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    The Vagabond
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    The Vagabond
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    The Vagabond
    Ebook247 pages4 hours

    The Vagabond

    By Colette

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    From the author of Gigi comes this tale of 33-year-old Renée Néré, recently divorced and seeking a new life as a vaudeville performer. Maxime, a wealthy playboy, tempts her from the path of independence with the comforts of love and marriage. From the physical and psychological distance of a provincial tour, Renée reflects upon the conflicting needs of security and freedom.
    "The Vagabond, one of the first and best feminist novels ever written, is that rare thing: a great book which is also inspiring," declared Erica Jong. This vivid portrait of life in the Parisian music halls of the early twentieth century was drawn from the author's personal experiences. Colette's 1910 novel mirrors her own adventures as an itinerant dancer as well as her struggles to maintain a balance between social respectability and artistic freedom. This edition features an authoritative new translation of her story as well as an informative Introduction by Stanley Appelbaum.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDover Publications
    Release dateMar 7, 2012
    ISBN9780486120751
    Unavailable
    The Vagabond

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    Reviews for The Vagabond

    4/5

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    • 5/5
      This is the first book I read by Colette. I thought it was witty, inspiring, full of life and personality. One of my favorite sentences already towards the end, on page 211: ' Who is the full-mouthed ancestor who goes on barking inside me with a violence not only verbal but sentimental?'.
    • 3/5
      Verhaal van een zich vrijvechtende vrouw, maar heel genuanceerd. Goede sfeerbeschrijving van de kabaretwereld rond de eeuwwisseling. Iets te breed uitgesponnen introspectie: vooral 2de helft deel 1 en begin deel 2 overbodig
    • 5/5
      I have loved everything I've read by Colette. She's written so many books that I may never read them all, but what a nice problem to have. The first fifty pages of this book are absolute poetry, line by line.
    • 3/5
      I really like Collette's writing in this book. It has received some negative reviews for an awkward translation, but I like it. It's very evocative of the narrator's personality.

      Great book for getting a feel for what life as a woman in the underbelly of Paris was like in the early 20th century.
    • 4/5
      Autobiographical novel set in Paris music halls of the early 1900s. The vagabonde / wanderer protagonist moves toward social acceptance and romantic love for a while, only to reject the compromises an easy life offers, favoring instead a rigid self-honesty, an obscure sort of dignity that may be vanity, and perhaps, eventually, artistic engagement as a writer. The plot is almost the precise reverse of the conventional novel where loners find cover in the end, or die. Here, Colette creates a character still and always in the thick of it, lost yet grounded in her own emotional world, staring down everything with clear eyes.
    • 4/5
      Collete's The Vagabond tells a story of backstage life in the music halls of turn of the century Paris. The narrator/heroine has left a failed marriage and career as a novelist to earn a living performing two shows a night as an actress in French pantomime.The Vagabond works as a backstage novel and as a source of insight into the its author, Colette. Because the narrator's biography shares so much with Colette's it's nearly impossible not to succumb to the temptation of committing the biographical fallacy. Since their back stories match, it's easy to conclude that the novel must be the story of Colette. With this in mind, I found The Vagabond ultimately disappointing. Collete is known for dealing with issues of love and sexuality, especially female sexuality, with a frankness that Americans see as French. It's a cliche in the U.S. to see the French, especially French artists like Colette, as more in-tune with an adult sensibility around sex than we are. I found Colette's novel Cheri to be a good example of this adult sexuality even though the title character is a teenager. So I was surprised to find much of The Vagabond adolescent:Love, if you can; no doubt this will be granted you, so that at the summit of your poor happiness you may again remember that nothing counts, in love, except the first love, and endure at every moment the punishment of remembering, and the horror of comparing.I was 22 when my first love came to an end. At that time I would have agreed with Colette whole-heartedly. 25 years later, it's tempting to roll my eyes a little in exasperation. Colette was 37 when she wrote The Vagabond. While the passage above is well written, I don't buy it. The love that lasts is the love that counts. Spend a decade or more with the one you love and you'll look back on that first love, remembering and comparing with no horror or punishment at all. Except maybe a moment or two spent wondering, "What was I thinking?"While I had more problems with The Vagabond than the one outlined here, there is enough that's good in the novel to make it a worthwhile read. The peek at theatrical life, Colette's beautiful writing, the hints at autobiography all succeed in entertaining the reader. Those lucky enough to read it while in the throes of first love or in recovery from it will find a kindred spirit in Colette's The Vagabond. Colette lived until 1954, so I figured there must be film footage of her. I could only find a little snippet from a 1951 documentary featuring an interview with Colette over breakfast in bed. Because the embed feature was disabled, you'll have to follow the link over to YouTube if you'd like to see it.
    • 5/5
      Colette does what she does best; she writes about love, but for her this was always synonymous with entrapment and this theme is fully explored in this wonderful novel.It was published in 1911 and Colette wrote most of it while she was on the road with a dance and mime act. She wrote it backstage, on trains and in hotel rooms and the immediacy of the writing comes through by her use of the first person in her narrative. We feel the cold backstage dressing rooms, the cramped and poorly lit hotel rooms, the struggle for survival with her fellow artists, their wary camaraderie and battles with ill health. Colette like her heroine (Rennee) was obsessive about her backstage dressing room preparations which were interrupted by admirers and would be lovers.The vagabonde is Renee who has recently extricated herself from a tyrannical husband Adolphe Taillandy and has sought to earn her living on the stage while writing a novel when she can. Collete at this time had just left her husband Willy Gauthier-Villars and Taillandy is obviously based on him:As far as I am concerned, the only genius he had was for lying. No woman, none of his women, could possibly have appraised and admired, feared and cursed his passion for lying as much as I did. Adolphe Taillandy used to lie feverishly, voluptuously, untiringly, almost involuntary. For him adultery was merely a type of falsehood, and by no means the most delectable.Rennee in the novel attracts the attention of a rich admirer and when he comes backstage she treats him with disdain, his persistence pays off and she eventually thinks that she might be in love with her 'Big Noodle'. He offers her a life of ease and luxury, but she hesitates unwilling to give up her hard won independent life.Colette writes beautifully breathing fire and passion into a story of love ,loss and fear of the future, without any trace of a cool Freudian analytical approach. She tells her would be lover;I refuse to see the most beautiful countries of the world microscopically reflected in the amorous mirror of your eyesRenee goes on tour with her mime and dance group and the novels climax is written as a series of letters exchanged between Renee and her 'Big Noodle' who stays behind in Paris. Colette writes some beautiful love letters which point subtly to the denouement of her novel. Fine writing indeed:To speak the truth is one thing, but the whole truth that cannot , must not be saidI thoroughly enjoyed this marvellous book
    • 5/5
      The story of an educated woman who makes her living as a performer in France and comes to love a gentle, wealthy, rather bland man ... but isn't sure she can stay with him.Passionate and detailed story, related by a first-person narrator, a Frenchwoman in her thirties who has become accustomed to living out of a trunk, repairing her costumes, putting up with the rough usage of her dancing partner. Glimpses into dancehall life. Quick portraits of performers, many of them fragile and indestructible women. Bourgeois comforts and respectable marriage beckon ... the conclusion is inevitable, and wrenching.
    • 2/5
      Recommended to help you through loneliness and despair at the end of an affair.
    • 3/5
      Verhaal van een zich vrijvechtende vrouw, maar heel genuanceerd. Goede sfeerbeschrijving van de kabaretwereld rond de eeuwwisseling. Iets te breed uitgesponnen introspectie: vooral 2de helft deel 1 en begin deel 2 overbodig
    • 3/5
      I liked this very much; the language, the characters, the heroine's eventual choice. Big Noodle as a name for a love interest, indeed. I have so met that guy.

      I wish Colette was easier to come by. She seems to have been an incredible woman, with an impressive set of works to her name. The copy I turned up was falling apart and sourced from a regional library in Ballarat, a donated copy published in 1954. I wanted to keep it.
    • 5/5
      I do not as a rule re-read books. But when I do, I become thoroughly convinced that one never re-reads a book anymore than one steps into the same river twice. This is my third reading of Colette's The Vagabond. I like it even better this time. On this reading I was struck by the irony and humor, plus Colette's understanding of the natural world and her genius for conveying its beauty stood out more than they had in previous readings.

      Renée's difficulty in choosing between love and independence are heart rending. There are some who will say her choice was heartless. No she just didn't have the heart for it, that is for love. Her freedom has been hard won. A woman in 1910 did not up and leave her husband as easy as flipping a pancake. Nor was it an easy thing to begin alone and lonely,your connections with your former wholly life severed, in a new career. A career on the stage? I respect the honesty of her choice.