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“Friendship is more dangerous than love, since its roots are stronger and go deeper than the roots of love. The anguish of friendship is more bitter than the anguish of love. Certain souls love friendship as others love love; they suffer through friendship as others through love. They have in their lives only one friendship as others have but a single love. It is when they lose friendship that they despair hopelessly.”

— Renée Vivien, A Woman Appeared to Me (1904)

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Alice Pike Barney - Natalie With Mandolin

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“July 31th 1901

Dearest, I have dreamt again of my Violet and I saw her, spoke to her, know that she was living, and I afterwards blessed the kindly sleep that brought her back to me, just as I saw her last.

[…]

One thing consoles me for having lived a foolish, useless, and wicked life, and that is, that no one will mourn for me as I have mourned for Violet, because I don’t deserve it. —

August 10th 1901

[…] The thoughts of Violet never leave me and never will. Her portrait is always near me. I so constantly think of her, and every time the tears will come, though I know she is happy - safe - at peace.”

“Ma très chère, j'ai à nouveau rêvé de ma Violette et je l'ai vue, je lui ai parlé, je sais qu'elle était vivante, et j'ai ensuite remercié ce doux sommeil de me l'avoir ramenée à moi, comme je l'avais vue la dernière fois.

[…]

Une chose me console d'avoir vécu une vie stupide, inutile et empoisonnée et c'est que personne ne va me pleurer comme j'ai pleuré Violette, parce que je ne le mérite pas. –

[…] Les pensées de Violette jamais ne me quittent et jamais ne me quitteront. Son portrait est toujours près de moi. Je pense constamment à elle, et tout le temps les larmes me viennent, même si je sais qu'elle est heureuse ‐ en sécurité - en paix.

Extraits de lettres manuscrites de Pauline Tarn (Renée Vivien) à une certaine Elsa, cités dans Le Papillon de l'âme, Œuvres intimes inédites.

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~ The Calvatone Victory.

Date: A.D. 2nd century (Torso, head and sphere; the rest parts were reconstructed and added in 1844 according to the then views of the iconography of Victor)

Medium: Guilded bronze

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Garbo distinguished herself from other actors in the silent era whose gesticulations gave the term “silent opera” to the craft. Unlike some of her grimacing, eye-popping colleagues on screen, Garbo was a master of deep, subtle expressions. As Arnold Genthe had, the men in Hollywood who worked with Garbo most declared that her extraordinary power on film emanated from the eyes:

Clarence Brown: “She had something behind the eyes that you couldn’t see until you photographed it in close-up. If she had to look at one person with jealousy, and another with love, she didn’t have to change her expression. You could see it in her eyes. Nobody else has been able to do that on the screen.” 

Clarence Bull: “You could read her through her eyes. That’s why we made so many big pictures of her, to see what she was thinking.”

William Daniels: “I didn’t create a ‘Garbo face,’ but I always did try to make the camera peer into her eyes, to see what was there. She has the most beautiful eyes I ever saw.”

Victor Sjöström: “She thinks above her eyes. Certain great actors possess what seems to be an uncanny ability to register thought—Lon Chaney was one, Garbo is another. They seem literally to absorb impressions… Garbo is more sensitive to emotions than film is to light, [and] you see it through her eyes.” Greta Garbo in The Painted Veil (1934) dir. by Ryszard Bolesławski

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Tea Leaves, 1909 by William McGregor Paxton (American, 1869-1941), The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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Sir Frank Dicksee, study for “Chivalry” (pencil, watercolor and bodycolor, with gum arabic and with scratching out).

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Capucine by Yale Joel, 1950’s.

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“I was born for quiet existence For rural silence, where the lyre Sounds more sweetly in the silence, And spirit finds creative fire. In ease and innocence I take A walk beside the lonely lake, And far niente is my law.”

— Pushkin, Eugene Onegin

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Full moon at the Temple of Poseidon in Sounio, Greece

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“(…) do not fear Death. For the dead, lying on a bed of violets, find at last those dreams that Life never offered, and long-lost perfumes and long-silent music.”

— Renée Vivien, from A Woman Appeared To Me [translated by Jeannette H. Foster]

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«What are you doing?» «Follow me.»

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Anna Elisabet Weirauch’s novel, Der Skorpion, published in Germany in 1919, is considered significant in lesbian history for its influence being comparable to that of Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness in the English-speaking world. It is the first novel of a trilogy, the following novels being published in 1921 and 1932. The Well of Loneliness defends the innateness of homosexuality; Weirauch’s novel also develops this concept, although—significantly—Der Skorpion was published nine years earlier.

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“I’m not logical. I’m Juliet infected with romantic fever.”

— Renée Vivien, The Muse of the Violets

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Renée Vivien, 1900

Smithsonian Institution Archives

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Paul Grabwinkler (1880 - 1946)

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Clementina Maude, Viscountess Hawarden(1822-1865)