 Hello and welcome. I'm Laura Shepherd, Director of Events at the Mechanics Institute. Thank you for joining us for our online program and the opening event for our FETTA Colette, January 25 through 27 2023. This is a three day celebration of the 150th birthday of France's most famous and provocative woman writer Sidonie Gabrielle Colette, 1873 to 1954. And also the reprinting of her beloved novel, Cherie, and the end of Cherie, published by New York Review Books. Today's program, The Intimate Worlds of Colette, we are very pleased to welcome the translator of Cherie and end of Cherie, Paul April, in conversation with foremost Colette biographer, Judith Thurman, and our program is moderated by Zach Rogal. In addition to our panel today, our FETTA Colette will feature a performance of Colette Uncensored with renowned Bay Area actress Lori Holt, and also our Cinema Lit Film series will show Cherie starring Michelle Pfeiffer. We are honored to co-sponsor this event with the New York Review Books, City Lights, Booksellers and Publishers, and the From Institute for Lifelong Learning. If you're new to the Mechanics Institute, we were founded in 1854, and we are one of San Francisco's most literary and cultural centers in the heart of the city. We have a General Interest Library, an international chess club, ongoing author and literary programs, and on Friday night, Cinema Lit Film series. So please visit our website at milibrary.org. This talk today will be followed by a Q&A with you, our audiences. I invite you to put your questions in the chat. Colette's Cherie 1920 and its sequel, The End of Cherie, 1926 are widely considered her masterpieces. Paul April's new translation of these two celebrated novels bring out a vivid sensuality and acute intelligence that is so unique and so beautiful. These two vicious, elegant prose, the two novels explore the evolving, inner lives and intimate relationship of an unlikely couple. Leia DeLonval, a middle-aged former courtesan, and Fred Peleu, 25 years her junior, known as Cherie. Cherie tells how they have come to a crossroads that will shift and change their relationship only by relinquishing the past. And now I'd like to introduce our guests. Paul April is a publisher, poet and translator. In the New York Review Books Classics, he translated three novels by Jean Giorno, including Hill, The Open Road, and Melville, which was a co-winner of the 2018 annual translation prize of the French American Foundation. And he lives on Niagara escarpment in Ontario, Canada. And guest, Judith Thurman, is the author of two prize-winning biographies, Secrets of the Flesh, A Life of Colette, and of Issaac Denison, The Life of a Storyteller, which won the National Book Award for Biography in 1983. Her work includes essay collections, Cleopatra's Nose, 39 Variations of Desire, and A Left-Handed Woman. And she is a staff writer at The New Yorker specializing in cultural criticism. She is widely published as a literary critic, journalist, and a translator of poetry. And our moderator today, Zach Rogau, is an author, editor, or translator of more than 20 books or plays. His translations of French literature include two books by Colette, Shipwrecked on a Traffic Island and other previously untranslated gems, co-translated with Rene Morel, and the novel Green Wheat, which was shortlisted for the Penn Book of the Month translation prize. Rogau co-authored the play Collette Uncensored, which had its first staged reading at Kennedy Center in Washington DC, and has also been seen in London, Catalonia, Portland, and in many venues throughout San Francisco and the Bay Area. He has received the Penn Book of the Month translation prize for his translation of Earthlight by Andre Breton, and the Northern California Book Reviewers Award in translation for this English version of Georges-San's novel, Oras. So please welcome our esteemed guests, and I turn it over to our moderator Zach Rogau. Laura, thank you so much, and I'm so delighted that Mechanics Institute has organized this wonderful celebration of Colette's 150th birthday and I'm honored to be part of that with Judith Thurman and Paul April. It was years after her birth. In some ways, Colette's work seems to me even more relevant today than in the past. I'm wondering, Judith and Paul, what aspects of her work and life have resonated most deeply for you. I'll just go first. I've spent my career really writing about the title of my essay as a left-handed woman, which applies to right-handed women as well, but women who were considered not right, sinister in some way, awkward in some way, threatening in some way. And in Colette's life, the aspects of her life in her work and in her life, more in her life really than in her work, the struggle to become who she was, the struggle to, you know, the struggle against all kinds of voices of the old men of her society. And particularly the struggle to express a sexual identity that was transgressive at many, actually in her case, almost in most stages. So those have been some of the important aspects of her life for me, but as a writer, I read for sentences. I read for style. I read for the beauty of the language and Colette's, the intoxicating beauty of Colette's language, but also the precision of it. It's just something that has never ceased to move me. Well, I completely concur. Her writing was so gorgeous and so original. You know, it still affects us today very deeply. Of course, it needs to be retranslated to continue to have the force that it deserves. But I mean, her style was incomparable in so many genres. And that's a rarity, even today. And her sensuality is astounding. But the way she combined it with penetrating insights into motives and desires and relationships. It's still very challenging emotionally. I mean, and so that means that it still feels very current. It doesn't feel outmoded. But again, I have to say that I think it bears out that the retranslation of great literature is always necessary. I just want to add one thing about what she means to me, which is that Colette was a total workhorse. And she, and she's one of the rare writers who's, who's forced in some ways, waxes rather than wanes as she gets older, she, she, she pretty much died with a pen in her hand. And that was such an inspiring model for me. And that you just, you keep going, you, she calls writing the vomaticious the vomitist task. And so, and it just gave me such a great sense of solidarity at the vomitist moments which are many in, in my own work so I'm really grateful for that. And I mean, she was so, so awake and receptive to the very, very end, you know, this famous last word, well God, you know, like she, she never stopped taking it in. I think inspiring. One of her work that I find very prophetic is her love of nature and her appreciation of the whole environment that she grew up in, she grew up in a small town and although she became a Parisian. She was always so aware of, of nature, its vitality and its connection to human experience and imagery. And yeah, I was so impressed by, you know, the very opening of her first published work, though it was under Willie's name, but that first section of Claudine L. a call. I mean, you feel like it's a it's a kind of an ecological adventure in a forest, and it's so tactile and I mean so she also has an enormous vocabulary about nature, an enormous vocabulary of botany. You, you, I mean, I don't know one flower from another but I know their names in French from, from reading her. And so, these were her familiar spirits and and the flowers and the trees and the plants and the winds and the and the swamp animals and the, what is it called not a biosphere of lower burgundy. That was the aspect of her work that first attracted me. And, you know, so to move into the ethos of the sharing novels was, you know, quite a shift. And yet within the sharing novels there are some absolutely magical passages of descriptions of flora and you know, settings. She had a tremendous gift for that. I think he also, he also have a gift for translating those passages. And I wanted to ask you of all of Colette's books, and she wrote I think something like 50 books what made you choose Sherry and the end of Sherry is the ones that you most wanted to translate. Well as was already said, I mean they're they're renowned as masterpieces. And they had been translated more than once in the past Sherry and published three times, I believe and and the end of Sherry or the last of Sherry as it was being titled twice. But those translations were arguably outmoded. That might be euphemism. I'll come back to that. But as it happened under the copyright regime, the both of the Sherry novels were about to come into the public domain. There's a 95 year time delay from their first publication. So there was an opportunity to return to them. And endeavor to, well, both make them more contemporary but also I think to alleviate some of the deficiencies in the existing and former translations. And I could point particularly to the ones that were done by British translator named Roger Sandhouse in the night. The Sherries were done in the 1950s. And I did look at them. I mean before I even decided to take on Sherry. And I knew right away that something needed to be done, because the, the, the tone that he imparted to them was so inappropriate. And he took so many outrageous liberties. You know, if you compare his versions to the originals. So, recognizing that knowing that the rights were going to become available. I approach Edwin Frank, the editorial director at New York, the books, who immediately expressed enthusiasm. He was a huge fan of the books knew that the existing translation, especially this trade translation was problematic. And so I found myself really entering the world of Collette. Could I interrupt you a second? Sure, of course. I can ask you to read a short passage from your translation. You can hear some of the music of the language. Absolutely. I guess I should give a little bit of context. I'm a young, young man. At this stage, you know, he's only 19 is at his mother's house in the conservatory his mother is a former courtesan who is now quite wealthy and her close friend, Leia is visiting. And Leia and Sherry already had quite a close kind of friendship, a certain level of intimacy but not expressed in erotic terms. And so here we have Leia. She walked down in a chair and fanned herself a stink smoth and some big mosquitoes with long trailing legs were circling around the lamps, and the smell of the garden, since night had fallen, had become a country smell. A whiff of acacia came inside, so distinct, so potent that both of them turned around, as though they expected to see it walking across the room. It's the acacia with the pink clusters said Leia in an undertone. Yes said Sherry, but tonight it's had so much orange blossom to drink. She looked him over vaguely admiring that he thought of this. He was inhaling the scent, like a willing victim, and she turned away, all of a sudden, fearing he wouldn't beckon her. But he did beckon her all the same. And she came. She came to him to kiss him with a bitter and selfish impulse and thoughts of chastisement. Hold on, it's absolutely true. You have a beautiful mouth. This time, I'm going to drink my fill, because I want to, and I'll let you have your way. It's a shame, but I don't care. I'm coming. She kissed him so hard that they pulled back, drunk, deafened, breathless, trembling, as though they just fought physically. She took her place again on her feet in front of him. He hadn't budged. He nestled still in the depths of the rocker, and she taunted him softly. And so, so, and braced herself for an insult. But he held his arms out, opened his lovely trembling hands, laid back his wounded head and revealed between his lashes the matching sparkle of two tears. Meanwhile, he murmured words, groans, a feral and amorous ode. She could make out her name and repeated darlings and comes and never leaves you. An ode that she listened to while bending over him, full of apprehension, as if she'd unwittingly done him great harm. I think that passage illustrates very well what you're saying about her psychological insights. There's such complexity in that one scene and the feelings of the characters are so well fleshed out there. They are so fleshed out. It's as I return to it and read my own translation. I'm amazed to discover how much dissonance. I was able to encapsulate ambiguity, ambivalence, dissonance, and that makes the characters so real, I think. So what are some of the challenges in translating Collette that are unique to her work. Well, I mean, there are pros. I actually agree with the characterization of her process, having been lean. I'm not exactly sure what that's supposed to say because I think it's very, very rich and very organic. And she had such an immense vocabulary. I mean, especially for someone who was essentially, you know, like a basically a secondary education, but she read so voraciously. And clearly was like a sponge when it came to picking up wonderful rare kinds of words, but also the way she found the nuances in more common words and as a translator. Well, three of us, we know, you know, you're faced with. How do you construe the words, and then there could be a sort of first level of equivalence, the more obvious ones and you start trying to put them in place. But with Collette, what I found is that if you just stay at that level. It just, it doesn't flow, it isn't convincing, and it doesn't sound natural. And what I strive for, I think most translators do is a certain level of naturalness in addiction, especially in dialogue. And so with Collette, I would have to spend a great deal of time and put a lot of thought into finding just the right equivalence without straying too far. You know, there are no strict rules to this and as a reader of translations you're very much a passive recipient of choices, you know, unless you do compare to the original which almost no one would do. So, you know, it's not it's on your own conscience, you know what are what are your ethics as a translator. How far are you going to go away from what could be considered the denotation of those words or the more strict. So I hope that I have managed to pull that off and achieve some kind of naturalness and addiction. I think another another challenge that I found translating her is that she has so many gifts as a writer, so many modes that she can draw from. There's a sensual description that you've talked about that Judith also mentioned there's, there's her psychology as a as a as a creator of characters. There's also her humor. Her dialogue and Sherry is is just so witty it's just amazing so you have to be at the top of your game as a translator all the time in trying something that that can approach what she creates in our French. You would read a favorite passage of yours from Sherry maybe would you also read the French is that. Yes, I chose this passage in introduction to the volume to just because I was talking about Collette rather than about fall. Most of the essay but I wanted readers to be able those who who can read French, and even those who can't read French just to be able to experience the quality of her language and the quality of his version of it because one thing about this translation is one thing about translation in general. You know you're reading a foreign language, but this the farness has somehow been modified, not completely eliminated, but modified in such a way that you are not aware of it anymore. So it's like listening to the speaker of a foreign language, whose grammar and syntax and vocabulary is so masterful that the accent ceases to the accent is there but it ceases to be any obstacle whatsoever. This is this is a passage. Towards the end of the end of the show he went. She has just left lia's apartment, which is one of the greatest scenes in literature he's. He discovers, I don't know the spoiler alert he discovers her this woman who he has adored that he hasn't seen her in years and she has not only age she's surrendered to age. She surrendered to the pleasures of her flesh she surrendered to a kind of uncorseted, not vigilant mode of living, and he's devastated. So he goes he leaves like a sleepwalker to find himself in the street, which he doesn't recognize he's he's in a transom. And he says Colette writes And this is is Paul's English. He did notice that the pink sky was being reflected by the stream in the gutter, which was still swollen with rain, and off the blue backs of the swallows that were swooping level with the ground. And because the evening air was cooling down, and the memory had taken away with him was shrinking like a traitor into the inmost depths of his being there to assume it's definitive power and scale. He believed he'd forgotten all about it. And he felt happy. Thank you for highlighting that that wonderful passage. So we've touched briefly on how Sherry and Colette's work in general deals with questions of gender and gender fluidity. And I'm wondering, how does that aspect of the novel relate to the current discussions that are happening about the whole issue of gender and gender fluidity. Well, I think it's so affirmative, especially in terms of the transition that Leah makes from a much more decidedly feminine character, a former harlot if you will, who's very concerned with still with her female character, like more stereotypical female attractiveness. And then, you know, enters what I mean, Judith was so well describing. I think Colette describes it when when Sherry encounters her again after a lapse of many years that she had had seemed a kind of easygoing virility. And there's there's something, you know, completely liberated, I would say, about how she is presented at that stage. And this of course is devastating for for Sherry, because he he hadn't understood and occurred to him that this woman he had adored and might go through such a profound change, and not just in in her gender characteristics, but also she become very heavy. And she was entirely comfortable with that as well. And she stopped dressing in any kind of ornate way, fashionable way she wore the simplest kinds of clothes and she was completely comfortable in them. And I think this is all, you know, very affirmative and inspiring for all of us, you know, in terms of not having to conform, but being able to be comfortable in our own skin. And, yeah, and so that that was, in a sense, quite ahead of its time. Well, the whole world of the Demi Monde and the world of the courtesans who, which is the world of the two Chinese. They are now this represents a minuscule percentage of women who sold their bodies were forced to work in the sex trade. It was the it was the top echelon. But they were women who had achieved something that almost no other women in that society could achieve, which was autonomy. They didn't have husbands. They was in under under laws of France your husband was was still the guardian of your property and they were, they were, they were, they were free of husbands they were free of the control of men. They arranged their lives for their own pleasure, and their pleasure very often included keeping much younger lovers both male and female. They became who played the role in their lives that they had played in the lives of the various men who kept them. So, it's a it's a, there were some great actresses who, who also managed to achieve that kind of freedom, but so it's, it's a, it's a window, if you like, to a kind of gynaecology, which, which these books are and they are in the end of series one, especially because she is just as he's just as he's dismayed and horrified by what Leah has become. She is dismayed and horrified by what his beautiful submissive young wife has become. She is the unseemly competence of this completely sort of ambitious and driven woman who was once a submissive teenage girl when they married, and his old mother who's who's seems to be a day trader on the stock market she's amassed this portfolio and they have endowed a hospital so it's examples of not entirely benevolent examples of female industry and entrepreneurship and autonomy, because Colette in many respects one shouldn't forget this she's not trying to set, you know, politically correct model of a new world. She sort of takes Sherry's side on this. She's she's sort of, she, she in many ways sympathizes with the men whom she has always considered the weaker sex, and in some ways pathetic. But I'd also like to say because it's it's a, that Colette's lover, the Mackie's Demony who, who in some ways rescued her from her marriage to Willie and she would now I believe they would now I believe consider themselves transgender, not transvestite. And, and I think that this very publicly lived relationship between a woman who was then gay Colette and a person who was trans who thought of themselves as trans transgender. It was way, way, way, way, way, way ahead of its time there were, there was a, there was a lesbian demigod in Paris or a famous and creative one, but there were not many people as radical in their, in their gender identity as, as Missy was, and she was she was she was known to her nieces to, they were known to their nieces and nephews as Uncle Max, and an extremely touching moment when, when their brother died, the head of the family. They dressed as a woman for the funeral and the nieces and nephews were so appalled that they asked them to go home and come as themselves. It was a very famous moment where Colette who, who at one point earned her living as a mime had Missy act with her. I think it was, was it at the dream of Egypt. That was the plane, yeah. Yes, so Colette is playing an Egyptian mummy who's who's an Egyptian princess and she comes out of her wrappings of as a mummy and kisses. She's an archaeologist who's played by Missy by a woman on stage and and this would cause such an enormous scandal that you know the police had to be called in to subdue the riot. And this was when like around 1910 maybe that this happened. A little bit later. And Colette famously bared her breast on stage, which was also very bold and quite liberated in this sense. And it is, there's something else in terms of her, her assertiveness aggression even on this subject, which was that at one point she and Missy were hanging out with socializing with her husband Willie and his mistress Meg. And there was all kinds of gossip in the papers about this and she said I don't know what you were finding so worth gossiping about with simply two couples who have arranged to live according to our pleasure. This was just an in your face reply to the hypocrisy of the ballet book, because if you read Proust if you read Colette if you read almost any writer of the ballet book. It was one of the most highly sexualized eroticized moments in history. Well, which that's hard to say because they all seem to be but but it was especially. It still took enormous courage I think to live to live that live those values and ideals in fact it's it's almost hard to comprehend how someone could be that you know that that bold in a society. I mean what you know they was such what you were saying about the, the aging co cuts who you know had had a master a lot of money, you know they had gained power, like real power, which was extraordinary and they were inverting the whole the conventional relationship between the sexes. And this is over 100 years ago. Yeah. And it's also worth pointing out what tremendous liberation there is from having to from society because they were not welcome in in high society they were not welcome in the salons of Paris, they were fallen women. And so, and so what so what George and George L the two Georges, they, and so they didn't have to bother with those tiresome calls and the teas, and the dinners and sitting at the table and little gloves, and they could work. So, so being a fallen woman was a get out of jail free card in some respects for women who had better things to do. And another thing that it was very unusual about this book, Sherry, and a theme that runs in several of Colette's books is the romance of the older woman and the younger man. And in French literature, this is a long standing theme that goes back to, at least to Benjamin Benjamin Constance novel Adov which was published in 1816. And it goes back to Fedra. Oh, Fedra. And so, I know recently, when the Nobel Prize also wrote her book getting lost on a theme like this. It's some French writers are very comfortable dealing with and yet, there's so few examples of this in English language literature I'm wondering. Why, why that is why does this theme of the older woman and the younger man somehow challenge the Anglo Saxon world more than it does in France. Well, it is fascinating isn't it. I mean they're Balzac stand all I mean they they had characters who are young men 20 years younger than than the women they were with. You know, I was so curious about this. I went online and look to see, you know, how often had this older woman younger man relationship occurred in English literature, like 350 results, but they're not serious books. They're all sensational kind of titillating books. And I have the risk of fending anyone. I think it has to do with the way that the masculinity is understood and defined in France as opposed to America or you know the US speaking world. I think that this is a very important element in the Cherie books as well, where the myth where Cherie is, he is infantilized and feminized, you know repeatedly. And so there isn't a contradiction in Leia, having a great deal of power and control over him. And so I think that it in English in English societies. There's there's much less of a willingness to portray a male protagonist with those qualities. Now I'm sure I'm general over generalizing, but I think you have to look for clues somewhere, because it is striking. No, it does. I also at the risk of fending people. There's, there's, of course, a strand of puritanism, if we're talking about England for the moment, a strand of puritanism in English culture there's in the world of English literature up until modern times, which was, for the most part, in the middle class world. There was the demands of masculinity were about domination and as you said, the notion of an old of a woman being the dominating partner it was was probably horrific and in some deep psychological way. So the idea also of fearlessness, there's there's a fearlessness to eroticism in my own experience in in your in France, a curiosity that is often not true in in America and in England if you you know you go to a party there's this channeled that the channels are narrower, the channels of desire seem to be narrow. Now that is a gross, gross kind of ridiculous generalization, but there's truth in this truth in it too. There is, sure. I think there's also the question of repression of women if you're going to repress someone, you have to repress them sexually as well because that's a facet of human experience and it's it's part of the patriarchy that women sexuality has been has been constrained. That's absolutely true and the, but in France women have been certainly constrained. I mean they only got the vote in 1946 seven. But, but their desire has been respected. That's very French. And aspects. No, it's a patriarchal culture like any other Western culture. But, but in terms of female desire that has been nurtured and in many ways and respected and, and has been a source of fascination. So there are, there are, it's hard to talk about this stuff without being sort of ridiculously general but So another thing that really struck me about the world of Sherry is how much people are measured by how young and attractive they are by their taste in clothing jewelry furniture food and drink. It kept reminding me in many ways of our contemporary culture and, and how focused we are on, you know, being foodies on how we look on not not showing age. Do you feel there's something resonant about this side of the, of the novel and also how what is Colette's ultimate verdict on on that very very judgmental view of people through through their, their tastes and their, their looks. I think that Colette sets it up so artfully, because in the first book, there is this great deal of attention to appearance to the superficial material aspects of life. But then it gets completely subverted in, in the end of Sherry by, you know, Leia's new persona. And in that in so many ways it feels more valid, more at ease. I mean it's emphasized, you know that she she's so comfortable in this new way of being of living. She's discarded all of that dross. And, and, yeah, so I think that I assume and Judith you would, you know, know, better than I order you to Zach because you both explored her life and so much more depth and I have, but that this would we this would correspond to quite well with with Colette's own evolution in her own way of life and her own habits, am I right. You know, you're definitely right. I was going to say one thing, one thing that you're, especially the first your first reading brings back in that, and that Zach you heightened when you're in your comments on it. Her great strength is her ability to express and contain paradox. And that is true of her own character so on the one hand Colette gets fat and she doesn't worry about it she loves food she's never going to deprive herself of a single calorie for any reason. She doesn't disapprove of people who smoke too much but a cigarette now and then it's a delightful pleasure why on earth give it up. She has a series of younger lovers in her own life including her stepson, who was not, who was not chevy but but originally but certainly that that relationship echoes in the end of sharing. So she and then she marries a man 17 years her last husband, 17 years her junior, knowing full well that at some point she'll be a very old woman and he will go out and have love affairs on his own and that that is completely natural. So, and yet and yet and yet, she can be extremely disapproving of almost as if she had internalized the patriarchy she can be extremely extremely disapproving of women who let themselves go and have her daughter who was a lesbian. And, you know, she's that she said oh it's fine to experiment with but you don't want to do it full time and so there are there, one shouldn't overlook the incongruities and the contradictions because having lived them, they're visceral to her and so she they are in her work, and that's part of its power. I'm sorry, what was famously said, do I contradict myself very well I contradict myself I contain multitudes. Yeah, well, as I said, going back over the text, I really was struck by how much dissonance and paradox. There was, you know, on almost every page. And yet somehow it all adds up to a very believable character. And maybe that's because we are all complex and full of contradictions. I think there's a great deal of truth in that. So the character of Sherry when I reread the book in your translation Paul. I noticed that that many times he's described quote as a brat. And is that really the whole of Sherry's personality. If he's more than that. What more is there to Sherry and what is the significance of Sherry as a character today. Well, I think that the answer to that has to take the measure of the degree to which Sherry is it is a tragic character. But at first he is just just a scoundrel and a rascal and he misbehaves and acts highly spoiled, you know, and somewhat feckless, but gradually I think one realizes that he is a, he is a victim. It's not to say that he shouldn't have taken more steps to assert himself or define himself. But first of all, think of the environment he grew up in. I mean he's he's growing up in a brothel. He has no father. He effectively has no mother other than a sort of drill sergeant, Martinette, who is quite sadistic towards him a number of times. And so the poor kid, you know, it's not a wonder that he, he doesn't really assume a strong coherent identity and is in fact what Colette calls him repeatedly. He's nourishing my son, nourishing suggesting that he's still sort of nursing, he hasn't been weaned. And, and his, his personality his character, never fully formed. And then, as it like an enormous double lambie that has societal dimensions. He has to go through the war. And he and he's alienated as a soldier. He gets a medal but he doesn't even believe he deserved it comes back to a world that's changed where everyone else seems to have moved on. And, you know, once again, he he's cast out where does he belong and he he laments this and that and that begins the long and agonizing downward trajectory that he goes through. In your in your biography you describe Sherry as acting out a kind of noble revolt against the modernity. Can you say more about what he he he he said, these are in a way Colette creates this kind of Eden, this, this little demo of Eden of it's a world in which a world of almost total heathen is. She she sees this as noble in a way she sees, you know, all these people trading stocks and and opening restaurants and and and being bankers and and and it's, it's a strangely archaic patrician notion of the beauty and nobility of hedonism. And, and, and she in some ways, when he comes back from the war, he comes back to a world in which that is passe in which it is not only passe but it's somehow disreputable, and he's, he's he's sort of exiled into this, the world of the 20s of speed and of industry and he's, you know, not every not every sort of self indulgent heathen is an artist but in some ways Leia is and so is shelly and so his this he can practice his art anymore. His life is feudal, and you would think that this is this one of these counterintuitive things that a life of hedonism is the feudal life, but in some ways Colette suggesting that, you know, a life of purpose that's of capitalist purpose is much more sinister than a life of, of aesthetic appreciation of the body in the what you're saying, what you're both saying reminds me a little bit that Colette's mother CEDO came from a family where her siblings or brothers were very influenced by the utopian socialist movement of the Romantic era, which was very strong in the sensemonians and the furiorists and this vein of socialism was something that talked about the sanctification of the flesh that the sensemonians talked about the sanctification of the flesh so there was a kind of hedonistic strain to French socialism oddly in the very early days that I think kind of flows into maybe no that's a very important thing to point out also Fourier one of his principles was that the sexuality of children have to be respected. And it was, it was in practice we don't not sure how well that worked out but but but but that was a radical it's a radical notion, first of all in the Christian culture the children are sexual. And then that that their desires that they have erotic desires and that they should be respected. So you began talking a little bit about this generation that lived through World War one, and the tremendous upheaval that people who either fought in the war were touched by experienced, and then the post war era of the end of sherry. Can you say more about this lost generation the generation of sherry that experienced the war, and then had to adjust again to post war life and how that was kind of a shock for for many at that time. And going back to the feminist point. The men were away. Millions died. Women were running the country, and they weren't so eager to give up the power and the sense of significance and the sense of, of, of exteriority of being in the world not as ornaments but as as as doers and shakers. So many of the men left their little women at home and came back to find them transformed, as did shedding. So that that was one of the remarkable shifts that happens in French culture and it's not stable it goes as I say we didn't get the vote until the 40s so if there's tremendous repression of that too because it was pretty hard findings women were running around in short skirts and they were here and smoking and drinking and, and, and, and having sex before they were married once you were married in France was different but young girls were doing this so that's I think that's part of what happened in that generation. And yet collect sympathizes in some way as you're saying with with sherry is alienation from this post war world. She does she. There's this, I have written about this there's the voice as liberated as she was as transgressive as she was. There was a deep she's a deeply conservative writer, I think, also that's one of the contradictions she's deeply conservative about about so many things. And it's almost. It's almost trans, in a way, you know that this that this free woman this this bold, this bold writer this bisexual woman often speaks with this, this voice of the old patriarchs the right wing. You know the fathers and the husbands. So she she finds women sort of dismayingly. What's the word that she uses she has her word is the best, the best in the novels. Yes, well she uses, she uses it. No she uses it in a letter. Delegacy and literature she wrote to a friend is one of those cliches that make me furious, except for three or four female writers, women's vulgarity their sentimental brutality has all that it takes to make any man whatsoever feel wounded and embarrassed. That's also the voice of Colette. And that's very much like her comment on feminism isn't it. Yes. I think that was the whip in the harem like, she says, any French women will have the thought of the nerve to think of embracing feminism they deserve the whip in the harem. Yeah. I think she delighted in that it's a perfect contradiction to. Yeah. I think that we have some questions from our audience, and I would love to hear what their thoughts are and what Judith and Paul think of in response. Right. Zach, the first question is in the Q amp a box and has a French quote so we're going to ask you to read that. Is there a Q amp a box I don't see. If you open up at the bottom of your screen, the Q amp a box. I think it's the quote that I referred to earlier about some, you know, love that's well nourished and love that's badly or poorly nourished. Paul, if you want to take that. Okay, so should I read it out. Please read out the question. Thank you. Yeah. Okay. I think it is in La Fanta Sherie, where she writes in Leah point of view. So it's a very visceral notion of love and an unsentimental one. And I think this it actually brings up a point that I wanted to make that, you know, one thing that I love about collect in all her writing and all her thinking is that she never abstracts or at least I don't think she ever abstracts things. There's always some kind of concrete connection. And, and so in the way that she obviously talks about bodies and about desires and all that. It's never as it is so often I think in English literature, you know, translated into some kind of, you know, conceptual, rarefied kind of feeling. Yeah. Should I have translated that whole quote. If you want to be sincere or honest, I guess you would admit that there is well fed or well nourished love and poorly nourished love. And the rest of it. It's literature. In other words, it's just embroidered. It's just invented. It's not the real thing. Judith, do you have further? I can't see the question. Oh, you don't have the Q&A button. What do you think if you go to your chat. Chats open. There's excuse me. Mode in the chat. The function is at the bottom along the bottom part of your screen. Yeah, the participants. If you see that. Okay. Okay. That's good. Yeah. Well, may I interrupt just to say I didn't read the rest of the previous question, which came from Sarah D'Elegenti at the Alliance Francaise in Washington, I believe. Sorry, I do not have the translation with me. Would you agree with this definition of literature. After all, Colette's writing is full of both nourriture terrestre. I think that Colette was being, you know, quite arch. It's quite funny what she says about the two kinds of love. So I can't say whether I agree with it or not. I mean, I think there's a lot of other kinds of literature. Yeah, it's a that the way she phrases that is something that he comes, she, she liked to make fun of literature, but by what she didn't mean literature by which she meant writers posing someone in a radio interview and she was an old woman living with arthritis terrible arthritis Ben Bant living at the Palais Royale, asked her long complicated question. And she just looked at him and she and she said, mon enfant ça pue la littérature is my boy that stinks of literature. So that that notion of the sentimental be invented. The systematizing this is that you either have a good meal, and you love it and you both have your satisfied at the end, or some mean scraggly on unappetizing dishes been presented to you. And let's get serious about this I think that that was part of her character. Yeah, quite arch. There's an additional question from Jennifer Saita. Paul mentioned some egregious liberties the British translation took with Sherry. What are they and why do you think he took them. Well, I think he was being lazy and sort of cheating. In fact, at its worst. Well maybe not it's worse, but this is something that I think people find hard to believe. But when you examine an original text against a translation, you can find that a translator has simply left out whole sentences and you have phrases that were difficult to construe and sent house that a number of times. You know which I found appalling. But again, as I said earlier, as a reader of the translation you really wouldn't know that so. The first thing I think overall that sent house did is he tried to impose a kind of British bohemian tone to the entire book, sort of transpose from Paris in the belly pop to London and I don't know when. But it just to me came across as false, very false. And in specific instances. He would just wantonly change parts of speech and, you know, render things in completely inappropriate ways. So it's a highly faulty translation. And at the same time, it was read by countless readers for decades. And, and, and, you know, on that basis, a lot of people loved Colette so you know, I think again, it just emphasizes that all great literature needs to be re translated over time. And even, you know, my new translation and there's been another new translation of the two sharing novels, which I think are both, well, they were big improvements. Eventually, they will need to be superseded. It's hard to imagine at this moment, how and why, but I think they will. Right into this problem with Roger St. House translation when I was retranslating libleo male, which he translated as the ripening seed and I named green wheat and there's a lot of teenage dialogue in that book. Roger St. House who was it was an eminent member of the Bloomsbury group and the lover of Lytton Strait you know I do honor him but he translated the dialogue into British boarding school slang of the 1920s which is what he knew and it just doesn't sound right today. It might have sounded right in 1920 in the 1920s. And this is one of the things I want to raise here which is sexism, because there are two egregious examples of great French women writers being translated by men. And then Simone de Beauvoir, the first translation that which has been superseded by an excellent one by, by two women, and, and collect. I'm not saying that he wasn't trying to be. I think liberties were taken things were cut in a sort of a way that would not have happened with the male writer. And I really have to say that, because I've seen that with Bova seen it with Colette. And I haven't made a study of this to see if this is true across the border down the line but it's worth somebody out there should do it it would be an interesting. I'd like to see what, what turned up. I just want to say that if anybody is having trouble accessing chat, please send your go ahead and send post your questions to the Q&A, because so that we can read them. I just want to make sure everybody's able to post posted chat. So, while we're waiting then for the moment. Another comment about the previous translations of Sherry and La Fante Sherry, the first translation of Sherry was done by Janet Flanner, who was an eminent journalist and lived in Paris. I think Judith would she have actually known Colette. She did. She did. Yeah. So she had access to a lot of information. And she was also lesbian, which is important. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And, and, and indeed her translation was very fine. I looked at it and but it was, it was part of its era. And this is true of any translation. It sounds today a little antiquated. It has a charm but it's it's not as well colloquial I guess you could say as as what I think I've written to to impart to my version. But again, I mean, what I what I consider to be natural and colloquial for today's years. 50 years from now may may well sound quite dated. Well will sound quite dated up Paul I was going to ask, you know now that you finished this translation, are you considering another book of Colette's to translate or also I'd like to ask both of you. What are your next projects and translation. So, it's interesting you should ask because, and then, and going back to something that Judith said, I think La naissance du jour probably should be done. I think it would be an extremely challenging project because of the nature of the writing it's a it's a genre unto itself. And but I mean it's something that I have in mind. But in fact, I think my next project to be a departure in in many respects. But not entirely because it will be a novel that involves a very enigmatic young man with ambiguous sexuality, which is a novel by Stendhal called our months. 100 years before the sharing novels, and was translated 100 years ago by long grief, who was the great translator of Proust, and hasn't been done since then so I've sort of. I'm considering that as my next project. I've gone down a rabbit hole where I've gotten very interested in the romantic era partly through Josh sand and. I've read a museum that all circle of writers who I think we're very prophetic in their views on on on the world and was a writer named all the mirror Jay who wrote the book that labo and the opera was based on and right now I'm kind of coming through his work to see what I can find. Fascinating. What are, what are your, what are your projects right now as well and you have a new book coming out. I have a new book, the book of essays, and which is published in December. I'm right now I'm still on SAP at the New York or another several stories that I want to pursue but I've been just after 50 years of writing nonfiction and and journalism and sort of one one commission after another. I've just been playing around with something for myself and we'll see what happens to him. There is one additional question from john right. Are there any major works collect not translated into English. I would say no I mean my project, you know, ship direct on a traffic island and other previously and untranslated gems was an attempt to kind of find the things that had fallen through the cracks and there there wasn't a lot of work that I could. I think it was very dangerous that I was considering for that, for that volume and I chose about 200 of the what I thought was the best. Yes, wait, is Mesa pontissage translated. Yes, it is. Yeah, I think that the, the real issue is which ones need most and soon as to be retranslated. Yeah. She did write a lot of journalism Judith you were talking about her journalism can you say more about that. Well she was she was the editor, she's an editor and correspondent for the largest Paris daily for a very long time. And then it's theater critic for a while, and she was writing three pieces a week, often reviews of play she had an advice column as you would you translated she, she reported on true crime she loved true crime. She thought it was much more interesting than the rest of the news, as most people do, you know, sort of look at the look at all of the crime coverage in in mainstream media. So she, she was in that sense, a cultural reporter. And she, that was her main source of that was livelihood, you know she did earn money from her fiction but it was, it was the math that kept her. And she, she reported a great deal on on the war. She, she was a war correspondent, absolutely. She was right there at the front lines at one point. She snuck in, she, her husband was there. And she managed to smuggle herself to the front lines and to live in secrecy because she wasn't supposed to be there. And she wrote, she wrote about that. She wrote about the, she wrote, she reported from Rome, before Italy entered the war. She. Yeah, her political reporting is not her great stuff. It's not her greatest work, I have to say, but as you would, has all her journalism been collected and published in French. There was a recent book that was edited by Frédéric Maget of her journalism, I believe, in France. It's also in the play out. This is it. Yeah. Our last question is, what is the best biography of Colette, and we must say that Judith Thurman's biography, not translated, not translated translated. Yeah, no, it's the English translation of secrets of the flesh. But it's translated into French. It's a name. It's written in English, of course, but it's a French translation. It's a surpassingly great translate great biography. There's no doubt about it. And I also want to mention if anyone is interested in purchasing either sherry and the sherry and the purity and pure. We have them on site here at the mechanics Institute for sale, and they will be on sale tomorrow during our performance of Colette uncensored and also at our cinema lead film series on Friday. I think we're going to bring our program to a close is this has been just so inspiring to have to have you all together I want to thank Judith Thurman and Paul April and Zach Rogal for an amazing, amazing conversation for our Feta Colette, and the world's exploring the worlds of Colette in all of Colette's writing she embraces all of our intimacies of emotion, love, desire, pleasure and pain. She is truly a liberated woman and we celebrate her for how she embraces life. It's a huge embrace of life and love. I just want to particularly think that probably also on behalf of fall for his questions and his searching. You know really getting, getting to the important, the pith of the subject. Good to talk with you, Judith and you, Paul, and thank you again Laura for inviting all of us. Thank you, Laura. Great. This has been such a great pleasure and we hope to have you all back together for another program. Merci beaucoup. Merci to the moment. And we will see you tomorrow night at our Colette uncensored with Lori Holt. Have a great day today and