Diana Souhami – No Modernism Without Lesbians

The mere existence and choices of these women challenged patriarchal conventions, but they were also daring supporters of artistic enterprises, especial-ly those that were in “resistance to male tyranny and stupidity” - a tyranny intended to protect the sensibilities of daughters and wives, but which actually exerted male authority and power over them. A long read, the book is arranged in short and pleasurable chapters that follow the lives of Sylvia Beach, Bryher, Natalie Barney and Gertrude Stein as well as the many other lives they touched, transforming their biographies into a cultural ‘Who’s Who’ of their times.

Sylvia Beach for instance was the founder of Shakespeare and Company, the legendary bookshop, where many aspiring writers found a home: Hemingway, Ezra Pound, D.H. Lawrence being regular guests. She single-handedly managed to publish James Joyce’s Ulysses at a time when it was censored everywhere else. Bryher was a wealthy novelist and poet who identified as a feminist but was a man at heart. Heiress to a shipowner, she used her wealth - gained through marriage to an essentially homosexual man who was having an affair with her life-long bisexual partner and writer Hilda Doolittle - to help struggling writers and all sorts of publishing ventures, especially those “who seem not likely to be published by other publishers for commercial or legislative reasons”.

Natalie Barney, another novelist and poet, gained notoriety hosting her legendary Friday salons. Barney supported feminism, pacifism and fiercely opposed monogamy, sketching out her own rules for sapphic love making “living the first of all the arts”. The “hazardous Fridays” were attended by guests hungry for avantgarde art, sharp conversations, the strawberry tarts as well as the prospect of finding new lovers and friends. Last but not least, we learn about the infamous Gertrude Stein, the self-pro-claimed mother and father of Modernism. Stein’s hermetic writing is now understood as a reworking of patriarchal language meant to “express things seen not as one knows them but as they are when one sees them without remembering having looked at them”. Apart from her trailblazing literary experiments, she was also an avid collector of artists such as Picasso, Matisse, Gauguin or Toulouse Lautrec at a time when they were considered “wild beasts” by the general public.

So even if the assumption which the title boasts of is a bold one and certainly meant to provoke it is only a tiny weight on the scales of restitution in the systematic omission of women’s achievements in general, and more so of those that loved other women. And while the limitations of context and class should not be ignored, Souhami makes a compelling case in acknowledging the achievements of these remarkable and numerous women in forming a cultural movement, while generously gifting us a treasure trove of fresh and precious references to use at our own discretion.

Text: Laura Amann