Paris in July does not just include books. Contributions on your Paris vacation, your favourite meal or restaurant, French movies, music, art and more are very welcome
If Paris is the city of love, then Colette (Sidione-Gabreelle Colette 1873 to 1954) is the high priestess. For many their image of Paris derives from memories of the movie, Gigi, made from her probably most famous work. Living to almost eighty, she produced eighty volumes of writings of all sorts. When she passed in 1954 she was given the first ever state funeral for a French woman. She is an LGTGQ icon and she loved cats.
Cheri by Colette - 1920 - Included in Chéri; and The End of the Chéri / by Colette; translated from the French by Paul Eprile; introduced by Judith Thurman.- 2022
"Colette’s Chéri (1920) and its sequel, The End of Chéri (1926), are widely considered her masterpieces. In sensuous, elegant prose, the two novels explore the evolving inner lives and the intimate relationship of an unlikely couple: Léa de Lonval, a middle-aged former courtesan, and Fred Peloux, twenty-five years her junior, known as Chéri. The two have been involved for years, and it is time for Chéri to get on with life, to make something of himself, but he, the personification of male beauty and vanity, doesn’t know how to go about it. It is time, too, for Léa to let go of Chéri and the sensual life that has been hers, and yet this is more easily resolved than done. Chéri marries, but once married he is restless and is inevitably drawn back to his mistress, as she is to him. And yet to reprise their relationship is only to realize even more the inevitability of its end. That end will come when Chéri, back from World War I, encounters a world that the war has changed through and through. Lost in his memories of time past, he is irremediably lost to the busy present. Paul Eprile’s new translation of these two celebrated novels brings out a vivid sensuality and acute intelligence that past translations have failed to capture." From The New York Review of Books.
I hope to feature The End of Cheri later in the month. Additionally I highly recommend Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette by Judith Thurman (2000)
4 comments:
These days, Colette is probably more read abroad. Even as a French student, I never had to read or study any book by her! I'll be soon rereading Sido with one of my French students though
Interesting what you say Emma. I don't think I have read anything by her, but being a classic, I guess you could say, I should try her books.
In our Zoom meeting, we talked about the characteristics of French literature. This is one of them, I think: longing.
I love the collage you've used for this one. And what a quintessential choice for the month's theme!
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