Often referred to as ‘the most famous unknown of the century’, Djuna Barnes was among those expat writers of high modernist literature alongside Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, and H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) whose contributions characterized the genre and its period as decadent, sensual, and lost. A closer look at Djuna Barnes’ writing career shows that before she joined the expatriate community of writers in 1920s Paris, her earlier works from the 1910s were already experimenting with some of the themes that she would explore more fully in famous works such as Nightwood (1936). Those themes included: sexuality, gender identity, societal deviation, and women’s rights. In her poem ‘Suicide’, published in 1915, more than two decades before Nightwood, we see Barnes critical of the world around her, a world that does not favor those who fall outside of the ‘norm’. This is a world that often ostracizes those who society would deem troublesome: people with disabilities, members of the LGBTQ community, women who deviated from societal expectations, or simply dissenting parties who were disillusioned with society. Literary historian Mary I. Unger argues that during this time the counterculture of urban New York City, in which Djuna found herself, was thought of as a ‘wasteland teeming with the disorderly, disabled, and unsightly’ (128). Barnes felt at home amongst the misfits of society, for she herself always was one, and ‘Suicide’ reflects precisely what misfits experienced in a world that aimed to exclude them.

Barnes’ poem ‘Suicide’ highlights the haunting imagery of ‘shattered’ and ‘bruised’ bodies: the corpses of two women who committed suicide. Their bodies are described as mangled and beaten down by a society that failed them. The women in question who society deemed unfavorable for her perceived failure to perform a more ‘feminine’ or ‘proper’ gender persona appear to meet their tragic fates because of this deviation from patriarchal expectations. The corpses of the two bodies are described in such a way as to convey how they were mistreated, excluded, and forgotten women not only in life but also in death. Irene Martyniuk describes the women in the poem as ‘defeated’ by the forces of ‘society’s conventions’ (63). Readers of the poem would do well to view Barnes’ descriptions of the women’s dead bodies as not only showcasing the harsh realities of the impending death and carnage that already existed and would continue in the wake of World War I but also as a voice who represents the members of the Lost Generation who were ‘lost’ because they were excluded. Although Barnes wrote ‘Suicide’ while living in New York, her transatlantic thinking is nevertheless reflected in the poem as she works to connect the trauma of war with the trauma of social marginalization, for both result in death whether physical or spiritual. In fact, Barnes’ identity as a lesbian and her own experience of social marginalization may well be the reason that she self-exiled to Paris alongside Gertrude Stein and H.D.: She may have been in search of community acceptance, or at least escaping persecution.

A visual artist as well as a poet, Barnes created striking drawings for a range of publications, including a chapbook which included this poem, The Book of Repulsive Women: 8 Rhythms and 5 Drawings. As Quin Gilbert-Forlini points out, Barnes did not originally link the five drawings in the chapbook with specific poems, but instead clustered them together at the end. Subsequent editors have sometimes attempted to match up the illustrations with specific poems from the collection, though Gilbert-Forlini judges those attempts unsuccessful given the artist’s original organization for the poetry printed along with her art. Barnes famously hated The Book of Repulsive Women and actively worked to repress its publication in the decades following its initial release. While we can only speculate as to why the creator hated her own creation, Gilbert-Forlini convincingly argues that readers of the 1920s refused to acknowledge Barnes’ sexuality, nor would readers acknowledge Barnes’ insistence that lesbianism is the subject of the book. It is our responsibility, then, as contemporary readers to recognize that the corpse(s) of the poem represent the bodies of women who identified as marginalized members of society, that they were likely lesbians, and that they committed suicide because of society’s refusal to accept them.

Editorial work on this entry by Genesis Roblero

Djuna Barnes illustration from The Book of Repulsive Women.