The Women in the Middle of Duras’ The Lover, Part II
Marguerite Duras
Last Friday night, Chris and I went to hear the latest reading from The Loft's Mentor Program series, which featured two mentees (Fred and Annie--you were great!) and one of the Poetry Mentors, Palbo Medina, a poet who also works in nonfiction and fiction. Chris is one of the Nonfiction Mentors this year, so I've had the privilege of meeting all the mentees. I have a hard time imagining imagining a more energized group of writers. The application process for the 2010-2011 Mentor Series is underway, and I encourage writers from the Twin Cities area to apply. Applications must be received by April 30, 5 p.m.
One of the highlights of the evening was discussing Duras' The Lover very briefly with Pablo Medina, who described it as a perfect melding of fiction and nonfiction. My crush on Medina begins. Chris and I picked up two of his books to read to one another: the acclaimed novel, The Cigar Roller, and a book of poetry, The Floating Island.
Again, there is a female figure who haunts Duras' work--tragic, bored, found fascinating by others, isolated from her homeland as the last strains of a dying colonialism play out. We find a second figure today, in the second character sketch of woman in Paris during WWII that sits halfway through The Lover. This figure also is of a dying age, the last of a line of women that stretches back, perhaps even beyond the Revolution that a charming aristocrat survived by becoming an actress or such--why not, she was forever wearing masks of survival. This figure, however, is not bored, not afraid; she is active in seeing and knowing the world--even if her perspective is skewed. Beautiful too, of course--Duras is fascinated by beauty. But this woman, Betty Fernandez, this figure--she is not internal. She looks out, not in, unlike the silent Marie-Claude Carpenter. Still, the war comes.
Share on FacebookBetty Fernanadez. My memory of men is never lit up and illuminated like my memory of women. Betty Fernandez. She was a foreigner too. As soon as I say the name there she is, walking along a Paris street, she's short-sighted, can't see much, screws up her eyes to recognize you, then greets you with a light hand-shake. Hello, how are you? Dead a long time ago now. Thirty years, perhaps. I can remember her grace, it's too late now for me to forget, nothing mars its perfection still, nothing ever will, not the circumstances, nor the time, nor the cold or the hunger or the defeat of Germany, nor the coming to light of the crime. She goes along the street still, above the history of such things however terrible. Here too the eyes are pale. The pink dress is old, the black wide-brimmed hat dusty in the sunlight of the street.
She's slim, tall, drawn in India ink, an engraving. People stop and look in amazement at the elegance of this foreigner who walks along unseeing. Like a queen. People never know at first where she's from. And then they think she can only be from somewhere else, from there. Because of this she's beautiful. She's dressed in old European clothes, scrapes of brocade, out-of-date old suits, old curtains, old oddments, old models, mother-eaten old fox furs, old otterskins, that's her kind of beauty, tattered, chilly, plaintive and in exile, nothing suits her, everything's too big, and yet it looks marvelous. Her clothes are loose, she's too thin, nothing fits, yet it look marvelous. She's made in such a way, face and body, that anything that touches her shares immediately and infallibly in her beauty.
She entertained, Betty Fernandez, she had an "at home." We went sometimes. Once Drieu La Rochelle was there. Clearly suffering from pride, he scarcely deigned to speak, and when he did it was as if his voice was dubbed, his words translated, stiff. Maybe Brasillach was there too, but I don't remember, unfortunately. Satre never came. There were poets from Montparnasse, but I don't remember any names, not one. There were no Germans. We didn't talk politics. We talked about literature. Ramon Fernandez used to talk about Balzac. We could have listened to him forever and a day. He spoke with a knowledge that's almost completely forgotten, and of which almost nothing completely verifiable can survive. He offered opinions rather than information. He spoke about Balzac as he might have done about himself, as if he himself had once tried to be Balzac. He had a sublime courtesy even in knowledge, a way at once profound and clear of handling knowledge without ever making it seem an obligation or a burden. He was sincere. It was always a joy to meet him in the street or in a café, and it was a pleasure to him to greet you. Hallo how are you? he'd say, in the English style, without a comma, laughing. And while he laughed his jest became the war itself, together with all the unavoidable suffering it caused, both resistance and collaboration, hunger and cold, martyrdom and infamy. She, Betty Fernandez, spoke only of people, whose she'd seen in the street or those she knew, about how they were, the things still left for sale in the shops, extra rations of milk or fish, good ways of dealing with shortages, with cold and constant hunger, she was always concerned with the practical details of life, she didn't go beyond that, always a good friend, very loyal and affectionate. Collaborators, the Fernandezes were. And I, two years after the war, I was a member of the French Communist party. The parallel is complete and absolute. The two things are the same, the same pity, the same call for help, the same lack of judgment, the same supersitition if you like, that consists in believing in polication solution to the personal problem. She too, Betty Ferndadez, looked out at the empty streets of the German occupation, looked at Paris, at the squares of catalpas in flower, like the other woman, Marie-Claude Carpenter. Was "at home" certian day, like her.
