"Lorely - Undine - Viviane - reçois mon coeur entre tes mains étranges - et si douces !"

Ice and fire: Set of two handwritten letters signed “Paule” and “Pauline” addressed to Natalie Clifford Barney: « Lorely – Undine – Viviane – reçois mon cœur entre tes mains étranges – et si douces ! » « Il m'est impossible de te revoir ! »Two handwritten letters signed «Paule» and «Pauline» addressed to Natalie Clifford Barney and written in black ink on a double leaf with a silver purple header and the address 3 rue Jean-Baptiste Dumas. On the letter signed «Pauline», the address at the top is crossed out with a line of ink. Transverse fold from having been sent.

Skillful romantic contrast from the virtuoso Renée Vivien, who, in turn Paule and Pauline, orchestrates her romantic relationships before her run away to Lesbos.

Several years after an extraordinary break-up, during which Natalie Clifford Barney tried to win back the Muse aux violettes, the latter finally fell back into her arms.

The first letter, signed “Paule” is very sensual:
“I have thought of you so deeply and with such softness since you left! And I see you again, in your dress shimmering with opals, magical and prestigious... Yesterday's spell has regained its eternal power over me... It is now three o'clock in the morning and I am not sleeping at all and I am thinking of you, intensely... and I bitterly consider that one evening when you were beside me, foolishly, a stupid fatigue went through me... While this night when I am alone, I cannot sleep.” We discover at the turn of a sentence that this missive, written in haste, is completely secret:
“Don't be surprised, beautiful, to receive any day an icy letter telling you that I am going to Holland with my friend and whoever. My friend has demanded that I write you this letter, she is very worried, very nervous, about you. Please don't be mad with me when you receive this letter, I had to write it to calm and reassure my friend. Once again, forgive me!”

The “friend” in question is none other that the baroness Hélène de Zuylen, with whom Renée maintained a stable relationship since her break-up with l'Amazone in 1901. The “Brioche”, as Natalie calls her, who tried by all means to save Renée from the torments of her heart, even asks her to write “an icy letter” to her rival. This false letter, in a very different tone from the first, seems to have been written directly under her dictation:
“After you left, I thought a lot about everything that had just happened, and I can only repeat to you what I have already told you: it is impossible for me to see you again, under any circumstances. The nervous disorder of which I am now suffering and of which only you are the cause, demands the utmost tranquility in the interest of my health, and I beg you to refrain, in the future, from any attempt at getting together, which, I warn you in advance, will be absolutely useless. You will see, from this letter, that I am in Holland, with my friend, as I told you. We go out together, among the calm landscapes, a charming rest. Farewell, Natalie, and remember that you were the sole cause of everything that happened. Pauline”

However, a third muse occupies all of Renée's thoughts: the young Ottoman Kérimé Turkhan-Pacha, with whom she has maintained an intense and regular correspondence for a year. Several days later, she left France with Natalie for Mytilene (Lesbos) and took the opportunity to escape and finally meet her Bosphorus sultana for the very first time.

A very beautiful testimony of Renée Vivien's ubiquity in love. Precious and very rare letters from Sappho 1900 to l'Amazone.


It is at the end of 1899 and through Violette Shillito that Renée Vivien – then Pauline Tarn – met Natalie Clifford Barney "this American woman softer than a scarf, whose sparkling face shines with golden hair, sea blue eyes, never-ending teeth" (Colette, Claudine à Paris). Natalie, who had just experienced a summer romance with the scandalous Liane de Pougy who introduced her to sapphism, paid little attention to this new acquaintance. Renée, on the other hand, was totally captivated by the young American woman and describes this love at first sight in her autobiographical novel, Une femme m'apparut: "I lived again the hour, already well past, when I saw her for the first time, felt the shiver that ran through me when my eyes met the mortal steel of her look, those eyes blue and piercing as a blade. I had a dim premonition that this woman would determine the pattern of my fate, and that her face was the predestined face of my Future. Near her I felt the luminous dizziness which comes at the edge of an abyss, or the attraction of a very deep water. She radiated the charm of danger, which drew me to her inexorably." "Winter 1899-1900. Beginnings of the idyll. One evening, Vivien is invited by her new friend to Mme Barney's studio [Natalie's mother], 153 avenue Victor-Hugo, on the corner of the rue de Longchamp. Natalie finds the courage to read the verses of her composition. As Vivien tells her to love these verses, she tells her that it is better to love the poet. A response worthy of the Amazon." (J.-P. Goujon, Tes blessures sont plus douces que leurs caresses) Two years of unequal happiness will follow, punctuated by Natalie's recurring infidelities and Renée's sickly jealousy, the letters of which oscillate between inflamed declarations and painful admissions of guilt. "Renée Vivien is the daughter of Sappho and Baudelaire, she is the 1900 flower of evil with fevers, broken-up fights, sad delights." (Jean Chalon, Portrait d'une séductrice)

In 1901, a major break-up occurred which lasted almost two years; Renée, despite requests from Natalie and the others she sent to win her back, resisted. "The two friends saw each other again, and in August 1905, went on a pilgrimage to Lesbos, which was a disappointment for Natalie Barney and was short-lived. [...] The spring was broken once and for all. The two former friends stopped seeing each other in 1907, and Vivien died without them seeing each other again." (J.-P. Goujon, ibid.)