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professional writer whose craft was distinct and separate from herself.
Of course, Colette was not "ruined" by her professional begin–
nings;
and, if it seems strange that she needs such apologies, we must
remember the unattractive image of the professional writer, whose
work-in our day, at least-being so mechanical, seems to preclude
the qualities of good imaginative literature. Perhaps because things are
extreme in America, we see this problem, too, in its most lurid light,
although it is not only an American problem. Naturally, no final solution
of it can be found in Colette's career-the problem is too large and
complex-but her example may be instructive. The relation she con–
trived between herself and her writing does not suggest the sterile
automatism of professional virtuosity, from which the person and the
personality have been removed. We cannot speak of Colette's work in
terms of privation or failure or deadness. Although her literary life may
not have begun in the urgency of personal expression, it can hardly
be
called impersonal. Her standards have been high, her dedication
great, her pride and delight in literature intense; and her dissatisfac–
tions and criticisms were no less scrupulous than if she had begun and
worked differently.
Nor has Colette's fiction been marked by a want of feeling. In
fact, the very opposite is so, for, when Colette writes of love, of animals,
of what people want and how they get it, we respond to a great depth
of feeling even as we are struck by its clarity. These are not the qualities
we
usually find
in
a professional writer, although, of course, a lucid
depth of feeling is the quality of all very good fiction. Colette uses her
own feelings and her own experience as all writers do, but even when
she is being most personal, her subject is related to her own feeling,
not equivalent to it. Unfortunately, these two collections contain none
of her autobiographical writing which-especially the writing about
her mother-shows most clearly Colette's relation to her subject. In her
fiction, however, we can see evidence of that relation in the way she
describes and realizes her characters; they exist for us without handi–
caps, without privilege. Her relation to them is not directly personal;
they do not express her feelings only, nor is she too easily or finally
identified with them. We may observe that she is closest to Claudine,
the first of her characters and the least satisfactory. Claudine controlled
too
much of the world and never met with enough real opposition; she
scored her triumphs so easily that we can't be more than amused at
her.
But, when Colette's characters make a deeper impression on us–
as Lea,
the lovely courtesan, does in her love for Cheri-they move in
a more crowded field: at a distance from their author, unprotected by
