The Innocent Libertine

Colette is a fascinating woman and I am very excited to read a biography of hers that I am waiting to come in through library loan. She performed at Moulin Rouge, wrote erotic literature in the early 1900's, had an affair with her stepson, and hid some of her Jewish friends in her attic during World War II.

The Innocent Libertine is really two short novels, Minne and Les Egarements de Minne,  that Colette combined after they had been published separately. They go together beautifully into one long arc for Minne.

In Minne, she starts as a young women who lives a very rich inner life. She lives with her mother in Paris and becomes obsessed with a gang of street thugs. Their leader, Curly, is the main object of her affection and she creates a great love between them in her mind without ever speaking to him. Every action she takes has such importance in to her every noise outside is just one step closer to bringing her and Curly together. When he disappears, she becomes ill and they go to the country with her uncle and cousin.

"She felt herself on the threshold of another life, on the verge of initiation into sacred mysteries."

There she spends her time lying fantastically and her cousin, Antoine, grows to desire her immensely. She dismisses him because to her she is already engaged to Curly (a man she had never spoken to). When she returns home, she leaves her house during the night to chase after Curly and gets a very harsh dose of reality. The Paris streets are not the place for a young girl.

In Les Egarements de Minnne, or Part Two, Minne is grown up some and married. Yet she is having a string of affairs in search of achieving an orgasm. Jealous of the sexual joy the men she sleeps with have, she believes that if she just finds the right man she will be able to feel the same. Her husband grows jealous and attempts to recreate her as the innocent girl he is in love with.

"After all, that boy is as nice as anything! He was dying of pleasure in my arms and there was I waiting and saying to myself: 'Obviously, it's not unpleasant... but show me something better!"

Colette is sexy and exciting without being smutty, even if there is a naked lady lounging on the cover. Minne's tale really is lovely and came to a very stratifying ending, if you catch my drift.

a sky is so small

Aside from being a total fox, Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, or just Colette as she is known, was an amazing writer. I first read My Mother's House and Sido and just wanted to curl up in this world with these beautiful french provincial characters. There is not a whole lot going on plot wise in these stories, the main thrust is characters. As I am a seriously character-driven reader, I adored her writing. I scoped out the local Half-Price books and found her collection of short stories, The Tender Shoot, and dove in.

The first of the short stories, "Belle-Vista",  follows Colette at a provincial hotel as she waits for her house to be worked on by contractors. The hotel is run by a lesbian couple that befriends Colette. They have another guest, a man named M. Daste, who provides special intrigue for Colette. 

"If I observed M. Daste more carefully than he deserved, it was because I am always terrified, when chance throws me among unknown people, of discovering some monstrosity in them. I search them to the core with a sharp, distasteful eye as one does a dressing-table drawer in a hotel bedroom. No old dressings? No hair-pins, no broken buttons, no crumbs of tobacco? Then I breath again and do not give it a second thought."

The second short stories is "Gribiche". Colette spent some time in theatre productions and ran into many interesting characters there. Gribiche was a young woman who worked there and had an acident. While bringing flowers and a collection of money for her, it becomes apparent that Gribiche is having an abortion aided by her mother (who does this for a living) and no doctor's aid. This is a great example on how unsafe abortions can be when they are no provided by trained medical professional and I will give you two guesses as to how young Gribiche fares. 

"These memories are distant, but precise. they rise out of the fog that inevitably drowns the long days of that particular time, the monotonous amusements of dress rehearsals and suppers at Pousset's, my alternations between animal gaiety and confused unhappiness, the split in my nature between a wild, frightened creature and one with a vast capacity for illusion. But it is a fog that leaves the faces of my friends intact and shinning clear."  - "The Kepi"

"The Rendezvous" is a story that does not have Colette as a character but rather follows a group of four on a vacation. One of the men and woman ,Bernard and Rose, are in a covert affair and arrange to met at night through meaningful looks. However when they reach the meeting point, a young man who was their guide earlier is there bleeding profusely. Bernard wants Rose to run back for help while he stops the bleeding but Rose is appaled by the fact that people will know she was out there with him and what a scandal that will be to her family. This causes Bernard to see her in a new light and he is left with the decision to help a man he does not know who is bleeding to death or to escort the woman he loves back to the hotel. 


I am going to skip a few short stories in this collection, not because I did not love them, but because I don't want this blog post to be to long to handle. "Rainy Moon" is a beautiful story about Colette interacting with two sisters who live in the house that she used to live in. One of these sisters is going through a severe breakdown and the other thinks she is using sorcery to kill her estranged husband.  In "Green Sealing Wax" we get another slice of Colette's parents and I just adore Sido and was so happy to see her again. The last two stories, "The Sick Child" and "The Photographer's Missus", both compliment each other well I think. In both we get a inside glimpse into two people who are eager for death and come face-to-face with it. 

"'What do you expect?' said my mother. 'She's an old maid.'

'But Mamma, she's married!'

'Do you really imagine,' retorted Sido acidly, 'people stop being old maids for a little thing like that?'

I really, really enjoyed this book and cannot wait to read more of Colette. Apparently she is best know for her work Gigi which was taken and turned to a play and musical, so I think I need to check that out.