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Simple Passion
French novelist Annie Ernaux tells a story of love, longing, and sex in the sparse, elegant style that has won her international acclaim. Simple Passion was the #1 national bestseller in France for over three months, and it was a celebrated scandal even in France's liberal society.
80 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1991
About the author
Annie Ernaux
78 books7,562 followersThe author of some twenty works of fiction and memoir, Annie Ernaux is considered by many to be France’s most important writer. In 2022, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. She has also won the Prix Renaudot for A Man's Place and the Marguerite Yourcenar Prize for her body of work. More recently she received the International Strega Prize, the Prix Formentor, the French-American Translation Prize, and the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation for The Years, which was also shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize in 2019. Her other works include Exteriors, A Girl's Story, A Woman's Story, The Possession, Simple Passion, Happening, I Remain in Darkness, Shame, A Frozen Woman, and A Man's Place.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 5,540 reviews
August 13, 2024
It is difficult not to emerge from this book feeling scoured from the intimacy of it. Nobel Prize winner Annie Ernaux is a writer who brings things down to the most vulnerable, to the concrete and particular. She writes the personal with clear, controlled precision; every detail, every careful rite described, brings us into a rare and almost intolerable sense of privacy. To abide in these pages is, after all, to be constantly overhearing a confession.
In Simple Passion Ernaux confesses, without pity or piety, to a two-year passionate love affair she had with a married man. All the facts of this “passion,” brutal in their simplicity, are disinterred, disentangled, and resurrected. For Ernaux, it was an obsession, a sickness, as if she were possessed by something other than herself. Her life in those two years was lived out in its recurring patterns of absence and collision and, in between: a desperate, ecstatic, near-devotional waiting. Everything else was an unbearable interruption—except the writing, which was a necessity, a striving back towards the familiar and comforting and sane. The resulting book is, then, first and foremost a ritual conducted in private, only later stripped bare and turned public.
There is something powerfully subversive about Ernaux’s determined attention to the intimate, the messy and vulnerable, the stories regarded as private and shameful which—through the act of writing—become fully lived, deliberately realized, and even liberating. Ernaux turns the truth of her experiences into words that might allow her to overcome the tradition and tyranny of female silence, to feel embodied so she may not be erased. It is here, inside the book, that the author has permission to lose herself and not be wrong. But the story is not just a cathartic purge; it is a way of connecting our isolated (and therefore insufficient) stories to other isolated (and therefore insufficient) stories, and to do so without constraint or morality or apologies for where one has been or what one has done. This book is, to summon Ernaux’s own words, “an offering of a sort, bequeathed to others.”
Because Ernaux conceives of Simple Passion as an offering, she is resistant to interpreting her story. For the majority of the book, Ernaux avoids justifying or deciphering her love affair, and seems equally uninterested in forcing some kind of meaning to land. The point is that this happened, the book says, and something about it feels like life. It is interesting, therefore, that the very last page of the book attempts to close that circle into a definite whole. Part of the conclusion of Simple Passion is Ernaux’s proclamation that this “simple passion,”—this frenzied, unpredictable, world-shattering submergence in another person—made available for her a self-knowledge that could only be accessible to her through an intimate relationship with the other; a means to a meaning that could only be made intelligible through the risks that all-obliterating desire necessitates. And while it had never felt like love or not being alone, this passion afforded Ernaux the luxury of living outside and away from herself, of being nothing but “time flowing through” her, before retuning at last to a truer and (in her words) “closer” relationship with the people and the world around her.
What one senses in this final gesture towards closure—regardless of whether one is convinced by it or not—is the inevitable invasion of the public space into the writer’s private sanctuary, and the difficulty (if not impossibility) of fully overcoming that. In its brilliant transgression of societal and literary norms, Simple Passion ultimately leaves us with the question of whether one is actually free to transgress at all.
In Simple Passion Ernaux confesses, without pity or piety, to a two-year passionate love affair she had with a married man. All the facts of this “passion,” brutal in their simplicity, are disinterred, disentangled, and resurrected. For Ernaux, it was an obsession, a sickness, as if she were possessed by something other than herself. Her life in those two years was lived out in its recurring patterns of absence and collision and, in between: a desperate, ecstatic, near-devotional waiting. Everything else was an unbearable interruption—except the writing, which was a necessity, a striving back towards the familiar and comforting and sane. The resulting book is, then, first and foremost a ritual conducted in private, only later stripped bare and turned public.
There is something powerfully subversive about Ernaux’s determined attention to the intimate, the messy and vulnerable, the stories regarded as private and shameful which—through the act of writing—become fully lived, deliberately realized, and even liberating. Ernaux turns the truth of her experiences into words that might allow her to overcome the tradition and tyranny of female silence, to feel embodied so she may not be erased. It is here, inside the book, that the author has permission to lose herself and not be wrong. But the story is not just a cathartic purge; it is a way of connecting our isolated (and therefore insufficient) stories to other isolated (and therefore insufficient) stories, and to do so without constraint or morality or apologies for where one has been or what one has done. This book is, to summon Ernaux’s own words, “an offering of a sort, bequeathed to others.”
Because Ernaux conceives of Simple Passion as an offering, she is resistant to interpreting her story. For the majority of the book, Ernaux avoids justifying or deciphering her love affair, and seems equally uninterested in forcing some kind of meaning to land. The point is that this happened, the book says, and something about it feels like life. It is interesting, therefore, that the very last page of the book attempts to close that circle into a definite whole. Part of the conclusion of Simple Passion is Ernaux’s proclamation that this “simple passion,”—this frenzied, unpredictable, world-shattering submergence in another person—made available for her a self-knowledge that could only be accessible to her through an intimate relationship with the other; a means to a meaning that could only be made intelligible through the risks that all-obliterating desire necessitates. And while it had never felt like love or not being alone, this passion afforded Ernaux the luxury of living outside and away from herself, of being nothing but “time flowing through” her, before retuning at last to a truer and (in her words) “closer” relationship with the people and the world around her.
What one senses in this final gesture towards closure—regardless of whether one is convinced by it or not—is the inevitable invasion of the public space into the writer’s private sanctuary, and the difficulty (if not impossibility) of fully overcoming that. In its brilliant transgression of societal and literary norms, Simple Passion ultimately leaves us with the question of whether one is actually free to transgress at all.
April 19, 2021
From the very beginning, and throughout the whole of our affair, I had the privilege of knowing what we all find out in the end: the man we love is a complete stranger.
July 28, 2022
“Desde septiembre del año pasado no he hecho más que esperar a un hombre.”Brutal.
No me extraña que en el primer párrafo la autora mencione a aquellas famosas películas X codificadas que emitía Canal + en sus inicios. Su novela, aunque justo lo contrario de codificada, también es pornográfica: “una presentación abierta y cruda”, como define el término la RAE, de una pasión irrefrenable que, si bien no busca excitar, consigue de una forma desnuda y directa perturbar al lector con su absoluta ausencia de pudor emocional.
“No quiero explicar mi pasión —lo que equivaldría a considerarla un error o un desvarío por los que hay que justificarse—, sino sencillamente exponerla.”Un relato autobiográfico (un término que incomoda a la autora pero que soporta mejor que el de autoficción) en el que Ernaux nos revela los sentimientos que dominaron su vida durante el año que mantuvo una relación con un hombre casado. Un hombre que, por encima de su trabajo, de sus amigos, de sus propios hijos, monopolizó cada segundo de su vida, la cual prácticamente consistía en esperar una llamada telefónica en la que oír su voz pronunciando su nombre (“«¿podemos vernos?», uno de los momentos más hermosos que existen”) y pasar unas pocas horas con él (“«solo quedan dos horas», «una hora», o «dentro de una hora yo estaré aquí y él se habrá marchado de nuevo». Me preguntaba con asombro: «¿Dónde está el presente?»”).
“Para mí no había cronología en esta relación, solo conocía la presencia o la ausencia. Me limito a acumular las manifestaciones de una pasión y a oscilar incesantemente entre «siempre» y «un día», como si este inventario fuera a permitirme alcanzar la realidad de esta pasión.”Una situación en la que cielo e infierno quedaban intensamente entremezclados, en la que todo el placer que obtenía de sus encuentros estaba unido al dolor de la despedida y la ausencia, consciente en todo momento de que más pronto que tarde su vida, sin él, desembocaría en “una retahíla de días sin ninguna esperanza”. Y aun así — “Me habría gustado no tener nada que hacer salvo esperarle”— era incapaz de concebir una existencia que no estuviera dominada por la profunda pasión que sentía por un hombre que, por su parte, podía estar días y días sin dar señales de vida (“En cierto sentido, yo tenía más suerte que él”).
“… cuando me encontraba rodeada de otras mujeres, en la caja del supermercado, en el banco, me pregunta si ellas tenían, como yo, un hombre metido a todas horas en la cabeza o, de no ser el caso, cómo se las arreglaban para vivir así…”No obstante el apasionado y descarnado desnudo integral que nos retrata, algo parecido al pudor asoma de vez en cuando en el relato y, junto a frases tan bestias como que “Una noche, se me ocurrió someterme a la prueba del sida: «Por lo menos me habría dejado esto»”, encontramos reflexiones acerca del por qué de esta confesión pública, de su posible efecto terapéutico, de su quizá carácter exhibicionista…
“Me pregunto si no escribo para saber si los demás no han hecho o experimentado cosas idénticas, o al contrario, para que les parezca normal experimentarlas. O incluso para que las vivan a su vez, olvidando que un día las leyeron en alguna parte.”Una historia íntima e intensa que nos choca aun más viniendo de una mujer de su posición social y cultural, que siempre mantuvo un compromiso militante con el feminismo y que ahora descubre “de lo que uno puede ser capaz, que equivale a decir de todo.”
“… me acerqué al límite que me separaba del otro, hasta el punto de que a veces creí traspasarlo.”Eso piensa ella, yo más bien creo que los límites a los que se acercó, nunca se alcanzan, fueron a los de su autoconocimiento.
“… seguía empleando todos los recursos que ayudan a soportar la pena, que infunden esperanza cuando, razonablemente, ya no la hay: hacer solitarios, echar diez francos en el bacín de un pordiosero en Auber formulando un deseo: «Que telefonee, que vuelva», etcétera. (Quién sabe, tal vez, en el fondo, la escritura forme parte de este tipo de recursos.)”
July 1, 2024
‘We were burning up a capital of desire. What we gained in physical intensity we lost in time.’
It is with a staggering brilliance and sublime prose that Annie Ernaux is able to turn on a firehose of passion into her short works, leaving the reader overcome with emotion and flipping pages with the same feverish intensity as Ernaux describes herself in her recollections of the past. Simple Passion is a deceptively simple novel at 80pgs, but Ernaux manages to pack a seemingly endless flow of emotion into this story about an affair while also using it as a platform to discuss autobiographical fiction. As always, Ernaux harnesses a directness with words that pulls a fierce sense of passion with them, beautiful translated into English here by Tanya Leslie. ‘All I have done,’ she writes, ‘is translate into words…the way in which his existence has affected my life’ and she does so in a way that will certainly affect the reader and plant you directly into an understanding of her mind and manners during this period of time. Quick, gorgeous, and bursting with Ernaux’s enthusiasm and insights, Simple Passion is another reminder that even winning the Nobel Prize might not be enough praise for what she deserves.
‘[W]hen I began to write, I wanted to stay in that age of passion, when all my actions…were channeled towards one person.’
It is a simple enough story, covering the year of an affair with a married man—a Russian diplomat working in Paris and bears a ‘slight resemblance’ to a young Alain Delon—and a few reflections after it comes to an end. Yet, Ernaux manages to make it feel like it is a far reaching importance in a way that captures how this affair captured her entire being during the time. She says about the duration of the affair that ‘quite often I felt I was living out this passion in the same way I would have written a book: the same determination to get every single scene right, the same minute attention to detail,’ which makes sense to then which to capture the story and retell it in a way she hopes that ‘these pages will always mean something to me, to others too maybe.’ As with many Ernaux books, she separates from the idea of being purely memoir and this book is categorized by the publisher as fiction, though for those who are interested, her real, unfiltered diary entries from the time of this affair are published as Getting Lost, which appeared in English translation earlier this year.
‘I could experience only absence or presence.’
One this that comes across clearly in her works is that she is someone that feels emotion with her whole heart, body and soul. Simple Passion recounts, well, incredible passion and being ‘entirely at the mercy’ of these feelings. This full-being intensity is reflected as well in The Possession where she is completely driven by her obsessions, though her it is with a former lover’s new partner (not the same affair though as in this book). ‘I do not wish to explain my passion,’ she tells us, ‘that would imply that it was a mistake or some disorder I need to justify—I just want to describe it.’ Of the time during the affair she tells us ‘I behaved in an artificial manner,’ and ‘the only actions involving willpower, desire, and what I take to be human intelligence...were all related to this man.’ Anything not directly part of her ‘growing obsession’ she sees as something that is merely ‘a means of filling in time between two meetings.’ Anyone who has felt the intensity of love, especially young love, will likely be stirred by these feelings no matter how seemingly foolish, just as she realizes in this time how empathetic and empowered she is by all the stories of other women so immersed in their obsessions of love. She pushes aside anything that ‘prevented me from luxuriating in the sensations and fantasies of my own passion.’ In effect, he was her entire being during this period.
‘I measured time differently, with all my body.’
The book recounts her observations of herself during the time as well as those of him, though we actually learn very little about him and much more about how she felt because of him. We know he is married, he likes to drink, he is only ever referred to as ‘A’, and that there is a bit of a language barrier, but for the latter she enjoys it as it gives her, upfront, ‘the privilege of knowing what we all find out in the end: the man we love is a complete stranger.’ I enjoy the way Ernaux describes how even things like a mark on the carpet from a food accident are pleasing because it is a reminder of time spent with him. This is something most of us do, attach memories to mementos, and I find that eventually these objects become neither the object or the memory, but an interesting blend that is both but could no longer have meaning without the other. Her method of detailing the emotional resonance from events gives a more heartfelt impact than if she had focused on detailing the events instead.
During the later parts of the affair, we see Ernaux grappling with the knowledge of time passing, memories and feelings fading, and how we always try and inevitably fail to swim upstream.He leaves, inevitable, back for Russia and we find the the deluge of emotions has now dried up into a somber state of insomnia and lacking a sense of purpose. Where once absence meant longing for the next meeting, now it merely means absence without a presence to come. I found it particularly moving when she says that ‘the partly erased frescoes in Santa Croce moved me because of my story, which would come to resemble them one day—fading fragments in his memory and in mine.’ After a relationship ends sadly, often the idea that you’ll get over it is almost more painful, because at least you have the sadness attached to memories to keep you in that moment. The fading seems like a betrayal.
‘Living in passion or writing: in each case one’s perception of time is fundamentally different.’
‘Throughout this period, all my thoughts and all my actions involved the repetition of history,' Ernaux writes, 'I wanted to turn the present back into the past, opening on to happiness.’ When revisiting places does not trigger this, she turns to writing, something that figures as a life saving or life giving action in many of her works. This is also a favorite aspect of her books for me. Simple Passion tackles head on her fears of ‘people’s judgment and the “normal” values of society’ that can occur after publication, which she mostly dismisses in many others. But here she stresses over ‘having to answer questions such as “Is it an autobiography?” and having to justify this or that,’ and how this fear keeps many stories from people told. This is territory I’ve found Jeanette Winterson handles with expertise, insisting that even the books delving deeply into biographical details are simply fiction and that ‘Autobiography is not important. Authenticity is important. The writer must fire herself through the text, be the molten stuff that welds together disparate elements.’ Ernaux reaches her own conclusion tha stories must be told and this idea which is highly indicative of her work:
So this is a great line, right? As time passes, she finds ‘the world is beginning to mean something again outside A’ but the pages of this book are a more permanent catalog of the passions and desires of their time together. She says they last with more emotion than, say, a bathrobe he once used she would cling to even once his scent has left, and through her fiction she is hope able to even ‘save the bathrobe from oblivion.’ It is a beautiful sentiment. What is interesting is that she says these are the fictional, polished accounts, but her writing manages to retain a rawness that strikes straight to the heart.
‘It is a mistake therefore to compare someone writing about his own life to an exhibitionist, since the latter has only one desire: to show himself and to be seen at the same time.’
Annie Ernaux is an absolute gem and I am once again blown away by how much power she can pack into these short snacks of remembrance. In such a little space she packs a whole cosmos of feeling, from passion to pain, and bestows it so elegantly and bravely upon the reader. While I found this one slightly less impactful than the previous ones I've read, Happening likely being the most, it was still a deeply emotive and moving experience. Through her reflections, she is able to learn more about herself and she passes that along to us as a lesson as well. Namely she learned people are capable of ‘ anything: sublime or deadly desires, lack of dignity, attitudes and beliefs I had found absurd in others until I myself turned to them,’ and that possibility is part of what makes fiction so essential. But most importantly she learned that, to add to all her ideas of what the word luxury means ‘is also being able to live out a passion for a man or a woman.’ I’d like to add another meaning, and that luxury is being able to spend time in the brilliant mind of authors like Ernaux.
5/5
‘Now I was only time flowing through myself.’
It is with a staggering brilliance and sublime prose that Annie Ernaux is able to turn on a firehose of passion into her short works, leaving the reader overcome with emotion and flipping pages with the same feverish intensity as Ernaux describes herself in her recollections of the past. Simple Passion is a deceptively simple novel at 80pgs, but Ernaux manages to pack a seemingly endless flow of emotion into this story about an affair while also using it as a platform to discuss autobiographical fiction. As always, Ernaux harnesses a directness with words that pulls a fierce sense of passion with them, beautiful translated into English here by Tanya Leslie. ‘All I have done,’ she writes, ‘is translate into words…the way in which his existence has affected my life’ and she does so in a way that will certainly affect the reader and plant you directly into an understanding of her mind and manners during this period of time. Quick, gorgeous, and bursting with Ernaux’s enthusiasm and insights, Simple Passion is another reminder that even winning the Nobel Prize might not be enough praise for what she deserves.
‘[W]hen I began to write, I wanted to stay in that age of passion, when all my actions…were channeled towards one person.’
It is a simple enough story, covering the year of an affair with a married man—a Russian diplomat working in Paris and bears a ‘slight resemblance’ to a young Alain Delon—and a few reflections after it comes to an end. Yet, Ernaux manages to make it feel like it is a far reaching importance in a way that captures how this affair captured her entire being during the time. She says about the duration of the affair that ‘quite often I felt I was living out this passion in the same way I would have written a book: the same determination to get every single scene right, the same minute attention to detail,’ which makes sense to then which to capture the story and retell it in a way she hopes that ‘these pages will always mean something to me, to others too maybe.’ As with many Ernaux books, she separates from the idea of being purely memoir and this book is categorized by the publisher as fiction, though for those who are interested, her real, unfiltered diary entries from the time of this affair are published as Getting Lost, which appeared in English translation earlier this year.
‘I could experience only absence or presence.’
One this that comes across clearly in her works is that she is someone that feels emotion with her whole heart, body and soul. Simple Passion recounts, well, incredible passion and being ‘entirely at the mercy’ of these feelings. This full-being intensity is reflected as well in The Possession where she is completely driven by her obsessions, though her it is with a former lover’s new partner (not the same affair though as in this book). ‘I do not wish to explain my passion,’ she tells us, ‘that would imply that it was a mistake or some disorder I need to justify—I just want to describe it.’ Of the time during the affair she tells us ‘I behaved in an artificial manner,’ and ‘the only actions involving willpower, desire, and what I take to be human intelligence...were all related to this man.’ Anything not directly part of her ‘growing obsession’ she sees as something that is merely ‘a means of filling in time between two meetings.’ Anyone who has felt the intensity of love, especially young love, will likely be stirred by these feelings no matter how seemingly foolish, just as she realizes in this time how empathetic and empowered she is by all the stories of other women so immersed in their obsessions of love. She pushes aside anything that ‘prevented me from luxuriating in the sensations and fantasies of my own passion.’ In effect, he was her entire being during this period.
‘I measured time differently, with all my body.’
The book recounts her observations of herself during the time as well as those of him, though we actually learn very little about him and much more about how she felt because of him. We know he is married, he likes to drink, he is only ever referred to as ‘A’, and that there is a bit of a language barrier, but for the latter she enjoys it as it gives her, upfront, ‘the privilege of knowing what we all find out in the end: the man we love is a complete stranger.’ I enjoy the way Ernaux describes how even things like a mark on the carpet from a food accident are pleasing because it is a reminder of time spent with him. This is something most of us do, attach memories to mementos, and I find that eventually these objects become neither the object or the memory, but an interesting blend that is both but could no longer have meaning without the other. Her method of detailing the emotional resonance from events gives a more heartfelt impact than if she had focused on detailing the events instead.
During the later parts of the affair, we see Ernaux grappling with the knowledge of time passing, memories and feelings fading, and how we always try and inevitably fail to swim upstream.He leaves, inevitable, back for Russia and we find the the deluge of emotions has now dried up into a somber state of insomnia and lacking a sense of purpose. Where once absence meant longing for the next meeting, now it merely means absence without a presence to come. I found it particularly moving when she says that ‘the partly erased frescoes in Santa Croce moved me because of my story, which would come to resemble them one day—fading fragments in his memory and in mine.’ After a relationship ends sadly, often the idea that you’ll get over it is almost more painful, because at least you have the sadness attached to memories to keep you in that moment. The fading seems like a betrayal.
‘Living in passion or writing: in each case one’s perception of time is fundamentally different.’
‘Throughout this period, all my thoughts and all my actions involved the repetition of history,' Ernaux writes, 'I wanted to turn the present back into the past, opening on to happiness.’ When revisiting places does not trigger this, she turns to writing, something that figures as a life saving or life giving action in many of her works. This is also a favorite aspect of her books for me. Simple Passion tackles head on her fears of ‘people’s judgment and the “normal” values of society’ that can occur after publication, which she mostly dismisses in many others. But here she stresses over ‘having to answer questions such as “Is it an autobiography?” and having to justify this or that,’ and how this fear keeps many stories from people told. This is territory I’ve found Jeanette Winterson handles with expertise, insisting that even the books delving deeply into biographical details are simply fiction and that ‘Autobiography is not important. Authenticity is important. The writer must fire herself through the text, be the molten stuff that welds together disparate elements.’ Ernaux reaches her own conclusion tha stories must be told and this idea which is highly indicative of her work:
‘It occurred to me that writing should also aim for that—the impression conveyed by sexual intercourse, a feeling of anxiety and stupefaction, a suspension of moral judgment.’
So this is a great line, right? As time passes, she finds ‘the world is beginning to mean something again outside A’ but the pages of this book are a more permanent catalog of the passions and desires of their time together. She says they last with more emotion than, say, a bathrobe he once used she would cling to even once his scent has left, and through her fiction she is hope able to even ‘save the bathrobe from oblivion.’ It is a beautiful sentiment. What is interesting is that she says these are the fictional, polished accounts, but her writing manages to retain a rawness that strikes straight to the heart.
‘It is a mistake therefore to compare someone writing about his own life to an exhibitionist, since the latter has only one desire: to show himself and to be seen at the same time.’
Annie Ernaux is an absolute gem and I am once again blown away by how much power she can pack into these short snacks of remembrance. In such a little space she packs a whole cosmos of feeling, from passion to pain, and bestows it so elegantly and bravely upon the reader. While I found this one slightly less impactful than the previous ones I've read, Happening likely being the most, it was still a deeply emotive and moving experience. Through her reflections, she is able to learn more about herself and she passes that along to us as a lesson as well. Namely she learned people are capable of ‘ anything: sublime or deadly desires, lack of dignity, attitudes and beliefs I had found absurd in others until I myself turned to them,’ and that possibility is part of what makes fiction so essential. But most importantly she learned that, to add to all her ideas of what the word luxury means ‘is also being able to live out a passion for a man or a woman.’ I’d like to add another meaning, and that luxury is being able to spend time in the brilliant mind of authors like Ernaux.
5/5
‘Now I was only time flowing through myself.’
October 23, 2022
When I was a child, luxury was for me fur coats, long dresses and villas by the sea. Later, I thought it was to live the life of an intellectual. Now it seems to me that it is also the ability to live a passion for a man or a woman.
This brilliant work of auto-fiction explores the inner experience of an all-consuming passion, a love affair with a married foreigner. Ernaux really writes as erotic obsession feels. It is just that glaring, intense and brilliant.
“It occurred to me that writing should also aim for that—the impression conveyed by sexual intercourse, a feeling of anxiety and stupefaction, a suspension of moral judgment.”
Ernaux defies stereotypes and just as our goddess and pioneer Anaïs Nin makes a compelling case that erotic fixation can reach the heights and intensity in women, just as in men. The writing and atmosphere remind me also of Mothering Sunday, another but Ernaux is more raw, direct and brutal in her depiction of the emotional part of intense yearning for another human being. It’s authentic pain, desire and anticipation that permeates the whole text, the irrepressible passion that borders, and crosses into irrational. The author bravely discusses things that are not easy to be open about, being equally ardent and determined about the writing silenced experiences as she is about the erotic.
This self-analysis is important because the author is successful in depicting the amorous phenomenon as an experience that transfigures consciousness, making one temporarily more fixated on a lover but in a long run more open to the vast peculiarities of the world which can suddenly be intuitively understood. Pornographic sex may be transgression, but true erotic causes transfiguration, the extasis that broadens human experience which Ernaux explores in her subjectivity through this text.
Thanks to him, I was able to approach the frontier separating me from others, to the extent of actually believing that I could sometimes cross over it.
Erotic is not about him or her, an object of desire, it is the love for the intensity of the passion itself and the experience of that lust has a vast cathartic potential in teaching one how to be free from the control of reason, immersed in his own passion and instincts, wrapped in another in the intoxicating rush of longing, the essence of dionysian wisdom that values fervid experiences above all else. It is surrendering to chaos in an experience where you almost solely depend on another person, the self-undoing as well as encounter of self in otherness, repressing the logical and conscious element, the state most similar to a disorder of madness a sane person can reach, where time is only defined by absence and presence of a lover, the unbearable wait from encounter to encounter, and even Ernaux looking back, cannot draw a clear line between a memory of desperation and hallucination that bleeds into insanity.
I had no future other than the telephone call fixing our next appointment. I would try to leave the house as little as possible except for professional reasons (naturally he knew my working hours), forever fearing that he might call during my absence. I would also avoid using the vacuum cleaner or the hairdryer as they would have prevented me from hearing the sound of the telephone. Every time it rang, I was consumed with a hope that only lasted the time it took me slowly to pick up the receiver and say hello. When I realised it wasn’t him, I felt so utterly dejected that I began to loath the person who was on the line. As soon as I heard A’s voice, my long, painful wait, invariably tinged with jealousy, dissipated so quickly that I felt I had been mad and had suddenly become sane again. I was struck by the insignificance of that voice and the exaggerated importance it had taken in my life.
I experienced pleasure like a future pain.
Desire is the very essence of a man, and without giving in to the intense feelings that part of nature is not lived through, robbing a person of what may be a vital experience of life. Without surrendering to the whim of the erotic, has one even fully lived? As Ernaux stated in the affair she discovered what people are capable of, but also what is she capable of.
Without knowing it, he brought me closer to the world.
But even in her vigours approach to the topic, Ernaux comes to an understanding of the clear separation between a real person and an image of obsession. The object of fixation really ever existed only in her mind, and the point is not the man but the parts of self she was able to explore through him, and that is why Ernaux is never destroyed by the flames of her passion, as many of lustful lovers in works of literature before her, such as in Tunnel or Belle du Seigneur, because she can ultimately differentiate between the real man and numinous object that made her reach the height of desire, which makes her able to let go and mourn the loss of her lover in real life without the destructive disintegration. The lover image in our mind is often no more than a mere illusion than ultimately collapses in the face of reality - the person is made of flesh and flaws, but the experience itself has transpersonal ecstatic qualities, ones that go beyond the reality itself in the cycle of annihilation and creation.
From the very beginning, and throughout the whole of our affair, I had the privilege of knowing what we all find out in the end: the man we love is a complete stranger.
The writing process for her is the healing and separation from intoxication into a more clear-headedness, a reflective state where she can see what happened and fully appreciate that experience without feeling the pain anymore, that way her story does not end in tragedy much like a lot of other stories about this kind of obsession do. Ernaux makes you think about your own romantic entanglements rushing you to be able both to fully dwell in them and have the potential to reach mature freedom from the person that enabled you to experience them.
He had said, “You won’t write a book about me.” But I haven’t written a book about him, neither have I written a book about myself. All I have done is translate into words—words he will probably never read; they are not intended for him—the way in which his existence has affected my life. An offering of a sort, bequeathed to others.
If you have a recommendation on a similar quality book about the narratives of erotic, please do say.
This brilliant work of auto-fiction explores the inner experience of an all-consuming passion, a love affair with a married foreigner. Ernaux really writes as erotic obsession feels. It is just that glaring, intense and brilliant.
“It occurred to me that writing should also aim for that—the impression conveyed by sexual intercourse, a feeling of anxiety and stupefaction, a suspension of moral judgment.”
Ernaux defies stereotypes and just as our goddess and pioneer Anaïs Nin makes a compelling case that erotic fixation can reach the heights and intensity in women, just as in men. The writing and atmosphere remind me also of Mothering Sunday, another but Ernaux is more raw, direct and brutal in her depiction of the emotional part of intense yearning for another human being. It’s authentic pain, desire and anticipation that permeates the whole text, the irrepressible passion that borders, and crosses into irrational. The author bravely discusses things that are not easy to be open about, being equally ardent and determined about the writing silenced experiences as she is about the erotic.
This self-analysis is important because the author is successful in depicting the amorous phenomenon as an experience that transfigures consciousness, making one temporarily more fixated on a lover but in a long run more open to the vast peculiarities of the world which can suddenly be intuitively understood. Pornographic sex may be transgression, but true erotic causes transfiguration, the extasis that broadens human experience which Ernaux explores in her subjectivity through this text.
Thanks to him, I was able to approach the frontier separating me from others, to the extent of actually believing that I could sometimes cross over it.
Erotic is not about him or her, an object of desire, it is the love for the intensity of the passion itself and the experience of that lust has a vast cathartic potential in teaching one how to be free from the control of reason, immersed in his own passion and instincts, wrapped in another in the intoxicating rush of longing, the essence of dionysian wisdom that values fervid experiences above all else. It is surrendering to chaos in an experience where you almost solely depend on another person, the self-undoing as well as encounter of self in otherness, repressing the logical and conscious element, the state most similar to a disorder of madness a sane person can reach, where time is only defined by absence and presence of a lover, the unbearable wait from encounter to encounter, and even Ernaux looking back, cannot draw a clear line between a memory of desperation and hallucination that bleeds into insanity.
I had no future other than the telephone call fixing our next appointment. I would try to leave the house as little as possible except for professional reasons (naturally he knew my working hours), forever fearing that he might call during my absence. I would also avoid using the vacuum cleaner or the hairdryer as they would have prevented me from hearing the sound of the telephone. Every time it rang, I was consumed with a hope that only lasted the time it took me slowly to pick up the receiver and say hello. When I realised it wasn’t him, I felt so utterly dejected that I began to loath the person who was on the line. As soon as I heard A’s voice, my long, painful wait, invariably tinged with jealousy, dissipated so quickly that I felt I had been mad and had suddenly become sane again. I was struck by the insignificance of that voice and the exaggerated importance it had taken in my life.
I experienced pleasure like a future pain.
Desire is the very essence of a man, and without giving in to the intense feelings that part of nature is not lived through, robbing a person of what may be a vital experience of life. Without surrendering to the whim of the erotic, has one even fully lived? As Ernaux stated in the affair she discovered what people are capable of, but also what is she capable of.
Without knowing it, he brought me closer to the world.
But even in her vigours approach to the topic, Ernaux comes to an understanding of the clear separation between a real person and an image of obsession. The object of fixation really ever existed only in her mind, and the point is not the man but the parts of self she was able to explore through him, and that is why Ernaux is never destroyed by the flames of her passion, as many of lustful lovers in works of literature before her, such as in Tunnel or Belle du Seigneur, because she can ultimately differentiate between the real man and numinous object that made her reach the height of desire, which makes her able to let go and mourn the loss of her lover in real life without the destructive disintegration. The lover image in our mind is often no more than a mere illusion than ultimately collapses in the face of reality - the person is made of flesh and flaws, but the experience itself has transpersonal ecstatic qualities, ones that go beyond the reality itself in the cycle of annihilation and creation.
From the very beginning, and throughout the whole of our affair, I had the privilege of knowing what we all find out in the end: the man we love is a complete stranger.
The writing process for her is the healing and separation from intoxication into a more clear-headedness, a reflective state where she can see what happened and fully appreciate that experience without feeling the pain anymore, that way her story does not end in tragedy much like a lot of other stories about this kind of obsession do. Ernaux makes you think about your own romantic entanglements rushing you to be able both to fully dwell in them and have the potential to reach mature freedom from the person that enabled you to experience them.
He had said, “You won’t write a book about me.” But I haven’t written a book about him, neither have I written a book about myself. All I have done is translate into words—words he will probably never read; they are not intended for him—the way in which his existence has affected my life. An offering of a sort, bequeathed to others.
If you have a recommendation on a similar quality book about the narratives of erotic, please do say.
![Profile Image for ©hrissie ❁ [1st week on campus-somewhat run-down].](https://cdn.statically.io/img/i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1610034740i/49071166._UX200_CR0,20,200,200_.jpg)
October 28, 2022
'He had said, “You won’t write a book about me.” But I haven’t written a book about him, neither have I written a book about myself. All I have done is translate into words—words he will probably never read; they are not intended for him—the way in which his existence has affected my life. An offering of a sort, bequeathed to others.'
In Annie Ernaux's self-analytical text, Simple Passion, living within the parameters of a 'growing obsession' -- the 'exaggerated importance' of a passionate affair -- means surrendering to the void and ultimate meaninglessness of existence; being 'entirely at the mercy of that crucial moment' of encounter; slipping chaotically into-and-out of a contorted consciousness. It also means -- at one and the same time -- opening oneself up to the world: to the turpid aspects of our humanness. Alongside the vertiginous force of self-undoing, Ernaux testifies that through her lived out passion for A she 'discovered what people are capable of'. Moreover: 'Without knowing it, he brought me closer to the world.' But she harbours no illusions, for 'From the very beginning, and throughout the whole of our affair, I had the privilege of knowing what we all find out in the end: the man we love is a complete stranger.' True to the mental-and-material experience of desire, opposites see themselves in one another. Because, also, 'thanks to him, I was able to approach the frontier separating me from others, to the extent of actually believing that I could sometimes cross over it.'
Ernaux's is a starkly written, honest rendition of 'the signs of passion'. At no point does it attempt to obscure the fundamental reason of its existence: describing that sense of being 'wrapped up in a man'. It is about the defining Wait inscribed in all-consuming passion, where impenetrable absence engulfs all instances of non-presence and transforms experience into a series of absurdities known to those who have shared this condition. A condition of 'idleness' that is singularly 'lethargic', its captive 'slip[ping] into a semi-slumber' and responding to a disjointed and dramatically recalibrated conception of time, the 'interval of time' stretching between moments of encounter turning into 'an unbearable, interminable wait'.
'Now I was only time flowing through myself.'
'I experienced pleasure like a future pain.'
'Throughout this period, all my thoughts and all my actions involved the repetition of history. I wanted to turn the present back into the past, opening on to happiness.'
'In my dreams too was the desire to reverse time.'
'[...] the time which separates the moment when [these words] are written—when only I can see them—from the moment when they will be read by other people, a moment which I feel will never come. [...] This delay makes it possible for me to write today'
'Living in passion or writing: in each case one’s perception of time is fundamentally different.'
In the resultant eradication of a self's centre, passion becomes the kindred receptacle of trauma. An 'ordeal', as Ernaux puts it: 'I reflected that there was very little difference between this reconstruction and a hallucination, between memory and madness.'
The writing is acutely introspective and deconstructive, its intensity accentuated by the very disconcerting power and unfathomable quality of an unyielding passion. It is aware of itself as writing, and liberally fluctuates between observations on passion and the writing process, essentially thinking of them in intersecting terms.
'It occurred to me that writing should also aim for that—the impression conveyed by sexual intercourse, a feeling of anxiety and stupefaction, a suspension of moral judgement.'
'Quite often I felt I was living out this passion in the same way I would have written a book: the same determination to get every single scene right, the same minute attention to detail. I could even accept the thought of dying providing I had lived this passion through to the very end—without actually def ining “to the very end”—in the same way I could die in a few months’ time after finishing this book.'
'I felt I was living out my passion in the manner of a novel but now I’m not sure in which style I am writing about it: in the style of a testimony, possibly even the sort of confidence one finds in women’s magazines, a manifesto or a statement, or maybe a critical commentary.'
'Sometimes I wonder if the purpose of my writing is to find out whether other people have done or felt the same things or, if not, for them to consider experiencing such things as normal.'
'Of the living text, this book is only the remainder, a minortrace. One day it will mean nothing to me, just like its living counterpart.'
'To go on writing is also a means of delaying the trauma of giving this to others to read.'
...The understated beauty of this frank compendium is absolutely astonishing...
🌹🌹🌹
4.5 stars.
December 21, 2022
Winner of Nobel Prize for Literature 2022.
I plan to rate all the books I read this year before writing my review for 2022 on Goodreads. I will write a few words about each unrated book and hopefully I will return with more when I have more time.
My 2nd Annie Ernaux and not the last, for sure. I read this in preparation for Getting Lost which I recently received as part of my Fitzcarraldo subscription. They both discuss the same Passionate affair with a younger man from the Russian Embassy. This one had the format of a bare it all memoir, while Getting Lost is the author's journal kept while being infatuated.
I like Annie's writing stile, she manages to make the reader understand her feelings, if not agree with them.
I plan to rate all the books I read this year before writing my review for 2022 on Goodreads. I will write a few words about each unrated book and hopefully I will return with more when I have more time.
My 2nd Annie Ernaux and not the last, for sure. I read this in preparation for Getting Lost which I recently received as part of my Fitzcarraldo subscription. They both discuss the same Passionate affair with a younger man from the Russian Embassy. This one had the format of a bare it all memoir, while Getting Lost is the author's journal kept while being infatuated.
I like Annie's writing stile, she manages to make the reader understand her feelings, if not agree with them.
June 10, 2023
DIOS MÍO. Que perturbador e íntimo fue este libro. Me fascinó reencontrarme con las características que tanto disfruto de la pluma de Annie.
Su libro “El acontecimiento” me encantó de mil formas, pero me atrapó con su estilo narrativo y sus frases tan filosas sobre las emociones.
Ella tiene la habilidad de expresar una infinidad de sentimientos con una sola oración.
“Pura pasión”, narra la obsesión de una mujer hacia un hombre casado con el que tiene una relación informal. E impresiona ver cómo esa pasión, poco a poco le arrebata la tranquilidad. Quedo más sorprendido al saber que nuevamente la autora se narra a sí misma en las páginas.
Cualquier lector se puede encontrar en esta historia, pues la condición humana que presenta la autora es tan real como dolorosa.
Dejo una frase que me dejó con la boca abierta:
“Una noche, se me ocurrió someterme a la prueba del sida: Por lo menos me habría dejado eso.”
Recomendado 🙌🏻
Su libro “El acontecimiento” me encantó de mil formas, pero me atrapó con su estilo narrativo y sus frases tan filosas sobre las emociones.
Ella tiene la habilidad de expresar una infinidad de sentimientos con una sola oración.
“Pura pasión”, narra la obsesión de una mujer hacia un hombre casado con el que tiene una relación informal. E impresiona ver cómo esa pasión, poco a poco le arrebata la tranquilidad. Quedo más sorprendido al saber que nuevamente la autora se narra a sí misma en las páginas.
Cualquier lector se puede encontrar en esta historia, pues la condición humana que presenta la autora es tan real como dolorosa.
Dejo una frase que me dejó con la boca abierta:
“Una noche, se me ocurrió someterme a la prueba del sida: Por lo menos me habría dejado eso.”
Recomendado 🙌🏻
June 23, 2023
Criticism is a modern form of autobiography.
-Ricardo Piglia
Why do we always judge our inherent desires, our simple passions on the grounds of morality? Is it necessary to weigh our acts as per the norms established by society, which apparently created by us for ourselves? Can’t we accept our deeds as manifestations of our yearnings and impulses, would it disturb our social order, are our longings and wishes so dangerous that they have to kept under the guise of morality? The intriguing tussle between individuality and collectivism have been haunting the mankind since time immemorial, and they have been only a few who could trod the treacherous path of in-between and have the courage to unravel all the veils and to put things naked under the burning sun of truth, Anne Ernaux definitely sits at the pinnacle of such bravery.
link: source
The book starts with a shocking act in which the narrator watches the porn though it’s quite natural but, I mean, who would have thought that it could be opening of a book in the mainstream. She proposes that writing should aim to replicate the feelings of witnessing sexual intercourse, that feeling of anxiety and stupefaction, a suspension of moral judgement. The narrator keeps on waiting for a man of her desire, her passion, the time in between the meetings is like a suspended existence for her as if her entire being cries from the hell of nothingness, for arrival of her man of simple passion, to free her from this burning purgatory. The desire to meet the man of her aspiration seems to be the sole purpose of her existence. There is no temporal relief for the narrator since there is no ‘present’ in her life and her entire life is suspended in the unassumed future robbing the key moments off time-space fabric. She is in a kind of limbo as if she is only time flowing through herself. Despite that, she likes to keep the mess of existence as it is since every object may evoke a caress and other feelings, forming stills of life whose intensity and pain could never be captured by any forms of art. What we gained in physical intensity we lost in time.
As the time passes in the advent of waiting for her man, her horrors keep coming back to her inferring a mishap. She feels as if it’s her destiny to live out this burning passion in the same way she would have written a book, she strives for perfection in the relationship and thereby going for excellence in writing this book, we see the glimpses of metafiction as if you get an eerie feeling that it may be your own world too. She tries to put control on her feelings through words but as we know it can be extremely taxing. You can’t share these exceedingly intimates details with your parents or children, for the sharp edge of sword of moral judgement may cut your soul in to pieces so you chooses to write them, in a way to get away from the them, to kill the demons associated with them but aren’t you thereby exposing yourself to the world. The narrator or the author uses memory as a portal of time and thereby handpicking moments as per her choice, to recreate them, relive them but isn’t there is profound risk for her to stare her own shame.
It was all infinite emptiness, except when we were together making love.
Though she writes in first person, but it generates a sense of alienation among the readers as if they are reading about someone else. She writes not to distill what she might have experienced in her life but to recreate and relive the moments which might have been buried deep down in the history of time. The indifference of her lover towards the obsession of the narrator kills her, little by little. However, she finds relief in writing about her relationship as the writing separates the moments when they are written from when they will be read by other people, and this temporal delay in way saves her from the shame of being exposed to the world. She longs to remember him with her entire being as if he has been silhouetted inside her, but time is not taking her anywhere, it only makes her grow old and grumpy. She wants to transform the present into past as if one could jump into temporal chambers to open to the portal of happiness buried under the temporal axis of past. I wondered why it wasn’t possible to slip into that particular day or moment as easily as one slips into another room.
The narrator strives to put an end to her sorrow and grief however, the act of writing does not lessen them but by writing about them she tries to bury the savage demons of nostalgia, pain, grief deep down in time and memory, so as to free her consciousness from the guilt and shame of them. The act of writing delays the trauma of being exposed to the world. We see that autofiction, as we call it, gives the narrator (author) the impunity as if she is roaming in a sacred and personal space where there is no risk of being judged by the world, as if the author puts her soul in the narrator and thereby freeing herself from the moral indignation of the world and by that means, sacrificing the narrator in place of her. However, as soon the book is finished and ready for publication, it is removed form the fabric of time and it stands of its own as if being infused with ‘being’ of its own and hence does not need anyone anymore to exist in this world; perhaps that is how this book came into existence, probably that’s how every book comes into existence.
The author writes about the desires and indignities of a human heart ensnared in all-consuming passion. The line between fact and fiction is blurred in an attempt to write-down the relationship with a married man, perhaps to get away from the relationship, to kill all demons associated with. We always find it hard to assuage the wounds of heart with reason, and we see the author is also humane in that sense, but she has been able to cultivate restrained and detached prose, deeply moving account of life and death, youth and age, imaginations, and reality, a poignant seemingly love story but the book is a deep examination of how an obsessive (or passionate as the author calls) affair creates an emptiness in life, around which your entire existence may keep revolving, suspending in the fabric of time and space.
link: source
Till now, I have been happy to be a keen observer who watches the process of creation, the dilemma of author-narrator with passion from a distance so as to not interfere in it, and I keep on ruminating over the outrageous possibilities and thereby keep on stretching the fabric of imagination. However, eventually, the guilt of not involving in this consecrated process of creation, wraps around by soul and finally I surrender myself to the eccentric, but vicious attraction and I found myself looking at my own shame; the terrifying horror to realize that its my own story, encapsulates my being, but the realization that it is perhaps everyone’s story, assuages my palpitating heart.
The opening quote appeared on my reading landscape very timely as I have just started reading the notebooks of Ricardo Piglia after a long fascination with his writing abilities but it could not turn out into a reading experience due to unavailability of the notebooks in English. Nonetheless, it accentuates the point that autofiction remains the voice of contemporary literature as we have seen quite a few authors exploring this genre or blurring the previously accepted genres but one thing is for sure that the new voice in the contemporary literature is deeply engaging and enchanting.
-Ricardo Piglia
Why do we always judge our inherent desires, our simple passions on the grounds of morality? Is it necessary to weigh our acts as per the norms established by society, which apparently created by us for ourselves? Can’t we accept our deeds as manifestations of our yearnings and impulses, would it disturb our social order, are our longings and wishes so dangerous that they have to kept under the guise of morality? The intriguing tussle between individuality and collectivism have been haunting the mankind since time immemorial, and they have been only a few who could trod the treacherous path of in-between and have the courage to unravel all the veils and to put things naked under the burning sun of truth, Anne Ernaux definitely sits at the pinnacle of such bravery.
link: source
The book starts with a shocking act in which the narrator watches the porn though it’s quite natural but, I mean, who would have thought that it could be opening of a book in the mainstream. She proposes that writing should aim to replicate the feelings of witnessing sexual intercourse, that feeling of anxiety and stupefaction, a suspension of moral judgement. The narrator keeps on waiting for a man of her desire, her passion, the time in between the meetings is like a suspended existence for her as if her entire being cries from the hell of nothingness, for arrival of her man of simple passion, to free her from this burning purgatory. The desire to meet the man of her aspiration seems to be the sole purpose of her existence. There is no temporal relief for the narrator since there is no ‘present’ in her life and her entire life is suspended in the unassumed future robbing the key moments off time-space fabric. She is in a kind of limbo as if she is only time flowing through herself. Despite that, she likes to keep the mess of existence as it is since every object may evoke a caress and other feelings, forming stills of life whose intensity and pain could never be captured by any forms of art. What we gained in physical intensity we lost in time.
As the time passes in the advent of waiting for her man, her horrors keep coming back to her inferring a mishap. She feels as if it’s her destiny to live out this burning passion in the same way she would have written a book, she strives for perfection in the relationship and thereby going for excellence in writing this book, we see the glimpses of metafiction as if you get an eerie feeling that it may be your own world too. She tries to put control on her feelings through words but as we know it can be extremely taxing. You can’t share these exceedingly intimates details with your parents or children, for the sharp edge of sword of moral judgement may cut your soul in to pieces so you chooses to write them, in a way to get away from the them, to kill the demons associated with them but aren’t you thereby exposing yourself to the world. The narrator or the author uses memory as a portal of time and thereby handpicking moments as per her choice, to recreate them, relive them but isn’t there is profound risk for her to stare her own shame.
It was all infinite emptiness, except when we were together making love.
Though she writes in first person, but it generates a sense of alienation among the readers as if they are reading about someone else. She writes not to distill what she might have experienced in her life but to recreate and relive the moments which might have been buried deep down in the history of time. The indifference of her lover towards the obsession of the narrator kills her, little by little. However, she finds relief in writing about her relationship as the writing separates the moments when they are written from when they will be read by other people, and this temporal delay in way saves her from the shame of being exposed to the world. She longs to remember him with her entire being as if he has been silhouetted inside her, but time is not taking her anywhere, it only makes her grow old and grumpy. She wants to transform the present into past as if one could jump into temporal chambers to open to the portal of happiness buried under the temporal axis of past. I wondered why it wasn’t possible to slip into that particular day or moment as easily as one slips into another room.
The narrator strives to put an end to her sorrow and grief however, the act of writing does not lessen them but by writing about them she tries to bury the savage demons of nostalgia, pain, grief deep down in time and memory, so as to free her consciousness from the guilt and shame of them. The act of writing delays the trauma of being exposed to the world. We see that autofiction, as we call it, gives the narrator (author) the impunity as if she is roaming in a sacred and personal space where there is no risk of being judged by the world, as if the author puts her soul in the narrator and thereby freeing herself from the moral indignation of the world and by that means, sacrificing the narrator in place of her. However, as soon the book is finished and ready for publication, it is removed form the fabric of time and it stands of its own as if being infused with ‘being’ of its own and hence does not need anyone anymore to exist in this world; perhaps that is how this book came into existence, probably that’s how every book comes into existence.
The author writes about the desires and indignities of a human heart ensnared in all-consuming passion. The line between fact and fiction is blurred in an attempt to write-down the relationship with a married man, perhaps to get away from the relationship, to kill all demons associated with. We always find it hard to assuage the wounds of heart with reason, and we see the author is also humane in that sense, but she has been able to cultivate restrained and detached prose, deeply moving account of life and death, youth and age, imaginations, and reality, a poignant seemingly love story but the book is a deep examination of how an obsessive (or passionate as the author calls) affair creates an emptiness in life, around which your entire existence may keep revolving, suspending in the fabric of time and space.
link: source
Till now, I have been happy to be a keen observer who watches the process of creation, the dilemma of author-narrator with passion from a distance so as to not interfere in it, and I keep on ruminating over the outrageous possibilities and thereby keep on stretching the fabric of imagination. However, eventually, the guilt of not involving in this consecrated process of creation, wraps around by soul and finally I surrender myself to the eccentric, but vicious attraction and I found myself looking at my own shame; the terrifying horror to realize that its my own story, encapsulates my being, but the realization that it is perhaps everyone’s story, assuages my palpitating heart.
The opening quote appeared on my reading landscape very timely as I have just started reading the notebooks of Ricardo Piglia after a long fascination with his writing abilities but it could not turn out into a reading experience due to unavailability of the notebooks in English. Nonetheless, it accentuates the point that autofiction remains the voice of contemporary literature as we have seen quite a few authors exploring this genre or blurring the previously accepted genres but one thing is for sure that the new voice in the contemporary literature is deeply engaging and enchanting.
July 21, 2024
الكتاب الخامس الذي أقرأه لأني أرنو و أعتقد كدة حيكون الكتاب الأخير!
في هذه النوفيلا المملة بتتكلم إرنو عن علاقة غرامية عابرة و هي علاقة محكوم عليها بالفشل منذ البداية ولكنها كانت مهتمة أوي إنها تجيبلنا شلل كقراء وتحكي لنا عن شغفها الغير طبيعي بهذا الرجل التي كانت علي علاقة به و إن إزاي حياتها وقفت تماماً لو هو مش موجود!
"لم يكن لدي أي مستقبل آخر سوى انتظار اتصاله الهاتفي المقبل كي يحدد موعداً للقائنا.."
والله يا أستاذة أني أنا مش عارفة إنتي أخدتِ نوبل ليه!
يقول أحمد سعد في أغنيته الشهيرة وسع وسع
لو كانت بالحظوظ الدنيا كانت تبوظ!
هي بالحظوظ يا عم أحمد والله والدليل أهو..أني أرنو!
في هذه النوفيلا المملة بتتكلم إرنو عن علاقة غرامية عابرة و هي علاقة محكوم عليها بالفشل منذ البداية ولكنها كانت مهتمة أوي إنها تجيبلنا شلل كقراء وتحكي لنا عن شغفها الغير طبيعي بهذا الرجل التي كانت علي علاقة به و إن إزاي حياتها وقفت تماماً لو هو مش موجود!
"لم يكن لدي أي مستقبل آخر سوى انتظار اتصاله الهاتفي المقبل كي يحدد موعداً للقائنا.."
والله يا أستاذة أني أنا مش عارفة إنتي أخدتِ نوبل ليه!
يقول أحمد سعد في أغنيته الشهيرة وسع وسع
لو كانت بالحظوظ الدنيا كانت تبوظ!
هي بالحظوظ يا عم أحمد والله والدليل أهو..أني أرنو!
July 24, 2023
This is an intimate portrait of a woman in love. Everything she does, everything she sees, everyone she talks with is related back to HIM. She reads things he might be interested in. If she hears someone talk of a vacation she thinks ‘I’ll ask him if he’s been there.’ She dresses ‘just in case,’ and she looks at fashions in store windows daily. A phone call brings dejection if it’s NOT HIM. Everything else is simply filling time before their next meeting.
Of course, he’s married with kids. He’s from Eastern Europe (she never tells us where), assigned to France for his job, and has brought his family with him. She lives for his calls and his hurried visits. When they are together she dreads seeing him sneak a glance at his watch and then suffers dejection as she watches him dress to leave.
The quick calls are all-important and infrequent. He can’t call from home and these are the pre-cellphone days of pay-phones on street corners. (It’s 1991.) She makes promises, in effect, ‘if he calls today I’ll make a donation to…’ She drops money into beggars’ cups with a wish.
The book is a primer on what it is like for a woman to be in love with a married man. She never tells us if he’s in love with her.
The book is also a bit of a meta-novel. She tells us she is writing the book as therapy to get over him. There's an extended analogy between her obsession with writing a book and trying to make it perfect with the way she tried to make her relationship perfect. Some passages about this:
[On why she is writing.] “I do not wish to explain my passion - that would imply that it was a mistake or some disorder I need to justify - I just want to describe it.”
“Living in passion or writing: in each case one's perception of time is fundamentally different.”
“I stare at the written pages with astonishment and something resembling shame, feelings I certainly never felt when I was living out my passion and writing about it.”
She raises an interesting question. Once you are past a reality that happened to you, and then you have written about it, what’s the difference between having experienced something and just having read about it in the first place?
Her lover’s native language is not French so his French is imperfect. “…I was able to appreciate the approximate quality of our conversations. From the very beginning, and throughout the whole of our affair, I had the privilege of knowing what we all find out in the end: the man we love is a complete stranger.”
Her lover is called back to his home country. She waits for a phone call that will never come. Or will it?
I liked the writing. The sentences flow; not necessarily short, but simple, sparse and to the point, nothing lyrical. It’s a very intimate portrait of a woman baring her soul in a way that I think few authors, men or women, would have the courage to do. There’s a bit of explicit sex.
This is the first book I've read by the 2022 Nobel Prize winner. Almost all of her work is autobiographical. Her books in order, catalog her parents’ lives, her teenage years, her marriage, her affair with an East European man (this book I am reviewing), her abortion, the onset of Alzheimer's, her mother's death, her battle with breast cancer.
Top photo: the author, age 18, with her mother at her parents’ café in Yvetot, Normandy from france.amerique.com (copyright by the author)
The author (b. 1940) from newyorker.com
[Revised 7/24/23]
Of course, he’s married with kids. He’s from Eastern Europe (she never tells us where), assigned to France for his job, and has brought his family with him. She lives for his calls and his hurried visits. When they are together she dreads seeing him sneak a glance at his watch and then suffers dejection as she watches him dress to leave.
The quick calls are all-important and infrequent. He can’t call from home and these are the pre-cellphone days of pay-phones on street corners. (It’s 1991.) She makes promises, in effect, ‘if he calls today I’ll make a donation to…’ She drops money into beggars’ cups with a wish.
The book is a primer on what it is like for a woman to be in love with a married man. She never tells us if he’s in love with her.
The book is also a bit of a meta-novel. She tells us she is writing the book as therapy to get over him. There's an extended analogy between her obsession with writing a book and trying to make it perfect with the way she tried to make her relationship perfect. Some passages about this:
[On why she is writing.] “I do not wish to explain my passion - that would imply that it was a mistake or some disorder I need to justify - I just want to describe it.”
“Living in passion or writing: in each case one's perception of time is fundamentally different.”
“I stare at the written pages with astonishment and something resembling shame, feelings I certainly never felt when I was living out my passion and writing about it.”
She raises an interesting question. Once you are past a reality that happened to you, and then you have written about it, what’s the difference between having experienced something and just having read about it in the first place?
Her lover’s native language is not French so his French is imperfect. “…I was able to appreciate the approximate quality of our conversations. From the very beginning, and throughout the whole of our affair, I had the privilege of knowing what we all find out in the end: the man we love is a complete stranger.”
Her lover is called back to his home country. She waits for a phone call that will never come. Or will it?
I liked the writing. The sentences flow; not necessarily short, but simple, sparse and to the point, nothing lyrical. It’s a very intimate portrait of a woman baring her soul in a way that I think few authors, men or women, would have the courage to do. There’s a bit of explicit sex.
This is the first book I've read by the 2022 Nobel Prize winner. Almost all of her work is autobiographical. Her books in order, catalog her parents’ lives, her teenage years, her marriage, her affair with an East European man (this book I am reviewing), her abortion, the onset of Alzheimer's, her mother's death, her battle with breast cancer.
Top photo: the author, age 18, with her mother at her parents’ café in Yvetot, Normandy from france.amerique.com (copyright by the author)
The author (b. 1940) from newyorker.com
[Revised 7/24/23]
July 19, 2017
At a spare sixty-one pages, Annie Ernaux's account of a woman's experience with all-consuming passion is mercifully brief.
And this is a mercy because, for a woman of the current cultural age, great shame attaches to the knowledge that the self can be surrendered so cheaply and completely; that one can and does make a willing transformation, compelled by pure emotional need, into the servant of another's whim. To perceive oneself alive only in his presence, to recognize his absence as a kind of death; sensing the slip into a holding pattern; held in reserve through his inattendance like a toy set once again to its shelf. This is a difficult reality to address. We do this. It happens. No one really talks about it, yet we get the sense we have humiliated ourselves and should never, ever let it happen again.
And this is why Ernaux's analysis of the phenomenon is important. Her terse and brutally honest conveyance of the id-ness of it all - the primitive hunger, the compulsive grasping, the self-serving nature of every interpersonal transaction - without the trappings of romance or the yardstick of morality, allows for the creation of an equally honest internal space in which we might reflect on our own experience with obsession, enslavement, and lust.
Frankly, I think this is the drive behind the massive popularity of Fifty Shades of Grey. It's the hunt for a place in which we might safely inspect passion and shame. Having read both, I can tell you this: What E.L. James dismisses, Annie Ernaux provides.
And this is a mercy because, for a woman of the current cultural age, great shame attaches to the knowledge that the self can be surrendered so cheaply and completely; that one can and does make a willing transformation, compelled by pure emotional need, into the servant of another's whim. To perceive oneself alive only in his presence, to recognize his absence as a kind of death; sensing the slip into a holding pattern; held in reserve through his inattendance like a toy set once again to its shelf. This is a difficult reality to address. We do this. It happens. No one really talks about it, yet we get the sense we have humiliated ourselves and should never, ever let it happen again.
And this is why Ernaux's analysis of the phenomenon is important. Her terse and brutally honest conveyance of the id-ness of it all - the primitive hunger, the compulsive grasping, the self-serving nature of every interpersonal transaction - without the trappings of romance or the yardstick of morality, allows for the creation of an equally honest internal space in which we might reflect on our own experience with obsession, enslavement, and lust.
Frankly, I think this is the drive behind the massive popularity of Fifty Shades of Grey. It's the hunt for a place in which we might safely inspect passion and shame. Having read both, I can tell you this: What E.L. James dismisses, Annie Ernaux provides.
October 10, 2021
Every year there is excited debate about what author will be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature and this year one of the top contenders that readers were speculating about was Annie Ernaux. Since I had a fairly free morning and while I was waiting for the prize announcement to be made, I thought I'd get to reading the most recent book to be translated by this author whose work I fell in love with starting with “The Years”. It's very short – just under 50 pages! And it centres around the subject of a married man that the author/narrator had an affair with for a couple of years. It's an all-consuming passion which takes over her life for this period of time. Her focus is not on the details or moral drama of the affair, but the impact passion has upon an individual: “I do not wish to explain my passion – that would imply that it was a mistake or some disorder I need to justify – but simply to describe it.” In doing so, she illuminates how we can become completely entangled in heated passion in a way that defies all logic and reason. Ernaux uses her characteristically rigorous sense of self enquiry to raise larger questions about the nature of desire, imagination, time and memory.
One of the most fascinating aspects of Ernaux's writing is the openness of her narrative to take shape in the way which will best convey the meaning and heart of her subject matter. She describes how: “I felt I was living out my passion in the manner of a novel, but now I am not sure in which style I am writing about it, whether in the style of a testimony, or possibly even the sort of confidence that can be found in women's magazines, maybe a manifesto or a statement, or perhaps a critical commentary.” This book defies genre or any conventional form. Yet, its construction feels perfectly suited to what she wants to say and there's a masterful precision to her ideas. If most writers were to do this and discuss the book's construction so openly within the text it would feel intrusively self conscious, but with Ernaux it feels like a sincere and conscientious way to explore the subject matter. The book even moves from the past to the present tense because she realises that she's gradually being released from the grip that passion has on her which traps her in memories of her lover. At the beginning she's outside of the flow of everyday life, but by the end she's rejoined the stream of time and can reside again in the present.
Read my full review of Simple Passion by Annie Ernaux on LonesomeReader
I also made a video discussing this book which you can watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqO_tTy5AK4
One of the most fascinating aspects of Ernaux's writing is the openness of her narrative to take shape in the way which will best convey the meaning and heart of her subject matter. She describes how: “I felt I was living out my passion in the manner of a novel, but now I am not sure in which style I am writing about it, whether in the style of a testimony, or possibly even the sort of confidence that can be found in women's magazines, maybe a manifesto or a statement, or perhaps a critical commentary.” This book defies genre or any conventional form. Yet, its construction feels perfectly suited to what she wants to say and there's a masterful precision to her ideas. If most writers were to do this and discuss the book's construction so openly within the text it would feel intrusively self conscious, but with Ernaux it feels like a sincere and conscientious way to explore the subject matter. The book even moves from the past to the present tense because she realises that she's gradually being released from the grip that passion has on her which traps her in memories of her lover. At the beginning she's outside of the flow of everyday life, but by the end she's rejoined the stream of time and can reside again in the present.
Read my full review of Simple Passion by Annie Ernaux on LonesomeReader
I also made a video discussing this book which you can watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqO_tTy5AK4
May 1, 2023
4/5 ❤❤❤❤
Mi primera incursión en la producción de Annie Ernaux, reciente Premio Nóbel de Literatura. Como suelo hacer, antes de la reseña definitiva, os dejo mis primeras impresiones.
- De los comentarios de los amigos de GR, ya sabía que esta autora es muy intimista y que, por lo tanto, si no te engancha la temática, podía resultar monótona y aburrida. En este caso, a mí no me ocurrió eso, sino que me ha resultado interesante su incursión sentimental en relación con su experiencia vital.
-Ernaux escribe esta obra como consecuencia de los efectos provocados por una fuerte pasión (de ahí el título), generada por su relación con un hombre casado, de la que siempre tuvo pocas esperanzas de gran longevidad. De hecho, confiesa que esta obra nace como una ampliación de lo generado por esa relación que la obsesiona completamente, una vez que él pone el punto final.
- En esta crónica, por tanto, la autora desnuda sus sentimientos ante el lector, reconociendo muchas veces, que lo que hace no es ni lo correcto ni lo conveniente. Es verdad que nos sitúa en un lugar común de la literatura, porque se me viene a la memoria "Anna Karenina" (salvando obviamente las distancias por supuesto) o la "Carta de una desconocida" de Stefan Zweig, entre otras obras, pero sin embargo la obra de Ernaux es más personal y nada novelada, puesto que retrata sus propios sentimientos, reacciones y decisiones.
Por todo ello, la obra me ha sorprendido gratamente, lo que unido a su brevedad, me hace recomendarla sin ambages. Entonces, ¿por que cuatro estrellas y no cinco?. Pues por dos razones: primero, la temática no me ha parecido original, aunque sí el modo de afrontarla; en segundo lugar, la obra no me ha dejado un poso duradero, aunque comprendo que esta impresión es muy personal.
Mi primera incursión en la producción de Annie Ernaux, reciente Premio Nóbel de Literatura. Como suelo hacer, antes de la reseña definitiva, os dejo mis primeras impresiones.
- De los comentarios de los amigos de GR, ya sabía que esta autora es muy intimista y que, por lo tanto, si no te engancha la temática, podía resultar monótona y aburrida. En este caso, a mí no me ocurrió eso, sino que me ha resultado interesante su incursión sentimental en relación con su experiencia vital.
-Ernaux escribe esta obra como consecuencia de los efectos provocados por una fuerte pasión (de ahí el título), generada por su relación con un hombre casado, de la que siempre tuvo pocas esperanzas de gran longevidad. De hecho, confiesa que esta obra nace como una ampliación de lo generado por esa relación que la obsesiona completamente, una vez que él pone el punto final.
- En esta crónica, por tanto, la autora desnuda sus sentimientos ante el lector, reconociendo muchas veces, que lo que hace no es ni lo correcto ni lo conveniente. Es verdad que nos sitúa en un lugar común de la literatura, porque se me viene a la memoria "Anna Karenina" (salvando obviamente las distancias por supuesto) o la "Carta de una desconocida" de Stefan Zweig, entre otras obras, pero sin embargo la obra de Ernaux es más personal y nada novelada, puesto que retrata sus propios sentimientos, reacciones y decisiones.
Por todo ello, la obra me ha sorprendido gratamente, lo que unido a su brevedad, me hace recomendarla sin ambages. Entonces, ¿por que cuatro estrellas y no cinco?. Pues por dos razones: primero, la temática no me ha parecido original, aunque sí el modo de afrontarla; en segundo lugar, la obra no me ha dejado un poso duradero, aunque comprendo que esta impresión es muy personal.
March 17, 2022
Çok sevdim, yine. Ernaux hiç üzmüyor. Bu kitabı anlayamamayı, yadırgamayı arzu ederdim fakat anladım maalesef. Tutku ve saplantı arasındaki zaman zaman farkına bile varmadığımız incelikteki çizgiyi enfes anlatmış, her zamanki gibi kendine karşı acımasızlığa varan bir dürüstlükle yazmış Ernaux. Saplantıya evrilme potansiyeli taşıyan tutkunun sıklıkla insana “bu ben değilim, dönüştüğüm şeyden nefret ediyorum” dedirten şeyler yaptırma gücünü, “hazzı gelecekteki bir acı gibi yaşamayı” 50 sayfada mükemmel biçimde özetliyor yazar. Bu kitabı bir genç kızken okumuş olmayı çok arzu ederdim. “Kaç kez seviştiğimizi hesaplıyordum. Her defasında ilişkimize bir şeyin daha eklendiği hissine kapılıyordum, fakat bizi birbirimizden kesinlikle ayıracak olan da bu jest ve haz birikimiydi. Bir arzu sermayesini tüketiyorduk. Fiziksel yoğunluk düzeyinde kazanılan, zaman düzeyinde yitiriliyordu.”
October 6, 2022
şimdi bir yazarın önce magnum opus’unu okuyup sonra geri dönmek çok hoş bir şey değil bence. önce “seneler”i okuyup, ernaux’nun dilinin, kimliğinin, tarzının şahikasını görünce bu tarzın habercisi “yalın tutku” bana o kadar ahım şahım gelmedi tabii.
ama 40’ların sonundaki bir kadının bu kadar dürüst bir biçimde evli bir erkekle ilişkisini, sevişmesini, özlemini kaleme alması 80’li yıllar için olduğu kadar bugün de isyankar ve cesur.
aşk -ki anlatıcı aşk demiyor hiçbir zaman oysa kadının tarafından elbette öyle- her yaşta mı aynı yaşanır? kadınların hayatlarını, zamanlarını, işlerini güçlerini adamaları her yaşta ve her yerde mi aynı olur yareppim die ara ara sinirlerim bozulmadı değil, doğruya doğru.
anlatıcının telefona bakabilmek uğruna hayatından vazgeçmesinden bahsediyoruz. evli ve hakkında doğru düzgün hiçbir şey bilmediği bir adam uğruna. birkaç kere GERİ ZEKALI demiş olabilirim, kusura bakma annie’ciğim, kötü hatıralar, tetiklendim :)
ama annie ernaux’cuğum emek emek otobiyografik anlatıyı nasıl kurduğunu bize burada göstermiş. arada kişisel yorumları, yazmak hakkındaki düşünceleri, yaşamından, işinden açıkça bahsetme cesareti seneler’e gelen yolun döşenmeye başlanan taşları resmen. çevirinin çok iyi olduğunu da ekleyeyim.
yaza yaza bu tutkudan sıyrılan anlatıcıyı kurtaran yazmak mı? geçen zaman mı?
peki biz biraz kendi edebiyatımızı düşünelim… bugün bile 50 sayfalık böyle bir anlatının bu ülkede yayımlanma ihtimali var mı sizce? ya da boşanmış bir kadın yazarın seks hayatını ve tutkusunu böyle ortaya dökerek yazması? hadi yazdı erkek egemen yayın dünyası tarafından kabulü? adalet ağaoğlu’nun gece hayatım’da yer alan erotik rüyalarına bile neler dendiğini ben kendi kulaklarımla duydum. geçelim.
ama 40’ların sonundaki bir kadının bu kadar dürüst bir biçimde evli bir erkekle ilişkisini, sevişmesini, özlemini kaleme alması 80’li yıllar için olduğu kadar bugün de isyankar ve cesur.
aşk -ki anlatıcı aşk demiyor hiçbir zaman oysa kadının tarafından elbette öyle- her yaşta mı aynı yaşanır? kadınların hayatlarını, zamanlarını, işlerini güçlerini adamaları her yaşta ve her yerde mi aynı olur yareppim die ara ara sinirlerim bozulmadı değil, doğruya doğru.
anlatıcının telefona bakabilmek uğruna hayatından vazgeçmesinden bahsediyoruz. evli ve hakkında doğru düzgün hiçbir şey bilmediği bir adam uğruna. birkaç kere GERİ ZEKALI demiş olabilirim, kusura bakma annie’ciğim, kötü hatıralar, tetiklendim :)
ama annie ernaux’cuğum emek emek otobiyografik anlatıyı nasıl kurduğunu bize burada göstermiş. arada kişisel yorumları, yazmak hakkındaki düşünceleri, yaşamından, işinden açıkça bahsetme cesareti seneler’e gelen yolun döşenmeye başlanan taşları resmen. çevirinin çok iyi olduğunu da ekleyeyim.
yaza yaza bu tutkudan sıyrılan anlatıcıyı kurtaran yazmak mı? geçen zaman mı?
peki biz biraz kendi edebiyatımızı düşünelim… bugün bile 50 sayfalık böyle bir anlatının bu ülkede yayımlanma ihtimali var mı sizce? ya da boşanmış bir kadın yazarın seks hayatını ve tutkusunu böyle ortaya dökerek yazması? hadi yazdı erkek egemen yayın dünyası tarafından kabulü? adalet ağaoğlu’nun gece hayatım’da yer alan erotik rüyalarına bile neler dendiğini ben kendi kulaklarımla duydum. geçelim.
February 4, 2023
Congratulations to Annie Ernaux, awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2022!! (which just happens to be the same year I read most of her work).
"Sometimes I wonder if the purpose of my writing is to find out whether other people have done or felt the same things or, if not, for them to consider experiencing such things as normal. Maybe I would also like them to live out these very emotions in turn, forgetting that they had once read about them somewhere.”
Simple Passion is a short novella-length memoir (or is it and all her work auto-fiction?) wherein Annie Ernaux recalls a time when she is consumed by passion, describing a two year affair she had as a young woman--when she was at university--with an older, married man from Poland who was working in France temporarily. [Some of these details are fiction, as the man was from Russia, and she was actually 48, and he was younger than her]. She couldn't contact the man, but waited every day by the phone for him to call and say he was coming over. We learn nothing of the man; we only learn the all-consuming obsession she has at the time where nothing else really matters, even though she knows that the desires involve undeniable indignities, and come to nothing over time. We don't get a sense of all the fun one might presume she has (it's an affair!); quite the contrary, she becomes reduced in the process to a kind of paralysis. She never expresses regret explicitly--she's describing things as they are, principally, not commenting on them or judging her younger self--but one can see the psychology of being reduced to "the other woman."
Even though Ernaux makes explicit attempts not to get too emotional or self-critical--to just focus on where memory takes her--I get the sense that she does have some regrets about how diminished she feels at this time, not knowing what to do about it, not being able to end it. I think plenty of people can relate to it.
"Sometimes I wonder if the purpose of my writing is to find out whether other people have done or felt the same things or, if not, for them to consider experiencing such things as normal. Maybe I would also like them to live out these very emotions in turn, forgetting that they had once read about them somewhere.”
Simple Passion is a short novella-length memoir (or is it and all her work auto-fiction?) wherein Annie Ernaux recalls a time when she is consumed by passion, describing a two year affair she had as a young woman--when she was at university--with an older, married man from Poland who was working in France temporarily. [Some of these details are fiction, as the man was from Russia, and she was actually 48, and he was younger than her]. She couldn't contact the man, but waited every day by the phone for him to call and say he was coming over. We learn nothing of the man; we only learn the all-consuming obsession she has at the time where nothing else really matters, even though she knows that the desires involve undeniable indignities, and come to nothing over time. We don't get a sense of all the fun one might presume she has (it's an affair!); quite the contrary, she becomes reduced in the process to a kind of paralysis. She never expresses regret explicitly--she's describing things as they are, principally, not commenting on them or judging her younger self--but one can see the psychology of being reduced to "the other woman."
Even though Ernaux makes explicit attempts not to get too emotional or self-critical--to just focus on where memory takes her--I get the sense that she does have some regrets about how diminished she feels at this time, not knowing what to do about it, not being able to end it. I think plenty of people can relate to it.
February 5, 2016
This book reminded me of exactly how I felt when I fell for a married man. Intense and overwhelming chemistry was swallowing us. For me it was an experiment (I was very young and naive) and for him being fifteen years older it was a thrill of his own. I had never experienced such mind losing magnetism with any other man before and there was something so decadent in our relationship. I didn’t feel ashamed, I didn’t have a reason, he didn’t have any whatsoever guilt trips and I was 20 and living my student life with a full blown adrenaline rush.
But he was with a reason driving me mad and I was willingly doing this to him as well. Just, this kind of passion is so extreme that it makes you do things that you wouldn’t normally do; it makes you cross your moral boundaries without any guilty conscious nibbling. When I look back at those days, I roll my eyes although there was something so animal and wildly exciting when we saw each other for the first time so that unharming violent passion that we had was in a way appropriate for that time.
Nowadays I would never go into those kind of complicated relationships because of the numerous vivid overheated reasons and because of the countless hidden struggles and scars that are left behind. Just like Ernaux said and just like she thanks passage of time for knowing that.
But again, never say never. Old flames are not always dead matches.
But he was with a reason driving me mad and I was willingly doing this to him as well. Just, this kind of passion is so extreme that it makes you do things that you wouldn’t normally do; it makes you cross your moral boundaries without any guilty conscious nibbling. When I look back at those days, I roll my eyes although there was something so animal and wildly exciting when we saw each other for the first time so that unharming violent passion that we had was in a way appropriate for that time.
Nowadays I would never go into those kind of complicated relationships because of the numerous vivid overheated reasons and because of the countless hidden struggles and scars that are left behind. Just like Ernaux said and just like she thanks passage of time for knowing that.
But again, never say never. Old flames are not always dead matches.
November 27, 2022
Este es el tercer libro al hilo que leo de Annie, el más breve pero el más potente. Leí reseñas donde decían que esto era sobre un amor "tóxico" y la verdad no encontré nada de tóxico. Supongo que lo tóxico viene de que el personaje masculino era casado y en esta sociedad cuando rompes el cannon de lo que "debería ser" todo se convierte en malo. EL manejo de las emociones en este libro de Annie solo son dos, cuando él no está y cuando él está. No hay dolor, no hay llanto, no hay arrepentimiento, Annie vive el presente con lo que tiene.
Annie escribe desde lo que su cuerpo dicta, no su cabeza o su corazón, el cuerpo es el que lleva la voz con el sexo desbordado, el deseo permanente de sentir la presencia del otro, el silencio cuando él no está, el ruido cuando llega.
Hay algo precioso que hace Annie, dar detalles de que en ese momento de su vida, todo lo que ella hacía, pensaba, compraba estaba pensado para el otro. Cosas inanimadas como objetos del deseo, desde una copa de vino sin lavar, hasta comprar esa lencería solo para ese momento, solo para él.
No es tóxica la pasión, la pasión es todo lo que ella describe en este libro y el que esté libre de pecado que tire la primera piedra.
Annie escribe desde lo que su cuerpo dicta, no su cabeza o su corazón, el cuerpo es el que lleva la voz con el sexo desbordado, el deseo permanente de sentir la presencia del otro, el silencio cuando él no está, el ruido cuando llega.
Hay algo precioso que hace Annie, dar detalles de que en ese momento de su vida, todo lo que ella hacía, pensaba, compraba estaba pensado para el otro. Cosas inanimadas como objetos del deseo, desde una copa de vino sin lavar, hasta comprar esa lencería solo para ese momento, solo para él.
No es tóxica la pasión, la pasión es todo lo que ella describe en este libro y el que esté libre de pecado que tire la primera piedra.
November 23, 2022
Annie Ernaux scrie excepțional, mai mult decât atât, își așterne sufletul pe hârtie, am avut, astfel, dublă satisfacție să o citesc. I-am sorbit cuvintele și am trăit în cartea ei.
Nu am intâlnit de mult timp o scriitoare care să scrie cu atâta luciditate, cu un astfel de talent si cu atâta curaj, într-un cuvânt cu asemenea putere.
Annie Ernaux m-a cucerit pe loc, m-a acaparat de la primele pagini si după ce mi-a dat drumul, când am ajuns la sfârșitul cărții, un timp nu am reușit să încep altă lectură.
E unul din oamenii care s-au născut pentru a scrie. Sunt încântată, onorată pot spune, când îi întâlnesc. Pentru că, citindu-i, mă limpezesc, mă înalț, mă regăsesc. Și, de fapt, de aceea iubesc forța literaturii, pentru acest dar neprețuit de a mă reda pe mine mie.
"Pasiune simplă": o bijuterie de text, care, in doar 50 de pagini, exprimă atât de mult și atât de intens. Cum pasiunea, deși totală, poate fi simplă, bazată doar pe clipele cu omul iubit, "înainte" și "după" sunt doar momente subordonate acestora. La fel sunt și diferitele calități ale bărbatului, lipsurile lui, vremea, orice lucru și orice fapt.
Nu știu cum poate descrie Ernaux atât de limpede totul, acum parcă văd cu alți ochi toate pasiunile din lume, mi le pot reprezenta mult mai ușor, ca și cum ar avea un miez comun: acea traire ca o ardere conștientă, rece la prima vedere, dar în realitate distrugătoare.
"Când eram copil, pentru mine luxul însemna mantouri de blană, rochii lungi și vile pe malul mării. Mai târziu, am crezut că înseamnă să duci o viață de intelectual. Acum mi se pare că înseamnă și să poți trăi o pasiune pentru un bărbat sau o femeie."
"Confesiunea adolescentei" m-a zguduit. Incepe cu dorința scriitoarei de a aduce la viață fata care a fost, cu 55 de ani în urmă, prin travaliul memoriei - a creat din lut un personaj, a suflat peste el cu amintirile și i-a dat conturul vieții. Treptat, cele două s-au suprapus printr-un proces sublim, realizat prin scris.
"Cea care, în fiecare, zi la biroul meu, nu face decât să se alăture acestei fete care am fost eu, să se dizolve în ea - eu sunt fantoma ei, care locuiește în ființa ei dispărută."
Este o poveste de dragoste neîmplinită, de căutarea identității, de dezamăgiri, de realizări, de chinuri, de... dragoste neîmplinită.
E splendidă, mie așa mi s-a părut și nu voiam să se mai termine. Cum își aduce Ernaux trăirile și sentimentele din trecut, cum le întoarce de pe o față pe alta, cum le dă numele corect și cum reface ordinea lucrurilor! E inegalabilă.
Inutil să spun că aștept următoarele traduceri de la Anansi.
Inchei cu un citat din "Pasiune simplă":
"Când voi începe să-mi bat acest text la mașină, când îmi va apărea scris cu litere publice, nevinovăția mea va lua sfârșit."
Nu am intâlnit de mult timp o scriitoare care să scrie cu atâta luciditate, cu un astfel de talent si cu atâta curaj, într-un cuvânt cu asemenea putere.
Annie Ernaux m-a cucerit pe loc, m-a acaparat de la primele pagini si după ce mi-a dat drumul, când am ajuns la sfârșitul cărții, un timp nu am reușit să încep altă lectură.
E unul din oamenii care s-au născut pentru a scrie. Sunt încântată, onorată pot spune, când îi întâlnesc. Pentru că, citindu-i, mă limpezesc, mă înalț, mă regăsesc. Și, de fapt, de aceea iubesc forța literaturii, pentru acest dar neprețuit de a mă reda pe mine mie.
"Pasiune simplă": o bijuterie de text, care, in doar 50 de pagini, exprimă atât de mult și atât de intens. Cum pasiunea, deși totală, poate fi simplă, bazată doar pe clipele cu omul iubit, "înainte" și "după" sunt doar momente subordonate acestora. La fel sunt și diferitele calități ale bărbatului, lipsurile lui, vremea, orice lucru și orice fapt.
Nu știu cum poate descrie Ernaux atât de limpede totul, acum parcă văd cu alți ochi toate pasiunile din lume, mi le pot reprezenta mult mai ușor, ca și cum ar avea un miez comun: acea traire ca o ardere conștientă, rece la prima vedere, dar în realitate distrugătoare.
"Când eram copil, pentru mine luxul însemna mantouri de blană, rochii lungi și vile pe malul mării. Mai târziu, am crezut că înseamnă să duci o viață de intelectual. Acum mi se pare că înseamnă și să poți trăi o pasiune pentru un bărbat sau o femeie."
"Confesiunea adolescentei" m-a zguduit. Incepe cu dorința scriitoarei de a aduce la viață fata care a fost, cu 55 de ani în urmă, prin travaliul memoriei - a creat din lut un personaj, a suflat peste el cu amintirile și i-a dat conturul vieții. Treptat, cele două s-au suprapus printr-un proces sublim, realizat prin scris.
"Cea care, în fiecare, zi la biroul meu, nu face decât să se alăture acestei fete care am fost eu, să se dizolve în ea - eu sunt fantoma ei, care locuiește în ființa ei dispărută."
Este o poveste de dragoste neîmplinită, de căutarea identității, de dezamăgiri, de realizări, de chinuri, de... dragoste neîmplinită.
E splendidă, mie așa mi s-a părut și nu voiam să se mai termine. Cum își aduce Ernaux trăirile și sentimentele din trecut, cum le întoarce de pe o față pe alta, cum le dă numele corect și cum reface ordinea lucrurilor! E inegalabilă.
Inutil să spun că aștept următoarele traduceri de la Anansi.
Inchei cu un citat din "Pasiune simplă":
"Când voi începe să-mi bat acest text la mașină, când îmi va apărea scris cu litere publice, nevinovăția mea va lua sfârșit."
July 12, 2023
My introduction to the fiction of Annie Ernaux is Simple Passion. Published in 1991 and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2022 (when the author was 82), this novella had everything I hoped that it would--rawness, brevity and recklessness. I found Ernaux (translated from French to English by Tanya Leslie) similar to Eve Babitz in at least one sense: I was blissfully unaware whether I was reading fiction or non-fiction. Much too short to be considered a novel but substantive enough not to be labeled a manifesto, this is the first person account of an unnamed narrator in France circa 1989 who recounts her brief affair with a married man.
-- From September last year, I did nothing else but wait for a man: for him to call me and come round to my place. I would go to the supermarket, the cinema, take my clothes to the dry cleaner's, read books, and mark essays. I behaved exactly the same way as before but without the long-standing familiarity of these actions I would have found it impossible to do so, except at the cost of a tremendous effort. It was when I spoke that I realized I was acting instinctively. Words, sentences, and even my laugh, formed on my lips without my actually thinking about it or wanting it. In fact I have only vague memories of the things I did, the films I saw, the people I met. I behaved in an artificial manner. The only actions involving willpower, desire, and what I take to be human intelligence (planning, weighing the pros and cons, assessing the consequences) were all related to this man.
-- When he left me more time between his phone call and his visit, three or four days, I imagined with disgust all the work I would have to do and the social engagements I would have to attend before seeing him again. I would have liked to have done nothing else but wait for him. I lived with the growing obsession that something might happen to stop us from meeting. One afternoon, when I was driivng home and expecting him half an hour later, it occurred to me fleetingly that I could have an accident. Immediately: "I'm not sure that I would stop."
-- As soon as he left, I would be overcome by a wave of fatigue. I wouldn't tidy up straight away: I would sit staring at the glasses, the plates and their leftovers, the overflowing ashtray, the clothes, the lingerie strewn all over the bedroom and the hallway, the sheets spilling over on to the carpet. I would have liked to keep that mess the way it was--a mess in which every object evoked a caress or a particular moment, forming a still-life whose intensity and pain could never, for me, be captured by any painting in a museum. Naturally I would never wash until the next day, to keep his sperm inside me.
I downloaded the Kindle version ($7.99) in preparation of the second draft of my novel. In terms of notes, or the cheat sheet for a cheater, Simple Passion is what I hoped it would be. Its succinctness, lack of conventional narrative and total absence of moral judgment were assets. The focus is how the narrator's life changes in the course of her affair, not the shaping of her experiences into a plot. As much as I enjoy thrillers, this book was different. Ernaux trusts the reader to fill in the spaces ourselves--I pictured the narrator a multiethnic woman in the present day--and I was thrilled to go careening toward a cliff with her.
Book/ song pairing (dedicated to Sarah): "The Adulteress," Pretenders (Side 1, Track 1 of Pretenders II, 1981)
-- From September last year, I did nothing else but wait for a man: for him to call me and come round to my place. I would go to the supermarket, the cinema, take my clothes to the dry cleaner's, read books, and mark essays. I behaved exactly the same way as before but without the long-standing familiarity of these actions I would have found it impossible to do so, except at the cost of a tremendous effort. It was when I spoke that I realized I was acting instinctively. Words, sentences, and even my laugh, formed on my lips without my actually thinking about it or wanting it. In fact I have only vague memories of the things I did, the films I saw, the people I met. I behaved in an artificial manner. The only actions involving willpower, desire, and what I take to be human intelligence (planning, weighing the pros and cons, assessing the consequences) were all related to this man.
-- When he left me more time between his phone call and his visit, three or four days, I imagined with disgust all the work I would have to do and the social engagements I would have to attend before seeing him again. I would have liked to have done nothing else but wait for him. I lived with the growing obsession that something might happen to stop us from meeting. One afternoon, when I was driivng home and expecting him half an hour later, it occurred to me fleetingly that I could have an accident. Immediately: "I'm not sure that I would stop."
-- As soon as he left, I would be overcome by a wave of fatigue. I wouldn't tidy up straight away: I would sit staring at the glasses, the plates and their leftovers, the overflowing ashtray, the clothes, the lingerie strewn all over the bedroom and the hallway, the sheets spilling over on to the carpet. I would have liked to keep that mess the way it was--a mess in which every object evoked a caress or a particular moment, forming a still-life whose intensity and pain could never, for me, be captured by any painting in a museum. Naturally I would never wash until the next day, to keep his sperm inside me.
I downloaded the Kindle version ($7.99) in preparation of the second draft of my novel. In terms of notes, or the cheat sheet for a cheater, Simple Passion is what I hoped it would be. Its succinctness, lack of conventional narrative and total absence of moral judgment were assets. The focus is how the narrator's life changes in the course of her affair, not the shaping of her experiences into a plot. As much as I enjoy thrillers, this book was different. Ernaux trusts the reader to fill in the spaces ourselves--I pictured the narrator a multiethnic woman in the present day--and I was thrilled to go careening toward a cliff with her.
Book/ song pairing (dedicated to Sarah): "The Adulteress," Pretenders (Side 1, Track 1 of Pretenders II, 1981)
May 7, 2023
This is pure interiority. A mainlining of the feelings and experiences of a woman's year long affair with a married man. There's almost no story whatsoever, very little context, none of the usual hallmarks of narrative; instead, just the most spare, unsentimental account of feelings. The feelings encountered when consumed by passion.
When I say not much story, that's not an exaggeration. It's extremely limited in that regard. We know very little of the man in question, and really, it's not about him, at all. It's about HER. It's about her obsession, her single-mindedness, her pain, and her loneliness in this relationship. Her waiting, her hoping, her promise-making, her record-keeping.
Because we have little to no context or story, there's nothing for the reader to do. No judging the narrator's decisions or whether the relationship is a mistake or whether the guy is bad. We are simply witness to the author's state of mind.
Annie Ernaux writes like no one else. Her words are extremely precise. Razor sharp and tremendously revealing. She rejects traditional story form, and is completely unique. I admire that she's so uncompromising, though I'm not sure what I take away from this work. It's more of a series of impressions about the nature of obsession for me. It's like I've just read a highly intellectual person's diary. It's fascinating, and economical (only 60 pages), but a bit like being in a floating head rather than anything resembling a novel.
Oddly, it was her words on writing that resonated with me the most:
At this point, sitting in front of the pages covered in my indecipherable scrawlings, which only I can interpret, I can still believe this is something private, almost childish, of no consequence whatsoever - like the declarations of love and the obscene expressions I used to write on the back of my exercise books in class, or anything else one may write calmly, in all impunity, when there is no risk of it being read. Once I start typing out the text, once it appears before me in public characters, I shall be through with innocence.
When I say not much story, that's not an exaggeration. It's extremely limited in that regard. We know very little of the man in question, and really, it's not about him, at all. It's about HER. It's about her obsession, her single-mindedness, her pain, and her loneliness in this relationship. Her waiting, her hoping, her promise-making, her record-keeping.
Because we have little to no context or story, there's nothing for the reader to do. No judging the narrator's decisions or whether the relationship is a mistake or whether the guy is bad. We are simply witness to the author's state of mind.
Annie Ernaux writes like no one else. Her words are extremely precise. Razor sharp and tremendously revealing. She rejects traditional story form, and is completely unique. I admire that she's so uncompromising, though I'm not sure what I take away from this work. It's more of a series of impressions about the nature of obsession for me. It's like I've just read a highly intellectual person's diary. It's fascinating, and economical (only 60 pages), but a bit like being in a floating head rather than anything resembling a novel.
Oddly, it was her words on writing that resonated with me the most:
At this point, sitting in front of the pages covered in my indecipherable scrawlings, which only I can interpret, I can still believe this is something private, almost childish, of no consequence whatsoever - like the declarations of love and the obscene expressions I used to write on the back of my exercise books in class, or anything else one may write calmly, in all impunity, when there is no risk of it being read. Once I start typing out the text, once it appears before me in public characters, I shall be through with innocence.
December 2, 2022
Having just read two huge, rather bloated works of fiction, I found this short and crystalline slice of life-writing to be a perfect palate-cleanser. Ernaux's prose is extremely precise without ever feeling fussy or finicky; attentive without feeling remotely navel-gazing. How she pulls this off, I don't know.
There are so many ideas and observations flying around in here that I found myself underlining about ten percent of the entire book – and the more spare her prose becomes, the more it seems to generate, with a kind of homeopathic potency, new connections in your head as you read it. The premise is simple, though – it's Ernaux's notes on an affair she had with a married man over the space of several months in 1989, a few years before this was published. From the very beginning she positions her reflections with great care, writing specifically in what you might call a post-pornographic mode: after many centuries and generations, she says near the beginning,
Already this is a remarkably precise and unusual way to frame her thoughts, and she continues in similar style. It's notable that we know almost nothing about the man Ernaux is so infatuated with here; she says this is for reasons of privacy, but perhaps more to the point is that the book is, in the end, not about him at all. It's all about her and her responses. We never have the chance (as we do in so many similar stories) to grumble, ‘I don't know what she sees in this guy’, nor to concede with approval, ‘Yeah he does seem pretty hot.’ This instantly removes one of the biggest problems with this kind of writing, since when you're crazy about someone it's almost impossible to convey this in any meaningful way to someone else who doesn't share your feelings. There simply are no traits that are universally attractive, and one girl's Mr Darcy is another woman's Patrick Bateman.
Ernaux sidesteps all of that. We know only that the man in question is foreign and married: everything else has to do with the inside of her head. Still, I did wonder, reading this, whether those who haven't experienced this kind of passion can even relate to what she's saying, since I'm aware that many people, even those who think of sex as an important part of their lives, have never felt this kind of overwhelming desire for someone before. But anyone who has will read some of the descriptions in here with a deep pull of recognition:
I also found myself wondering how much of her experience is culturally determined, both by time and place. Is such a passion genuinely more rare nowadays, under the influence perhaps of a generalised millennial suspicion of the whole business of sexual desire? Or is it just rarer to admit it? Ernaux's feelings (her disregard of the wife, her willing ‘lack of dignity’) are, in some sense, politically incorrect; unfeminist. Someone who feels something similar today would, perhaps, frame it differently to themselves inside their head.
And of course Ernaux is aware of all of this – she says herself that the experience brought out ‘beliefs and behaviours’ that she ‘would have found insane in other people’. But she is scrupulous in avoiding value-judgements; except obliquely, by commenting that she's only able to write about it by ignoring what comes next (i.e. that it will be published in a book and read by other people). And yet Passion simple is not what you'd call – in that phrase so beloved of blurb-writers – ‘brutally honest’. There is no sense of forcing herself to expose the negative aspects of her behaviour. Rather, there is just this sublime uncensoriousness about her own feelings and actions, which I found technically very impressive.
Along the way, new thoughts and surprising observations are sparked off on every page. In one throwaway footnote (to take one example), she laments that there is no female-on-male equivalent of Courbet's L'Origine du monde , something that had really never struck me before. And it's true that all the similar representations of men that I could think of are themselves by men (Robert Mapplethorpe's Man In A Polyester Suit, say). Though lots of people of course feel otherwise, it's still a cultural cliché to consider the male genitals as basically unattractive things – I've never forgotten the comments of Sylvia Plath in The Bell Jar, which we read in school: ‘The only thing I could think of was turkey neck and turkey gizzards and I felt very depressed’, which I always found much more funny than offensive, despite the fact that comparable descriptions of women by men (Kingsley Amis's horrified description of a vagina as looking like ‘the inside of a giraffe's ear’, for example) seemed much harder to laugh at.
In any case, the point is that getting beyond cultural clichés is what Ernaux does here at every level, sentence by sentence and thought by thought. The result, as in all great writing, is a new way of looking at the world, even if it's one we don't necessarily want to share or approve of.
In effect, the book finds a new framework for talking about sex and desire, and this outlook, I think you could argue, is something that has been taken up by later French writers from Catherine Millet to Leïla Slimani. American writers have treated the subject with more puritanical alarm, and British ones with a greater sense of embarrassed sniggering. Those who have tried to do similar things in English have generally either been greeted with mockery (Toni Bentley's The Surrender comes to mind, and let's be honest, no one mocked it more than I did) or chosen to filter it through portrayals of BDSM or through love interests that are metamorphosed into mermen or vampires or werewolves or whatever – all of which devices are, in the end (or so Ernaux makes you feel), ways of disguising the central problem of simply how to write about desire, especially for women.
That's a lot of things to think about in just seventy-six pages of well-spaced text! How you react to it all will depend on many factors, but that it will provoke a reaction of some kind seems inevitable – so close does it get you to the real feelings and responses of a writer whose tonal control is in evidence in every line. If that's not something to feel passionate about, I don't know what is.
There are so many ideas and observations flying around in here that I found myself underlining about ten percent of the entire book – and the more spare her prose becomes, the more it seems to generate, with a kind of homeopathic potency, new connections in your head as you read it. The premise is simple, though – it's Ernaux's notes on an affair she had with a married man over the space of several months in 1989, a few years before this was published. From the very beginning she positions her reflections with great care, writing specifically in what you might call a post-pornographic mode: after many centuries and generations, she says near the beginning,
c'est maintenant, seulement, qu'on peut voir cela, un sexe de femme et un sexe d'homme s'unissant, le sperme – ce qu'on ne pouvait regarder sans presque mourir devenu aussi facile à voir qu'un serrement de mains.
Il m'a semblé que l'écriture devrait tendre à cela, cette impression que provoque la scène de l'acte sexuel, cette angoisse et cette stupeur, une suspension du jugement moral.
it's only now that you can see such things: sperm, a woman's sex and a man's sex coming together – something you couldn't look at without almost dying has become as easy to see as a handshake.
It seemed to me that writing should tend towards this – the response provoked by portrayals of the sexual act; that anguish and that astonishment. A suspension of moral judgement.
Already this is a remarkably precise and unusual way to frame her thoughts, and she continues in similar style. It's notable that we know almost nothing about the man Ernaux is so infatuated with here; she says this is for reasons of privacy, but perhaps more to the point is that the book is, in the end, not about him at all. It's all about her and her responses. We never have the chance (as we do in so many similar stories) to grumble, ‘I don't know what she sees in this guy’, nor to concede with approval, ‘Yeah he does seem pretty hot.’ This instantly removes one of the biggest problems with this kind of writing, since when you're crazy about someone it's almost impossible to convey this in any meaningful way to someone else who doesn't share your feelings. There simply are no traits that are universally attractive, and one girl's Mr Darcy is another woman's Patrick Bateman.
Ernaux sidesteps all of that. We know only that the man in question is foreign and married: everything else has to do with the inside of her head. Still, I did wonder, reading this, whether those who haven't experienced this kind of passion can even relate to what she's saying, since I'm aware that many people, even those who think of sex as an important part of their lives, have never felt this kind of overwhelming desire for someone before. But anyone who has will read some of the descriptions in here with a deep pull of recognition:
Dans le R.E.R., le métro, les salles d'attente, tous les lieux où il est autorisé de ne se livrer à aucune occupation, sitôt assise, j'entrais dans une rêverie de A. À la seconde juste où je tombais dans cet état, il se produisait dans ma tête un spasme de bonheur. J'avais l'impression de m'abandonner à un plaisir physique, comme si le cerveau, sous l'afflux répété des mêmes images, des mêmes souvenirs, pouvait jouir, qu'il soit un organe sexuel pareil aux autres.
On the RER, on the metro, in waiting rooms – all the places where you're allowed not to be doing something else – no sooner was I seated than I would sink into reveries of A. The instant I fell into this state, it produced a spasm of happiness in my head. I had the impression of giving myself over to a physical pleasure, as if the brain, under the constant flood of the same images, the same memories, could come; as if it were a sex organ the same as the others.
I also found myself wondering how much of her experience is culturally determined, both by time and place. Is such a passion genuinely more rare nowadays, under the influence perhaps of a generalised millennial suspicion of the whole business of sexual desire? Or is it just rarer to admit it? Ernaux's feelings (her disregard of the wife, her willing ‘lack of dignity’) are, in some sense, politically incorrect; unfeminist. Someone who feels something similar today would, perhaps, frame it differently to themselves inside their head.
And of course Ernaux is aware of all of this – she says herself that the experience brought out ‘beliefs and behaviours’ that she ‘would have found insane in other people’. But she is scrupulous in avoiding value-judgements; except obliquely, by commenting that she's only able to write about it by ignoring what comes next (i.e. that it will be published in a book and read by other people). And yet Passion simple is not what you'd call – in that phrase so beloved of blurb-writers – ‘brutally honest’. There is no sense of forcing herself to expose the negative aspects of her behaviour. Rather, there is just this sublime uncensoriousness about her own feelings and actions, which I found technically very impressive.
Along the way, new thoughts and surprising observations are sparked off on every page. In one throwaway footnote (to take one example), she laments that there is no female-on-male equivalent of Courbet's L'Origine du monde , something that had really never struck me before. And it's true that all the similar representations of men that I could think of are themselves by men (Robert Mapplethorpe's Man In A Polyester Suit, say). Though lots of people of course feel otherwise, it's still a cultural cliché to consider the male genitals as basically unattractive things – I've never forgotten the comments of Sylvia Plath in The Bell Jar, which we read in school: ‘The only thing I could think of was turkey neck and turkey gizzards and I felt very depressed’, which I always found much more funny than offensive, despite the fact that comparable descriptions of women by men (Kingsley Amis's horrified description of a vagina as looking like ‘the inside of a giraffe's ear’, for example) seemed much harder to laugh at.
In any case, the point is that getting beyond cultural clichés is what Ernaux does here at every level, sentence by sentence and thought by thought. The result, as in all great writing, is a new way of looking at the world, even if it's one we don't necessarily want to share or approve of.
[Q]uand je me trouvais au milieu d'autres femmes, à la caisse du supermarché, à la banque, je me demandais si elles avaient comme moi un homme sans arrêt dans la tête, sinon, comment elles faisaient pour vivre ainsi, c'est-à-dire – d'après mon existence d'avant – en n'ayant comme attente que le week-end, une sortie au restaurant, la séance de gym ou les résultats scolaires des enfants : tout ce qui m'était maintenant ou pénible ou indifférent.
When I found myself among other women – at the supermarket checkout, at the bank – I wondered whether they, like me, constantly had a man going round their head, and if not, how they managed to live like that; which is to say (as per my own previous existence), with nothing to look forward to but the weekend, a meal out, a session at the gym or the children's exam results: everything that now struck me as either arduous or irrelevant.
In effect, the book finds a new framework for talking about sex and desire, and this outlook, I think you could argue, is something that has been taken up by later French writers from Catherine Millet to Leïla Slimani. American writers have treated the subject with more puritanical alarm, and British ones with a greater sense of embarrassed sniggering. Those who have tried to do similar things in English have generally either been greeted with mockery (Toni Bentley's The Surrender comes to mind, and let's be honest, no one mocked it more than I did) or chosen to filter it through portrayals of BDSM or through love interests that are metamorphosed into mermen or vampires or werewolves or whatever – all of which devices are, in the end (or so Ernaux makes you feel), ways of disguising the central problem of simply how to write about desire, especially for women.
That's a lot of things to think about in just seventy-six pages of well-spaced text! How you react to it all will depend on many factors, but that it will provoke a reaction of some kind seems inevitable – so close does it get you to the real feelings and responses of a writer whose tonal control is in evidence in every line. If that's not something to feel passionate about, I don't know what is.
May 12, 2022
À partir du mois de Septembre l'année dernière, je n'ai plus rien fait d'autre qu'attendre un homme...
From September last year, I did nothing else but wait for a man...
Simple Passion is a memoir of an unrequited love; an unrewarded and obsessive love of a French woman who is having an affair with a married Eastern European businessman. A woman who does nothing but wait for that man; wait for him to call, to come , to write.
She is constantly living "entre la mémoire et la folie" (between the memory and madness).
She is consumed by desire.
Je ne connaissais que la présence ou l'absence.
I only knew the presence or the absence.
Have you ever been in an unreciprocated relationship? Have you ever been in love with someone who doesn't love you back? Have you ever poured your heart out only to hear crickets instead?
When does one cross over the line from desire to obsession to losing one's sanity?
And what must one do? Give in to the infatuation? Drown in self-pity, pain, crushed pride and shame? Or accept the reality and try to forget?
Mais je continuais à vivre..."qu'il téléphone, qu'il revienne".
Yet I went on living...“he’ll call, he’ll come back".
From September last year, I did nothing else but wait for a man...
Simple Passion is a memoir of an unrequited love; an unrewarded and obsessive love of a French woman who is having an affair with a married Eastern European businessman. A woman who does nothing but wait for that man; wait for him to call, to come , to write.
She is constantly living "entre la mémoire et la folie" (between the memory and madness).
She is consumed by desire.
Je ne connaissais que la présence ou l'absence.
I only knew the presence or the absence.
Have you ever been in an unreciprocated relationship? Have you ever been in love with someone who doesn't love you back? Have you ever poured your heart out only to hear crickets instead?
When does one cross over the line from desire to obsession to losing one's sanity?
And what must one do? Give in to the infatuation? Drown in self-pity, pain, crushed pride and shame? Or accept the reality and try to forget?
Mais je continuais à vivre..."qu'il téléphone, qu'il revienne".
Yet I went on living...“he’ll call, he’ll come back".
January 27, 2023
Não sei dizer-vos se estas 5 estrelas vêm da qualidade da obra, do facto de ter encontrado nela várias vidas que me são familiares, ou ambos. Uma coisa, porém, é inegável: nunca vi ninguém despir-se tanto e demonstrar fraquezas, humilhações e paixões desta forma!
Opinião completa em https://www.instagram.com/p/Cn45o20MZ3u/
Opinião completa em https://www.instagram.com/p/Cn45o20MZ3u/
December 7, 2022
Lo primero que leo de Annie. Me gustó, me encontré. Seguiré explorando sus libros.
June 24, 2023
বেশ কিছুদিন আগে অনলাইনে একটা ইন্টারেস্টিং জরিপ দেখেছিলাম। প্রশ্ন তোলা হয়েছিলো, আপনার জীবনসঙ্গীকে বেছে নিতে কোন বৈশিষ্ট্যটি আপনি সবথেকে গুরুত্ব দিয়ে দেখেন? সেখানে সিংহভাগ মানুষের জবাব ছিল, Support and Kind Words. তারপরের জায়গাটা নিয়েছে, Understanding & Good Listening. এ দুটো বাদেও কিছু কিছু মানুষ সঙ্গীর সাথে Quality Time কাটানোকে গুরুত্বপূর্ণ মনে করে। অ্যানি আর্নোর আত্মজীবনীমূলক লেখা 'Simple Passion' পড়তে গিয়ে বারবার মনের কোণে এই প্রশ্নটা উঁকি দিচ্ছিলো। অ্যানি
আসলে তাঁর সঙ্গীর ভিতরে কী খুঁজে পেয়েছিলেন?
১৯৮৯ সালে অ্যানি একজন পূর্ব-ইউরোপীয় বিবাহিত ব্যবসায়ীর সাথে সম্পর্কে জড়িয়ে পড়েন। আর এই সম্পর্ক হয়ে পড়ে তাঁর তীব্র অবসেশনের জায়গা,জীবনের কেন্দ্রবিন্দু। 'টানেল ভিশন' নামে ইংরেজীতে একটা শব্দবন্ধ আছে। সুড়ঙ্গের মধ্য দিয়ে যেমন শুধু সুড়ঙ্গমুখে থাকা আলোক উদ্ভাসিত দৃশ্য সুড়ঙ্গের ভেতরে থাকা ব্যক্তির চোখে পড়ে,চারপাশের বাকি বস্তুগুলোর অস্তিত্ব সম্পর্কে সে ওয়াকিবহাল থাকে না। অ্যানির অবস্থা হয়েছিলো ঠিক এই টানেল ভিশনের মতো। জীবনের সমস্ত ধ্যানজ্ঞান,মনোযোগের কেন্দ্রবিন্দু হয়ে পড়েছিলো অ্যানির এই সম্পর্ক। তিনি তখন জীবন ও জগৎ সম্পর্কে উদাসীন।
দু'বছরের এই সম্পর্কে যে সামান্য সময়টুকু অ্যানি তাঁর প্রেমিক 'A' এর সাথে কাটানোর সুযোগ পেতেন, সেই সময়টুকুর আয়োজনের জন্য স্বপ্নে বিভোর হয়ে কাটতো তাঁর প্রতিটা দিন। ঘণ্টার পর ঘণ্টা ফোনের পাশে কাটিয়ে দিতেন শুধু 'A' এর ফোনকলের প্রতীক্ষায়। যে কয়েক ঘণ্টা একসাথে থাকবেন,তখন কী খাবেন,কোন ওয়াইনটা পান করবেন,কোন পোশাকটা পরে থাকবেন,ঘরের জানালায় কী পর্দা লাগানো থাকবে সেসব নিয়ে বুঁদ হয়ে থাকতেন অ্যানি।
❝অমরত্বের প্রত্যাশা নেই নেই কোন দাবী দাওয়া
এই নশ্বর জীবনের মানে শুধু তোমাকে চাওয়া...❞
অ্যানির জীবন হয়ে পড়েছিলো জাতিস্মর গানের এই লিরিকের মতো। এই অবসেশনকে অ্যানি তাই ব্যাখ্যা করতে চান না। তিনি মনে করেন এইটা তো তাঁর করা কোনো ভুল নয় যে এর জবাবদিহি তাঁকে করতেই হবে। তিনি বলছেন,
“I do not wish to explain my passion – that would imply that it was a mistake or some disorder I need to justify – but simply to describe it”
এমনকী তাঁর সন্তান,ছাত্রদেরকেও সেই সময়টায় তিনি বাড়িতে থাকতে দিতেন না যখন মিস্টার A দেখা করতে আসতেন। তিনি চাইতেন না তাঁর একান্তই ব্যক্তিগত এই সময়ে অন্য কারো অনুপ্রবেশ ঘটুক।
৪৮ পৃষ্ঠার এই ছোট্ট লেখাটা পড়তে গিয়ে আমি বারবার থমকে গেছি। এতো অবলীলায় ব্যক্তিগতজীবন নিয়ে লেখা যায়! একদম শুরুর পৃষ্ঠায় অ্যানি বলছেন এমন এক গ্রীষ্মের কথা,যখন তিনি প্রথম এক্স-রেটেড সিনেমা দেখেন। সেই বর্ণনার শেষে গিয়ে যখন তিনি লিখছেন,“It occurred to me that writing should also aim for that -- the impression conveyed by sexual intercourse, a feeling of anxiety and stupefaction, a suspension of moral judgement.”আমি প্রবল ধাক্কা খাই। এতো অদ্ভুতভাবে লেখা শুরু করা যায়!
এরপর শুরু হয় মিস্টার A এর জন্য অ্যানির সুদীর্ঘ অপেক্ষার কিসসা। অ্যানির এই প্যাশন স্নেহ-ভালোবাসা থেকে শুরু করে এর দরুণ হিংসা,ভয় আর উপাসনার এক বর্ণিল যাত্রা। মিস্টার 'A' এর প্রতি তাঁর নির্ভরতার,দুর্বলতার কথা ফিরে ফিরে স্পষ্ট হয়েছে ছোট্ট বইটার প্রতিটি পাতায়। মাঝেমাঝে মনে হয় টিনেজ লাভ স্টোরি। যখন মিস্টার A আছেন দূর পরবাসে,দিনের পর দিন অ্যানির সাথে মিলন ঘটছে না,সংযোগ হচ্ছে না,অ্যানি তাঁদের একসাথে যাপনের দিনগুলোর স্মৃতির জাবর কাটেন। অথচ অ্যানি জানেন এই জীবনের প্রতিটি প্রেমের কবিতাই বিচ্ছেদের মধ্য দিয়ে অর্থপূর্ণ হয়ে ওঠে। বিচ্ছেদই অমোঘ নিয়তি। তিনি বলছেন,“From the very beginning, and throughout the whole of our affair, I had the privilege of knowing what we all find out in the end: the man we love is a complete stranger”
অ্যানি জানেন মিস্টার A এই বইটা পড়বেন না। তিনি আসলে বইটায় শুধু নিজের জন্য লিখেন নি,মিস্টার A এর জন্য লিখেন নি,বরং লিখেছেন ফেলে আসা এমন এক সময়ের উদ্দেশ্যে,যখন তাঁর ���ীবনের সমস্তটাকে রন্ধ্রে রন্ধ্রে প্রভাবিত করেছেন মিস্টার A.আর্নোর লেখা পড়তে গিয়ে বারবার মনে হয়েছে, এতো অবলীলায় জীবনের নিজস্ব অভিজ্ঞতার দিকটা নিয়ে লেখা যায়! এমন ধরনের একান্ত ব্যক্তিগত কথাবার্তা আত্মজীবনীতে তো অনেকেই লিখেন। কিন্তু সেগুলোর উদ্দেশ্যই থাকে কন্ট্রোভার্সি তৈরি করা। মুখরোচক কত কিছুই তো লেখা যায়! অথচ অ্যানির লেখার কোথাও এতো রিভিলিং কিছু আছে বলে মনে হয় না। লেখা পড়ল�� শ্রদ্ধায়ই জাগে।
অপ্রিয় সত্য প্রকাশে অ্যানি আর্নোর এই প্রয়াস দুঃসাহসিক। সত্য যদি তেতো লাগে, তা হলে তা যার বিস্বাদ লাগছে তার সমস্যা। আমি মনে করি না, তিনি বিস্বাদময় সত্যের গল্পকার। তিনি নিজের সত্য উন্মোচনকারী গল্পকার। তার এতটুকুই কাঙ্ক্ষা , তার নিজের সত্য গল্প যেন অন্যদের অভিজ্ঞতাকে পুরোমাত্রায় প্রতিনিধিত্ব করতে পারে।
অ্যানি যে বিষয়গুলোকে কেন্দ্র করে নিজের জীবনকে লিখেছেন, এতে তিনি সৎ সাহস দেখিয়েছেন। অপ্রিয় ঠেকলেও এগুলো কিন্তু মোটেও অরুচিকর নয়। এগুলো অনেক নারীর জীবনের অভিজ্ঞতার অংশ। এই নারীরা সমাজে এক ধরনের নিষিদ্ধ অবস্থায় থাকে। তাঁর সাহিত্যে নিজের কথা লিখতে গিয়ে এসব নারীর জীবন আলেখ্য তুলে ধরার মাধ্যমে সেই সামাজিক অমর্যাদার অবসান ঘটাতে ভূমিকা রেখেছেন। পাশাপাশি তার সাহিত্য পড়ে পাঠক অনুভব করতে পারছে, তাদের নিজস্ব অভিজ্ঞতা অবৈধ নয় মোটেও, বরং প্রতিনিধিত্ব করার মতো যোগ্য।
আসলে তাঁর সঙ্গীর ভিতরে কী খুঁজে পেয়েছিলেন?
১৯৮৯ সালে অ্যানি একজন পূর্ব-ইউরোপীয় বিবাহিত ব্যবসায়ীর সাথে সম্পর্কে জড়িয়ে পড়েন। আর এই সম্পর্ক হয়ে পড়ে তাঁর তীব্র অবসেশনের জায়গা,জীবনের কেন্দ্রবিন্দু। 'টানেল ভিশন' নামে ইংরেজীতে একটা শব্দবন্ধ আছে। সুড়ঙ্গের মধ্য দিয়ে যেমন শুধু সুড়ঙ্গমুখে থাকা আলোক উদ্ভাসিত দৃশ্য সুড়ঙ্গের ভেতরে থাকা ব্যক্তির চোখে পড়ে,চারপাশের বাকি বস্তুগুলোর অস্তিত্ব সম্পর্কে সে ওয়াকিবহাল থাকে না। অ্যানির অবস্থা হয়েছিলো ঠিক এই টানেল ভিশনের মতো। জীবনের সমস্ত ধ্যানজ্ঞান,মনোযোগের কেন্দ্রবিন্দু হয়ে পড়েছিলো অ্যানির এই সম্পর্ক। তিনি তখন জীবন ও জগৎ সম্পর্কে উদাসীন।
দু'বছরের এই সম্পর্কে যে সামান্য সময়টুকু অ্যানি তাঁর প্রেমিক 'A' এর সাথে কাটানোর সুযোগ পেতেন, সেই সময়টুকুর আয়োজনের জন্য স্বপ্নে বিভোর হয়ে কাটতো তাঁর প্রতিটা দিন। ঘণ্টার পর ঘণ্টা ফোনের পাশে কাটিয়ে দিতেন শুধু 'A' এর ফোনকলের প্রতীক্ষায়। যে কয়েক ঘণ্টা একসাথে থাকবেন,তখন কী খাবেন,কোন ওয়াইনটা পান করবেন,কোন পোশাকটা পরে থাকবেন,ঘরের জানালায় কী পর্দা লাগানো থাকবে সেসব নিয়ে বুঁদ হয়ে থাকতেন অ্যানি।
❝অমরত্বের প্রত্যাশা নেই নেই কোন দাবী দাওয়া
এই নশ্বর জীবনের মানে শুধু তোমাকে চাওয়া...❞
অ্যানির জীবন হয়ে পড়েছিলো জাতিস্মর গানের এই লিরিকের মতো। এই অবসেশনকে অ্যানি তাই ব্যাখ্যা করতে চান না। তিনি মনে করেন এইটা তো তাঁর করা কোনো ভুল নয় যে এর জবাবদিহি তাঁকে করতেই হবে। তিনি বলছেন,
“I do not wish to explain my passion – that would imply that it was a mistake or some disorder I need to justify – but simply to describe it”
এমনকী তাঁর সন্তান,ছাত্রদেরকেও সেই সময়টায় তিনি বাড়িতে থাকতে দিতেন না যখন মিস্টার A দেখা করতে আসতেন। তিনি চাইতেন না তাঁর একান্তই ব্যক্তিগত এই সময়ে অন্য কারো অনুপ্রবেশ ঘটুক।
৪৮ পৃষ্ঠার এই ছোট্ট লেখাটা পড়তে গিয়ে আমি বারবার থমকে গেছি। এতো অবলীলায় ব্যক্তিগতজীবন নিয়ে লেখা যায়! একদম শুরুর পৃষ্ঠায় অ্যানি বলছেন এমন এক গ্রীষ্মের কথা,যখন তিনি প্রথম এক্স-রেটেড সিনেমা দেখেন। সেই বর্ণনার শেষে গিয়ে যখন তিনি লিখছেন,“It occurred to me that writing should also aim for that -- the impression conveyed by sexual intercourse, a feeling of anxiety and stupefaction, a suspension of moral judgement.”আমি প্রবল ধাক্কা খাই। এতো অদ্ভুতভাবে লেখা শুরু করা যায়!
এরপর শুরু হয় মিস্টার A এর জন্য অ্যানির সুদীর্ঘ অপেক্ষার কিসসা। অ্যানির এই প্যাশন স্নেহ-ভালোবাসা থেকে শুরু করে এর দরুণ হিংসা,ভয় আর উপাসনার এক বর্ণিল যাত্রা। মিস্টার 'A' এর প্রতি তাঁর নির্ভরতার,দুর্বলতার কথা ফিরে ফিরে স্পষ্ট হয়েছে ছোট্ট বইটার প্রতিটি পাতায়। মাঝেমাঝে মনে হয় টিনেজ লাভ স্টোরি। যখন মিস্টার A আছেন দূর পরবাসে,দিনের পর দিন অ্যানির সাথে মিলন ঘটছে না,সংযোগ হচ্ছে না,অ্যানি তাঁদের একসাথে যাপনের দিনগুলোর স্মৃতির জাবর কাটেন। অথচ অ্যানি জানেন এই জীবনের প্রতিটি প্রেমের কবিতাই বিচ্ছেদের মধ্য দিয়ে অর্থপূর্ণ হয়ে ওঠে। বিচ্ছেদই অমোঘ নিয়তি। তিনি বলছেন,“From the very beginning, and throughout the whole of our affair, I had the privilege of knowing what we all find out in the end: the man we love is a complete stranger”
অ্যানি জানেন মিস্টার A এই বইটা পড়বেন না। তিনি আসলে বইটায় শুধু নিজের জন্য লিখেন নি,মিস্টার A এর জন্য লিখেন নি,বরং লিখেছেন ফেলে আসা এমন এক সময়ের উদ্দেশ্যে,যখন তাঁর ���ীবনের সমস্তটাকে রন্ধ্রে রন্ধ্রে প্রভাবিত করেছেন মিস্টার A.আর্নোর লেখা পড়তে গিয়ে বারবার মনে হয়েছে, এতো অবলীলায় জীবনের নিজস্ব অভিজ্ঞতার দিকটা নিয়ে লেখা যায়! এমন ধরনের একান্ত ব্যক্তিগত কথাবার্তা আত্মজীবনীতে তো অনেকেই লিখেন। কিন্তু সেগুলোর উদ্দেশ্যই থাকে কন্ট্রোভার্সি তৈরি করা। মুখরোচক কত কিছুই তো লেখা যায়! অথচ অ্যানির লেখার কোথাও এতো রিভিলিং কিছু আছে বলে মনে হয় না। লেখা পড়ল�� শ্রদ্ধায়ই জাগে।
অপ্রিয় সত্য প্রকাশে অ্যানি আর্নোর এই প্রয়াস দুঃসাহসিক। সত্য যদি তেতো লাগে, তা হলে তা যার বিস্বাদ লাগছে তার সমস্যা। আমি মনে করি না, তিনি বিস্বাদময় সত্যের গল্পকার। তিনি নিজের সত্য উন্মোচনকারী গল্পকার। তার এতটুকুই কাঙ্ক্ষা , তার নিজের সত্য গল্প যেন অন্যদের অভিজ্ঞতাকে পুরোমাত্রায় প্রতিনিধিত্ব করতে পারে।
অ্যানি যে বিষয়গুলোকে কেন্দ্র করে নিজের জীবনকে লিখেছেন, এতে তিনি সৎ সাহস দেখিয়েছেন। অপ্রিয় ঠেকলেও এগুলো কিন্তু মোটেও অরুচিকর নয়। এগুলো অনেক নারীর জীবনের অভিজ্ঞতার অংশ। এই নারীরা সমাজে এক ধরনের নিষিদ্ধ অবস্থায় থাকে। তাঁর সাহিত্যে নিজের কথা লিখতে গিয়ে এসব নারীর জীবন আলেখ্য তুলে ধরার মাধ্যমে সেই সামাজিক অমর্যাদার অবসান ঘটাতে ভূমিকা রেখেছেন। পাশাপাশি তার সাহিত্য পড়ে পাঠক অনুভব করতে পারছে, তাদের নিজস্ব অভিজ্ঞতা অবৈধ নয় মোটেও, বরং প্রতিনিধিত্ব করার মতো যোগ্য।
November 17, 2022
French writer Annie Ernaux had a brief affair with an Eastern European man (named only “A.”) in the ‘80s when she was middle-aged, and describes the lifespan of the relationship in Simple Passion, a short book from the early ‘90s.
This isn’t the kind of story that normally interests me - the only thing that made me check it out was because Ernaux is this year’s Nobel Laureate for Literature (although it’s questionable whether the prestige of this prize has forever been tarnished given that it turns out to be an award judged by rich scumbags who serially assault women). And, having read it now, Ernaux failed to change my opinion on affair stories!
First of all, Ernaux calling this a “book” is rather generous on her part - it’s 34 pages long (35 with footnotes), so it’s a short story. And while the prose is fine and she does take you into her mind (it’s the loosest definition of “fiction” - this is basically nonfiction) when she was in the throes of the affair. It’s convincing and slightly interesting and I get the title - there’s nothing “simple” when it comes to human emotion.
But for all that, she doesn’t really show you why she was so besotted with this man. You don’t feel any passion or love - that entire aspect of the affair is completely absent. She says this book is about how “his existence has affected my life” but it’s really only a partial overview.
Instead you get an almost anthropological series of descriptions of her behaviour when she was obsessed with this guy. Waiting for him to return to her for his next visit, the things she would do to prepare for their next rendez-vous, etc. until one day it’s over and that’s that. It’s just not very interesting to read and, because the material is so slight, it felt long even at 34 pages.
Maybe her other books are amazing and those are what got her the Nobel, but, going by Simple Passion alone, I didn’t see anything special here to see why she got the award. Simple Passion is simply tedious.
This isn’t the kind of story that normally interests me - the only thing that made me check it out was because Ernaux is this year’s Nobel Laureate for Literature (although it’s questionable whether the prestige of this prize has forever been tarnished given that it turns out to be an award judged by rich scumbags who serially assault women). And, having read it now, Ernaux failed to change my opinion on affair stories!
First of all, Ernaux calling this a “book” is rather generous on her part - it’s 34 pages long (35 with footnotes), so it’s a short story. And while the prose is fine and she does take you into her mind (it’s the loosest definition of “fiction” - this is basically nonfiction) when she was in the throes of the affair. It’s convincing and slightly interesting and I get the title - there’s nothing “simple” when it comes to human emotion.
But for all that, she doesn’t really show you why she was so besotted with this man. You don’t feel any passion or love - that entire aspect of the affair is completely absent. She says this book is about how “his existence has affected my life” but it’s really only a partial overview.
Instead you get an almost anthropological series of descriptions of her behaviour when she was obsessed with this guy. Waiting for him to return to her for his next visit, the things she would do to prepare for their next rendez-vous, etc. until one day it’s over and that’s that. It’s just not very interesting to read and, because the material is so slight, it felt long even at 34 pages.
Maybe her other books are amazing and those are what got her the Nobel, but, going by Simple Passion alone, I didn’t see anything special here to see why she got the award. Simple Passion is simply tedious.
October 6, 2022
Nobel Prize in Literature 2022
"One night the thought of getting myself screened for AIDS occurred to me:'At least he would have left me that.'"
It certainly delivered the story of obsession that it promised. And being short felt like the right choice for this kind of intense story.
"One night the thought of getting myself screened for AIDS occurred to me:'At least he would have left me that.'"
It certainly delivered the story of obsession that it promised. And being short felt like the right choice for this kind of intense story.
August 21, 2021
Il m'a semblé que l'écriture devrait tendre à cela, cette impression que provoque la scène de l'acte sexuel, cette angoise et cette stupeur, une suspension de jugement moral.
(It seemed to me that writing should tend towards that, this feeling provoked by watching the sexual act, this anguish and stupefaction, a suspension of moral judgement.)
I don't know how Ernaux creates such profound writing out of everyday material and there's a supreme paradox here that writing (and reading) is not living and yet, in her hands, it becomes more than a stand-in, a reflection, a recollection of moments of life. Here Ernaux contemplates an affair with a married man, and her obsessive, annihilating, love and desire that subsume everything to themselves. From recreating the material realities of physical love to recounting the ways in which every action becomes possessed - buying clothes, finding the object of desire in every book, piece of art, film - and how time itself contracts around meetings, emptying out in the spaces between assignations.
In simple, pared back language, somehow this conveys both private intimacy and also forges deep connections with the reader, erasing the boundaries between the authorial, narrative and readerly 'I'.
Quand jétais enfant, le luxe, cétait pour moi les manteaux de fourrure, les robes longues et les villas au bord de la mer. Plus tard, j'ai cru que c'était de mener une vie d'intellectuel. Il me semble maintenant que c'est aussi de pouvoir vivre une passion pour un homme ou une femme.
(When I was a child, luxury was for me fur coats, long dresses and villas by the sea. Later, I thought it was to live the life of an intellectual. Now it seems to me that it is also the ability to live a passion for a man or a woman.)
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