"Tu es pareille à une sirène cruelle qui aurait aveuglé un esclave et qui se couronnerait étant nue, de l'indifférence de l'esclave aveugle devant sa beauté."

Autograph letter signed ("Pauline" and "P.M.T.") by Renée Vivien addressed to Natalie Clifford Barney and written in black ink on a double folio with silver-violet letterhead and the address 3 rue Jean-Baptiste Dumas. Transverse fold inherent to mailing.
Very fine love and reproach letter written after the long two-year separation and probably upon return from Mytilene (Lesbos): "Est-ce vraiment pour moi que tu restes demain, Tout-Petit ? ... Qui le saura jamais ? ... Ce doute, que le passé justifie un peu, entrave mes plus hautains élans, et fait de moi la créature misérable et triste que je suis." ["Is it really for me that you stay tomorrow, Little One? ... Who will ever know? ... This doubt, which the past somewhat justifies, hampers my most haughty impulses, and makes me the miserable and sad creature that I am."] Renée, weakened by Natalie's infidelities, struggles to trust her again ("Je ne puis croire en toi" ["I cannot believe in you"]) but continues, despite her suffering, to be entirely devoted to her: "Tu m'as dédaignée alors que tu aurais été pour moi la révélation miraculeuse - Tu m'as dédaignée... Et aujourd'hui, tu t'étonnes de ne point me trouver telle que tu m'aurais rêvée, toi qui n'as pas pris le soin de me façonner à ta guise ! Ecoute. Tu es comme un potier qui, voyant à ses pieds un argile informe, le repousserait, et qui, plus tard, voyant un de ses élèves en fait une statue imparfaite, exhalerait en termes amers sa colère et son dédain." ["You scorned me when you would have been for me the miraculous revelation - You scorned me... And today, you are surprised not to find me as you would have dreamed me, you who did not take the care to shape me to your liking! Listen. You are like a potter who, seeing at his feet an unformed clay, would push it away, and who, later, seeing one of his students make an imperfect statue from it, would exhale in bitter terms his anger and disdain."] Torn between pain and desire, Renée nevertheless calls for her lover: "Viens demain à minuit...si tu peux... si tu veux... si Ilse n'en décide pas autrement et si ton caprice te le permet..." ["Come tomorrow at midnight...if you can... if you want... if Ilse doesn't decide otherwise and if your whim allows it..."]
These reunions would not last however: torn between Baroness Hélène de Zuylen and Natalie, Renée would chain together travels; in turn to Holland, Germany, Switzerland and Venice, she would confide her hesitations to Kérimé Turkhan-Pacha her epistolary companion from the Bosphorus.
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 lived a summer idyll with the sulfurous Liane de Pougy who had initiated her into sapphism, paid only discreet attention to this new acquaintance. Renée on the other hand was totally 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 eyes of mortal steel, her eyes sharp and blue like a blade. I had the obscure prescience that this woman was intimating to me the order of destiny, 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 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 voluptuousness."] (Jean Chalon, Portrait d'une séductrice)
In 1901 occurred an important rupture that would last almost two years; Renée, despite Natalie's entreaties and the intermediaries she sends to reconquer her, 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 future. [...] The spring was definitively broken. The two former friends ceased to see each other from 1907, and Vivien died without them having seen each other again."] (J.-P. Goujon, Ibid.)
Precious and very rare letter from Sappho 1900 to the Amazon.