"Femmes damnées" Saphisme et poésie (1846-1889) by Myriam Robic (review)

For those familiar with depictions of lesbian love in Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal (1857) wanting to better understand the social, historical, artistic, and literary milieu in which the work was created, Myriam Robic's "Femmes damnées" Saphisme et poésie (1846-1889) ambitiously aims to provide that context. Robic demonstrates that Baudelaire's depiction of Sappho was not an anomaly, instead helping the reader to better understand the social and literary implications of nineteenth century poetry depicting a homosexual Sappho. Baudelaire's impetus to associate Sappho with lesbianism pushes poets such as Banville, Verlaine, and Cantel to promote their works through scandalous portrayals of lesbian love. Robic begins her study with the first depictions in the nineteenth century and concludes with a compelling discussion of Verlaine's "Ballade Sappho" (1886). In addition, she provides detailed analyses of lesser known works that have not been studied due to the explicit nature of their subject matter.

In her review of scholarly works, Robic notes that there have been strong contributions to this field by Joan DeJean, Nicole G. Alber, and Marie-Jo Bonnet, but argues that none of their works really delve into the specificities of nineteenth century poetry as a genre or the aesthetics of the period. A major strength of the work is not only rich and close textual analyses that fill that gap in the scholarship, but also Robic's expert inclusion of many sources in her argument, ranging from lexical dictionaries of the time, medical texts, literary works, and historical documents. Literary and feminist scholars will appreciate Robic's careful lexical analysis of various terms, including tribade, lesbienne, soeur, saphienne, inverti, as well as Krafft-Ebing's uraniste féminin. She further demonstrates that the literary and artistic treatment of same-sex love between women informed medical and psychanalytical discourses and vice versa.

By providing intertextual analyses of images of Sappho from a wide range of works, she aims to prove that "chaque époque a ainsi pu créer et recréer sa Sapho" (238). She explores the French interest in Greek and Latin cultures and explains how French writers became so fascinated with Sappho in the nineteenth century. The image of Sappho that we see portrayed in these works is often a titillating one, filtered through the masculine imagination, "l'incarnation d'un fantasme masculin voyeuriste" (82).

In her discussion of Baudelaire's Les fleurs du mal, Robic provides a detailed analysis of the work in relation to reigning discourses on hysteria, showing that these images were part and parcel of erotic stereotypes in Sapphic literature written by men. She credits Baudelaire for granting "un nouveau statut" to the figure of la lesbienne, moving beyond reductionist images focused on anatomy in circulation at the time and making her instead "un veritable être social" (85). She also utilizes documents from the 1857 trial to better understand the critical reception of the work and the role of the censor in shaping Baudelaire's as well other writers' depictions of Sappho. Different strategies were used to get around the censor between 1850-1860, including publishing in Belgium, condemning the act in the work itself, or using "Sappho" as a coded reference to lesbians.

Robic also provides an entire section concentrating on rules of versification. She discusses how certain writers abandoned traditional rime schemes (alternating between masculine and feminine rimes), reflecting social changes between the sexes.

In her discussion of Verlaine's "Sur le balcon," she compares the voyeurism to that in Baudelaire's "Lesbos." In addition, Verlaine uses a religious lexicon to describe lesbians, much like Baudelaire, Banville, and Ménard. Calling it "la parodie d'une certaine forme d'érotisme burlesque," Robic ends her volume with a discussion of Verlaine's "Ballade Sappho" which she considers to be a precursor to his Hombres (219).

The myth of Sappho reached its greatest heights in decadent literature as she is a key persona in "romans...