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The Ravishing of Lol Stein
The Ravishing of Lol Stein is a haunting early novel by the author of The Lover. Lol Stein is a beautiful young woman, securely married, settled in a comfortable life—and a voyeur. Returning with her husband and children to the town where, years before, her fiancé had abandoned her for another woman, she is drawn inexorably to recreate that long-past tragedy. She arranges a rendezvous for her friend Tatiana and Tatiana’s lover. She arranges to spy on them. And then, she goes one step further . . .
194 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1964
About the author
Marguerite Duras
311 books2,863 followersMarguerite Germaine Marie Donnadieu , known as Marguerite Duras, was a French novelist, playwright, screenwriter, essayist, and experimental filmmaker. Her script for the film Hiroshima mon amour (1959) earned her a nomination for Best Original Screenplay at the Academy Awards.
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December 17, 2019
so there's this chick Lol Stein, a real blank broad, gets ditched by her cougar-lovin' fiance. bitch goes crazy, but the quiet kinda crazy, the kinda crazy you keep to yourself. girl gets married to some musician type. years later, she's a mother of three, living in her old town, and she gets wrapped up in her hottie best friend's life. the best friend is busy giving it up to this prick, a dapper don who works with her husband at the local hospital. Lol gets obsessed with the douchebag. some boring get-togethers happen. Lol spends some time watching the hotel room where the two are busy banging it out. mr douche spends some time wondering what is up with Lol. finally Lol and the ever-curious prick take a long-assed train trip to the place where Lol was first ditched years ago. they sit on the beach a while and talk some bullshit. finally, they bone. the end.
so there is an empty vessel. her name is Lol Stein. some say her mind became bent when she was betrayed by her lover; others say her mind was always a blank. Lol is a being who has let form define meaning; she has built her life around ideas such as what should a house and home look like? and how should a wife act, how should a scorned lover feel? Lol begins to be obsessed with her friend's affair... she wants to watch where the two lovers go, she wants to be a silent witness to their acts, she wants to find meaning in the forms of their passion. she wants their passion to fill her. in turn, her friend's lover becomes obsessed with her... he wants to understand what lies beneath that glassy surface, he wants to see his passion reflected upon it. is the nature of their different obsessions simply to be obsessed with the idea of an obsession? is that the nature of passion, of obsession... form eventually becoming meaning?
so there is a french writer, Marguerite Duras. her novels are not written in the classic literary form; her works are a part of the Nouveau roman - they are anti-tradition. her novels reject such standbys as narrative, characterization. her novels take the details of the world, the form of her characters' actions, and centralizes them so that these details, these descriptions of form, become the meaning itself. in her focus on these physical details, on the physicality of actions, she could possibly be considered a sensual writer. and yet this distance, this separation of incident from emotion, this focus on dividing intellectual contemplation from emotional reaction, makes her works an often clinical, alienating experience. ironically enough, her novel The Ravishing of Lol Stein is ostensibly about passion and voyeurism and the nature of love, the meaning of obsession, the traps and tricks of perspective and point of view. it is a passionless rendering of the various forms of passion.
so there is a reviewer, mark monday, a shallow kind of guy, one with an automatic bias against the intellectualization of sensuality. he finds it distasteful, hollow, unreal. even worse, he finds it to be Not Hot. perhaps he is merely symptomatic of gender essentialism at its most prosaic - a man who responds to visual, sensory outputs like all men supposedly do - the kind of guy who wants visceral activity, sensual description, the kind of dude who is intimately familiar with the pornographic appeal of the extreme close-up detail. he wants it to be real. and so he rejects Duras' frosty attempt to deconstruct the nature of passion and obsession. it leaves him cold.
so there is this guy, Mark M_____, he's rather an intellectual sort. he is a thinker. one of his favorite films is Hiroshima Mon Amour, written by Marguerite Duras. he admires the film's ability to position two living, breathing characters as - eventually - something both less and more than human... as archetypes for all lovers, for all individuals seeking meaning in escape, in passion, in the forms that meaning takes, within the at-times obliterating, all-encompassing physicality of each other's arms. he admires Duras' distance. he enjoys her lack of reliance on traditional narrative, plot, and characterization. in particular, he appreciates how, in books like The Ravishing of Lol Stein, the reader can literally pick any random page and, reading that page, understand the meaning of the entire work. each detail is symptomatic of the whole. he loves that.
so there was this bookish kid, Mark, who worked in the a/v department (of course) while going to school at ucsd. one evening he was in charge of a special screening of the film Hiroshima Mon Amour, for a class that he was in. unfortunately, Mark was high as a kite and got the reels mixed up... so the viewing audience saw the first part of the film first, the third part of the film second, the second part of the film last. there was not a single complaint from the audience. in class the next day, the students discussed the film - and there was no mention of a narrative breakdown, of a mix-up in reels. the purpose of the film remained clear for the students. each detail within the film distilled the meaning intended by the filmmakers. the narrative order was inconsequential. content did not drive form. characterization was unnecessary. plot was meaningless. meaning was present in each part of the film. each part was a whole.
so there was this book, The Ravishing of Lol Stein. it dealt with passion and obsession, and the forms they take, and the meaning of those forms. it dealt with those subjects intellectually, objectively, without heat or emotion. it showed no interest in rendering its characters so that they could be understood empathetically. it left me cold. Duras began to seem rather heartless, rather cruel. but after some time, i began to recall Hiroshima Mon Amour, and what i loved about that film. i began to consider the novel again. i contemplated Duras' challenging themes. i started to admire the novel's distance, its alienation from its own topic. and so i grew to understand its frigid appeal, its sensual lack of earthy sensuality.
well, what can i say: sometimes i dig a cold, smart bitch.
so there is an empty vessel. her name is Lol Stein. some say her mind became bent when she was betrayed by her lover; others say her mind was always a blank. Lol is a being who has let form define meaning; she has built her life around ideas such as what should a house and home look like? and how should a wife act, how should a scorned lover feel? Lol begins to be obsessed with her friend's affair... she wants to watch where the two lovers go, she wants to be a silent witness to their acts, she wants to find meaning in the forms of their passion. she wants their passion to fill her. in turn, her friend's lover becomes obsessed with her... he wants to understand what lies beneath that glassy surface, he wants to see his passion reflected upon it. is the nature of their different obsessions simply to be obsessed with the idea of an obsession? is that the nature of passion, of obsession... form eventually becoming meaning?
so there is a french writer, Marguerite Duras. her novels are not written in the classic literary form; her works are a part of the Nouveau roman - they are anti-tradition. her novels reject such standbys as narrative, characterization. her novels take the details of the world, the form of her characters' actions, and centralizes them so that these details, these descriptions of form, become the meaning itself. in her focus on these physical details, on the physicality of actions, she could possibly be considered a sensual writer. and yet this distance, this separation of incident from emotion, this focus on dividing intellectual contemplation from emotional reaction, makes her works an often clinical, alienating experience. ironically enough, her novel The Ravishing of Lol Stein is ostensibly about passion and voyeurism and the nature of love, the meaning of obsession, the traps and tricks of perspective and point of view. it is a passionless rendering of the various forms of passion.
so there is a reviewer, mark monday, a shallow kind of guy, one with an automatic bias against the intellectualization of sensuality. he finds it distasteful, hollow, unreal. even worse, he finds it to be Not Hot. perhaps he is merely symptomatic of gender essentialism at its most prosaic - a man who responds to visual, sensory outputs like all men supposedly do - the kind of guy who wants visceral activity, sensual description, the kind of dude who is intimately familiar with the pornographic appeal of the extreme close-up detail. he wants it to be real. and so he rejects Duras' frosty attempt to deconstruct the nature of passion and obsession. it leaves him cold.
so there is this guy, Mark M_____, he's rather an intellectual sort. he is a thinker. one of his favorite films is Hiroshima Mon Amour, written by Marguerite Duras. he admires the film's ability to position two living, breathing characters as - eventually - something both less and more than human... as archetypes for all lovers, for all individuals seeking meaning in escape, in passion, in the forms that meaning takes, within the at-times obliterating, all-encompassing physicality of each other's arms. he admires Duras' distance. he enjoys her lack of reliance on traditional narrative, plot, and characterization. in particular, he appreciates how, in books like The Ravishing of Lol Stein, the reader can literally pick any random page and, reading that page, understand the meaning of the entire work. each detail is symptomatic of the whole. he loves that.
so there was this bookish kid, Mark, who worked in the a/v department (of course) while going to school at ucsd. one evening he was in charge of a special screening of the film Hiroshima Mon Amour, for a class that he was in. unfortunately, Mark was high as a kite and got the reels mixed up... so the viewing audience saw the first part of the film first, the third part of the film second, the second part of the film last. there was not a single complaint from the audience. in class the next day, the students discussed the film - and there was no mention of a narrative breakdown, of a mix-up in reels. the purpose of the film remained clear for the students. each detail within the film distilled the meaning intended by the filmmakers. the narrative order was inconsequential. content did not drive form. characterization was unnecessary. plot was meaningless. meaning was present in each part of the film. each part was a whole.
so there was this book, The Ravishing of Lol Stein. it dealt with passion and obsession, and the forms they take, and the meaning of those forms. it dealt with those subjects intellectually, objectively, without heat or emotion. it showed no interest in rendering its characters so that they could be understood empathetically. it left me cold. Duras began to seem rather heartless, rather cruel. but after some time, i began to recall Hiroshima Mon Amour, and what i loved about that film. i began to consider the novel again. i contemplated Duras' challenging themes. i started to admire the novel's distance, its alienation from its own topic. and so i grew to understand its frigid appeal, its sensual lack of earthy sensuality.
well, what can i say: sometimes i dig a cold, smart bitch.
April 6, 2020
nope. i do not like marguerite duras.
janet flanner, in the new yorker claims that her writing has a "shine like crystal." and that's probably true, if one is observing that it is as pointy and depthless as crystal, as chill and remote, as something that refracts emptily. ooooh duras BURN!!
if this is a literary bodice ripper, i gotta say i prefer the crappy contemporary ones. this one isn't even intense with the taut tingling of repression, which also has its place and is something i can appreciate - it doesn't all have to be desperate passions and rending of garments, but this zombie vacuity does nothing for me - nothing nothing nothing. there is nothing at stake here, just people blinking emptily at each other, speaking words with no momentum behind them, frequently non sequiturs so it seems as though they are involved in separate conversations. lack of quotation marks so that when one character will reluctantly, languidly plop out a sentence, you sometimes don't even know which one is speaking, unless there is a back-and-forth, and then you can use context or whatever. but the one isolated word or phrase in a scene when two people are just sitting around existing, who knows who is speaking? who cares?
and i am not just pouting because no one but me wanted to read zola for the literary smut portion of our rippings, i swear. i did not like The Lover when i read it, but i had hope nonetheless. this one sounded like it could be interesting. but the french have this habit of creating highly stylized works of art that leave me cold. why do they do that? very infuriating, frenchies...
i know all the other rippers will have informed and intelligent things to say about this, and my frazzled and sweaty frustration will be coolly counteracted by more reasonable ladies (and a dude or two) with elegant and refined responses examining the psychology of characters such as these, and what duras is trying to accomplish by portraying them in this way, but i am a monster and i bust down the door and say "boring boring boring boring!!!"
also, "boring!!"
now i will go hide.
♥
come to my blog!
janet flanner, in the new yorker claims that her writing has a "shine like crystal." and that's probably true, if one is observing that it is as pointy and depthless as crystal, as chill and remote, as something that refracts emptily. ooooh duras BURN!!
if this is a literary bodice ripper, i gotta say i prefer the crappy contemporary ones. this one isn't even intense with the taut tingling of repression, which also has its place and is something i can appreciate - it doesn't all have to be desperate passions and rending of garments, but this zombie vacuity does nothing for me - nothing nothing nothing. there is nothing at stake here, just people blinking emptily at each other, speaking words with no momentum behind them, frequently non sequiturs so it seems as though they are involved in separate conversations. lack of quotation marks so that when one character will reluctantly, languidly plop out a sentence, you sometimes don't even know which one is speaking, unless there is a back-and-forth, and then you can use context or whatever. but the one isolated word or phrase in a scene when two people are just sitting around existing, who knows who is speaking? who cares?
and i am not just pouting because no one but me wanted to read zola for the literary smut portion of our rippings, i swear. i did not like The Lover when i read it, but i had hope nonetheless. this one sounded like it could be interesting. but the french have this habit of creating highly stylized works of art that leave me cold. why do they do that? very infuriating, frenchies...
i know all the other rippers will have informed and intelligent things to say about this, and my frazzled and sweaty frustration will be coolly counteracted by more reasonable ladies (and a dude or two) with elegant and refined responses examining the psychology of characters such as these, and what duras is trying to accomplish by portraying them in this way, but i am a monster and i bust down the door and say "boring boring boring boring!!!"
also, "boring!!"
now i will go hide.
♥
come to my blog!
October 26, 2023
The Ravishing of Lol Stein is a Nouveau Roman love story, and those who are familiar with her work will know she writes in a stark, minimal style, with short sentencing, but done in a most profound way. There are three main viewpoints, looking in from the outside: yes it's a tale of love, but also a voyeuristic mystery, and a nostalgic trip down memory lane.
Who is the person behind the mystery voice that’s narrating The Ravishing of Lol Stein? That's one of the first things I asked myself, as the story focuses almost entirely on the passions of the central characters and on the narrator’s attempts to understand the history of the enigmatic Lol. Stripped of climax and denouement, the story elevates memory and sexual tension over physical action.
Lol Stein, is a reserved young woman, engaged to wed but at a ball, her love abandons Lol for a mysterious older woman, Lol is left in the hands of friend Tatiana to help comfort her. Later in a state of depression Lol meets a man, John Bedford, who is immediately intrigued by her, hence, they fall in love, start a family and move away. After ten years they return, but yearning for past sorrows grips Lol, who takes to meandering long walks to ponder on her heartbroken youth and reminisce about that tragic night when all was lost. After time she would take to following a woman she recognized, which would lead her to another man whist spying in a hotel window; but as Lol takes to voyeurism, unknown to her, the narrator is also following.
With a deft and slender touch each page feels like you are in the presence of a wondering ghost, and with some hauntingly beautiful sentences. I've read most of her fiction, and this one I feel the most affection for.
May 12, 2024
Крайне непросто писать обзор на книги автора из плеяды Нового французского романа, ярким представителем которого является Маргерит Дюрас. Не могу сказать, что сюжета нет, но он вялотекущий. Целью писательницы было показать мельчайшие нюансы психологического состояния своих героев. Лола Валери Штайн собиралась выйти замуж за Майкла Ричардсона, и во время бала его увела навсегда из ее жизни Анна-Мари Штреттер. Потрясенная, Лола Валери заболела, ее ментальное здоровье было подорвано, она была опустошена. Она любила Майкла слишком сильно. Тем не менее, ей удалось выйти замуж за хорошего и заботливого человека. Она родила троих детей, семейная жизнь, забота о доме, и, особенно, саде, несколько успокоила ее. Она смогла найти свою школьную приятельницу Татьяну Карл, с которой в далёком детстве они танцевали на школьном дворе, пока другие ученики шли на прогулки. Татьяна характеризуется, как потаскуха, по крайней мере, внешне.
Лола Валери выследила Татьяну и ее любовника Жака Холта в гостинице и наблюдала за их силуэтами в освещённом окне, лёжа на поле, засеянном овсом. Непонятно, почему ее заинтересовал Жак. Напоминал ли он чем-то ее бывшего жениха? В общем, она оказалась с ним в постели.
Мне не очень понравился роман, потому что он о душевных переживаниях женщины, не очень понятной мне. Это женщина - любящая до умопомрачения, и за это она заслуживает по крайней мере уважения, но она инфантильна. За десять лет после психологической травмы, она совершенно не изменилась, она не совершенствовалась, не стремилась ни к чему, о ее материнстве известно лишь, что у нее трое детей. В ее системе ценностей - серьезная разбалансировка, когда любовь, ее утрата, ее похищение вызвали гипертрофированную значимость этой любви по отношению ко всем остальным ценностям.
Глубокое понимание природы бессознательного в этом романе Дюрас отметил учён��й с мировым именем, философ, психиатр Жак Лакан.
Знание человеческой психологии у Дюрас великолепно, но роман - не из моих предпочтений.
Дополнительно, хотелось бы отметить, что русскоязычное название романа - "Неповторимое обаяние Лолы Валери Штайн" в то время как точный перевод с оригинального названия "Восхищение Лолы Валери Штайн". Смысл существенно меняется. Зачем переводчик изменил название?
Лола Валери выследила Татьяну и ее любовника Жака Холта в гостинице и наблюдала за их силуэтами в освещённом окне, лёжа на поле, засеянном овсом. Непонятно, почему ее заинтересовал Жак. Напоминал ли он чем-то ее бывшего жениха? В общем, она оказалась с ним в постели.
Мне не очень понравился роман, потому что он о душевных переживаниях женщины, не очень понятной мне. Это женщина - любящая до умопомрачения, и за это она заслуживает по крайней мере уважения, но она инфантильна. За десять лет после психологической травмы, она совершенно не изменилась, она не совершенствовалась, не стремилась ни к чему, о ее материнстве известно лишь, что у нее трое детей. В ее системе ценностей - серьезная разбалансировка, когда любовь, ее утрата, ее похищение вызвали гипертрофированную значимость этой любви по отношению ко всем остальным ценностям.
Глубокое понимание природы бессознательного в этом романе Дюрас отметил учён��й с мировым именем, философ, психиатр Жак Лакан.
Знание человеческой психологии у Дюрас великолепно, но роман - не из моих предпочтений.
Дополнительно, хотелось бы отметить, что русскоязычное название романа - "Неповторимое обаяние Лолы Валери Штайн" в то время как точный перевод с оригинального названия "Восхищение Лолы Валери Штайн". Смысл существенно меняется. Зачем переводчик изменил название?
February 26, 2018
424. Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein = The Ravishing of Lol V. Stein = The rapture of Lol V. Stein, Marguerite Duras
Le ravissement de Lol V. Stein is a novel written by Marguerite Duras and published in France by Gallimard in 1964. The text was translated by Richard Seaver and published as The Ravishing of Lol Stein in the US by Grove Press in 1966. The text was also translated by Eileen Ellenbogen in the UK as The rapture of Lol V. Stein for Hamish Hamilton in 1967.
At the beginning of the novel, Lol Stein (her middle initial is omitted in the English translation) is a woman in her thirties. She was born and raised in South Tahla in a bourgeois family and is engaged to Michael Richardson at 19. However, at a ball in the seaside resort of Town Beach, Michael Richardson leaves Lol for Anne-Marie Stretter, an older woman. After a difficult recovery from this shock, Lol marries John Bedford, a musician she meets on one of her daily walks. Lol leaves South Tahla with her husband. Ten years later, with three children, Lol is an established woman with no time for fantasy. She returns with her family to South Tahla and moves into the house she grew up in. Lol goes on her daily walks as she did ten years before. She thinks she recognises Tatiana Karl one day, the friend who consoled her after her breakup with Michael Richardson. The man who accompanies Tatiana makes a deep impression on Lol. Lol reestablishes her contact with Tatiana and gets to know both her husband and her lover, Jacques Hold. Lol is able to get information from Jacques about events at the ball at T Beach 10 years before. Lol reveals to Jacques her interest in him but forbids him to stay with her instead of Tatiana. Lol spies on Tatiana and her lover but Jacques notices her. One day Lol tells Jacques that she has been to T Beach alone and plans to return with him. While doing this, Lol shows Jacques the room where she and Michael Richardson had split up. Lol and Jacques spend the night together. The next day, Jacques has one last meeting with Tatiana Karl.
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: چهاردهم ماه آگوست سال 2007 میلادی
عنوان: شیدائی لول و. اشتاین؛ نویسنده: مارگاریت دوراس؛ مترجم: پرویز شهدی؛ تهران، ققنوس، 1378؛ در 199 ص؛ شابک: 9643112144؛ موضوع: داستانهای نویسندگان فرانسه - قرن 20 م
عنوان: شیدایی لل. و. اشتاین؛ نویسنده: مارگاریت دوراس؛ مترجم: قاسم روبین؛ تهران، اختران، 1395؛ در 169 ص؛ شابک: 9789642071036؛
لُل زنی ست که رنج را از یاد برده، خود را هم از یاد برده… نسیان همین است؛ مثل آب، که در دمای زیر صفر و در نسیانِ آب بودن یخ میزند. یخ میزند
دوراس میگوید: تمام زنهای کتابهای من، در هر سنّی که باشند، سرشته از گِل لُل اند، یا شاید هم به نوعی خود از یاد بردگانند؛ موجب شوربختیِ زندگیشانند؛ از کوچه و بازار هراسانند؛ به سعادت هم چشم ندوخته اند. در بین اشخاصِ کتابهای من، سرآمد است لُل – لُلِ کتاب، کتابِ لُل، خیلی خواهان دارد. شوریده عقلی لُل را به گوش همۀ عالم میرسانم. پایان نقل
قصۀ لُل والری اشتاین دقیقاً از وقتی شروع میشود که آخرین مشتریهای کازینوی ت.ییچ قدم به تالار رقص میگذارند. دنبالۀ ماجرا به سپیده دم میانجامد، به دگرگونی لُل.و.اشتاین. مجلس رقص که به پایان میرسد، با فرجام شب، در خواب و خاموشی، قصه هم تمام میشود؛ انگار ده سال گذشته است. لُل.و.اشتاین شوهر میکند، شهر زادگاهش -اس.تالا- را ترک میکند، صاحب اولاد میشود، زن باوفای عرصۀ زندگی میشود، خود را خرسند و خوشبخت نشان میدهد. بعد هم از پس ده سال جدایی بین او و آن مجلس رقصِ شبانه، بازمیگردد به اس.تالا که زندگی کند. دوست از یاد رفتۀ دوران کودکیش را در همین شهر پیدا میکند، تاتیانا کارل را، همان زنی که تمام شب در مجلسِ رقصِ ت.ییچ همراهش مانده بود، ولی لُل این را هم از یاد برده است. سالدیده است وقتی از کازینو میآید بیرون، روی چرخ معلولین، یا شاید بر تابوتی روی دوش مردان چینی. ا. شربیانی
Le ravissement de Lol V. Stein is a novel written by Marguerite Duras and published in France by Gallimard in 1964. The text was translated by Richard Seaver and published as The Ravishing of Lol Stein in the US by Grove Press in 1966. The text was also translated by Eileen Ellenbogen in the UK as The rapture of Lol V. Stein for Hamish Hamilton in 1967.
At the beginning of the novel, Lol Stein (her middle initial is omitted in the English translation) is a woman in her thirties. She was born and raised in South Tahla in a bourgeois family and is engaged to Michael Richardson at 19. However, at a ball in the seaside resort of Town Beach, Michael Richardson leaves Lol for Anne-Marie Stretter, an older woman. After a difficult recovery from this shock, Lol marries John Bedford, a musician she meets on one of her daily walks. Lol leaves South Tahla with her husband. Ten years later, with three children, Lol is an established woman with no time for fantasy. She returns with her family to South Tahla and moves into the house she grew up in. Lol goes on her daily walks as she did ten years before. She thinks she recognises Tatiana Karl one day, the friend who consoled her after her breakup with Michael Richardson. The man who accompanies Tatiana makes a deep impression on Lol. Lol reestablishes her contact with Tatiana and gets to know both her husband and her lover, Jacques Hold. Lol is able to get information from Jacques about events at the ball at T Beach 10 years before. Lol reveals to Jacques her interest in him but forbids him to stay with her instead of Tatiana. Lol spies on Tatiana and her lover but Jacques notices her. One day Lol tells Jacques that she has been to T Beach alone and plans to return with him. While doing this, Lol shows Jacques the room where she and Michael Richardson had split up. Lol and Jacques spend the night together. The next day, Jacques has one last meeting with Tatiana Karl.
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: چهاردهم ماه آگوست سال 2007 میلادی
عنوان: شیدائی لول و. اشتاین؛ نویسنده: مارگاریت دوراس؛ مترجم: پرویز شهدی؛ تهران، ققنوس، 1378؛ در 199 ص؛ شابک: 9643112144؛ موضوع: داستانهای نویسندگان فرانسه - قرن 20 م
عنوان: شیدایی لل. و. اشتاین؛ نویسنده: مارگاریت دوراس؛ مترجم: قاسم روبین؛ تهران، اختران، 1395؛ در 169 ص؛ شابک: 9789642071036؛
لُل زنی ست که رنج را از یاد برده، خود را هم از یاد برده… نسیان همین است؛ مثل آب، که در دمای زیر صفر و در نسیانِ آب بودن یخ میزند. یخ میزند
دوراس میگوید: تمام زنهای کتابهای من، در هر سنّی که باشند، سرشته از گِل لُل اند، یا شاید هم به نوعی خود از یاد بردگانند؛ موجب شوربختیِ زندگیشانند؛ از کوچه و بازار هراسانند؛ به سعادت هم چشم ندوخته اند. در بین اشخاصِ کتابهای من، سرآمد است لُل – لُلِ کتاب، کتابِ لُل، خیلی خواهان دارد. شوریده عقلی لُل را به گوش همۀ عالم میرسانم. پایان نقل
قصۀ لُل والری اشتاین دقیقاً از وقتی شروع میشود که آخرین مشتریهای کازینوی ت.ییچ قدم به تالار رقص میگذارند. دنبالۀ ماجرا به سپیده دم میانجامد، به دگرگونی لُل.و.اشتاین. مجلس رقص که به پایان میرسد، با فرجام شب، در خواب و خاموشی، قصه هم تمام میشود؛ انگار ده سال گذشته است. لُل.و.اشتاین شوهر میکند، شهر زادگاهش -اس.تالا- را ترک میکند، صاحب اولاد میشود، زن باوفای عرصۀ زندگی میشود، خود را خرسند و خوشبخت نشان میدهد. بعد هم از پس ده سال جدایی بین او و آن مجلس رقصِ شبانه، بازمیگردد به اس.تالا که زندگی کند. دوست از یاد رفتۀ دوران کودکیش را در همین شهر پیدا میکند، تاتیانا کارل را، همان زنی که تمام شب در مجلسِ رقصِ ت.ییچ همراهش مانده بود، ولی لُل این را هم از یاد برده است. سالدیده است وقتی از کازینو میآید بیرون، روی چرخ معلولین، یا شاید بر تابوتی روی دوش مردان چینی. ا. شربیانی
September 4, 2023
The displacement brought on by conjecture and uncertainty -- what does any other person truly think or feel? how can we know? -- moves this smoothly out of the actual and into the metaphysical. Beautifully, destroyingly. Duras' prose is a tension system of concepts in deadly suspension, but this one seems to occur at a pivot-point. Five years later, of Destroy, She Said, Duras would say something like "I'm so sick of plots, all the telling what happened, I can't stand it anymore" and proceed to continuously strip away and refine her systems into gleaming singularities. Many of them, at least. Not that she didn't apply a rigorous minimalism to plenty of earlier works as well, but there were also clear actions and plot movements in stories like 10:30 on a Summer's Night, and here, where scenes repeat with the full force of any of her constructions, while interacting in a larger, more elaborate system. The early chapters create an inciting conflagration and then analyze it into obscurity and shadow, an obscurity amplified by distance of interpretation. Then time and perspective shift into a greater immediacy (with its own ambiguities) and a series of mounting aftershocks that never bring a release from the tightening tension-coils that grip every word.
Here, just listen:
Here, just listen:
What would have happened? Lol does not probe very deeply into the unknown into which this moment opens. She has no memory, not even an imaginary one, she has not the faintest notion of this unknown. But what she does believe is that she must enter it, that that was what she has to do, that it would always have meant, for her mind as well as her body, both their greatest pain and their greatest joy, so commingled as to be undefinable, a single entity but unnamable for lack of a word. I like to believe--since I love her--that if Lol is silent in daily life, it is because, for a split second, she believed that this word might exist. Since it does not, she remains silent. It would have been an absence-word, a hole-word, whose center would have been hollowed out into a hole, the kind of hole in which all other words would have been buried. It would have been impossible to utter, it would have been made to reverberate. Enormous, endless, an empty gong, it would have held back anyone who wanted to leave, it would have convinced them of the impossible, it would have made them deaf to any other word save that one, in one fell swoop it would have defined the moment and the future themselves. By its absence this word ruins all the others, it contaminates them, it is also the dead dog on the beach at high noon, this hole of flesh. How were other words found? Hand-me-downs from God knows how many love affairs like Lol Stein's, affairs nipped in the bud, trampled upon, and from massacres, oh! you've no idea how many their are, how many blood-stained failures are strewn along the horizon, piled up there, and, among them, this word, which does not exist, is nonetheless there: it awaits you just around the corner of language, it defies you--never having been used--to raise it, to make it arise from its kingdom, which is pierced on every side and through which flows the sea, the sand, the eternity of the ball in the cinema of Lol Stein.
August 28, 2023
Everybody moved on
I, I stayed there
Dust collected on my pinned-up hair
They expected me to find somewhere
Some perspective, but I sat and stared
right where you left me. Taylor Swift
This is my first encounter with Marguerite Duras and surely it won’t be the last. Much as the protagonist of this story, who by the end of the novel still remains indecipherable, I can’t pinpoint exactly the allurement her prose conveys. The style felt unique and somewhat experimental, though it might be my lack of familiarity with her work. The masterful use of the language is infused in every description and thought.
Lol Stein is a delightful character. Her descend to madness is attributed to a traumatic experience, where she was abandoned by her fiancé; but I would argue this event was more of a detonator of something that was ever-present: there was already something lacking in Lol, something which kept her from being(...)"there."
Upon losing the affection of her loved one, it seems like Lol is cursed to re-live the same scene over and over, it doesn’t just feel like a latent memory, but something that keeps happening for her. She is hoping for some interruption in the endless repetition of her life
The moment her hand was dropped while dancing, she accepted it blatantly. Her madness presents itself differently, than that of other famous mad women, such as Mrs Rochester from Jane Eyre, who is defined by rage. Lol is the opposite, she is anesthetized, banned from existence, devoid of thoughts.
Thoughts, a welter of thoughts, all rendered equally sterile the moment her walk was over—none of these thoughts had ever crossed the threshold with her into her house—occur to Lol as she walks
I, I stayed there
Dust collected on my pinned-up hair
They expected me to find somewhere
Some perspective, but I sat and stared
right where you left me. Taylor Swift
This is my first encounter with Marguerite Duras and surely it won’t be the last. Much as the protagonist of this story, who by the end of the novel still remains indecipherable, I can’t pinpoint exactly the allurement her prose conveys. The style felt unique and somewhat experimental, though it might be my lack of familiarity with her work. The masterful use of the language is infused in every description and thought.
Lol Stein is a delightful character. Her descend to madness is attributed to a traumatic experience, where she was abandoned by her fiancé; but I would argue this event was more of a detonator of something that was ever-present: there was already something lacking in Lol, something which kept her from being(...)"there."
Upon losing the affection of her loved one, it seems like Lol is cursed to re-live the same scene over and over, it doesn’t just feel like a latent memory, but something that keeps happening for her. She is hoping for some interruption in the endless repetition of her life
The moment her hand was dropped while dancing, she accepted it blatantly. Her madness presents itself differently, than that of other famous mad women, such as Mrs Rochester from Jane Eyre, who is defined by rage. Lol is the opposite, she is anesthetized, banned from existence, devoid of thoughts.
Thoughts, a welter of thoughts, all rendered equally sterile the moment her walk was over—none of these thoughts had ever crossed the threshold with her into her house—occur to Lol as she walks
April 5, 2011
Reading this book is like sitting beside a sleepy tranquil lake on one lazy Sunday afternoon. You appreciate the serene surroundings, the chirping birds, the blowing gentle breeze, the scent of the trees mixed with the water. You then see a small boat docked by the lake side and decide to have do some rowing. Unknown to you, there is a lake “loch” monster silently stirring below the lake and at anytime will pop out the water and will eat you alive.
My first book by Marguerite Duras (1914-1996), a French writer and film director. Definitely not to be my last. Her writing is captivating not because of the usual lyrical prose but the short staccato phrases give you that feeling of immediacy and danger. That feeling will make you continuously leaf the pages till the end of the book. You want to know the end and make sure that you are out of the water when the loch monster pops out.
This is a story of Lol V. Stein who at 19 is engaged to marry 22-y/o Michael Richardson, only heir of a rich couple. One night in a ball, Michael meets an older widower, Anne-Marie Stretter. Michael ditched Lol. Hurt and with her heart broken, Lol goes to another town and meets musician Jean Bedford. They get married and bear children. After 10 years, Lol and her family return to the town. Lol meets her former friend Tatiana Karl who now has a lover Jacques Hold but childless. Jacques is the narrator of the story.
The story reminded me of a woman in our island-town who was said to be ditched by her fiancé few days before they were supposed to get married. Since the day she was ditched, she did not get outside the house. She did get down to the lower floor only to bring up water from their water pump. The island-town, even up to now, has no water system. Our family had a well but it is not suitable for drinking. So, me and my brothers were the ones who fetched water from their pump that is located across the back of our house.
I was still very young, or maybe not born yet, when the ditching happened. I only heard the story from my mother (as usual, she knows all the lives of people in the island). As a young boy, whenever I saw the old lady by the stairs or the pump, I used to marvel at her feet: so white, so clean, delicate-looking and thought that maybe that was how my dirty boy feet would look like if I did not go outside the house for the rest of my life. I never had the courage to talk to her, my being a shy provincial boy. However, that old woman sort of became a legend among us boys: a woman who was betrayed by her lover and chose not to show her face to the world for the rest of her life.
We went through all that: we all had our unrequited love or simply ditched by someone who used to love us. How did we react? This novel, The Ravishing of Lol Stein has another title depending on the edition: The Rapture of Lol Stein. Yes, she has been hurt that much that she leads an dull but seemingly painless life. The pain of being ditched is inside her but she has, or chooses not to have, no outlet to express the pain. The trauma of losing her lover is something that stays with her forever. Funny thing is that, at first, I thought that "rapture" is the same as "rupture" so I thought that the voyeurism that Lol Stein does in the story is her rupture because of the bottled pain in her heart or her "pocketbook" (if I may borrow the term of Mary Angelou in I Know Why the Caged Birds Sing)
But that old woman with white clean feet? When half of the town got burned in 1984, she had no choice but to come out because the house with the pump where she lived and where we used to get clean drinking water? It got burned. Unfortunately, I was not there because I was in college in the city so I did not see how she managed to walk on the street with many people seeing her scared face for the first time.
My first book by Marguerite Duras (1914-1996), a French writer and film director. Definitely not to be my last. Her writing is captivating not because of the usual lyrical prose but the short staccato phrases give you that feeling of immediacy and danger. That feeling will make you continuously leaf the pages till the end of the book. You want to know the end and make sure that you are out of the water when the loch monster pops out.
This is a story of Lol V. Stein who at 19 is engaged to marry 22-y/o Michael Richardson, only heir of a rich couple. One night in a ball, Michael meets an older widower, Anne-Marie Stretter. Michael ditched Lol. Hurt and with her heart broken, Lol goes to another town and meets musician Jean Bedford. They get married and bear children. After 10 years, Lol and her family return to the town. Lol meets her former friend Tatiana Karl who now has a lover Jacques Hold but childless. Jacques is the narrator of the story.
The story reminded me of a woman in our island-town who was said to be ditched by her fiancé few days before they were supposed to get married. Since the day she was ditched, she did not get outside the house. She did get down to the lower floor only to bring up water from their water pump. The island-town, even up to now, has no water system. Our family had a well but it is not suitable for drinking. So, me and my brothers were the ones who fetched water from their pump that is located across the back of our house.
I was still very young, or maybe not born yet, when the ditching happened. I only heard the story from my mother (as usual, she knows all the lives of people in the island). As a young boy, whenever I saw the old lady by the stairs or the pump, I used to marvel at her feet: so white, so clean, delicate-looking and thought that maybe that was how my dirty boy feet would look like if I did not go outside the house for the rest of my life. I never had the courage to talk to her, my being a shy provincial boy. However, that old woman sort of became a legend among us boys: a woman who was betrayed by her lover and chose not to show her face to the world for the rest of her life.
We went through all that: we all had our unrequited love or simply ditched by someone who used to love us. How did we react? This novel, The Ravishing of Lol Stein has another title depending on the edition: The Rapture of Lol Stein. Yes, she has been hurt that much that she leads an dull but seemingly painless life. The pain of being ditched is inside her but she has, or chooses not to have, no outlet to express the pain. The trauma of losing her lover is something that stays with her forever. Funny thing is that, at first, I thought that "rapture" is the same as "rupture" so I thought that the voyeurism that Lol Stein does in the story is her rupture because of the bottled pain in her heart or her "pocketbook" (if I may borrow the term of Mary Angelou in I Know Why the Caged Birds Sing)
But that old woman with white clean feet? When half of the town got burned in 1984, she had no choice but to come out because the house with the pump where she lived and where we used to get clean drinking water? It got burned. Unfortunately, I was not there because I was in college in the city so I did not see how she managed to walk on the street with many people seeing her scared face for the first time.
March 3, 2020
No, it's not really one of the greatest novels ever written in any objective way, but I'm such a fan of the French nouveau roman I can't help but give this lovely little tome five stars. I loved everything about The Ravishing of Lol Stein--the mysterious narrator, the non-place and mix of cultural origins to the names of the fugitive characters, the convoluted story told almost entirely through impressions and emotions, the inner reality that trumps all sense of any outer objective realism, the inconclusive ending, the smell of the mellowing, cheap paper of a Grove Press hardcover from a 1980s remainder bin. I remember so vividly falling in love with the novels of Blanchot, Duras, Beckett, Sarraute, Philippe Sollers, and Robbe-Grillet in college, how they set me to writing with increased fervor searching to say what had never been said before in new, unthought forms of narrative. Reading this was like hearing an LP I never heard before from a band I loved back in the 1980s.
April 14, 2012
An intriguing read, difficult to review because the story doesn't really follow narrative rules about plot progression or character motivations. I think this is deliberate on the part of the author because the subject is so intimate, so passionate and mysterious. Duras doesn't explain and doesn't analyze the love life of Lola V Stein, who may or may not be crazy. I suspect she is normal, as normal as anyone can be who has been deeply wounded in the first enthusiasm of young love and has chosen to retreat back inside the shell. Also, the title may be a little misleading, there's no actual rape in the novel, other than an emotional one. I think I prefer the "rapture" translation for "ravissement" over the one in the title.
The defining moment of the heroine takes place at a seaside casino, where she witnesses her fiancee come under the spell of another woman, dancing in her arms until sunrise, lost to the outside world. We get a brief glimpse of Lol before this event - as a self sufficient and taciturn highschooler - and a longer story of the aftermath, with Lol as a good wife and mother returning ten years later to the place of her youth. She roams the streets of her hometown, a closed book, absorbing the images of houses and gardens and people until a stranger catches her attention and leads her back to her best friend from school days : Natalie, a witness to her defining night at the casino.
From here the storyline gets mixed, switching madly in point of view from one character to another, with fragments of unfinished dialogue, silences and meaningful looks - illustrating the impulsive nature of our passions, escaping rational analysis and logical explanations. The couples come together and drift apart in a dreamy haze, dancing to an unknown tune, like in a memorable serata where :
sentiment is rife everywhere, people are slipping on that greasy substance
I checked a bit on the wikipedia about Marguerite Duras, and I found out she wrote the script for "Hiroshima Mon Amour" . The book reminds me a little of that movie, of two people from different planets trying to use words and their bodies to communicate, to reach an understanding. I am even more reminded of another film - L'annee derniere a Marienbad - a surrreal experience that defies meaning, that simply exists. I think The Ravishing of Lol Stein is the kind of book that will be different with each re-read, and probably every reader will pick something else from the story, depending on what his / her emotional baggage is.
The defining moment of the heroine takes place at a seaside casino, where she witnesses her fiancee come under the spell of another woman, dancing in her arms until sunrise, lost to the outside world. We get a brief glimpse of Lol before this event - as a self sufficient and taciturn highschooler - and a longer story of the aftermath, with Lol as a good wife and mother returning ten years later to the place of her youth. She roams the streets of her hometown, a closed book, absorbing the images of houses and gardens and people until a stranger catches her attention and leads her back to her best friend from school days : Natalie, a witness to her defining night at the casino.
From here the storyline gets mixed, switching madly in point of view from one character to another, with fragments of unfinished dialogue, silences and meaningful looks - illustrating the impulsive nature of our passions, escaping rational analysis and logical explanations. The couples come together and drift apart in a dreamy haze, dancing to an unknown tune, like in a memorable serata where :
sentiment is rife everywhere, people are slipping on that greasy substance
I checked a bit on the wikipedia about Marguerite Duras, and I found out she wrote the script for "Hiroshima Mon Amour" . The book reminds me a little of that movie, of two people from different planets trying to use words and their bodies to communicate, to reach an understanding. I am even more reminded of another film - L'annee derniere a Marienbad - a surrreal experience that defies meaning, that simply exists. I think The Ravishing of Lol Stein is the kind of book that will be different with each re-read, and probably every reader will pick something else from the story, depending on what his / her emotional baggage is.
August 14, 2024
https://kansasbooks.blogspot.com/2024...
“El acercamiento a Lol no existe. Uno no puede acercarse o alejarse de ella, Hay que esperar que venga a buscarte, que ella quiera. Quiere, se me hace patente, que la conozca y la vea en un cierto espacio que habita en ese momento. ¿Cuál?”
Es rara mi relación con Marguerite Duras, porque es un autora que adoro y sin embargo solo había leído una novela, la archiconocida "El Amante" y de esto hace ya mil años. La adoro porque me he visto casi todas sus pelis dirigidas por ella, y las no dirigidas, aquellas en las que su texto, su guión, es casi el protagonista absoluto. Sin embargo, no existiría Marguerite Duras directora de cine de no ser por sus textos, su obsesión por reflejarse ella misma en ellos, pero es una autora difícil, impenetrable y ya había intentado antes aproximarme a alguna novela suya y tuve que aparcarlo por eso, porque me parecía impenetrable. El ensayo de Amina Cain A Horse at Night (“I wanted to write fiction because I saw something in Dura’s Lol Stein. I didn’t know how to stop thinking about that character…”), me recordó que la tenía esperando en la recámara así que me acerqué, y claramente ha sido el momento. Su ficción es tal como aparece reflejada en sus películas, una mezcla de narración fantasmal y atmósfera de las ideas. El argumento, los personajes sirven como excusa para que el lenguaje se ramifique en frases cortas, directas, que dejan intuir algo que va más allá de lo que percibimos a simple vista: “Nos dirigimos hacia algo. Aunque no pase nada avanzamos hacia algún fin”. Sus personajes sí que avanzan aunque parezcan fantasmas revoloteando en torno a la misma obsesión, amor y ausencia, una obsesión para la Duras.
“Así, Lol se casó sin haberlo deseado, del modo que le convenía, sin pasar por el horror de una elección, sin tener que plagiar el crimen que hubiera supuesto ante algunos, la sustitución por un ser único y sobre todo sin haber traicionado el abandono ejemplar en el que la había dejado.”
Es también casualidad que me decidiera a leer esta novela de la Duras, justo cuando estoy leyendo "En busca del tiempo perdido" de Proust, porque en "El arrebato de Lol V. Stein" todo está construido alrededor de querer recuperar un tiempo que ya pasó, porque no es tanto la realidad de lo que ocurrió sino el poso que dejó en nosotros ese recuerdo, o esa memoria. Recuperar las sensaciones pero ¿hasta qué punto podemos confiar en esa memoria? Así que intentando extraer la sensación, quizás todo se haya fragmentado y perdido en el camino. También al igual que en la obra de Proust, en esta novela hay un mucho de voyeurismo…, los personajes, Lol, por ejemplo, otea, vigila, observa a escondidas y no solo ella sino el narrador Jacques Hold, y porque los momentos más importantes de esta novela, dependen de un encuentro, de los encuentros que ocurren por azar y cambian toda la puesta en escena.
“Tatiana también dice que Lol V. Stein era bonita, que en el colegio se la disputaban, aunque se te escurría entre las manos como el agua, porque lo poco que retenías merecía el esfuerzo, aunque una parte de sí misma estuviera siempre ida lejos de ti y del momento presente.
¿Era el corazón el que no estaba ahí? Sí, al parecer era esa zona del sentimiento lo que, en Lol, se diferenciaba de los demás.”
"El arrebato de Lol V. Stein" cuenta la historia de una chica, Lola Valerie Stein, cuyo prometido una noche en la sala de baile del casino sucumbe bajo el hechizo de otra mujer: la deja esa misma noche por Anne Marie Stretter, francesa, la mujer del cónsul de Francia en Calcuta, una mujer de mundo mayor que ella. Juntos abandonan el casino, bajo la atenta mirada de Lol que desde la entrada de la otra mujer se había sentido fascinada y abandonada al mismo tiempo y desde el primer minuto por esa escena. “Nada podía dejar entrever en esta mujer, ni siquiera fugazmente, el extraño luto que había llevado Lol V. Stein por Michael Richardson.” Se dice que Lol no pudo resistir el abandono, la ausencia, o el desamor, sin embargo, según el relato de su amiga Tatiana, también testigo de la escena, Lol ya se había mostrado “incompleta”, mucho antes, quizás desde siempre. “Según Tatiana Karl, los orígenes de esta enfermedad se remontan a mucho antes, mucho antes incluso de su amistad. Estaban ahí, en Lol V. Stein, incubados, pero sin llegar a exteriorizarse debido al gran afecto que siempre la había rodeado en su familiar”. Pasan diez años y Lol se ha casado, ha rehecho su vida, se va a vivir lejos y vuelve casada y con tres hijos. Vuelve de nuevo a su ciudad natal y a partir de aquí, de alguna forma vuelve a producirse un retroceso a ese pasado que se quedó grabado en una memoria fragmentada en la sala de baile del casino. El arrebato del que hace mención el título puede estar referido a una cierta locura de la que Lol nunca ha conseguido liberarse, porque durante diez años se ha mostrado “accesible” y sin embargo, la vuelta a su ciudad natal ha liberado una especie de fuerza que había estado bloqueada.
“He aquí desarrollados, mezclados a la vez, esa falsa semblanza expuesta por Tatiana Karl y lo que yo invento. A partir de todo ello contaré mi historia de Lol V. Stein.”
El texto está narrado por Jacques Hold, el amante de su amiga Tatiana Karl y lo fascinante está precisamente en este narrador, que nos está contando la historia de su encuentro con Lol diez años después, pero al mismo tiempo nos está narrando unos hechos de su pasado, no de primera mano, sino a su vez de lo que le había contado Tatiana, así que este amante construye su propia historia de Lol V. Stein. No sabemos si la Lol que llegamos a conocer es la verdadera o quizás la creada por él mismo, él mismo cae fascinado por la historia de amor no resuelta de Lol diez años antes, e intenta recrearla a su vez. La protagonista femenina que crea aquí Marguerite Duras es absolutamente fascinante por ese juego que se crea entre narrador poco confiable y nuestro intento por llegar a la verdadera Lol y su “aparente” locura, una locura arrebatada, fragmentada, que no deja de ser un intento por recuperar un tiempo que se fue. El acontecimiento ocurrido la noche del baile en el casino es tan traumático que parece suspendido en el tiempo para Lol, esa memoria atrapada en un tiempo que ya pasó. Y sin embargo, y a pesar de ese arrebato/locura que la convierte en una durmiente viva en palabras de su marido, hay momentos, fragmentos, que nos la definen como una mujer de carne y hueso, no es una sonámbula ni un fantasma del pasado. La gracia de Marguerite Duras está en la percepción, más que en los hechos. Una novela además enlazada con El vicecónsul en la que Anne Marie Stretter volverá a surgir como mujer en la memoria.
"- ¡No es posible! ¿Eres Lol? ¿No me equivoco, verdad?
-Soy -dijo Lol."
♫♫♫ Marguerite Duras - Jeanna Criscitiello ♫♫♫
Écrire (1993), Benoît Jacquot & Marguerite Duras
“El acercamiento a Lol no existe. Uno no puede acercarse o alejarse de ella, Hay que esperar que venga a buscarte, que ella quiera. Quiere, se me hace patente, que la conozca y la vea en un cierto espacio que habita en ese momento. ¿Cuál?”
Es rara mi relación con Marguerite Duras, porque es un autora que adoro y sin embargo solo había leído una novela, la archiconocida "El Amante" y de esto hace ya mil años. La adoro porque me he visto casi todas sus pelis dirigidas por ella, y las no dirigidas, aquellas en las que su texto, su guión, es casi el protagonista absoluto. Sin embargo, no existiría Marguerite Duras directora de cine de no ser por sus textos, su obsesión por reflejarse ella misma en ellos, pero es una autora difícil, impenetrable y ya había intentado antes aproximarme a alguna novela suya y tuve que aparcarlo por eso, porque me parecía impenetrable. El ensayo de Amina Cain A Horse at Night (“I wanted to write fiction because I saw something in Dura’s Lol Stein. I didn’t know how to stop thinking about that character…”), me recordó que la tenía esperando en la recámara así que me acerqué, y claramente ha sido el momento. Su ficción es tal como aparece reflejada en sus películas, una mezcla de narración fantasmal y atmósfera de las ideas. El argumento, los personajes sirven como excusa para que el lenguaje se ramifique en frases cortas, directas, que dejan intuir algo que va más allá de lo que percibimos a simple vista: “Nos dirigimos hacia algo. Aunque no pase nada avanzamos hacia algún fin”. Sus personajes sí que avanzan aunque parezcan fantasmas revoloteando en torno a la misma obsesión, amor y ausencia, una obsesión para la Duras.
“Así, Lol se casó sin haberlo deseado, del modo que le convenía, sin pasar por el horror de una elección, sin tener que plagiar el crimen que hubiera supuesto ante algunos, la sustitución por un ser único y sobre todo sin haber traicionado el abandono ejemplar en el que la había dejado.”
Es también casualidad que me decidiera a leer esta novela de la Duras, justo cuando estoy leyendo "En busca del tiempo perdido" de Proust, porque en "El arrebato de Lol V. Stein" todo está construido alrededor de querer recuperar un tiempo que ya pasó, porque no es tanto la realidad de lo que ocurrió sino el poso que dejó en nosotros ese recuerdo, o esa memoria. Recuperar las sensaciones pero ¿hasta qué punto podemos confiar en esa memoria? Así que intentando extraer la sensación, quizás todo se haya fragmentado y perdido en el camino. También al igual que en la obra de Proust, en esta novela hay un mucho de voyeurismo…, los personajes, Lol, por ejemplo, otea, vigila, observa a escondidas y no solo ella sino el narrador Jacques Hold, y porque los momentos más importantes de esta novela, dependen de un encuentro, de los encuentros que ocurren por azar y cambian toda la puesta en escena.
“Tatiana también dice que Lol V. Stein era bonita, que en el colegio se la disputaban, aunque se te escurría entre las manos como el agua, porque lo poco que retenías merecía el esfuerzo, aunque una parte de sí misma estuviera siempre ida lejos de ti y del momento presente.
¿Era el corazón el que no estaba ahí? Sí, al parecer era esa zona del sentimiento lo que, en Lol, se diferenciaba de los demás.”
"El arrebato de Lol V. Stein" cuenta la historia de una chica, Lola Valerie Stein, cuyo prometido una noche en la sala de baile del casino sucumbe bajo el hechizo de otra mujer: la deja esa misma noche por Anne Marie Stretter, francesa, la mujer del cónsul de Francia en Calcuta, una mujer de mundo mayor que ella. Juntos abandonan el casino, bajo la atenta mirada de Lol que desde la entrada de la otra mujer se había sentido fascinada y abandonada al mismo tiempo y desde el primer minuto por esa escena. “Nada podía dejar entrever en esta mujer, ni siquiera fugazmente, el extraño luto que había llevado Lol V. Stein por Michael Richardson.” Se dice que Lol no pudo resistir el abandono, la ausencia, o el desamor, sin embargo, según el relato de su amiga Tatiana, también testigo de la escena, Lol ya se había mostrado “incompleta”, mucho antes, quizás desde siempre. “Según Tatiana Karl, los orígenes de esta enfermedad se remontan a mucho antes, mucho antes incluso de su amistad. Estaban ahí, en Lol V. Stein, incubados, pero sin llegar a exteriorizarse debido al gran afecto que siempre la había rodeado en su familiar”. Pasan diez años y Lol se ha casado, ha rehecho su vida, se va a vivir lejos y vuelve casada y con tres hijos. Vuelve de nuevo a su ciudad natal y a partir de aquí, de alguna forma vuelve a producirse un retroceso a ese pasado que se quedó grabado en una memoria fragmentada en la sala de baile del casino. El arrebato del que hace mención el título puede estar referido a una cierta locura de la que Lol nunca ha conseguido liberarse, porque durante diez años se ha mostrado “accesible” y sin embargo, la vuelta a su ciudad natal ha liberado una especie de fuerza que había estado bloqueada.
“He aquí desarrollados, mezclados a la vez, esa falsa semblanza expuesta por Tatiana Karl y lo que yo invento. A partir de todo ello contaré mi historia de Lol V. Stein.”
El texto está narrado por Jacques Hold, el amante de su amiga Tatiana Karl y lo fascinante está precisamente en este narrador, que nos está contando la historia de su encuentro con Lol diez años después, pero al mismo tiempo nos está narrando unos hechos de su pasado, no de primera mano, sino a su vez de lo que le había contado Tatiana, así que este amante construye su propia historia de Lol V. Stein. No sabemos si la Lol que llegamos a conocer es la verdadera o quizás la creada por él mismo, él mismo cae fascinado por la historia de amor no resuelta de Lol diez años antes, e intenta recrearla a su vez. La protagonista femenina que crea aquí Marguerite Duras es absolutamente fascinante por ese juego que se crea entre narrador poco confiable y nuestro intento por llegar a la verdadera Lol y su “aparente” locura, una locura arrebatada, fragmentada, que no deja de ser un intento por recuperar un tiempo que se fue. El acontecimiento ocurrido la noche del baile en el casino es tan traumático que parece suspendido en el tiempo para Lol, esa memoria atrapada en un tiempo que ya pasó. Y sin embargo, y a pesar de ese arrebato/locura que la convierte en una durmiente viva en palabras de su marido, hay momentos, fragmentos, que nos la definen como una mujer de carne y hueso, no es una sonámbula ni un fantasma del pasado. La gracia de Marguerite Duras está en la percepción, más que en los hechos. Una novela además enlazada con El vicecónsul en la que Anne Marie Stretter volverá a surgir como mujer en la memoria.
"- ¡No es posible! ¿Eres Lol? ¿No me equivoco, verdad?
-Soy -dijo Lol."
♫♫♫ Marguerite Duras - Jeanna Criscitiello ♫♫♫
Écrire (1993), Benoît Jacquot & Marguerite Duras
November 7, 2008
Duras’ writing is like taking a slow drug—something woozy and disorienting, a little foggy yet intensifying, slowing down time here, speeding it up there. Her style is fluid and incantatory; a hypnotic movement of memory and breath, a watercolor swirl of feelings on the surface of a lake that at first glance appears calm and neutral, but underneath something bubbles up, the premonition of a storm, and while reading I am waiting and waiting for that storm to break, for all the silt being churned up in the depths to come spewing out, for something real and undeniable to emerge. And does it? Does one true feeling ever burst through the overriding numbness, does Duras make good on all her romantic-obsessive meandering to show us what or who has been driving the boat, do we ever get a chance to see the characters unveil themselves completely, do we know anything or anyone by the end?
Hm.
Duras is masterful at creating tension, setting the stage for drama with a playwright’s deft hand at direction, except she is describing the inner stage, the invisible feelings and motivations playing out in each character, which our narrator intuits or invents. In many ways this narrator seemed to be incidental, a figment of everyone’s imagination, including the reader’s, there only to physically inhabit the landscape, to serve as a grounding “I/eye,” but amorphous and permeable as a phantom, occupying other characters and turning a third-person view on himself with a kind of eerie remove. I admire the confidence with which Duras sweeps her reader along, never stopping to check in and see how windblown the reader is, just coaxing and continuing, single-pointed through the fog.
The narrator wants Lol to “consume and crush me with the rest…to be bent to her will” (97), but WHY I kept asking myself, Why Why WHY? Here is where my reactions started getting personal. I recalled in my own writing how tempting it was to write myself into a tragic, numbed-out yet obsessively compelling woman character, enigmatic and evasive, beautiful in her absolute impenetrability. The term that kept coming up for me related to this portrait was “self-indulgent.” Duras’ characters talk about love, but I don’t see any of them actually feeling it. I didn’t get any real sense of the link between Tatiana and Lol—I got that Lol played out the projected madness and alienation the other characters (Jack and Tatiana) felt within, but I didn’t ever fully buy into the melodramatic intensity under which these characters lived. Perhaps I would have done better with more of a social context, something bigger to draw from than just this triadic world of disconnect and yearning and repression…And yet I also get that this was the intent, to show the self-absorption of these lives, independent of any greater story arc or historical context, just these roiling, voyeuristic, emotional beings captured and liberated by Lol’s tragic stoicism. I kept feeling myself drawn along the thread of some mystery, the answer to which (the cause of Lol’s madness, the truth behind the breakdown at the ball, etc) would be revealed at the end. But it wasn’t, really. And maybe this too was the point. But by the last line I realized I didn’t really care about any of them. They all seemed to me like actors, entertaining themselves with shows of dramatic intensity fit for the stage. And viewed from the audience, it’s intriguing—but, as it struck me, egotistical. Obviously struck a chord for me to look at more closely in my own work…
Hm.
Duras is masterful at creating tension, setting the stage for drama with a playwright’s deft hand at direction, except she is describing the inner stage, the invisible feelings and motivations playing out in each character, which our narrator intuits or invents. In many ways this narrator seemed to be incidental, a figment of everyone’s imagination, including the reader’s, there only to physically inhabit the landscape, to serve as a grounding “I/eye,” but amorphous and permeable as a phantom, occupying other characters and turning a third-person view on himself with a kind of eerie remove. I admire the confidence with which Duras sweeps her reader along, never stopping to check in and see how windblown the reader is, just coaxing and continuing, single-pointed through the fog.
The narrator wants Lol to “consume and crush me with the rest…to be bent to her will” (97), but WHY I kept asking myself, Why Why WHY? Here is where my reactions started getting personal. I recalled in my own writing how tempting it was to write myself into a tragic, numbed-out yet obsessively compelling woman character, enigmatic and evasive, beautiful in her absolute impenetrability. The term that kept coming up for me related to this portrait was “self-indulgent.” Duras’ characters talk about love, but I don’t see any of them actually feeling it. I didn’t get any real sense of the link between Tatiana and Lol—I got that Lol played out the projected madness and alienation the other characters (Jack and Tatiana) felt within, but I didn’t ever fully buy into the melodramatic intensity under which these characters lived. Perhaps I would have done better with more of a social context, something bigger to draw from than just this triadic world of disconnect and yearning and repression…And yet I also get that this was the intent, to show the self-absorption of these lives, independent of any greater story arc or historical context, just these roiling, voyeuristic, emotional beings captured and liberated by Lol’s tragic stoicism. I kept feeling myself drawn along the thread of some mystery, the answer to which (the cause of Lol’s madness, the truth behind the breakdown at the ball, etc) would be revealed at the end. But it wasn’t, really. And maybe this too was the point. But by the last line I realized I didn’t really care about any of them. They all seemed to me like actors, entertaining themselves with shows of dramatic intensity fit for the stage. And viewed from the audience, it’s intriguing—but, as it struck me, egotistical. Obviously struck a chord for me to look at more closely in my own work…
Read
March 18, 2011I can feel a Marguerite Duras fixation coming on.
While fairly impressed with her late novel L'amant de la Chine du nord , I wasn't completely drawn into Duras's milieu until David and I watched Hiroshima mon amour, the 1959 Alain Resnais film for which she wrote the screenplay. To put it bluntly, Hiroshima mon amour blew. me. away. The opening sequence reduced me to sobs, overlaying Emmanuelle Riva's and Eiji Okada's stark, dreamlike narration (a stylized argument, which at times seems almost to veer into poetic verse, about whether or not Riva's character has or has not "seen" the devastation of Hiroshima) with footage of said devastation and of the hospital and museum Riva's character mentions. And the film as a whole raised fascinating questions about authenticity, storytelling, trauma, and the ability of humans to connect and empathize. Since Duras' 1964 novella Le ravissement de Lol V. Stein shares many of these same preoccupations, I thought I would attempt to write about them together, even though I know that I will be overwhelmed with material!
Both Hiroshima and Ravissement, then, are deeply concerned with the extent to which it is (im)possible to step inside another person's experience. In the opening scene of the film, Riva's character (known simply as "elle" or "her") makes a repeated claim to have witnessed the events of nuclear devastation in Hiroshima, not at first hand but through visits to bomb victims in the hospital, trips to the museum, and viewings of the newsreels. As she amplifies on her experiences, speaking in mesmerizing circuits of repeated words, Eiji Okada's character "lui"/"him" occasionally interrupts her to deny her authority: "Tu n'as rien vu à Hiroshima." ("You saw nothing at Hiroshima.") So did she? It's a complicated question. On one hand, some of her claims are quite radical:
Obviously, this Frenchwoman can only "know" that the temperature in Peace Square reached ten thousand degrees in the way one knows a fact from a history textbook: with her brain rather than her body. Likewise there is a world of difference between visiting an interpretive museum exhibit, even an extremely well-constructed one, and "knowing" an event through first-hand knowledge either personal or cultural. On the other hand, her empathy just as obviously exceeds the theoretical: watching those newsreels and museum exhibits really has imbued her with some part of the horror of the situation. In fact, as a viewer watching the scenes of devastation ourselves, we are in the exact same situation. Resnais and Duras make us question Elle's claims to understanding, even as they put us in an extreme position of identification with her. After all, if I am sobbing as I watch this film (which I was), how can I fully dismiss the power of simulacrums to convey experience? As she herself acknowledges later on, we as outside observers are limited in our ability to both feel and act: "On peut toujours se moquer. Mais que peut faire d'autre un touriste, que justement pleurer?" / "You can always scoff. But what else can a tourist do, but weep?" Later on in the film, Riva's character is possessive about her own traumatic war-time experience; her Japanese lover can listen and feel pain, but he can't truly understand.
Le ravissement de Lol V. Stein, too, questions the ability of any person to tell the story of another's trauma—or even to claim absolute certainty about what that trauma was in the first place. Lola Valerie Stein (self-styled Lol V.) remains a cypher throughout the novella, which is narrated by her eventual lover, Jacques Hold. Jacques meets Lol through another lover of his, Tatiana Karl, an old school friend of Lol's who was present on the night, ten years before, which directly preceded Lol's mental breakdown. Exactly what precipitated this breakdown remains a subject of contention throughout the novella: while it's clear that Lol and her fiancé both met an older woman that night, and that the fiancé left with said woman as dawn was breaking, Lol's emotions at each step of the evening are puzzling, as is her present relationship to the past. For example, Tatiana recalls that for most of the dance Lol didn't seem to mind her fiancé being enamored of another woman, sitting calmly throughout the evening until the couple left the ballroom without her. Was she ever in love with her fiancé? Was she in love with the woman who replaced her in his affections? Was she in love with some mental image of the couple together, and herself as an observer of their love? Was she teetering on the brink of mental disaster the whole time, and this night was merely the straw that broke the camel's back of her mind?
Tatiana is invested in one version of past events, and Lol—uncommunicative, shocky, and prone to telling bizarre, easily-detectable lies—is of little use as a witness. Jacques himself is all too aware of his inability to fathom Lol's inner world; not only was he not present on the famous night of the ball, but Tatiana, who was there, disagrees about whether it's even the crucial event in Lol's past. She feels that Lol has always been missing some crucial component, that her "self" has always been somehow absent, and that the seeds of her breakdown were present since long before the night at T. Beach.
Thus not only do we have competing accounts of what happened inside Lol while she watched her fiancé fall for another woman, we have a debate about whether it even matters. Tatiana and Jacques are also unsure of the degree to which Lol has recovered from her breakdown: the slick surfaces of her immaculately-maintained home and marriage seem to indicate "recovery," yet Tatiana at least is invested in the idea of Lol's continuing malady. And what is that malady in the first place? It becomes clear that Lol is, for some reason and in some way, obsessed with her past, but what is she remembering and experiencing when she thinks of it?
This brings up another commonality between Ravissement and Hiroshima, which is a preoccupation with memory and forgetting, and the pain involved in inevitably forgetting something one had sworn to remember. In the film, Riva's character gestures at this idea with the statement
But the inability to forget—or more accurately, the ability to never forget, to remember forever, is just that: an illusion. Even as these characters are haunted by an inescapable relationship to their past traumas (to the point where several people identify each other as synonymous with those traumas), what dwells inside them is not precisely "memory" but an ever-changing set of reference points combining past, present, potential and imaginary. When Lol moves back to the town of S. Tahla after ten years away, for example, her memories of the town seem to start out sharp, not having been added to much in the intervening years, but soon they become eroded through frequent applications of new experience.
Thus being back in her home town erodes Lol's past knowledge of it, just as she seems unable to see again the shapes of her past self and her former fiancé when she revisits T. Beach at the end of the novel. Her attempts to reenact the past with a new cast of characters, and force it to provide her with something that was missing the first time around, are dream-like and fascinating, asking similar questions and evoking a similar mood to the relationship between "Elle" and "Lui" in Hiroshima mon amour. I am eager to read more Duras from this period; where should I start? Moderato Cantabile? L'après-midi de M. Andesmas? Recommendations very much welcome. In the meantime, both Le ravissement de Lol V. Stein and Hiroshima mon amour come very highly recommended.
While fairly impressed with her late novel L'amant de la Chine du nord , I wasn't completely drawn into Duras's milieu until David and I watched Hiroshima mon amour, the 1959 Alain Resnais film for which she wrote the screenplay. To put it bluntly, Hiroshima mon amour blew. me. away. The opening sequence reduced me to sobs, overlaying Emmanuelle Riva's and Eiji Okada's stark, dreamlike narration (a stylized argument, which at times seems almost to veer into poetic verse, about whether or not Riva's character has or has not "seen" the devastation of Hiroshima) with footage of said devastation and of the hospital and museum Riva's character mentions. And the film as a whole raised fascinating questions about authenticity, storytelling, trauma, and the ability of humans to connect and empathize. Since Duras' 1964 novella Le ravissement de Lol V. Stein shares many of these same preoccupations, I thought I would attempt to write about them together, even though I know that I will be overwhelmed with material!
Both Hiroshima and Ravissement, then, are deeply concerned with the extent to which it is (im)possible to step inside another person's experience. In the opening scene of the film, Riva's character (known simply as "elle" or "her") makes a repeated claim to have witnessed the events of nuclear devastation in Hiroshima, not at first hand but through visits to bomb victims in the hospital, trips to the museum, and viewings of the newsreels. As she amplifies on her experiences, speaking in mesmerizing circuits of repeated words, Eiji Okada's character "lui"/"him" occasionally interrupts her to deny her authority: "Tu n'as rien vu à Hiroshima." ("You saw nothing at Hiroshima.") So did she? It's a complicated question. On one hand, some of her claims are quite radical:
J'ai eu chaud, Place de la Paix. Dix mille degrés sur la Place de la Paix. Je le sais. La temperature du soleil sur la Place de la Paix - comment l'ignorer?
I was hot in Peace Square. Ten thousand degrees in Peace Square. I know it. The temperature of the sun in Peace Square - how could you not know it?
Obviously, this Frenchwoman can only "know" that the temperature in Peace Square reached ten thousand degrees in the way one knows a fact from a history textbook: with her brain rather than her body. Likewise there is a world of difference between visiting an interpretive museum exhibit, even an extremely well-constructed one, and "knowing" an event through first-hand knowledge either personal or cultural. On the other hand, her empathy just as obviously exceeds the theoretical: watching those newsreels and museum exhibits really has imbued her with some part of the horror of the situation. In fact, as a viewer watching the scenes of devastation ourselves, we are in the exact same situation. Resnais and Duras make us question Elle's claims to understanding, even as they put us in an extreme position of identification with her. After all, if I am sobbing as I watch this film (which I was), how can I fully dismiss the power of simulacrums to convey experience? As she herself acknowledges later on, we as outside observers are limited in our ability to both feel and act: "On peut toujours se moquer. Mais que peut faire d'autre un touriste, que justement pleurer?" / "You can always scoff. But what else can a tourist do, but weep?" Later on in the film, Riva's character is possessive about her own traumatic war-time experience; her Japanese lover can listen and feel pain, but he can't truly understand.
Le ravissement de Lol V. Stein, too, questions the ability of any person to tell the story of another's trauma—or even to claim absolute certainty about what that trauma was in the first place. Lola Valerie Stein (self-styled Lol V.) remains a cypher throughout the novella, which is narrated by her eventual lover, Jacques Hold. Jacques meets Lol through another lover of his, Tatiana Karl, an old school friend of Lol's who was present on the night, ten years before, which directly preceded Lol's mental breakdown. Exactly what precipitated this breakdown remains a subject of contention throughout the novella: while it's clear that Lol and her fiancé both met an older woman that night, and that the fiancé left with said woman as dawn was breaking, Lol's emotions at each step of the evening are puzzling, as is her present relationship to the past. For example, Tatiana recalls that for most of the dance Lol didn't seem to mind her fiancé being enamored of another woman, sitting calmly throughout the evening until the couple left the ballroom without her. Was she ever in love with her fiancé? Was she in love with the woman who replaced her in his affections? Was she in love with some mental image of the couple together, and herself as an observer of their love? Was she teetering on the brink of mental disaster the whole time, and this night was merely the straw that broke the camel's back of her mind?
Tatiana is invested in one version of past events, and Lol—uncommunicative, shocky, and prone to telling bizarre, easily-detectable lies—is of little use as a witness. Jacques himself is all too aware of his inability to fathom Lol's inner world; not only was he not present on the famous night of the ball, but Tatiana, who was there, disagrees about whether it's even the crucial event in Lol's past. She feels that Lol has always been missing some crucial component, that her "self" has always been somehow absent, and that the seeds of her breakdown were present since long before the night at T. Beach.
Je lui ai demandé si la crise de Lol, plus tard, ne lui avait pas apporté la preuve qu'elle se trompait. Elle m'a répeté que non, qu'elle, elle croyait que cette crise et Lol ne faisaient qu'un depuis toujours.
Je ne crois plus à rien de ce que dit Tatiana, je ne suis convaincu de rien.
I asked her if Lol's breakdown, later on, didn't prove to her that she had been wrong. She repeated that no, that she, she believed that this attack and Lol had always been one.
I no longer believe in anything Tatiana says, I'm not convinced of anything.
Thus not only do we have competing accounts of what happened inside Lol while she watched her fiancé fall for another woman, we have a debate about whether it even matters. Tatiana and Jacques are also unsure of the degree to which Lol has recovered from her breakdown: the slick surfaces of her immaculately-maintained home and marriage seem to indicate "recovery," yet Tatiana at least is invested in the idea of Lol's continuing malady. And what is that malady in the first place? It becomes clear that Lol is, for some reason and in some way, obsessed with her past, but what is she remembering and experiencing when she thinks of it?
This brings up another commonality between Ravissement and Hiroshima, which is a preoccupation with memory and forgetting, and the pain involved in inevitably forgetting something one had sworn to remember. In the film, Riva's character gestures at this idea with the statement
De même que dans l'amour, cette illusion existe, cette illusion de pouvoir jamais oublier, de même j'ai eu l'illusion devant Hiroshima, que jamais je n'oublierai. De même que dans l'amour.
Just as in love, this illusion exists, this illusion of never being able to forget, I had the illusion when confronted with Hiroshima, that I would never forget it. Just as in love.
But the inability to forget—or more accurately, the ability to never forget, to remember forever, is just that: an illusion. Even as these characters are haunted by an inescapable relationship to their past traumas (to the point where several people identify each other as synonymous with those traumas), what dwells inside them is not precisely "memory" but an ever-changing set of reference points combining past, present, potential and imaginary. When Lol moves back to the town of S. Tahla after ten years away, for example, her memories of the town seem to start out sharp, not having been added to much in the intervening years, but soon they become eroded through frequent applications of new experience.
[E]lle commença à reconnaître moins, puis différement, elle commença à retourner jour après jour, pas à pas vers son ignorance de S. Tahla.
Cet endroit du monde où on croit qu'elle a vécu sa douleur passée, cette prétendue douleur, s'efface peu à peu de sa mémoire dans sa matérialité. Pourquoi ces lieux plutôt que d'autres? En quelque point qu'elle s'y trouve Lol y est comment une première fois. De la distance invariable du souvenir elle de dispose plus: elle est là. Sa présence fait la ville pure, méconnaissable. Elle commence à marcher dans le palais fastueux de l'oubli de S. Tahla.
She began to recognize less, then differently, she began to return day after day, step by step towards her ignorance of S. Tahla.
This spot in the world where they say she lived her past grief, this alleged grief, is little by little erased from her memory by her corporeality. Why these places rather than others? Wherever Lol finds herself, it is as though she is there for the first time. She no longer positions herself at the unvarying remove of memory: she is there. Her presence renders the city pure, unknowable. She begins to walk in the sumptuous palace of forgetting S. Tahla.
Thus being back in her home town erodes Lol's past knowledge of it, just as she seems unable to see again the shapes of her past self and her former fiancé when she revisits T. Beach at the end of the novel. Her attempts to reenact the past with a new cast of characters, and force it to provide her with something that was missing the first time around, are dream-like and fascinating, asking similar questions and evoking a similar mood to the relationship between "Elle" and "Lui" in Hiroshima mon amour. I am eager to read more Duras from this period; where should I start? Moderato Cantabile? L'après-midi de M. Andesmas? Recommendations very much welcome. In the meantime, both Le ravissement de Lol V. Stein and Hiroshima mon amour come very highly recommended.
October 26, 2019
مهمترین مزیت کتاب سبک و قالب نوشتاری آن است.
ترکیب ظریف واقعیت و خیال ، جابجایی راویها و زاویه دید باعث پیچیدگی در خواندن و فهم داستان میشود .
کسانی که به این سبک نوشتهها و مسایل روانشناختی علاقمند باشند این کتاب را دوست خواهند داشت.
نکته عجیب و آزاردهنده اسم شخصیت اصلی است که اکثرا (لول بعضا، لولا گاها، لولا والری اشتاین و ... گفته میشود که در کنار نوع روایت کمی باعث تشتت و سردرگمی کتاب و خواننده خواهد بود.
ترکیب ظریف واقعیت و خیال ، جابجایی راویها و زاویه دید باعث پیچیدگی در خواندن و فهم داستان میشود .
کسانی که به این سبک نوشتهها و مسایل روانشناختی علاقمند باشند این کتاب را دوست خواهند داشت.
نکته عجیب و آزاردهنده اسم شخصیت اصلی است که اکثرا (لول بعضا، لولا گاها، لولا والری اشتاین و ... گفته میشود که در کنار نوع روایت کمی باعث تشتت و سردرگمی کتاب و خواننده خواهد بود.
January 7, 2015
This book has haunted me since I first read it three years ago. I remembered so well the feeling I had while reading this the first time, lethargic and removed from reality, as if a veil had fallen between myself and the rest of the world, the edges of everything having gone soft and blurry, and that same sensation came flooding back as I read a second time. Additionally, this second reading made me slightly restless, not from boredom but from a subtle anxiety emanating from the pages, growing more substantial as the story moves inexorably to its conclusion. The multiple layers disguised by the apparent simplicity of the writing, Duras' lyrical style, and the dreamlike quality that infuses the very pages are part of what makes this so memorable for me. Something about it touches oh so very lightly some dark, inner place while you read, just brushes it enough to remind you what's hidden in the recesses of the mind, passions, and body.
While some have complained that very little happens within The Ravishing of Lol Stein, I vehemently disagree. While there are plenty of "things" that happen - the first meeting, the dinner party, the nights at the hotel, and Lol and Jack's trip at the end - those things all feel as if they aren't even really happening, there's such a dream quality to them. The events have been pared down to almost an outline of a scene, with all the empty spaces filled with the muted, warped inner workings of the characters as presented by the unreliable narration. It's quite easy to look back over the story and have those things slip the readers mind. The true action is in the characters themselves, their stilted interactions and personal motives, the fluid way they react to one another, slipping and sliding past as each changes and responds. That's Duras' focus, what she's presenting to the reader as important. Plenty happens there, more than can be picked up in a single reading, but it's so understated it might be easy to miss.
I love this book so much, and I can't even explain why, not in any satisfactory way. It's simply my response to it, so base and visceral, the twisting in my gut and the way my breathing would break as I read. One of my all-time favorites.
While some have complained that very little happens within The Ravishing of Lol Stein, I vehemently disagree. While there are plenty of "things" that happen - the first meeting, the dinner party, the nights at the hotel, and Lol and Jack's trip at the end - those things all feel as if they aren't even really happening, there's such a dream quality to them. The events have been pared down to almost an outline of a scene, with all the empty spaces filled with the muted, warped inner workings of the characters as presented by the unreliable narration. It's quite easy to look back over the story and have those things slip the readers mind. The true action is in the characters themselves, their stilted interactions and personal motives, the fluid way they react to one another, slipping and sliding past as each changes and responds. That's Duras' focus, what she's presenting to the reader as important. Plenty happens there, more than can be picked up in a single reading, but it's so understated it might be easy to miss.
I love this book so much, and I can't even explain why, not in any satisfactory way. It's simply my response to it, so base and visceral, the twisting in my gut and the way my breathing would break as I read. One of my all-time favorites.
January 2, 2023
This disorienting exploration of the gaze as a window to the labyrinths of existence was inspired by a visit Duras made to a psychiatric hospital where she met Manon - a young woman with "an empty gaze”.
Among Lacan’s many qualities was apparently his impeccable taste in literature, taking from his text "Hommage fait à Marguerite Duras du ravissement de Lol V. Stein". His homage acknowledges art’s ability to transcend and anticipate theory, seeing through psyche’s riddles with irrefutable honesty.
"Duras knows my teachings without being taught by me".
This novel’s intensely scopic focus feels reminiscent of John Berger’s “Ways of Seeing”.
“Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.” -John Berger
Lol's madness is one of depersonalization and identity amnesia.
“She, who does not see herself, is thus seen, in others.”
Duras works with mirrors as a way to return to the self and recompose it. A knot is formed by a tangling of the characters and their malleable borders, giving way to a three-way-being.
“Other ties bind them in a grip which is not one of sentiment or of happiness”
There is a voyeuristic sensuousness in this dynamic, where agency comes from projection and is enacted through a double in the presence of the "Other”. This Otherness is brilliantly asserted by the secretiveness of the narrator's identity through the first half of the novel.
Lol's story resumes 10 years after her original trauma by way of repetition, when she turns her desire towards a signified object and is pulled away from nonexistence.
The object consists of a scene that rebirths (a borrowed) existence through the act of looking.
"They look at each other endlessly, endlessly".
Naming the "Other" by revealing the narrator’s identity marks the traversing of fantasy, which was preventing self-effacement. Crossing the boundaries into reality causes the murdering of the idealised Object. And once the "Other" succumbs, the real Subject surfaces.
(Un)fortunately, fantasy inhabits existence, making it impossible to kill one without harming the other.
Among Lacan’s many qualities was apparently his impeccable taste in literature, taking from his text "Hommage fait à Marguerite Duras du ravissement de Lol V. Stein". His homage acknowledges art’s ability to transcend and anticipate theory, seeing through psyche’s riddles with irrefutable honesty.
"Duras knows my teachings without being taught by me".
This novel’s intensely scopic focus feels reminiscent of John Berger’s “Ways of Seeing”.
“Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.” -John Berger
Lol's madness is one of depersonalization and identity amnesia.
“She, who does not see herself, is thus seen, in others.”
Duras works with mirrors as a way to return to the self and recompose it. A knot is formed by a tangling of the characters and their malleable borders, giving way to a three-way-being.
“Other ties bind them in a grip which is not one of sentiment or of happiness”
There is a voyeuristic sensuousness in this dynamic, where agency comes from projection and is enacted through a double in the presence of the "Other”. This Otherness is brilliantly asserted by the secretiveness of the narrator's identity through the first half of the novel.
Lol's story resumes 10 years after her original trauma by way of repetition, when she turns her desire towards a signified object and is pulled away from nonexistence.
The object consists of a scene that rebirths (a borrowed) existence through the act of looking.
"They look at each other endlessly, endlessly".
Naming the "Other" by revealing the narrator’s identity marks the traversing of fantasy, which was preventing self-effacement. Crossing the boundaries into reality causes the murdering of the idealised Object. And once the "Other" succumbs, the real Subject surfaces.
(Un)fortunately, fantasy inhabits existence, making it impossible to kill one without harming the other.
February 22, 2019
3.5 stars. A mesmerising, unusual, mystical, atmospheric, engaging novel about the relationship of two women, Lola Stein and Tatiana Karl, who share the same bachelor lover. The novel starts ten years before when Lola and Tatiana, under 20 years of age, are at a dance. Lola is engaged to marry Michael Richardson. However at the dance Michael becomes smitten by Anne-Marie Stretter. After the dance Lola never again sees Michael. The engagement is broken off. Lola marries John Bedford and has three daughters. Tatiana marries Peter Beugner. They have no children. Tatiana has lovers, including the narrator, Jack Hold. Ten years later, after no contact between Lola and Tatiana, Lola seeks out Tatiana.
One is never quite sure what is going on between Tatiana, Lola and Jack. Tatiana thinks Lola is slightly mad as she believes Lola has never recovered from being jilted. Lola knows about Tatiana's affair with Jack and Tatiana understands Jack's attraction to Lola. The strengths of this book are the atmosphere created and language. The character's are not fully developed and the plot is fairly straightforward.
Here is an example of the author's writing style:
"That she had so completely recovered her sanity was a source of sadness to her. One should never be cured of one's passion."
“I desperately want to partake of the world which emerges from the lips of Lol Stein, I want to be a part of this lie which she has forged. Let her bear me with her, let our affair take, from this point forth, a different course, let her consume and crush me with the rest, I shall bend to her will, let my hope be to be crushed with the rest, to be bent to her will.”
An interesting, worthwhile read.
One is never quite sure what is going on between Tatiana, Lola and Jack. Tatiana thinks Lola is slightly mad as she believes Lola has never recovered from being jilted. Lola knows about Tatiana's affair with Jack and Tatiana understands Jack's attraction to Lola. The strengths of this book are the atmosphere created and language. The character's are not fully developed and the plot is fairly straightforward.
Here is an example of the author's writing style:
"That she had so completely recovered her sanity was a source of sadness to her. One should never be cured of one's passion."
“I desperately want to partake of the world which emerges from the lips of Lol Stein, I want to be a part of this lie which she has forged. Let her bear me with her, let our affair take, from this point forth, a different course, let her consume and crush me with the rest, I shall bend to her will, let my hope be to be crushed with the rest, to be bent to her will.”
An interesting, worthwhile read.
October 4, 2020
In a certain state of mind, all trace of feeling is banished. Whenever I remain silent in a certain way, I don't love you, have you noticed that?
This novel strangely struck me as Australian. It is certainly comfortable and entitled. There are open spaces, contemporary convenience and a dearth of worry. What whirls in the wake is narrative. A middle class teen is abandoned by her fiancé. The psychic damage is absolute--yet politely understated. A decade later she has a suburban triumph of sorts. She's married well, has three children and seemingly every available advantage. Yet the fissures in her soul clamor for attention, if not redemption. A surrogacy of sorts ensues. One that was likely shocking for readers of the last century. It is all too complacent in its indolent destruction for my taste. Everything is muted, save for her husband's practicing the violin and the sound of voices from the next room. The rye fields outside the hotel are placed without emotion nor the unruly. Nature appears to have passed on this destination. There are passages which practically beg for empathy and yet reliance on artful dialogue didn't allow for either elevation or immanence. One of the protagonist admit to being indifferent to nearly everyone, I can relate, given the white drone of my reading. There was little to be found in terms of color or music.
This novel strangely struck me as Australian. It is certainly comfortable and entitled. There are open spaces, contemporary convenience and a dearth of worry. What whirls in the wake is narrative. A middle class teen is abandoned by her fiancé. The psychic damage is absolute--yet politely understated. A decade later she has a suburban triumph of sorts. She's married well, has three children and seemingly every available advantage. Yet the fissures in her soul clamor for attention, if not redemption. A surrogacy of sorts ensues. One that was likely shocking for readers of the last century. It is all too complacent in its indolent destruction for my taste. Everything is muted, save for her husband's practicing the violin and the sound of voices from the next room. The rye fields outside the hotel are placed without emotion nor the unruly. Nature appears to have passed on this destination. There are passages which practically beg for empathy and yet reliance on artful dialogue didn't allow for either elevation or immanence. One of the protagonist admit to being indifferent to nearly everyone, I can relate, given the white drone of my reading. There was little to be found in terms of color or music.
Read
June 27, 2023there’s something so sinister underneath every moment of this book and that is a fun and fascinating feeling. what is said and what goes unsaid? what is love? obsession? memory? etc. she’s asking it all
November 14, 2023
Objektivno, sjajno piše. Subjektivno, ne kapiramo se.
October 21, 2011
Tatiana Karl, Tatiana Karl, Tatiana Karl... Yes Marguerite, after the umpteenth iteration we know the character's full name by now...
I know charitable literary critics call this repetition of the various characters' full names an "incantation," but I call it a silly pretentious affect. I suppose it's part of Duras' strategy to convey the title character's obsession, which distills her ultimate happiness and sadness to a singular point in time where she has become emotionally and mentally growth stunted.
Reading this is rather like watching a snake eat its own tail.
Lol Stein has nothing to say, thus Duras and her characters want us to think this constitutes a fascinating enigma with something substantive at its core.
I think it's the hocus pocus of a writer using the maximum amount of words to beat a dead horse. It's a clever writerly exercise for those who care for clever writerly exercises.
After awhile the lovely scene setting and yearning wear out their welcomes and become self parody.
Here's a review by a guy who finds himself very impressed with it, even if in describing it he still fails to persuade me why it should be interesting:
http://www.culturecartel.com/review.p...
I know charitable literary critics call this repetition of the various characters' full names an "incantation," but I call it a silly pretentious affect. I suppose it's part of Duras' strategy to convey the title character's obsession, which distills her ultimate happiness and sadness to a singular point in time where she has become emotionally and mentally growth stunted.
Reading this is rather like watching a snake eat its own tail.
Lol Stein has nothing to say, thus Duras and her characters want us to think this constitutes a fascinating enigma with something substantive at its core.
I think it's the hocus pocus of a writer using the maximum amount of words to beat a dead horse. It's a clever writerly exercise for those who care for clever writerly exercises.
After awhile the lovely scene setting and yearning wear out their welcomes and become self parody.
Here's a review by a guy who finds himself very impressed with it, even if in describing it he still fails to persuade me why it should be interesting:
http://www.culturecartel.com/review.p...
Read
February 5, 2016 I shall not have to read it at the same time as Proust. Her style appears in all its artificiality. A kind of clinical and cold manierism. The distance which the writing puts with regard to the character disembody them. They are reduced to the state of archétipaux skeletons. And the history is of an exceptional foolishness. Harlequin in the Nouveau Roman. To flee.
January 27, 2016
Tôi đã phải đợi gặp cuốn sách này ngót 15 năm sau lần xuất bản đầu tiên, đợi bản thân mình đi hết một quãng đường 7 năm đầy cô đơn sau lần đầu tiên đọc tác phẩm Người tình thì hôm nay tôi mới có cơ hội được thức “trọn vẹn” một đêm cùng "Nỗi đam mê của Lol.V.Stein" của Marguerite Duras. Thành thử tôi sẽ cố viết một bài review dài thật dài cho bõ công đợi chờ :)) Dù rằng, viết về cuốn sách này hay bất kỳ cuốn sách nào của nữ sĩ Duras cũng luôn là việc quá khó khăn với tôi.
Trong đời của một người đàn bà đẹp biết khát khao tình yêu, sau trừ khi đi những băn khoăn tủn mủn về áo váy, chồng con, bếp núc… thì câu hỏi quan trọng mà cô ta sẽ phải trả lời ít nhất một lần trong đời mình là: Trong cuộc chiến tình ái thì thái độ của ta là gì: Buông bỏ hay tranh đoạt?
Còn với cuộc đời một người đàn ông cuốn hút, biết khát khao đàn bà, thì câu hỏi quen thuộc vẫn là: Chọn ai trong hai người, một cô đáp ứng ta tất cả mọi nhu cầu thể xác hay một cô cho ta khao khát tinh thần?
Liệu tôi có "quá quắt" chăng khi lại chọn hai câu hỏi như thế khi muốn nói đến nội dung tác phẩm Nỗi đam mê của Lol.V.Stein? Quả thật, bất kỳ ai đã biết Marguerite Duras hay từng đọc các tác phầm của bà cũng đều linh cảm được điều này: Tìm câu trả lời cho một/các câu hỏi ư, đó là vấn đề riêng của độc giả & nhân vật. Tác giả cuốn sách này chỉ là một kẻ “bị hoang tưởng” đang cố tái hiện lại mọi chi tiết của câu chuyện theo cách mình muốn. Bà hiếm khi màng đến chuyện giải đáp hay giải quyết bất kỳ câu hỏi nào, dù đó có là những câu hỏi do chính bà gợi lên đi chăng nữa. Ngay từ đầu, độc giả bị đặt vào thế phải chấp nhận rằng có những nhân vật dị dạng như thế và có một câu chuyện hoang dại đến thế. Bên dưới những đầu ngón tay của ta, bọn họ sẽ hiện ra lấp lánh cảm xúc: ghen tuông, ngờ vực, bối rối, thù địch, yêu dấu, đam mê, day dứt, đau khổ... và HẾT. Rồi nếu bạn vẫn suy nghĩ miên man, ấy là lỗi của bạn.
Tôi không nghĩ mình phải cố "làm mờ" cốt truyện khi review Nỗi đam mê của Lol.V.Stein để làm gì. Cái thú vị của những tiểu thuyết tâm lý – tình cảm kiểu này luôn nằm trong cách kể, chứ không phải là ở việc kể cái gì, vì mọi thứ sẽ phơi bày một cách trắng trợn ngay ở những trang đầu tiên rồi lại bị lấp liếm ở trang tiếp theo. Sự phóng túng trong phong cách sáng tác Marguerite Duras cho phép vũ trụ của Nỗi đam mê của Lol.V.Stein giãn nở ra về mọi hướng với hàng chục giả thuyết không thể xác thực lẫn các biến cố phi lý nhưng tự chúng lại biết dàn xếp một cách ổn thỏa để có thể xuất hiện cạnh nhau khá tự nhiên. Này nhé, độc giả sẽ gặp một ông chồng không mảy may tỏ thái độ khi biết vợ mình đang ngoại tình, một người phụ nữ có thể đột ngột yêu say đắm một người đàn ông không rõ vì lí do gì rồi lại (tỏ ra) dửng dưng khi bị anh ta phụ bạc, một cô ả có đời sống tình dục phóng đãng nhưng lại hết sức đau khổ khi biết tình nhân của mình không yêu mình dù anh ta luôn miệng tỏ tình… Bạn chớ bao giờ mong bọn họ dừng lại một lần để nói chuyện lí lẽ hay luân lý - đạo đức khi làm chuyện này chuyện kia, chuyện là họ còn đang bận ngạt thở bởi những cảm xúc phức tạp của mình và c���a các nhân vật khác.
Sự xung đột trong cảm xúc là mặt chủ yếu được khai thác trong phần lớn cuốn sách. Hai người phụ nữ và một người đàn ông có mối quan hệ “luyến ái” phức tạp thường xuyên bị ném vào cùng một không gian kín để mà dày vò lẫn nhau nhằm tìm kiếm một dạng sự thật nào đó hoặc đủ dạng thức của dối trá. Mỗi đoạn văn xuất hiện trong cuốn sách đều là một lần gắng sức của tác giả khi muốn tả thực mọi rung động tinh vi nhất trong nội tâm nhân vật trước tất cả sự kiện. Ai không ưa lối kể chuyện miên man lộn xộn vốn là đặc trưng trong các sáng tác của Marguerite Duras thì hẳn sẽ thấy mỏi mệt khi đọc Nỗi đam mê của Lol.V.Stein nhưng cá nhân tôi thì mê cái “vụng quá hóa duyên” ấy lắm. Bà quá giỏi trong việc lèn thêm vài tầng nghĩa mơ hồ xuống dưới các chi tiết vụn vặt (hoặc có thể là tôi đang tự huyễn hoặc mình về điểm này). Tỉ như, tôi thấy chi tiết người đàn ông nghịch chiếc nhẫn của cuới của Lol.V.Stein khi nàng đang ngủ say rồi nhận xét: “làn da ở phía dưới chiếc nhẫn trắng hơn, mịn hơn, như một vết sẹo. Nàng không hay biết gì cả. Tôi tháo chiếc nhẫn và đưa lên mũi ngửi. Nó chẳng có mùi vị gì hết, tôi đeo nhẫn lại cho nàng, nàng vẫn không biết” là một chi tiết có tính gợi mở. Hay cái cách Duras cho Lol.V.Stein say ngủ trong cánh đồng lúa mạch đen bên ngoài khách sạn “Những khu rừng” – một lần cuối cùng, là rất khéo… Rốt cuộc, tôi tưởng như mình không biết gì về người phụ nữ mang cái tên Lol.V.Stein dù đã được nghe kể chi tiết về nỗi đam mê trong nàng.
Trong đời của một người đàn bà đẹp biết khát khao tình yêu, sau trừ khi đi những băn khoăn tủn mủn về áo váy, chồng con, bếp núc… thì câu hỏi quan trọng mà cô ta sẽ phải trả lời ít nhất một lần trong đời mình là: Trong cuộc chiến tình ái thì thái độ của ta là gì: Buông bỏ hay tranh đoạt?
Còn với cuộc đời một người đàn ông cuốn hút, biết khát khao đàn bà, thì câu hỏi quen thuộc vẫn là: Chọn ai trong hai người, một cô đáp ứng ta tất cả mọi nhu cầu thể xác hay một cô cho ta khao khát tinh thần?
Liệu tôi có "quá quắt" chăng khi lại chọn hai câu hỏi như thế khi muốn nói đến nội dung tác phẩm Nỗi đam mê của Lol.V.Stein? Quả thật, bất kỳ ai đã biết Marguerite Duras hay từng đọc các tác phầm của bà cũng đều linh cảm được điều này: Tìm câu trả lời cho một/các câu hỏi ư, đó là vấn đề riêng của độc giả & nhân vật. Tác giả cuốn sách này chỉ là một kẻ “bị hoang tưởng” đang cố tái hiện lại mọi chi tiết của câu chuyện theo cách mình muốn. Bà hiếm khi màng đến chuyện giải đáp hay giải quyết bất kỳ câu hỏi nào, dù đó có là những câu hỏi do chính bà gợi lên đi chăng nữa. Ngay từ đầu, độc giả bị đặt vào thế phải chấp nhận rằng có những nhân vật dị dạng như thế và có một câu chuyện hoang dại đến thế. Bên dưới những đầu ngón tay của ta, bọn họ sẽ hiện ra lấp lánh cảm xúc: ghen tuông, ngờ vực, bối rối, thù địch, yêu dấu, đam mê, day dứt, đau khổ... và HẾT. Rồi nếu bạn vẫn suy nghĩ miên man, ấy là lỗi của bạn.
Tôi không nghĩ mình phải cố "làm mờ" cốt truyện khi review Nỗi đam mê của Lol.V.Stein để làm gì. Cái thú vị của những tiểu thuyết tâm lý – tình cảm kiểu này luôn nằm trong cách kể, chứ không phải là ở việc kể cái gì, vì mọi thứ sẽ phơi bày một cách trắng trợn ngay ở những trang đầu tiên rồi lại bị lấp liếm ở trang tiếp theo. Sự phóng túng trong phong cách sáng tác Marguerite Duras cho phép vũ trụ của Nỗi đam mê của Lol.V.Stein giãn nở ra về mọi hướng với hàng chục giả thuyết không thể xác thực lẫn các biến cố phi lý nhưng tự chúng lại biết dàn xếp một cách ổn thỏa để có thể xuất hiện cạnh nhau khá tự nhiên. Này nhé, độc giả sẽ gặp một ông chồng không mảy may tỏ thái độ khi biết vợ mình đang ngoại tình, một người phụ nữ có thể đột ngột yêu say đắm một người đàn ông không rõ vì lí do gì rồi lại (tỏ ra) dửng dưng khi bị anh ta phụ bạc, một cô ả có đời sống tình dục phóng đãng nhưng lại hết sức đau khổ khi biết tình nhân của mình không yêu mình dù anh ta luôn miệng tỏ tình… Bạn chớ bao giờ mong bọn họ dừng lại một lần để nói chuyện lí lẽ hay luân lý - đạo đức khi làm chuyện này chuyện kia, chuyện là họ còn đang bận ngạt thở bởi những cảm xúc phức tạp của mình và c���a các nhân vật khác.
Sự xung đột trong cảm xúc là mặt chủ yếu được khai thác trong phần lớn cuốn sách. Hai người phụ nữ và một người đàn ông có mối quan hệ “luyến ái” phức tạp thường xuyên bị ném vào cùng một không gian kín để mà dày vò lẫn nhau nhằm tìm kiếm một dạng sự thật nào đó hoặc đủ dạng thức của dối trá. Mỗi đoạn văn xuất hiện trong cuốn sách đều là một lần gắng sức của tác giả khi muốn tả thực mọi rung động tinh vi nhất trong nội tâm nhân vật trước tất cả sự kiện. Ai không ưa lối kể chuyện miên man lộn xộn vốn là đặc trưng trong các sáng tác của Marguerite Duras thì hẳn sẽ thấy mỏi mệt khi đọc Nỗi đam mê của Lol.V.Stein nhưng cá nhân tôi thì mê cái “vụng quá hóa duyên” ấy lắm. Bà quá giỏi trong việc lèn thêm vài tầng nghĩa mơ hồ xuống dưới các chi tiết vụn vặt (hoặc có thể là tôi đang tự huyễn hoặc mình về điểm này). Tỉ như, tôi thấy chi tiết người đàn ông nghịch chiếc nhẫn của cuới của Lol.V.Stein khi nàng đang ngủ say rồi nhận xét: “làn da ở phía dưới chiếc nhẫn trắng hơn, mịn hơn, như một vết sẹo. Nàng không hay biết gì cả. Tôi tháo chiếc nhẫn và đưa lên mũi ngửi. Nó chẳng có mùi vị gì hết, tôi đeo nhẫn lại cho nàng, nàng vẫn không biết” là một chi tiết có tính gợi mở. Hay cái cách Duras cho Lol.V.Stein say ngủ trong cánh đồng lúa mạch đen bên ngoài khách sạn “Những khu rừng” – một lần cuối cùng, là rất khéo… Rốt cuộc, tôi tưởng như mình không biết gì về người phụ nữ mang cái tên Lol.V.Stein dù đã được nghe kể chi tiết về nỗi đam mê trong nàng.
June 22, 2022
”Man bör aldrig bli helt frisk från passionen.”
Hon är 19 år, från överklassen och förälskad i mannen hon är förlovad med när han på en bal väljer bort henne till förmån för en vacker främling. Hon känner inte direkt någon smärta men tio år senare förstår vi att hur hon blev ratad tog henne mycket hårt. Hon är gift med en annan man och har tre barn men är deprimerad, känner varken smärta eller glädje. Lols hänförelse – som titeln belyser – pekar på vännen Tatiana Karl och hennes älskare som möts på ett hotell. Lol blir voyeur vilket går helt i linje med hennes alienation till omvärlden. Och helt i linje med vad det verkar Duras idé att meningen med livet är passionen, inte långvariga relationer eftersom de stagnerar (jämför De små hästarna i Tarquinia).
Förutom passion är det är smärta, rågfält, hotell och stora känslor som leder till att kvinnor svimmar. Kärlekslösa äktenskap och passionerad men omöjlig kärlek bredvid – som sig bör i en Duras-roman. Berättandet pågår främst via dialoger, mellan män och kvinnor (som inte är gifta) medan de dricker sprit och svettas.
Jag gillar det osäkra och hemliga berättarjaget. Han är bekant med Lol förstår man, men vem det är förblir osäkert ett bra stycke in i romanen. Berättaren erkänner sin osäkerhet och att han emellanåt hittar på vilket inbjuder läsaren till en lek med sanningen som intresserar mig. Handlingen fokuserar berättarens (resultatlösa) försök att förstå sig på Lol. Ingen känner henne, kanske inte heller hon själv. Det är tydligt att för Lol är det inte bara svårt att vara kvinna – utan människa.
”Hon betraktar stötvis, hon ser dåligt, sluter ögonen för att se bättre, öppnar dem igen.”
Den här romanen pågår i två nivåer; en fysisk och en metafysisk. Det är främst den sistnämnda som intresserar Duras. Romanen saknar dramatisk kurva, klimax och upplösning. Men den är ändå dramatiskt från början till slut, och intim. Enormt intim. Boken är ”bara” 170 sidor men Lols deprimerade person påverkar mig så starkt att det blir liksom kvalmigt. Jag vill därifrån, andas frisk luft.
Det är rent märkvärdigt hur hon kan gestalta och skapa emotioner i läsaren. Och hur hon kan skriva eggande och sexigt utan att det blir obehagligt explicit. Jag tror mycket ligger i att hon är sparsmakad och lämnar utrymme åt läsaren att fylla i luckor. Det känns som att jag kommer att minnas vissa av scenerna för alltid exempelvis när Lol ligger i ett hav av råg, vilsen i sina minnen och i sin sorg. Fantastiskt fin feelbad.
Hon är 19 år, från överklassen och förälskad i mannen hon är förlovad med när han på en bal väljer bort henne till förmån för en vacker främling. Hon känner inte direkt någon smärta men tio år senare förstår vi att hur hon blev ratad tog henne mycket hårt. Hon är gift med en annan man och har tre barn men är deprimerad, känner varken smärta eller glädje. Lols hänförelse – som titeln belyser – pekar på vännen Tatiana Karl och hennes älskare som möts på ett hotell. Lol blir voyeur vilket går helt i linje med hennes alienation till omvärlden. Och helt i linje med vad det verkar Duras idé att meningen med livet är passionen, inte långvariga relationer eftersom de stagnerar (jämför De små hästarna i Tarquinia).
Förutom passion är det är smärta, rågfält, hotell och stora känslor som leder till att kvinnor svimmar. Kärlekslösa äktenskap och passionerad men omöjlig kärlek bredvid – som sig bör i en Duras-roman. Berättandet pågår främst via dialoger, mellan män och kvinnor (som inte är gifta) medan de dricker sprit och svettas.
Jag gillar det osäkra och hemliga berättarjaget. Han är bekant med Lol förstår man, men vem det är förblir osäkert ett bra stycke in i romanen. Berättaren erkänner sin osäkerhet och att han emellanåt hittar på vilket inbjuder läsaren till en lek med sanningen som intresserar mig. Handlingen fokuserar berättarens (resultatlösa) försök att förstå sig på Lol. Ingen känner henne, kanske inte heller hon själv. Det är tydligt att för Lol är det inte bara svårt att vara kvinna – utan människa.
”Hon betraktar stötvis, hon ser dåligt, sluter ögonen för att se bättre, öppnar dem igen.”
Den här romanen pågår i två nivåer; en fysisk och en metafysisk. Det är främst den sistnämnda som intresserar Duras. Romanen saknar dramatisk kurva, klimax och upplösning. Men den är ändå dramatiskt från början till slut, och intim. Enormt intim. Boken är ”bara” 170 sidor men Lols deprimerade person påverkar mig så starkt att det blir liksom kvalmigt. Jag vill därifrån, andas frisk luft.
Det är rent märkvärdigt hur hon kan gestalta och skapa emotioner i läsaren. Och hur hon kan skriva eggande och sexigt utan att det blir obehagligt explicit. Jag tror mycket ligger i att hon är sparsmakad och lämnar utrymme åt läsaren att fylla i luckor. Det känns som att jag kommer att minnas vissa av scenerna för alltid exempelvis när Lol ligger i ett hav av råg, vilsen i sina minnen och i sin sorg. Fantastiskt fin feelbad.
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March 14, 2017
e hoje já não há mais nada de Marguerite Duras no Brasil :/
"Il y a quelques jours un de mes amis qui revenait de Rio de Janeiro m’a dit : « Tu te rends compte,
Lol V. Stein, notre livre, si difficile, quand j’ai débarqué de l’avion, la première chose que j’ai vue dans
les vitrines des librairies de l’aéroport, en lettres lumineuses, c’est O Deslumbramento 5°Ediçào. »" (DURAS, 1985, La vie matérielle)
~
''Que se serait-il passé ? Lol ne va pas loin dans l'inconnu sur lequel s'ouvre cet instant. Elle ne dispose d'aucun souvenir même imaginaire, elle n'a aucune idée sur cet inconnu. Mais ce qu'elle croit, c'est qu'elle devait y pénétrer, que c'était ce qu'il lui fallait faire, que ç'aurait été pour toujours, pour sa tête et pour son corps, leur plus grande douleur et leur plus grande joie confondues jusque dans leur définition devenue unique mais innommable faute d'un mot. J'aime à croire, comme je l'aime, que si Lol est silencieuse dans la vie c'est qu'elle a cru, l'espace d'un éclair, que ce mot pouvait exister. Faute de son existence, elle se tait. Ç'aurait été un mot-absence, un mot-trou, creusé en son centre d'un trou, de ce trou où tous les autres mots auraient été enterrés. On n'aurait pas pu le dire mais on aurait pu le faire résonner. Immense, sans fin, un gong vide, il aurait retenu ceux qui voulaient partir, il les aurait convaincus de l'impossible, il les aurait assourdis à tout autre vocable que lui-même, en une fois il les aurait nommés, eux, l'avenir et l'instant. Manquant, ce mot, il gâche tous les autres, les contamine, c'est aussi le chien mort de la plage en plein midi, ce trou de chair.'' (Le ravissement de Lol V. Stein)
"Il y a quelques jours un de mes amis qui revenait de Rio de Janeiro m’a dit : « Tu te rends compte,
Lol V. Stein, notre livre, si difficile, quand j’ai débarqué de l’avion, la première chose que j’ai vue dans
les vitrines des librairies de l’aéroport, en lettres lumineuses, c’est O Deslumbramento 5°Ediçào. »" (DURAS, 1985, La vie matérielle)
~
''Que se serait-il passé ? Lol ne va pas loin dans l'inconnu sur lequel s'ouvre cet instant. Elle ne dispose d'aucun souvenir même imaginaire, elle n'a aucune idée sur cet inconnu. Mais ce qu'elle croit, c'est qu'elle devait y pénétrer, que c'était ce qu'il lui fallait faire, que ç'aurait été pour toujours, pour sa tête et pour son corps, leur plus grande douleur et leur plus grande joie confondues jusque dans leur définition devenue unique mais innommable faute d'un mot. J'aime à croire, comme je l'aime, que si Lol est silencieuse dans la vie c'est qu'elle a cru, l'espace d'un éclair, que ce mot pouvait exister. Faute de son existence, elle se tait. Ç'aurait été un mot-absence, un mot-trou, creusé en son centre d'un trou, de ce trou où tous les autres mots auraient été enterrés. On n'aurait pas pu le dire mais on aurait pu le faire résonner. Immense, sans fin, un gong vide, il aurait retenu ceux qui voulaient partir, il les aurait convaincus de l'impossible, il les aurait assourdis à tout autre vocable que lui-même, en une fois il les aurait nommés, eux, l'avenir et l'instant. Manquant, ce mot, il gâche tous les autres, les contamine, c'est aussi le chien mort de la plage en plein midi, ce trou de chair.'' (Le ravissement de Lol V. Stein)
June 25, 2015
And all day long during the trip this situation remained unchanged, she was beside me and separated from me by a great distance, abyss and sister. Since I know—have I ever been so completely convinced of anything?—that I can never really know her, it is impossible for anyone to be closer to another human being than I am to her, closer to her than she is to herself, she who so constantly takes wing away from her living life. If there are others who come after me who know her as well, I will accept their coming.
[...]
Who is there now, so near and yet so far, what marauding thoughts and ideas prowl through her mind, again and again, by day, by night, in every light? even right this minute? At this very moment when, holding her in my arms in this train, I might be tempted to think she was no different from any other woman? Around us, the walls: I try to scale them, catch hold, slip back, start over again, perhaps, perhaps, but my reason remains the same, undismayed, and I fall.
[...]
Who is there now, so near and yet so far, what marauding thoughts and ideas prowl through her mind, again and again, by day, by night, in every light? even right this minute? At this very moment when, holding her in my arms in this train, I might be tempted to think she was no different from any other woman? Around us, the walls: I try to scale them, catch hold, slip back, start over again, perhaps, perhaps, but my reason remains the same, undismayed, and I fall.
January 18, 2019
One of the most boring books I ever took the trouble to finish. I thought I should give Duras another chance (I didn't enjoy 'The Lover' very much either), so I read this as well. It was even more disappointing, convoluted (not in a good way) and utterly boring.
It falls into the typical sin of bad feminine literature: describing things like clothes and details of women's beauty even if they are utterly pointless in their respective contexts. Furthermore, it is difficult to follow (probably because it follows a descent into madness, albeit not a very good one). Even more boring, it strives to makes pretentiousness interesting in characters, and just like in real life, it only manages to make them annoying.
It falls into the typical sin of bad feminine literature: describing things like clothes and details of women's beauty even if they are utterly pointless in their respective contexts. Furthermore, it is difficult to follow (probably because it follows a descent into madness, albeit not a very good one). Even more boring, it strives to makes pretentiousness interesting in characters, and just like in real life, it only manages to make them annoying.
July 27, 2019
You can read my review here:
https://burninghousepress.com/2017/07...
https://burninghousepress.com/2017/07...
December 21, 2018
به گمانم من هم قصد ندارم علیه پیشپاافتادهگیی مرگزای خاطرهی لُل.و.اشتاین مقابله کنم. میخوابم.
February 17, 2022
Marguerite Duras malaisante prend la tête à tout le monde avec son livre de merde
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