colette

When she does not find love, she may find poetry. Because she does not act, she observes, she feels, she records; a color, a smile awakens profound echoes within her; her destiny is outside her, scattered in cities already built, on the faces of men already marked by life, she makes contact, she relishes with passion and yet in a manner more detached, more free, than that of a young man. Being poorly integrated in the universe of humanity and hardly able to adapt herself therein, she, like the child, is able to see it objectively; instead of being interested solely in her grasp on things, she looks for their significance; she catches their special outlines, their unexpected metamorphoses. She rarely feels a bold creativeness, and usually she lacks the technique of self-expression; but in her conversation, her letters, her literary essays, her sketches, she manifests an original sensitivity. The young girl throws herself into things with ardor, because she is not yet deprived of her transcendence; and the fact that she accomplishes nothing, that she is nothing, will make her impulses only the more passionate. Empty and unlimited, she seeks from within her nothingness to attain All.

“I draw roses. What if I do nothing but draw roses? Why not? Maybe at the end one of them will start talking to me. Will tell me unheard, undreamed stories, like how it feels to be under rains, to grow up in a garden, to be face to face with the sky, to have thorns and unbearably beautiful scents, to be strong and short lived, to come through life without making a fuss about it? What if a rose bush walked toward me and took me into its affection?”

good things will happen 🧿

Elle s'est endormie un soir, croisant ses bras, / Ses bras souples et blancs sur sa poitrine frêle, / Et fermant pour toujours ses yeux clairs, déjà las / De regarder ce monde, exil trop lourd pour elle. // Elle vivait de fleurs, de rêves, d'idéal (...)