The Lover (original 1971; edition 1998)

I personally found the writing (or at least in the Spanish version that I have) to be hideous.

Nevertheless, I liked the story so much I read it to the end. I simply adore this story. ( )

"Very early in my life it was too late."

The Lover by Marguerite Duras is a powerfully moving meditation on identity and death. Although prose, it is nearly poetic in form, and exceptionally poetic in tone and imagery. Framed by two Stygian boat rides, the first into "the long hot girdle of the earth, with no spring, no renewal," the narrator hypnotizes the reader with an elegy for herself, for a lover, for her brother:

“People ought to be told of such things. Ought to be taught that immortality is mortal, that it can die, it’s happened before and it happens still. It doesn’t ever announce itself as such—it’s duplicity itself. It doesn’t exist in detail, only in principle. Certain people may harbor it, on condition they don’t know that’s what they’re doing. Just as certain other people may detect its presence in them, on the same condition, that they don’t know they can. It’s while it’s being lived that life is immortal, while it’s still alive. Immortality is not a matter of more or less time, it’s not really a question of immortality but of something else that remains unknown. It’s as untrue to say it’s without beginning or end as to say it begins and ends with the life of the spirit, since it partakes of the spirit and of the pursuit of the void. Look at the dead sands of the desert, the dead bodies of children: there’s no path for immortality there, it must halt and seek another way.”

It is so rewarding and easy to get lost in Barbara Bray’s translation of Duras’s language, whether the narrator is sharing her impressions of the evil in her family, her lover’s desperation, her classmate’s breasts, the rivers of Asia, or the memories of rooms and sounds. This may be one of the most consistently sad narratives I have ever read, but it delivers the cumulative effect of a cleansing meditation. It’s the kind of book that when you finish it, you make a mental note to have yourself read it again at some later point in your life. I suppose one could read this book from various perspectives, whether feminist or colonial or whatever, but let me encourage you to simply lose yourself in a heartbreaking lament for the intense privacy of our lives and the ineffable sadness of our deaths. ( )

Dearest Marguerite,

I know it is awfully late now, to write to you. I could not resist though. I thought about you the other day; as her eyes scanned the Chinese gentleman for the first time, on the ferry to Mekong. The demure young features veiled under a mannish hat, gave away precocious impression of a 15 year old girl as he offered her a cigarette. The statuesque Chinaman who exuded charm and eloquence was besotted by her as she was by him. He was to be her lover; an escape from the abhorrent and impoverished life. On the brink of her sexual exploration, she yearned for the pleasure of his touch, his embrace; a world that was beyond the imagination of a young school girl. As she pressed her red-stained lips on the cold glass of his car, he knew he could never marry her, a fact that he told her several times, but would always love her, for “A love like this, so strong, it never happens again in a lifetime…never.”

As the movie played on my screen, I searched for your book and there it lay among the dusty pile of old books, a slight tattered at the cover page. An affair of a pubescent girl with a 27-year old affluent Chinese man brings variation in one’s perception. Over the years, the book was disparaged for its pedophilic nature and the overtly sexual display of a young girl romanticizing to the term 'prostitutes'. The girl’s impecunious and abusive family history, they said was a convenient backdrop to pen a fragile child pornographic literary piece. From the time I read the book as an 12 year old, when I accidentally “borrowed” the book from my cousin’s library stock to those several occasions, I comprehended the writings as an adult, all I observed was a power struggle of an adolescent who naively used her sexuality to find a sense of belonging and in some way gain control over her existence. The story is far more complicated than just the exterior of a love affair. It delineates a distorted notion of true love (if the term is applicable here), the hypocrisy of social mores and the chaos derived from infidelity and wealth.

I have cherished the book for decades now, and words fail me in expressing my heartwarming thankfulness for bursting my initial deluded bubble of an idyllic Nancy Drew utopia, exposing the discrepancies of a flawed society and sullied emotions. Life unexpectedly became a rational place to live in.

R.I. P. – Ms. Duras.


From,
The 7th grader, who once scribbled ‘orgasm’ for the very first time in her history textbook and became wiser.
















( )

Hmm, I'm not sure what to say about this one. It's an easy read ... the paperback is only 117 pages, and the language is not difficult. It's written beautifully, but I felt very detached from the main character, as though I couldn't quite "get" her and everything she was trying to express. I enjoyed reading this, but it left me puzzled. It's worth checking out, and it may greatly impact you and strike you as a "work of literary genius" (from the back cover). Or, it might not. I think this one depends on who you, the reader, are, and on the experiences you have had. ( )

Hauntingly sad. The detached, fragmented writing style was powerful and leaves much for the reader to ponder. I found it fascinating that most of the main characters were not named. This is definitely worth a re-read in the future. ( )