Journey for Myself

The 1922 book was a small, lyrical volume — twelve prose pieces, issued with lithographs by Charles Guérin. Its pieces turn inward: a Sunday, the heat of a sickroom, a pause, an illness, rendered as reverie. The mood is close and therapeutic, memory and bodily sensation made into prose.

In 1928 Colette reworked the book so thoroughly that it is almost a different one. Retitled Le Voyage égoïste suivi de Quatre saisons, it keeps only four of the early pieces — 'Dimanche,' 'J'ai chaud,' 'Répit,' and 'Malade' — and adds the twelve texts of Quatre saisons along with more recent, more ironical writing. The inward weather of 1922 is now set beside outward, contemporary observation: fashion, social life, the passing scene.

Because the two versions differ so much, Journey for Myself is best understood as a mutable self-portrait rather than a single stable book — Colette revisiting and rebuilding her own short prose across the 1920s. It was translated into English under this title by David Le Vay.

There is no plot. The book is a collection of short prose pieces — reveries and observations rather than a narrative. The 1922 version gathers twelve inward pieces on weather, illness, waiting, and memory. The 1928 version keeps only four of these and adds many more, including the twelve texts of Quatre saisons and sharper, more ironical writing about contemporary life.

Read together, the two states show Colette moving between two registers of the short self-portrait: the lyrical and inward on one side, the worldly and observant on the other. The unifying figure is the writing self, described at rest and in motion across a decade.