Literature: “Colette is a woman of crazy topicality” for Emmanuelle Lambert

We never stopped reading Colette (1873-1954), but probably not enough. Why ?

She is one of our great writers and yet, we tend to underestimate her. Is it the comparison with his contemporary Marcel Proust, whose centenary we have just celebrated and who, in certain ways, resembles him so much? May be. Proust, he was not mistaken, he admired Colette. And she was fascinated by the power of the author of “In Search of Lost Time”, his ability to resuscitate life through sensation. Via different paths, their works come together through a power that is of the order of witchcraft.

What led you to Colette?

In the houses I went to, in the flea markets where my mother took me, there was always a book by Colette. I didn’t study it in school and in my high school years it seemed outdated. Then I read “Sido”. More than by the portrait of his mother, I was flabbergasted by the power of evocation: in three sentences people, environments, an era emerge. In a jiffy, she takes you on board. She analyzes without being demonstrative, with a sense of formula, mad virtuosity and speed. With it, you split the waves.

This great stylist said she didn’t like literature. Paradoxical, Colette?

There is of course a hint of coquetry. When the young Georges Simenon asked his advice, she told him, “Don’t do literature and you’ll be fine.” It meant: “Don’t do what is expected of you, be free.” She’s done that all her life. Colette was a workaholic but nature flowed from her pen like a spring, without weighing. What interested him? The living. She hated fixed things and literary notability. Colette is first and foremost an artist.

Acrobat, even, since, from 1906 to 1912, she climbed on the boards…

Yes, she liked to define herself as a music-hall artist. And unlike many writers of her time who were annuitants, Colette lived from her pen. His work is abundant. And it has constantly reinvented itself. Writer, but also dancer, mime, actress, journalist, advertiser, she had even set up a beauty institute in Paris.

“By going on stage, by her relationships with women, by advancing in age, by writing, she has emancipated herself”

Would she have been Colette without her first husband Willy, who signed his first books?

No. Colette settled her accounts in a very hard book, “My learning”. Young, she lived a relationship under the influence and ended up divorcing. But it was Willy who took it out of his province and made it. Literature was a cage, she used it as a tool for liberation. By going up on stage, by her relationships with women, by advancing in age, by writing, she became emancipated.

Through her journey of freedom, isn’t Colette a woman of today?

Absolutely, the character is crazy topical. She had three husbands and a great love affair with Mathilde de Morny, known as “Missy”. Being bisexual was no exception in its time. More original was to assume its multiple identities in broad daylight.

After having invented with Claudine the sassy, ​​intrepid young girl, Colette shows the aging woman, but still seductive, desirable and desired.

With her female body exposed, she creates literature that speaks of feelings, male and female sexuality, homosexuality, relations between different generations, torpedoing the canons of respectability of her time. Colette gains a sulphurous reputation there, which also serves her. This woman is never afraid.

“Colette shows the facets and contradictions of affective and sexual desire. The principle of ambiguity is central to her”

You were waiting for the question: Was Colette a feminist?

No. To say so would be anachronistic. But her journey as a woman and as a writer, her absolute demand for romantic and financial freedom, are inspiring for women today. She never let her sex – today she would say her gender – get in the way of her artistic and social possibilities. Until the end, even sick, she gave up nothing. Her smoky eyes emanate a magnetism, an invincible flame of seduction. Her feminine strength is all the stronger for being ambiguous.

What do you mean ?

Colette shows the facets and contradictions of affective and sexual desire. It happens that her heroines also like to suffer by men. The principle of ambiguity is central to her. This goes for her love of animals and nature, which of course makes her very modern in our eyes. But she also likes to dominate, to tame animals, to have them for her.

Do you have any favorite books? Advise us…

I told you about “Sido”. I also like “La Naissance du jour”, a letter to his mother which engages with a fiction by the writer at work, a book of dazzling intelligence. “La Maison de Claudine”, which immerses us in childhood stories, is a marvel of precision and beauty.

I also want to quote “L’Envers du music-hall”: Colette is often harsh in her books, but the stage was her life. His eye is sociological, his style journalistic, quick and concise. And this moving book shows the tenderness that Colette had for the forgotten and the ungraded in the entertainment world.

Colette in a few dates

1873. Born in Burgundy.
1889. Meets her future husband, Henry Gauthier Villars known as “Willy”.
1895. Publishes “Claudine at school” signed by Willy, first in the Claudine series.
1904. Publishes “Dialogues of Beasts”.
1906. Divorce, early career in the music hall and romantic relationship with Mathilde de Morny.
1912. Married Henry de Jouvenel, birth of her daughter “Bel Gazou” and affair with Bertrand, son of her husband.
1919. Literary director of the “Morning”.
1923. “Budding Wheat”.
1925. Meets her third husband Maurice Goudeket.
1928. Publishes “The Birth of the Day”.
1930. “Sido”.
1932. Opens a beauty salon in Paris.
1949. President of the Goncourt Academy.
1954. Death in Paris. First woman to have a state funeral.

(1) “Sidonie Gabrielle Colette”, by Emmanuelle Lambert, ed. Gallimard, 216 pages, €29.90.