Djuna Barnes, ca. 1919

Djuna Barnes (June 12, 1892 – June 18, 1982) was an American writer who played an important part in the development of 20th century English language modernist writing by women and was one of the key figures in 1920s and 30s bohemian Paris after filling a similar role in the Greenwich Village of the teens. Her novel Nightwood became a cult work of modern fiction, helped by an introduction by T.S. Eliot. It stands out today for its portrayal of lesbian themes and its distinctive writing style. Since Barnes's death, interest in her work has grown and many of her books are back in print. Image File history File links Djuna_Barnes_ca_1919. ... Image File history File links Djuna_Barnes_ca_1919. ... June 12 is the 163rd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (164th in leap years), with 202 days remaining. ... 1892 (MDCCCXCII) was a leap year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ... June 18 is the 169th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (170th in leap years), with 196 days remaining. ... 1982 (MCMLXXXII) was a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The term writer can apply to anyone who creates a written work, but the word more usually designates those who write creatively or professionally, or those who have written in many different forms. ... (19th century - 20th century - 21st century - more centuries) Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s As a means of recording the passage of time, the 20th century was that century which lasted from 1901–2000 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar (1900–1999... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... For Modernism in an American context, see American modernism. ... The 1920s is a decade that is sometimes referred to as the Jazz Age or the Roaring Twenties, usually applied to America. ... The 1930s (years from 1930–1939) were described as an abrupt shift to more radical and conservative lifestyles, as countries were struggling to find a solution to the Great Depression, also known in Europe as the World Depression. ... City flag City coat of arms Motto: Fluctuat nec mergitur (Latin: Tossed by the waves, she does not sink) Paris Eiffel tower as seen from the esplanade du Trocadéro. ... The Washington Square Arch Greenwich Village (IPA pronunciation: ), also called simply the Village, is a largely residential area on the west side of downtown (southern) Manhattan in New York City named after Greenwich, London. ... // Caitlin wants nathans penis mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. ... Thomas Stearns Eliot (September 26, 1888 - January 4, 1965), was a major Modernist Anglo-American poet, dramatist, and literary critic. ... A lesbian is a woman who is romantically and sexually attracted only to other women. ...

Life

Early life (1892-1912)

Barnes was born in a log cabin on Storm King Mountain, near Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York. Her paternal grandmother, Zadel Turner Barnes, was a writer, journalist, and Women's Suffrage activist who had once hosted an influential literary salon. Her father, Wald Barnes,^[1] was an unsuccessful composer, musician, and painter. An advocate of polygamy, he married Barnes's mother Elizabeth in 1889; his mistress Fanny Clark moved in with them in 1897, when Barnes was five. They had eight children, whom Wald made little effort to support financially. Zadel, who believed her son was a misunderstood artistic genius, struggled to provide for the entire family, supplementing her diminishing income by writing begging letters to friends and acquaintances.^[2] Storm King Mountain is along the west bank of the Hudson River south of Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York, USA. Its distinctive curved ridge is the most prominent aspect of the view south down Newburgh Bay, from Newburgh, Beacon and the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge. ... Cornwall on Hudson is a village located in Orange County, New York. ... The term womens suffrage is a social, economic and political reform movement aimed at extending suffrage — the right to vote — to the women. ... A salon is a gathering of stimulating people of quality under the roof of an inspiring hostess or host, partly to amuse one another and partly to refine their taste and increase their knowledge through conversation and readings, often consciously following Horaces definition of the aims of poetry, to... The term polygamy (many marriages in late Greek) is used in related ways in social anthropology and sociobiology and sociology. ...

As the second oldest child, Barnes spent much of her childhood helping care for siblings and half-siblings. She received her early education at home, mostly from her father and grandmother, who taught her writing, art, and music but neglected subjects such as math and spelling.^[3] She claimed to have had no formal schooling at all; some evidence suggests that she was enrolled in public school for a time after age ten, though her attendance was inconsistent.^[4]

At the age of 16 she was raped, apparently by a neighbor with the knowledge and consent of her father, or possibly by her father himself. She referred to the rape obliquely in her first novel Ryder and more directly in her furious final play The Antiphon. Sexually explicit references in correspondence from her grandmother, with whom she shared a bed for years, suggest incest, but Zadel -- dead for forty years by the time the The Antiphon was written -- was left out of its indictments.^[5] Shortly before her eighteenth birthday she reluctantly "married" Fanny Clark's brother Percy Faulkner in a private ceremony without benefit of clergy. He was fifty-two. The match had been strongly promoted by her father and grandmother, but she stayed with him for no more than two months.^[6]

New York City (1912-1921)

In 1912 Barnes's family, facing financial ruin, split up. Elizabeth moved to New York City with Barnes and three of her brothers, then filed for divorce, freeing Wald to marry Fanny Clark. The move gave Barnes an opportunity to study art formally for the first time; she attended the Pratt Institute for about six months, but the need to support herself and her family -- a burden that fell largely on her -- soon drove her to leave school and take a job as a reporter at the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. Over the next few years her work appeared in almost every newspaper in New York; she wrote interviews, features, theatre reviews, and a variety of news stories, often illustrating them with her own drawings. She also published short fiction in the New York Morning Telegraph's Sunday supplement and in the pulp magazine All-Story Cavalier Weekly.^[7] New York, NY redirects here. ... Pratt Institute is a specialized, private college in New York City with campuses in Manhattan and Brooklyn. ... The Brooklyn Eagle, also called The Brooklyn Daily Eagle was a daily newspaper published in Brooklyn, New York from 1841 to 1955. ... Flynns Detective Fiction from 1941. ...

Clipping from World Magazine, September 6, 1914.

Much of Barnes's journalism was subjective and experiential. Writing about a conversation with James Joyce, she admitted to missing part of what he said because her attention had wandered, though she revered Joyce's writing. Interviewing the successful playwright Donald Ogden Stewart, she shouted at him for "roll[ing] over and find[ing] yourself famous" while other writers continued to struggle, then said she wouldn't mind dying; as her biographer Phillip Herring points out, this is "a depressing and perhaps unprecedented note on which to end an interview".^[8] For a 1914 World Magazine article she submitted to force-feeding, a technique then being used on hunger-striking suffragists. Barnes wrote "If I, play acting, felt my being burning with revolt at this brutal usurpation of my own functions, how they who actually suffered the ordeal in its acutest horror must have flamed at the violation of the sanctuaries of their spirits." She concluded "I had shared the greatest experience of the bravest of my sex".^[9] Yet in other stories she mocked suffrage activists as superficial, as when she quoted Carrie Chapman Catt as admonishing would-be suffrage orators never to "hold a militant pose", or wear "a dress that shows your feet in front".^[10] Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Donald Ogden Stewart (1894-1980) an American author and screenwriter, member of the Algonquin Round Table. ... The New York World was a newspaper published in New York from 1860 until 1931. ... Force-feeding is the practice of feeding someone against his or her will. ... A hunger strike is a method of non-violent resistance in which participants fast as an act of political protest, or to provoke feelings of guilt or to achieve a goal such as a policy change. ... Suffragette with banner, Washington DC, 1918 The title of suffragette was given to members of the womens suffrage movement in the United Kingdom and United States, particularly in the years prior to World War I. The name was the Womens Social and Political Union (founded in 1903). ... // Image:CarrieChapmanCatt, i win. ...

This satirical drawing of a dandyish Greenwich Village resident accompanied Barnes's 1916 article "How the Villagers Amuse Themselves."

In 1915 Barnes moved out of her family's flat to an apartment in Greenwich Village, where she entered a thriving Bohemian community of artists and writers. Among her social circle were Edmund Wilson, Berenice Abbott, and the Dadaist artist and poet Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, whose biography Barnes tried to write but never finished. She also came into contact with Guido Bruno, an entrepreneur and promoter who published magazines and chapbooks out of his garret on Washington Square. Bruno had a reputation for unscrupulousness, and was often accused of exploiting Greenwich Village residents for profit -- he used to charge tourists admission to watch Bohemians paint -- but he was a strong opponent of censorship and was willing to risk prosecution by publishing Barnes's 1915 collection of "rhythms and drawings", The Book of Repulsive Women. Remarkably, despite a description of sex between women in the first poem, the book was never legally challenged; the passage seems explicit now, but at a time when lesbianism was virtually invisible in American culture, the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice may not have understood its imagery.^[11] Others were not as naive, and Bruno was able to cash in on the book's reputation by raising the price from fifteen to fifty cents and pocketing the difference.^[12] Twenty years later she used him as one of the models for Felix Volkbein in Nightwood, caricaturing his pretensions to nobility and his habit of bowing down before anyone titled or important.^[13] Image File history File links Size of this preview: 435 × 599 pixelsFull resolution (1162 × 1600 pixel, file size: 678 KB, MIME type: image/gif)Drawing by Djuna Barnes, originally published in the New York Morning Telegraph Sunday Magazine, accompanying her article How the Villagers Amuse Themselves. The original story reads... Image File history File links Size of this preview: 435 × 599 pixelsFull resolution (1162 × 1600 pixel, file size: 678 KB, MIME type: image/gif)Drawing by Djuna Barnes, originally published in the New York Morning Telegraph Sunday Magazine, accompanying her article How the Villagers Amuse Themselves. The original story reads... Sporty Parisian dandies of the 1830s: a girdle helped one achieve this silhouette. ... The Washington Square Arch Greenwich Village (IPA pronunciation: ), also called simply the Village, is a largely residential area on the west side of downtown (southern) Manhattan in New York City named after Greenwich, London. ... The term Bohemian was first used in the nineteenth century to describe the non-traditional lifestyles of marginalized and impoverished artists, writers, musicians, and actors in major European cities. ... Edmund Wilson (May 8, 1895 – June 12, 1972) was an American writer, noted chiefly for his literary criticism. ... Berenice Abbott [1] (July 17, 1898 – December 9, 1991) was an American photographer best known for her black-and-white photography of the streetlife and architecture of New York City during the 1930s. ... Dadaism or Dada is a post-World War I cultural movement in visual art as well as literature (mainly poetry), theatre and graphic design. ... Baroness Else (Elsa) von Freytag-Loringhoven (sometimes also called Else von Freytag-von Loringhoven) (1874-1927) was a German-born avant-garde, Dadaist artist and poet who spent most of her life in Greenwich Village, New York. ... Guido Bruno (1884–1942) was a well-known Greenwich Village character, sometimes called the Barnum of Bohemia. He was based at his Garret on Washington Square. ... Washington Square is the name of some urban parks in the United States. ... This article is about homosexual women, not inhabitants of the Greek island of Lesbos A lesbian (lowercase L) is a homosexual woman. ... The New York Society for the Suppression of Vice (SSV) was founded in 1873 by Anthony Comstock and his supporters in the Young Mens Christian Association. ...

The poems in The Book of Repulsive Women show the strong influence of late nineteenth century Decadence, and the style of the illustrations resembles Aubrey Beardsley's. The setting is New York City, and the subjects are all women: a cabaret singer, a woman seen through an open window from the elevated train, and, in the last poem, the corpses of two suicides in the morgue. The book describes women's bodies and sexuality in terms that have indeed struck many readers as repulsive, but, as with much of Barnes's work, the author's stance is ambiguous. Some critics read the poems as exposing and satirizing cultural attitudes toward women.^[14] Barnes herself came to regard The Book of Repulsive Women as an embarrassment; she called the title "idiotic", left it out of her curriculum vitae, and even burned copies. But since the copyright had never been registered, she was unable to prevent it from being republished, and it became one of her most reprinted works.^[15] In 19th century European and especially French literature, decadence was the name given, first by hostile critics, and then triumphantly adopted by some writers themselves, to a number of late nineteenth century fin de siècle writers who were associated with Symbolism or the Aesthetic movement and who relished artifice... Aubrey Beardsley Aubrey Vincent Beardsley (August 21, 1872 – March 16, 1898) was an influential English illustrator, and author. ... The L 14th Street-Canarsie Local is a service of the New York City Subway, running local along the full length of the BMT Canarsie Line, 24 hours a day. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ...

Barnes was a member of the Provincetown Players, an amateur theatrical collective whose emphasis on artistic rather than commercial success meshed well with her own values. The Players' Greenwich Village theatre was a converted stable with bench seating and a tiny stage; according to Barnes it was "always just about to be given back to the horses". Yet it played a significant role in the development of American drama, featuring works by Susan Glaspell, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Wallace Stevens, and Theodore Dreiser, as well as launching the career of Eugene O'Neill. Three one-act plays by Barnes were produced there in 1919 and 1920; a fourth, The Dove, premiered at Smith College in 1925, and a series of short closet dramas were published in magazines, some under Barnes's pseudonym Lydia Steptoe. These plays show the strong influence of the Irish playwright J. M. Synge; she was drawn to both the poetic quality of Synge's language and the pessimism of his vision. Critics have found them derivative, particularly those in which she tried to imitate Synge's Irish dialect, and Barnes may have agreed, since in later years she dismissed them as mere juvenilia.^[16] Yet in their content, these stylized and enigmatic early plays are more experimental than those of her fellow playwrights at Provincetown.^[17] A New York Times review by Alexander Woollcott of her play Three From the Earth called it a demonstration of "how absorbing and essentially dramatic a play can be without the audience ever knowing what, if anything, the author is driving at.... The spectators sit with bated breath listening to each word of a playlet of which the darkly suggested clues leave the mystery unsolved."^[18] The Provincetown Players was a theater company located in Provincetown, Massachusetts on Cape Cod, and famous for producing the plays of American playwright Eugene ONeill. ... Susan Keating Glaspell (July 1, 1876 – July 27, 1948) was an American dramatist, theatrical producer, theatre owner/operator, and novelist. ... Edna St. ... Wallace Stevens Wallace Stevens (October 2, 1879 – August 2, 1955 in poetry) was a major American Modernist poet. ... Theodore Dreiser, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1933 Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser (August 27, 1871 – December 28, 1945) was an American naturalist author known for dealing with the gritty reality of life. ... Eugene Gladstone ONeill (October 16, 1888 – November 27, 1953) was a Nobel- and four-time Pulitzer Prize-winning American playwright. ... A closet drama is a play that is not intended to be performed onstage, but read by a solitary reader or, sometimes, out loud in a small group. ... John Millington Synge John Millington Synge (April 16, 1871 - March 24, 1909) was an Irish dramatist, poet, prose writer, and collector of folklore. ... Juvenilia is an EP released by Liz Phair. ... Alexander Woollcott, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1939 Alexander Humphreys Woollcott (January 19, 1887 – January 23, 1943) was a critic and commentator for The New Yorker magazine, and a member of the Algonquin Round Table. ...

Greenwich Village in the 1910s was known for its atmosphere of sexual as well as intellectual freedom. Barnes was unusual among Villagers in having been raised with a philosophy of free love, espoused both by her grandmother and her father. Her father's idiosyncratic vision had included a commitment to unlimited procreation, which she strongly rejected; criticism of childbearing would become a major theme in her work.^[19] She did, however, retain sexual freedom as a value. In the 1930s she told Antonia White that "she had no feeling of guilt whatever about sex, about going to bed with any man or woman she wanted";^[20] correspondence indicates that by the time she was 21 her family was well aware of her bisexuality,^[21] and she had a number of affairs with both men and women during her Greenwich Village years. Of these the most important was probably her engagement to Ernst Hanfstaengl, a Harvard graduate who ran the American branch of his family's art publishing house. Hanfstaengl had once given a piano concert at the White House and was a friend of then-Senator Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but he became increasingly angered by anti-German sentiment in the United States during World War I. In 1916 he told Barnes he wanted a German wife; the painful breakup became the basis of a deleted scene in Nightwood. He later returned to Germany and became a close associate of Adolf Hitler. Starting in 1916 or 17 she lived with a socialist philosopher and critic named Courtenay Lemon, whom she referred to as her common-law husband, but this too ended, for reasons that are unclear. She also had a passionate romantic relationship with Mary Pyne, a reporter for the New York Press and fellow member of the Provincetown Players. Pyne died of tuberculosis in 1919, attended by Barnes until the end.^[22] The term free love has been used since at least the nineteenth century to describe a social movement that rejects marriage, which is seen as a form of social bondage, especially for women. ... Putzi together with Hitler, during the time when he acted as his Press Agent Ernst Franz Sedgwick Hanfstaengl (Munich, February 2, 1887 - November 6, 1975) was the only person known to have worked directly for both Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Adolf Hitler. ... Franklin Delano Roosevelt (January 30, 1882–April 12, 1945), 32nd President of the United States, the longest-serving holder of the office and the only man to be elected President more than twice, was one of the central figures of 20th century history. ... “The Great War ” redirects here. ... Hitler redirects here. ... Socialism is a social and economic system (or the political philosophy advocating such a system) in which the economic means of production are owned and controlled collectively by the people. ... New York Press is a free alternative weekly in New York City. ... Tuberculosis (abbreviated as TB for Tubercle Bacillus) is a common and deadly infectious disease that is caused by mycobacteria, primarily Mycobacterium tuberculosis. ...

The Fountain of the Four Bishops in Paris's Place Saint-Sulpice, an important location in Nightwood.

Image File history File links Size of this preview: 700 × 599 pixelsFull resolution (2070 × 1772 pixel, file size: 473 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) I have adjusted the color and contrast of this image, cropped it, touched up some color aberration, and attempted to reduce barrel distortion. ... Image File history File links Size of this preview: 700 × 599 pixelsFull resolution (2070 × 1772 pixel, file size: 473 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) I have adjusted the color and contrast of this image, cropped it, touched up some color aberration, and attempted to reduce barrel distortion. ... The large square of Place Saint Sulpice, which is dominated on the east side by the enourmous church of Saint-Sulpice, was built in the last half of the 18th century in the quiet, tranquil gardens of the Luxembourg Quater of the VIe arrondissement of Paris. ...

Paris (1921-1930)

In the 1920s, Paris was the center of modernism in art and literature; as Gertrude Stein remarked, "Paris was where the twentieth century was".^[23] Barnes first travelled there in 1921 on an assignment for McCall's Magazine. She interviewed her fellow expatriate writers and artists for U.S. periodicals and soon became a well-known figure on the local scene; her black cloak and her acerbic wit are remembered in many memoirs of the time. Even before her first novel was published, her literary reputation was already high, largely on the strength of her story "A Night Among the Horses", which was published in The Little Review and reprinted in her 1923 collection A Book.^[24] She was part of the inner circle of the influential salon hostess Natalie Barney, who would become a lifelong friend and patron, as well as the central figure in Barnes's satiric chronicle of Paris lesbian life, Ladies Almanack. They probably also had a brief affair, but the most important relationship of Barnes's Paris years was with the artist Thelma Wood. Wood was a Kansas native who had come to Paris to become a sculptor, but at Barnes's suggestion took up silverpoint instead, producing drawings of animals and plants that one critic compared to Rousseau. By the winter of 1922 they had set up housekeeping together in a flat on the Boulevard Saint-Germain.^[25] City flag City coat of arms Motto: Fluctuat nec mergitur (Latin: Tossed by the waves, she does not sink) Paris Eiffel tower as seen from the esplanade du Trocadéro. ... For Modernism in an American context, see American modernism. ... Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 29, 1946) was an American writer and catalyst in the development of modern art and literature, who spent most of her life in France. ... Cover of the March 1911 issue McCalls was a monthly American womens magazine that enjoyed great popularity through much of the 20th century, peaking at a readership of six million in 1960. ... This article does not cite its references or sources. ... Natalie Clifford Barney (31 October 1876 – 2 February 1972) was an American expatriate who lived, wrote, and hosted a literary salon in Paris. ... Thelma Ellen Wood [1] was an American sculptor (July 3, 1901 – December 10, 1970). ... Official language(s) none Capital Topeka Largest city Wichita Area  Ranked 15th  - Total 82,277 sq mi (213,096 km²)  - Width 211 miles (340 km)  - Length 417 miles (645 km)  - % water 0. ... Silverpoint predates the use of graphite as a drawing medium and was used by old masters such as Leonardo da Vinci, Albrecht Durer and Jan Van Eyck. ... Self Portrait, 1908 Henri Julien Félix Rousseau (May 21, 1844 – September 2, 1910) was a French Post-Impressionist painter in the Naive or Primitive manner. ... Boulevard Saint-Germain at the corner of Rue de Buci Les Deux Magots Bell tower of Saint-Germain-des-Prés Abbey Church The Boulevard Saint-Germain is a major street in Paris on the Left Bank (south side) of the Seine river. ...

Barnes's drawing of James Joyce illustrated her 1922 interview with him in Vanity Fair.

Barnes arrived in Paris with a letter of introduction to James Joyce, whom she interviewed for Vanity Fair and who became a friend. The headline of her Vanity Fair interview billed him as "the man who is, at present, one of the more significant figures in literature", but her personal reaction to Ulysses was less guarded: "I shall never write another line.... Who has the nerve to after that?"^[26] It may have been reading Joyce that led Barnes to turn away from the late nineteenth century Decadent and Aesthetic influences of The Book of Repulsive Women toward the modernist experimentation of her later work.^[27] They differed, however, on the proper subject of literature; Joyce thought writers should focus on commonplace subjects and make them extraordinary, while Barnes was always drawn to the unusual, even the grotesque.^[28] Then, too, her own life was an extraordinary subject. Her autobiographical first novel Ryder would not only present readers with the difficulty of deciphering its shifting literary styles -- a technique inspired by Ulysses -- but also with the challenge of piecing together the history of an unconventional polygamous household, far removed from most readers' expectations and experience.^[29] Image File history File links Size of this preview: 483 × 600 pixelsFull resolution (1000 × 1242 pixel, file size: 433 KB, MIME type: image/gif) Originally published in Vanity Fair, April 1922. ... Image File history File links Size of this preview: 483 × 600 pixelsFull resolution (1000 × 1242 pixel, file size: 433 KB, MIME type: image/gif) Originally published in Vanity Fair, April 1922. ... James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (Irish Séamus Seoighe; 2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish writer, widely considered to be one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. ... American actress Demi Moore, on a typical Vanity Fair cover (August, 1991) Vanity Fair is a glossy American glamour magazine monthly that offers a mixture of articles based on sensational exaggerations, jet-set and entertainment-business personalities, politics, and lies. ... Decadence was the name given, first by hostile critics, and then triumphantly adopted by some writers themselves, to a number of late nineteenth century fin de siècle writers associated with Symbolism or the Aesthetic movement. ... Aesthetics (or esthetics) (from the Greek word αισθητική) is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty. ...

Despite the difficulties of the text, Ryder's bawdiness drew attention, and it briefly became a New York Times bestseller. Its popularity caught the publisher unprepared; a first edition of 3,000 sold out quickly, and by the time more copies made it into bookstores, public interest in the book had died down. Still, the advance allowed Barnes to buy a new apartment on Rue Saint-Romain, where she lived with Thelma Wood starting in September 1927. The move made them neighbors of Mina Loy, a friend of Barnes's since Greenwich Village days, who appeared in Ladies Almanack as Patience Scalpel, the sole heterosexual character, who "could not understand Women and their Ways".^[30] Image:Loy-Haweis1904. ...

Due to its subject matter, Ladies Almanack was published in a small, privately printed edition under the pseudonym "A Lady of Fashion". Copies were sold on the streets of Paris by Barnes and her friends, and Barnes managed to smuggle a few into the United States to sell. A bookseller, Edward Titus, offered to carry Ladies Almanack in his store in exchange for being mentioned on the title page, but when he demanded a share of the royalties on the entire print run, Barnes was furious. She later gave the name Titus to the abusive father in The Antiphon.^[31]

Barnes dedicated Ryder and Ladies Almanack to Thelma Wood, but the year both books were published -- 1928 -- was also the year that she and Wood separated. Barnes had wanted their relationship to be monogamous, but had discovered that Wood wanted her "along with the rest of the world".^[32] Wood had a worsening dependency on alcohol, and she spent her nights drinking and seeking out casual sex partners; Barnes would search the cafés for her, often winding up equally drunk. Barnes broke up with Wood over her involvement with heiress Henriette McCrea Metcalf (1888-1981), who would be scathingly portrayed in Nightwood as Jenny Petherbridge.^[33]

1930s

Much of Nightwood was written during the summers of 1932 and 1933, while Barnes was staying at Hayford Hall, a country manor in Devonshire rented by the art patron Peggy Guggenheim. Fellow guests included Antonia White, John Ferrar Holms, and the novelist and poet Emily Coleman. Evenings at the manor -- nicknamed "Hangover Hall" by its residents -- often featured a party game called Truth that encouraged brutal frankness, creating a tense emotional atmosphere. Barnes was afraid to leave her work in progress unattended because the volatile Coleman, having told Barnes one of her secrets, had threatened to burn the manuscript if Barnes revealed it. But once she had read the book, Coleman became its champion. Her critiques of successive drafts led Barnes to make major structural changes, and when publisher after publisher rejected the manuscript, it was Coleman who persuaded T.S. Eliot, then an editor at Faber and Faber, to read it.^[34] This page is about the English county, for alternative meanings see Devon (disambiguation). ... Peggy Guggenheim (August 26, 1898 - December 23, 1979) was an American art collector. ... Antonia White [1] (1899 – 1980) was a British writer, born in London March 1, 1899 under the name Eirine Bottling to parents Cecil and Christine Bottling. ... Emily Coleman [1] (1899-1974) was an American born writer, and a lifelong compulsive diary keeper, writing about everything and everybody. ... Thomas Stearns Eliot (September 26, 1888 - January 4, 1965), was a major Modernist Anglo-American poet, dramatist, and literary critic. ... Faber and Faber is a celebrated publishing house in the UK, notable in particular for publishing the poetry of T. S. Eliot. ...

Faber published the book in 1936. Though reviews treated it as a major work of art,^[35] the book did not sell well. Barnes received no advance from Faber and the first royalty statement was for only £43; the U.S. edition published by Harcourt, Brace the following year fared no better.^[36] Barnes had published little journalism in the 30s and was largely dependent on Peggy Guggenheim's financial support. She was constantly ill and drank more and more heavily; according to Guggenheim, she accounted for a bottle of whiskey a day. In February 1939 she checked into a hotel in London and attempted suicide. Guggenheim funded hospital visits and doctors, but finally lost patience and sent her back to New York. There she shared a single room with her mother, who coughed all night and who kept reading her passages from Mary Baker Eddy, having converted to Christian Science. In March 1940 her family sent her to a sanatorium in upstate New York to dry out.^[37] Furious, Barnes began to plan a biography of her family, writing to Emily Coleman that "there is no reason any longer why I should feel for them in any way but hate"; this idea would eventually come to fruition in her play The Antiphon. After she returned to New York City she quarrelled bitterly with her mother and was thrown out on the street.^[38] ISO 4217 Code GBP User(s) United Kingdom, Crown Dependencies Inflation 3. ... Mary Baker Eddy Mary Baker Eddy (born Mary Morse Baker July 16, 1821 - December 3, 1910) founded the Church of Christ, Scientist in 1879 and was the author of its fundamental doctrinal textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. ... Christian Science is a religious teaching regarding the efficacy of spiritual healing according to the interpretation of the Bible by Mary Baker Eddy, in her book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (First published in 1875). ...

Return to Greenwich Village (1940-1982)

Left with nowhere else to go, Barnes stayed at Thelma Wood's apartment while Wood was out of town, then spent two months on a working ranch in Arizona with Emily Coleman and Coleman's lover Jake Scarborough. She returned to New York and, in September, moved into the small apartment at 5 Patchin Place in Greenwich Village where she would spend the last 42 years of her life. Throughout the 40s she continued to drink and wrote virtually nothing. Guggenheim, despite misgivings, provided her with a small stipend, and Coleman, who could ill afford it, sent US$20 a month. In 1946 she worked for Henry Holt as a manuscript reader, but her reports were invariably caustic and she was soon fired.^[39] Official language(s) English Capital Phoenix Largest city Phoenix Area  Ranked 6th  - Total 113,998 sq mi (295,254 km²)  - Width 310 miles (500 km)  - Length 400 miles (645 km)  - % water 0. ... The United States dollar is the official currency of the United States. ... Holt, Rinehart and Winston, somethimes abbreviated as HRW or referred to as Holt, is an Austin, Texas based publishing company, that specializes in textbooks for use in secondary schools. ...

In 1958 she published her verse play The Antiphon. It was translated into Swedish by Karl Ragnar Gierow and U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld and was staged in Stockholm in 1962. Dag Hjalmar Agne Carl Hammarskjöld ( ) (July 29, 1905 – September 18, 1961) was a Swedish diplomat and the second Secretary-General of the United Nations. ... 1962 (MCMLXII) was a common year starting on Monday (the link is to a full 1962 calendar). ...

Jacques-Louis David's portrait of Madame Récamier. In Creatures in an Alphabet, Barnes wrote:

The Seal, she lounges like a bride,
Much too docile, there's no doubt;
Madame Récamier, on side,
(if such she has), and bottom out. Image File history File links Download high resolution version (833x568, 40 KB) en:Jeanne Françoise Julie Adélaïde Récamier painted by Jacques-Louis David in 1800 Oil on canvas 244 x 75 cm Musee du Louvre, Paris Source: [1], specifically [2] File links The following pages link... Image File history File links Download high resolution version (833x568, 40 KB) en:Jeanne Françoise Julie Adélaïde Récamier painted by Jacques-Louis David in 1800 Oil on canvas 244 x 75 cm Musee du Louvre, Paris Source: [1], specifically [2] File links The following pages link... Jacques-Louis David (August 30, 1748 – December 29, 1825) was a highly influential French painter in the Neoclassical style, considered to be the prominent painter of the era. ...

After The Antiphon, Barnes focused on writing poetry, which she worked and reworked, producing as many as 500 drafts. She wrote eight hours a day despite a growing list of health problems, including arthritis so severe that she had difficulty even sitting at her typewriter or turning on her desk light. Many of these poems were never finalized and only a few were published in her lifetime. In her late poetry she began to move away from the conscious archaism of her earlier work toward what she called "a very plain straight 'put it there' manner", but her penchant for unusual words gleaned from the Oxford English Dictionary nevertheless renders most of them obscure.^[40] Her last book, Creatures in an Alphabet, is a collection of short rhyming poems whose format suggests a children's book, but even this apparently simple work contains enough allusiveness and advanced vocabulary to make it an unlikely read for a child: the entry for T quotes Blake's "The Tyger", a seal is compared to Jacques-Louis David's portrait of Madame Récamier, and a braying donkey is described as "practicing solfeggio". Creatures continues the themes of nature and culture found in Barnes's earlier work, and their arrangement as a bestiary reflects her longstanding interest in systems for organizing knowledge, such as encyclopedias and almanacs.^[41] William Blake (November 28, 1757 – August 12, 1827) was an English poet, visionary, painter, and printmaker. ... William Blakes original plate for The Tyger. ... Jacques-Louis David (August 30, 1748 – December 29, 1825) was a highly influential French painter in the Neoclassical style, considered to be the prominent painter of the era. ... Jeanne Françoise Julie Adélaïde Récamier, by Jacques-Louis David, 1800, a portrait which sparked European fashion for Greek attire. ... In music, solfege (or solmization) is a pedagogical technique for the teaching of sight-singing in which each note of the score is sung to a special syllable, called a solfege syllable (or sol-fa syllable). The seven syllables normally used for this practice in the West are: Do, Re... This article or section includes a list of works cited or a list of external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks in-text citations. ... An almanac (also spelled almanack, especially in Commonwealth English) is an annual publication containing tabular information in a particular field or fields often arranged according to the calendar. ...

Although Barnes had other female lovers, in her later years she was known to claim "I am not a lesbian, I just loved Thelma."

Barnes was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1961. She was the last surviving member of the first generation of English-language modernists when she died in New York in 1982. Langston Hughes, National Institure of Arts and Letters This page is a candidate for speedy deletion. ... 1961 (MCMLXI) was a common year starting on Sunday (the link is to a full 1961 calendar). ... English is a West Germanic language developed in England, and the first language for most people of Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. ...

Major works

Ryder

Barnes's novel Ryder (1928) draws heavily on her childhood experiences in Cornwall-on-Hudson. It covers fifty years of history of the Ryder family: Sophia Grieve Ryder, like Zadel a former salon hostess fallen into poverty; her idle son Wendell; his wife Amelia; his resident mistress Kate-Careless; and their children. Barnes herself appears as Wendell and Amelia's daughter Julie. The story has a large cast and is told from a variety of points of view; some characters appear as the protagonist of a single chapter only to disappear from the text entirely. Fragments of the Ryder family chronicle are interspersed with children's stories, songs, letters, poems, parables, and dreams. Like Joyce's Ulysses -- an important influence on Barnes -- the book changes style from chapter to chapter, parodying writers from Chaucer to Dante Gabriel Rossetti.^[42] A salon is a gathering of stimulating people of quality under the roof of an inspiring hostess or host, partly to amuse one another and partly to refine their taste and increase their knowledge through conversation and readings, often consciously following Horaces definition of the aims of poetry, to... In literature and storytelling, a point of view is the related experience of the narrator — not that of the author. ... There are several notable individuals with the name Joyce: // joyce is the coolest person to have ever walked this earth. ... The name Ulysses can mean: The Roman equivalent of Odysseus A 1922 novel by James Joyce: Ulysses (novel) A 1967 movie based on the novel, Ulysses (movie) A solar probe: Ulysses (spacecraft) A poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson A anime television program produced by DiC Entertainment: Ulysses 31 An indie... Chaucer: Illustration from Cassells History of England, circa 1902 Chanticleer the rooster from an outdoor production of Chanticleer and the Fox at Ashby_de_la_Zouch castle Geoffrey Chaucer (ca. ... Dante Gabriel Rossetti (May 12, 1828 - April 10, 1882) was an English poet, painter and translator. ...

Both Ryder and Ladies Almanack abandon the Beardsleyesque style of her drawings for The Book of Repulsive Women in favor of a visual vocabulary borrowed from French folk art. Several illustrations are closely based on the engravings and woodcuts collected by Pierre Louis Duchartre and René Saulnier in the 1926 book L'Imagerie Populaire -- images that had been copied with variations since medieval times.^[43] The bawdiness of Ryder's illustrations led the U.S. Postal Service to refuse to ship it, and several had to be left out of the first edition, including an image in which Sophia is seen urinating into a chamberpot and one in which Amelia and Kate-Careless sit by the fire knitting codpieces. Parts of the text were also expurgated. In an acerbic introduction, Barnes explained that the missing words and passages had been replaced with asterisks so that readers could see the "havoc" wreaked by censorship. A 1990 Dalkey Archive edition restored the missing drawings, but the original text was lost with the destruction of the manuscript in World War II.^[44] This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ... Engraving is the practice of incising a design onto a hard, flat surface, by cutting grooves into it. ... Four horsemen of the Apocalypse by Albrecht Dürer Ukiyo-e woodcut, Ishiyama Moon by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1889) Woodcut is a relief printing artistic technique in printmaking in which an image is carved into the surface of a block of wood, with the printing parts remaining level with the surface... The Middle Ages formed the middle period in a traditional schematic division of European history into three ages: the classical civilization of Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modern times. ... A USPS Truck at Night A U.S. Post Office sign The United States Postal Service (USPS) is the United States government organization responsible for providing postal service in the United States and is generally referred to as the post office. ... A chamber pot (also a john, a chamberpot, a jordan, a Po (from French pot de chambre) or simply a potty) consists of a bowl-shaped container kept in the bedroom under a bed and used as a toilet at night. ... Henry VIII wearing a codpiece A codpiece (Middle English language codpece: cod, bag, scrotum (from the Old English language codd, bag) + pece, piece) is a flap or pouch that attaches to the front of the crotch of mens trousers to provide a covering for the genitals. ...

Ladies Almanack

Ladies Almanack (1928) is a roman à clef about a predominantly lesbian social circle centering on Natalie Clifford Barney's salon in Paris. It is written in an archaic, Rabelaisian style, with Barnes's own illustrations in the style of Elizabethan woodcuts. Ladies Almanack (1928), by Djuna Barnes, is a roman à clef about a predominantly lesbian social circle centering on Natalie Clifford Barneys salon in Paris. ... A roman à clef or roman à clé (French for novel with a key) is a novel describing real-life events behind a façade of fiction. ... Natalie Clifford Barney (31 October 1876 – 2 February 1972) was an American expatriate who lived, wrote, and hosted a literary salon in Paris. ... Rabelaisian refers to the works of Rabelais. ... The Elizabethan Era is the period associated with the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558 - 1603) and is often considered to be a golden age in English history. ... A woodcut is a method of printing in which an image is carved into the surface of a piece of wood, with the printing parts remaining level with the surface while the non-printing parts are removed, typically with chisels. ...

Barney appears as Dame Evangeline Musset, "who was in her Heart one Grand Red Cross for the Pursuance, the Relief and the Distraction, of such Girls as in their Hinder Parts, and their Fore Parts, and in whatsoever Parts did suffer them most, lament Cruelly".^[45] "[A] Pioneer and a Menace" in her youth, Dame Musset has reached "a witty and learned Fifty";^[46] she rescues women in distress, dispenses wisdom, and upon her death is elevated to sainthood. Also appearing pseudonymously are Elisabeth de Gramont, Romaine Brooks, Dolly Wilde, Radclyffe Hall and her partner Una, Lady Troubridge, Janet Flanner and Solita Solano, and Mina Loy.^[47] Romaine Brooks (May 1, 1874 – December 7, 1970), born Beatrice Romaine Goddard, was an American painter who specialized in portraiture and used a subdued palette dominated by the color gray. ... Dolly Wilde (1895-1941) was born in the United Kingdom, and was the only child of Oscar Wildes dissipated older brother Willie. ... Image:Radclyffe-hall-190x274. ... Janet Flanner (March 13, 1892 - November 7, 1978) was a child of Quakers, an American writer and journalist who served as the Paris correspondent of The New Yorker magazine from 1925 until she retired in 1975 [1]. She also published a single novel, The Cubical City, set in New York... Image:Loy-Haweis1904. ...

The obscure language, inside jokes, and ambiguity of Ladies Almanack have kept critics arguing about whether it is an affectionate satire or a bitter attack, but Barney herself loved the book and reread it throughout her life.^[48]

Nightwood

Barnes's reputation as a writer was made when Nightwood was published in England in 1936 in an expensive edition by Faber and Faber, and in America in 1937 by Harcourt, Brace and Company, with an added introduction by T. S. Eliot. 1936 (MCMXXXVI) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will take you to calendar). ... Faber and Faber is a celebrated publishing house in the UK, notable in particular for publishing the poetry of T. S. Eliot. ... 1937 (MCMXXXVII) was a common year starting on Friday (link will take you to calendar). ... Harcourt Trade Publishers is a U.S. publishing firm, and one of the worlds largest publishers of textbooks. ... Thomas Stearns Eliot, OM (September 26, 1888 – January 4, 1965), was a poet, dramatist and literary critic. ...

The novel, set in Paris in the 1920s, revolves around the lives of five characters, two of whom are based on Barnes and Wood, and it reflects the circumstances surrounding the ending of their relationship. In his introduction, Eliot praises Barnes' style, which while having "prose rhythm that is prose style, and the musical pattern which is not that of verse, is so good a novel that only sensibilities trained on poetry can wholly appreciate it." The 1920s is a decade that is sometimes referred to as the Jazz Age or the Roaring Twenties, usually applied to America. ...

Due to concerns about censorship, Eliot edited Nightwood to soften some language relating to sexuality and religion. An edition restoring these changes, edited by Cheryl J. Plumb, was published by Dalkey Archive Press in 1995. Dalkey Archive Press is a small publisher of fiction, poetry, and literary criticism, specializing in the publication or republication of obscure and out-of-print works, particularly contemporary literature. ...

Dylan Thomas described Nightwood as "one of the three great prose books ever written by a woman," while William Burroughs called it "one of the great books of the twentieth century." It was number 12 on a list of the top 100 gay books compiled by The Publishing Triangle in 1999.^[49]

The Antiphon

Legacy

Barnes has been cited as an influence by writers as diverse as Truman Capote, William Goyen, Isak Dinesen, John Hawkes, Bertha Harris, and Anais Nin. Writer Bertha Harris described her work as "practically the only available expression of lesbian culture we have in the modern western world" since Sappho. Truman Capote (pronounced ) (30 September 1924 – 25 August 1984) was an American writer whose non-fiction, stories, novels and plays are recognized literary classics, including the novella Breakfast at Tiffanys (1958) and In Cold Blood (1965), which he labeled a non-fiction novel. ... Charles William Goyen (April 24, 1915 – August 30, 1983) was an American author, editor, and teacher. ... Blixen in Kenya, 1918 Isak Dinesen (April 17, 1885-September 7, 1962) was a pen name for the Danish author Karen Blixen. ... John Hawkes (born John Clendennin Talbot Burne Hawkes, Jr. ... Bertha Harris (1939, Fayetteville, North Carolina) is an American born openly lesbian novelist. ... Ana s Nin (February 21, 1903 - January 14, 1977) was a French author who became famous for her self-published diaries, which span a period of forty years, beginning when she was twelve years old. ... Bertha Harris (1939, Fayetteville, North Carolina) is an American born openly lesbian novelist. ...

Bibliography

• The Book of Repulsive Women: 8 Rhythms and 5 Drawings (1915)
• A Book (1923) - revised versions published as:
  • A Night Among the Horses (1929)
  • Spillway (1962)
• Ryder (1928)
• Ladies Almanack (1928)
• Nightwood (1936)
• The Antiphon (1958)
• Selected Works (1962) - Spillway, Nightwood, and a revised version of The Antiphon
• Vagaries Malicieux: Two Stories (1974) - unauthorized publication
• Creatures in an Alphabet (1982)
• Smoke and Other Early Stories (1982)
• I Could Never Be Lonely without a Husband: Interviews by Djuna Barnes (1987) - ed. A. Barry
• New York (1989) - journalism
• At the Roots of the Stars: The Short Plays (1995)
• Collected Stories of Djuna Barnes (1996)
• Poe's Mother: Selected Drawings (1996) - ed. and with an introduction by Douglas Messerli
• Collected Poems: With Notes Toward the Memoirs (2005) - ed. Phillip Herring and Osias Stutman

Ladies Almanack (1928), by Djuna Barnes, is a roman à clef about a predominantly lesbian social circle centering on Natalie Clifford Barneys salon in Paris. ...

Notes

References

2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the Anno Domini era. ... February 25 is the 56th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the Anno Domini era. ... February 25 is the 56th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the Anno Domini era. ... March 22 is the 81st day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (82nd in leap years). ... 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the Anno Domini era. ... April 1 is the 91st day of the year (92nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar, with 274 days remaining. ...

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Djuna Barnes

• House of Incest: Exile from the Family in Modernist Women's Literature — about the women of the Left Bank

Image File history File links Wikiquote-logo-en. ... Wikiquote is a sister project of Wikipedia, using the same MediaWiki software. ... The left bank of a river is the bank on the left when looking in the direction of flow towards the sea. ...

Online works

• The Book of Repulsive Women
• "The Confessions of Helen Westley" — an interview
• "How It Feels to Be Forcibly Fed" on Wikisource.
• Selections from interviews by and with Barnes
• "What Do You See, Madam?" — one of Barnes's early newspaper short stories