Published on the fiftieth anniversary of her death, this intellectual biography of Colette — the final volume of Julia Kristeva's trilogy Female Genius — will be considered a major breakthrough in understanding one of the great creative minds of the twentieth century.

Colette (1873-1954) was a prolific novelist who celebrated sexual pleasure and invented a language for it at a time when women writers were inhibited about dealing with the topic. Female sexuality in a male-dominated world and the joys and pains of love served as her main themes, and her novels — Cheri, La Chatte, and Gigi, among them — blurred the boundaries between fact and fiction long before autobiographical novels became commonplace. She married three times, had male and female lovers, and for a time supported herself as a mime, dancing semi-nude in music halls throughout France. When she died, she received the first state funeral the French Republic had ever given a woman.

Colette's writing was inspired by entertainers, courtesans, an aristocratic Parisian lesbian subculture, and fin de sicle gay aesthetes. She admired those who lived on the sexual edge and was accused of moral corruption in intellectual matters — she published in pro-Vichy, anti-Semitic journals during the Occupation, even as she fought to keep her Jewish third husband from deportation. Kristeva deftly examines Colette's controversial life and work and considers two of her most important influences, Honor de Balzac and Marcel Proust. In a multifaceted approach, Kristeva considers Colette's use of metaphor, the characters in her novels, and the development of her writing within the context of her life. Paying particularattention to the language the French writer used to say the unsayable and name the unnameable, Kristeva offers an elegant and sophisticated critique of Colette's psychological conflicts, particularly her sexual relationships and how these conflicts are both recorded in and resolved through the act of writing.

Appealing to Freudian and Lacanian concepts such as the Oedipus complex, perversion, the symbolic, and melancholy, Kristeva opens Colette's oeuvre to psychoanalytic interpretation. The impression that remains is of a woman intent on experiencing the world's pleasures — its jouissance — in a melding with the world's flesh.

"In this final volume of her trilogy on female genius (Hannah Arendt; Malanie Klein), Parisian linguistics professor Kristeva employs her prodigious arsenal of feminist scholarship and psychoanalytic prowess to prove why the French author of Cheri and Gigi deserves such intellectual distinction. A writer, dancer and sexual gourmand, Colette was the sort of woman who took boxing lessons in order to acquire 'the most vicious punch possible.' Seducing both male and female lovers (including her own stepson), the thrice married and intensely prolific aesthete ignored the sexual mores of her time and sublimated her lifestyle in a lyrical prose that Kristeva equates with the light-filled palettes of Poussin and Watteau. Expertly translated by Todd, the dense biography is a fascinating read for lovers of belle-lettres, but it assumes that readers already possess a substantial familiarity with Colette's work. After breezing through the author's life, Kristeva launches into a close reading of all seven movements to 1905's Tendrils of the Vine (even breaking down the title by its vocal vibrations) and proceeds to scrutinize Colette's strained relationship with her mother, Sido. Kristeva is at her best when she uses psychoanalysis to explore the 'perverse acts' that punctuated Colette's life, noting that for Colette, 'writing itself appears as a substitute for erotic pleasure and the text as a fetish.' Clearly in awe of her subject, Kristeva candidly admits that she feels 'all the humility of the immigrant when faced with her language, over which she asserts her irrevocable mastery,' and does her idol proud by completing a rousing, academically rigorous, detailing of her life. 3 pages of b&w photos." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Psychoanalyst and literary theorist Kristeva (linguistics, U. of Paris VII) completes her trilogy Female Genius with an intellectual biography of French novelist Collette (1873-1954). She says Collette found a language to express the interplay between her sensations, desires, and anxieties and the infiniteness of the world; and that transcended her presence as a women of her century. nie f<'e>minin, Collette/> was published in 2002 by Librairie Arth<`e>me Fayard. Todd is a prolific translator based in Portland, Oregon.
Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Published on the fiftieth anniversary of her death, this intellectual biography of Colette — the final volume of Julia Kristeva's trilogy Female Genius — will be considered a major breakthrough in understanding one of the great creative minds of the twentieth century.

Colette (1873-1954) was a prolific novelist who celebrated sexual pleasure and invented a language for it at a time when women writers were inhibited about dealing with the topic. Female sexuality in a male-dominated world and the joys and pains of love served as her main themes, and her novels — Cheri, La Chatte, and Gigi, among them — blurred the boundaries between fact and fiction long before autobiographical novels became commonplace. She married three times, had male and female lovers, and for a time supported herself as a mime, dancing semi-nude in music halls throughout France. When she died, she received the first state funeral the French Republic had ever given a woman.

Colette's writing was inspired by entertainers, courtesans, an aristocratic Parisian lesbian subculture, and fin de siA]cle gay aesthetes. She admired those who lived on the sexual edge and was accused of moral corruption in intellectual matters — she published in pro-Vichy, anti-Semitic journals during the Occupation, even as she fought to keep her Jewish third husband from deportation. Kristeva deftly examines Colette's controversial life and work and considers two of her most important influences, HonorA(c) de Balzac and Marcel Proust. In a multifaceted approach, Kristeva considers Colette's use of metaphor, the characters in her novels, and the development of her writing within the context of her life. Paying particular attention to the language the French writer used to say the unsayable and name the unnameable, Kristeva offers an elegant and sophisticated critique of Colette's psychological conflicts, particularly her sexual relationships and how these conflicts are both recorded in and resolved through the act of writing.

Appealing to Freudian and Lacanian concepts such as the Oedipus complex, perversion, the symbolic, and melancholy, Kristeva opens Colette's oeuvre to psychoanalytic interpretation. The impression that remains is of a woman intent on experiencing the world's pleasures — its jouissance — in a melding with the world's flesh.

The third book in Kristeva's trilogy on female genius, "Colette" interlaces commentary on the life and work of this notorious French novelist who made it possible for women to write erotic literature. The result is an elegant and sophisticated critique filled with psychoanalytic insight.

Published on the 50th anniversary of Colette's death, Kristeva's 'Colette' will be considered a major breakthrough in the understanding of one of the great creative minds of the 20th century. Translated by Jane Marie Todd.