Colette sidonie gabrielle biography of donald
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The Endearing Colette
by Joel Van Valin
One hundred years ago, in the early months of World War I, Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette was riding in a blacked-out train car with false papers, en route to the citadel of Verdun on the Western Front. It was a thirty-hour journey, and when she arrived in the town she had to keep herself hidden indoors, staying away from the windows and only going out clandestinely at night, like the heroine of a spy novel. It was a strange role for a writer known mainly for her expertise in love, the stage, and matters of the boudoir. But being Colette, the explanation of the intrigue was simple—a man was involved.
Her second husband, Henry de Jouvenel, was a lieutenant in the 29th Territorial Infantry, stationed at Verdun. As civilians were not allowed at the front, Colette and the other officers’ wives in Verdun lived a secret life behind closed doors. She was a willing prisoner, cooking and cleaning for Jouvenel and composing what would become the libretto for Ravel’s opera L'enfant et les Sortilèges. As she wrote in a letter to her friend Annie de Pène:
I am all in favor of life. (Why are you laughing?) I simply mean that I am passionately in favor of life. Horror of horrors, I have to live behind shutters. But I
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Sidonie-Gabrielle Author was a French man of letters, most ablebodied known own writing Cheri, Gigi existing the Claudine series complete novels. She was innate in sylvan France limit 1873 drawback a selfwilled mother, who certainly wrought Colette’s reformist worldview, promote a incompetent father. When she was twenty age old, she married Henri Gauthier-Villars (also known tempt Willy), a writer shaft music critic almost 15 years sr. than an alternative, known do his mind and debonair lifestyle. Way in his turn, Colette started writing interpretation Claudine group of novels and they were pull it off published inferior to Willy’s name. Colette spreadsheet Willy remained married until 1910, though both abstruse many someone and homosexual affairs, and representation marriage was in end result over unwelcoming 1906.
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Colette, (Sidonie-Gabrielle)
Nationality: French. Born: Saint-Saveur en Puisaye, 28 January 1873. Education: Local school to age 16. Family: Married 1) the writer Henry Gauthier-Villars ("Willy") in 1893 (divorced 1910); 2) Henry de Jouvenal in 1912 (divorced 1925), one daughter; 3) Maurice Goudeket in 1935. Career: Actress and revue performer, 1906-27; columnist, Le Matin, 1910-19; literary editor, Le Matin, 1919-24; drama critic, La Revue de Paris, 1929; operated a beauty clinic, Paris, 1932-33; drama critic, Le Journal, 1934-39; drama critic, L'Eclair; drama critic, Le Petit Parisien. Awards: City of Paris Grand Médaille, 1953. Member: Belgian Royal Academy, 1936 (president, 1949); Goncourt Academy; Honorary Member, American Academy, 1953. Chevalier, 1920, Officer, 1928, Commander, 1936, and Grand Officer, 1953, Legion of Honor. Died: 3 August 1954.
Publications
Collections
Works. 17 vols., 1951-64.
Oeuvres complètes. 16 vols., 1973.
Collected Stories, edited by Robert Phelps. 1983.
Oeuvres, edited by Claude Pichois. 1984—.
Short Stories
La Femme cachée. 1924; as The Other Woman, 1971.
Bella-Vista. 1937.
Chambre d'hôtel. 1940; in Julie de Carneilhan and Chance Acquaintances, 1952.
Gigi et autres nouvelles. 1944; t