Colette

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For other uses, see Colette (disambiguation).
Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette

Born 28 January 1873(1873-01-28)
Yonne, France
Died 3 August 1954 (aged 81)
Paris, France
Pen name Colette
Occupation Novelist
Nationality French
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Colette was the pen name of the French novelist Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (28 January 1873 – 3 August 1954). She is best known, at least in the English-speaking world, for her novel Gigi, which provided the plot for a Lerner & Loewe musical film and stage musical.

Contents

[edit] Early life, marriage

Colette was born in Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye, Yonne, in the Burgundy Region of France, the daughter of Jules-Joseph Colette and Adèle Eugénie Sidonie Landoy ("Sido"). In 1893 she married Henri Gauthier-Villars, a famous wit known as "Willy", who was 15 years her senior.

Her first books, the Claudine series, were published under the pen name of her husband, "Willy", writer, music critic, "literary charlatan and degenerate",[1]. Claudine still has the power to charm; in belle epoque France it was downright shocking, much to Willy's satisfaction and profit.

[edit] Music hall career, affairs with women

Colette in a publicity still for Rêve d'Égypte

In 1906 she left the unfaithful Gauthier-Villars, living for a time at the home of the American writer and salonist Natalie Barney. The two had a short affair, and remained friends until Colette's death.[2]

Colette took up work in the music halls of Paris, under the wing of Mathilde de Morny, the Marquise de Belbeuf, known as Missy, with whom she became romantically involved. In 1907, the two performed together in a pantomime entitled Rêve d'Égypte at the Moulin Rouge. Their onstage kiss nearly caused a riot, which the police were called in to suppress. As a result of this scandal, further performances of Rêve d'Égypte were banned and Colette and de Morny were no longer able to openly live together, though their relationship continued a total of five years.[3]

She also was involved in a heterosexual relationship during this time, with the Italian writer Gabriele D'Annunzio.

Another affair during this period was with the automobile-empire scion, Auguste Herriot. Colette's sexuality is not really as confusing as it may appear. She seems to have instinctively preferred men, with her three long marriages and numerous heterosexual affairs. For example, her first husband (M. Willy) exploited her in every possible way, and published her writings as his own; but she remained obsessed with him, and they met for rendezvous after their divorce.

[edit] Second marriage, affair with stepson

In 1912 Colette married Henri de Jouvenel, the editor of the newspaper Le Matin. The couple had one daughter, Colette de Jouvenel, known to the family as Bel-Gazou. Colette de Jouvenel later stated that her mother did not want a child and left her in the care of an English nanny, only rarely coming to visit her.

In 1914, during World War I, Colette was approached to write a ballet for the Opéra de Paris which she outlined under the title "Divertissements pour ma fille". After Colette herself chose Maurice Ravel to write the music, he reimagined the work as an opera, to which Colette agreed. Ravel received the libretto to L'Enfant et les sortilèges in 1918, and it was first performed on 21 March 1925.[4]

During the war she converted her husband's St. Malo estate into a hospital for the wounded, and was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour (1920). She divorced Henri de Jouvenel in 1924 after a much talked-about affair with her stepson, Bertrand de Jouvenel.

[edit] Third marriage

Colette, painted ca. 1896 by Jacques Humbert

Colette married Maurice Goudeket in 1935. After 1935 her legal name was simply Sidonie Goudeket. Maurice Goudeket published a book about his wife, Close to Colette: An Intimate Portrait of a Woman of Genius. An English translation was published in 1957 by Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, New York.

[edit] Continued writings

Post-war, her writing career bloomed following the publication of Chéri (1920). Chéri tells a story of the end of a six-year affair between an aging retired courtesan, Léa, and a pampered young man, Chéri. Turning stereotypes upside-down, it is Chéri who wears silk pajamas and Léa's pearls, and who is the object of gaze. And in the end Léa demonstrates all the survival skills which Colette associates with femininity. (The story continued in The Last of Chéri (1926), which contrasts Léa's strength and Chéri's fragility and decline).

After Chéri, Colette entered the world of modern poetry and paintings centered around Jean Cocteau, who was later her neighbor in Jardins du Palais-Royal. Their relationship and life is vividly depicted in their books. By 1927 she was frequently acclaimed as France's greatest woman writer. "It ... has no plot, and yet tells of three lives all that should be known", wrote Janet Flanner of Sido on its publication in 1930. "Once again, and at greater length than usual, she has been hailed for her genius, humanities and perfect prose by those literary journals which years ago ... lifted nothing at all in her direction except the finger of scorn."

She published around 50 novels in total, many with autobiographical elements. Her themes can be roughly divided into idyllic natural tales or dark struggles in relationships and love. All her novels were marked by clever observation and dialogue with an intimate, explicit style. Her most popular novel, Gigi, was made into a Broadway play and a highly successful Hollywood motion picture, Gigi, starring Maurice Chevalier, Louis Jourdan and Leslie Caron.

[edit] Legacy

A controversial figure throughout her life, Colette flaunted her lesbian affairs. She aided her Jewish friends, including hiding her husband in her attic all through the war. She was a member of the Belgian Royal Academy (1935), president of the Académie Goncourt (1949) (and the first woman to be admitted into it, in 1945), and a Chevalier (1920) and a Grand Officier (1953) of the Légion d'honneur.

When she died in Paris on 3 August 1954, she was given a state funeral, although she was refused Roman Catholic rites because of her divorce. Colette is interred in Le Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

Colette's tomb in Le Père Lachaise Cemetery.

[edit] Notable works

[edit] See also

[edit] Biography

  • Sylvain Bonmariage, Willy, Colette et moi, with an introduction by Jean-Pierre Thiollet, Anagramme ed., Paris, 2004 (reprint)

[edit] References

  1. ^ Colette
  2. ^ Rodriguez, Suzanne (2002). Wild Heart: A Life: Natalie Clifford Barney and the Decadence of Literary Paris. New York: HarperCollins. pp. 131. ISBN 0-06-093780-7. 
  3. ^ Benstock, Shari (1986). Women of the Left Bank: Paris, 1900–1940. Texas: University of Texas Press. pp. 48–49. ISBN 0-292-79040-6. 
  4. ^ LA Phil Presents | Piece Detail - Maurice Ravel: L'enfant et les sortilèges

[edit] External links

Persondata
NAME Colette, Sidonie-Gabrielle
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Colette
SHORT DESCRIPTION French novelist
DATE OF BIRTH January 28, 1873
PLACE OF BIRTH Yonne, France
DATE OF DEATH August 3, 1954
PLACE OF DEATH Paris, France
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colette"
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