Animal Dialogues
The earlier animal book whose talking pets, Toby-Chien and Kiki-la-Doucette, reappear among these pieces.
Read our take
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.
Themes and analysis
The nightingale’s song
The nightingale's song begins as a practical defense against sleep, then grows into an absorbing pleasure whose original purpose can almost be forgotten. The human speaker insists on hearing the first frightened cry beneath that beauty. When she takes the fable into her own voice, expression becomes both a protection and a risk: she wants to say everything, yet repeatedly falls back toward murmuring and restraint. Freedom here does not restore the old untroubled sleep. It produces an alert, unfinished practice of speaking, in which delight carries the memory of constraint.
Snow at the fortifications
The excursion begins with a shared identity: woman and dogs run, taste the snow and return together to the fire. As the animals settle, the narration turns toward a more solitary reckoning with another year. Childhood returns through seasonal smells, food and ritual rather than through an abstract date. Those sensations recover an earlier way of experiencing time, but cannot restore the face that belonged to it. The mirror makes that difference unavoidable. Remembering becomes something to carry into aging, rather than a means of escaping the passage of years.
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
Before 1908
Pieces appear in Le Mercure musical and La Vie parisienne before Colette gathers them into the book.
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
Readers may also like
The Vagabond
The novel drawn from the same touring music-hall years the sketches here glance at.
Read our take
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.
If you like Colette
Explore authors with a similar voice, perspective, and influence.
Henry Miller
The Brooklyn dropout who arrived in Paris broke at thirty-eight and wrote the exuberant, banned books that ended American censorship.
View author
Louis-Ferdinand Céline
The doctor of the Paris slums who wrote the century's blackest, funniest novel — and changed the sound of French prose.
View author
Martha Gellhorn
War correspondent who covered the Spanish Civil War, D-Day, and conflicts across five more decades; Hemingway's third wife, 1940–1945.
View author
References
References
The sources below include the primary text, editions, scholarship, archival materials, and other records that informed this page. They document The Tendrils of the Vine, its publication, and its place in literary history.
1The Tendrils of the Vine
NovelColette, 1908Used forThe primary text represented by this page, used for descriptions of the work’s contents and for any quoted passages shown here.
2Les Vrilles de la vigne — Hachette / Livre de Poche 1961 reprint
WebsiteWikisourceUsed forPrimary French text of the title fable and “Rêverie de nouvel an” in the Hachette / Livre de Poche 1961 reprint. Supports the readings of song, snow, memory and aging; no 1908 or 1934 edition collation is claimed. The fable and first-person self-portrait are read as literary constructions.
3Colette — bibliography of original editions
WebsiteSociété des amis de ColetteUsed forThe Société des amis de Colette bibliography verifies the original edition's publisher and publication date.
4Société des amis de Colette — Chronology
WebsiteUsed forUsed to place The Tendrils of the Vine within Colette's published work and verify its bibliographic context.
5Bibliothèque nationale de France — The Worlds of Colette
Exhibition catalogueUsed forUsed for independent biographical, archival, or historical context surrounding Colette's career and the period in which The Tendrils of the Vine appeared.
6Library of Congress — Colette resource guide
WebsiteUsed forUsed to cross-check authorship, chronology, and the work's place in Colette's wider catalogue.
7Bibliothèque nationale de France — Colette: online resources
WebsiteUsed forUsed to verify Colette's bibliography and place The Tendrils of the Vine within the broader chronology of Colette's career.
8Colette — publication history of the tendrils of the vine
WebsiteSociété des amis de ColetteUsed forPublication and revision history used for the timeline.
i
Why these sources are here
The primary text is the baseline reference for every book page. Additional references document publication history, interpretation, and historical context where that evidence is available.
Explore more resources