"Tu vois bien que mes pensées te reviennent toujours."

Autograph letter signed "Pauline" by Renée Vivien addressed to Natalie Clifford Barney and written in violet ink on two double sheets edged with violets. Transverse folds inherent to posting.
Very fine love letter evoking the only novel by the Violet Muse, Une femme m'apparut.
"Comment aurais-je pu ne point songer à toi Natalie, moi qui écrivais « Une femme m'apparut » - qui l'écrivais pour la seconde fois avec mes yeux nouveaux, et devenus plus clairs - avec mon cœur plus calme et plus profond ?" ["How could I not have thought of you Natalie, I who was writing 'Une femme m'apparut' - who was writing it for the second time with my new eyes, which had become clearer - with my heart calmer and deeper?"]
Published in 1904, this novel - the only one of Renée's literary career - tells the love story of the narrator and "Vally," Natalie Clifford Barney, from their beginning to their tragic end and the "apparition" of the savior Hélène de Zuylen. Reconciled with the Amazon, Renée undertakes to rewrite the book which will appear at the beginning of 1906: "Literary and stylistic improvement? No. The concern to justify herself anew, but this time in the face of Natalie Barney, is beyond doubt. Remorse too: now, the apparition that gives the book its title is no longer Eva-Hélène de Zuylen, but Lorely-Natalie Barney, and this from page 2. When we know that, during the summer of 1904, unexpected reunions in Bayreuth came to unite Natalie Barney and Vivien, we better understand the meaning of this new version of the novel, [Renée] only returns to her amorous past, to deliver us a second version, revised and corrected. She thus erases the final choice she had suggested in the first version. Complete palinode, confirmed by the very text of the letters that Vivien will write to Natalie Barney in 1904 and especially in 1905." (J.-P. Goujon, Tes blessures sont plus douces que leurs caresses) This confusion of feelings shows through this letter filled with oxymorons: "je goûte une tristesse charmante à t'évoquer [...] quand je songe à toi, j'évoque ma plus belle douleur" ["I taste a charming sadness in evoking you [...] when I think of you, I evoke my most beautiful pain"] The sadness - mixed with unconditional love - is here pushed to its paroxysm: "Ne te laisse pas attrister par ma lettre grise de ce soir. Il y a des heures ternes - ce sont peut-être les meilleures - Dans tous les cas, ce sont les plus vraies [...] Et ceux qui sont, comme tu le dis « ingrats et joyeux » sont fort à plaindre." ["Do not let yourself be saddened by my grey letter this evening. There are dull hours - these are perhaps the best - In any case, these are the truest [...] And those who are, as you say 'ungrateful and joyful' are much to be pitied."] Vivien effaces herself completely in favor of her beloved, even proposing to live in her place: "Va - si tu le peux - là où je voudrais être - à Mytilène. Je verrais l'île merveilleuse à travers tes prunelles - tu me ferais respirer tous ses parfums - A dire vrai, le courage m'a manqué pour y aller. Je n'avais plus la force ni le désir de partir ainsi." ["Go - if you can - where I would like to be - to Mytilene. I would see the marvelous island through your eyes - you would make me breathe all its perfumes - To tell the truth, I lacked the courage to go there. I no longer had the strength nor the desire to leave thus."] "Ne peux-tu, toi, aller à Mytilène et me rapporter des roses de là-bas ?" ["Cannot you go to Mytilene and bring me roses from there?"] Yet, it is together that the two lovers will soon undertake the journey to Lesbos; it will be the last of their story.

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 to sapphism, paid only discrete attention to this new acquaintance. Renée on the other hand was totally subjugated by the young American and will 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 sharp blue eyes like a blade. I had the obscure presentiment that this woman was giving 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."] "Winter 1899-1900. Beginning of the idyll. One evening, Vivien is invited by her new friend to the studio of Mme Barney [Natalie's mother], 153 avenue Victor-Hugo, at the corner of rue de Longchamp. Natalie grows bold enough 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, op. cit.) Two years of unequal happiness followed, punctuated by Natalie's recurring infidelities and Renée's morbid 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 came an important break that would last almost two years; Renée, despite Natalie's solicitations and the intermediaries she sends to reconquer her, resists. "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 tomorrow. [...] 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.