Natalie
Clifford Barney (31 October 1876 – 2 February 1972) was an American
playwright, poet and novelist who lived as an expatriate in Paris.  She
was openly lesbian and began publishing love poems to women under her
own name as early as 1900, considering scandal as "the best way of
getting rid of nuisances"(meaning heterosexual attention from young
males).

This is the sixty-sixth post in a series highlighting the best gay and
lesbian authors from the 20th century (with a few before and after that
period) who have recorded in fiction, and nonfiction, the history of gay
people telling what life is, and was, during an important time of
history.

Barney's
salon was held at her home on Paris' Left Bank for more than 60 years
and brought together writers and artists from around the world,
including many leading figures in French literature along with American
and British Modernists of the Lost Generation. She worked to promote
writing by women and formed a "Women's Academy" in response to the
all-male French Academy while also giving support and inspiration to
male writers from Remy de Gourmont to Truman Capote.[
She was openly lesbian and began publishing love poems to women under
her own name as early as 1900, considering scandal as "the best way of
getting rid of nuisances"(meaning heterosexual attention from young
males).In her writings she supported feminism and pacifism. She opposed
monogamy and had many overlapping long and short-term relationships,
including on-and-off romances with poet Renée Vivien and dancer Armen
Ohanian and a 50-year relationship with painter Romaine Brooks. Her life
and love affairs served as inspiration for many novels, ranging from
the salacious French bestseller Sapphic Idyll to The Well of Loneliness,
arguably the most famous lesbian novel of the 20th century.

Major relationships
Barney practiced, and advocated, what would today be called polyamory.
As early as 1901, in Cinq Petits Dialogues Grecs, she argued in favor of
multiple relationships and against jealousy;[ in Èparpillements she
wrote "One is unfaithful to those one loves in order that their charm
does not become mere habit."[ While she could be jealous herself, she
actively encouraged at least some of her lovers to be non-monogamous as
well.
Due in part to Jean Chalon's early biography of her, published in
English as Portrait of a Seductress, she had become more widely known
for her many relationships than for her writing or her salon. She once
wrote out a list, divided into three categories: liaisons,
demi-liaisons, and adventures. Colette was a demi-liaison, while the
artist and furniture designer Eyre de Lanux, with whom she had an
off-and-on affair for several years, was listed as an adventure. Among
the liaisons—the relationships that she considered most important—were
Olive Custance, Renée Vivien, Elisabeth de Gramont, Romaine Brooks, and
Dolly Wilde.Of these, the three longest relationships were with de
Gramont, Brooks, and Wilde; from 1927, she was involved with all three
of them simultaneously, a situation that ended only with Wilde's death.
Her shorter affairs, such as those with Colette and Lucie
Delarue-Mardrus, often evolved into lifelong friendships.

Legacy
By the end of Barney's life her work had been largely forgotten. In
1979, Nathalie Barney was honored with a place setting in Judy Chicago's
feminist work of art The Dinner Party. In the 1980s Barney began to be
recognized for what Karla Jay calls an "almost uncanny anticipation" of
the concerns of later feminist writers.[98] English translations of some
of her memoirs, essays, and epigrams appeared in 1992, but most of her
plays and poetry are still untranslated.

Her indirect influence on literature,
through her salon and her many literary friendships, can be seen in the
number of writers who have addressed or portrayed her in their works.
Claudine S'en Va (Claudine and Annie, 1903) by Colette contains a brief
appearance by Barney as "Miss Flossie,"echoing the nickname she had
earlier been given in de Pougy's novel Idylle Saphique. Renée Vivien
wrote many poems about her, as well as a Symbolist novel, Une Femme
M'Apparut (A Woman Appeared to Me, 1904), in which she is described as
having "eyes ... as sharp and blue as a blade.... The charm of peril
emanated from her and drew me inexorably." Remy de Gourmont addressed
her in his Letters to the Amazon, and Truman Capote mentioned her in his
last, unfinished novel Answered Prayers. She also appeared in two later
novels by writers who never met her: Francesco Rapazzini's Un Soir chez
l'Amazone (An Evening with the Amazon, 2004) is a historical novel
about Barney's salon, while Anna Livia's Minimax (1991) portrays both
her and Renee Vivien as still-living vampires.

According
to Lillian Faderman, "There was probably no lesbian in the four decades
between 1928 and the late 1960s capable of reading English or any of
the eleven languages into which the book was translated who was
unfamiliar with The Well of Loneliness."Although the novel's author,
Radclyffe Hall, intended it as an argument for greater tolerance for
what she called "sexual inverts", it has often been criticized by
lesbian readers for its protagonist's self-hatred and its use of terms
like "freak" and "mistake of nature".[ Barney, as the salon hostess
Valérie Seymour, appears in the novel as the symbol of a different
attitude. "Valérie, placid and self-assured, created an atmosphere of
courage; everyone felt very normal and brave when they gathered together
at Valérie Seymour's."

Barney and the women in her social circle are the subject of Djuna
Barnes's Ladies Almanack (1928), a roman à clef written in an archaic,
Rabelaisian style, with Barnes' own illustrations in the style of
Elizabethan woodcuts. She has the lead role as Dame Evangeline Musset,
"who was in her Heart one Grand Red Cross for the Pursuance, the Relief
and the Distraction, of such Girls as in their Hinder Parts, and their
Fore Parts, and in whatsoever Parts did suffer them most, lament
Cruelly". "[A] Pioneer and a Menace" in her youth, Dame Musset has
reached "a witty and learned Fifty"; she rescues women in distress,
dispenses wisdom, and upon her death is elevated to sainthood. Also
appearing pseudonymously are Elisabeth de Gramont, Romaine Brooks, Dolly
Wilde, Radclyffe Hall and her partner Una, Lady Troubridge, Janet
Flanner and Solita Solano, and Mina Loy.The obscure language, inside
jokes, and ambiguity of Ladies Almanack have kept critics arguing about
whether it is an affectionate satire or a bitter attack, but Barney
herself loved the book and reread it throughout her life.
On October 26, 2009, Barney was honored with a historical marker in her
home town of Dayton, Ohio. The marker is the first in Ohio to note the
sexual orientation of its honoree. This plaque was vandalized in July
2010.

Works
Works in French
Quelques Portraits-Sonnets de Femmes (Paris: Ollendorf, 1900)
Cinq Petits Dialogues Grecs (Paris: La Plume, 1901; as "Tryphé")
Actes et entr'actes (Paris: Sansot, 1910)
Je me souviens (Paris: Sansot, 1910)
Eparpillements (Paris: Sansot, 1910)
Pensées d'une Amazone (Paris: Emile Paul, 1920)
Aventures de l'Esprit (Paris: Emile Paul, 1929)
Nouvelles Pensées de l'Amazone (Paris: Mercure de France, 1939)
Souvenirs Indiscrets (Paris: Flammarion, 1960)
Traits et Portraits (Paris: Mercure de France, 1963)
Works in English
Poems & Poèmes: Autres Alliances (Paris: Emile Paul, New York: Doran, 1920) – bilingual collection of poetry
The One Who Is Legion (London: Eric Partridge, Ltd., 1930; Orono, Maine: National Poetry Foundation, 1987)
English translations
A Perilous Advantage: The Best of Natalie Clifford Barney (New Victoria Publishers, 1992); edited and translated by Anna Livia
Adventures of the Mind (New York University Press, 1992); trans. John Spalding Gatton

FOR MORE INFORMATION GO TO

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natalie_Clifford_Barney