Hostname: page-component-7bb8b95d7b-nptnm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-09-21T09:36:35.489Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Djuna Barnes and the Geriatric Avant-Garde

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Scott Herring
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Though her publications were slight after she permanently moved to Greenwich Village, in New York City, in 1940, Djuna Barnes labored over scores of literary and nonliterary typescript drafts from the 1940s to the 1980s. This unpublished artwork constitutes a geriatric avant-garde that deepened her earlier investments in modernist aesthetics. Archived documents record the elderly writer performing the principles of high modernism—innovation, experimentalism, and novelty—across an unprecedented array of genres, such as the poem, the pharmacy order, the grocery list, the medicine regimen, the memo, and personal correspondence. This article reassesses gerontophobic depictions of Barnes as an aged recluse who lived a creatively fruitless late life. The underex-plored works of her senior years are a unique version of what Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick calls “a senile sublime.”

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 130 , Issue 1 , January 2015 , pp. 69 - 91
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2015

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Achenbaum, W. Andrew. Crossing Frontiers: Gerontology Emerges as a Science. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Adorno, Theodor W. “Late Style in Beethoven.” Essays on Music. Selected by Richard Leppert. Introd. Leppert. Trans. Susan H. Gillespie. Berkeley: U of California P, 2002. 564–68. Print.Google Scholar
Alpern, Sara, et al., eds. The Challenge of Feminist Biography: Writing the Lives of Modern American Women. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1992. Print.Google Scholar
Barnes, Djuna. “C.O.Bigelow.” 10 Dec. 1980. TS. Collection of Hank O'Neal.Google Scholar
Barnes, Djuna. “Dereliction. Pro Vita Sua of (Parasites, Parthengenesis, and Spectre Spring.).” 1 June 1970. TS. Ser. 3, box 8, folder 20. Djuna Barnes Papers. Spec. Collections. Hornbake Lib., U of Maryland, College Park.Google Scholar
Barnes, Djuna. Grocery list. 5 Feb. 1979. TS. Ser. 3, box 10, folder 12. Djuna Barnes Papers. Spec. Collections. Hornbake Lib., U of Maryland, College Park.Google Scholar
Barnes, Djuna. “The Hummingbird.” N.d. TS. Ser. 3, box 9, folder 8. Djuna Barnes Papers. Spec. Collections. Hornbake Lib., U of Maryland, College Park.Google Scholar
Barnes, Djuna. “(Item vrom Poems in Passing.): Phantom Spring.” N.d. TS. Ser. 3, box 9, folder 13. Djuna Barnes Papers. Spec. Collections. Hornbake Lib., U of Maryland, College Park.Google Scholar
Barnes, Djuna. “Jefferson,-675-2277.” N.d. TS. Collection of Hank O'Neal.Google Scholar
Barnes, Djuna. “Jefferson Market, Barnes.” N.d. TS. Collection of Hank O'Neal.Google Scholar
Barnes, Djuna. Letter to Silas Glossop. 9 Nov. 1967. TS. Ser. 2, box 8, folder 2. Djuna Barnes Papers. Spec. Collections. Hornbake Lib., U of Maryland, College Park.Google Scholar
Barnes, Djuna. Letter to Silas Glossop. 23 May 1973. TS. Ser. 2, box 8, folder 3. Djuna Barnes Papers. Spec. Collections. Hornbake Lib., U of Maryland, College Park.Google Scholar
Barnes, Djuna. “The Marian Year.” N.d. TS. Ser. 3, box 8, folder 9. Djuna Barnes Papers. Spec. Collections. Hornbake Lib., U of Maryland, College Park.Google Scholar
Barnes, Djuna. Note on Nightwood. N.d. MS. Ser. 3, box 11, folder 6. Djuna Barnes Papers. Spec. Collections. Hornbake Lib., U of Maryland, College Park.Google Scholar
Barnes, Djuna. “Pavan.” N.d. TS. Ser. 3, box 11, folder 3. Djuna Barnes Papers. Spec. Collections. Hornbake Lib., U of Maryland, College Park.Google Scholar
Barnes, Djuna. Prescription routine and C. O. Bigelow pharmacy request. N.d. TS. Ser. 3, box 9, folder 8. Djuna Barnes Papers. Spec. Collections. Hornbake Lib., U of Maryland, College Park.Google Scholar
Barnes, Djuna. “Rite of Spring.” 25 May 1980. TS. Ser. 3, box 10, folder 9. Djuna Barnes Papers. Spec. Collections. Hornbake Lib., U of Maryland, College Park.Google Scholar
Barnes, Djuna. “Virgin Spring.” N.d. TS. Ser. 3, box 11, folder 11. Djuna Barnes Papers. Spec. Collections. Hornbake Lib., U of Maryland, College Park.Google Scholar
Barnes, Djuna. Will. 20 May 1980. TS. Ser. 1, box 4, folder 11. Djuna Barnes Papers. Spec. Collections. Hornbake Lib., U of Maryland, College Park.Google Scholar
Barnes, Djuna. “Work in progress: Rite of Spring.” N.d. TS. Ser. 3, box 10, folder 9. Djuna Barnes Papers. Spec. Collections. Hornbake Lib., U of Maryland, College Park.Google Scholar
Benstock, Shari. Women of the Left Bank: Paris, 1900-1940. Austin: U of Texas P, 1986. Print.Google Scholar
Boccaccio, Mary. Letter to Djuna Barnes. 23 May 1977. TS. Ser. 2, box 16, folder 2. Djuna Barnes Papers. Spec. Collections. Hornbake Lib., U of Maryland, College Park.Google Scholar
Borenstein, Audrey. Chimes of Change and Hours: Views of Older Women in Twentieth-Century America. Cranbury: Associated UP, 1983. Print.Google Scholar
Bornstein, George. Material Modernism: The Politics of the Page. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001. Print.Google Scholar
Brodzki, Bella, and Schenck, Celeste, eds. Life/Lines: Theorizing Women's Autobiography. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1988. Print.Google Scholar
Broe, Mary Lynn. Introduction. Broe, Silence 3–23.Google Scholar
Broe, Mary Lynn, ed. Silence and Power: A Reevaluation of Djuna Barnes. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1991. Print.Google Scholar
Burke, Carolyn. “‘Accidental Aloofness’: Barnes, Loy, and Modernism.” Broe, Silence 67–79.Google Scholar
Bush, Ronald. The Genesis of Ezra Pound's Cantos. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1976. Print.Google Scholar
Butler, Robert N. Why Survive? Being Old in America. 1975. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2002. Print.Google Scholar
Caselli, Daniela. Improper Modernism: Djuna Barnes's Bewildering Corpus. Surrey: Ashgate, 2009. Print.Google Scholar
Chudacoff, Howard P. How Old Are You? Age Consciousness in American Culture. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1989. Print.Google Scholar
Curry, Lynda. “‘Tom, Take Mercy’: Djuna Barnes' Drafts of The Antiphon.” Broe, Silence 286–98.Google Scholar
Daley, Suzanne. “Djuna Barnes Dies; Poet and Novelist.” New York Times 20 June 1982, final ed.: 32. Print.Google Scholar
“Djuna Barnes Papers.” ArchivesUM, 2007. Web. 13 Jan. 2013.Google Scholar
DuPlessis, Rachel Blau. Blue Studios: Poetry and Its Cultural Work. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 2006. Print.Google Scholar
DuPlessis, Rachel Blau. Purple Passages: Pound, Eliot, Zukofsky, Olson, Creeley, and the Ends of Patriarchal Poetry. Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 2012. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eburne, Jonathan P., and Felski, Rita, eds. What Is an Avant-Garde? Spec. issue of New Literary History 41.4 (2010): v-xv, 695-931. Print.Google Scholar
Ehlers, Sarah. “Making It Old: The Victorian/Modern Divide in Twentieth-Century American Poetry.” Modern Language Quarterly 73.1 (2012): 37–67. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Faltejskova, Monika. Djuna Barnes, T. S. Eliot, and the Gender Dynamics of Modernism: Tracing Nightwood. New York: Routledge, 2010. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Field, Andrew. Djuna: The Life and Times of Djuna Barnes. New York: Putnam, 1983. Print.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. The Use of Pleasure. Trans. Hurley, Robert. New York: Vintage, 1990. Print. Vol. 2 of The History of Sexuality.Google Scholar
Friedman, Susan Stanford. “Women's Autobiographical Selves: Theory and Practice.” The Private Self: Theory and Practice of Women's Autobiographical Writings. Ed. Benstock, Shari. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1988. 34–62. Print.Google Scholar
Fuchs, Miriam. “Djuna Barnes and T. S. Eliot: Authority, Resistance, and Acquiescence.” Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature 12.2 (1993): 288–313. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fuchs, Miriam. The Text Is Myself: Women's Life Writing and Catastrophe. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 2004. Print.Google Scholar
Gerstenberger, Donna. “The Radical Narrative of Djuna Barnes's Nightwood.” Breaking the Sequence: Women's Experimental Fiction. Ed. Friedman, Ellen G. and Fuchs, Miriam. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1989. 129–39. Print.Google Scholar
Gilmore, Leigh. Autobiographics: A Feminist Theory of Women's Self-Representation. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1994. Print.Google Scholar
Glendinning, Victoria. “Lies and Silences.” The Troubled Face of Biography. Ed. Homberger, Eric and Charmley, John. Hong Kong: Macmillan, 1988. 49–62. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
González, Jennifer A. “Autotopographies.” Prosthetic Territories: Politics and Hypertechnologies. Ed. Brahm, Gabriel Jr., and Driscoll, Mark. Boulder: Westview, 1995. 133–50. Print.Google Scholar
Gullette, Margaret Morganroth. Aged by Culture. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2004. Print.Google Scholar
Gullette, Margaret Morganroth. “Creativity, Aging, Gender: A Study of Their Intersections, 1910-1935.” Aging and Gender in Literature: Studies in Creativity. Ed. Wyatt-Brown, Anne M. and Rossen, Janice. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1993. 19–48. Print.Google Scholar
Haber, Carole. Beyond Sixty-Five: The Dilemma of Old Age in America's Past. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1983. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hardie, Melissa Jane. “Repulsive Modernism: Djuna Barnes' The Book of Repulsive Women.” Journal of Modern Literature 29.1 (2005): 118–32. Print.Google Scholar
Heisler, Aaron Yale. “Literary Memory and the Moment of Modern Music.” Modernism/Modernity 19.4 (2012): 693–715. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herring, Phillip. Djuna: The Life and Work of Djuna Barnes. New York: Penguin, 1996. Print.Google Scholar
Herring, Phillip, and Stutman, Osías, eds. Collected Poems, with Notes toward the Memoirs. By Djuna Barnes. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 2005. Print.Google Scholar
Herring, Phillip. “Guide to the Poems and Texts.” Herring and Stutman, Collected Poems xv-xix.Google Scholar
Herring, Phillip. Introduction. Herring and Stutman, Collected Poems 3–18.Google Scholar
Hollis, Catherine. “No Marriage in Heaven: Editorial Resurrection in Djuna Barnes's Nightwood.” Text 13 (2000): 233–49. Print.Google Scholar
Johnson, Barbara. Introduction. The Seductions of Biography. Ed. Rhiel, Mary and Suchoff, David. New York: Routledge, 1996. 119–21. Print.Google Scholar
Kalaidjian, Walter. The Edge of Modernism: American Poetry and the Traumatic Past. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2006. Print.Google Scholar
Kannenstine, Louis F. The Art of Djuna Barnes: Duality and Damnation. New York: New York UP, 1977. Print.Google Scholar
Levine, Nancy J. “Works in Progress: The Uncollected Poetry of Barnes's Patchin Place Period.” Review of Contemporary Fiction 13.3 (1993): 187–200. Print.Google Scholar
McCullough, Frances. “On Meeting Miss Barnes.” A Festschrift for Djuna Barnes on Her 80th Birthday. Ed. Gildzen, Alex. Kent: Kent State U Libs., 1972. N. pag. Print.Google Scholar
Medovoi, Leerom. “Age Trouble: A Timely Subject in American Literary and Cultural Studies.” American Literary History 22.3 (2010): 657–72. Print.Google Scholar
Messerli, Douglas. Foreword. I Could Never Be Lonely without a Husband: Interviews. By Djuna Barnes. Ed. Alyce Barry. London: Virago, 1987. 3–8. Print.Google Scholar
Micir, Melanie. “‘Living in Two Tenses’: The Intimate Archives of Sylvia Townsend Warner.” Journal of Modern Literature 36.1 (2012): 119–31. Print.Google Scholar
Miller, Tyrus. Late Modernism: Politics, Fiction, and the Arts between the World Wars. Berkeley: U of California P, 1999. Print.Google Scholar
Nealon, Christopher. “The Matter of Literacy, or, Poetry without Modernity.” J19: The Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists 1.1 (2013): 206–13. Print.Google Scholar
North, Michael. Novelty: A History of the New. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2013. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O'Neal, Hank. “Life Is Painful, Nasty, and Short… In My Case It Has Only Been Painful and Nasty”: Djuna Barnes, 1978-1981: An Informal Memoir. New York: Paragon, 1990. Print.Google Scholar
Page, Chester. Memoirs of a Charmed Life in New York. New York: iUniverse, 2007. Print.Google Scholar
Personal Narratives Group. “Origins.” Interpreting Women's Lives: Feminist Theory and Personal Narratives. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1989. 3–15. Print.Google Scholar
Peters, Margot. “Biographies of Women.” Biography 2.3 (1979): 201–17. Print.Google Scholar
Plumb, Cheryl J. Introduction. Nightwood: The Original Version and Related Drafts. By Djuna Barnes. Ed. Plumb. Normal: Dalkey Archive P, 1995. vii-xxvi. Print.Google Scholar
Plumb, Cheryl J. “Revising Nightwood: ‘A Kind of Glee of Despair.‘” Review of Contemporary Fiction 13.3 (1993): 149–59. Print.Google Scholar
Podnieks, Elizabeth. “‘New Biography’ for a New Millennium.” Introduction. A/B: Auto/Biography Studies 24.1 (2009): 1–14. Print.Google Scholar
Pound, Ezra. Ta Hio: The Great Learning. Seattle: U of Washington Bk. Store, 1928. Print.Google Scholar
“Puffball, N.” Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford UP, Mar. 2013. Web. 25 July 2014.Google Scholar
Raymont, Henry. “From the Avant-Garde of the Thirties, Djuna Barnes.” New York Times 24 May 1971, final ed.: 24. Print.Google Scholar
Said, Edward W. On Late Style: Music and Literature against the Grain. New York: Pantheon, 2006. Print.Google Scholar
Sawyer-Lauçanno, Christopher. E. E. Cummings: A Biography. London: Methuen, 2005. Print.Google Scholar
Schulze, Robin G. “How Not to Edit: The Case of Marianne Moore.” Textual Cultures 2.1 (2007): 119–35. Print.Google Scholar
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity. Durham: Duke UP, 2003. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Sidonie. “Performativity, Autobiographical Practice, Resistance.” A/B: Auto/Biography Studies 10.1 (1995): 17–33. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Sidonie, and Watson, Julia. Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives. 2nd ed. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2010. Print.Google Scholar
“Spaddle, N.” Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford UP, Mar. 2013. Web. 16 Oct. 2013.Google Scholar
Stimpson, Catharine. Afterword. Broe, Silence 370–73.Google Scholar
Sullivan, Hannah. The Work of Revision. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2013. Print.Google Scholar
Suzman, Richard, and Riley, Matilda White. “Introducing the ‘Oldest Old.‘” Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly. Health and Society 63.2 (1985): 175–86. Print.Google Scholar
Suzman, Richard M., Willis, David P., and Manton, Kenneth G. “Introducing the Oldest Old.” The Oldest Old. Ed. Suzman, Willis, and Manton. New York: Oxford UP, 1992. 3–14. Print.Google Scholar
Tyler-Bennett, Deborah. “‘Thick within Our Hair’: Djuna Barnes's Gothic Lovers.” Gothic Modernisms. Ed. Smith, Andrew and Wallace, Jeff. New York: Palgrave, 2001. 95–110. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
“Whipless, Adj.” Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford UP, Mar. 2013. Web. 26 July 2014.Google Scholar
Woodward, Kathleen. Aging and Its Discontents: Freud and Other Fictions. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1991. Print.Google Scholar
Woodward, Kathleen. At Last, the Real Distinguished Thing: The Late Poems of Eliot, Pound, Stevens, and Williams. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1980. Print.Google Scholar
Woodward, Kathleen. Figuring Age: Women, Bodies, Generations. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1999. Print.Google Scholar
Woodward, Kathleen. Statistical Panic: Cultural Politics and Poetics of the Emotions. Durham: Duke UP, 2009. Print.Google Scholar