Dictionnaire Colette by Guy Ducrey et Jacques Dupont (review)

With over eighty specialist contributors, around 420 entries, many of which are substantial essays in their own right, and over a thousand double-column pages, the Dictionnaire Colette is a veritable summum of erudition and analysis. This very large dictionary is a reflection of the scale of Colette’s work — her complete works run to sixteen volumes — and of the multiple audiences, both academic and non-academic, that it addresses. It gives extensive coverage to her life, her works, the circles she moved in, and the key themes that established her literary reputation: the portraits of the family relationships; the erotic and emotional relationships of Le Blé en herbe and the Chéri volumes, for example; the natural world; animals (‘Chats’ is probably one of the longest entries of all); and the powerfully evocative quality of her writing. Entries on ‘Odeurs’, ‘Sens’, ‘Sauvagerie’, ‘Chevelure’, ‘Maquillage’, ‘Bleu’, are just some of those exploring her sensual evocation of the experience of the physical world. ‘Quotidien’, ‘Fait divers/chronique judiciaire’, ‘Crimes’, and ‘Argent’ open other perspectives on different materialities. Full attention is paid to the more recent readings, from Gender and Women’s Studies and Autofictional Studies, which challenge the earlier hierarchical categorizations that only acknowledged her quality within the established parameters of the ‘woman writer’. Julia Kristeva’s psychoanalytical rereading of the trajectory of the work, particularly in relation to the figure of the mother, has also been influential. Numerous entries on ‘Bêtes’ — ‘Araignée’, ‘Chat’, ‘Chien’, ‘Cheval’, ‘Papillons’, ‘Végétarisme’ — are written with a contemporary awareness of Animal Studies, the ambivalent nature of her portraits, and discussions of vegetarianism. The noise of the century appears through the Dreyfus case — Willy was a prominent anti-Dreyfusard — and particularly through the two world wars. Her Jewish third husband Maurice Goudeket was interned in 1941; Colette was moving in circles — including Otto Abetz and Karl Epting — that helped to secure his release, though her contributions to extreme-right newspapers such as Gringoire drew the ire of the clandestine Lettres françaises. We learn in ‘Céline’ that he was furious at her very different treatment at the Liberation from his own. Through her own literary and cultural standing, and through her marriages, she was at home in prominent literary and musical salons, in elite political circles, and even maisons closes such as the legendary Le Sphinx. Her connections with the music hall, the circus, dance, and performance sit alongside her involvement in theatre (she wrote an astonishing 380 theatre reviews, covering 500 separate plays), in cinema (with screenplays, subtitles, and film reviews), and in fashion and the visual arts. This is both a major reference book, impressively comprehensive and indispensable for research, and a treasure trove of surprises: Colette had her own gym at home; her maternal grandfather fought at Waterloo; André Maginot, of all people, suggested she should start a business selling beauty products; she was interviewed by Walter Benjamin. It is a pity there is no index, but the standard and interest of the entries is uniformly high, and the critical attention to detail in a writer renowned for her art of the detail makes for endlessly fascinating reading.