Horse Drawn: Nightwood by Djuna Barnes

T.S Eliot raved about the novel Nightwood (1936) (and edited and published it), which is not particularly surprising given that its author, Djuna Barnes (1892 – 1982) credited Eliot with providing much of the stylistic inspiration. Nightwood is a mysterious treat. To read it is akin to eating something delicious but never finding out the key ingredients; a sensation (slightly cloying) rather than a cognitive exercise. Obsessive love is sketched with feverish tension. Themes and characters are regurgitated and recycled and at the end (I read it in one sitting) I felt a bit sick. This was not because I was shocked by its transgressions; the bestiality or transvestism but because it replayed somatic memories of my own impossible attachments. I hadn’t been physically stirred by a book for years.

As part of the current project to resurrect ‘minor modernists’ from obscurity (crudely differentiated from the heavy-weights such as Eliot, Woolf and Joyce) Barnes is currently enjoying great popularity. An initiative supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and based at Birkbeck College, University of London includes a forum and seminar series dedicated to Barnes and the First International Djuna Barnes Conference is scheduled for this Autumn. As well as write, Barnes produced some beautiful, Beardsley-esque illustrations (her yin to his inflated yang!).

I discovered Nightwood when I started spending time at the farm next-door to the house where it was written. I often peer through the hedge into Hayford Hall's garden and imagine the intrigue and erotic play that provided the exterior landscape to this most singular of texts.

Djuna Barnes by Berenice Abbott,1920s

Solita Solano and Djuna Barnes in Paris

Djuna Barnes Bibliography :

The Book of Repulsive Women: 8 Rhythms and 5 Drawings (1915)
A Book (1923) – revised versions published as:
- A Night Among the Horses (1929)
- Spillway (1962)
Ryder (1928)
Ladies Almanack (1928)
Nightwood (1936)
The Antiphon (1958)
Selected Works (1962) – Spillway, Nightwood, and a revised version of The Antiphon
Vagaries Malicieux: Two Stories (1974) – unauthorized publication
Creatures in an Alphabet (1982)
Smoke and Other Early Stories (1982)
I Could Never Be Lonely without a Husband: Interviews by Djuna Barnes (1987) – ed. A. Barry
New York (1989) – journalism
At the Roots of the Stars: The Short Plays (1995)
Collected Stories of Djuna Barnes (1996)
Poe's Mother: Selected Drawings (1996) – ed. and with an introduction by Douglas Messerli
Discanto, poesie 1911–1982, Roma, Edizione del Giano, 2004 a cura di Maura Del Serra
Collected Poems: With Notes Toward the Memoirs (2005) – ed. Phillip Herring and Osias Stutman