Stroke by Stroke

The book gathers fifteen pieces, and it has a real unity of purpose: each is a portrait, drawn from Colette's long acquaintance with the artistic life of her time. The gallery is remarkable. Among the writers are Anna de Noailles, Marcel Proust, Georges Courteline, and Léon-Paul Fargue; among performers, Sarah Bernhardt and the singer Emma Calvé; there is the composer Claude Debussy, and painter and artist friends including André Dignimont, Marcel Vertès, Luc-Albert Moreau, and Charles Camoin. A Balzacian figure, Madame de Marneffe, joins the living.

Colette's method is the one her title promises: not the full biographical account but the telling feature, the remembered gesture, the line that fixes a person. Drawn late, from a lifetime of watching, the portraits carry both affection and the exactness of someone who missed very little.

Stroke by Stroke stands with The Flower of Youth and Intermittent Journal among the collectible late volumes from Le Fleuron. It is close in spirit to My Apprenticeships, where Colette drew the figures of her early years at greater length.

There is no plot. The book is a collection of fifteen short portraits — people Colette had known across a lifetime in the artistic world, sketched from memory feature by feature. The subjects include the writers Anna de Noailles, Marcel Proust, Georges Courteline, and Léon-Paul Fargue; the actress Sarah Bernhardt and the singer Emma Calvé; the composer Claude Debussy; and painter friends such as André Dignimont, Marcel Vertès, and Luc-Albert Moreau.

The method is the title's: not full biography but the telling feature and remembered gesture, the few exact strokes that fix a person. It is a portrait-chronicle collection, one of the clearest to classify among Colette's late books.