"A quoi bon nous revoir ? Ton impatience se heurterait vainement contre ma lassitude, contre mon ennui."

Autograph letter signed "Pauline" from Renée Vivien addressed to Natalie Clifford Barney and written in purple ink on two double sheets with violet letterhead and address of 23 avenue du Bois de Boulogne. Transverse folds inherent to posting.
A very beautiful and lengthy breakup letter addressed to the Amazon after her impromptu summer 1904 visit to Bayreuth to attempt to win Renée back: "... Les heures passées à Bayreuth étaient de la douceur : et c'est pourquoi je suis revenue." ["The hours spent in Bayreuth were sweet: and that is why I returned."] The lexical field of death is omnipresent in this missive, as if to better emphasize the definitive character of her decision: "Pourquoi t'acharner à vouloir ranimer vainement les choses mortes, Natalie ? Tu ne l'as point compris : ce que je cherchais auprès de toi c'était le souvenir et rien d'autre. On ne revit point l'autrefois. Tu dois le sentir comme moi-même. [...] Je souriais à mon passé. Il est doux parce qu'il est mort. Et toi, tu veux galvaniser ce cadavre et le rendre odieux." ["Why persist in trying to vainly revive dead things, Natalie? You have not understood: what I sought with you was memory and nothing else. One cannot relive the past. You must feel it as I do myself. [...] I smiled at my past. It is sweet because it is dead. And you, you want to galvanize this corpse and make it odious."] The Muse of violets here reveals her suffering and disappointment, pleading with Natalie twice: "Laisse-moi ne plus revenir." ["Let me not return again."]
A veritable funeral oration for extinguished love, this letter is very illuminating as to each one's way of loving: "Nous nous sommes mal comprises. Je voulais un peu de rêve : tu m'offres la réalité." ["We have misunderstood each other. I wanted a little dream: you offer me reality."] For this is what separates Renée - the dreamy and quasi-platonic poetess - and Natalie - the carnal and fickle lover: "Ne sens-tu donc pas, ne comprends-tu donc pas que je n'ai plus aucun désir d'amour ? Je suis lasse infiniment ; je ne voulais qu'un peu de douceur. Et tu m'offres la vie et les frissons, que sais-je ? tout dont je ne me soucie point. Les joies charnelles ? Mais je les possède, mon amie me les donne, ma chair est satisfaite et au-delà. Je ne cherche point cela : je ne désire point cela. Ces choses m'excèdent, venant de toi. J'espérais que, assouvie de ton côté, tu ne me demanderais que ce que je te demande : un peu de rêve lassé ; un peu de compréhension, un peu de regret. Mais nous nous sommes trompées mutuellement. [...] Cherche un amour de chair chez une autre [...]" ["Do you not feel, do you not understand that I no longer have any desire for love? I am infinitely weary; I wanted only a little sweetness. And you offer me life and thrills, what do I know? everything I care nothing about. Carnal joys? But I possess them, my friend gives them to me, my flesh is satisfied and beyond. I do not seek that: I do not desire that. These things excess me, coming from you. I hoped that, satiated on your side, you would ask of me only what I ask of you: a little weary dream; a little understanding, a little regret. But we have deceived each other mutually. [...] Seek carnal love with another [...]"]

It was at the end of 1899 and through the intermediary of Violette Shillito that Renée Vivien - then Pauline Tarn - made the acquaintance of Natalie Clifford Barney "cette Américaine plus souple qu'une écharpe, dont l'étincelant visage brille de cheveux d'or, de prunelles bleu de mer, de dents implacables" ["this American more supple than a scarf, whose sparkling face shines with golden hair, sea-blue pupils, implacable teeth"] (Colette, Claudine à Paris). Natalie, who had just lived a summer idyll with the scandalous Liane de Pougy who had initiated her into sapphism, paid only discrete attention to this new acquaintance. Renée, however, was totally captivated by the young American and would relate this thunderbolt in her autobiographical novel Une Femme m'apparut: "J'évoquai l'heure déjà lointaine où je la vis pour la première fois, et le frisson qui me parcourut lorsque mes yeux rencontrèrent ses yeux d'acier mortel, ses yeux aigus et bleus comme une lame. J'eus l'obscur prescience que cette femme m'intimait l'ordre du destin, que son visage était le visage redouté de mon avenir. Je sentis près d'elle les vertiges lumineux qui montent de l'abîme, et l'appel de l'eau très profonde. Le charme du péril émanait d'elle et m'attirait inexorablement. Je n'essayai point de la fuir, car j'aurais échappé plus aisément à la mort." ["I evoked the already distant hour when I saw her for the first time, and the shiver that ran through me when my eyes met her eyes of mortal steel, her sharp blue eyes like a blade. I had the obscure presentiment that this woman was giving me destiny's order, that her face was the dreaded face of my future. I felt near her the luminous vertigos that rise from the abyss, and the call of very deep water. The charm of peril emanated from her and attracted me inexorably. I did not try to flee from her, for I would have escaped death more easily."] "Hiver 1899-1900. Débuts de l'idylle. Un soir, Vivien est invitée par sa nouvelle amie dans l'atelier de Mme Barney [mère de Natalie], 153 avenue Victor-Hugo, à l'angle de la rue de Longchamp. Natalie s'enhardit à lire des vers de sa composition. Comme Vivien lui dit aimer ces vers, elle lui répond qu'il vaut mieux aimer le poète. Réponse bien digne de l'Amazone." ["Winter 1899-1900. Beginning of the idyll. One evening, Vivien is invited by her new friend to Mme Barney's [Natalie's mother] studio, 153 avenue Victor-Hugo, at the corner of rue de Longchamp. Natalie ventures to read verses of her composition. As Vivien tells her she loves these verses, she replies that it is better to love the poet. A response quite worthy of the Amazon."] (J.-P. Goujon, Tes blessures sont plus douces que leurs caresses) Two years of unequal happiness would follow, punctuated by Natalie's recurring infidelities and Renée's pathological jealousy, whose letters oscillate between inflamed declarations and painful mea culpa. "Renée Vivien, c'est la fille de Sappho et de Baudelaire, c'est la fleur du mal 1900 avec des fièvres, des envols brisés, des voluptés tristes." ["Renée Vivien is the daughter of Sappho and Baudelaire, she is the flower of evil 1900 with fevers, broken flights, sad voluptuousnesses."] (Jean Chalon, Portrait d'une séductrice)
In 1901 came an important breakup that would last almost two years; Renée, despite Natalie's entreaties and the intermediaries she sends to win her back, resists. "Les deux amies se revirent, et se fut, en août 1905, le pèlerinage à Lesbos, qui constitua une déception pour Natalie Barney et demeura sans lendemain. [...] Le ressort était définitivement brisé. Les deux anciennes amies cessèrent de se voir dès 1907, et Vivien mourut sans qu'elles se soient revues." ["The two friends saw each other again, and it was, in August 1905, the pilgrimage to Lesbos, which constituted a disappointment for Natalie Barney and remained without a tomorrow. [...] The spring was definitively broken. The two former friends ceased to see each other from 1907, and Vivien died without their having seen each other again."] (J.-P. Goujon, Ibid.)
Precious and very rare letter from Sappho 1900 to the Amazon.