Colette's celebrated novels about an older courtesan and her young lover, now in a new translation and published in one volume. Colette’s Chéri (1920) and its sequel, The End of Chéri (1926), are widely considered her masterpieces. In sensuous, elegant prose, the two novels explore the evolving inner lives and the intimate relationship of an unlikely couple: Léa de Lonval, a middle-aged former courtesan, and Fred Peloux, twenty-five years her junior, known as Chéri. The two have been involved for years, and it is time for Chéri to get on with life, to make something of himself, but he, the personification of male beauty and vanity, doesn’t know how to go about it. It is time, too, for Léa to let go ofChéri and the sensual life that has been hers, and yet this is more easily resolved than done. Chéri marries, but once married he is restless and is inevitably drawn back to his mistress, as she is to him. And yet to reprise their relationship is only to realize even more the inevitability of its end. That end will come when Chéri, back from World War I, encounters a world that the war has changed through and through. Lost in his memories of time past, he is irremediably lost to the busy present. Paul Eprile’s new translation of these two celebrated novels brings out a vivid sensuality and acute intelligence that past translations have failed to capture.
Chéri Série
Tato série se ponoří do vášnivého, avšak pomíjivého vztahu mezi mladým mužem a starší ženou. S něžnou upřímností a soucitným vhledem zkoumá složitost touhy, lásky a stárnutí. Autorka mistrovsky vykresluje portréty postav s impresionistickým stylem, který odhaluje hluboké lidské emoce a znepokojení spojené s mládím a středním věkem.
Doporučené pořadí čtení
Osou příběhu odehrávajícího se před a po I.světové válce je láska mezi stárnoucí metresou a bohatým mladíkem. Ten se ožení s mladou inteligentní dívkou a po návratu z války nemůže pochopit okolní dychtivý svět. Vrací se proto ke své bývalé milence kde jej však čeká velké zklamání. Volí proto jediné smutné východisko.
Související knihy
Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics: Chéri and The Last of Chéri
- 256 stránek
- 9 hodin čtení
Chéri , together with The Last of Chéri , is a classic story of a love affair between a very young man and a charming older woman. The amour between Fred Peloux, the beautiful gigolo known as Chéri, and the courtesan Léa de Lonval tenderly depicts the devotion that stems from desire, and is an honest account of the most human preoccupations of youth and middle age. With compassionate insight Colette paints a full-length double portrait using an impressionistic style all her own. "A wonderful subject [treated with] intelligence, mastery, and understanding of the least-admitted secrets of the flesh." ― André Gide