My Blue Notebooks: The Intimate Journal of Paris's Most Beautiful and Notorious Courtesan

by Liane de Pougy

A fascinating and provocative glimpse into the life of the legendary early twentieth-century courtesan--a Folies-BergFre dancer who became a princess and died a nun, details her many acquaintances including poet Max Jacob, Colette, and Marcel Proust, and vividly discusses her numerous sexual encounters with both men and women. Original.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Biography, France, Lesbian, Diary, Autobiography

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1977

Reviews

[Eve Tushnet · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's true that these diaries are full of lovers spilling jewels in de Pougy's lap and magnificent banquets with famous friends. It's true that her authorial voice is decollete in the extreme. If you like literary criticism mixed with commentary on women's breasts, lush descriptions of evening wear, and all the other champagne-and-oyster pleasures of high bad living, you will find what you seek here.

But this sapphic adventuress ended her life a devout Catholic and was buried in the habit of a Dominican, and her spiritual journey shapes her diaries even more than her fond memories of her licentious past. De Pougy's faith emerges very early in the diaries. She's able to do a topless photo shoot with her former inamorata, then go home and read her nightly chapter of The Imitation of Christ. Over time, the intense suffering caused by her husband and the spiritual shock she experienced at a home for disabled children lead her to greater faith--and greater silence, as the diaries become more intermittent. Watching her oscillation and ambivalence slowly settle into deep, cruciform faith is fascinating, especially because she never loses her self-possessed wit.

NB she's got some unacknowledged sins mixed in with her acknowledged ones, including condescension toward servants and, quite prominently, anti-Jewish attitudes. I'm still five-starring it, in part because those aspects of de Pougy's voice fade and have disappeared by the end, but, well, I hope she's had a few postmortem chats with Raissa Maritain.

[Phillip Kay · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book of immeasurable value, a postcard from another age. Here is a woman who flourished in the 1880s and 1890s (although she is writing in the period 1919-1941) who can speak to this age and this reader. This is a journal, and is marked by lack of pretension, realism and extreme honesty. Famous names abound - Proust, Max Jacob, Poulenc, Coco Chanel... but the underlying story is a love story. It is the love story of Liane and Nathalie Barney, and the love story of Liane and Georges Ghika. The story is marked by reticence, by a finesse one recognises as a characteristic of pre world war European culture. In itself this is a disturbing measure of how our world has been transformed, and lessened, by the loss of cultural standards as a result of the extermination of the cultured class in the wars. Liane portrays herself as human, as ignorant, as determined to survive, as damaged by her origins and her associates, and as someone who succeeded on the path of the 'artiste', the beautiful woman who successfully sells herself while allegedly practising an art. She knew and admired Sarah Bernhardt, and pays tribute to her dominant gift, her marvellous voice. It is said that Nathalie Barney was the love of Liane's life, and Liane's journal bears this out by what it does not say, by what it does not reveal. Every statement about Nathalie, who rejected Liane's love to play the field, reveals a woman who had given all of herself, unaffected by the distance and lack of contact with Nathalie. Liane was one of the great romantics. Her romanticism makes of her a great contemporary, of all eras. This sensitivity married to such pragmatism and determination makes Liane someone to value and respect. How sad that modern readers have rejected her book because it does not reveal intimate lesbian details of who touched who where. Perhaps lesbianism in the 1890s was a bit more innocent than it is now? Liane is someone I like enormously, and I am sad that I was only four years old when she died, for I would have liked to know her. In a sense, a poignant one, I know her through these notebooks.

[Renee · Rating 1 out of 5]

You'd think that someone who'd lived such an extraordinary life would have some interesting tales to tell or at least good gossip. Instead, it's boring, decades old non-gossip, largely about her own vanity. It is also a late-middle-aged Princess lamenting her wasted youth, lost beauty, and how terribly hard it is to be rich and idle. Saucy details? Not so much. She keeps alluding to alleged affairs, but then lapsing into these faux-reveries and self-recriminations. It's not that you get no sense of the woman or her life, so much as that the picture of the woman that emerges is tediously vain, shallow, self-absorbed, smugly entitled and venal in uncharming and utterly tactless ways. I don't know what I expected, but it wasn't this tedious mess.

[Megan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The kind of woman I hope to have been in a previous life. Liane de Pougy/Princess Ghika had a charming, jaded-yet-naive voice that begs to be read again and again. I adore her.

[Meg Onthemove Reading · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought this would be a lot more interesting than it turned out to be. There were glimpses of what might have been turned into a beautiful novel on grief when she was talking about the terrible losses that she had gone through in her life. But the notebooks moved between this and the banal and boring detail of everyday life, and often remained entirely superficial.

[Nancy Oakes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Soon. This was fun, but it was also an interesting look at what went on during France's interwar years as seen through the lens of one woman's experiences. Jean Lorrain has multiple mentions. But more soon.

[Gia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting.

[Jes Tyler]

Really wanted this to be much spicier

[Janine · Rating 3 out of 5]

In keeping with one of my August 2021 reading themes (read about France), I found this book waiting in my “to be read” pile. It’s a curious kind of memoir taken from her diaries (I.e. blue notebooks) detailing aspects of her life between 1919-1940. Liane de Pougy (AKA Anne-Marie Chassaigne AKA Princess Ghika) was a Folies-Bergere dancer and famous courtesan prior to her marriage to Prince Ghilka, who was 12 years her junior, in 1910. You learn this and other details such as about her son, Marc, whom she left but reunited with prior to his death fighting as an aviator for France in WWI; her lesbian affairs prior to and during her marriage(when her husband left her for two years to pursue another woman); her pain over husband running off with another woman but her acceptance of his return; her intense drive to explore her spiritual side (which after her husband’s death in the early 40’s she is accepted as a layperson into the Dominican order - this is told in the Preface); and her later work with a Catholic asylum for abandoned children, soliciting money from her wealthy friends to update it and improve the living conditions of these severely developmentally delayed children. The diaries reveal acquaintanceships or deep friendships with famous people of her time (Sarah Bernhardt, Max Jacob, Jean Cocteau, Colette, Marcel Proust , etc). The references to admiring Mussolini in the late 30s and her hope Hitler will be like him certainly read curiously in today’s world where strong leader types and perverted nationalism continues, even more so because of the evilness Hitler did in his role as Furher. There really isn’t much in the way shocking detail in the notebooks considering her notorious past, but rather these are the observations of a woman in a time where life was so diametrically different from the 21st C (her life crossed the 19th and early 20th centuries) such that you are might be in what knowing how “wealthy” people lived at that time but you don’t necessarily connect to any of it. Her desire to pursue a more spiritual life that comes up from time to time is curious on that she really doesn’t repudiate anything from her former life. I found this is tedious read.

[Avery Grey · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a true diary of one of the most famous courtesans of the Belle Epoque. She doesn't try to make it into a lyrical story, but rather includes everyday occurrences and details which bring that time period to life. I do wish it had included the years prior to 1914, but she does include some anecdotes of events which happened during her heyday. The honesty is refreshing and you see her self-image fluctuate wildly between self-satisfaction and desolate inadequacy. What I found most entertaining was how she detailed her friendships, one day lavishing praise on one and the next numbering his/her faults. A must-read for those interested in the Belle Epoque.

[Meredith · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not nearly as interesting as I had hoped.

[Sara Giacalone · Rating 3 out of 5]

Liane de Pougy's journals contained interesting tidbits, but lacked the insight and I was hoping for.

[Leslie Zemeckis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Such an enjoyable romp. They just don't make them like that anymore. An intimate closeup look at the life of a courtesan who had it all. I loved it.

[Grace La Rock]

I love the wit in her writing. It is very diary like, so it sometimes is quite scattered in thoughts...so pay attention.