Intermittent Journal

The title is a small misdirection. Despite calling itself a journal, the book is not a diary and keeps no running dated record; it is a collection of late chronicles and tales, gathered under a title that suggests something more private than the pieces actually are. That gap between title and contents is itself characteristic of the late, curated way these volumes were assembled.

It was made as an object as much as a text. The first edition was a luxury printing limited to 480 copies, part of Goudeket's effort to position Colette as an author of rare, collectible books. The following year it was absorbed into Volume XIV of her Œuvres complètes, gaining a few more pieces in the process.

Intermittent Journal belongs with The Flower of Youth and Stroke by Stroke among the late Le Fleuron volumes, and with At Hand among the collections drawn into the fourteenth volume of the collected works.

There is no plot, and — despite the title — no actual diary. The book is a mixed gathering of late chronicles and tales rather than a running dated record. It first appeared in 1949 in a luxury edition limited to 480 copies, with thirteen pieces.

The following year it was taken into Volume XIV of Colette's Œuvres complètes, where it expanded slightly. Like the other late Le Fleuron volumes, it was made as a collectible object as much as a book to read, part of the effort to turn Colette's scattered late prose into finished volumes.