Archives for August 15, 2011

I was supposed to fly from St. Louis to New York on Sunday, collect Mrs. T, then proceed on Monday to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Alas, the weather failed to cooperate, and my flight to New York was summarily canceled, forcing me to spend an unscheduled night at an airport hotel, dining on free hot dogs, enjoying Turner Classic Movies and the hot tub, and trying not to think about the next day’s forecast any more than I could help.
Alas, I have no idea where I’ll be by the time you read these words. Should my luck improve significantly, I’ll fly into LaGuardia Airport on Monday morning, take a cab to Kennedy Airport, meet Mrs. T there, and head for Oregon. If not…well, I haven’t a clue. And even if my luck does hold, it means that I’ll be flying halfway across the country in one direction, then turning around and flying all the way across the country in the other direction. The only thing of which I’m sure is that a thoroughly lousy day awaits me.
More as it happens, unless I’m paralyzed by despair and/or exasperation.

It’s been quite a while since I last read anything by Colette, one of my favorite writers, so I recently decided to spend some time getting reacquainted with her, and this week’s almanac entries will reflect the fruits of my labor (if that’s the word for so pleasurable a task).
In addition to being a remarkable writer, Colette was also one of the most photogenic artists of the twentieth century, not merely in her youth but long after arthritis had gnarled her features and condemned her to an indoor life of immobility and pain. The painting that you see above (the artist is Jacques Humbert) dates from 1896, and shows her as a beautiful young woman, teetering on the edge of knowingness. The second image is a reproduction of a photographic portrait of Colette shot by Irving Penn in 1951. Both images capture something of her intriguing, ever-elusive essence.
I also spent a few minutes trolling through YouTube in search of Colette-related video, and came up with two clips from Colette, a film documentary made in 1951 by Yannick Bellon. (Yes, it’s in French, but it’s subtitled.) Alas, I can’t embed the clips, but you can view them by going here and here. Colette herself appears on camera and can be heard speaking in both sequences, the second of which is a survey of her fascinating career as a music-hall performer.
If you happen to be a Francophone, you can also listen to a 1950 radio program about Colette by going here. The piece of music heard at the beginning is Ravel’s Jeux d’eau.
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The Glyndebourne Festival’s 1987 production of Maurice Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges, designed by Maurice Sendak, directed by Frank Corsaro, and conducted by Simon Rattle. The libretto is by Colette:

“To a poet, silence is an acceptable response, even a flattering one.”
Colette, Paris from My Window