Go Ask Colette

I mean, of course Colette had an advice column in Marie Claire between 1939 and 1940. I don’t even know why I’m surprised. The Believer has a few excerpts on their blog taken from a collection of previously untranslated works; I liked this one best, her response to a twenty-year-old woman who couldn’t decide between her safe, reasonable fiancé and some guy who sounds really hot.

I feel I love him more than my fiancé, or rather, not in the same way: I feel for him a violent love, passionate, reckless; for my fiancé, my love is calm, considered, as if asleep.

To which Colette responds:

When you’re twenty years old, do you listen to a love that is “calm, pondered, as if asleep”? Your age is not made for well-motivated decisions, and it seems to me you are looking more for excuses than advice. You admit that absence was enough to make you forget “a little bit” the man who, once you found him again, set you on fire. Couldn’t you try, using such efficient means, to forget him “a lot”? And at the same time — honesty invites you — find the courage not to marry the fiancé who only inspires in you lukewarm feelings. As far as I can see, he is lacking in insight and shrewdness. How can he not sense around you, around him, a presence, and thoughts, that are against him? Leave him be, the angel; and leave the tempter. Does my response not bring you the “peace” you crave? Excuse my frankness, but I can’t help remembering that you are twenty years old. And I’ve never been able to believe that peace is a good present to give a young woman.

Emphasis mine, obviously, bolded because that sentence is going to be repeating in my head for the rest of today and probably my life, ensuring I never get any peace ever again.