"Il ne faut plus souffrir pour moi, ma Douceur blonde, je t'aime, je te guérirai."

Autograph letter from Renée Vivien addressed to Natalie Clifford Barney and written in black ink on a double sheet bordered with a violet trim. Transverse fold inherent to mailing.
A beautiful love letter marking the reconciliation of the Muse of Violets and the Amazon after a two-year separation: "Your letter was cruelly sweet to me, I wept reading it and something within me rejoiced despite everything to think that between us the bond was so powerful and subtle that only death could entirely untie it, if death is definitive."
Weary and very jealous of Natalie's infidelities, Renée had made the radical decision to leave her. The Amazon had then, by every means, attempted to win her back, sending emissaries as well as numerous letters: "My tears have flowed over all the letters you have sent me since the silence that had settled between us." Renée seems this time to have broken her promise never to see Natalie again and addresses this beautiful declaration to her, full of hope for the future: "Forget you! But my lips, which are the soul of my soul, have kept your reflection and your imprint. [...] Something in [me] has been broken since then, from having loved too blindly. But if it is true that there remain within us unknown tenderness and ignored sweetness that we can still lavish upon each other in a better future, let us not hesitate to discover them in the depths of our souls. I would like to take you in my arms, my Little One, like a sick child, and rock you, and console you, and heal you, and see the smiles of yesteryear bloom again on your lips. You must no longer suffer for me, my Blonde Sweetness, I love you, I will heal you." These reunions would not last however: torn between Baroness Hélène de Zuylen and Natalie, Renée would embark on a series of travels; in turn to Holland, Germany, Switzerland and Venice, she would confide her hesitations to Kérimé Turkhan-Pacha, her epistolary companion from the Bosphorus whom she would meet in the summer of 1905 during her last journey with Natalie Clifford Barney to Mytilene.
A moving letter from Renée Vivien, addressed to the great love of her life.
It was at the end of 1899 and through 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 eyes, implacable teeth"] (Colette, Claudine à Paris). Natalie, who had just experienced a summer idyll with the scandalous Liane de Pougy who had initiated her into sapphism, paid only discreet attention to this new acquaintance. Renée on the other hand was completely captivated by the young American and would relate this love at first sight 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 mortal steel eyes, her sharp blue eyes like a blade. I had the obscure prescience that this woman was giving me fate's order, that her face was the dreaded face of my future. I felt near her the luminous vertigo that rises 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 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 studio [Natalie's mother], 153 avenue Victor-Hugo, at the corner of rue de Longchamp. Natalie ventures to read verses of her composition. When 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 oscillated between passionate 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 voluptuousness."] (Jean Chalon, Portrait d'une séductrice)
In 1901 came an important break that would last almost two years; Renée, despite Natalie's solicitations and the intermediaries she sent to win her back, resisted. « 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.