April 23, 2020

 

Her Second Pandemic

The Red DUchess COMES OUT AGAIN at 145

 

Elizabeth de Gramont turns 145 today, a bit late for her second pandemic but just in time for the e-launch of No Modernism Without Lesbians by Diana Souhami. This book brings us closer to a few women we almost forgot about: like British arts patron Bryher (a huge benefactor to Modern artists of color) and American painter Florine Stettheimer, part of the Harlem Renaissance (who will soon be getting a do-over by her incredible biographer, Barbara Bloemink). It’s good to know there’s more to come, especially about Eva Palmer Sikelianos. And Romaine Brooks. Every book lover under a stay at home order needs something to look forward to. I’m sad to read, on Diana Souhami’s website, that this book is to be the last of that ilk. Di’s Dykes are taking a bow.

“Modern, then and whenever” is what Souhami calls the contribution of Gertrude Stein. The same can be said of Lily de Gramont, whose avant-garde haircut inspired Alice Toklas to take the kitchen shears to Gertrude, predating COVID fashion by nearly a century. To return the compliment, Lily decided to translate Stein’s work for French readers. Et voilà. More proof that there’s no modernism without fearless lesbians. And that translators get the short end of the stick. It may have taken all afternoon for Alice to make Gertrude look like a Roman emperor. But we still don’t know how long Lily labored over Four Saints in Three Acts. Which never did get published.

Speaking of how hard it is to still find books in translation, there’s a wonderful and funny novel about Gertrude, Alice, Lily and Everybody Who Was Anybody of 1926. Hardly anybody knows about it: A Night at the Amazon’s by Francesco Rapazzini. That’s the book that launched this blog site. Sally Hamilton and I have translated it into English. It’s got everything you want in a comedy of manners:

• witty banter
  

  Encore EJ

• pretty girls
• sexy boys
• a drunken cook
• a cheeky butler who forgot to wash
• Oscar Wilde’s niece who’s better than Oscar
• social climbers you love to hate
• a 1920s Bugatti roadster
• romantic plots that run all the red lights
• a famous chocolate cake fight
• unveiling of a priceless painting
• a bad wig
• an erotic poetry recital
• a new maid who’s just learned that her society boss is a rampant lesbian
  

  Brava EJ

• diamonds and tiaras (plural)
• 35 different accents
• a polar bear rug in the bedroom
• jealous spats
• roasting the dead
• truth in the garden
• love in the loo
• and a big reveal

 

In short: Everybody Being Geniuses Together. Will it all come to tears? Dear listener, this is the year to find out!

Last year (or so) had a few entries of note in Madame’s diary. In August (of 2018 but who’s counting), this letter to the editor of The New York Times was published, to the credit of Elisabeth de Gramont. Perhaps it was a tempest in a teapot when a biographer tried to hide the true identity of Proust’s model for the young Oriane de Guermantes in his magnum opus… but it didn’t seem like a TIATP to me, nor to Francesco Rapazzini, whose biography of EdG has still never appeared in English to set the record straight. Francesco always has interesting ideas and things to say. Have you read his dreamy, bittersweet third novel in French, Un été Vénitien? It has won prizes and won over influential critics. I tried to win a 2020 PEN/Heim Translation grant for translating it, but both grants for French translations went to colonial works of great merit. It’s a pity because now more than ever, Venice under COVID cries out for a novel like this by an actual Venetian about the city he loved as a boy and came of age in as a young man. So let’s hope that English publication of Venetian Summer is in our near futures.

Then, in July, there was this interesting conversation at the Proust Society with Cassandra Langer, the biographer of Romaine Brooks. Lily wouldn’t miss it for the world. It was about Proust’s lesbians, a subject she knew everything about on both counts. The YouTube recording is an hour long, and it’s an hour well spent.

It’s hard to know what Lily thought about Eva Palmer, the gate-crashing artist and performer whom Lily’s eternal mate Natalie Barney described in print as “the mother of my desire.” Eva’s monumental biography has now been published by Artemis Leontis, and last September at Brown University, the conversation between the author and Eva’s great grandaughter, the poet and memoirist Eleni Sikelianos, would have been a must-do on Lily’s calendar. If anyone has a transcript—or better, video—from that gathering, please let me know and I will post it here.

Well, look at the time. It’s midnight in Virginia, not April in Paris. Like everybody in lockdown all over the world, I’m wondering what tomorrow will bring. Today in your honor, Madame, I’m determined to do something really modern, really cutting edge. Just for fun, just for the sheer audacity of accomplishing something creative during a plague year, I want to bring out The Amazon’s as the first Audible audiobook to predate its translation as an English publication!

Here’s a snippet. Have fun listening. It’s only three minutes long.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THE AUDIOBOOK TRAILER ON SOUNDCLOUD.

Dear reader of mine, or similar, won’t you follow along on the journey—or help us get the book published and produced as an audiobook? You can hear more audiobook demos I’m producing with Caleb Green by searching for me on ACX, the Audible marketplace. Caleb is a new alumnus of Boston’s Berklee College of Music & brilliant on sound design, scoring and audio production. We are absolutely looking for a patron to fund production of The Amazon’s. If you like, I can furnish a budget. A long demo is available, conforming to Audible’s requirements. I pledge my royalty to a charity of your choice. So if you are a bright light of artistic philanthropy in this hour of darkness, and if you long to be able to listen to A Night at the Amazon’s on Audible, shoot me an email: Suzanne@suzannestroh.com. And check out my portfolio at SuzanneStroh.com, my professional site.

Oh! I nearly forgot my curtsy. Your laughter, Madame, is my string of pearls. Many happy returns.