The Princess Borghese Breaks Up With Talma On Lake Bourget
(Sept. 1813)
She had arranged a boating expedition
to the Abbey of Hautecombe with the sulking Talma
(the great tragedian, her current bedmate)
and Captain Duchand, an elegant hussar,
who would, perhaps that very night, replace
the forsaken thespian. Laure d’Brantes
had come along. (To sit between the rivals?)
It took about an hour to cross the lake,
which time Pauline recited Petrarch to Duchand,
and disembarked declaiming, still, while Talma
stumbled off to weep most bitterly
among the ruins. He often performed at parties
scenes from Othello, but Talma’s predicament
was far more complicated than the Moor’s.
Pauline’s relationship with the Emperor,
her brother, was thought to be incestuous!
What might she tattle to Napoleon
about his favorite actor? How explain
her disappointment and frustration? Talma knew
that she was often bored, restless and bored
because her Aesthetic sensibility
was crude and shallow. Some considered her
the greatest beauty in Europe, but on the voyage back
he felt that she was merely the richest nymphomaniac
in Rome, and entirely unworthy of his love.
— George Green
from The Hopkins Review, Winter 2021
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Author: The Best American Poetry
