If Djuna Barnes is remembered today it is for her novel “Nightwood”. Her admirers may call that shortsighted and add “Antiphon” a play, “Ryder” a novel, and some may even seek to remind us of “Ladies Almanack”. The latter a send up of lesbian life of the expatriate lesbian community in Paris. Once thought to_ be an “affectionate Lampoon,” but now thought, like all her works, to be a product of a woman whose rage and vitriol kept her alive to a ripe old age. As a matter of fact, Djuna Barnes was an alcoholic of immense proportions; a devotee of “Chesterfields” (you remember that old smoke – or do you?); a lady who almost never exercised, and who amazingly made it to ninety. Hank O’Neal issued an informal memoir, with her cooperation, entitled: “Life is Painful, Nasty and Short…in my case it has only been painful and nasty.” Evidently living to ninety did not always have it’s compensations.
More than once I’ve told you my theory that all culture is connected. What are my (the) connections I wish to emphasize? Somewhere in that computer I call my head I always knew of Djuna Barnes, but I can’t tell you why or how. Then I did a T.S. Eliot column and he wrote the introduction for “Nightwood”. I didn’t much deal with Eliot as an editor though I mentioned it. Since I had the novel and because of the introduction I figured I’d read it. Then of course having read it I wanted to write about it, and her. That required work and research. The second connection is that when Ms. Barnes was in eclipse one Douglas Messerli, Professor of English at Temple University, came knocking on her door (literally). My son got his doctorate at Temple. Anyhow she allowed Messerli to bring her “Newspaper Tales” back into print. These were published under the titles “Smoke and other early stories” and “New York”. New York my foot! – guess where Djuna Barnes got her start? On the old Brooklyn Daily Eagle – that’s where. That newspaper is today published out of the same office as “The Record”. Are Djuna Barnes and I connected? Well that’s stretching it – but. I hope you remember my column on “Hermann Broch”. Jack Aaron Hirschman published his Ph.D. dissertation: “The Orchestrated Novel: A Study of Poetic Devices in Novels of Djuna Barnes and Hermann Broch, and the Influence of the Works of James Joyce Upon Them”. I also hope you remember my article on Ulysses, and how to read it. So we have a lot of connections here. We need one more – read on.
Phillip Herring in his biography “Djuna”, copyright 1995; says that you can’t understand the literary works of Djuna Barnes unless you know the life. Some may, possibly me, add that you may not understand the works even if you do. Where do we begin? Well, her grandmother Zadelthruer Barnes was a minor literary figure, and as such she eclipsed and divorced her husband. She taught her son Wald Barnes to believe in free love. Wald Barnes is Djuna’s father. Believing what he was taught he decided that his daughter should be initiated into the cult of free love, so he gave her to a man three times her age. She saw it as rape and betrayal by her father. In fact, she once gave an account to someone that it was her father, but it most likely was a neighbor. Less traumatic, but equally.significant is that she probably had an incestuous relationship with her grandmother. Then to top things off Wald brought home another wife and kicked out Djuna’s mother and her children. However, this didn’t occur till he first raised a second family. All lived together, until Wald, who was impecunious, couldn’t support two families. Djuna’s was thought the more likely to manage without him. Monetarily, at least, Wald proved right because both of her brothers were successful. One went into advertising and is credited with the slogan: “Wouldn’t you really rather have a Buick”. Which for me is another association because when he was little my Harvard genius used to ask everyone if they’d really rather have a “Ewick”.
“The Antiphon” is Djuna Barnes “Orestia”. You remember the “Orestia” the world’s first foremost dysfunctional family. Professor Herring (he is a professor of English at Wisconsin – Madison) says that Djuna Barnes poured all her bitterness and vitriol against her family into that play. I did neglect to mention that her brothers tried to put her away in a sanatarium because of her drinking, but that would have been death for her anyhow. She stopped drinking to write “The Antiphon”. I’ll tell you that with the Herring Biography, I could get some of it, precious little. It is in verse. T.S. Eliot told her that she should stick to prose because she was one of the great prose stylists. He did not like her poetry because of it’s strict iambic pentameter. She should have listened. Dag Hammarskjold had the play translated into Swedish, and produced in Sweden. She cried more than most when his plane was lost in Africa (Herring says Zambia but I thought it was Zaire).
Let’s get to “Nightwood”. The two loves of Djuna Barnes life were “Thelma Wood (female) and Ernst “Putzi” Hantstaengl (male). In later life Djuna Barnes denied she was ever a lesbian as she gravitated to men, but the lady doth protest too much. “Nightwood” is to take down Thelma Wood for leaving Djuna Barnes. Let’s just digress to talk about “Putzi” Hantstaengl. Does that name sound at all familiar to you? He was German from a rich family who owned art galleries. He was Harvard educated and became Hitler’s friend. Eventually, or so “Putzi” says he tried to moderate Hitler. Hitler not wishing to be moderated called “Putzi” to deliver a letter to Franco; only it was planned that Putzi’s parachute wouldn’t open. “Putzi” was tipped off and tripped off to Switzerland. He wrote about both Adolf and Djuna. For her part she tried to get “Putzi”, in better days, to have Hitler agree to be interviewed. She had fantasies of killing Hitler. “Putzi” you should’ve got her in.
On the back of the New Directions “Nightwood” the blurbs say: It is the story of Robin Vote and those she destroys – her husband the “Baron”, their child Cuido. and the two women. Nora and Jenny who love her.” Robin Vote is Thelma (Night) Wood and Nora is Djuna. The blurbs also quote T.S. Eliot on the beauty of phrasing, the brilliance of wit and characterization and a quality of horror and doom very nearly related to that of an Elizabethan tragedy. Not bad for 170 pages. I didn’t really feel the “horror”, because to me Robin Vote doesn’t destroy people – she just leaves them. Although at the end Robin Vote herself is on the verge of destruction. Djuna Barnes said that the ending was ambiguous. It involves Robin in church with a dog. Her friends and her critics say there is nothing ambiguous about it. I say I thought as her friends did, but then I said nah – she can’t mean this – but evidently she did. If I’m ambiguous that’s because this is a family Newspaper and I truly wasn’t sure – though I knew that was only one nuance. If you want to be sure you have to read it. Remember T. S. Eliot. Edwin Muir and Dylan Thomas will vouch for Djuna Barnes. Dylan Thomas said: “One of the three great prose books ever written by a woman.”
As for me, I haven’t even covered her Paris days with the likes of Janet Flanner, Mina Joy, Peggy Guggenheim, and Gertrude Stein. Nor have I covered Massachusetts and Greenwich Village. She was a founder with Eugene O’Neill of the Provincetown Playhouse. I do not approve, but with all the booze and bedding she managed to write at least one classic.
NOTE: This article originally published in the New York Law Journal