Writing the Life of Natalie Clifford Barney's Salon: ‘le cercle d'enchantement et d'inspiration’

This paper focuses on the expatriate American poet Natalie Clifford Barney and her life as salon hostess in Paris which spanned the sixty-year period from 1908 to 1968. It explores how Barney embodied transnationalism, adopting the French language in her writing and creating an international friendship circle around herself. That transnationalism granted her both sexual freedom as a promiscuous lesbian and freedom of speech as an active feminist. Her unconventional salon not only openly supported homosexuality but also served as a forum fostering exchange between prominent politicians, writers, musicians and artists from all over the world. Her life as a salon hostess became the object of two innovative forms of life writing, both dating from the late 1920s: André Rouveyre's sketch map of the guest list of the international figureheads of modernism who frequented Barney's salon, and Djuna Barnes's satirical portrait of the salon written and illustrated under the title The Ladies Almanack. The study of these two little-known pieces as original forms of life writing highlights Barney's pivotal role at the centre of a forward-looking cosmopolitan artistic circle.