Françoise Sagan by Thomas D.MacAvoy 1955 via
Françoise Sagan by Thomas D.MacAvoy 1955 via
Category Archives: Writers and Poets
Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (1900s)
Colette, 1900s via
Elegant Diana Vreeland Study for portrait by William Acton (1930s)
Diana Vreeland (1903 – 1989), was a noted columnist and editor in the field of fashion. She worked for the fashion magazines Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue and as a special consultant at the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She was named to the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame in 1964.
Vintage Photos of Colette by André Kertész (1930)
Jean Cocteau in bed with a Mask (1927)
Jean Cocteau (1889 – 1963) was a French writer, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker. An important exponent of avant-garde art, Cocteau had great influence on the work of others.
He is best known for his novel Les Enfants Terribles (1929), and the films The Blood of a Poet (1930), Les Parents Terribles (1948), Beauty and the Beast (1946) and Orpheus (1949).
Portrait of Jean Cocteau in bed with Mask by Berenice Abbott, 1927 via
Portrait of Jean Cocteau in bed with Mask by Berenice Abbott, 1927 via
Portrait of Jean Cocteau in bed with Mask by Berenice Abbott, 1927 via
Portrait of Jean Cocteau in bed with Mask by Berenice Abbott, 1927 via
Anita Loos and Cecil Beaton in Palm Beach (1930)
Vintage Photos of Performance Artist Emmy Hennings (1885-1948)
Emmy Hennings (born Emma Maria Cordsen, 1885 – 1948) was a performer and poet. She was also the wife of celebrated Dadaist Hugo Ball.
Hennings and Ball moved to Zurich in 1915, where they took part in the founding of the Cabaret Voltaire, which marked the beginning of the Dada movement. Hennings was a regular performer at the Cabaret Voltaire. Her performances included a role in Das Leben des Menschen (the Life of a Man), in which she appeared with Ball.
In The Magic Bishop: Hugo Ball, Dada Poet, author Erdmute Wenzel White writes that Hennings “was admired by expressionists as the incarnation of the cabaret artist of her time… The shining star of the Voltaire, according to the Zuricher Post (Zurich Post), her role in Dada has not been adequately acknowledged.
After the Cabaret Voltaire ended, Hennings and Ball toured, performing mostly in hotels. Hennings sang, did puppetry, and danced to music composed by Ball. She also recited her own poetry. In 1916 Ball and Hennings created Arabella, their own ensemble troupe, where Hennings performed under the name Dagny.
Hennings married Ball on 21 February 1920. Although they had no children together, Hennings had a daughter, Annemarie, from a previous relationship. Hennings, who outlived Ball by two decades, lived in Magliaso, Switzerland from 1942 to 1948. She died at a clinic in Sorengo, Switzerland.
Emmy Hennings been almost completely erased from the history of the Dada movement. This was due to her own inner conflict, her extreme practice of Catholicism contrasting with her debauched bohemian lifestyle but also because of her constant rewriting of her story and that of Hugo Ball during the latter part of her life. Dada artists and historians thus preferred to eclipse the role Emmy Hennings and turned her into a naive eccentric adorned by a childish bob haircut (source).
Emmy Hennings and her dada puppets, 1916 via
Emmy Hennings, 1910-1913 via
Emmy Hennings with her friends for Revolution Ball of “Action”, 1915 via
Emmy Hennings, 1915 via
Emmy Hennings, 1917-1918
Nancy Cunnard by Curtis Moffat (1925)
Colette on a Parisian balcony (1932)
Vintage Photos of French Novelist Anna de Noailles
FOR this I write, that when I lie in earth,
It may be known I loved the air and mirth,
And that my book to future races tell
How I loved life and nature passing well.
Attentive to the toil of towns and fields,
I marked what every changing season yields,
Since water, earth, and flames that gold refine
Are fairest imaged in this soul of mine.
I say what I do feel, what I behold,
With heart for which the truth was not too bold,
I who have had the hardihood to will
When I am dead and gone to be loved still.
And that young man reading what I wrote,
Feeling his troubled heart thrilled with delight,
Forgetting those who love him in the life
Should welcome me to be his best-loved wife.
Read more at http://www.blackcatpoems.com/n/my_writing.html#1hHWWDPuD89VtDg8.99
Poet and novelist Anna de Noailles (1876 – 30 1933) was of Greco-Romanian origins, but was born in Paris where she lived all her life. She wrote three novels, an autobiography, and nine collections of poetry. In 1897 she had married Mathieu Fernand Frédéric Pascal de Noailles (1873–1942), the fourth son of the 7th Duke de Noailles.
FOR this I write, that when I lie in earth,
It may be known I loved the air and mirth,
And that my book to future races tell
How I loved life and nature passing well.
Attentive to the toil of towns and fields,
I marked what every changing season yields,
Since water, earth, and flames that gold refine
Are fairest imaged in this soul of mine.
I say what I do feel, what I behold,
With heart for which the truth was not too bold,
I who have had the hardihood to will
When I am dead and gone to be loved still.
And that young man reading what I wrote,
Feeling his troubled heart thrilled with delight,
Forgetting those who love him in the life
Should welcome me to be his best-loved wife.
Read more at http://www.blackcatpoems.com/n/my_writing.html#1hHWWDPuD89VtDg8.99
FOR this I write, that when I lie in earth,
It may be known I loved the air and mirth,
And that my book to future races tell
How I loved life and nature passing well.
Attentive to the toil of towns and fields,
I marked what every changing season yields,
Since water, earth, and flames that gold refine
Are fairest imaged in this soul of mine.
I say what I do feel, what I behold,
With heart for which the truth was not too bold,
I who have had the hardihood to will
When I am dead and gone to be loved still.
And that young man reading what I wrote,
Feeling his troubled heart thrilled with delight,
Forgetting those who love him in the life
Should welcome me to be his best-loved wife.
Read more at http://www.blackcatpoems.com/n/my_writing.html#1hHWWDPuD89VtDg8.99
The couple soon became the toast of Parisian high society.
De Noailles had friendly relations with the intellectual, literary and artistic elite of the day. So popular that various notable artists painted her portrait, including Antonio de la Gandara, Kees van Dongen, Jacques Émile Blanche, and the British portrait painter Philip de Laszlo. In 1906 her image was sculpted by Auguste Rodin; the clay model can be seen today in the Musée Rodin in Paris, and the finished marble bust is on display in New York’s Metropolitan Museum.
For her works de Noailles was the first woman to become a Commander of the Legion of Honor. In her poetry she actively engaged with her French literary heritage while finding a source of inspiration in Greek paganism and in Nietzsche’s radical thought, de Noailles constructed an original poetic world view. Her work is best described as Dionysian–ecstatic, sensual, erotic, playful, sometimes violent, and always marked by a tragic undercurrent which becomes more apparent in her later poetry (source). She died in 1933 in Paris, aged 56, and was interred in the Père Lachaise Cemetery.
Comtesse de Noailles, 1922 via
Anna de Noailles, 1922 via
Anna de Noailles wearing her trademark bouffant coiffure augmented by a wall of bangs and a 1900s dress with complex sleeves, 1904 via
Portrait of Anna de Noailles, 1918 via
FOR this I write, that when I lie in earth,
It may be known I loved the air and mirth,
And that my book to future races tell
How I loved life and nature passing well.
Attentive to the toil of towns and fields,
I marked what every changing season yields,
Since water, earth, and flames that gold refine
Are fairest imaged in this soul of mine.
I say what I do feel, what I behold,
With heart for which the truth was not too bold,
I who have had the hardihood to will
When I am dead and gone to be loved still.
And that young man reading what I wrote,
Feeling his troubled heart thrilled with delight,
Forgetting those who love him in the life
Should welcome me to be his best-loved wife.
Read more at http://www.blackcatpoems.com/n/my_writing.html#1hHWWDPuD89VtDg8.99
FROM THE BYGONE 
