Construction of an Artistic Self: Sophie Gaudier-Brzeska’s Poetry Notebooks and Journal

This study focuses on journal passages and verses from Sophie Gaudier-Brzeska’s poetry notebooks that demonstrate her drive to construct an artistic self. Although her artistic ambitions were long central to her idealisation of aesthetic values, she faced patriarchal prejudices, poverty, and psychological challenges in her efforts to achieve artistic recognition. Both she and her much younger and much lauded partner, sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, adopted a transgressive posture towards what they regarded as the corrupt bourgeois conventions of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century European and British society. Their joint development of an artistic project foregrounding primordial and transcendent forces is reflected in his letters with reference to their conversations and her letters (not extant). After Henri’s tragic death fighting in northern France (June 1915), Sophie continues to reflect on that project in her journal and in her earlier poems and creation of new works, both constantly revised. For Sophie, her artistic self is realised through her invocation of Henri’s continuing presence in her journal and poetry that reflect her experiences and anguish. While her life ended in obscurity, and madness, her remarkable artistic achievements can be reconstituted from the debris of her diaries and poetry notebooks.