Elizabeth Bishop
1911 Worchester Massachusetts
1929 Enrolls in Vassar College
1938 Buys a house in Key West, Florida
1956 Receives the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
1951 to 1965 - lives in Petropolis, Brazil (not too far from Rio de Janeiro, where Stefan Zweig moved with his wife to escape the same forces that motivated Bishop to return to the USA and where Zweig and his wife committed suicide. I spent some time there about 15 years ago. It is now a get away for affluent Cariocas and rich Europeans. I am glad Elizabeth Bjshop was able to live in such a beautiful place for 15 years, with her longest love, Lola de Macado Soares, an acomplished landscape designer.
Bishop loved women, poetry, travel, and alcohol. As she got older her drinking got worse. Liza Weiland in Paris 7 A. M. helped me see the personal and social forces that lead to her impairment by alcohol. Bishop had an inherited income from her father that rendered her free to travel and write. She was secure but not truly rich in the style of Natalie Clifford Barney.
I totally loved Paris 7 A. M. This is a work of shimmering beauty, deeply insightful. It is the sort of book you will feel like kissing upon completion, or maybe well before. Paris 7 A M is a work to keep on the nightstand to have something that makes you happy to see in the morning. Few authors can capture the inner life of a great artist as well as Wieland has done for Bishop.
Wieland takes us deeply into the events of the opening years of Bishop's life.
Tragedy soon found Bishop, her father died when she was eight months old, shortly afterwards her mother was committed to a mental asylum which she never left. Bishop did not again see her mother. She was sent to her maternal grandparents in Novia Scotia. After a few years she moved to the home of her wealthy paternal grandparents. Bishop was not happy with them so she was transferred to the home of her mother's sister. Her aunt, paid by the grandparents for her care, instilled in her a love of poetry, this came to provide her direction in life. Her father's estate set up a trust for Bishop which sustained her for life. Having numerous health issues Bishop struggled with her schooling but did graduate from the very prestigious Vassar in 1934. Wieland does not directly narrate this but we come to a comprehension of this through her conversations with her friends. She met the poet Marianne Moore at Vassar who was an early mentor. Vassar was considered a sister school to Harvard, educating the wives of America's elite.
Most of Paris 7 A. M takes place during a trip Bishop made with college friends. We see the emotional strains on Bishop brought on by her mother, confined to a mental hospital. We sense a guilt on her part as she prepares for Europe. At that time Vassar was a place for girls from wealthy families to attend college before marrying. There were serious classes in literature and the arts. She did have a college boyfriend, it is not clear if they ever slept together.
It is June 1937, Bishop and her college roommates are on a Paris trip. They are seeking inspiration from the world's most romantic city. Bishop's mother had just died. They love the history, the centuries old buildings, the sense of walking where the giants of French literature once walked. They meet interesting people, Bishop develops a romantic interest in a woman she meets. We see her world opening up. Paris was full of expats seeking something America did not offer them.
Recently I read a very well done account of the life of Natalie Clifford Barney, an American expat, fabulously wealthy, hostess to one of the premier salons of Paris, Wild Heart Natalie Clifford Barney and the Decadence of Literary Paris by Suzanne Rodriguez. Natalie was very openly gay. I loved it when I read these lines:
"They receive a handwritten invitation: Miss Barney will be at home two Fridays hence. Perhaps Miss Bishop would do us the honor . . . She likes the poem about Paris and the clocks, Louise says. She told me that. Too many clocks, Elizabeth says. Why do so many of my poems begin with some assertion about what time it is? Time is of the essence? I wonder if Clara will be there. It’s odd that we haven’t seen her. She seems to have disappeared."
Natalie was about fifty and very much an imperial figure. Bishop did not have the exquisite beauty Natalie prefered in her women and probably Bishop was probably still too inhibited by New England vslues to have accepted an advance. Elizabeth read her poem Paris 7 A. M.
Bishop arrived in Paris with two college friends, a shockingly violent event befalls one of them.. On arrival they rented space from a middle aged woman mourning the loss of her daughter. She became a kind of mother figure for Bishop. It is through her that the women fight back against the coming assult on the Jewish population of France.
We see Bishop, partially through a French woman she met becoming increasingly concerned about the rise of Fascism:
""They are cruel, Sigrid says, the führer and Mussolini. In all the photographs, they hold a stick or a riding crop. To beat someone. This gives them pleasure. I think sometimes what they want is not about the country, really. They want to violate. It is like sex. They want to shove everyone up against a wall in a dark room. They want this very badly, no matter the consequences. And certain sorts of people make them very nervous. People who have unusual magic. Who? says Elizabeth, fascinated by the idea. Who has unusual magic? You do, Sigrid says. I do. Gisèle does. Gypsies. The insane. Hitler would have killed your mother right away. Don’t, Elizabeth says."
I really liked the way Wieland closed the book, with segments on Bishop's life in Key West, Brazil and elsewhere.
The prose is exquisite. I felt, and for sure, wished I was in Paris.
Those into the work of Bishop will be in their glory as they read Paris 7 A. M. For me, I was thrilled when she met Nafalie Clifford Barney. That alone made the book for me.
Liza Wieland is the author of seven works of fiction and a volume of poems. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Christopher Isherwood Foundation, and the North Carolina Arts Council. She is the 2017 winner of the Robert Penn Warren Prize from the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Her novel, A Watch of Nightingales, won the 2008 Michigan Literary Fiction Award, and her most recent novel, Land of Enchantment, was a longlist finalist for the 2016 Chautauqua Prize. She teaches at East Carolina University. From the author's website.
YouTube has recordings of Bishop reading Paris 7 A. M. and other poems.
While in Paris Bjshop's landlord, she refused to accept rent was Clara Longworth de Chambrun, a very important and fascinating person. In her apartment Bishop wrote Paris 7 A M.
You can learn more about her here
Her life would be the basis for a great novel or biography.
On her website Wieland has posted two interesting articles on Bishop.
I can see this book becoming a classic. For sure I will return to Paris 7 A M
Mel u
with the assistance of Ambrosia Bousssesu
6 comments:
Wow, high praise! Another Fascinating woman from a by gone era. Thanks Mel U. It could take more a while to fully process your review, but it does sound like you thoroughly enjoyed it.
I'm bookmarking this one for next year's Paris in July. Thank you for this helpful review.
Good idea Deb!
Tamara. I plan now to reread this for Paris in July 2020
Deb Nance at Reader Buzz. Thanks for your comment. Maybe we can do a group read next year.
How intriguing. Cheers
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