The Limited Times

Now you can see non-English news...

Why you should reread L'Amant by Marguerite Duras

2022-05-20T07:21:26.465Z


THE BEST OF THE GONCOURT PRIZE – The Lover is not a small, fabricated and insincere thing, it is the great book of one of our greatest novelists, believes Philippe Claudel.


Philippe Claudel is a novelist and director, author notably of Gray Souls (Renaudot Prize 2003) and the Brodeck Report (Goncourt Prize for high school students 2007).

In 2012, he was elected to the Académie Goncourt, of which he is the general secretary.

To discover

  • Discover the “Best of the Goncourt Prize” collection

When I read

L'Amant

when it came out in 1984, I didn't like it.

I was young.

I was an avid reader of Duras.

I had read almost all his books, even the first, even the most austere, the most closed.

Somehow she belonged to me.

In the sense that I felt unique, unique to read, and my relationship to his books was also unique.

I agreed to share it with other readers, but on condition that their number was not excessive.

L'Amant, a book from the "Best of the Goncourt Prize" selection

The Lover by Marguerite Duras is part of the exceptional collection “The Best of the Goncourt Prize”.

The jurors of the most famous of literary prizes and Le Figaro have chosen the 40 best books to have won the prize since its creation in 1903. To be found at your newsagent from March 10 every other Thursday (the first volume at 3, 90 €, then 12.90 € the following), but also on the Figaro Store.

We were the chosen ones.

She belonged to us.

So when this novel appeared and very quickly met with astonishing success, even before the Goncourt Prize was awarded, I felt betrayed.

I succumbed to the syndrome of the possessive reader who suddenly sees one of his favorite authors become a popular novelist, with a wide audience, and conceives of it a violent inconvenience, as during a romantic betrayal.

It seemed to me bland, simplistic, taking up figures and themes that other books before it, in a marvelous way, had woven

It was thus, in this state, that I then read the book.

Annoyed.

Abandoned.

And it struck me as bland, simplistic, picking up figures and themes that other books before it had wonderfully woven:

A Barrage Against the Pacific

,

The Vice-Consul

.

I had the impression that Duras was repeating himself by lowering himself, by simplifying, in an attempt to reach a vast audience less demanding than me.

In the years that followed, Duras continued to write books, to publish interviews, to say anything sometimes.

Little by little, caught up in the clever game of the media, the character Duras supplanted the author.

I attended all this with difficulty, while continuing to read what she published.

Then she died, and her death allowed me to return to her books, to them entirely.

She had disappeared.

Only his texts remained.

I re-read first those that I loved above all and that had never disappointed me.

And then, one day, I took over

L'Amant

.

With apprehension.

The beautiful and sober white cover had yellowed a little, the paper of the pages seemed to have worn out.

But the first sentence, "

One day, I was already old, in the lobby of a public place, a man came up to me

", the first sentence I don't know why because it's not the most beautiful, the strongest, most bewitching of the first sentences of novels, this first sentence made my heart beat faster, and I found myself clutching the book tighter in my hands.

I did not leave him.

These were dizzying hours of reunion and emotion.

Read alsoDiscover the exceptional collection “The best of the Goncourt prize”

Then appeared to me all my stupidity, my smugness, my fatuity.

My judgment of the past, stupid.

My bad faith, immeasurable.

What an idiot I had been!

The Lover

was a dark gem that I had taken, blinded by my imbecility as an arrogant young reader, for some glassware.

When I closed the book, I had tears in my eyes.

Since then, how many times have I come back to meet the fifteen-year-old girl leaning on the railing of the ferry that crosses the Mekong, decked out in a large man's hat, wearing gold lamé pumps, her body of almost still a child emerging in transparency under the too light dress?

How many times have I embarked with her on this story of love, siblings, warmth, distance, writing, madness and death?

Yes, how many times?

I cannot say.

But what I do know is that each reading of the book made me see in him another reflection than the one I had in memory, as if, like cut diamonds, he possessed a multiplicity of facets and that each of them reflected the light of

Read alsoThis Goncourt prize that changed their lives

Novel of a childhood, novel of a lost colony, novel of a romantic initiation – and are there in our literature more beautiful pages than those which say this first time?

–, family novel, novel of a family madness, social novel, novel of the birth of a writer, novel of old age which contemplates in a telescopic way her distant young years, novels of bodies and meteors, exotic novel,

The Lover

is all this and more, as I read and reread it, here and there, and at various ages in my life.

The Lover is not this fabricated and insincere little thing, written to please (...) it is the great book of one of our greatest novelists

And then, above all, in everything, there is the music.

The sublime voice of the Duras, allow me to call it that as we do for the divas.

Because with her often, but in this book perhaps even more than in any other, there is her music, her voice, like no other, each sentence rising from the page like a note, each page composing melodies harmonious or dissonant, and the book then becomes a score that speaks to the ear as well as to the heart, to all the senses, so much this music, this voice, in a brutally synaesthetic way, becomes flesh, smell, landscape, caress, embrace, dread, wonder.

No, definitely,

L'Amant

is not this fabricated and insincere little thing, written to please as I foolishly believed when I was twenty-two.

This is the great book of one of our greatest novelists who, once again delving into her past and her present, manages to put into words her young hours, her suffering, her urgency to write, her wisdom and her unreason. .

It is the great book of desire and death, of boredom and hope, of beauty and its destruction, of love and its opposite, which is not hate but loss. of love, its definitive, immeasurable loss, from which we never recover, and which would almost make us hate love, but never, never, never, hate the lover.

The Lover, by Marguerite Duras.

ISBN 978-2-8105-0948-5 Retail price: €12.90 – 192 pages.

Publication on May 19, 2022 on newsstands (June 2, 2022 in bookstores).

» You can obtain this work from the collection « Le Meilleur du Prix Goncourt »

at the price of 12.90 euros.

I ENJOY IT

Source: lefigaro

All news articles on 2022-05-20

You may like

News/Politics 2024-03-27T15:16:04.798Z
News/Politics 2024-03-15T05:17:59.789Z
Life/Entertain 2024-03-07T05:07:02.880Z
News/Politics 2024-02-07T05:32:42.008Z

Trends 24h

Latest

© Communities 2019 - Privacy

The information on this site is from external sources that are not under our control.
The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the views expressed within them.