Hawthorne on Islert (2024)

Renée Vivien (Pauline Tarn, 1877–1909) was much preoccupied by the question of her posthumous reputation. “Relirez-vous mes vers / Par les futurs matins neigeant sur l'univers” she wondered (in “Vous pour qui j’écrivis”)? Vivien has had to wait a long time for a reader of the caliber of Camille Islert to come along, but you could say that her prayers have been answered. In Renée Vivien: une poétique sous influence ? Islert gives Vivien her due as a poet worthy of intense and extensive study in a monograph that stretches to nearly six hundred pages (it was originally a thesis). The key word throughout is that of influence, a thread that links the four major sections of the book where Islert returns to the topic from different angles: what is meant by influence in a literary context, what is its role in how poets are evaluated, how the concept is deployed differently when it comes to reading the work of male versus female writers, and how does a poetic voice establish its originality? A secondary theme of importance is the concept of “dédoublement,” a split between the self and the poetic voice that sometimes takes the form of being able to talk about a “je” in the third person.

But first there is a lot of brush to be cleared. One issue, for example, is how to refer to the author: poète, poétesse, something else? Islert opts for poétesse because Vivien was “l’une des seules femmes du tournant du siècle à utiliser volontairement le terme” (6). Then Islert launches into her subject with an overview of the difficulties of working on nineteenth-century women poets by way of introduction to refute the common perception that Vivien is either “imitatrice ou femme damnée” (23). Islert stresses that her goal is to treat the entirety of Vivien's work “comme un ensemble” (26), an aim grounded in a larger discussion of the relationship of femininity to poetry that draws on the work of numerous critics, both French (Christine Planté, Patricia Izquierdo, Nicole Albert) and North American (Harold Bloom, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, Gretchen Schulz, Adrianna Paliyenko).

The main body of the study comes in four large parts with subdivisions into chapters, in the first of which Islert aims to show “la construction d'un sujet ‘en procès’” (48) to borrow Kristeva's term. The second part analyses Vivien's world and “la construction formelle des poèmes pour mettre en valeur conjointement les systèmes d'opposition symbolique puis d’hybridation qui s’y jouent” (49). The third section looks at Vivien’s deployment of female figures and the foundational myths of the turn-of-the-century period, while the final section examines the emergence of a discourse that articulates a “‘je’ lesbien” (50).

One “idée reçue” that Islert takes on is the way that Vivien is often presented as a follower of Baudelaire. While this association yokes her name to that of a major poet, it robs her of her originality. Her works is too easily dismissed, asserts Islert, as that of a mere imitator, almost a plagiarist, but one who can’t help it (because only a woman and therefore incapable of originality). Islert coins the term “baudelairisme” (65) to refer to this process and comments “Renée Vivien est ainsi lavée de toute culpabilité, mais, du même coup, déclarée inapte à penser la poésie” (63). To present a more nuanced picture of Vivien’s poetic influences, Islert does a herculean job of tracking down every conceivable coded, oblique reference in Vivien's work (so many from British authors such as Swinburne and Rosetti) to argue that Vivien is not so much imitating as weaving together strands of discourse as a form of dialogue. This is not a passive process of simply reproducing the voice of other “masters,” but her work is “l’occasion de jouer sur des connaissances communes pour créer avec le lecteur une connivence” (81) as well as “intérroger les frontières qui séparent les oeuvres” (104).

Throughout the study, Islert situates Vivien in the context of decadent thought and aesthetics, arguing that her work represents a kind of “carrefour des tendances artistiques du tournant 1900” (181) while maintaining that there is not one single “decadence.” For example, in part three, Islert analyses the way Vivien deploys classical figures (which here includes biblical personae such as Lilith and Vashti) to elaborate a form of female purity that defies the male gaze. Islert characterizes this as a “nouvelle mythographie décadente” (313).

In addition to demonstrating deep knowledge of Vivien's entire oeuvre, Islert also mines Vivien’s autobiographical prose fiction, such as Une femme m'apparut along with the much less well known L’être double, for insights about how Vivien uses dédoublement to represent poetic figures. In the former, Vivien offers the persona San Giovanni, loosely inspired by the androgynous representation of John the Baptist by Leonardo da Vinci. L’être double presents an even more striking alter ego, Vivian Lindsay. The work has long been overlooked because it appeared under a different pseudonym (Paule Riversdale) and was out of print, but thanks to the efforts of ErosOnyx Press, who have been republishing all of Vivien’s works, the book is once again easily accessible and rewards study, as Islert amply demonstrates. What consistently emerges from this deep dive into self-representation is that Vivien sought an androgynous voice, but, argues Islert, not the usual androgyny of the decadent period, which somehow is always already male (paradoxically), but a unique, female-inflected version of androgyny.

The final section of the study returns explicitly to the theme of influence to ask if and how Vivien can “Contrecarrer l’influence,” which entails (as the subtitle of part four announces) a path from “Des Subjectivités féminines au sujet politique lesbien” (435). As part of this process, after reformulating the lyric voice of the speaking poet (“I”), Vivien must also reinvent the addressee, the “tu.” Throughout, Islert balances abstract theoretical discourse with perceptive observations about specific texts. For example, although Vivien gradually assumes a “lesbian ‘je’” as she moves from publishing under a gender-neutral name (“R. Vivien”) to an explicitly gendered authorial identity (with La Vénus des aveugles in 1903), Islert notes that erotic encounters still mainly take place in the future tense (456).

In her conclusion, Islert returns to reviewing explicitly the argument about influence. During the Belle Epoque, argues Islert, “influence” takes on a new importance when it is applied in asymmetrical fashion to male and female poets: women require the injection of male influence to be fertile as writers, whereas male writers give new life to those they imitate. Vivien doesn't dodge the question of influence but she develops a meta-discourse that evades (or at least attempts to) the traps of female subjectivity by taking on a poetic voice that is both androgynous and female at the same time (the contradictions notwithstanding). 

It is difficult to do full justice to the extent and complexity of Islert’s reading of Vivien succinctly. The study is long, the ideas are nuanced, and the discourse is at times abstract. Indeed, Vivien comes across not just as a decadent writer, but as a postmodern one, preoccupied with subjectivity, metadiscourse, and deconstruction. This kind of analysis will not be to everyone’s taste, but regardless of what approach one favors, readers will gain much insight into Vivien’s work from this essential study. This is not the kind of criticism that takes on close readings of things like meter, metaphor, and rhyme, but there is a wealth of perceptive commentary. Vivien should be rejoicing that her work has received such attention. I give the last word to Islert: “[Vivien’s] exemple nous montre que la réflexivité affichée dans les oeuvres poétiques féminines du tournant du siècle représente toujours une prise de risque fondamentale, lorsque la toute relative bienveillance à l’égard de leurs écrits ne tient qu’au fil de la sincérité que l’on souhaite y trouver” (584).