{"id":86609,"date":"2015-06-11T15:05:15","date_gmt":"2015-06-11T19:05:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=86609"},"modified":"2015-06-11T15:49:34","modified_gmt":"2015-06-11T19:49:34","slug":"love-is-a-bohemian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/06\/11\/love-is-a-bohemian\/","title":{"rendered":"Love Is a Bohemian"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"600full-renee-vivien\"<\/a>

Vivien and Barney in 1900.<\/p><\/div>\n

From \u201cRen\u00e9e Vivien,\u201d an essay by Natalie Clifford Barney anthologized in <\/em>A Perilous Advantage: The Best of Natalie Clifford Barney. Vivien, a poet who was born on this day in 1877, began an intense affair with Barney in 1899; in 1901, they broke up, and Barney began to devote herself to winning Vivien\u2019s affections again. Eventually they reunited and traveled together to Lesbos, but not without great effort on Barney\u2019s part. \u201cHow could I win her back?\u201d she writes: \u201cShould I bang on her closed door? Dare to send her a more direct poem, reveal to her my suffering, how much I was suffering? Swallow my pride and admit that I loved her still, since I could not help but be faithful to her?\u201d She decided to write a sonnet\u2014\u201cMy tears are a slow poison I will drink\/Instead of gleaning from some trivial affair\/A barren cure, the final numbness,\u201d are among its lines.<\/em><\/p>\n

But how to get this sonnet to her without anyone else reading it? I asked my friend, Emma Calv\u00e9\u2014who was also suffering from a romantic desertion \u2026 to lend me her irresistible voice. That night, disguised as street singers, she sang under Ren\u00e9e Vivien\u2019s French windows: \u201cI have lost Eurydice, there is no pain like mine,\u201d while I pretended to pick up coins thrown to us from the other floors. At last Ren\u00e9 opened her French window, the better to hear that astounding voice singing the famous aria. \u201cLove is a Bohemian whom no law binds.\u201d The moment had arrived. I threw my poem, attached to a bouquet of blowers, over the garden fence so that she would see it and pick it up. But passers-by were beginning to crowd around us and we had to slip away before the singer, recognized even in the shows by her voice, was swamped with applause. <\/p>\n

I soon got a reply to my sonnet. Not from Ren\u00e9e as I had hoped, but from the governess who, having gathered up both poem and bouquet, \u201cdestined for a person whose welfare was her concern, begged me to cease these dispatches which were as useless as they were distressing.\u201d<\/p>\n

If it is true that feelings cannot be summoned to order, it is truer still that they cannot be dismissed to order! My rage was only equaled by my anguish. I sent an SOS to Eva, who came immediately. Horrified to find me in such despair, she went to plead my cause with Ren\u00e9e, who saw her several times and even made advances\u00a0to her but obstinately refused to speak to me \u2026<\/p>\n

Knowing that Ren\u00e9e had invited Eva to join her in a box at the opera to watch Manfred, with Eva\u2019s complicity I took her place. Ren\u00e9e greeted me with open arms and we listened to the music of Schumann rapturously entwined, watched by the vigilant eye of the governess who was sitting in state in the corner of the box next to Levy-Dhurmer for whom Ren\u00e9e had just posed. As she drove me back to my hotel, Ren\u00e9e promised to meet me again the next day. Since the hour she had suggested had already passed, and as I had to take the train to Monte Carlo that very day, I summoned the courage to telephone her. \u201cOne cannot play one\u2019s life over again,\u201d she told me. Then, when she heard that I had just received a telegram saying that my father\u2019s health had deteriorated, she added, hesitantly, \u201cIf his health gives cause for alarm and you need me \u2026 \u201d \u201cI don\u2019t need anyone,\u201d I replied bravely and hung up, with death in my soul.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From \u201cRen\u00e9e Vivien,\u201d an essay by Natalie Clifford Barney anthologized in A Perilous Advantage: The Best of Natalie Clifford Barney. Vivien, a poet who was born on this day in 1877, began an intense affair with Barney in 1899; in 1901, they broke up, and Barney began to devote herself to winning Vivien\u2019s affections again. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[419],"tags":[1741,2111,18420,7221,8301,18421,962],"class_list":["post-86609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-culture","tag-lesbians","tag-love","tag-natalie-clifford-barney","tag-poems","tag-renee-vivien","tag-ruses","tag-sonnets"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWinning Her Back: Natalie Clifford Barney and Renee Vivien<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Barney remembers a dramatic episode in which she tried to win back her lover, Ren\u00e9e Vivien.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/06\/11\/love-is-a-bohemian\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Love Is a Bohemian by Dan Piepenbring\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"June 11, 2015 \u2013 From \u201cRen\u00e9e Vivien,\u201d an essay by Natalie Clifford Barney anthologized in A Perilous Advantage: The Best of Natalie Clifford Barney. 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