Adventures of the Mind: The Memoirs of Natalie Clifford Barney (The Cutting Edge : Lesbian Life and Literature)

by Natalie Clifford Barney, John Spalding Gatton (Translator)

In this book, Barney explores her family tree, chronicles her friendships and associations through reprinted correspondence and recreated conversations, and evokes the golden age of her salon in gallery of literary portraits.

Foreword / Karla Jay --
Introduction / Karla Jay --
1. Forewarning --
2. First Adventure: Oscar Wilde in the United States --
3. Pierre Louys circa 1900: Literary Beginnings --
4. Anatole France: Among the Amazons --
5. Remy de Gourmont: The Amazon's Friend --
6. Marcel Proust --
7. Rainer Maria Rilke: Belated Appreciation --
8. Fleg, Then Zangwill, Then Fleg --
9. Gabriele D'Annunzio: At Home --
10. Max Jacob --
11. Doctor Jesus-Christ Mardrus --
12. The Critical State of Andre Rouveyre --
13. Paul Valery: The Dawn of an Academician: An Attempt at Clarification-
14. Legends and Anecdotes, Translators and Detractors --
15. An Academy of Women: Foreword --
16. Lucie Delarue-Mardrus, President --
17. English Bohemian Life and Anna Wickham --
18. Colette --
19. Rachilde --
20. Aurel: Festival in Return --
21. Mina Loy --
22. Elisabeth de Gramont --
23. Djuna Barnes --
24. Gertrude Stein --
25. Romaine Brooks: The Case of a Great Painter of the Human Face --
26. Renee Vivien --
27. Retrospective of Marie Leneru by Magdeleine Marx Paz --
28. P.P.C.: Leave-Taking.

Genres: Lesbian, Memoir, Nonfiction, France, Jewish, LGBT, Queer

248 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1929

About the author

Natalie Clifford Barney (31 October 1876 – 2 February 1972) was an American expatriate who lived, wrote and hosted a literary salon in Paris. She was a noted poet, memoirist and epigrammatist.

Barney's salon was held at her home on Paris's Left Bank for more than 60 years and brought together writers and artists from around the world, including many leading figures in French literature along with American and British Modernists of the Lost Generation. She worked to promote writing by women and formed a "Women's Academy" in response to the all-male French Academy while also giving support and inspiration to male writers from Remy de Gourmont to Truman Capote.

She was openly lesbian and began publishing love poems to women under her own name as early as 1900, considering scandal as "the best way of getting rid of nuisances". In her writings she supported feminism, paganism and pacifism. She opposed monogamy and had many overlapping, long and short-term relationships, including an on-and-off romance with poet Renée Vivien and a 50-year relationship with painter Romaine Brooks. Her life and love affairs served as inspiration for many novels, ranging from the salacious French bestseller Sapphic Idyll to The Well of Loneliness, arguably the most famous lesbian novel of the 20th century.[3]

Reviews

[au · Rating 4.5 out of 5]

What I love most about Natalie Barney is her self awareness and her uncompromising wit. I think this is the closest to a memoir we have from Natalie; somehow, we find her amongst her writings of others and amongst the lines of poems that are not hers. I loved the different "forms" of texts this book includes, with letters, excerpts from books, poems, etc. Reading the letters feels as if I'm intruding on something very intimate (though they all have a common theme- the men are on Natalie's feet). For example, Proust being honored and sorrowful that he cannot attend Natalie's salon and Pierre Louys preferring Natalie's works to Renee's. Meanwhile, Natalie praises the works of her female friends, including Gertrude Stein and Mina Loy. She even praises the poems of Anna Wickham, even though Berthe Cleyrergue (Natalie's housekeeper and confidante) noted that Natalie told her not to respond to Anna's calls. I found many writers I didn't know of before and ought to read, including Wickham. I find solace in her feminist poems, such as "The Walk" that Natalie features in her chapter.

However, I found that the portraits of Natalie's female friends/lovers were not as well developed as the chapters on her male friends. I get that the chapters on the female friends were read aloud during her Fridays, but it felt imbalanced compared to Natalie's portraits on the men (though we know, of course, which of the two Natalie preferred). She states in the preface to the second half of the book that she only wishes "to imply, to suggest, to sketch" these women and have the reader appreciate their lives on their own. Finishing each chapters left me waiting for more.. Also, Natalie is brutal to Renee in the chapter about her. She basically deems Renee a betrayer of their pagan cult for converting to Christianity on her deathbed. I wish that there was a full translation of Souvenirs indiscrets, because those chapters are Natalie's full accounts of her friends. The chapters Renee Vivien, Remy de Gourmont, and Colette are translated in A Perilous Advantage: The Best of Natalie Clifford Barney by Anna Livia and are beautiful!!

I think it would be more difficult to enjoy this book if one doesn't know already of Natalie's life or the names of the French literary circle, since she does throw a lot of names out (some for name dropping, honestly). Natalie displays her true wit in this book, as witty as her pensees. I found a new favorite quote from this book, though not by Natalie, but by Mallarme: "A roll of the dice will never abolish chance."

Quotes:

"If one is surprised that the author intrudes so often into these pages, it is becuase these adventures of the mind develop necessarily in the encounters of two people. Like other adventures, these have their dangerous liasions, their attempts at understanding, their intrigues, their variants of infidelity, their quarrels of pride and even of love." (24)

"Should I permit the expression of a feeling to outlive the feeling that prompted it? Should I keep the letter that authenticates it? Should I fix it thus in its fidelity?. . .give it an afterlife?. . .Should I burn this or that letter but save the letters of so-and-so?" (27)

"Friendship as much as love undergoes fluctuations, and the tokens of a sentiment are badly reduced to dust at others' homes. In the adventures of the mind there are complaints, sudden turns of such delicacy that no law could govern them. And isn't it by a supreme intuition that every creature returns home to die, and restores to the dovecote all these scattered flocks--our letters?" (44)

"I have nothing formal, reassuring, or fixed; it is possible that one day I will no longer be found at my at-home day. --I will have burned my Temple of Friendship--a ritual gesture owed to missing friends--or I will have borne it away like a tabernacle toward the unknown, with the horizons as my smiling accomplices." (198)