Sacred and Profane Memories was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1932, after Van Vechten had abandoned fiction and was increasingly devoted to photography. The book collects his autobiographical essays — vivid, anecdotal pieces about the people, places, and events that shaped his extraordinary social and cultural life.
Van Vechten writes about attending the opera in the early 1900s, when Caruso and Melba were at the Metropolitan; about his friendships with Gertrude Stein, Mabel Dodge, and the Arensberg circle; about the early days of modern dance, when Isadora Duncan was still a scandalous novelty; about his involvement with the Harlem Renaissance and his relationships with Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and James Weldon Johnson. Each essay is a self-contained memoir, but together they constitute a portrait of American cultural life in its most creative period.
The title captures Van Vechten’s sensibility precisely: he made no distinction between the sacred and the profane, between high culture and popular culture, between the opera house and the speakeasy. His memories are sacred because they are personal — they belong to a life lived with intensity and attention — and profane because they concern pleasure, appetite, and the body. The book is a monument to a particular kind of American bohemianism: learned, gregarious, unashamed, and fiercely democratic in its enthusiasms.
Collecting Sacred and Profane Memories
First edition (Knopf, New York, 1932): Cloth binding.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $60–$150
- Without jacket: $15–$30