Djuna Barnes
- Hayeon Kwak
- Dec 13, 2024
- 3 min read
“That was Djuna Barnes? No wonder she wanted to lead” - a reference to Djuna Barnes in Woody Allens’ Midnight in Paris.
Djuna Barnes is not a household name today, but in her lifetime, she was unforgettable. She was known for her innovative and challenging writing, friendly everyone– James Joyce, Sylvia Beach, Hemingway, the list goes on. Her love affairs with various women were captured by multiple memoirs in the lesbian Paris community, and even in her own, most famous, book called Nightwood.
At 20 years old, Djuna Barnes was furiously typing away, publishing flashy new articles for the well-known New York magazines Brooklyn Daily Magazine, Vanity Fair, The New York Morning Telegraph, and many more. Her dramatic illustrations and writings rode the wave of yellow journalism, but refused to be labeled. From her very first article, Barnes sought to question everything that breathed and didn’t in the city. Her work exposed the strange and the unsettling. While Barnes sympathized with feminists and reformers, she refused to “join” a group, preferring to pave her own way and stick to her own opinions.
Barnes’ accounts prioritized reality over the truth. She often embellished and completely made up anecdotes to convey and conserve what New York City truly felt like as it transitioned into modernity. For example, her short article You Can Tangle– a Little– at Arcadia Dance Hall tells the fictional, short love story of a wealthy bachelor and perfume counter girl– individuals on opposite ends of the social spectrum– who meet each other anonymously and break down the barriers of bias between them. Arcadia Dance Hall is a kind of utopia, a place where social status disappears and people of all walks of life can meet and dance, solely for fun and good company. It represents the blending of the social hierarchy that occurred in New York City, and perhaps the kind of place Barnes wanted to come true in real life.
Her stories as a journalist in New York connected her with the expatriate society in Paris and paved the way for her dizzying, colorful life in Europe when she was sent as a correspondent to France for McCall’s magazine in 1921. Barnes’ reputation as a journalist introduced her to prominent writers in Paris, including Peggy Guggenheim, Natalie Barney, and artist Thelma Wood.
Djuna Barnes’ works captured and framed a group of people, local stories, and unknowns from a time past. Ladies Alamanack (1928) conserves the lesbian culture in Paris that was centred at Natalie Barney’s salons, and Nightwood fictionalizes her own experience as a queer woman going through a breakup, inspired by her relationship with Thelma Wood.
In 1981, Djuna Barnes passed away in obscurity. She never understood the influence and inspiration she served for young gay women who sought her out, writing letters she replied to bitterly in the height of her alcoholism. But whether Barnes herself recognized it or not, her work and life are an awe-inspiring and empowering story of courage for everyone.
Written by Hayeon Kwak
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