Djuna Barnes (1892-1982)

Nightwood : The Original Version and Related Drafts by Djuna Barnes, Cheryl J. Plumb (Editor)

"Written in convoluted and poetic language, Nightwood is an obsessive romance illuminating the demonic and destructive aspects of love. It tells the story of a beautiful young woman, Robin Vote, and Nora and Jenny, the two women who desire her and are eventually overwhelmed and destroyed by their own passions. Robin Vote, sketchy and paradoxical, angelic yet amoral, intriguing because of what is kept from the reader rather than what is revealed, is the pivotal point upon which the story turns. A gothic undercurrent charges the book with tension: human is transformed into beast, beast into human. This theme appears over and over, and Djuna Barnes' obsessive telling of the tale melds style with subject matter. Throughout the book, Djuna Barnes interjects monologues from Dr. Matthew O'Connor, a gender-bending character and unusual literary device whose monologues illuminate the storyline and provide a cohesive understanding of the plot. Formal, dense, even verbose, yet fluid and vivid, Nightwood circles and spirals, swirling around the shadowy plot to create a timeless tale of love and tragedy" -- Heather Downey

"Djuna Barnes remains a reminder of the Road Not Yet Taken international, devious, perverse, verbally abundant, psychologically subtle." -- Edmund White, Voice Literary Supplement 11-95

"Admired by Joyce, Nightwood is as important to the history of the 20th century novel as Finnegans Wakeand more readable." -- Miranda Seymour, New York Times Book Review 11-26-95

"Nightwood . . . is one of the top ten novels written this century and is undoubtedly . . . one of the greatest gay novels ever written. It is a magnificent, passionate, lyrical work which probes deep beneath the surface skin of life where so many novels are content to stay. . . . The editor, Cheryl J. Plumb, is to be congratulated . . . It is a work which goes on resonating after every reading." -- Gay Times 3-96

"I read Nightwood back in the 1930s and was very taken with it. I consider it one of the great books of the twentieth century." -- William Burroughs

"[Nightwood possesses] the great achievement of a style, the beauty of phrasing, the brilliance of wit and characterisation, and a duality of horror and doom very nearly related to that of Elizabethan tragedy." -- T. S. Eliot



  

Paris Was a Woman Directed by Greta Schiller

From the director of Before Stonewall comes this alternately interesting and scholarly documentary centering on the lives of several expatriates who lived and worked in Paris between the wars. Paris, specifically the area known as the Left Bank, became an intellectual, religious, racial, sexual and political haven for so many artists, including Hemingway, Joyce and Picasso. But this well-researched documentary probes past the era's "stars" and focuses on the many women and lesbians who also thrived, those being Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas, publishers Sylvia Beach and Adrienne Monnier, New Yorker columnist Janet Flanner, heiress Natalie Barney, painter Romaine Brooks, and Djuna Barnes and her lover Thelma Woods. Narrated by Juliet Stevenson, and written by Andrea Weiss.

Starring: Sharl Benstock, Berthe, Giselle Freund, Sam Steward, Dr. Catherine Stimpson 
Label: Zeitgeist
( 1995, 75 min, US )

Djuna Barnes Library 

Djuna Barnes (1892-1982) was an American author of fiction, poetry, and plays, who got her start as a freelance journalist and illustrator in New York in 1913. Her talent and her connections with the artistic community in Greenwich Village soon led to the publication of her poetry and to the production of several of her plays by the Provincetown Players. Assignments from magazines took her to Europe in 1921 where lived until 1939. During that time she published several book-length works, including the novel Nightwood, which is considered her masterpiece. In 1940 she moved to Greenwich Village, where she lived for the remainder of her life. Her verse play, The Antiphon, was published in 1958. She continued to write poetry up until her death, though little was published.

The cataloged portion of the Djuna Barnes Library contains nearly 400 titles. The library was part of the collection purchased from Miss Barnes in 1973 and 1977, along with her personal and family papers, correspondence, writings, printed matter, and serial publications. The UMCP Libraries continue to augment the Barnes collections by purchase and donation.

Djuna Barnes 

This site, although difficult to read, offers a biography, a bibliography and notes on Nightwood.  

Excerpt:

  Djuna Barnes was born June 12, 1892, in Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York on her family's farm. Through her father and grandmother, Barnes gained a great appreciation of and dedication to the arts (the Barnes home was often frequented by such artistic greats as Jack London and Franz Liszt).

Barnes did not have a formal education because her father believed that the public school system was inadequate, and thus felt he felt that home schooling was much more beneficial. Her only formal schooling came after she left the home and moved to New York City...

Djuna Barnes

From the Knitting Circle at South Bank University, UK.  This page offers some biographical information and a bibliography. 

Guide to the Papers of Djuna Barnes

The complete Guide to the Papers of Djuna Barnes is now available in PDF format from The University of Maryland Libraries.

Summery and Commentary on Djuna Barnes' "Nightwood"

This short annotation is by Janice L Willms from the Medical Humanities Collection at NYU.