Proust vs Colette: A conversation with Antoine Compagnon, from L’Académie française

[Music] welcome V Avenue my name is Renee Ketchum and I curate the cultural offerings of afusa and I'm honored to welcome everyone today to PR versus Colette a conversation with antoan compo from the academy LA Academy Fran and Grand Mercy to our sponsors France today and bonjour par afusa is the largest aliance Franz Network in the world helping 25,000 Learners of French each year learn French live French and love French visit your local chapter or AF usa.org to learn about some of our wonderful National events coming up um we have Lou with the Melville Foundation Sarah burnhard how to retire in France with our one of our favorites Adrien Leeds and again one film one Federation a discussion of B FL a few Logistics please stay on mute during the presentation stay on speaker view please put all of your questions in the chat and if you have technical issues sign back in in a couple of minutes using the original Zoom link this event is being recorded for our YouTube channel and the total runtime will be 1 hour I'm honored to introduce antoan compo professor ameritus of French literature at colle of France and the blanch WN professor of French and comparative literature at Columbia University author of 1989 and France inter 2022 equally is thrilled to introduce my friend ferish pru ferish is the founder of the Pu Society of Greenwich a nonprofit literary group her website will be in the chat but it is the pr society.org since 2007 fish has been leading a monthly PR Discussion Group engaged in close reading of Al the group started its fourth round of reading PR in January 2023 welcome ferish day welcome Antoine thank you R um hello everyone Welcome to our today's event uh professor of companion it's an honor and a thril uh to have you with us today to talk about these two great stars of French literature pruce and Colette who were contemporaries and knew each other uh p is of course considered one of the most influential writers of the 20th century and Colette is one of the most beloved female authors in France she is the first woman author who was granted the state funeral in France which is quite extraordinary her writings about women experiences at the time was quiet revolutionary however um some people might say that her work lacks the complexity and voluminosity of Cru work so a lot of people might wonder why um you have chosen um Colette as the literary personality to compare to PR uh what is your response to to them oh you're muted um yes I think now I'm unmuted yes yeah well thank you for organizing this this event I'm glad to discuss host and Colette with you you notice that I'm teaching at this point a seminar at Colombia which is called PR versus Colette so I should explain probably why I decided to teach such a seminar and I think there are both I would say uh personal reasons and uh more objective reasons first about the let's say the personal reasons as you know as you introduced me I've been working on poost for almost 40 years even more than 40 years since the early 1980s uh when I started working on the edition of pro for the the new Playard that was being realized in the uh 1980s uh so the work on post is really um yes has been uh longstanding uh now uh Colette how did I start working on Colette uh what happened is that uh in those series of radio broadcasts that I've been doing for France uh which started in the I think the first one was on Mon I think it was in 2012 I would say uh I have done year after year a number of these uh radio broadcasts uh on FR for the summer I did mon I did ble one year Pascal and I think that was when I was invited by FR when the book uh on Pascal because the book always came out a year after the radio shows uh I was on FR at the radio one morning discussing the book on Pascal and on the phone there was a woman who said uh but you've done only men in this series of on French authors it's it's only men this is uh this is not good this is not acceptable there should be a woman at some point and I said well I would enjoy doing collect and at after the when I left the studio the radio Studio the head of La BL who is now a good friend don't me well let's do Colette next year so uh I was uh I had to do Colette uh of course I know Colette well I say quite well I would say for at least two reasons uh the first reason is when when I was in Primary School in the 1950s uh in E Prim Colette was really a a fixture of the in in the 1950s all French children were well acquainted with Colette's work I would say we had dict from Lon Clin which was probably the most popular books the house of Clin description of the village the parents all the all that went on in this little Village of deep France so Colette belongs to my the deepest of my culture and then as you also know I've been teaching at Colombia for many years next year it will be 40 years teaching at Colombia so over the years there was let's say a desire to uh introduce women in the celi at Colombia in most in All American universities so I've been teaching Colette quite regularly at Colombia I introduced I would say most of the novels of Colette in various courses and seminars at Colombia the cloin series The sherei of course laan sherei the end of Shi which is a great book on World War I and on the end of the consequences of World War I the the issue of demobilization of course I taught [Music] Leon break of so I taught over the years many of those great books by colle so uh I accepted to do the radio series on Colette a couple of years ago I can't remember when it was probably 2020 or 2021 and I enjoyed doing it a lot it was easier than Pascal uh it was it was a joy to work on Colette to re I spent a summer reading the four volumes of the plad and it's four volumes it's a it's a huge Colette worked wrote for I mean Colette died much older than pu puce died when he was 50 Colette died when she was 80 so so she she she she had time to write still more than po so I enjoyed it so much that uh uh well I thought I shouldn't stop working on goette uh and what happened also is that in 2021 and 2022 I was uh mobilized by the uh celebration first in 2021 of uh uh the birth of pro 150 years earlier in 1871 and then in 2022 to uh the Centenary of the death of Roost in 1922 for for two years I was heavily mobilized by post I organized two exhibitions one that took place at the biblo national called La fabri the love which was really on how the novel came to be and the other exhibition uh was at the mudis the Jewish Museum in Paris the exhibition was called on the mother's side and at that time had I had written a book which came out the same year [Music] called so on the Jewish side of Po this book is now translated and will come out at Columbia University passed under the title post uh I forget the title now post a Jewish way so this will come out in a couple of months in English so I was quite busy with post for two years 2122 because of those centennials and suddenly without realizing that uh another commemoration with happened that Colette was born in 1873 so suddenly in 2023 this year I was thrown into without expecting it it was totally improvised I was thrown into the celebration of Colette when I did those radio uh BR broadcast a couple of years ago and when I published Anette some with Colette probably two years ago nobody thought of the centenal it was out of the landscape while the Sentinel of PR had been planned for at least three years because when you do an exhibition you have to start preparing it at least two or three years earlier with Colette nothing was planned and suddenly at the end just a year ago at the end of 2022 I was uh thrown into the celebration you might have noticed that I did a sort of a small Playard an anthology of Colette for the plad uh we started it last October so it was very everything was improvised on about Colette uh the Playard came out in February 23 and then all through 23 I was involved in various celebrations of uh the uh birth of Colette 150 years ago in February uh 1873 last week I was in in Europe and I even spoke of Colette in Monaco in Monte Carlo you might remember that Colette was a very good friend of the prince Pierre de Mano who was the father of Prince re de Monaco and the father of Prince Albert Monaco so the grandfather of the present ruler of Monaco and so they wanted to organize a celebration Colette was very close to the prince Pierre in the last years of her life she she went every summer for a good month in Monaco as a guest of the prince Pierre and the prince re by the way Pierre de Monaco who was born kak was also a friend of Ro it's another connection there are many many connections between K and post this is another one uh their their Monaco connection so I was in Monaco last week to speak of Colette in front of the family [Music] of Prince Albert and high school students it was a very nice combination of people for a commemoration of Colette so Colette has kept me very busy this year 2023 after PR kept me very busy in 21 and 22 so that's why I decided to have a seminar on PO and collect and of course there are also very obvious reasons which are not as let's say circumstantial P was born in as I said in 1871 kette was born in 1873 they belong to exactly the same generation they are the same age they had the same culture they frequented the same mil in Paris in the 1890s uh and they are members of this group that I call uh the the group deis the group of six who are really the modern Classics of French literature these great writers were born in just a couple of years Valerie Jade clel PR Colette and Peggy the six these six writers were really the most important many of them linked with the NRF with the Noel Rie Fran were born between 1869 and 187 3 in four years they were all born and they are really the writers modern Classics who occupied the first half of the 20th century and especially the years after World War I the 1920s the 1930s where the years where they were at their Peak they were in their 50s and they were the major writers of course Piggy died uh during World War I in September 1914 H died in 1922 the others survived World War II until Valerie died in 49 jid in 51 so they they lived after World War II so it's a great generation Colette belongs fully to that group and to that generation moreover we can say that she's the only woman in this group group of six and we can also say that she's probably the most popular writer uh with PR with PR nowadays if I think of this group this group of six PR and Colette are the two who still are read widely uh who I mean who the two celebrations are proof of their uh uh popularity so you see there are plenty of reasons to confront PR Colette and of course they knew each other as I said there were members of the same Salon in the 18 90s in Paris Colette arrived in Paris in 1893 just after she married uh Willie HRI goer V and they in particular both and Colette and her husband H go V were frequent guests of the salon of Madame arave Madame kave who was the Mistress of anat France so they both went to this Salon it was I think every Wednesday there was a dinner then people would come after dinner there would be music Madame arm cave is one of the models for Madame vuran in the reer and she also appears in Cline AAR so we have the same model for the this woman who has a major Salon both in PR and in Colette and of course when PR and Colette met in Paris around 1895 in this Salon they didn't get along very well they were not the same type po of course was a was a snob po was probably quite heavily gay and Colette was Brazen Fearless brush and they didn't get along they were not the same type at all in the 1890s in a uh including aari where Colette introduces a gay character uh the gay character inoc sense represents Pro the pro she knew in those Salon of the 1890s and there is a passage where she mentions in the manuscript she describes uh the a person she met at the salon she calls him a which is really anti-semitic it was corrected by Willie who corrected it but but wrote it gives you an idea of what she thought of host in 1895 19 1896 they were really not at the same band although they met at in the same salon and of course then came the ders affair and they were on opposite sides at the time of the dfus affair dfus P of course claims to have been one of the first dfar it's a bit of an exaggeration because the first dfar was dfus brother mat or Bernard Lazar but still PR was very active in 1897 1898 in the refus affair he is the one who obtained the signature of anat France who wrote the preface [Music] to he obtained the signature of anat France the day after jaus to support Zola in his fight for a new trial of dfus while Colette and uh and Willie who I just said were quite an Semitic were anti-us ists at the time of the dfus affair so the the the the connection is is not they knew each other in the 1890s but of course they LED very different life in the in the 1900s it's the time of the relationship between Colette and Missi Colette when she separates from really lives with a woman quasi officially for five or six years between 1905 and 1911 she lives with Missi the Maris de who dresses as a woman she is quite scandalous she on on stage she acts as a mime as a p in pantomimes and she uncovers her breast she's everybody in France has scen has seen Colette's breast in the 1900s so this is not the type of PR Ador so when do they really connect deeply when do they when does the connection because they loved each other later in the later years when does it happen uh I would say that it happens when Colette reads com swans way she is immediately conquered by Swans way and this is very striking how does she read it you see they have they they are in the same mil so they have many common friends and relationships uh the The Men Who tells Colette that she should read combre and she reads it in early 1914 as soon as it is published it's published in November 1913 she is among the first readers of swans way and uh and and andan the man who introduces to is L Rober L Rober is a close friend of BR in those years 1912 1913 uh Lu Rober is the first reader of the uh of the types script one of the first readers of the typescript and proofs gal and proofs of swans way in 1913 and he there's a there are numerous letters between PR and L Rober in 1913 while he reads the the proofs of swans way and gives advice to poost for instance he's he doesn't like the title Swan's way you think it's banal and poor but he is very close to PO and he is the one who recommends uh to uh collect that you should read combre as I said she loves it and we understand why she loves it she loves it because there's a description of the village com and I think that we can say that she would be influenced by Com when she starts describing s her own village in uh in lisonin so she loves it then what happens then what happens they meet again they meet during the war a couple of times at The Ritz hotel where host is a frequent Patron in those years 1917 1918 he goes to the Ritz and he has dinner with Colette they meet there and they they reconnect but they reconnect and at that point she has been so impressed by uh by the book that the the the reservations are completely forgotten at that point and at that point also PR reads reads collect and there is a beautiful letter uh in 1919 after PR has read mitsu mitsu which is a short novel between a short story and a novel and he is very moved by mitsu and we can also understand why he's moved by mitsu because it's the it's the story it's a story that takes place during the war in Paris between a little actress of the Music Hall mitsu and a leftenant who is in Paris during the war for a leave on leave from the FES and from the front and of course as you know at that point is writing about the war in we have those long passages on the war seen from Paris uh in the Years 1917 that period of the war so they both were work on the war seen from uh not the front but the uh the back of the war and and they learned from each other in those years and so in the in the final years of Bruce life let's say between 1919 and his death in [Music] 1922 the mutual admiration is obvious they write each other they send their books with with inscriptions that are very complimentary and they of course one could say uh there's an alliance between Colette and PR between 1919 and 1922 because they are I think we can say they are the most important writers in those years PO is already a classic P received the was awarded the pron in 1919 for the je so his Eminence is obvious is already I mean is acknowledge as a great writer and I would say that Colette too Colette is is a great writer already Colette has been a great writer since very early on when she published the clothing in 19 1900 she was immediately recognized in 1910 she had a couple of votes in her favor for the pronu in 1919 her reputation is obvious in 1920 she publishes sherei sherei which is probably one of the best novels one of her masterpieces and with Sheri everybody uh knows that Colette is a great writer so I think this is there's a sort of interplay between Colette and po also in those years Colette is the literary director of the of a major daily L man so so Colette in a sense is a power for woman uh she uh she can uh order articles on for so I think that in those years there is a complicity between PR and Colette in those years they appreciate each other they recognize each other and of course PR will soon die very young as I said at 50 and in the 30 years that follow that follow 1922 until colet death in 1954 she will write she will come back many times she will write at least I would say I haven't counted them but I I would say it's at least six pieces on Post in various uh Publications uh at the same time on about her memories of pro and also on her work so uh I think that PR liked Colette and PR and Colette loved PR even though as I said initially when they first met they they couldn't really get along so of course you said uh is it the same uh are they both as great riters last year after I I spoke on colet and PR I don't remember where one of my uh old colleagues from the sbon someone I really respect came to me and said will you agree that but Colette is a b is a great writer but Colette is a good writer and I said no I don't agree I think they are both great writers I think PR is a great writer obviously and I think that Colette is not only a good writer as I said she was always popular she wrote a number of best sellers in the 1920s and 1930s and even the Cline the first series of the Cline which he didn't sign was a was an excellent was was bestseller so she wrote a number of bestsellers and we and you know we have this Prejudice if it sells it's not a good book remember what Z said after if it sells from the point of view of posterity it's not good well Colette sold many books in her lifetime and I think she is a great writer and I would put her in the same league as post if you want my conclusion well um prce in his books he says that work of a genius is not going to be understood by his contemporaries it's the future Generations who would understand the works of aus better but you're right I mean they are um um I think what what is um really common between the two is that both of them re revolutionized the writing I mean colet what she writes about uh women's experiences and their everyday life and the concept of feminine desire is something that was not done before and proce with is writing you know the um famous for is the stream of Consciousness again is something that was not done so they both really influenced the 20th century style of writing so you you know you're a pro scholar we know that that you have written extensively and even given uh lectures and uh thought courses on PR your book on Colette andet is the only book you have done on um on Colette um and um I just finished reading it it's um I found it an extraordinary study of not only Colette here is the cover of your book not only Colette and her work but is full of insights into um into the similarities between their writing and you said something that very intriguing at least it it intrigued me a lot and you said that um um Colette discovered uh involuntary memory for PR um do you like to elaborate on that I I think that's very interesting well uh involuntary memory is not a great invention everybody experiences involuntary memory I I simply wanted to say that in in Clin aari there is an episode of involuntary memory but we all I think most of us experienced involuntary memory but we didn't write the rearch so PR of involuntary memory made the a masterpiece what what connects p and Colette deeply is that they're both writers of sensation sensation and Sensibility is at the uh essence of both FR and Colette and I would say a mistrust of intellect they don't want to be intellectuals they want to base their art on sensation and this is also I think this is what Colette realized when she read com which she didn't expect that this snobbish gay uh guy that she met in the salon would be able to write such a fantastic description of experiences of sensation Sensations ASAS in com and she realized that they were close that they were similar from the point of view of uh yes basing their art on on Sensations and not on intellect so uh yes yes they are very close from that point of view but of course they uh their writing style is very different so we have to what they do with those Sensations is very different when you read the first page of Clin alol I mean CL the first page of Clin alol is very impressive by its short very short sentences very modern very modern and when you compare it with ET the first page of swans way we are in a completely different style nevertheless they are very close uh they are very Innovative both of them Innovative uh when I am asked what is a great writer I say there are both great writers a great writer is someone after whom the French literary language is no longer exactly the same a great writer is someone who has introduced an inflection in uh in literary pose and they boed did and there are not that many writers who have altered uh literary French we when we read Colette and when we read P we know that they did that and that and also we know that this was immediately perceived when PR published when Colette published Clin but especially the the the novels of the 1920s Shi Etc there was a consensus that this was a new style in order to transmit this experience of sensation so I think that they both contributed differently to uh the evolution of liter French yeah exactly um my next question is about the concept of Auto fiction in both these two authors um many people believe that PR La is about prce himself that the narrator is uh is Marcel prce even though there are differences that the narrator's mother is not Jewish the narrator is probably one of the rare male characters in the book who is 100% you know uh strictly straight they you know most everybody else all the other male characters turn out to be homosexual um and U but there are similarities they both want to be authors they're sickly and they're uh social climbers um so um and but in Pro book this concept of autop fiction is um um strengthened by the fact that halfway through the book like thousands of pages after the start of the book he all of a sudden very you know playfully he says well let's assume that my NM is the same as the author's name marel so we but it's obvious you know usually in books you either the narrator stays nameless all through the book or somewhere at the start of the book we find out what his name is so p is playing mind games with us um so that's why it's not obvious is it you know um him in the book or is it parts of it is him or not um how about Colette is I'm I know that some of the books like vagabon is her experiences after divorcing Willie and having to struggle you know she was very poor at the time um but um but I think she was more straightforward in um depicting um herself as the character in her books write more on her life experiences well so you mentioned the uh what's now considered a genre autofiction this this is a term that was introduced quite recently didn't exist at the time of PR and Colette it seems to me that we can cons that they were that they were both let's say prophets of Auto fiction they both introduced Auto fiction even though uh the concept didn't exist Auto fiction meaning that uh they introduce it's not autobiography it's but they introduced characters that uh in a sense have the name of the author so you mentioned the passage where the uh narrator of the reserch uses the first name Marcel in a way we have exactly the same uh figure in post in Colette's novel which is also the most ambitious which is is lour break of day published in the late 1920s which when she's really at the uh full of her literary power inour there is a central character whose name is Colette and this is Colette and and there are a number of other characters which are fictional so there's a mixture of colet being a writer present as a writer and fiction in fact Colette Colette has played with her identity all through her literary career remember the first books I signed Willie uh the name of her the the pen name of the workshop of her husband h v then she will sign the pr poems of L laog de they are signed Colette Willie but remember Colette is not her first name her name is Gabriel Colette is the name of her father jul Colette cap Colette so Colette is her last name the name of her father so she signs Colette Willie then she will sign Colette the juvel when she marries H juvel in 192 the first book that she signs Colette is Leon uh how is it translated hyping seed in 1923 and after that she would always sign Colette from 1923 to her death her pen name her real name is Colette and everybody calls her Colette juvel when he her lover in the 19 early 1920s doesn't call her Gabrielle he calls her Colette which is her pen name which is the name of her father this is a bit crazy and also remember she gave the name the first name Colette to her daughter when she had a daughter in 1913 she was called Colette which would be forbidden today now the French code according to the French code you cannot give to a child as a first name the last name of the father or of the mother because this is to create this creates difficult situations a difficult situation which was created for Colette's daughter so kette played with her identity in her work all through her life until the end and uh yes this is something that she I think discovered in PR and recognize in I think I mean my thesis this is that after reading PR Colette was influenced by PR she was influenced in the way she could play with the village of her youth she would influence in the way she could play with her identity in her work and she was also influenced in ways that we might also discuss the way she could treat sexuality in her work yes so so I think uh Colette got a lot from PR from Reading PR and she was a good reader of PR yeah uh yeah you mentioned sexuality of course I mean you said something about proce being a snob and kette was not of course but um there are other differences like prce was wealthy and Colette had to struggle I mean pce was wealthy until towards the end of his life and he l all his Investments um but they were pce also was very he didn't like scandals like he even invited Jean Lauren to a duel because he called him shot which sort of means precious or um insinuates that he's a homosexual he didn't like that um Colette on the contrary she thrives on Scandal she like you said she Beed her breast and she kissed uh woman lover on the stage that you know ended up closing I think the play or something so they were two different people but sexuality of all different kinds it's something that is in inherent part of both these two authors writings um Colette however she criticized Pro for not understanding the truth about um uh love between women she said I mean this is something I learned by reading your book andet she said that he dedicated twice as much of his writing to Sodom than to gomorah um and she of course wrote about lesbianism openly she identified as one and as you said she left her husband really for a woman so that says a lot about her but do you like to comment on this aspect yes yes first on what you said about pce being wealthy and Colette being well she came from the Bourgeois but a bourjois that had no more money I mean that her father just didn't manage the money the wealth of the family well so Colette always said that she so this introduces a big difference mus PR and Colette PR when you read PR resarch it's about a writer's vocation about being a writer it's all pro has to do with becoming a writer a literary vocation while Colette always said that she was not a writer she wrote in order to make money she be she became a journalist but she would have done she was also an actor she was a dancer uh she was a comedian she was a Jour she she was a journalist mainly she even sold Cosmetics she would do anything to earn money and she always claimed that she didn't have a literary vocation she hated that word she hated literature she always said no literature no literature was the motto of her writing so there there is a very a major opposition between PR and Colette and I think it has to do with being a man and being a woman a literary vocation is a man's business a man's ambition it's men who want to be famous writers Colette didn't want to be a famous writer she want wanted to she wrote Because it's was a way of making money then there is a sex as you said uh Colette when she read Sodor immediately wrote to PO that this was a a major book this was she was imp she said I always wanted to write on homosexuality and you did it and you did it and I can no longer do it but then this she didn't try to P but she said later that PR uh there was nothing to say on sodam after PR but there was everything to say about gomorra because PR hadn't understood anything about gomorra and the explanation so one of the most ambitious books of Colette is Le pure andure the pure and the impure which was published in 1931 32 under another title s pleas and then took the the title Pur it's not a novel it's not a narrative it's really an essay it's the most theoretical I said there is no theory in Colette but in Le it's speculative she wants to write an essay on various uh sexual transgressions so a number of sexual transgressions are analyzed in leure and of course the most the the most chap numerous chapters are on lesbianism there are four chapters on lesbianism in the pur lure there is only one on Don jism one on uh on Sodom on male homosexuality but the the central part is on female homosexuality and Colette analyzes all aspects of sexual of U of of of a female homosexuality and her Theory her thesis that gor doesn't exist gor doesn't exist while Sodom exists I think that uh uh today feminists would consider it a bit anachronistic and a bit uh let's say perhaps even homophobic so I they wouldn't agree with this the but still uh it's probably the most daring of Colette books and and we cannot forget nowadays that quette is one of the first writers who explicitly dealt with uh transsexuality uh which which P didn't touch upon which nobody touched upon at the time and as I said Colette had a much experience of it because she lived for many years with a woman who wanted to be a man who dressed like a man lived like like a man behaved like a man so she knew about it first hand and wanted to write about it so uh uh yes and I think that is a response toor so it's another powerful connection between the two one of many yeah um we don't have much time and we have some questions but I wanted just to say um quickly that um I found something very poetic in your book about Colette you said for her she saw everything in blue not only the sky and the sea that are blue but also the air the rain the milk the day I I thought that was interesting and rather poetic so before um question and answers um you um um I know you're busy with your project at L Museum um you're going to be very busy next year because another anniversary coming up right Colette's death in 1954 seven years so be prepared um but are you working on a new book that you like to share with us no no no I'm not not working on a book at this point I have to I have to take some take a break yeah okay good good there's one issue that we should probably discuss which we haven't discussed is the role of the mother yes that was one of my questions but uh we don't have much time but please go ahead maybe a little bit Yeah again the mother the mother as we know is Central in in in com and the whole but kette will say later in her life that her mother Sido is the most important character in my life she said the person Cal so there again it's the confusion between life and fiction and in fact Sido after she died in 1912 be not before but after she died became ever more important in the novel and we should mention the book that is called Sido Sido which is one of the most beautiful ones which is an evocation of the mother so the mother childhood we might suggest that it's also a theme that goette thought she could explore after reading PR because she didn't explore it before the publication of com it's only after reading combre that she found a way to explore literarily uh her mother and her childhood yeah and that's sort of also goes with that semi autobiographical nature of Po writing because he wrote those two uh chapters combre based on his on childhood experiences at e or yes um okay do you you please thank thank you Fain thank you Professor compon we have we have a couple of questions in the chat that I think have already been addressed by Professor compon but we one in particular as you had mentioned that that that Colette um was very much influenced by combre um Manuel uy is asking could PR have been influenced by any of Colette's early works could PR have been influenced by Colette early work uh the Colette's early work being the the cloin uh being the the cloin written under the the signature of wheie uh what aspects of Colette could have influenced PR uh perhaps the presence of the homosexual character as I said in claudina there is a young osexual character which is by chance called Marcel it's a coincidence is it a coincidence I don't know because she knew Bru in those years uh the introduction of there there are not many homosexual characters in French novels before col in 1900 or 1901 uh but I don't think we have any reference to the cloin in uh PR he certainly was aware of the novels uh as I said the first book that PO mentions is mitsu in 1919 and this is because of the war circumstances is the war seen from Paris we have a few more questions just two more questions if we have time um Alan wolfy is asking can you please comment on P je on but has not much to do with Colette it was never published between 1952 uh two years before Ked died there's not much connection uh I don't see exactly what I could say of course in John there is a lot about the draus affair is and as I suggested on the dfus in the dfus case and Bruce were on opposite sides of the commitment I don't see much what I could say about Jean uh through the Colette connection yeah thank you there Echoes of of it in but yeah you're right there is nothing so I think we have one more question um Professor Beth gesk is asking Professor compo did you read the letters between Colette and Andre s who became a journalist invited by Colette uh I don't remember reading those letters no Andre salmon no I don't remember reading those letters there Colette wrote a lot I mean there are many volumes of letters uh from Colette unfortunately we don't have the letters to her mother which were destroyed which would have been the most important collection of letters and then we just have a final comment in case you have time to join us at some point in the future that Emily is asking I would love to hear a future presentation on PR and mon ah PR and mon yeah there's a lot to say about PR and mon as there's a lot to say about PR and KET well p and Mon and mon what's so impressive about the two is that they both died before finishing the book there was and also they wrote a single book this is a big difference about Po and Colette which we didn't even think of mentioning Ro wrote one book Colette wrote I don't know 30 or 40 books one after each other one almost every year kette post it's it's always a question what could PR have written after the rer if he hadn't died so young of course he would have written nothing because his Destiny was to die writing the rer as mon died adding marginalia in the essays they are books about death both the resarch and the essays so yeah yes there's a lot to say about and mon well Professor comp and F prio thank you so much for an extraordinary presentation I'm watching things go up in the chat um I think everybody was AB is absolutely thrilled with the presentation and we look forward to welcoming you back thank you very much thank you thank you everyone Happy Thanksgiving to everyone thank you everyone thank you onto companion thank you bye-bye