“Renee-valations” about Vivien’s Stories and Poetry by Morghan C.

When reading Renee Vivien’s collection of poems, “The Muse of the Violets”, in conversation with “Prince Charming”, the original book brings to life different aspects of her storytelling and her poetry. Through interacting with a first edition of her poetry published in 1977 by The Naiad Press, it highlighted the simplicity and beauty of the language used by Vivien. At the beginning of the book, there was a brief biography about Vivien, which divulged the fact that she is not French, but an Anglo-American lesbian named Pauline Tarn. This brief biography adds context for her work because she was alive from 1877 to 1909, a time when the LGBTQ community was significantly less socially accepted. This background completely changed my interaction with her poetry.

My first interaction with Vivien’s work was reading the short story “Prince Charming” in class. It was a story about a young woman, Sarolta, who grew up convinced that she was going to marry Bela, the feminine male child of the Szecheny family. When Bela returned to town after being away for sometime, Sarolta fell in love with him and moved away with him, who is revealed to not actually be Bela, but Terka, the masculine female child of the Szecheny family.

Before delving into the content of the book, I noted the art on the cover and back of the book. It depicted simply drawn violets, which brought a sort of elegance to the poetry between the covers. It helped prime me to be ready to read something light and whimsical because the art does not have much detail in it. The book itself was slightly smaller than a normal book and not very long in length, as it was a collection of poetry. The poems were typically about a page long and in typewriter font. All of which contributed to me feeling like I had just been given the manuscript that she just took off the typewriter.  

One of Vivien’s poems, “You For Whom I Wrote”, was particularly haunting in verbiage and nature. The poem depicted a nameless woman, pale and dishevelled, with images of snow, the night, and cold weather; this was contrasted with images of roses and flames. The woman narrated was an almost lover. She was someone that the narrator had feelings for, but nothing came of it and the narrator wondered about whether her almost lover would ever see it. These images brought to mind the idea that this woman was a ghost, a figment in the memory of Vivien. The distinct difference between the white and cold and fiery morning and roses made it clear that the woman was real, but not present in the material sense; instead she was thought of in fantasy, seen through her loss of color and life when detailed, unlike the roses and flames.

With the spooky undertones of the fantasy from her poem, “Prince Charming” had a new aspect for me when I read it, specifically the ending. The ending vaguely described how Sarolta and Terka were happily living in a castle and were rarely seen by society. This, when viewed in conversation with Vivien’s poem, shifted in my mind from a statement of fact to a fanciful vision. The story became fuzzy, one filled with shadows, clouds, and mist. It was like a dream, a pleasantly haunting image because I connected with the poem about an almost lover in a haunting way, which had a terribly unfortunate ending that was unseen by the narrator. In this same way, the ending of “Prince Charming” was also unseen by the narrator and thus took on the haunting image, except this time it was a happy ending.

After reading the book of Vivien’s poetry, it was clear that Vivien’s writing was an outlet as. Many of her poems showed the forbidden nature of her life and love, which added even further context to the rest of her work. Through her poems, a layer of unknown and mystery was added and helped me read her short story with the same level of unclarity. The various breaks in thoughts and lyrical prose indicate that her poetry touched a different part of my soul, the part that is also filled with wonder and uncertainty about the world.