Pauline Tarn chose the capital of the arts and the very posh avenue of the Bois de Boulogne to settle in her twenties. A lover of poetry, the young woman quickly fell in love with the sultry Natalie Clifford Barney, who first read her verses and introduced her to sapphism. With her, she maintained a stormy relationship for several years, but this did not prevent her from succumbing to the charms of the exotic Kérimé Turkhan-Pacha, to whom she dedicated magnificent poems.

Borrowing several pseudonyms and finally adopting her nom de plume Renée Vivien, the poetess had a short-lived but prolific career, publishing no less than twelve collections of poetry, seven volumes of prose, novels and short stories, not to mention her translations of the works of Sappho and other Hellenic poets. Charles Maurras compared her verses to those of Verlaine and declared her to be Baudelaire's daughter at a time when critics paid little heed to female authorship.

Such praise, however, did little to quell the fire burning in Renée Vivien's heart. Plunged into a suicidal depression, consumed by alcohol and drugs, she died one November morning, aged only 32.