Natalie Clifford Barney

In her writings she supported feminism and pacifism. She opposed monogamy and had many overlapping long and short-term relationships, including on-and-off romances with poet Renée Vivien and dancer Armen Ohanian 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. Read Less

They reconciled and traveled together to Lesbos, where they lived happily together for a short time and talked about starting a school of poetry for women like the one which Sappho, according to tradition, had founded on Lesbos some 2,500 years before. However, Vivien soon got a letter from her lover Hélène (the Baroness de Zuylen de Nyevelt) and went to Constantinople thinking she would break up with her in person. Vivien planned to meet Barney in Paris afterward but instead stayed with the Baroness and this time, the breakup was permanent.

Vivien's health declined rapidly after this. According to Vivien's friend and neighbor Colette, she ate almost nothing and drank heavily, even rinsing her mouth with perfumed water to hide the smell. Colette's account has led some to call Vivien an anorexic but this diagnosis did not yet exist at the time. Vivien was also addicted to the sedative chloral hydrate. In 1908 she attempted suicide by overdosing on laudanum and died the following year. In a memoir written fifty years later Barney said "She could not be saved. Her life was a long suicide. Everything turned to dust and ashes in her hands." Read Less

By the end of Barney's life her work had been largely forgotten. In 1979, Nathalie Barney was honored with a place setting in Judy Chicago's feminist work of art The Dinner Party. In the 1980s Barney began to be recognized for what Karla Jay calls an "almost uncanny anticipation" of the concerns of later feminist writers. English translations of some of her memoirs, essays, and epigrams appeared in 1992, but most of her plays and poetry are still untranslated.

Her indirect influence on literature, through her salon and her many literary friendships, can be seen in the number of writers who have addressed or portrayed her in their works. Claudine S'en Va (Claudine and Annie, 1903) by Colette contains a brief appearance by Barney as "Miss Flossie," echoing the nickname she had earlier been given in de Pougy's novel Idylle Saphique. Renée Vivien wrote many poems about her, as well as a Symbolist novel, Une Femme M'Apparut (A Woman Appeared to Me, 1904), in which she is described as having "eyes... as sharp and blue as a blade. The charm of peril emanated from her and drew me inexorably." Remy de Gourmont addressed her in his Letters to the Amazon, and Truman Capote mentioned her in his last, unfinished novel Answered Prayers. She also appeared in two later novels by writers who never met her: Francesco Rapazzini's Un Soir chez l'Amazone (An Evening with the Amazon, 2004) is a historical novel about Barney's salon, while Anna Livia's Minimax (1991) portrays both her and Renee Vivien as still-living vampires. Read Less