Review: April Bernard, Colette‘s World and Ours
A pair of novels by Colette, in two new (and strikingly similar) translations, has arrived to bring us her world—as far away and foreign as an alien planet, yet close enough to nudge its way into our dreams.
Pearls that are heavy, and real; other, lighter, pearls that are fake; a dressing gown the color of marigolds; accounts of incomes and savings and real estate; a fading red-headed beauty who can carry off that shade of mauve; blush wine; a gilt bedstead with a small chip in the paint; endless flowers and leather-goods and hats; finally, skin itself, the young man’s like “armor,” while the woman’s has grown “pinched around the mouth.” To be such a chronicler of the sensual, of course, Colette must have loved all these delights of the haute bourgeoisie; what astonishes in the pages of these, her two most significant works of fiction, is the judgment also implicitly levelled at material pleasure—that it cannot substitute for actual meaning. Colette’s characters know so little of things other than surfaces, that when they find themselves with real feelings, the only possible outcome is disaster.
The belle époque, which lasted up to the brink of World War I, gave birth in Paris to a peculiar phenomenon, a class of celebrated courtesans, often former music-hall performers, who inhabited a rarefied climate. They were supported by their aristocratic lovers—sometimes also their husbands—and those who were cleverest even retired with considerable wealth. Twice Colette, who certainly knew some of these women well, wrote of a particular domestic problem these retired courtesans faced: to establish their illegitimate children in economic safety. In Gigi, the novel-play-film most everyone knows, Colette treated her fin-de-siècle courtesans with affectionate whimsy. True love enables Gigi to triumph over her upbringing—instead of continuing in the family business of (what no one calls) sex work, she gets to marry well. But the fairy-tale ending of Gigi belies what Colette also knew, and tells so devastatingly, in her two novels about Chéri.
Chéri is the son of a retired courtesan; his bad habits and bad temper seem to mark him for a wastrel’s future. So, at a crucial moment in his late teens, his mother’s good friend Léa takes him on as a project—Léa’s own very successful courtesan career now slowing down, she seems like just the woman to teach him manners and make him pleasing to a potential wealthy wife. What no one quite expects is how immediately the teacher-pupil pairing melts into the pairing of lovers, with she a good thirty years his elder. We meet these lovers six years into their affair, just on the brink of its end; Chéri will marry (well) at last, and Léa must give him up. The cruel social necessity for them both is to hide their feelings; or even not to know what they are.
Together these novels form a two-act drama, a tragedy that at first wears the air of light farce, only to darken into its slow and sorrowful close. Chéri belongs to Léa and her journey into old age, and the resignation of her last lover; The End of Chéri is Chéri’s story after the war is over, when he returns to his unhappy marriage and finds himself unable to break the spell that Léa once held over him. In the first novel, Léa looks at Chéri; in the second, Chéri looks at Léa—although his discovery of her as truly old is so shocking to his senses that he retreats into an alcoholic haze, surrounded by the fashionable photos of Léa when she was a young woman, the only version of her he can bear to look at.
Chéri and The End of Chéri, translated by Paul Eprile, introduction by Judith Thurman, NYRB Classics • Chéri and The End of Chéri, translated by Rachel Careau, foreword by Lydia Davis, W. W. Norton
It seems an odd coincidence that two substantial translations of these paired novels should appear at the same time, both of them elegant and careful, and only a little different in tonality. Are we somehow, specifically, ready to receive this story about the French nineteenth century’s habits of sex, and gender, and their agonies, just now? We are in a turmoil of doubt about the efficacy of monogamy, about gender roles, about sexual preference and identity, and about everything to do with desire—except, I would guess, the almost universal current notion that sex between people of radically different ages implies a power differential that must be condemned. Thus, the only truly shocking thing about the Chéri novels, to today’s readers, might be that the young man’s age, when he is taken up by his mother’s forty-something friend, is roughly seventeen.
What will not shock today, I think, is the portrait of two people inhabiting individual bubbles of serene self-regard. (We are all narcissists now.) Nor will it seem strange, to any but the most resolutely sentimental, that Léa and Chéri expect to experience one another on entirely instrumental terms—for whatever physical pleasures, and monetary and career advancements, can be made.
Here is a passage from the first novel, to see some of the nuances of its change from French into English.
Elle se couchait miséricordieusement de bonne heure pour que Chéri, réfugié contre elle, poussant du front et du nez, creusant égoïstement la bonne place de son sommeil, s’endormît. Parfois, la lampe éteinte, ell suivait une flaque de lune miroitante sur le parquet. Elle écoutait, mêlés au clapotis du tremble et aux grillons qui ne s’éteignent ni nuit ni jour, les grands soupirs de chien de chasse qui soulevaient la poitrine de Chéri.
… Elle s’endormait, longue dans les draps frais, bien à plat sur le dos, la tête noire du nourrisson méchant couchée sur son sein gauche.
In Paul Eprile’s version, this is:
Charitably, she’d go to bed early, so that Chéri—snuggled up to her, nuzzling with his forehead and his nose, selfishly sinking into his preferred position—could get to sleep. Sometimes, the lamp switched off, she’d follow a pool of moonlight glowing on the wooden floor. As they melded with the aspens’ rustling and the crickets’ cry, which never ended, night and day, she listened to the deep, hound-like sighs that lifted Chéri’s chest.
… She would go to sleep, stretched out flat on her back under the cool sheets, with the dark-haired head of the bratty nursling nestled on her left breast.
Eprile’s version of Colette’s voice (or here, perhaps, Léa’s, since it is from her point of view) comes across as pleasing and balanced, in a cool timbre of observation and control.
In Rachel Careau’s rendering:
She went to bed mercifully early so that Chéri, sheltered against her, nuzzling her with his forehead and nose, selfishly hollowing out the right spot for his night’s rest, might fall asleep. Sometimes, the lamp extinguished, she would follow a pool of moonlight shimmering on the parquet. She would listen, as they mingled with the gentle lapping of the aspen and with the crickets, which never died down night or day, to the great hound-dog sighs that heaved Chéri’s chest.
… She would fall asleep, stretched out on the cool sheets, lying absolutely flat on her back, the wicked infant’s black head lying on her left breast.
In comparison with Eprile, Careau is more adherent to the soft muddle, or swirl, of Colette’s syntax, her run-on sentences and sometimes uneven forward speed. The result is a little less cool, and more emotive.
One of the most memorable scenes of these novels takes place when Chéri, returned from the battlefield, goes to visit Léa and hears the voice he recognizes—but then cannot reconcile to the woman he sees.
Paul Eprile’s offers us:
There was no blond perfume in the air, and a cheap, pine-scented resin crackled in an electric burner. Chéri felt put out, like someone who’s come to the wrong floor. But a big innocent laugh on a low, descending scale rang out, muffled by a heavy curtain, and plunged the uninvited visitor into a vortex of memories.
Again, Careau’s English version seems nearly identical, but when spoken aloud sings a more natural, and pleasing, tune:
No honeyed fragrance wafted, and some humdrum pine resin sizzled in an electric perfume burner. Chéri felt annoyed, like a man who’s gotten off on the wrong floor. But a big, innocent laugh, in a deep cascading scale, reverberated, muffled behind a door curtain, and threw the intruder into a turmoil of memories.
Somehow, given the nuanced world of Colette, it makes sense that I can claim a slight preference for Careau’s translation, while recommending either, or both, or certainly the original French, to the curious.
The tragedy of that world, like ours today, is that narcissism as a cultural practice renders everyone susceptible to its breakdowns—that is, when the armor of self-love is made to crumble by genuine attachment, it leaves only ruin. If true love—caritas—is to prevail, it must first alter the selfishness our economic and social structures rely on. And I think we know, in early 2024, that only caritas can save this world.
April Bernard is the author of two novels and six books of poetry, most recently The World Behind the World. She has written for Book Post on Wallace Stevens, Angela Carter, Elizabeth Hardwick, Hilary Mantel, and Janet Malcolm, among others.
Book Post is a by-subscription book review service, bringing snack-sized book reviews by distinguished and engaging writers direct to your in-box, as well as free posts from time to time to those who follow us. Thank you for your subscription! Your payment supports our writers and our effort to build a common reading culture across a fractured media landscape. Please help us to grow our audience by giving Book Post as a gift, extending your subscription by referring a friend, or sharing a piece you like.
Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi, is Book Post’s Winter 2023 partner bookstore! We partner with independent bookstores to link to their books, support their work, and bring you news of local book life across the land. We’ll send a free three-month subscription to any reader who spends more than $100 with our partner bookstore during our partnership. Send your receipt to info@bookpostusa.com. Read more about Square here in Book Post. And buy a Book Post Holiday Book Bag for a friend and send a $25 gift e-card at Square with a one-year Book Post subscription!
Follow us: Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Notes, Bluesky, Threads @bookpostusa
If you liked this piece, please share and tell the author with a “like.”
Thank you, April! Books I love, and the inevitable Colette. "when the armor of self-love is made to crumble by genuine attachment, it leaves only ruin."
Thank you for this thoughtful comparison of two excellent translations.