Djuna Barnes - Ladies Almanack

The Selected Works of Djuna Barnes: Spillway, The Antiphon, Nightwood . New York: Farrar, Straus, 1962.

Smoke and Other Stories . Ed. Douglas Messerli. College Park, Md.: Sun & Moon Press, 1982; 2nd ed., 1987.

Spillway . London: Faber and Faber, 1962; rpt. New York: Harper and Row, 1972.

Vagaries Malicieux: Two Stories . New York: Frank Hallman, 1974.

Selected Books and Articles About Djuna Barnes and Ladies Almanack .

For further sources, consult Messerli’s bibliography, cited above, and Janice Thorn and Kevin Engel’s updated in Broe, Silence and Power , 407-13. Silence and Power is at present the most comprehensive and current source of critical thought on Barnes.

Benstock, Shari. Women of the Left Bank: Paris, 1900–1940 . Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986.

Broe, Mary Lynn. “Djuna Barnes,” in The Gender of Modernism , ed. Bonnie Kime Scott. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990.

——, ed. Silence and Power: A Reevaluation of Djuna Barnes . Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991.

Busch, Alexandra. “Eine Satire für Fortgeschrittene: Djuna Barnes’s Ladies Almanack.” Forum für Homosexualität und Literatur 6 (1989): 41–71.

Field, Andrew. Djuna: The Life and Times of Djuna Barnes . New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1983.

Gildzen, Alex, ed. A Festschrift for Djuna Barnes on Her 80th Birthday . Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Libraries, 1972.

Harris, Bertha. “The More Profound Nationality of Their Lesbianism: Lesbian Society in Paris in the 1920’s.” In Amazon Expedition: A Lesbian Feminist Anthology , ed, Phyllis Birkby, Bertha Harris, Jill Johnston, Esther Newton, and Jane O’Wyatt. New York: Times Change Press, 1973, 77–88.

Jay, Karla, and Joanne Glasgow, eds. Lesbian Texts and Contexts: Radical Revisions . New York: New York University Press, 1990.

Kannenstine, Louis F. The Art of Djuna Barnes: Duality and Damnation . New York: New York University Press, 1977.

Michel, Frann. “Displacing Castration: Nightwood, Ladies Almanack , and Feminine Writing.” Contemporary Literature 30 (Spring 1989): 33–58.

O’Neal, Hank. “Life is painful, nasty and short-in my case it has only been painful and nasty”: Djuna Barnes 1978–1981: An Informal Memoir . New York: Paragon House, 1990.

Plumb, Cheryl J. Fancy’s Craft: Art and Identity in the Early Works of Djuna Barnes . Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania: Susquehanna University Press, 1986.

Scott, James B. Djuna Barnes . Boston: Twayne, 1976.

This slight satiric wigging, this Ladies Almanack , anonymously written (in an idle hour), fearfully punctuated, and privately printed (in the twenties) by Darantière at Dijon; illustrated, with apologies to ancient chapbooks, broadsheets, and Images Populaires; sometimes coloured by the mudlark of the bankside and gamine of the quai; hawked about the faubourg and the temple, and sold, for a penny, to the people, cherished by de Gaulle as “the indolent and terrible.”

That chronicle is now set before the compound public eye.

Neap-tide to the Proustian chronicle, gleanings from the shores of Mytilene, glimpses of its novitiates, its rising “saints” and “priestesses,” and thereon to such aptitude and insouciance that they took to gaming and to swapping that “other” of the mystery, the anomaly that calls the hidden name. That, affronted, eats its shadow.

It might be well to honour the creature slowly, that you may afford it.

Djuna Barnes

August 1972

Now this be a Tale of as fine a Wench as ever wet Bed, she who was called Evangeline Musset and who was in her Heart one Grand Red Cross for the Pursuance, the Relief and the Distraction, of such Girls as in their Hinder Parts, and their Fore Parts, and in whatsoever Parts did suffer them most, lament Cruelly, be it Itch of Palm, or Quarters most horribly burning, which do oft occur in the Spring of the Year, or at those Times when they do sit upon warm and cozy Material, such as Fur, or thick and Oriental Rugs, (whose very Design it seems, procures for them such a Languishing of the Haunch and Reins as is insupportable) or who sit upon warm Stoves, whence it is known that one such flew up with an” Ah my God! What a World it is for a Girl indeed, be she ever so well abridged and cool of Mind and preserved of Intention, the Instincts are, nevertheless, brought to such a yelping Pitch and so undo her, that she runs hither and thither seeking some Simple or Unguent which shall allay her Pain! And why is it no Philosopher of whatever Sort, has discovered, amid the nice Herbage of his Garden, one that will content that Part, but that from the day that we were indifferent Matter, to this wherein we are Imperial Personages of the divine human Race, no thing so solaces it as other Parts as inflamed, or with the Consolation every Woman has at her Finger Tips, or at the very Hang of her Tongue?”

For such then was Evangeline Musset created, a Dame of lofty Lineage, who, in the early eighties, had discarded her family Tandem, in which her Mother and Father found Pleasure enough, for the distorted Amusement of riding all smack-of-astride, like any Yeoman going to gather in his Crops; and with much jolting and galloping, was made, hour by hour, less womanly, “Though never”, said she, “has that Greek Mystery occurred to me, which is known as the Dashing out of the Testicles, and all that goes with it!” Which is said to have happened to a Byzantine Baggage of the Trojan Period, more to her Surprise than her Pleasure. Yet it is an agreeable Circumstance that the Ages thought fit to hand down this Miracle, for Hope springs eternal in the human Breast.

It has been noted by some and several, that Women have in them the Pip of Romanticism so well grown and fat of Sensibility, that they, upon reaching an uncertain Age, discard Duster, Offspring and Spouse, and a little after are seen leaning, all of a limp, on a Pillar of Bathos.

Evangeline Musset was not one of these, for she had been developed in the Womb of her most gentle Mother to be a Boy, when therefore, she came forth an Inch or so less than this, she paid no Heed to the Error, but donning a Vest of a superb Blister and Tooling, a Belcher for tippet and a pair of hip-boots with a scarlet channel (for it was a most wet wading) she took her Whip in hand, calling her Pups about her, and so set out upon the Road of Destiny, until such time as they should grow to be Hounds of a Blood, and Pointers with a certainty in the Butt of their Tails; waiting patiently beneath Cypresses for this Purpose, and under the Boughs of the aloe tree, composing, as she did so, Madrigals to all sweet and ramping things.

Her Father, be it known, spent many a windy Eve pacing his Library in the most normal of Night-Shirts, trying to think of ways to bring his erring Child back into that Religion and Activity which has ever been thought sufficient for a Woman; for already, when Evangeline appeared at Tea to the Duchess Clitoressa of Nates court, women in the way (the Bourgeoise be it noted, on an errand to some nice Church of the Catholic Order, with their Babes at Breast, and Husbands at Arm) would snatch their Skirts from Contamination, putting such wincing Terror into their Dears with their quick and trembling Plucking, that it had been observed, in due time, by all Society, and Evangeline was in order of becoming one of those who is spoken to out of Generosity, which her Father could see, would by no Road, lead her to the Altar.