Ilse’s Reviews > The Lover > Status Update
Ilse
is on page 6 of 117
The story of my life doesn’t exist. Does not exist. There’s never any centre to it. No path, no line. There are great spaces where you pretend there used to be someone, but it’s not true, there was no one.
— Jun 04, 2024 12:49AM
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Ilse’s Previous Updates
Ilse
is on page 81 of 117
The light fell from the sky in cataracts of pure transparency, in torrents of silence and immobility. The air was blue, you could hold it in your hand. Blue. The sky was the continual throbbing of the brilliance of the light. The night lit up everything, all the country on either bank of the river as far as the eye could reach. Every night was different, each one had a name as long as it lasted.
— Jun 10, 2024 01:36AM
Ilse
is on page 80 of 117
I can't really remember the days. The light of the sun blurred and annihilated all color. But the nights, I remember them. The blue was more distant than the sky, beyond all depths, covering the bounds of the world. The sky, for me, was the stretch of pure brilliance crossing the blue, that cold coalescence beyond all color. I had that good fortune- those nights, that mother.
— Jun 08, 2024 03:48AM
Ilse
is on page 60 of 117
We said nothing about all this outside, one of the first things we'd learned was to keep quiet about the ruling principle of our life, poverty. And then about everything else. Our first confidants, though the word seems excessive, are our lovers, the people we meet away from our various homes, first in the streets of Saigon and then on ocean liners and trains, and then all over the place.
— Jun 08, 2024 02:44AM
Ilse
is on page 50 of 117
We're united in a fundamental shame at having to live. It's here we are at the heart of our common fate, the fact that all three of us are our mother's children, the children of a candid creature murdered by society. We're on the side of the society which has reduced her to despair. Because of what's been done to our mother, so amiable, so trusting, we hate life, we hate ourselves.
— Jun 05, 2024 06:31AM
Ilse
is starting
Very early in my life it was too late.
(Ach Marguerite, how from the first page can you catapult me back to how I felt when being fifteen just like you, when David Bowie was singing Station to Station in the life of Christiane F?)
— Jun 01, 2024 05:19AM
(Ach Marguerite, how from the first page can you catapult me back to how I felt when being fifteen just like you, when David Bowie was singing Station to Station in the life of Christiane F?)
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Noel
(last edited Jun 11, 2024 05:06AM)
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Jun 11, 2024 05:03AM
Such bleak quotes XD You make me want to read this again very soon. As you might know, I found the terseness quite irritating the first time, but I hadn’t much experience with anything like it before. Did you ever watch the film she did with Resnais, Hiroshima Mon Amour? There are a few (probably superficial) similarities with The Lover.
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I like that shelf name, “high voltage.�
I know you probably just haven’t gotten to this comment yet but I’d really like to talk with you about this movie 😄 I recently saw it for what must be the third or fourth time at my college theater. I think it’s one of THE greats.
Noel wrote: "Such bleak quotes XD You make me want to read this again very soon. As you might know, I found the terseness quite irritating the first time, but I hadn’t much experience with anything like it before.Did you ever watch the film she did with Resnais, Hiroshima Mon Amour? "Bleak, but so thought-provoking, isn't, it, Noel? Currently reading a biography on her, that book seems a lengthy annotation to 'L'amant', and many aspects of it seem present in various works of Duras, so that seems likely for 'Hiroshima Mon Amour' too. Since years I have a copy of the screenplay of 'Hiroshima mon amour' waiting at home, forever unable to make up my mind whether to watch the film first or read the little booklet - what did you think of Arnaud's film adaptation 'L'amant'? I thought her writing in L'amant more accessible than in what I previously read from her, and will soon read it a second time, I admit I was stunned :).
Oh, watch the film first! I skimmed through the booklet when reading up on the film. It’s really just the screenplay with Duras� “nocturnal notes� at the end. It’s written very much like a novel, though, with lots of specifics, which is usually a faux pas in screenwriting—the director, actors, etc., usually prefer to have more interpretive control. But the fact that the film was written by a novelist is what makes it so great (much like Last Year at Marienbad). You should watch it ASAP because it’s great, haha. Although the beginning is very intense. I haven’t seen the film adaptation yet :) Did you like it? What else have you read from Duras?
Noel wrote: "I like that shelf name, “high voltage.�"It's that amazing feeling when both the brain and the heart are on fire, electrified by words, Noel - I looked for a shelf name which captured the intensity of the reading experience :)
I might just have to steal it >:)Or I might go with something like, “high altitudes.� That’s what that feeling is like for me.
