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- Herausgeber: e-artnow
- Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
- Sprache: Deutsch
In "Claudine in Paris," Colette invites readers into the vibrant and often tumultuous world of adolescence, where youthful exuberance meets the complexities of adult society. The novel captures Claudine's adventures in the Parisian backdrop, employing a richly descriptive literary style that intertwines playful language with poignant observations. As part of the emerging modernist literature of the early 20th century, Colette's narrative delves into themes of identity, sexual awakening, and societal expectations, reflecting both a personal and collective journey toward self-discovery. Colette, a prominent figure in French literature, was influenced by her own unconventional upbringing and experiences as a woman in a patriarchal society. Her intimate knowledge of female desire and the intricacies of human relationships inform Claudine's character, drawing parallels between Colette's life and the protagonist's journey. Colette's bold narrative voice seeks to challenge societal norms, illuminating the often-overlooked struggles of femininity and independence in a transforming world. "Claudine in Paris" is a must-read for anyone captivated by richly drawn characters and explorations of personal identity. Readers will find themselves engrossed in the layers of emotion and humor that Colette masterfully weaves into Claudine's journey, making this novel an essential addition to any literary collection. This translation has been assisted by artificial intelligence.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025
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Claudine in Paris
Table of Contents
I
Today, I'm back to keeping my diary, which was necessarily interrupted during my illness, my big illness - because I really think I was very ill!
I don "t feel too strong yet, but the period of fever and great despair seems to have passed. Of course, I can "t imagine that people live in Paris for pleasure, without being forced to, no, but I "m beginning to understand that people are interested in what goes on in those big six-storey boxes.
For the sake of my notebooks, I'm going to have to tell the story of why I'm in Paris, why I left Montigny, the beloved and whimsical school where Mademoiselle Sergent, unconcerned about what people will say, continues to cherish her little Aimée while the pupils do their thing, why Daddy left his slugs, all that, all that... I'm going to be so tired when I'm done! Because, you know, I "m skinnier than last year and a bit longer; despite my seventeenth birthday the day before yesterday, I hardly look sixteen. Let "s see me look in the mirror. Oh, yes.
Pointy chin, you "re sweet, but don "t exaggerate, I beg you, your point. Hazel eyes, you persist in being hazel, and I can't fault you for that; but don't recoil under my eyebrows with this excess of modesty. My mouth, you're still my mouth, but so pale that I can't resist rubbing the petals torn from the red geranium in the window on those short, pale lips (which, by the way, is a nasty purplish tone that I eat right away). Oh you, my poor ears! Little white anemic ears, I hide you under my curly hair, and from time to time I look at you stealthily, and pinch you to make you blush. But it's mostly my hair! I can "t touch it without wanting to cry... I "ve had it cut off, cut off below the ear, my scorched brown shavings, my beautiful, well-rolled shavings! By golly, the ten centimeters that remain are doing all they can, curling and swelling and hurrying to grow, but I "m so sad every morning when I involuntarily lift my fleece before soaping my neck.
Daddy with the beautiful beard, I resent you almost as much as I resent myself. You wouldn "t think of a father like that! Listen to this.
With his great treatise on the Malacology of the Fresnois almost finished, Dad sent a large part of his manuscript to the publisher Masson, in Paris, and from that day on was consumed by an appalling fever of impatience. And how! His corrected "placards", dispatched boulevard Saint-Germain in the morning (eight hours by rail), were not back in Montigny that very evening? Ah! the letter carrier Doussine heard some harsh words. "Dirty Bonapartist letter carrier who doesn "t bring me proofs! He "s a cuckold, he didn "t steal it!" And the typographers, ah la la! Threats of scalps to these makers of outrageous "shells", anathemas on this "game of Sodom" snored all day long. Fanchette, my beautiful cat, who is a good person, raised her eyebrows indignantly. November was rainy, and the neglected slugs were dying one by one. So much so that one evening, Dad, one hand in his tricolor beard, told me: "My book isn't doing well at all; the printers don't care about me; the most reasonable thing would be to move to Paris." This proposal overwhelmed me. Such simplicity, combined with such insanity, exhilarated me, and I only asked for eight days to think it over. "Hurry up," Dad added, "I've got someone to take care of our house, what's-his-name wants to rent it. O the duplicity of the most ingenuous fathers! This one had already arranged everything on the sly, and I hadn "t foreseen the threat of this departure!
Two days later, at school, where, on Mademoiselle "s advice, I was vaguely thinking of preparing for my higher diploma, the great Anaïs asserted herself even more stubbornly than usual; I couldn "t stand it any longer and shrugged my shoulders and said to her: "Go on, go on, old girl, you won "t be eluding me1 any longer, I "m moving to Paris in a month. The stupefaction she didn "t have time to disguise threw me into extreme joy. She ran to Luce: "Luce! You're going to lose your great friend! My dear, you'll be crying blood when Claudine leaves for Paris. Quick, cut yourself a lock of hair, exchange your last oaths, you "ve only just got time!" Luce, dumbfounded, spread her palm-leaf fingers, opened her lazy green eyes wide and, without modesty, burst into loud tears. She annoyed me. "Pardié oui, je m'en vais! And I won't miss you, all of you!
At home, determined, I said the solemn "yes" to Dad. He combed his beard with satisfaction and said:
- Pradeyron is already looking for an apartment for us. Where is it? I've no idea. As long as I've got room for my books, I don't give a damn about the neighborhood. What do you care?
- Me too, I don "t... I don "t care.
I didn "t know anything about it, really. How do you expect a Claudine, who "s never left the big house and dear garden of Montigny, to know what she needs in Paris, and which neighborhood to choose? Fanchette doesn "t know either. But I became restless, and, as in all the great circumstances of my life, I began to wander while Dad, suddenly practical - no, I'm going too far - suddenly active, was busily packing.
For a hundred reasons, I preferred to flee into the woods and not listen to Mélie "s raging complaints.
Mélie is blonde, lazy and faded. She used to be very pretty. She cooks, brings me water and takes fruit from our garden to give to vague "acquaintances". But Dad assures me that she once fed me with "superb" milk and still loves me well. She sings a lot, and keeps a varied collection of saucy, even obscene songs in her memory, a number of which I have retained. (And they say I don "t cultivate the arts of pleasure!) There "s a very pretty one:
He had five or six drinks
Without wanting to catch his breath ,
Trou la la ...
And because he liked it
He spared no trouble ,
Trou la la... etc., etc.
Mélie pampers my faults and virtues with tenderness. She notes with exaltation that I am "gente", that I have "a beautiful body" and concludes: "It's a pity you don't have a beau." Mélie "s ingenuous, selfless need to arouse and satisfy amorous designs extends to all of nature. In spring, when Fanchette meows, coos and crawls on her back in the alleys, Mélie complacently calls out to the tomcats, luring them with plates full of raw meat. Then she gazes longingly at the resulting idylls, and, standing in the garden in her dirty apron, she lets the veal butt or the hare "tie" in salmis, musing, as she weighs her corsetless breasts in her palms, a frequent gesture that irritates me. Despite myself, I "m vaguely disgusted by the thought of suckling them.
All the same, if I were just a silly little thing and not a well-behaved girl, Mélie, obliging, would do whatever it took to get me to blame. But I only laugh at her, when she tells me about a lover - ah! no, for example - and I stuff her, and I tell her: "Why don "t you take this to Anaïs, you "ll be better received than here."
Mélie swore, on her mother "s blood, that she wouldn "t come to Paris. I told her: "I don "t care. So she began her preparations, prophesying a thousand appalling catastrophes.
So I wandered along the paths pattés2, through the rusty woods, scented with mushrooms and wet moss, picking yellow chanterelles, friends of creamy sauces and veal casseroles. And little by little, I realized that this move to Paris smacked of madness. Maybe if I begged Dad, or rather, intimidated him? But what would Anaïs say? And Luce, who would believe I was staying because of her? No. Damn! There'll be time to think about it, if I find myself in too much trouble out there.
One day, at the edge of the Bois des Vallées, as I was looking down on the woods, the woods that are what I love most in the world, and the yellow meadows, and the ploughed fields, their fresh, almost pink earth, and the Saracen tower above, which falls every year, I saw so clearly the folly, the misfortune of leaving, that I almost ran down to the house, to beg, to order the book cases to be opened and the legs of the armchairs to be untwisted.
Why didn "t I do it? Why did I stand there, empty, with my hands cold under my red cape? The chestnuts fell on me in their shells and pricked my head a little, like a ball of wool with darning needles left behind...
Let me cut it short. Farewell to the School; cold farewell to the Headmistress (amazing, Mademoiselle! Her little Aimée in her skirts, she says "au revoir" as if I were due to go home that very evening); Anaïs' snide farewell: "I don "t wish you luck, my dear, luck follows you everywhere, you "ll probably only deign to write to me to announce your marriage"; anguished, sobbing farewells from Luce, who has made me a little purse in yellow and black silk net, in perfect bad taste, and who still gives me a lock of her hair in a wooden Spa needle case. She had these souvenirs "stuffed" so that I would never lose them.
(For those of you who don "t know the impicassement spell, here it is: You place the object o to be empicked on the ground, enclose it between two brackets whose joined ends, Xo, intersect and where you inscribe, on the left of the object, an X. After that, you can rest easy, because empicassement is infallible. You can also spit on the object, but that "s not absolutely essential).
Poor Luce said to me: "Go on, you don "t think I "ll be unhappy. But you'll see, you'll see what I can do. I've had enough, you know, of my sister and her Mademoiselle. There was only you here, I only had taste because of you. You'll see!" I kissed her a lot, on her elastic cheeks, on her wet eyelashes, on her white and brown nape, I kissed her dimples and her irregular little nose that was too short. She had never had so many caresses from me, and the poor gobette "s despair redoubled. I could have made her very happy for a year (it wouldn "t have cost you that much, Claudine, I know you!) But I don "t regret not having done it.
The physical horror of seeing the furniture moved and my little habits packed away made me as chilly and nasty as a cat in the rain. Watching the departure of my little ink-stained mahogany desk, my narrow walnut boat-bed and the old Norman sideboard that serves as my linen cupboard, I nearly had a nervous breakdown. Dad, prankier than ever, strolled through the disaster, singing: "The arrogant English, Have come to lay siege to Lorient. Et les Bas-Bretons..." (We can "t quote the rest, unfortunately.) I never hated him as much as I did that day.
At the last moment, I thought I was going to lose Fanchette, who, as horrified as I was, had fled to the garden and taken refuge in the coal loft. I had great difficulty in capturing her and locking her in a travel basket, spitting and black, swearing like the devil. The only basket she admits to is the meat basket.
II
The journey, the arrival, the beginning of the installation are lost in a haze of distress. The dark apartment, between two courtyards, in this poor, sad Jacob Street, left me in a desolate torpor. Without moving, I watched the crates of books arrive one by one, then the out-of-place furniture; I saw Dad, excited and restless, nailing up shelves, pushing his desk from corner to corner, boasting aloud about the apartment "s location: "Just a stone "s throw from the Sorbonne, right next to the Société de géographie, and the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève within easy reach! "I heard Mélie moaning about the smallness of her kitchen - which, on the other side of the landing, is one of the most beautiful rooms in the apartment - and I suffered as she served us, under the excuse of the incomplete and difficult move-in, food that was... incomplete and difficult to ingest. A single thought gnawed at me: "What, I "m the one who "s here, I "m the one who let this madness happen?" I refused to go out, I stubbornly refused to do anything useful, I wandered from one room to another, my throat constricted and my appetite absent. After ten days, I took on such a strange appearance that Dad himself noticed and immediately panicked, as he does everything thoroughly and without measure. He sat me on his lap, against his big tricolored beard, and cradled me in his gnarled hands, which smelled like fir trees from all the shelving he "d done... I said nothing, but gritted my teeth, for I bore him a fierce grudge... And then my tense nerves gave way in a beautiful crisis, and Mélie put me to bed, burning up.
After that, a long time passed. Something like a typhoid-like brain fever. I don "t think I was very delirious, but I had fallen into a miserable night, and all I could feel was my head, which hurt so much! I remember lying on my left side for hours, tracing with my fingertip against the wall the outline of one of the fantastic fruits printed on my curtains; a kind of apple with eyes. All I have to do now is look at it, and I'm whisked away into a world of nightmares and swirling dreams, with everything: Mademoiselle, and Aimée, and Luce, a wall about to fall on me, the evil Anaïs, and Fanchette getting as fat as a donkey and sitting on my chest. I also remember Dad leaning over me, his beard and face seeming huge, and I pushing him with my two weak arms, and pulling my hands right back because the sheet of his overcoat seemed so rough and painful to touch! Finally, I remember a gentle doctor, a short blond man with a woman "s voice and cold hands that made me shiver all over.
For two months I couldn "t be combed, and, as the felting of my curls made me suffer when I rolled my head on the pillow, Mélie cut my hair, with her scissors, right up against my head, as best she could, on the stairs! My goodness, what luck that big Anaïs didn "t see me garçonned like that, she who was so jealous of my chestnut curls and used to pull them slyly during playtime!
I gradually regained a taste for life. One morning, when I was able to sit up on my bed, I realized that the rising sun was coming into my room, that white and red pekin paper was brightening up the walls, and I started thinking about French fries.
- Mélie, I'm hungry. Mélie, what "s that smell in your kitchen? Mélie, my little ice cream. Mélie, cologne to wash my ears. Mélie, what can you see through the window? I want to get up.
- Oh, my little company, you're getting restless again! That's because you're better. But you wouldn't stand up on all fours, and the doctor has forbidden it.
- Is it like that? Wait, walk, don't move! You'll see.
In spite of the desolate objurgations, and the "My beloved France, you're going to flank yourself on the floor; my little servant, I'll tell the doctor! with a great effort I pull my legs out of my bed... Misery! What have they done to my calves? And my knees, how fat they look! Darkly, I return to my bed, unable to take it anymore.
I agree to stay fairly quiet, although I find the "fresh eggs" of Paris have a singular taste of printed paper. My room is pleasant; wood is being burned, and I enjoy looking at the red and white pekin paper (as I said before), my two-door Norman sideboard, with my little trousseau inside; the shelf is worn and scratched, I've scratched it a bit and stained it with ink. It adjoins my bed, on the longest wall of my rectangular room, my boat bed, in walnut, with Persian curtains (we "re old-fashioned) with a white background, red and yellow flowers and fruit. Opposite my bed, my small, old-fashioned mahogany desk. No carpet; a large white poodle skin as a bedspread. A toadstool armchair, its tapestry a little worn on the arms. A low chair in old wood, mulched in red and yellow; another, just as low, in white ripolin. And a small square rattan table, varnished in natural tones. Now that's a salad! But this ensemble has always seemed exquisite to me. One of the narrow walls is occupied by two alcove doors, which close off my obscure dressing room in daylight. My dressing table is a Louis XV console with a pink marble top. (It "s a waste, it "s imbecility; it would be infinitely better in the living room, I know, but we "re not daddy "s girls for nothing). Let "s complete the enumeration: a big banal bowl, a spirited steed, and no tub, no; in place of the tub, which freezes your feet, ridiculous with its theatrical thunderous noises, a wooden tub, a cuveau, there! A good Montigny tub, made of hooped beech, where I squat cross-legged in the hot water, pleasantly grating my bottom.
So I obediently eat eggs and, as I'm absolutely forbidden to read, I read very little (my head immediately turns). I can "t explain to myself how the joy of my awakenings gradually darkens, as the day wears on, into melancholy and fierce cowering, despite Fanchette "s teasing.
Fanchette, a happy girl, happily accepted boarding school. She has, without protest, accepted a dish of sawdust hidden in my alley to deposit her little horrors, and I amuse myself, leaning over to follow the phases of an important operation on her cat-like face. Fanchette carefully washes her hind legs between her fingers. Figure wise and silent. Sudden stop in washing: serious face and vague concern. Sudden change of pose: she sits on her haunches. Eyes cold and almost stern. She stands up, takes three steps and sits down again. Then, in an irrevocable decision, we jump out of bed, run to her dish, scratch... And nothing at all. The indifferent look reappears. But not for long. The anxious eyebrows come closer; she feverishly regratches the sawdust, stomps around, looks for the right place and for three minutes, her eye fixed and out, seems to be thinking bitterly. After all, she likes to be a bit constipated. Finally, slowly, we stand up and, with painstaking care, cover the corpse with the penetrating air befitting this funereal operation. A little superfluous scratching around the plate, and without transition, a devilishly wiggling caper, the prelude to a goat dance, the step of deliverance. Then I laugh and shout, "Mélie, come and change, quick, the pussy dish!"
I began to take an interest in the sounds of the courtyard. A large, gloomy courtyard; at the far end, the back of a blackened house. In the courtyard, small nameless buildings with tiled roofs, tiles… like in the countryside. A low, dark door, I’m told, opens onto Rue Visconti. This courtyard, I’ve only ever seen crossed by workmen in smocks and women with unkempt hair, sad, with that sagging of the torso over the hips at every step, peculiar to utterly exhausted creatures. A child plays there, silent, always alone, belonging, I think, to the concierge of this dismal building. Downstairs, in our place—if I dare call “our place” this square house full of people I don’t know and who are unpleasant to me—a filthy maid in a Breton cap scolds a poor little dog every morning, who no doubt misbehaves during the night in the kitchen, and who yelps and cries; that girl, just wait until I’m better, she’ll meet her end at my hands! Finally, every Thursday, a barrel organ grinds out dreadful ballads from ten to eleven, and every Friday, a beggar (here they say “a poor man” and not “an unfortunate” as in Montigny), a classic tall beggar with a white beard, comes to declaim pathetically: “Ladies and Gentlemen—don’t forget—a poor unfortunate!—He can barely see!—He appeals—to your kindness!—Please, Ladies and Gentlemen! (one, two, three…)… pleeease!” All of it set to a little minor-key melody that ends in a major key. That venerable man, I have Mélie toss him four sous, though she grumbles and says I’m spoiling the trade.
Dad, relieved and beaming at the fact that I'm really convalescing, takes advantage of the situation to only appear at home around mealtimes. Oh the Libraries, Archives, Nationals and Cardinals he roams, dusty, bearded and bourbon-like!
Poor Dad, didn "t he almost call everything into question one morning in February, when he brought me a bouquet of violets! The scent of living flowers, their fresh touch, suddenly drew back the curtain of oblivion my fever had drawn over the Montigny I had left behind... I saw again the transparent, leafless woods, the roads lined with withered blue sloes and frostbitten ass-scrapers, and the tiered village, and the tower with its dark ivy that alone remains green, and the white School under a soft, glare-free sun; I breathed in the musky, rotten smell of dead leaves, and also the stale atmosphere of ink, paper and wet clogs in the classroom. And Dad, frantically clutching his Louis XIV nose, and Mélie, anxiously fiddling with her tits, thought I was going to get really sick again. The gentle, feminine-voiced doctor climbed the three flights of stairs in a hurry and said it was nothing at all.
(I hate this blond man with light glasses. He treats me well, though; but, at the sight of him, I tuck my hands under the sheet, I bend over, I close my toes, like Fanchette does when I want to look at her nails up close; a perfectly unfair feeling, but one that I certainly won't do anything to destroy. I don "t like a man I don "t know touching and groping me, putting his head on my chest to see if I "m breathing properly. Besides, for God "s sake, he could be warming his hands!)
It was nothing at all, in fact, and soon I was up and about. And from that day on, my concerns took another turn:
- Mélie, who's going to make my dresses now?
- I don't know anything about that, my guéline. Why don't you ask Madame Coeur for an address?
She's right, Mélie!
That, for example, is a shame not to have thought of it sooner, because "maame" Coeur, my God, she's not a distant relative, she's Dad's sister; but that admirable father has always freed himself, with perfect ease, from all sorts of family ties and duties. I think I saw her once in all, my Aunt Coeur. I was nine, and Dad was taking me to Paris with him. She looked like the Empress Eugenie; I think it was to annoy her brother, who looked like the Sun King. Sovereign family! She "s a widow, this lovely woman, and I don "t know of any children.
Every day, I wander around the apartment a little more, lost, skinny, in my flowing robe, gathered at the shoulders, in faded eggplant cotton velvet. In the dark living room, Dad has had the furniture from his smoking room and those from Montigny's living room brought in.
The low, wide Louis XVI armchairs, a little torn open, with the two Arab tables, the Moorish armchair in inlaid wood and the bed base covered with an Oriental rug, seem to be in close proximity. Claudine, we'll have to fix that...
I touch trinkets, pull over a Moroccan stool, reposition the little sacred cow on the mantelpiece (a very old Japanese knick-knack, twice glued back together thanks to Mélie), and then I immediately collapse onto the divan-spring, against the mirror where my too-large eyes, my hollow cheeks, and above all, above all, my poor hair in uneven layers plunge me into deep regret. Well, old girl, imagine if you had to climb the big walnut tree in the Montigny garden now! Where is your nimbleness, where are your agile legs and monkey-like hands that used to make such a crisp flac on the branches when you climbed up there in ten seconds? You look like a fourteen-year-old girl who’s been tormented.
One evening at dinner, while nibbling - without looking like it - on bread crusts that were still forbidden, I asked the author of Malacologie du Fresnois:
- Why haven "t we seen my aunt yet, haven "t you written to her? Didn "t you go to see her?
Dad, with the condescension we have for fools, asks me, gently, with a clear eye and a suave voice:
- Which aunt, my sweet?
Accustomed to these candid absences, I let him know it was his sister.
- You think of everything!" he exclaimed, full of admiration. A thousand herds of pigs! She'll be so happy to know we're in Paris! She's going to hang on to me," he added darkly.
Gradually I extended my walks to the book hole, Dad shone the three walls of the bedroom, which receives daylight through a large window (the only slightly light room in the apartment is the kitchen - although Mélie quaintly claims that "you can "t see out of your head or... ), and in the middle he has planted his thuya and copper desk on castors, which wanders into every corner, followed painfully by an old Voltaire armchair in red leather, bleached at the corners and cracked at both arms. The little flying ladder, to reach the dictionaries high up, a table on trestles, that "s all.
Stronger day by day, I come to warm myself by the familiar titles of books, and occasionally reopen Balzac Dishonored by Bertall, or Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary. What am I doing in this dictionary? Boring myself, and... learning a few nasty things, almost always shocking (nasty things are not always shocking; quite the opposite). But, ever since I learned to read, I have been a "mouse in father's house," and while I am hardly easily startled, I do not get overly passionate either.
I'm exploring Daddy's "turkey". That daddy! In his room, hung with country bouquet paper, a paper for young girls, he has a boat bed, too, the mattress sloping steeply. Dad only wants to sleep sitting up. I'll spare you the Empire furniture, the big wicker armchairs cushioned with scientific brochures and magazines, the colored boards hanging everywhere, strewn with slugs, centipedes and the filthy "arnies" of little beasts! On the mantelpiece, rows of fossils that used to be mollusks. And on the floor, next to the bed, two ammonites the size of car wheels. Long live Malacology! Our home is the sanctuary of a fine science, and not an overused one, I dare say.
Not an interesting dining room. If it weren "t for the Burgundian buffet and the big chairs, also Burgundian, I "d find it quite banal. The overly rustic sideboard no longer has the brown woodwork of Montigny as a backdrop. For lack of space, Mélie has planted the large linen cupboard there, beautiful with its Louis XV panels with musical attributes, but, like everything else, sad and out of place. She thinks of Montigny, as I do.
When the unsympathetic doctor tells me, with an air of modest triumph, that I can go out, I cry out: "Never in my life", full of such beautiful indignation that he remains, in a word, stupid.
- And why is that?
- Because my hair is cut! I won "t go out until I have long hair!
- Well, my child, you'll get sick again. You need, absolutely need, oxygen.
- You're "araling" me! I absolutely need hair.
He leaves, still gentle. Why doesn't he get angry? I'd tell him painful things to make me feel better...
Ulcerated, I study myself in the mirror. I realize that it "s not the shortness of my hair that makes me look like a sad cat, but its unevenness. The office scissors are ours! They're too big and blunt. The scissors in my workbox? They're too short. There are Mélie "s scissors... But she uses them to cut chicken tripe and split gizzards, and they disgust me.
- Mélie, buy me some dressmakers' scissors tomorrow morning.
It's a long and difficult job. A hairdresser would do it better and quicker, but my misanthropy towards everything in Paris is still too strong. Oh, the poor, all cut off at ear level! The ones on my forehead, oddly rolled up, don "t look too bad yet, but I get a big, angry chagrin when I look into two mirrors and see the white, thinning nape of my neck under the stiff little hairs that only slowly decide to spiral, like the pods of balsamines seeds that, after releasing their seed, gradually roll into a spiral, and dry there.
