Renée Vivien Quotes

[Charles Brun] was so charming that I always write to him as "My dear Charlotte!"

Goddess who delights in the ruin of the rose,
Prolong the night!

Déesse à qui plaît la ruine des roses,
Prolonge la nuit !

Men smell of leather. … The leather of huntsmen, furniture movers, porters.

I was born under an unlucky star. I love France and I am not French. I am English and I can't like England. My father was Scotch, my mother was born in Honolulu. My father, William Tarn, died at the age of forty in 1890. My real name is Pauline Tarn. I changed it to Renée Vivien.

What a disgrace to live at the beginning of the 20th century. … One is always influenced by one's own time. And ours is that of Sarah Bernhardt and Rostand. Things will be much better in another ten years. You will see a new art born, new and beautiful. You will see that, but I shall not. I shall be dead. But … Sarah Bernhardt will live forever, and go on playing L'AIGLON forever!

Under the sun the summer grasses fade.
The rose, expiring after the harsh ravage
Of the heat, languishes toward the shade.
Sleep drips from the foliage.

I'm not logical. I'm infected with the romantic fever. It began in my teens when I read Baudelaire in secret, in a country boarding school in England from which I slipped away by climbing over the wall. I was fifteen, the same age as Juliet--a Juliet for whom Romeo had no attraction.