VIVIEN, RENE

born 1877, London died 1909, Paris pseudonym of Pauline M. Tarn French poet whose poetry encloses ardent passion within rigid verse forms. She was an exacting writer, known for her mastery of the sonnet and of the rarely found 11-syllable line (hendecasyllable). Of mixed Scottish and American ancestry, she was educated in England, but she lived nearly all her life in Paris and wrote in French. Her poetry was influenced by Keats and Swinburne; by Baudelaire; by Hellenic culture; by her extensive travels in Norway, Turkey, and Spain; and by her lesbianism, all of which imparted a certain exoticism to her writings. Like her contemporary Anna de Noailles, she was gifted with beauty, fortune, talent, and fame. Nevertheless, Vivien was deeply unhappy, being unable to adjust to the realities of life. She hated the crassness of her age; her dark, candlelit apartment was decorated with objets d'art from past civilizations. Her major works are Cendres et poussires (1902; Ashes and Dust); Les Kithardes (1904; The Women of Kithara); translations from Sappho, the Greek poetess of Lesbos; and Sillages (1908; Sea Wakes). Vivien seems to have found peace shortly before her death with her conversion to Roman Catholicism, intimated in the new austerity of her last works, Dans un coin de violettes (1908; In a Violet Garden) and Le Vent des vaisseaux (1909; Ship Wind). Her Posies compltes were published in 12 volumes in 190110 and in two volumes in 1934.