| Title | : | Break of Day |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0374528322 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780374528324 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 168 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1928 |
Break of Day Reviews
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Red, pink, blue, pimento, moths, cats, dogs, birds, sand, wind, sea, moon. This book is so full of incredible descriptions of our everyday world, its colors, its inhabitants, its smell and look and feel. These details make me want to open my eyes wider and to savor every experience. It makes me want to live more fully (not even sure what that would mean), to love more fully, to eat an omelette more fully...
It's about a woman at the age of fifty after her second divorce spending the summer in a French beach town vacillating between taking a lover or remaining single. Her dead mother is there to guide her in the form of letters, words, and actions remembered by her daughter. The story is small and not very dramatic. But it's amazing that what was written eighty years ago in such a different world, for women at least, and in another country is still fresh and pertinent today. It was wonderful that the descriptions of the sights and sounds or her little world could reach out to me today and make me feel so much, remember so much. It's like recalling my childhood and all the things that were wondrous to me then and making me feel this all over again.
I especially loved her descriptions of animals, her and her mother's tenderness and consciousness of them. For example in recalling her mother, "And I still see your light foot making a detour to spare a little grass-snake, stretched out happily on a warm path." To me this is appreciation of life, love of life. And this is most what this book seems about. Colette says, "Death does not interest me - not even my own." Of course I don't take her completely at her word, but at least for these 140 pages I truly believe her. -
oh Colette- I am rereading some of her books . this one is particularly gorgeous. Written in her middle age she buys a small house in St Tropez. She is so in love with her house and her garden the cats,the birds ,the descriptions are so elaborate and so vivid you can smell the herbs and the flowers and hear the waves . She also has a certain contentment with her age ,where she is and finally she is where she belongs. This is a very fine state i also am in love with my battered 1940`s house ,it has been waiting for me. I am planning to plant trees and shrubbery every year while i can and hope i can feel that satisfied rooted feeling that she felt too. such beautiful reads.
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This is the quintessential book about nothing (really, nothing happens at all, and the climactic scene is an intense conversation in which Colette gets to be smug about being too old and powerful to give any fucks anymore). As with all Colette’s writing, her surroundings (St. Tropez this time!) are all-important, vividly depicted, and make you wonder how you tolerate your colorless existence. There’s the sun-soaked garden and swimming in the Mediterranean, fragrant evening air and simple meals and dancing. Excuse me while I weep at my cubicle.
Something I found interesting - this book is supposedly semi-autobiographical and to read it you’d develop the impression that Colette was elderly when it all happened. She was actually probably nearing 50, so that sort of dampens the fascination of a strapping 35-year-old falling in love with a much-older French lady. -
Rosalega töff pælingar, þurfti samt að lesa hana allt of hratt (fyrir skólann) svo ég náði ekki öllu. Colette eyðir svolitlum tíma í sveitinni eftir seinni skilnaðinn sinn og er þessi bók einhvers konar uppgjör/sættir við ástina. Mikið um fallegar náttúrumyndir og áhugaverðar pælingar um það að eldast. Hún hugsar um sjálfa sig sem rithöfund og mátar sig við móður sína og bréfaskriftir hennar. Afskaplega kúl femínískur texti um hvað það er að vera kona á þessum tíma, sérstaklega þá fráskilin kona, kona sem skrifar, miðaldra kona, dóttir, tvíkynhneigð kona en líka lífvera sem tengist í stærra samhengi jarðar.
Mjög erfiður texti, smá eins og að reyna að lesa Joyce nema bara á frönsku, en mæli samt með!
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Annar lestur: vá vá vá ! -
This novel, rich in layers, is filled with calculated beauty. If you prefer a more “traditional” plotline/story arc, then this isn’t for you. The subtext within these pages is not profound for profundity’s sake; it’s thoughtfully crafted and elegantly composed.
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“A woman lays claim to as many native lands as she has had happy loves. She is born, too, under every sky where she has recovered from the pain of loving.”
The 1928 novella
Break of Day is a contemplative book written by
Colette, one of the most celebrated female authors of France, in a time of deep introspection and isolation during the latter years of her life. An experimental work that does not keep strictly to fiction or nonfiction,
Break of Day twines the two in an artfully ambiguous narrative of such felt gentleness. The narrative, despite being so sparse as to be almost nonexistent, contains a wealth of emotion. Truly, between long passages of introspection, internal musings and remembrances, and gorgeously vivid descriptions of everything from human relationships to color to the dance of the salt air on the delicate summer plants, there are but a handful of scenes with any semblance of forward momentum. This novel has what feels like two and a half scenes of any distinguishable, memorable quality, and yet the prose is so filled with feeling and substance that the experience of reading
Break of Day has yet to fade from my mind since turning the last page weeks ago.
“‘The worst thing in a woman’s life: her first man.’ He is the only one you die of.”
In this story, Colette, who is at once herself and yet also a fiction, is grappling with her decision to free herself from the cycle of romantic love, to cast off that ghost which has haunted her for the length of her life. A prominent aspect of this self-journey involves another ghost entirely, however, that of her deceased mother whose presence seems always with her. She shares snippets of letters penned by her mother and recounts tales and memories of this woman she so admired. Colette often compares herself to the ideals she saw within her mother, asking herself and her mother’s memory if Sido would be proud of her. These two ideas, a woman’s ongoing preoccupation with romantic love of one man or another as well as a woman’s admiration of her mother, make the novel. Colette is attempting to escape the constant desire to be in love, to be consumed by the heat and heartbreak of romance, in order to find the peace of a later stage of life.
“...An age comes for a woman when, instead of clinging to beautiful feet that are impatient to roam the world, expressing herself in soothing words, boring tears and burning, ever-shorter sighs--an age comes when the only thing that is left for her is to enrich her own self.”
Though she wishes to embody the contented self reliance and self assurance she so longs for not only for herself but also for her mother’s memory, it is not an easy transition. Colette cannot so simply do what she has set out to, cannot be what she believes came so effortlessly to the individualistic Sido. Despite her commitment to the task, Colette is still a woman of whom the desire to love and be loved is easily rekindled and not so easily ignored. A woman of passion and feeling, Colette’s descriptions of the all consuming nature of love and moments of passing beauty and connection seem to settle in the bones with the rightness of them, the truth of them.
“Giving becomes a sort of neurosis, a fierce egotistical frenzy. ‘Here’s a new tie, a cup of hot milk, a shred of my own live flesh, a box of cigarettes, a conversation, a journey, a kiss, a word of advice, the shelter of my arms, an idea. Take! And don’t dream of refusing unless you want me to burst. I can’t give you less, so put up with it!’”
And all throughout the book does Colette exhibit such a care for words, such an eye for detail and a skill for painting a moment vividly within the mind’s eye. She has the ability to dazzle the reader with almost every sentence, not, I think, out of a desire to simply impress one with her words but to so accurately share the experience of singular moments in time. Her descriptions of the summer landscape, of the small house she keeps near the sea and the animals who accompany her in this “lonely” pursuit of hers are bursting with the joy and perfection of life. Her ability to craft atmosphere, to transport the reader to a moment in time when the blue of morning is just seeping in through the windows, is unmatched in its mastery.
It is difficult to describe just how a novel that seems to do little beyond serve as a meditative jumble of thoughts has so unsuspectingly left such an impression, but I hope I was able to express at least enough to encourage someone else to consider reading Colette’s work.
Break of Day is a slow book, but one that creeps up on you. And after it has, it stays there. -
I honestly think this was one of the top 5 or 10 books I read this year. I’m too near. But it’s a beautiful book- sentences that make you put the book down and stare at the ceiling….above all, Colette doesn’t moralize….what she does do is have a belief in life and how to enjoy it with dignity…there’s a right way to die, to love, to enjoy your tangerine trees, to enjoy saying goodbye to youthful desire. Wisdom. A book that could change you. I’m afraid of time…it never stops….Colette has her qualms with it but she is attuned to the rhythms of it, the sky at noon, the break of day, the hour before dusk….these are the measures of her soul….Sunday morning (watch out the world’s behind you!):
Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,
In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else
In any balm or beauty of the earth,
Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?
Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch.
These are the measures destined for her soul.
Man, how can people not love to read?! I feel blessed to have these books and musics and art in my life…they, honestly, help me get through. One foot, another foot….yeah, in the end you die but so many people, writers wanted to talk to us through time….
”oh jake we could have had such a damned good time together.”
“Yes,” I said. “Isn’t it pretty to think so?” -
Reading Break of Day for the second time, 11 years later, I liked it better. I had more patience for the appropriately laconic pacing and enjoyed the prose more. Whether it's because I'm older or was just in the mood for something unhurried, I can't say. It's like a soup that's been simmering on the stove all day... better for the time and care taken to reach its point.
My only complaint, such as it is, was with the last quarter or so, which felt tacked on. Her mediation on her mother fits with the theme of a woman reflection on maturing into middle age, but its presence adds very little to the narrative excepting bulk. Without it, the novella would hardly have justified its own volume, yet it treads ground that Colette was covering over and over during this time period: another tribute to her mother.
Maybe in another decade I'll feel differently. -
Lyrical; delicately lush. Rather dull storyline (although I appreciate her frank honesty regarding love, loss, and the feminine) but glittering with beauty. I picked up an English translation at a used book store in Seattle; I'd like to try a hand at her works in the original French. The English is so lovely that the original French must be exquisite.
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I pretty much just love Colette, and this is my favorite thing she wrote. Maybe I related so well because I was having relationship problems when I read it, but I still find the writing lovely and insightful and empowering.
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so insanely gorgeous, every page was dripping with beautiful prose
the relationship between mother and daughter is so well formed in this, it made me think of lady bird but in the sense that they are both great examples of mother/daughter relationships not in an aesthetic sense (this is much more beautiful to me, and i really like lady bird!)
cant wait to read more colette
also you can tell this translator GETS it -
On dirait que Colette a fait un bouquin avec les digressions charmantes dont elle agrémente ses romans le reste du temps... Souvenir poignants de sa mère, émoi devant les couleurs de la nature, la vie des animaux... sauf que là ce n'est pas le décor, c'est le livre. Une autre façon de présenter la naissance du jour, c'est de dire que c'est une version déstructurée de "la retraite sentimentale" : ah qu'il est bon, après une vie d'amours tumultueuses, de se retirer à la campagne, de découvrir les joies simples du jardinage, de la contemplation de la nature, du compagnonage avec les animaux, de la fréquentation popotte des voisins... et je n'y suis absolument pour rien si le voisin taiseux et fier s'est mis à en pincer violemment pour moi, allant jusqu'à me préférer à une jeunesse qui lui était tout acquise...
Alors non, malgré la beauté de son titre, je ne conseille pas "la naissance du jour", malgré des virtuosités d'expressions "la fenêtre s'ouvrait sur le grand vivier vert du ciel", que je n'arrive pas à retrouver, comme toujours dans un roman mal construit. -
El nacer del día es una novela de la propia experiencia de la autora tras romper su segundo matrimonio. En ella, Colette se asienta en la Provenza francesa en mitad de la campiña para despejar su mente y reflexionar acerca de su vida. Saca conclusiones sobre la independencia que necesita tras liberarse del amor y nos narra, de una forma discontinua y casi inconexa, su verano en la Provenza.
Sin duda para mí es un libro filosófico, para nada me situé ante una biografía o una historia común con un nudo y desenlace. Es como una colección de pensamientos de la autora que se van ordenando según le van surgiendo con las horas de los días.
La evolución se muestra en cómo Colette percibe el amor en ciertas escenas de la breve obra. La autora sólo quiere que asistamos con mente abierta a sus pensamientos, no le interesan los protagonistas y antagonistas sino las ideas que podamos sacar del sufrimiento que ella siente.
En la independencia encontraremos el verdadero amor. -
I love reading books that are translated from another language to English. I also love reading books that speak of someone living a quiet, peaceful, authentic life in a little village. Break of Day is by French author Colette, translated to English and tells of either her life or based on her life as she lives in a little village in the Cote d'Azur in her later years.
I loved the writing which was lyrical, beautiful and a little like Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway. I loved to live through her eyes as she gardens and speaks to her cats. As she has a quiet night at home in her cottage or a night out with friends on the coast.
I did get a little lost in the middle as she wrote about a young woman who was in love with a man who was her lover but that's OK - I'll just read it again. -
Masterful descriptions of the setting, sounds, images. However, the people who appear in the setting are less interesting, somehow they come across as only physical descriptions. The whole thing comes across as more of a diary/journal than a novel and, despite the fact that I am the same age as the central character and like many of the same things, there was no sense of 'connection'. Quite honestly, I found the people in the book, including the narrator, terribly boring and self-centred. Still worth the read for the descriptions/setting.
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Between two and three stars. I'm starting to really like Colette; reading her feels like having a long conversation with a whimsical, observant friend, the sort of conversation you might have on that friend's back porch on a warm summer evening. Even so, the extensively-recorded struggles with Helene and Vial grew tiresome, making even the enjoyable parts drag a bit.
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A great memoir. Although, her mother was the more interesting character.
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Lushly descriptive.
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i needed this, meditative. a way to slow down, and to move in and out gracefully, with subtlety. keeping all the lushness and richness and the sensuality.
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Le style de ce roman m'a fait penser un peu à Marguerite Duras.
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Absolument magnifique.
« Imagine-t-on, à me lire, que je fais mon portrait? Patience: c’est seulement mon modèle. »
Tsé. -
2 stars purely because it talks about gender roles in an interesting way for a 1928 novel. hated it though- so BORING. definition of no plot, no vibes.
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Bien avant que le terme "autofiction" n'ait été inventé, Colette publiait en 1928 ce roman où coexistent personnages fictifs et réels, se mettant elle-même en scène dans sa demeure estivale de Provence et mélangeant habilement des éléments autobiographiques et complètement fabulés avec une histoire de renoncement à l'amour et de symbiose avec la nature.
Sans ligne directrice ou récit clair, La Naissance du jour est un roman contemplatif où l'autrice débute en relisant les lettres de sa mère décédée, comparant les mots de cette maman tant aimée à son propre vieillissement, Colette étant maintenant bien ancrée dans la cinquantaine au terme de son second divorce.
J'ai tellement aimé l'écriture style flot de conscience, réfléchie, élégante et si précise. C'était d'une beauté débordante de nature tranquille, de lenteur appréciative, de refus calme mais solide des émotions fortes liées à un potentiel nouvel amour. C'était mon premier Colette, et j'espère que ce ne sera pas le dernier; cette romancière a brisé bien des plafonds de verre et normes sociales à son époque, et La Naissance du jour est loin d'être son roman le plus populaire. Ça promet. -
BREAK OF DAY (La Naissance du Jour) by Colette
In 1928, when she was 55, the celebrated French writer Colette left Paris and took up residence in a small village in Provence on the south coast called St Tropez. At that time St Tropez was an isolated village known to a tiny group of artists who were friends of Colette in Paris. Colette decided that for the first time since she was sixteen she would live in solitude, “without love.” That is, she would have no lover, just a house, several cats, a tangerine tree, a small vineyard and a few other garden plots in addition to a small cadre of friends.
And she decided to write a retrospective book, part fiction perhaps, describing her life there and her thoughts, her memories, especially of her mother, but also her father. The book is lyrical in English and it must be even more so in the original French. In the Introduction the book is described as written as if poetry. Most beautiful are her descriptions of her home and the coast at dawn and twilight.
I have a particularly nice edition illustrated by Françoise Gilot, a treasured French artist in her own right, but perhaps better known as Picasso’s mistress – some of the most beautiful portraits are of her – and later the wife of Dr. Jonas Salk, developer of the first polio vaccine. Gilot’s prints, several in color, add greatly to the beauty of the book.
While Colette’s earlier books are titillating in a straightforward manner, this book speaks occasionally of such matters but is not at all descriptive of her life as a great lover in a sexual sense, yet the book is very sensual, deeply loving of life and the joy in placating our senses. It is beautiful. Read the book in Summer or Autumn, or in the depths of late Winter when the cold has become wearisome and your body and soul yearn for the warmth of sun-drenched sand squeezing between your toes. -
A woman lays claim to as many native lands as she has had happy loves. She is born, too, under every sky where she has recovered from the pain of loving.
This novel throbs with a quiet passion. Its pages record an elegy for her elderly mother and a deep passion for the Provençal countryside that makes up its setting. There is less of the erotic and romantic here than one usually finds in Colette. The narrator even points this out at times. The love of landscape and animals and the reflections on unrequited love make it as clear an example of pastoral as I can recall. The narrator often identifies with the author, but also warns the reader: “Is anyone imagining as he reads me, that I am portraying myself? Have patience: this is merely my model.”
I call a lot of things “lyrical,” but this novel definitely qualifies. There are moments of tender reflection on life, family, and writing, as well as love. The last of these is almost an afterthought in the novel and emerges slowly and even a bit awkwardly (only for the characters, the novel’s execution is never awkward.) Here, we find a middle-aged woman who has escaped from the busy rhythms of the city to a small country estate where she can lose herself in the rhythms of nature and the menial labors that such an estate demands. The climax of the novel is a bit of a surprise, as love butts its way into the idyllic Provençal landscape. I keep evoking pastoral, but the novel’s sensuality, quet dignity, and reflections on age make me think of Colette as a modern Sappho. -
I have read this book three times … first when I was in art school and fell in love with Colette, again when I was in my 40s, and now, when I am in my late 60s. It gets better with each reading. Colette has left Paris at the age of 55 and has chosen the solitude of a small, secluded cottage on the coast of St Tropez to enjoy a quiet life with her cats, a sun-filled garden, morning dips in the Mediterranean Sea, and intimate dinners under the stars with a small group of local artists. As she writes her memoirs and reflects on her relationship with her mother, her sensual descriptions of colors, tastes, scents, earth, water, sky, and the creatures sharing her world are a beautiful lesson in mindfulness. Her contentment with solitude and independence, and her unhurried appreciation of life and love is inspiring. This is a softer, more mature Colette than found in her earlier works, and I love her ability to delight in the amusement of youth while savoring the tranquility of later life. This will not be the last time I read this enchanting memoir … and each time I will discover new pleasures of growing older.
