BOOKS
COLETTE AT EIGHTY
THE SHORT NOVELS OF COLETTE. Edited by Glenwoy Wescott. Dial
Press, $5.00.
GIGI, CHANCE ACQUAINTANCES, JULIE DE CARNEILHAN.
By
Colette. Forror, Strous
&
Young, $3 .50.
When Colette celebrated her birthday in January,
Le Figaro
Litteraire
marked the occasion by a week-end issue of loving tribute.
Letters to Colette from Gide, Proust, and Valery were reprinted, and
there were messages of affection from colleagues of the Academy Gon–
court, as well as praise from Mauriac, Katherine Anne Porter, AnouiIh
and others. Photographs were included, and Colette provided some
in–
teresting letters from her mother; but perhaps the most important of
all
was Colette's own tribute to herself: a delicate, evocative sketch called
" Cite d'Ecrivain."
A rare and fortunate writer, indeed, who can live
to such a great age and still be able to celebrate with something freshly
written! Colette's was one of the brightest flowers in that anniversary
garland; and we must take it as a sign of her wider importance that
new editions and new translations of her novels are now being published
both here and in England.
Madame Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette is one of the great members
of
the generation of Proust and Gide; and, with the ranks of that group
so depleted-and of later generations, too-Colette is likely to seem
a little lonely in her eminence. We can hardly help thinking of her
as
a noble curiosity against the background of wars, disease, politics,
neurosis, social changes, and the other problems of life since 1870.
What a feat for anyone to survive, and so magnificently! But Matisse
is one of that generation also, and there is more than the arthritis
they
share to suggest a resemblance between them; for, neither the grand
old literary woman nor the venerable painter have receded into
the
dimness of the recent past; they refuse to be only historical, and,
as
if
to prove it, they continue to live and work in the full consciousness of
their illustrious careers. Not only their great age is impressive: an
ancient
peasant living on yogurt commands respect, but we pay a different
tribute to these two exquisitely complex and refined artists who have
