Colette
The early twentieth century in France was a period of remarkable creative restlessness, when the boundaries between literature, theater, and popular performance were far more porous than they'd been before. Into that atmosphere stepped Colette, born Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette on 28 January 1873 in Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye, who would go on to work across an unusually wide range of disciplines throughout her long career.
Colette was, at various points, a novelist, short story writer, journalist, playwright, screenwriter, librettist, ghostwriter, and theatre critic — and that's before accounting for her work as a performer. She appeared on stage as an actor, dancer, singer, and cabaret performer, bringing a hands-on relationship with the performing arts that fed directly into her writing life. Writing in French, she produced novels that drew on the textures of everyday experience, desire, and independence. Among her notable works are Chéri, The Vagabond, and Gigi, the last of which became one of the more recognizable titles to carry her name beyond the literary world.
What set Colette apart within her era wasn't simply the quantity of her output but the range of forms she moved through. While many French writers of the period staked out a single discipline, she moved between the page and the stage with evident ease. Her journalism kept her connected to the rhythms of public life, her theatre criticism placed her in direct conversation with the performing arts, and her fiction drew freely on the kinds of experience she'd accumulated through performance. That combination gave her writing a grounded, observational quality that ran through even her most personal work.
Colette died on 3 August 1954 in the 1st arrondissement of Paris, having spent more than half a century as one of the most productive figures in French cultural life. Her contributions to French letters were formally recognized through her receipt of the Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour, one of the highest distinctions France awards to its citizens. It's a fitting note on which to close: a writer and performer who worked in nearly every medium available to her, honored by her country before her death.
Quotes by Colette
Colette's insights on:
It wasn’t only a little she-cat I bought. It was the nobility of all cats, their infinite disinterestedness, their knowledge of how to live, their affinities with the highest type of humans.
It is absurd to suppose that periods empty of love are blank pages in a woman’s life. The truth is just the reverse. What remains to be said about a passionate love affair? It can be told in three lines. He loved me, I loved Him. His presence obliterated all other presences. We were happy. Then He stopped loving me and I suffered.
To write sincerely, almost sincerely! I hope it may bring me relief, that sort of interior silence which follows a sudden utterance, a confession.
I put on a martyred expression – like this – as if I was bored to death with every luxury under the sun. I had the time of my life.
Does she deliberately make herself ugly out of modesty or pride?” Brice wondered, watching his wife walk pigeon-toed, run into the corner of the table, and rub her thigh. “It’s a kind of lie, too.
My son, be rich and live your own life! Tell yourself that you’re the incarnation of an ancient aristocracy. Model yourself on the feudal barons. You’re a warrior.
After you, probably anyone can have me who wants me. A woman, many women. But never another cat.