last night i read 'The Lover' by Marguerite Duras from start to finish in one sitting. and how timely. how absolutely perfectly timed! and my head and body felt all floaty afterward, the way a person feels after being exposed to High Honesty... a religious experience almost. the story, the imperative, of coming in to your own, your way, without conditions or expectations, this perfect acceptance of self regardless of attack or time or family. and also the sadness of it. the knowledge that curls down, curls around your head and reaches in through your eyes down to your heart, the dreadful vine that twists that soft redness, squeezes it until it ruptures, the regret, the wish that it was somehow possible to be something you are not because it would be so much easier! but she doesn't do this to herself. she knows herself... ahead of time and walks in to the whole shebang willingly, with open eyes, a confidence beyond lived experience... her school-girl braids, the gold shoes... and then, her dream to write... just write. and i responded so powerfully to that. it has been how i have felt my entire life. this pull to JUST WRITE SOMETHING. and the deep level of trust she extended to herself, to her need, to her dream- that when the book in her was ready to spring out, it would. and i think that deep level of trust is the only way to get the job done. i think it is the prime ingredient. alpha and omega. art is so religious in some ways. the tenants we keep, the sacrifice and the faith and the blood rushing rushing rushing. the ecstasy! i am so deep in love with art, with all these books i've been reading, all these ideas and images and shades of darker darkest grey. in love in such a deep way as to feel myself, see myself, as i truly am and for a moment, inside that love, to feel no hint of shame. this mode is completely right. this way of being. this way of thinking. this catalogue of life. these vignettes. these offerings. a photograph never taken. a photograph laid on the alter. a human story of love and need and expectation... the large desire that won't be kept still, won't be left in silence, will not be ignored. gorgeous!
and right there on the first page : I often think of the image only I can see now, and of which I've never spoken. It's always there, in the same silence, amazing. It's the only image of myself I like, the one in which I recognize myself, in which I delight.
is this not what an art practice is? finding this image? the record that was never made, the photograph that was never taken... the absent image that is perfect and true and complete because of its absence.
i highly recommend this book. :)
and good morning!
4 comments:
first time commenting on your beautiful blog, enjoyed your artwork display and your thoughts too. never got the inclination to read Duras' The Lover after i saw the film, maybe because i first discover the eroticism of the film before the book, inciteful perspective you wrote here.
hi blue eye! thank you so much!
i haven't seen the film and probably won't because, as i was reading it last night, i saw that the sex within the story would overshadow the exploration of poverty and family ties and a young girl's dream to become a writer, an artist. but i've heard the film is great. the book, as always, is probably so much more. when i saw the film version of The Piano Teacher i was sooooooo disappointed. not that the acting wasn't great, just that there are things in the writing that just can't seem to be expressed through film sometimes. and The Lover as a book definitely isn't concerned with sexiness. and margurite duras is such a skilled writer that the story takes on a very unexpected beauty from the first page.
Here's a wonderful quote from Marguerite Duras, Angela. I came across it in Lynn Freed's book, Reading Writing and Leaving Home.
I'm not sure of where Duras wrote or said these words, but I find them useful along the lines that you describe in this post. It follows:
'In books I’ve written about my childhood, I can’t remember, suddenly, what I left out, what I said. I think I wrote about our love for our mother, but I don’t know if I wrote about how we hated her too, or about our love for one another, and our terrible hatred too, in that common family history of ruin and death which was ours whatever happened, in love or in hate, and which I still can’t understand however hard I try, which is still beyond my reach, hidden in the very depths of my flesh, blind as a new born child. It’s the area on whose brink silence begins.'
Here in this quote Duras's writing reminds me very much of yours. It has that same breathless, edgy, one thought flowing on from another, restlessly trying to find a position from which to explore idea upon idea. I love it.
elisabeth!!!! what a huge compliment! and i must demure!!!! hahaha! she is such a wonderful, skilled, nuanced writer. simply amazing and so hard-hitting... and with such direct, paired-down language! i've only read two of her works now and i am definitely addicted. she has quickly become one of my most favorite and cherished writers.
that passage you quote (and this is really wonderful and fortuitous!) is from The Lover!!!!! and it caught my eye too! so comforting and encouraging - bred so much courage in me - when i read it! thank you! i'll have to track down Lynn Freed's book on payday and see what other gems in contains. the more i go forward, the more my desire to write presents itself so forcefully, so undeniably, as a NEED.
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