If there is anything that strikes me about this novel, it is probably the sadness, intoxication and tearing that permeates the lines. It is inexplicably painful, but willingly indulges in this pain.
When Duras wrote L’amant, he was 71 years old. As the novel begins, I was old. One day, a man came up to me in the hall of a public place. He introduced himself. He said to me, “I know you and will always remember you. You were young then, and everyone said you were beautiful, and now I have come especially to tell you that, to me, I think you are more beautiful now than when you were young, when you were a young woman, and I love your face as it is now, compared with your face then. ‘ There has never been a start like this before. The vicissitudes of time are coming out, and the face is amazing.
L’amant is an autobiographical novella, one of the masterpieces of Margaret Duras. The story of a love affair between a poor French girl and a weak Chinese rich young man may seem unremarkable, but the novel’s exploration of the most secret parts of human nature, the interpretation of the deepest feelings of love, touches the soul, which is a kind of power that can make people suddenly wake up in the dark and enlightening.
A 15-year-old white girl from France whose parents moved to Vietnam, she was born in Saigon, a Vietnamese city on the Mekong River. His father died young, and his mother struggled with her siblings. The mother is paranoid and strong, she unreasonably dote on the eldest son, to this tyrannical, gambling, cold eldest son showed unimaginable warmth and tolerance. The mother barely cared about her weak youngest son and only daughter, and she even forced her teenage daughter to commit herself to a rich man so that she could use the money to support her elder brother, who was idle and gambling.
It is unfortunate to grow up in a family without love, and this kind of misfortune, eventually affect your life. Duras was not immune. She hated her brother and wanted to see him die and enjoy her mother’s pain. It is such a depleted family of origin, created Duras ups and downs of life, but also the achievement of her life legend.
She was fifteen and a half when she met her lover. The morning ferry was misty and the melancholy man approached her. He accosted her and asked her if she wanted a cigarette. After making sure she hadn’t turned him away, he told her that he had just returned from France, that he wasn’t French, and that he lived in a big house with a blue porcelain railing platform on the embankment. Then she got into his luxurious black car.
At the beginning of the meeting of the two people are each with purpose: the man inexplicable heart in her young beauty, the girl is for his wealth, one is a flexible insight, one is to refuse to meet the green, lover’s single apartment to fulfill the two people’s scheming.
In the day after day, the lover of this rich man reveals his distress and helplessness to the girl: he lives in an extremely strict family, his father is the absolute authority in the family, and everything about him is arranged. Weak character let him dare not to fight, depend on the family money more let him fear, so he confessed to the girl: I can not marry you.
And this girl, is proud, she responded to the lover: Don’t worry, I just love your money. But in the warmth of this man, she begins to face the pain of her heart: in the grave of the family, she struggles with the feelings of loved ones, love them or hate them? She did not know. She only knew that she had to face a desperate mother every day, listening to her complaints and curses about life, watching her strong and evil indulgence of her big brother, sympathizing with the little brother who was afraid, and facing the embarrassment and pressure of poverty.
In a sense, they are two people in the same situation, they are lonely and helpless in their own homes, both have indescribable repression and mutilation, these two children who lack love become a beam of light to illuminate each other, although weak, but in the boundless darkness, without stars and candles, so, the glow of fireflies is very precious. They are in the unknown corner, each other open wounds, each other lick healing.
Duras made no secret of her lust, and her life was filled with lovers. She said things like: I love men, I only love men, I can have 50 men at a time. She poured too much emotion into every love. She also said: a love story, than 40 or 50 times more important, more meaningful. The young Duras enjoyed his lover’s caress and the tear-jerking pleasure he gave him. This woman, who claims to have a clear and clear line of lust, is a lively touch in a relationship that should only be about lust. She fell into the lover’s tender trap, addicted to his world, without looking back.
That’s what women are. Then rational strong woman, when really put into a love, are blind and decisive, she no longer independent of the original world, only burning a heart, eyes closed leap, jump into the unknown reincarnation. She said: That man makes my happiness so abstract, so entangled, so painful. It’s conflicted, it’s intense, it’s a struggle, isn’t it? This was Duras, who lived a twisted and complicated life, and who spent her whole life fighting against this imperfect world with her deviance.
Parting is bound to come. L’amant are ordered by their parents to marry the right woman, and it is time for French girls to leave the land. On board the ship to return home, the girl leaned over the railing as she had at first met. She cried, a silent cry without tears. When she saw the long, black car parked alone a little way from the parking lot, and the man’s desponding appearance, she knew that she loved this man. It was in this love that her soul was nourished, and she began to stretch out and dare to face the long unknown ahead.
At the end of The Lover, many years later in Paris, the man calls and says that he loves her just as he did before, that he can’t help loving her, that he will love her until he dies. It’s not a perfect ending, but it’s a happy one, as Duras says: We’re lovers, we can’t stop loving each other.
When love stripped away the carnal desire and pleasure, the rest is probably the most authentic love, whether you are young, beautiful, or old, haggard, I love. I would like to sit by the fire in the winter evening, take down a book, sleepy recall your tender eyes, love your painful wrinkles.
