Reporter | Dong Ziqi
Edit | Yellow Moon
Is it possible for us to compare Duras with Beauvoir? Yuan Xiaoyi, professor of the Department of French at East China Normal University and dean of the School of Foreign Languages, likened the relationship between the two to Camus and Sartre, "Duras is a complete proletariat, while Beauvoir is an academic school", although in the same group, the two writers are very different.
Huazhong University of Science and Technology Press's "Female Genius" series has recently launched two commentaries, Margaret Duras and Simone Beauvoir, written by Professor Huang Xun of the Department of French at Nanjing University and Shen Ke, a Lecturer in French at East China Normal University. A few days ago, Shanghai Duoyun Academy held an event entitled "Women and Writing: Beauvoir VS Duras", Yuan Xiaoyi, Mao Jian, Huang Xun and Shen Ke discussed the Duras and Beauvoir in their eyes. They spoke of the determination and passion of the former, the rationality and seriousness of the latter, Duras shocked and inspired their youth, and Beauvoir pointed the way for their careers as female intellectuals.
The "Female Genius: Life, Thought, Words" series is a series of original biographies of female thinkers, created and written by domestic female scholars. The first four books in the series were Virginia Woolf: The Eternal English Lily, Susan Sontag: The Wisest Man on Both Sides of the Atlantic, Alice Walker: The Legend of the Feminists, and Margaret Atwood: Queen of Canadian Literature; the two books featured at the sharing session were the second in the series, along with Simone Weil: Released for Silence and Hannah Arendt: Love, Thought, and Action.
<h3>Duras offers the full methodology for hedging adolescence</h3>
In the memories of Yuan Xiaoyi and Mao Jian, they both "withdrew in time" from duras' influence. Yuan Xiaoyi said, "When you were in college, you would think that your fate might be like Duras's, and then you still wanted to be a scholar like Beauvoir." "The adolescent mao tip read Duras, once addicted, and later pushed all of Duras's books deep into the bookshelf, blocked in front of them with Camus's books." Duras is an elderly girl, her girlishness is so strong, how come she does not grow up? (Laughs)" Mao Jian said with a laugh at the event site, "Huang Edo's life and work appearance is relatively beauvoir, but Duras has a strong enveloping for you." It's like a big gamble, you spend the best years of your youth on her, it's crazy. ”
The question Mao jian tried to ask was whether Duras was a writer who wrote about love or denigrated love. "Is there love in 'Lovers'?" Watching "Lover" is to watch a love novel, the girl does not love the man, but repeatedly in the writing of love, just like we watch Zhang Ailing's "Love of the Fallen City", Fan Liuyuan and Bai Liusu dig a pit for each other, but choosing ten modern and contemporary Chinese romance novels may put "The Love of the Fallen City" into it. So, in what way did the writer turn this story into a romance novel? "Mao Jian raised such a question." Duras wrote about love over and over again throughout his life, but without the moments of my own or particular passion that we imagined, in the end, love was unfulfilled and full of transactions. How could Duras turn an anti-love story into such love? ”
Huang's response suggests that we can examine how "Lover" was generated from the perspective of historical evolution. The 2006 war notes, in fact the first edition of The Lover, were intermittent essays written by Duras during World War II and the early post-war period (1943-1949), in which information consistent with The Lover can be found. For example, the lover's name is Leo, is an Annan, very rich, drives a luxury car, and likes her; the difference is that this Leo is ugly and stupid, and it is not the image of Leung Ka-fai in the movie afterwards. Huang Said that the first version seems to have nothing to do with love, writing only that a fifteen-year-old girl is loved, and someone gives her the initial hazy yearning, but when this man wants to kiss her, she is extremely disgusted. Later, there was a 1949 version of The Against the Pacific, which tells the story of the mother resisting the colonial government bureaucracy, desperately fighting against life and pulling three children, her relationship with the lover is more of a transaction, the lover sends her a powder box, a record player, takes her to the city to play, asks her which ring she likes, she says she likes the most expensive, so the first and second versions of Lover love are I only like your money. In the 1980s, against the backdrop of writers writing autobiographies and memoirs, a "self-written" Version of Lover was produced; the 1991 version can be seen as an upgrade to this version—Lover was more handsome and tall, and the autobiography became completely fictional. In 1984, Duras defined the relationship as a bad love, "I want your money, but you want your people too," and in the 1991 version, he revisited the love, thinking that it was love without knowing it, and this feeling must have hit a whole bunch of teenage girls and adult women.
Huang also said that Duras has made many films without audiences, and the pioneering and decisiveness she embodies in the films is very attractive. Mao Jian, who specializes in film and television, responded that she should not watch Duras's films, "Duras believes that movies are the product of the bourgeoisie's seizure of proletarian leisure time, so she wants to rescue the films that are used as bourgeois leisure tools, but the rescue is rescued, and the movies have no audience." Mao Jian said that this is where Duras is determined, and she has a special passion in it, entering novels, movies and love in a way that destroys herself. She noticed that Duras spoke horribly, "to the death," such as "If it weren't for writing, I would be a prostitute"—something she made it hard for readers, especially adolescent readers, to resist. "Isn't our adolescence about wasting ourselves, about hedging with our parents?" Duras offers the full methodology for hedging adolescence. There is a youthfulness in her that is too destructive. For this evaluation of Mao Jian, Yuan Xiaoyi also believes that Duras's radical way of living is alive, and people can feel this power.
<h3>Beauvoir re-examines the meaning of women as human beings in the general sense</h3>
Duras makes people addicted and substituted, and any of Beauvoir's works will not have a sense of substitution, Yuan Xiaoyi contrasts the two writing, Beauvoir is an academic school, and her famous slogan "Women are not born, but become" has a long reasoning process behind it, not from the experience of battle. She argues that Beauvoir was not a fighter, and that her fighting spirit was not as strong as Duras's, "She was a scholar, and her starting point was very simple, that is, if you want to criticize something, you must first understand something, and "The Second Sex" is one such example. ”
Shen Ke also introduced that "The Second Sex" has an extremely extensive and rich historical fact, even more important than the discussion itself. For example, the historical facts of The Second Sex are based not only on the living conditions of middle-class French women in which she herself lives, but also on the living conditions of black women she sees in the slums of the United States, which in turn inspires her racial perspective on women's issues. Shen Ke mentioned in the event, "Black women suffer from double oppression, the resistance to racial oppression is fierce, and in the face of gender oppression, they become accomplices of men: they enjoy men's physical protection and financial support, and based on this understanding, Beauvoir re-examines the meaning of women as human beings in the universal sense." ”
Huang added that beauvoir is nicknamed "beaver" very appropriately, the beaver lives at the water's edge, can hold on to the branches of wood, and she is as good at collecting materials and self-constructing as a beaver. "In 1955, Beauvoir came to China, and in 40 days he just walked around in a flash of light and went up to the Tiananmen Tower, but he could spend many years collecting materials and writing "The Long March: China Chronicle" when he went back. Later she wrote "American Chronicle" as well. ”
Shen Ke said that in contrast to Duras who always talk about love, the starting point for people to know Beauvoir is usually love, and love does not occupy a particularly important position in Beauvoir's life, "We often know Sartre first, then know Beauvoir, and then pay attention to her works." Beauvoir, she said, was a good student by standard, and one of the most important events in her life was the death of her friend Zaza. In Beauvoirs, Zaza had a deep friendship with her, Zaza came from a rich, intelligent and interesting background, and later met the weak philosopher Melo Ponty in love, and finally encountered the end of death. Zaza's death allowed Beauvoir to see the disillusionment of the bourgeois lady, beauvoir's first disillusionment with love, and from then on she began to pursue herself and freedom. Shen Ke commented that Beauvoir was an ambitious woman who had long hoped to become famous, and she had spent a lot of effort to write "Female Guest", thinking that she could win the Goncourt Literary Prize. Huang also added, "At the age of fifteen, Beauvoir will aspire to become a famous writer, and the important thing is not to be a writer but to be famous, because if you are not famous, others will not pay attention to your growth, will not pay attention to the process of your becoming." ”
Yuan Xiaoyi said that reading beauvoir is more about the group behind her and 20th-century France, and through her commentary, she can open the door to France's 20th century. "In the 20th century, we also experienced several waves of feminist movements, but today, the situation of women's lives is not necessarily better, which is a very interesting thing, what is the problem, or the power of words is not enough? The world of the 20th century didn't go any better, not just not being friendly enough to women — Beauvoir's foothold was the simplest but essential. ”