The book is semi-autobiographical, and recreates aspects of Colette's life on the stage. I am fascinated by her portrayal of the music hall, and the people she met there, and her bringing to life of the streets and locale of Montmartre and Paris. Mostly for her use of language, her words like a gift, with their warmth, grace, ease and clarity. With its poetic, vivid and direct style of writing, this is a voice which feels alive and never dated. Intoxicated, I am under its spell.
The sense of unreality that comes from walking within an invented form, a tangle of signs and symbols, and all the time knowing that it isn’t real. The labyrinth is part of the circle of time, of finding myself back at the place I started, of living within an illusion, a figure of the imagination. The streets are not really a labyrinth, and at the same time when I look at a map, they appear circular, so that walking around and the names of the streets create a sense of repetition, like being caught in a recurring dream.
The Palais de Justice is located on the Quai des Orfèvres on the Île de la Cité by the river Seine. Stretching out along the river bank, it dominates the scenery, grand and forbidding. It is one of the oldest official buildings in Paris, a site of great historic events, and revolution; the palace of justice, a monument to justice and injustice, looking out across Paris.
This is the first of Rhys's Paris hotels and I have chosen my location well. I am staying on Rue Constance, on the next street along from Rue Cauchois; both streets are just off Rue Lepic. The streets join together and I can walk around the corner into Rue Cauchois.The hotel of the universe is inhabited by people of many different nationalities, reflecting the area's status as a place of arrival. It was a part of the city Rhys explored when she first lived in Paris, and she is able to draw on this area in writing Quartet.
On the screen a pretty girl was pointing a revolver at a group of guests. They backed away with their arms held high above their heads and expressions of terror on their faces. The pretty girl’s lips moved. The fat hostess unclasped the necklace of huge pearls and fell, fainting, into the arms of a footman. The pretty girl, holding the revolver so that the audience could see that two of her fingers were missing, walked backwards towards the door. Her lips moved again. You could see what she was saying. ‘Keep ‘em up....’
I am following through connections on the books Rhys reads and admires, and this has led me to Escapade, which seems to be one of the few books by Evelyn Scott I have been able to track down. Rhys also mentions the book in her letters. In reading Escapade, I’ve been thinking about Evelyn Scott and her relation to Rhys. They were contemporaries, and admirers of each other’s work. They share a clarity of expression and perception that makes their writing feel modern and ahead of its time. This is about an experimental style but in both I detect also the expression of a state of mind, of a certain experience of life or philosophy, and a tendency to radical acts and ideas.
The Street Walks In 