Animal Dialogues
The earlier animal book whose talking pets, Toby-Chien and Kiki-la-Doucette, reappear among these pieces.
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The Tendrils of the Vine
by Colette
The early collection in which Colette's short prose became unmistakably her own — lyric reveries, animal pieces, and music-hall sketches side by side.
- 1908
About Colette
The story, briefly
Spoiler-freeThe Tendrils of the Vine is a collection of short prose pieces Colette first published in 1908, at the point where her writing broke free of both the Claudine novels and her first husband's influence. It gathers reveries, prose poems, brief dramatic monologues, animal dialogues, and music-hall sketches — no single story, but a range of moods and voices held together by a distinctive first-person presence: watcher, performer, lover, insomniac. Many readers in France treat it as one of the books where Colette's short form first became her own. (What's inside is described below.)
The story, in more detail
The book has no plot and no continuous narrator in the usual sense. Its unity is one of voice and attention. Across eighteen pieces in the first edition, Colette moves between lyric reverie, self-portrait, animal comedy, and glimpses of the touring music-hall world she was living in during these years. The recurring figure is less a fixed character than a version of Colette herself, turning insomnia, weather, performance, and desire into short concentrated prose.
The title piece is a small fable of entanglement and song: a singer once bound in sleep by the tendrils of the vine wakes and thereafter sings through the night rather than be caught again. It sets the book's key — freedom won and guarded — and the reveries that follow test it against love, solitude, and the body's appetites. Elsewhere the register shifts entirely, into the household comedy of the pets Toby-Chien and Kiki-la-Doucette or the backstage textures of the stage.
The Tendrils of the Vine is best read as a threshold book. It marks Colette emerging as a writer in her own right, no longer working the Claudine formula, and finding the compressed, sensory, exact manner that her later short fiction and memoirs would refine. Colette returned to it in 1934 for a definitive edition, enlarging the volume to twenty pieces.
What's inside
There is no continuous story. The book is a sequence of short prose pieces — reveries, prose poems, brief monologues, animal dialogues, and sketches of the stage — unified by Colette's voice rather than by plot. The title fable of the vine's tendrils, binding and then loosing a singer who resolves to stay awake and free, opens a series of first-person reflections on love, solitude, sleeplessness, and the pleasures of the senses.
Around these lyric pieces sit lighter and stranger registers: the domestic comedy of Colette's cat and dog talking over the household, and glimpses of the traveling music-hall world she knew from the inside during the years she wrote the book. The pieces vary in length and tone, and the reader moves through moods and personae rather than toward an ending. It is one of the collections where Colette's short form first takes on the concentration and sensory precision she is known for.
Why we recommend it
Where the short form becomes hers
One of the books French readers cite when they date the arrival of Colette's own manner — compressed, sensory, exact.
A range of registers in one volume
Lyric reverie, self-portrait, talking pets, and music-hall sketches sit side by side, so the book reads as a sampler of everything Colette could do.
The freedom the title names
Written as she broke from the Claudine machine, it takes the vine's tendrils as an image of entanglement escaped and guarded.
What this book explores
Bring it to book club
- The book has no plot, only a recurring voice. What holds the separate pieces together as you read?
- The title fable turns a bound singer into a figure of guarded freedom. How does that image color the pieces that follow?
- Reverie, animal comedy, and music-hall sketch sit in one volume. What does the range tell you about the writer Colette was becoming in 1908?
Timeline
1908
Les Vrilles de la vigne is published — eighteen short prose pieces, marking Colette's emergence as a writer in her own right.
1934
Colette revises the book for a definitive edition with Ferenczi, enlarging it to twenty pieces.
Book editions
Hardcover
- Hardcover
- 1908
Hardcover
- Hardcover
- 1934
Paperback
- Paperback
Ebook
- Ebook
Reader reviews
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The Vagabond
The novel drawn from the same touring music-hall years the sketches here glance at.
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The Hidden Woman
The later, darker gathering of short pieces, where Colette's contes turn from reverie to the shadow side of love.
Read our takeThe Tendrils of the Vine: frequently asked questions
Who wrote The Tendrils of the Vine?
Colette. Les Vrilles de la vigne was first published in 1908, at the point where her writing broke free of the Claudine novels and her first husband's influence.
Is The Tendrils of the Vine a novel?
No. It is a collection of short prose pieces — reveries, prose poems, animal dialogues, and music-hall sketches — unified by Colette's voice rather than by a continuous plot.
What does the title mean?
It comes from the opening fable, in which a singer once bound in sleep by the tendrils of the vine wakes and resolves to sing through the night rather than be caught again — an image of freedom won and guarded.
Why is the book considered important?
Many readers in France treat it as one of the collections where Colette's short form first became her own, no longer written to the Claudine formula.
Is it available in English?
There is no securely verified standalone English edition; individual pieces from the collection circulate in English through The Collected Stories of Colette.