A Woman Appeared to Me

Book excerpt: Appearing here together for the first time in English, in an exquisite translation by Brian Stableford, are the two markedly different novels issued by Renée Vivien under the title of A Woman Appeared to Me. First published in 1904 and 1905, these masterpieces of symbolist fiction recount Vivien's obsessive, torturing love affairs, most especially with the American writer Natalie Clifford Barney. Originally received with hostility due to their fervent championship of lesbianism, these highly sophisticated specimens of poetic prose, which offer an unusual combination of delicacy and fervor, economy and flamboyance, today can be seen as groundbreaking, and quite unparalleled, confessions of the pain and despair of intense amour.