Renée Vivien

Renée Vivien, born as Pauline Tarn (1877-November 10, 1909) was an American poet who wrote in the French language. She took to heart all the mannerisms of Symbolism, and was one of the last poets to claim allegiance to the school. She wrote verse and prose poetry.

Quotation

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:Voici la nuit: je vais ensevelir mes morts,

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:Mes songes, mes désirs, mes douleurs, mes remords,

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:Tout le passé... Je vais ensevelir mes morts.

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::::::---Let the Dead Bury Their Dead

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:You for whom I wrote, O beautiful young women!

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:You alone whom I loved, will you reread my verse...?

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:Will you say, 'This woman had the ardor which eludes me ..

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:Why is she not alive? She would have loved me ....'

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:Everywhere I go I repeat: I do no belong here.

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:Who will bring me hemlock in their own hands?

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Words To My Friend

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:Understand me: I am a mediocre being,

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:Not good, not very bad, peaceful, a bit cunning.

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:I detest heavy perfume and shrill voices,

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:And gray is more dear to me than scarlet or ocher.

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:

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:I love this dying day which grows dim by degrees,

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:A fire, the cloistered intimacy of a room

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:Where the lamps, veiling their amber transparencies,

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:Redden the antique bronze and turn the gray stoneware blue.

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:

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:My eyes drop to the carpet smoother than sand,

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:Indolently, I evoke rivers flecked with gold

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:Where the clarity of the beautiful past still floats...

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:And nevertheless, I am quite guilty.

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:

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:You see: I am at the age when a maiden gives her hand

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:To the man whom her weakness searches and dreads,

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:And I have not chosen a companion for the road,

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:Because you appeared at that turn in the road.

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:

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:The hyacinth was bleeding on the red hills,

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:You were dreaming and Eros walked at your side...

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:I am woman, I have no right to beauty.

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:I had been condemned to masculine ugliness.

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:

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:And I had the inexcusable audacity of wanting

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:Sisterly love fashioned with soft whiteness,

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:The furtive step that didn't trample the fern

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:And the sweet voice that comes to ally itself with evening.

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:

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:They have forbidden me your hair, the look in your eyes,

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:It seems that your hair is long and full of odors

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:And it seems your eyes reveal strange longings

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:And grow agitated like rebellious waves.

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:

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:They have pointed at me with irritated gestures,

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:Because my eyes searched out your tender look...

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:And seeing us go by, no one wanted to understand

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:That I had simply chosen you.

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:

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:Consider the vile law that I transgress

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:And judge my love that knows nothing of evil,

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:As candid, as necessary and fatal

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:As the desire that joins lover to mistress.

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:

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:They didn't read in my eyes how clearly I saw

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:The road where my destiny leads me,

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:And they have said, "Who is this damned woman

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:Who gnaws blindly at the flames of hell?"

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:

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:Leave them to the concern of their impure morality,

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:And let us imagine that dawn has the blondness of honey,

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:That days without spite and nights without malice

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:Come, such as lovers whose goodness reassures...

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:

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:We will go to see the clear stars on the mountains...

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:What matters to us, the judgment of men?

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:And what have we to doubt, since we are

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:Pure before life and since we love one another?...

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:

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::::::from At The Sweet Hour of Hand In Hand, trans. Sandia Belgrade, 1979

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