Cheri ; And, the Last of Cheri

Rating:
Summary: The bigger they are¿
Review: The first book, Cheri, is a rather trite love story about the affair of an older woman with her young lover. There are certain enjoyable sequences, and the sado-masochistic undercurrents keep things interesting, but the novel doesn't have much depth. It's the second novel, The Last of Cheri, where things truly get rich. Watch as the carefree, rich, beautiful Cheri slowly disintegrates into despair. The character, none too likeable in the first book, becomes almost sympathetic as he approaches his inevitable destruction. Money no longer interests him, his earlier hedonism no longer gives him the least satisfaction. Life, and his wife, have become a bore. Once having tasted the stratosphere of love, and loved the goddess Lea, existence in the ordinary can give him no satisfaction. All he has is memory. His best moments are behind him and the future can't offer anything to compare. All of his old acquaintances are busying and satisfying themselves with their grand little projects. These seem trivial to Cheri, even (especially!) his wife's noble charitable work. How pointless these endeavors are compared with love.

On the one hand it is almost satisfying to watch this shallow, callous young man's fall. He is the kind of person who, in the first book anyway, one would like to see get his. Yet one can not fail to sympathize, even empathize, with Cheri. We are not so different, we ordinary and haughty folk. We all feed on the same sustenance. Trying to live off memories, trying to revive the past and failing, these are things we humans do from time to time. For some, it consumes us.

Rating:
Summary: The boy who couldn't grow up
Review: These two short novels by the French writer Colette cover a territory with which I have to admit to being completely unfamiliar, that of a young man's romantic education by a much older "kept" woman -- a lifestyle I assume to be uniquely French. "Cheri" is the nickname of the man in question (real name: Fred), and his protectress and instructress in the arts of Eros is named Lea, who, an implied courtesan like his mother Madame Peloux, is kept wealthy by one or more benefactors. Having grown up fatherless and free from discipline, Cheri is immature and spoiled, self-assured that he will be amply supported by his good looks and the middle-aged women who dote on him.

At twenty-five, after living with Lea for several years, Cheri decides to marry a rich, younger girl named Edmee, and Lea understands that the time has come to let him go. Their separation is not as easy as that, however; the bottom line is that he truly loves Lea, more so than he does Edmee. With Lea he has developed a special relationship that somewhat perversely combines aspects of mother-son, boyfriend-girlfriend, and teacher-pupil. His greatest chagrin is the realization that he was even naive enough to assume that he was Lea's first and only lover, never conjecturing the sources of her income.

Colette's apparent purpose in these novels is to display a dramatic transformation of character. At nineteen, Cheri is a joyful and frivolous youth; at thirty, a discontented and disillusioned man suffering from an idle lifestyle and a loveless marriage. He is unable to relate to his wife Edmee, who does charity work for a hospital and hobnobs with various public figures -- selfless gestures that are alien to his personality. His involvement in World War I has given him another hard lesson in maturity, and now he is lost in the new post-war society, a world that has no use for a thirty-year-old man who acts like a child and is hopelessly in love with a woman old enough to be his mother.

It seems to me that Colette's literary value lies in her skill at depicting early twentieth century bourgeois France in a clear, conversational style that is more accessible than the impressionistic difficulties of Proust and Gide. In my estimate, her closest contemporary English counterpart would be Somerset Maugham; both writers manage to extract colorful but realistic drama out of the lives of ordinary people using straightforward but intelligent and sensitive prose that often evokes a certain elegance of setting, but Colette's characterization and attitude are distinctly French. Her American counterpart would be more difficult to identify.

Rating:
Summary: Strange bedfellows
Review: This pair of novels deals with an aging demimondaine (courtesan) and her very much younger lover. It is set in Paris of the Belle Epoque and then in post WWI.

Lea is approaching that "certain age" and though still beautiful, knows her time is passing as glamourous member of the demi-monde of Paris. She struggles against the ravages of age, as women who derive their power from their beauty all must. Her lover, Cheri, is a spoiled young man, son of another famous demimondaine and ballet dancer. He is rich, has everything he could want in life--except the will to live. Lea, entranced by his beauty, takes him under her wing to restore his health and they end up, predictably, lovers.

But the love affair takes a peculiar turn. Lea turns Cheri loose to marry, as he must, but can't forget him. But worse off is Cheri, who marries his young wife for money and abandons her because she bores him.

Lea's inexhaustible zest for life pulls her through any situation, but what of Cheri, whose desire to live has never been as robust?

A great set of novels that would have made a wonderful film.