Writers in Normandy Switzerland have chosen Colette, a famous French writer known throughout the world, as guest of honor at their 2024 book fair, at the Roche d’Oëtre gallery. Jean-Pierre Manesse-Dupont, writer and member of the association, explains this choice to us.
What motivated the association to make this anachronistic decision?
We worked on her and her work, on the centenary of the publication budding wheat published in 1923. It was the theme of our literary outing this year in Granville, where we went meet her
at the Richard-Anacreon Museum of Modern Art. It will also be present in volume V of our collective book for 2025.
How is Colette’s writing important for us today?
Provocative in her writing, in her way of living, she was the vanguard of feminism; she did not consider herself as such, but defined herself as being a sovereign woman, a true woman, affirming as I am, I am myself and I don’t have to keep quiet about what I am as a woman!
She claimed the right to be herself, not shying away from do what men themselves agreed to do legally
.
She must have come across as provocative, then?
Yes, she naturally was; freed, liberated and beyond moral rules. Recognized throughout the world in her writing as a writer and journalist; adored on stage; entrepreneur by opening a beauty and makeup salon, where she sold the perfumes she made. She frequented all the cultural and literary circles of her time. Colette was a great lover of life and cooking!
How will you bring it back to life this weekend?
Colette’s spirit will hover over the living room; we will bring it to life through its books and through the texts that will be read. A Collette still relevant today through her affirmation of claiming her place as a woman in society as equal to a man; dimension that is still difficult to recognize in a woman today. Still relevant today for her love of animals and nature, which she was able to describe with great sensuality and simplicity. Colette still alive, she who loved to say: I will only stop blooming to stop living.
Saturday September 28 and Sunday September 29book fair and photo exhibition. Gallery of Roche d’Oëtre. Inauguration Saturday at 11 a.m. Reception from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday, open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Contact: tel. 07 06 48 68 51.
