Lucie Delarue-Mardrus

Lucie Delarue-Mardrus (november 7) 1874 - april 26 1945) was a French journalist, poet, and novelist. She was a prolific writer who produced more than 70 books.

In France, she is best known for her poem beginning with the line "L'odeur de mon pays était dans une pomme" ("In the smell of an apple I held my native land.")

She was married to the translator J. C. Mardrus from 1900 to 1915, but her primary sexual orientation was toward women. She was involved in affairs with several women throughout her lifetime, and she wrote extensively of lesbian love.

In 1902-03 she wrote a series of love poems to the American writer and salon hostess Natalie Clifford Barney, published posthumously in 1957 as "Nos secrètes amours" ("Our Secret Loves"). [Souhami, 179.] She also depicted Barney in her 1930 novel, "L'Ange et les Pervers" ("The Angel and the Perverts"), in which she said she "analyzed and described Natalie at length as well as the life into which she initiated me".

The protagonist of the novel is a hermaphrodite named Marion who lives a double life, frequenting literary salons in female dress, then changing from skirt to trousers to attend gay soirées. Barney appears as "Laurette Wells", a salon hostess who spends much of the novel trying to win back an ex-lover, loosely based on Barney's real-life attempts at regaining her relationship with her former lesbian lover, Renée Vivien. [Livia, 22-23.]

One admirer wrote to describe Lucie Delarue-Mardrus, stating in part;

"She is adorable. She sculpts, amounts to horse loves a woman, then another, and yet another. She was able to free her husband of this experience and has never embarked on a second marriage or the conquest of another man."

Notes

References

* Livia, Anna (1995). "Introduction: Lucie Delarue-Mardrus and the Phrenetic Harlequinade." cite book | last = Delarue-Mardrus | first = Lucie | coauthors = trans. Anna Livia | year = 1995 | title = The Angel and the Perverts | location = New York | publisher = New York University Press | pages = 1-60 | id = ISBN 0-8147-5098-2

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* [http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=http://www.bouquinerie.com/catalogue/D/delaruemardus.asp&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=10&ct=result&prev=/search%3Fq%3DLucie%2BDelarue-Mardrus%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG Lucie Delarue-Mardus]