Colette Is Dead in Paris at 81; Novelist Wrote 'Gigi' and 'Cheri' Colette Is Dead in Paris at 81; Novelist Wrote 'Gigi' and 'Cheri' By THE NEW YORK TIMES ARIS, Aug. 3- Sidonie Gabrielle Colette, one of the most famous of modern French writers, died tonight at the age of 81 in her Paris apartment at the Palais Royal. Admirers Not Limited Sidonie Gabrielle Claudine Colette Gauthier-Villars de Jouvanel Goudeket is a name that would not attract attention except for its length, but the simple name, Colette, was one of the most famous in France. Her stature was recognized when she was elected the first woman president of the distinguished Goncourt Academy. But her fifty-odd novels and scores of short stories were as popular with housewives, shop girls and laborers as they were with intellectuals. But her writing was not intellectual. Her forte was in the delineation of women's problems of love and she lived as passionately as she wrote.

Sex was never forced to take a back seat in her writings, which were further embellished by a piquant style and sparkling dialogue. Speaking of the frankness with which she wrote of love, licit and illicit, one critic observed that an Englishman might feel she had lowered love to the level of sensuality, whereas a true Frenchman would feel she had elevated sensuality to the level of love. France's leading woman writer was born on Jan. 28, 1873, in the village of Saint-Sauver-en-Puisaye in Burgundy. Her father, a retired Army officer, was a frustrated politician. When his daughter was 6 years old, he permitted her to try to match him, wine glass for wine glass, as he stumped local cafes for votes. Learned From Mother Colette's mother, Sidonie, had the greater influence on the girl and taught her the importance of being a woman. Sidonie was the type who shocked the neighbors by refusing to wear mourning clothes when her husband died and who read Corneille at mass.

Colette's village life ended at the age of 20, when the music critic, Henri Gauthier-Villars, swept her off her feet and took her to Paris as his wife. He was a popular writer of potboilers under the name of Willy, and was known to all of Paris as a man of the world. One day, interested in stories of her school life, he encouraged her to write them down. He liked what he read and, making a few changes, sent them off to an editor- under his own name. Thus were born the Claudine novels, which made Willy wealthy and famous. She never liked writing, so M. Willy locked her in a room until she turned out something. After thirteen years of such apprenticeship, Colette became disillusioned and divorced him. Critics agree that M. Willy, although he tried to take full credit for her early books, was a splendid editor and taught her much about writing. She continued writing books, under her own name now, but she had no immediate success and had to find other ways of making a living. Becoming a music hall dancer, she found at the time new material for books.

Meanwhile, she was a drama critic, political writer, fashion critic and author of a column on cooking. She also was married to Henri de Jouvenel, a news editor. In 1910 she wrote "Renee," the story of a divorcee turned actress, the first of her other books to be taken seriously by the critics. From that time on she was in the forefront of French writers. Year after year she turned out novels, many of them thinly disguised autobiographies. By 1927, as eminent a writer as Paul Claudel was calling her "the greatest living writer in France." For the first time, with "Cheri" in 1920, probably her most famous novel, Colette wrote a book about a character entirely different from herself. With an adaptation of "Cheri" she turned to playwriting and played the principle role herself. Some of her most famous books were "Gigi," the "Caroline" series and "L'ingenue libertine." A passionate lover of animals, especially cats, she was the author of "Dialogue des betes." This conversation-piece between a cat and a dog caused her to be compared with Rudyard Kipling as an animal writer.

Known Here for 'Gigi' Another novel, "La Vagabonde," was chosen in one critical rating as one of the dozen best French novels of the century. Her last book, "En Pays Connu," was published four years ago. Colette was not too widely known in this country. Perhaps she was best known here for "Gigi," which she wrote as a novel and which was dramatized for Broadway by Anita Loos. It made Audrey Hepburn, who was selected personally by Colette for the part, a famous actress. In 1924, Colette was divorced from her second husband. They had a daughter, also named Colette. In 1935, she was married to Maurice Goudeket. Colette never was admitted to the Academie Francaise, but only because it is for men only. She was admitted, however, to the Belgian Academy of French Language and Literature and was an honorary associate of the American National Institute of Arts and Letters. Last year, she became the second woman in history to be made a grand officer of the Legion of Honor.

Sidonie Gabrielle Colette Biography (Go to It Happened in History Archives ) Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette Paris, 1903. Centuries of literary convention and social mores had evolved to this very moment. The time was ripe for a new French Revolution. The Gay Nineties were gone. The Roaring Twenties lay far off in the distance. Before them, World War I would rear its ugly head and grow to be known as, the "war to end all wars." It would showcase man�s inhumanity toward man and destroy the very essence of social fabric as society had known it. It would become the proving ground for all future wars. But for now, life was good. H. G. Wells was about to publish his futuristic novel, A Modern Utopia. Paris was about to become the center of the literary universe. Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette was about to publish her first novel and prepare to leave her first husband. And the world of literature was about to change forever.

In a whirlwind of success and failure so intertwined that she could barely tell them apart, Colette put aside a career as a populist writer and, following her divorce from a philandering husband in 1906, began dancing and singing in Parisian music halls, from La Chatte Amoureuse to L'Oiseau de Nuit. Destined to explore her own failing self-image, to define what it meant really to be a woman, she would push the envelope of public sexuality beyond even what she believed she could do. In the process, she would open the opportunity for the expression of sexuality for women around the world. Colette was born on January 28, 1873, in the French village of Saint-Saveur-en-Puisaye. Her father, Jules, was a retired army captain turned tax collector. Her mother, Sidonie�Sido for short�was Colette's greatest influence and strongest supporter; she had grown up among artists and political radicals in Belgium. Among her school friends, Colette insisted on being called by her last name, a European practice normally extended only to boys.

She grew up sturdy and energetic, rambunctious at school and determined to set herself apart from her young colleagues. Her mother�s own cavalier attitudes toward the social mores of the day rubbed off on the daughter, who felt her first yearnings for another female by the age of 11. Colette began her odyssey of sexual self-realization one chilly Parisian night in 1906. Caught up in the covertly charged sexuality rampant in pre-war France, she appeared on stage, as she had done many times before. But this time was different. This time, she brazenly exposed one breast, later reenacting the event for a photographer�s lens. The exhibition created worldwide controversy, rocking Parisian society to its very core. But not all of the reaction was negative. Dancer/poetess Toni Bentley remembers both her first encounter with Colette�s writings and the now-famous photograph. �I was eighteen when I discovered [Colette�s] novels and, while interest quickly became obsession, I devoured as many of them as I could find in fast succession.

I fell completely in love with this woman who seemed to speak the unspeakable about the pursuit of love, the pain of desire, and the tenderness that binds the two.� Then Bentley saw the photograph that would change her life. �...she was dressed in a torn slip of white linen, her left breast exposed and aiming at the camera lens with shameless pride. The nakedness continued down the left side revealing a rounded, expertly posed thigh that ended its length in a slipper tied with suggestive black laces. She offered her bosom with a demure gesture of surrender tempered by the grace of an aristocrat. �Her breast was beautiful and the woman of words suddenly became flesh and blood -- and curiously naughty. Colette�s Breast, as I came to think of the image, symbolized for me something that I wanted for myself though I was not sure exactly what that was. Did I want the power of her pen? Or the power of her bosom? Her assertive intellect? Or her alluring magnetism?� The photograph, Colette realized at the time of its taking, was more than a mere two-dimensional representational image.

It was an announcement to the world that womanhood�femininity in all of its convoluted, convulsive, conductive, and ethereal forms�had escaped Pandora�s box. More than that, it was an announcement that she, Colette, was the one who had freed it. For good or evil, women were no longer confined in literature to the roles of cookie-cutter characters, to cardboard recreations that neither lived, breathed, felt, nor cared. It was so in society, as well. The photograph of Colette liberated millions of women throughout France and the world. It gave hope to sexual feelings that dared to reach beyond the normal. But it created more than vivid images, a feeling of euphoric awakenings, and runaway publicity. It created scandal. It generated among the people of Europe an enormous amount of interest-desire-hate-love-lust for a woman whose four previously written novels had been published by her husband, writer and music critic Henri Gauthier-Villars, under his own pseudonym of Willy. Scandal was nothing new to Colette: she had at first dreamt about it and then written about it years later.

Now, by acting it out, she was merely liberating it from the darkest recesses of her mind. She was liberating the female sex, and she was liberating years of repressed emotions deep within her own tortured bosom. How appropriate that a photograph of that bosom would be the very vehicle by which she would leap from carnal desires to unbridled reality. Colette had met Gauthier-Villars on a trip to Paris with her father. The bewitching 16-year-old was taken by the rakish man-about-letters and could not put him out of her mind. Then 30, Gauthier-Villars had revolted against his bourgeois family and slipped comfortably into the artistic and Bohemian world of the Belle �poque. An author, columnist, and reviewer, he already possessed a stable of mistresses, but he was overwhelmed by Colette's impish purity, fresh beauty, and boundless vitality. At the age of 20, Colette agreed to become Mrs. Gauthier-Villars and left the countryside to conquer Paris.

Teasing and experimenting with androgyny, Colette appeared in the drawing rooms of the City of Lights costumed in jaunty sailor suits at a time when cross-dressing was forbidden by law except on the stage. Long before it was fashionable, she was already reinventing her persona, exposing and concealing herself at will, all the while daring anyone to decide which Colette was real. Her first series of books came out between 1900 and 1903. They proved to be enormously popular. Conceived when her husband was short of funds, Gauthier-Villars asked Colette to record her schoolgirl experiences, admonishing her to put a little something �extra� into the stories. The "extra" that he demanded began with a lesbian headmistress. In Claudine at School (1900), the main character, a tomboyish girl of 15, develops an intense crush on a pretty assistant mistress, Aim�e. It was the first time in modern literature that a girl looked at another woman and described her as an object of sexual pleasure.

In the follow-up Claudine Married (1902), Claudine�s husband arranges an affair between his wife and another woman for his own voyeuristic pleasure. Initially, Gauthier-Villars dismissed his wife�s stories as �commercially worthless.� In time, though, he found himself becoming strangely aroused at the thought of his wife�s expressions of fantasy through her characters. He suspected that there might be a market for the stories after all. He was rumored to have locked Colette in her room for hours each day, refusing to let her out until she created more titillating scenes. She was up to the task. And Gauthier-Villars� hunch was right. The highly popular novels spun off into a treasure trove of wealth for the newlyweds: a musical stage play, Claudine uniforms, Claudine soap, Claudine perfume, even Claudine cigars and cigarettes. The success of Claudine also gave Gauthier-Villars more attention than he�d ever known, and he preyed mercilessly upon the opportunities that arose from it. By the time Colette had met Gauthier-Villars, he was already a flamboyant, headstrong man-about-town.

Monsieur Willy, as he liked to be called, was also a literary charlatan whose numerous published works were written mostly by ghostwriters, including a number of male homosexual friends. In time, he would use Colette to the same selfish end. To Gauthier-Villars, using his wife to advance his own career was no foreign concept. She was merely one more player in a long list of credits and, for a short time at least, quite a willing one. Locally well known as a sexual degenerate, Gauthier-Villars was a vile and ruthless man. His marriage to Colette was a matter of convenience that quickly turned tumultuous and destructive. When Colette nearly died of a mysterious illness during their first year of marriage, Gauthier-Villars shrugged it off, resuming a long string of affairs. After Sido succeeded in nursing her daughter back to health, Gauthier-Villars forced Colette to acknowledge his mistresses and, at times, to entertain them in their home.

Suffering at the hands of her husband�s indiscretions, Colette recalled her mother�s philosophy: �There is only one person in this world you can count on, and that's yourself.� Colette and Gauthier-Villars separated in 1904. After deciding to end the marriage, Colette released the first novel published under her own name. Although Dialogues de Betes was well received, it did little to resolve the questions swirling around the author�s mind regarding her own sexuality. She needed to explore the depths and direction of her sexual identity. Examining her boundaries on stage seemed to offer the perfect opportunity. Performing as a dancer and a mime�both disciplines that she had studied earlier in life�allowed her to meet new people in an exciting new environment while providing her an opportunity to earn a living, a task not easily accomplished by a divorcee in turn-of-the-century France. The fantasy world of the stage also provided Colette a measure of safety to which she could retreat should the heat of her real-world passions grow too strong to endure comfortably.

�Solitude, freedom, my pleasant and painful work as mime and dancer,� Colette wrote years later, �tired and happy muscles, and, by way of a change from all that, the new anxiety about earning my meals, my clothes, and my rent -- such, all of a sudden, was my lot. But with it too went a savage defiance, a disgust for the milieu where I had lived and suffered, a stupid fear of man, of men, and of women too.� More than anything, Colette�s new career offered her an opportunity to act-out her own tormented fantasies. They provided her with the opportunity to feed her voracious sexual appetite. She lost little time in doing just that. In a sketch performed at the Moulin Rouge, Colette caused a near riot by miming on-stage copulation. By then, she had already had affairs with several women. One of her femme fatales was the youngest daughter of the Duc de Morny and the Emperor Napoleon III�s niece, Mathilde, better known as Missy. Colette moved into Missy�s ch�teau.

After enduring a brief and unhappy marriage, Missy had become the Marquise de Belboeuf, although she was better known in Paris lesbian circles as Monsieur Belboeuf. Missy supported Colette with money, introduced her to the society people with whom she ran, and opened up her underground world of beautiful men with long tresses and intense young women with fire in their eyes. Colette, in turn, showered Missy with love, affection, and sex. She also took Missy into a new production at the Moulin Rouge. In it, Colette played the role of an Egyptian mummy who unwrapped her bandages and kissed Missy�who played the cross-dressed role of the archaeologist�boldly. The 15-minute scene was banned by the Paris police commissioner. The publicity she received served Colette well. She felt happier, more fulfilled, and more alive than ever before. It also set the groundwork for the next ten years of her life�years during which the author-turned-performer would fall back, once again, on her writing, which began revealing the true unbridled sexual nature of the beast...and it would pave the way for other female writers to follow in her footsteps.

By the end of the 1920's, Colette was widely regarded as the greatest woman author in all of France. She became the first woman admitted to the prestigious Goncourt Academy and in her later years achieved the same legendary status as Gertrude Stein, the American expatriate living in Paris. When her book, The Ripening, was introduced in 1932, the New York Times ran a review of it. "A book about adolescents," it said, "The Ripening is certainly not for adolescent reading. But one can recommend it to the more mature as a little masterpiece of its kind." In 1935, Colette married her third husband, a pearl salesman who had lost his business during the Great Depression. He was Jewish, and the anti-Semitic attitudes of the time made it difficult for him to find work. Colette supported him financially and helped him hide out when Germany occupied France during World War II. Throughout the war years, Colette continued writing. She published her most famous novel, Gigi, in 1945 when she was seventy-two years old. Three years later, the novel was adapted into a film, and in 1958 it was made into a hit musical.

Sadly, Colette never saw the musical. She died in 1954. She was given an official French state funeral, highly unusual for a woman at the time. Thousands of mourners attended the service, and the entire nation--along with most of Europe--mourned the loss. Colette said, "By means of an image we are often able to hold on to our lost belongings. But it is the desperateness of losing which picks the flowers of memory, binds the bouquet." Colette | French writer | Britannica.com French writer Pierre Drieu La Rochelle Colette, in full Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (born Jan. 28, 1873, Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye, France —died Aug. 3, 1954, Paris ), outstanding French writer of the first half of the 20th century whose best novels, largely concerned with the pains and pleasures of love, are remarkable for their command of sensual description. Her greatest strength as a writer is an exact sensory evocation of sounds, smells, tastes, textures, and colours of her world. Colette, 1937.

Charles Leirens/Black Star Colette was reared in a village in Burgundy, where her much-loved mother awakened her to the wonders of the natural world—everything that “germinates, blossoms, or flies.” At age 20 and ill-prepared for both married life and the Paris scene, Colette married the writer and critic Henri Gauthier-Villars (“Willy”), 15 years her senior. He introduced her to the world of Parisian salons and the demimonde, and, not long after their marriage, he discovered her talent for writing. Locking her in a room to encourage her to focus on the task at hand, Willy forced her to write—but published as his own work—the four “Claudine” novels, Claudine à l’école (1900; Claudine at School), Claudine à Paris (1901; Claudine in Paris), Claudine en menage (1902; republished as Claudine amoureuse, translated as The Indulgent Husband), and Claudine s’en va: Journal d’Annie (1903; The Innocent Wife).

For these novels, Colette drew on her own experiences (both as a girl from the provinces and as a young married woman with a libertine husband) to produce scenes from the life of the young ingénue. Both Claudine and the passive, domestic Annie, who narrates the fourth Claudine book, reappear in Colette’s La Retraite sentimentale (1907; Retreat from Love), which was published under the name Colette Willy. Colette left Willy in 1906. Though her slightly salacious novels were wildly popular, as were the plays derived from them, she saw none of her earnings; Willy kept the royalties. Ever resourceful, she took a job as a music-hall performer, working long hours to keep poverty at bay. During these years (roughly 1906–10), she was involved with the marquise de Balbeuf (“Missy”), an independently wealthy lesbian who affected male dress and mocked the masculine manner. This period of her life inspired La Vagabonde (1910; The Vagabond) and L’Envers du music-hall (1913; Music-Hall Sidelights).

She was finally divorced from Willy in 1910, and in 1912 she married Henry de Jouvenel, editor in chief of the paper Le Matin, to which she contributed theatre chronicles and short stories. Their daughter (b. 1913) is the Bel-Gazou of the delightful animal story La Paix chez les bêtes (1916; some stories translated as Dogs, Cats, & I). Colette. Ringling Bros. Folds Its Tent The writings she published up to this point belong to what Colette called her years of apprenticeship; she wrote of them in Mes Apprentissages (1936; My Apprenticeships). Her best work was produced after 1920 and followed two veins. The first vein followed the lives of the slightly depraved, postwar younger generation. Among these novels are Chéri (1920) and La Fin de Chéri (1926; The Last of Chéri), dealing with a liaison between a young man (Chéri) and an older woman, and Le Blé en herbe (1923; The Ripening Seed), which concerns a tender and acid initiation to love.

The second vein looked back to the countryside of her enchanted childhood and away from the pleasures and disillusions of shallow love affairs. La Maison de Claudine (1922; My Mother’s House) and Sido (1930) are her poetic meditations on these years. After 1930 her life was both productive and serene. In 1935, having divorced de Jouvenel the previous year, she married the writer Maurice Goudeket. The marriage brought much happiness, as Goudeket recorded in his memoirs Près de Colette (1955; Close to Colette). During her last two decades, Colette wrote on a number of topics. In Ces Plaisirs (1932; “Those Pleasures,” later published as Le Pur et l’impur [1941; The Pure and the Impure]), she examined aspects of female sexuality. La Chatte (1933; The Cat) and Duo (1934) are treatments of jealousy. Gigi (1944), the story of a girl reared by two elderly sisters to become a courtesan, was adapted for both stage and screen.

A charming musical film version of 1958, starring Maurice Chevalier , Louis Jourdan , and a winsome Leslie Caron, enjoyed great popularity. Colette. Exploring France: Fact or Fiction? Colette was made a member of the Belgian Royal Academy (1935) and the French Académie Goncourt (1945) and a grand officer of the Legion of Honour—all honours rarely granted to women. A delicate and humorous realist, Colette was the annalist of female existence. She wrote chiefly of women in traditional roles, such as husband hunters or discarded, aging, or déclassé mistresses. Her chosen format was the novella, her style a blend of the sophisticated and the natural, laced with all the subtle cadences of sensuous pleasures and intuitive acumen . From 1949 she was increasingly crippled by arthritis. She ended her days, a legendary figure surrounded by her beloved cats, confined to her beautiful Palais-Royal apartment overlooking Paris.

Sidonie Gabrielle Colette | Article about Sidonie Gabrielle Colette by The Free Dictionary Sidonie Gabrielle Colette | Article about Sidonie Gabrielle Colette by The Free Dictionary Also found in: Dictionary , Thesaurus , Wikipedia . Colette (Sidonie Gabrielle Colette) (sēdōnē` gäbrēĕl` kōlĕt`), 1873–1954, French novelist. Colette achieved popularity with numerous novels, characterized by sensitive observations—particularly of women—and an intimate, semiautobiographical style. Her early series of novels, published in collaboration with her first husband, Willy (pseud. of Henry Gauthier-Villars), include Claudine at School (1900, tr. 1930) and The Innocent Wife (1903, tr. 1934). Among many later novels written on her own are The Vagrant (1910, tr. 1912), Chéri (1920, tr. 1929), The Cat (1933, tr.

1936), and Gigi (1945). Divorced in 1906, Colette worked on the music-hall stage until 1914. Her marriage to Henri de Jouvenel also ended in divorce, but her last years were enriched by the companionship of her third husband, Maurice Goudeket. Colette was the first woman to head the Goncourt Academy and the second to become a grand officer of the French Legion of Honor. Bibliography See Earthly Paradise, a collection of autobiographical writings, ed. by R. Phelps (1966); M. Sarde, Colette: Free and Fettered (1980); E. M. Eisinger and M. McCarty, ed., Colette: The Woman, the Writer (1981); G. Dormann, Colette: A Passion for Life (1985); N. W. Jouve, Colette (1987); C. Francis and F. Gontier, Creating Colette (2 vol., 1999–2000); J.

Thurman, Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette (1999). Colette full name Sidonie Gabrielle Claudine Colette. 1873--1954, French novelist; her works include Chéri (1920), Gigi (1944), and the series of Claudine books Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette - Colette & Claudine Colette & Claudine contact us On this day in 1873 Colette (Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette) was born outside Paris. Even given her mythologizing, and her intentional blurring of the lines in her autobiographical fiction, Colette's full and sensational life made her one of the most popular writers and personalities in the first half of the twentieth century.

She wrote over fifty books, and is credited and blamed with much: having invented the modern teenager (presented in her early Claudine novels); being the first modern woman (based on her intention to live "in the most normal manner I know, which is according to [my] pleasure"); being the first superstar (her self-promotion, her own line of chocolates and cosmetics, her personal gym, her cake-and-eat-it-too lament for privacy); being the first actress to bare her breasts on stage (or not bare them in a jeweled bra, or in man's clothing); being one of the first to write about the faked orgasm; being the first woman to be given, in 1954, a state funeral. Whether as Simone de Beauvoir or Madonna, she knocked the top-hat off more than one husband and the age, and most of the thousands at the funeral were women. If Colette helped shape a new era, her four-book Claudine series, published beginning in 1900, is regarded as striking the first blow.

Judith Thurman's recent biography (Secrets of the Flesh, 1999; there have been several other new ones) discusses Claudine at School, the opening book in the series, along such symbolic lines. The novel begins with the girls' old school being torn down, Claudine discovering that its walls were not full and thick but "hollow as armoires, with a kind of black corridor between them, where there's nothing but dust and a frightful, repulsive old smell. I amuse myself by frightening Marie Belhomme, telling her that these mysterious hiding places were contrived in the olden days to immure women who had deceived their husbands." The last scene of the novel is a dedication ceremony for the new school; as the traditional rites and pieties are observed, Claudine and her friends deliver their best, teenage lip-service.

Thurman's summary: "And the girls who have spent two hundred pages comparing breasts, fighting in the dust, lusting for each other, and for their teachers of both sexes, struggling for their places in a pecking order as a vertical as that of any barnyard or corporation, listen to the speeches with lowered eyes, in dresses of First Communion white, and lift their off-key voices in "The Hymn to Nature." Another recent biographer says that, from the commercial point of view, Colette's Claudine series "is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, in all of French literature." The legendary story of how her first husband locked her in a closet to write them is apparently not accurate; it is true that he took credit for writing the series, that he was unethical and debauched, that Colette started sleeping with his mistress while on the second book, and that she would soon leave him far behind. — SK 1000+ images about Sidonie Gabrielle Colette on Pinterest | January 28, Writers and Vintage photography Pinterest • The world’s catalog of ideas Sidonie Gabrielle Colette A frequentare un gatto si rischia di diventare migliori.

39 Pins1.48k Followers Colette Encyclopedia > People > Literature and the Arts > French Literature: Biographies Colette Colette (Sidonie Gabrielle Colette)sēdōnēˈ gäbrēĕlˈ kōlĕtˈ, 1873–1954, French novelist. Colette achieved popularity with numerous novels, characterized by sensitive observations—particularly of women—and an intimate, semiautobiographical style. Her early series of novels, published in collaboration with her first husband, Willy (pseud. of Henry Gauthier-Villars), include Claudine at School (1900, tr. 1930) and The Innocent Wife (1903, tr. 1934). Among many later novels written on her own are The Vagrant (1910, tr. 1912), Chéri (1920, tr. 1929), The Cat (1933, tr. 1936), and Gigi (1945). Divorced in 1906, Colette worked on the music-hall stage until 1914.

Her marriage to Henri de Jouvenel also ended in divorce, but her last years were enriched by the companionship of her third husband, Maurice Goudeket. Colette was the first woman to head the Goncourt Academy and the second to become a grand officer of the French Legion of Honor. See Earthly Paradise, a collection of autobiographical writings, ed. by R. Phelps (1966); M. Sarde, Colette: Free and Fettered (1980); E. M. Eisinger and M. McCarty, ed., Colette: The Woman, the Writer (1981); G. Dormann, Colette: A Passion for Life (1985); N. W. Jouve, Colette (1987); C. Francis and F. Gontier, Creating Colette (2 vol., 1999–2000); J. Thurman, Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette (1999). The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2012, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

Colette - Wikiquote Colette Jump to: navigation , search I love my past. I love my present. I'm not ashamed of what I've had, and I'm not sad because I have it no longer. Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette ( 28 January 1873 – 3 August 1954 ) was a French writer, usually known simply by her pen-name "Colette." Contents Quotes[ edit ] By means of an image we are often able to hold on to our lost belongings. But it is the desperateness of losing which picks the flowers of memory, binds the bouquet. You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm. When she raises her eyelids it's as if she were taking off all her clothes. Claudine and Annie (1903) There are days when solitude, for someone my age, is a heady wine that intoxicates you with freedom, others when it is a bitter tonic, and still others when it is a poison that makes you beat your head against the wall. Freedom (1908) Nothing ages a woman like living in the country.

L'Envers du music hall (Music Hall Sidelights), "On Tour" (1913) Her childhood, then her adolescence, had taught her patience, hope, silence and the easy manipulation of the weapons and virtues of all prisoners. Chéri (1920) pt. 2 It is not a bad thing that children should occasionally, and politely, put parents in their place. My Mother’s House, "The Priest on the Wall" (1922) I love my past. I love my present. I'm not ashamed of what I've had, and I'm not sad because I have it no longer. La Fin de Chéri (The Last of Cheri) (1926) My true friends have always given me that supreme proof of devotion, a spontaneous aversion for the man I loved. Break of Day (1928) Can it be that chance has made me one of those women so immersed in one man that, whether they are barren or not, they carry with them to the grave the shrivelled innocence of an old maid? Sido (1929) We only do well the things we like doing.

Prisons and Paradise (1932) By means of an image we are often able to hold on to our lost belongings. But it is the desperateness of losing which picks the flowers of memory, binds the bouquet. Mes Apprentissages (1936) You do not notice changes in what is always before you. Mes Apprentissages (1936) But just as delicate fare does not stop you from craving for saveloys, so tried and exquisite friendship does not take away your taste for something new and dubious. Chambre d’Hôtel, "The Rainy Moon" (1940) The true traveler is he who goes on foot, and even then, he sits down a lot of the time. Paris From My Window (1944) To a poet, silence is an acceptable response, even a flattering one. Paris From My Window (1944) The day after that wedding night I found that a distance of a thousand miles, abyss and discovery and irremediable metamorphosis, separated me from the day before. Noces (1945) Total absence of humor renders life impossible.

Chance Acquaintances (1952) You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm. New York World-Telegram and Sun (1961) The writer who loses his self-doubt, who gives way as he grows old to a sudden euphoria, to prolixity, should stop writing immediately: the time has come for him to lay aside his pen. Speech on being elected to the Belgian Academy. as quoted in “Lady of Letters” Pt. 4, Earthly Paradise (1966) ed. Robert Phelps Humility has its origin in an awareness of unworthiness, and sometimes too in a dazzled awareness of saintliness. Speech on being elected to the Belgian Academy. as quoted in “Lady of Letters” Pt. 4, Earthly Paradise (1966) ed. Robert Phelps There is no need to waste pity on young girls who are having their moments of disillusionment, for in another moment they will recover their illusion. “Wedding Day”, Earthly Paradise (1966) ed. Robert Phelps What a delight it is to make friends with someone you have despised! “Sido and I”, Earthly Paradise (1966) ed.

Robert Phelps It takes time for the absent to assume their true shape in our thoughts. After death they take on a firmer outline and then cease to change. "The Captain", Earthly Paradise (1966) ed. Robert Phelps As for an authentic villain, the real thing, the absolute, the artist, one rarely meets him even once in a lifetime. The ordinary bad hat is always in part a decent fellow. “The South of France”, Earthly Paradise (1966) ed. Robert Phelps It’s nothing to be born ugly. Sensibly, the ugly woman comes to terms with her ugliness and exploits it as a grace of nature. To become ugly means the beginning of a calamity, self-willed most of the time. Journey for Myself (1971) “Beauties,” Quatre Saisons (c. 1928). Le Pur et l'Impur (The Pure and the Impure) (1932)[ edit ] It is wise to apply the oil of refined politeness to the mechanisms of friendship. Ch. 9 Whether you are dealing with an animal or a child, to convince is to weaken.

Voluptuaries, consumed by their senses, always begin by flinging themselves with a great display of frenzy into an abyss. But they survive, they come to the surface again. And they develop a routine of the abyss: “It’s four o’clock … At five I have my abyss.” Perhaps the only misplaced curiosity is that which persists in trying to find out here, on this side of death, what lies beyond the grave. Smokers, male and female, inject and excuse idleness in their lives every time they light a cigarette. In the matter of furnishing, I find a certain absence of ugliness far worse than ugliness. The Photographer’s Wife On this narrow planet, we have only the choice between two unknown worlds. One of them tempts us — ah! what a dream, to live in that! — the other stifles us at the first breath. The Photographer’s Wife Don’t ever wear artistic jewellry; it wrecks a woman’s reputation. Aunt Alicia Boredom helps one to make decisions. Aunt Alicia A pretty little collection of weaknesses and a terror of spiders are our indispensable stock-in-trade with the men...

nine men out of ten are superstitious, nineteen out of twenty believe in the evil eye, and ninety-eight out of a hundred are afraid of spiders. They forgive us — oh! for many things, but not for the absence in us of their own feelings. Aunt Alicia Toby-Dog: It seems to me that of the two of us it's you they make the most of, and yet you do all the grumbling. Kiki-The-Demure: A dog's logic, that! The more one gives the more I demand. Toby-Dog: That's wrong. It's indiscreet. Kiki-The-Demure: Not at all. I have a right to everything. Toby-Dog: To everything? And I? Kiki-The-Demure: I don't imagine you lack anything, do you? Toby-Dog: Ah, I don't know. Sometimes in my very happiest moments, I feel like crying. My eyes grow dim, my heart seems to choke me. I would like to be sure, in such times of anguish, that everybody loves me; that there is nowhere in the world a sad dog behind a closed door, that no evil will ever come...

Kiki-The-Demure: And then what dreadful thing happens? Toby-Dog: You know very well! Inevitably, at that moment She appears, carrying a bottle with horrible yellow stuff floating in it — Castor Oil! Kiki-The-Demure: Once when I was little She tried to give me castor oil. I scratched and bit her so, she never tried again. Ha! She must have thought she held the devil between her knees. I squirmed, blew fire through my nostrils, multiplied my twenty claws by a hundred, my teeth by one thousand, and finally — disappeared as if by magic. Toby-Dog: I wouldn't dare do that. You see, I love her. I love her enough to forgive her even the torture of the bath. If I can't have too many truffles, I'll do without truffles, As quoted in Close to Colette by Maurice Goudeket Quotes about Colette[ edit ] I am devoted to those who endured, like Colette. It is easier … to kiss the world a bitter goodbye than to go on working, writing, changing, enduring the slings & arrows of outrageous aging. Colette endured. And she wrote & wrote & wrote.

Whenever I feel really depressed, I think of her & keep going. Erica Jong as quoted in Mountain Moving Day (1973) by Elaine Gill Here lived, here died Colette, whose work is a window wide open on life. Plaque placed by the city of Paris at the home of Colette, as quoted by Maurice Goudeket in Close to Colette (1957) Colette | Article about Colette by The Free Dictionary Colette | Article about Colette by The Free Dictionary Related to Colette: Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette Colette (Sidonie Gabrielle Colette) (sēdōnē` gäbrēĕl` kōlĕt`), 1873–1954, French novelist. Colette achieved popularity with numerous novels, characterized by sensitive observations—particularly of women—and an intimate, semiautobiographical style. Her early series of novels, published in collaboration with her first husband, Willy (pseud. of Henry Gauthier-Villars), include Claudine at School (1900, tr. 1930) and The Innocent Wife (1903, tr.

1934). Among many later novels written on her own are The Vagrant (1910, tr. 1912), Chéri (1920, tr. 1929), The Cat (1933, tr. 1936), and Gigi (1945). Divorced in 1906, Colette worked on the music-hall stage until 1914. Her marriage to Henri de Jouvenel also ended in divorce, but her last years were enriched by the companionship of her third husband, Maurice Goudeket. Colette was the first woman to head the Goncourt Academy and the second to become a grand officer of the French Legion of Honor. Bibliography See Earthly Paradise, a collection of autobiographical writings, ed. by R. Phelps (1966); M. Sarde, Colette: Free and Fettered (1980); E. M. Eisinger and M. McCarty, ed., Colette: The Woman, the Writer (1981); G. Dormann, Colette: A Passion for Life (1985); N. W.

Jouve, Colette (1987); C. Francis and F. Gontier, Creating Colette (2 vol., 1999–2000); J. Thurman, Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette (1999). Colette full name Sidonie Gabrielle Claudine Colette. 1873--1954, French novelist; her works include Chéri (1920), Gigi (1944), and the series of Claudine books Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette – The Vale of Soul-Making Charles Jealousy is not at all low, but it catches us humbled and bowed down, at first sight. For it is the only suffering that we endure without ever becoming used to it. ― Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, The Pure and the Impure. (NYRB Classics September 30, 2000) Originally published 1932. Rate this:

Question: Which French novelist’s first names were Sidonie Gabrielle?
Answer: Colette