• For Writers … A Tribute to Colette … Writer-Vagabond-Actress

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For Writers … A Tribute to Colette … Writer-Vagabond-Actress

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Posted by @europabridge1 in Writers & Writing

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Adventures in Paradise by europabridge or Elan Durham, Antonia White, Audrey Hepburn, Burgundy, Cheri, Claudine, Colette Sidonie Gabrielle, Earthly Paradise, Elan Durham europabridge, Enid McLeod, French Writers, Gigi, Michelle Pfeiffer, Paris, Robert Phelps, Stephen Frear's Cheri, The Vagabond, Women Alone, Women Writers, Writing Life

This tribute to Colette is an idea I had after cracking open a book I hadn’t looked at since the 80’s The Vagabond.

I was introduced to her in Southern California by an older friend, which began with the innocent loan of The Vagabond, and ended with my reading until I’d made my way through her entire oeuvre, which includes some 50 volumes.

Along the way, I became enamored of Paris, married a Frenchman — disastrously — and eventually became a writer myself, looking back at Colette with some mixture of skepticism, nostalgia, and love, which is also the way one sometimes regards old friends who become enemies. Or perhaps in the acrimony of a bad marriage, Colette’s own contributions to my life became for a time somewhat tarnished.

Nevertheless, Colette lived a remarkable life.

Growing up in the countryside of Burgundy, raised by a woman who rightly looked upon her daughter as her greatest achievement, she went on to marry a Parisian — Willy — who would lock her up in an attic, and force her (child-labor-style) to produce some talented, and entertaining adolescent books exploring the saucy adventures of one Claudine …

The Claudine books Willy signed his name to, refusing Colette’s authorial rights, which made him a fortune, and a personage in Paris, and Colette a kind of literary slave and ultimate example of demimonde arm-candy.

Eventually they divorced, and she went on to write under her own name, tread the theatrical boards, and become one of the first entrepreneurs of that era — creating her own line of make-up, and merchandising products the way major stars do today, with her ‘Claudine’ and ‘Colette’ brands.

She was the first woman inducted into the esteemed Academie Goncourt in Paris but is known, if at all, in America as the author of Gigi, a play which launched Audrey Hepburn‘s stunning career on the stage and screen, and Leslie Caron‘s career in film.

Actually, it was Colette who discovered Audrey Hepburn … Spotting the gamine ballerina at the Hotel de Paris in Monaco, she pronounced: ‘Voila! There’s our Gigi!’

C’est tout! A star was born.

I could go on about Colette for some time, if for no other reason than her life is so storied … She wrote beautifully, lived dangerously, loved outrageously — while sometimes embracing the most time-worn cliches, yet somehow making them seem exquisitely her own.

She died at peace with champagne on her lips, and a priest’s blessings on her soul who intimated she might be something of a saint.

Not bad for a woman whose very presence in France, not unlike other revolutionary figures in Arts and Letters, provoked debates about the condition of the human soul. Covering the juvenilia of Claudine to the full-bodied and wry observations of Lea about her own Cheri, Earthy Paradise — an amazing collection of writings — forms her autobiography and temple. Edited by Robert Phelps, this remarkable tome is a testament to her generous life, capacious person, fine sensibilities, and implacable reason.

Above, a poster from Stephen Frear’s effort based on Colette’s most famous creation– Lea’s Cheri — the young lover who cannot live without his older Parisian courtesan. So very French!

An excerpt about writing from The Vagabond follows. No comment needed, Colette speaks for herself, as ‘Renee Nere’ in a stirring testament to ‘the old scar that writing represents’. This translation by Enid McLeod is a bit flowery for my tastes but never mind, it was chosen in France as one of the best twelve books of the 20th Century.

(Read from one of the links below to learn more, and check out Antonia White‘s translations.)

I love this photograph … Colette looks like a refugee in her own life.

“To write, to be able to write, what does it mean? It means spending long hours dreaming before a white page, scribbling unconsciously, letting your pen play round a blot of ink and nibble at a half-formed word, scratching it, making it bristle with darts and adorning it with antennae and paws until it loses all resemblance to a legible word and turn into a fantastic insect or a fluttering creature half butterfly, half fairy.

Gigi

Gigi (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

To write is to sit and stare, hypnotized, at the reflection of the window in the silver ink-stand, to feel the divine fever mounting to one’s cheeks and forehead while the hand that writes grows blissfully numb upon the paper. It also means idle hours curled up in the hollow of the divan, and then the orgy of inspiration from which one emerges stupefied and aching all over, but already recompensed and laden with treasures that one unloads slowly on to the virgin paper in the little round pool of light under the lamp.

To write is to pour one’s innermost self passionately upon the tempting paper, at such frantic speed that sometimes one’s hand struggles and rebels, over-driven by the impatient god who guides it — and to find, next day, in place of the golden bough that bloomed miraculously in that dazzling hour, a withered bramble and a stunted flower.

To write is the joy and torment of the idle. Oh to write! From time to time I feel a need, as sharp as thirst in summer, to note and to describe. And then I take up my pen again and attempt the perilous and elusive task of seizing and pinning down, under its flexible double-pointed nib, the many-hued, fugitive, thrilling, adjective … The attack does not last long; it is but the itching of an old scar.

It takes too much time to write. And the trouble is, I am no Balzac! The fragile story I am constructing crumbles away when the tradesman rings, or the shoemaker sends in his bill, when the solicitor, or one’s counsel, telephones, or when the theatrical agent summons me to his office for ‘a social engagement at the house of some people of very good position but not in the habit of paying large fees.’

The problem is, since I have been living alone, that I have had first to live, then to divorce, and then to go on living, To do all that demands incredible activity and persistence. And to get where? Is there, for me, no other haven than this commonplace room done up in gimcrack Louis XVI? Must I stay forever before this impenetrable mirror where I come up against myself, face to face?

Tomorrow is Sunday: that means afternoon and evening performances at the Empyree-Clichy. Two o’clock already! High time for a woman of letters who has turned out badly to go to sleep.”

From The Vagabond by Colette. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York 1955

RELATED ARTICLES:

  • Earthly Paradise
  • Colette: The Gift & Grandeur of Paris – Style Icon
  • MTI Musicals Paris – Colette Collage
  • Claudine a l’ecole – French television
  • Architectural Digest – Colette’s Palais Royal Apartment
  • Secrets of the Flesh – Judith Thurman (Autobiography)
  • Reliving Colette’s Riviera – Judith Thurman T&L
  • Colette’s Home of the Heart – NYT’s Travel
  • Colette’s Obit – NYT’s 1954
  • Writers in Paris – Palais Royal
  • La Vagabonde (French) – Colette – www.archive.org University of Toronto
  • My Mother’s House & Sido – Colette (booklolly.wordpress.com)
  • About Elan Durham
  • Adventures in Paradise by europabridge Elan Durham
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Tresco, a golden path I'd love to be walking on just now ... Wouldn't you? ☀🌴🌿😊☀🙌🌾 * ... Instead of sitting in front of my computer everyday--rain, snow, or occasional shine--to work on character, plot, arc, irony, comedy, tragedy, anagnorisis, and voila--the final reveal! Which hopefully will not disappoint too many of you lovely people here and out there ... I'd wanted to publish 'Borrowed Light' by Christmas, but what's the point if it's still needing work, eh? But then, most things do ... It almost seems a miracle to have written a novel at all, when screenplays are really my thing. So hoping this particular novel-in-stories will be behind me by Summer 2019, and my SCREENPLAY sold too so I can spend more time in my beloved England and here ... (My apologies!) Actively shopping #AdventuresHackgate now! ✍👋🎬 * 'But to retrace your steps and get back to the upper air, This is the real task and the the real undertaking ... Therefore look up and search deep and when you have found it Take hold of it boldly and duly. If fate has called you The bough will come away easily, of its own sweet accord.' * (Poet of these dark times, Seamus Heaney.) * 'The readiness is all.' * #WritersofInstagram #amwriting #BorrowedLight #womenwriters #anovelinstories #amediting #adventuresinparadise #londonfilms #womennarrators #trescoabbeygardens #myscilly @zonephotography #lookingforsunshine 😊😘🤓 #anywayIcanfindit ☀☀☀ #seamusheaney #poetry #shakespearesunday
Tresco, Isles of Scilly ... * Ask @nicholas.keeble about my last comment on one of his stunning photos. I believe it read, 'Brilliant shit, Nic!' (shot) And because I'm traveling into MIT every day, weather permitting, to finish my novel, I'll offer the thoughts of others today for those of us who may be stumbling, exhausted, and too weary (writing crazy well but depressed, Brexit-broken and isolated?) to extemporize ... A Welshman's thoughts with a dash of boozy Heaney on the word menu today, as I think of you all with deep fondness and respect, and feel so grateful for your support and friendship and many private messages of perserverance and hope ... ✍☀🕯🕊💫 * 'And death shall have no Dominion. Dead man naked they shall be one With the man in the wind and the west moon; When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone, They shall have stars at elbow and foot; Though they shall go mad they shall be sane, Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again; Though lovers be lost their love shall not; And Death shall have no Dominion.' --- Dylan Thomas, May 1933, title taken from St Paul's Letters to the Romans ... Holocaust Anniversary worthy surely, and I've a memorial story in my novel 'Borrowed Light' too. * For s(he) drank like a fish Nightly, naturally Swimming towards the lure ... Of warm lit-up places. Seamus Heaney 🍾🍷☀🕯🕊💫💙🌠✨✍ 😄 * Sorry! Such low, low pixels, I tried to repair the photo through many edits. * @trescoisland @islesofscilly #my_tresco @zonephotographer #WritersofInstagram #amwriting #borrowedlight #anovelinstories #screenwritersofinstagram
Tresco Abbey Gardens, Grade I Listed, Isles of Scilly... A scene that struck me as rather Zen, textured, interesting, variegated, rich to the eye, inviting for the Spirit, and 3,038 miles from where I live now! 😩 ☀ Two feet of snow after a major Winter storm swept in with temperatures set for 3-9° tomorrow, and I've gotten to the point where I can no longer work here ... So I've been traveling into MIT in Cambridge to write, and cutting through GREAT SWATHS. I finished 8 chapters in 3 days, but now I'm well and truly screwed. Because the truth is, the particular minds of the parasites that surround me here ... like a black swarm of inky spiritual poison are ruining my focus and muddying my spirit. ☀ The Swans flew away a few days ago for the season, just after I'd fed them a loaf of organic sprouted multi-grain bread, and as I was doing this a woman came by to relate how some children years ago smashed all the Cygnet eggs, and beat the female Swan (Pen) with a baseball bat. And frankly--I apologise for that story, it is not mine--when I'm shut in around these locals in my tiny apartment in such a dark place, I am in agony for all the light I have already lost just by living in close proximity to them ... And I think about how derided and terrorized I've felt for years as a result of feeding the Swans, knowing any civilized nation would look upon them as protected ... And I'm afraid, friends, afraid I will not emerge from this dark place, and yet I must. I simply must succeed and heal and get as far away from this scummy baseball wielding battering lot, and as soon as possible. Drinking far too much gin, btw. 🍸The Swans flew away, oh why oh why can't I? 🕊 ☀ As there are Apartments in our own minds that - we never enter without apology - we should respect the seals of others - ☀ (New England poet, Emily Dickinson 1830-1886) ☀ #WritersofInstagram #amwriting @trescoisland #mytresco #future_expats #myscilly #borrowedlight #anovelinstories #adventuresinparadise #LondonFilm #poetry #emilydickinson #privacy #thesoulcriesoutforlight #freedom #loveengland #screenwritersofinstagram
A purple-hued Cornish church to help you get through 'Dry January' ... or else turn water into wine! 🍾🍷☀💟😊😘 * I've been writing everyday and with no distractions to take me outside the petty horrors of the US, feeling depressed through the holidays into January, especially this last week, when I've had to take to my bed or sofa or my foam mattress on the floor! (God, I miss having a nice bed!) If I do manage to make an epic sale this year--either my novel or London screenplay--there will be such a ruckus emanating from Massacuckoo, tidal waves will hit the Cornish Coast from a joyous noise! * Bleary-eyed but hanging in there, wish me luck, my Iger friends! And listen for the rumble ... and then the quiet. * 'On the grass when I arrive, Filling the stillness with life, But ready to scare off At the very first wrong move. In the ivy when I leave. It is you, black bird, I love. I park, pause, take heed. Breathe.' --Seamus Heaney, (a poet for hard times) * #WritersofInstagram #amwriting #seamusheaney #poetry #stjust #loveengland #lovecornwall @zonephotographer 🇬🇧 #swisbest❤️ @walkingcornwall @swisbest #screenwritersofinstagram #feelingbruisedandpurple 💜
Happy New Year to all my followers and to anyone who happens upon my page!🎉🌈☀ May the light of God, love of Nature, and best people shower your path with Grace ... * You have been an inspiration to me over the past few years and more: teachers and leavening agents, helping me rise to challenges seemingly beyond my abilities. You've provided comic distractions when I sorely needed a laugh, highest artistic standards from the best photographers ... the sharpest social angles, as well as domestic stylings to pour the balm of artful graces upon our souls, healing fractured worlds. I am so grateful to you all, and to England, Cornwall, and Isles of Scilly for giving me a safe community ... Thank you! 🕊💫🌿🌲✨☀ * 'History says, Don't hope On this side of the grave, But then, once in a lifetime The longed-for tidal wave Of justice can rise up And hope and history rhyme . . . Believe that a farther shore Is reachable from here. Believe in miracles And cures and healing wells.' ✍ Seamus Heaney (again) * * #WritersofInstagram #amwriting #SeamusHeaney #poetry #hope #happynewyear #givethanks @islesofscilly @visitislesofscilly #StMary #PeninnisLighthouse #BorrowedLight #anovelinstories #AdventuresinParadise #LondonFilm #hackgatescreenplay #ScreenwritersofInstagram
In the bleak midwinter, remember the coming light! St Just with plenty of light in October ... Forgive me, God, for I have edited out the telephone pole! 😀 ** 'Winter-evening cold. Our backs might never warm up but our faces Burned from the hearth blaze and the hot whiskeys . . . As green sticks hissed and spat into the ashes And whatever rampaged out there couldn't reach us, Firelit, shuttered, slatted and stone-walled.' ** The great Seamus Heaney ** Happiest Merry Christmas all ... May all our troubles be halved in the New Year, then halved again by Spring! May the world awaken to its humanity and tyrants vanish like the roots of dying weeds ... May we meet in kinder places, toast yule tidings throughout the year! May our love build dynasties in heaven and no harm touch our dear friends ... Cheers and Blessings! 🙏💫🍾🍷🔥🎁🍷🎄💖☀😘 ** Hope to see more of you all in 2019 in London or Cornwall-Scilly! I am writing non-stop pretty much and still looking for a London agent ... P.S. My novel and screenplays read better than my holiday toasts! 😋✍📚 ** Have a lovely holiday season, All! ** #WritersofInstagram #amwriting #AdventuresinParadise #London #BorrowedLight #womenwriters #anovelinstories #Cornwall #StJust #churchesofinstagram #Christmas #poetry #Winter #seamusheaney #toasts #wintersolstice #light
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Tresco, a golden path I'd love to be walking on just now ... Wouldn't you? ☀🌴🌿😊☀🙌🌾 * ... Instead of sitting in front of my computer everyday--rain, snow, or occasional shine--to work on character, plot, arc, irony, comedy, tragedy, anagnorisis, and voila--the final reveal! Which hopefully will not disappoint too many of you lovely people here and out there ... I'd wanted to publish 'Borrowed Light' by Christmas, but what's the point if it's still needing work, eh? But then, most things do ... It almost seems a miracle to have written a novel at all, when screenplays are really my thing. So hoping this particular novel-in-stories will be behind me by Summer 2019, and my SCREENPLAY sold too so I can spend more time in my beloved England and here ... (My apologies!) Actively shopping #AdventuresHackgate now! ✍👋🎬 * 'But to retrace your steps and get back to the upper air, This is the real task and the the real undertaking ... Therefore look up and search deep and when you have found it Take hold of it boldly and duly. If fate has called you The bough will come away easily, of its own sweet accord.' * (Poet of these dark times, Seamus Heaney.) * 'The readiness is all.' * #WritersofInstagram #amwriting #BorrowedLight #womenwriters #anovelinstories #amediting #adventuresinparadise #londonfilms #womennarrators #trescoabbeygardens #myscilly @zonephotography #lookingforsunshine 😊😘🤓 #anywayIcanfindit ☀☀☀ #seamusheaney #poetry #shakespearesunday
Tresco, Isles of Scilly ... * Ask @nicholas.keeble about my last comment on one of his stunning photos. I believe it read, 'Brilliant shit, Nic!' (shot) And because I'm traveling into MIT every day, weather permitting, to finish my novel, I'll offer the thoughts of others today for those of us who may be stumbling, exhausted, and too weary (writing crazy well but depressed, Brexit-broken and isolated?) to extemporize ... A Welshman's thoughts with a dash of boozy Heaney on the word menu today, as I think of you all with deep fondness and respect, and feel so grateful for your support and friendship and many private messages of perserverance and hope ... ✍☀🕯🕊💫 * 'And death shall have no Dominion. Dead man naked they shall be one With the man in the wind and the west moon; When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone, They shall have stars at elbow and foot; Though they shall go mad they shall be sane, Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again; Though lovers be lost their love shall not; And Death shall have no Dominion.' --- Dylan Thomas, May 1933, title taken from St Paul's Letters to the Romans ... Holocaust Anniversary worthy surely, and I've a memorial story in my novel 'Borrowed Light' too. * For s(he) drank like a fish Nightly, naturally Swimming towards the lure ... Of warm lit-up places. Seamus Heaney 🍾🍷☀🕯🕊💫💙🌠✨✍ 😄 * Sorry! Such low, low pixels, I tried to repair the photo through many edits. * @trescoisland @islesofscilly #my_tresco @zonephotographer #WritersofInstagram #amwriting #borrowedlight #anovelinstories #screenwritersofinstagram
Tresco Abbey Gardens, Grade I Listed, Isles of Scilly... A scene that struck me as rather Zen, textured, interesting, variegated, rich to the eye, inviting for the Spirit, and 3,038 miles from where I live now! 😩 ☀ Two feet of snow after a major Winter storm swept in with temperatures set for 3-9° tomorrow, and I've gotten to the point where I can no longer work here ... So I've been traveling into MIT in Cambridge to write, and cutting through GREAT SWATHS. I finished 8 chapters in 3 days, but now I'm well and truly screwed. Because the truth is, the particular minds of the parasites that surround me here ... like a black swarm of inky spiritual poison are ruining my focus and muddying my spirit. ☀ The Swans flew away a few days ago for the season, just after I'd fed them a loaf of organic sprouted multi-grain bread, and as I was doing this a woman came by to relate how some children years ago smashed all the Cygnet eggs, and beat the female Swan (Pen) with a baseball bat. And frankly--I apologise for that story, it is not mine--when I'm shut in around these locals in my tiny apartment in such a dark place, I am in agony for all the light I have already lost just by living in close proximity to them ... And I think about how derided and terrorized I've felt for years as a result of feeding the Swans, knowing any civilized nation would look upon them as protected ... And I'm afraid, friends, afraid I will not emerge from this dark place, and yet I must. I simply must succeed and heal and get as far away from this scummy baseball wielding battering lot, and as soon as possible. Drinking far too much gin, btw. 🍸The Swans flew away, oh why oh why can't I? 🕊 ☀ As there are Apartments in our own minds that - we never enter without apology - we should respect the seals of others - ☀ (New England poet, Emily Dickinson 1830-1886) ☀ #WritersofInstagram #amwriting @trescoisland #mytresco #future_expats #myscilly #borrowedlight #anovelinstories #adventuresinparadise #LondonFilm #poetry #emilydickinson #privacy #thesoulcriesoutforlight #freedom #loveengland #screenwritersofinstagram
A purple-hued Cornish church to help you get through 'Dry January' ... or else turn water into wine! 🍾🍷☀💟😊😘 * I've been writing everyday and with no distractions to take me outside the petty horrors of the US, feeling depressed through the holidays into January, especially this last week, when I've had to take to my bed or sofa or my foam mattress on the floor! (God, I miss having a nice bed!) If I do manage to make an epic sale this year--either my novel or London screenplay--there will be such a ruckus emanating from Massacuckoo, tidal waves will hit the Cornish Coast from a joyous noise! * Bleary-eyed but hanging in there, wish me luck, my Iger friends! And listen for the rumble ... and then the quiet. * 'On the grass when I arrive, Filling the stillness with life, But ready to scare off At the very first wrong move. In the ivy when I leave. It is you, black bird, I love. I park, pause, take heed. Breathe.' --Seamus Heaney, (a poet for hard times) * #WritersofInstagram #amwriting #seamusheaney #poetry #stjust #loveengland #lovecornwall @zonephotographer 🇬🇧 #swisbest❤️ @walkingcornwall @swisbest #screenwritersofinstagram #feelingbruisedandpurple 💜
Happy New Year to all my followers and to anyone who happens upon my page!🎉🌈☀ May the light of God, love of Nature, and best people shower your path with Grace ... * You have been an inspiration to me over the past few years and more: teachers and leavening agents, helping me rise to challenges seemingly beyond my abilities. You've provided comic distractions when I sorely needed a laugh, highest artistic standards from the best photographers ... the sharpest social angles, as well as domestic stylings to pour the balm of artful graces upon our souls, healing fractured worlds. I am so grateful to you all, and to England, Cornwall, and Isles of Scilly for giving me a safe community ... Thank you! 🕊💫🌿🌲✨☀ * 'History says, Don't hope On this side of the grave, But then, once in a lifetime The longed-for tidal wave Of justice can rise up And hope and history rhyme . . . Believe that a farther shore Is reachable from here. Believe in miracles And cures and healing wells.' ✍ Seamus Heaney (again) * * #WritersofInstagram #amwriting #SeamusHeaney #poetry #hope #happynewyear #givethanks @islesofscilly @visitislesofscilly #StMary #PeninnisLighthouse #BorrowedLight #anovelinstories #AdventuresinParadise #LondonFilm #hackgatescreenplay #ScreenwritersofInstagram
In the bleak midwinter, remember the coming light! St Just with plenty of light in October ... Forgive me, God, for I have edited out the telephone pole! 😀 ** 'Winter-evening cold. Our backs might never warm up but our faces Burned from the hearth blaze and the hot whiskeys . . . As green sticks hissed and spat into the ashes And whatever rampaged out there couldn't reach us, Firelit, shuttered, slatted and stone-walled.' ** The great Seamus Heaney ** Happiest Merry Christmas all ... May all our troubles be halved in the New Year, then halved again by Spring! May the world awaken to its humanity and tyrants vanish like the roots of dying weeds ... May we meet in kinder places, toast yule tidings throughout the year! May our love build dynasties in heaven and no harm touch our dear friends ... Cheers and Blessings! 🙏💫🍾🍷🔥🎁🍷🎄💖☀😘 ** Hope to see more of you all in 2019 in London or Cornwall-Scilly! I am writing non-stop pretty much and still looking for a London agent ... P.S. My novel and screenplays read better than my holiday toasts! 😋✍📚 ** Have a lovely holiday season, All! ** #WritersofInstagram #amwriting #AdventuresinParadise #London #BorrowedLight #womenwriters #anovelinstories #Cornwall #StJust #churchesofinstagram #Christmas #poetry #Winter #seamusheaney #toasts #wintersolstice #light

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