A Swiss paper revisits the hidden last years of Anna de Noailles
Le Courrier retraces the life of the poet and novelist, a friend of Proust painted by Van Dongen and Zuloaga, who withdrew from view as she aged in 1920s Paris.
Le Courrier has published a portrait of Anna de Noailles, the countess, salon hostess and writer whose lyric poetry and novels made her one of the most celebrated literary figures of early twentieth-century Paris. According to the Swiss outlet, by 1920 Noailles had begun to hide herself away rather than be seen growing older, even as her portraits by Kees van Dongen and Ignacio Zuloaga circulated as images of her earlier fame.
The piece situates her within the circle of Marcel Proust, of whom she was a friend, and describes a body of work that moved between desire, domination and, later, the experience of war. Le Courrier quotes the closing line of one of her poems: «Avoir l’âme qui rêve, au bord du monde assise.»
The source material does not specify whether this piece accompanies a new edition, biography or anniversary of Noailles; it reads as a stand-alone portrait of her life and literary afterlife.
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