Where Renée Vivien is Buried

Born Pauline Tarn in London in 1877, Renée Vivien was born to an English father and an American mother. Vivien inherited her father's fortune at the age of nine, allowing her to permanently move to Paris at twenty-one when she was able to access the trust with her father's fortune. This vast wealth allowed Vivien to travel great distances to fulfill her various whims, including setting up a lesbian colony on the island of Lesbos with Natalie Barney and traveling to Turkey (then still part of the Ottoman Empire) to rendezvous with one of her lovers, the wife of a diplomat. Vivien's inherited fortune also allowed her to hire tutors to learn Greek to translate Sappho's poetry into French. Vivien's biographers mention that if she was not happy with some of her published books that she would remove them from circulation entirely, so the works she made public were nothing short of perfect. She did not rely on her art as a source of income so she could labor over it for as long as she wanted and if she wasn't happy with it, she could simply throw it away or ensure that it never reached the public eye. Vivien is not only known for her translations of Sappho's poetry but also her own poetry, heavily inspired by Sappho's. Vivien is praised for writing explicitly lesbian poems at the turn of the 20th century in Paris, France. Drawing from Sappho's works, Vivien sought connections to the past and continuity from the past to her present. Her life was short-lived, however, as she died at thirty-two from pneumonia after suffering for many years from alcoholism and anorexia nervosa. Her life was described as a long suicide by those close to her, as she romanticized death in her life and her works of poetry.

Tex Sources:

Engelking, Tama. “Renée Vivien’s Sapphic Legacy: Remembering the ‘House of Muses.’” Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture & Social Justice 18, no. 1 & 2 (1993 1992): 138. https://journals.msvu.ca/index.php/atlantis/article/view/5174/4372.

Rodriguez-Hunter, Suzanne. Wild Heart: A Life: Natalie Clifford Barney and the Decadence of Literary Paris. HarperCollins e-books, 2009. https://silo.pub/wild-heart-a-life-natalie-clifford-barney-and-the-decadence-of-literary-paris.html.

Image Sources:

“Photo of Renée Vivien at Her Burial Site in Passy Cemetery,” September 15, 2014. http://tonyshaw3.blogspot.com/2014/09/cimetiere-de-passy-7-renee-vivien.html.

“Renée Vivien's Epitaph at Passy Cemetery,” September 15, 2014. http://tonyshaw3.blogspot.com/2014/09/cimetiere-de-passy-7-renee-vivien.html.

“Renée Vivien's Mausoleum at Passy Cemetery,” September 15, 2014. http://tonyshaw3.blogspot.com/2014/09/cimetiere-de-passy-7-renee-vivien.html.