RENEE. VIVIEN

Appearing here together for the first time in English, in an exquisite translation by Brian Stableford, are the two markedly different novels issued by Renée Vivien under the title of A Woman Appeared to Me. First published in 1904 and 1905, these masterpieces of symbolist fiction recount Vivien's obsessive, torturing love affairs, most especially with the American writer Natalie Clifford Barney. Originally received with hostility due to their fervent championship of lesbianism, these highly sophisticated specimens of poetic prose, which offer an unusual combination of delicacy and fervor, economy and flamboyance, today can be seen as groundbreaking, and quite unparalleled, confessions of the pain and despair of intense amour.

A Woman Appeared to Me

Bringing together four entire collections of the prose poems and short stories of the lesbian Symbolist "RenÉe Vivien" (Pauline Mary Tarn, 1877-1909), the current volume is compromised predominately of works which have never before appeared in English. It is as much by virtue of her idiosyncrasies as because of her considerable artistry that Pauline Tarn/RenÉe Vivien was, and remains, an extremely interesting figure. She had the rare privilege of combining a very considerable technical skill and intellectual brilliance with a vivid and versatile imagination and a literary standpoint that was unique in its day. That standpoint remains unusual even now, although historical circumstances have become much more hospitable to its potential appreciation in the last quarter of a century and her work is certainly more likely to find a sympathetic and understanding audience today than ever before. The four collections in this volume are: Fjord Mists, From Green to Violet, The She-Wolf Lady, and Christ, Aphrodite and Monsieur PÉpin.

RENEE. VIVIEN

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