I'm Old - Margaret Duras," The Lover

This is a deeper and heavier love than between ordinary people. Margaret Duras's "Lover", written at the age of 70, brings a deep sadness, like the tide of the night, the darkness rolling and dragging you into the abyss.

A fifteen-and-a-half-year-old White French girl and the son of a wealthy Chinese merchant meet on a ferryboat on the Mekong River, meet each other, and finally because the hero is too cowardly, he obeys his father's orders to marry a maiden designated by the family, and they will eventually be separated.

One of the characteristics of Duras is that the text is very appropriate. For example, the heroine lived with her mother and two older brothers when she was a child, her mother's preference for two older brothers, her big brother's oppression of her little brother, her hatred and disgust for her big brother, and her desire to kill big brother, Duras are all perfectly expressed.

No one understands the heroine's thoughts, because she has lived in a loveless environment since she was a child, a paranoid mother cannot give her enough love, and her two older brothers will only bring him fear. Duras wrote in the text that "this hatred is hidden in the depths of my flesh and blood, and the members of that one are as blind as a baby who has just been born for one day."

It can be seen from this that the members of this family, apart from the somewhat morbid love given by her mother, have only hatred left. A girl who grew up in such a family may not understand what love is, so she just thinks that love is just a personal desire, paving the way for the pain that the heroine feels after leaving the hero below to understand her love.

It is precisely because of this dark tone that exudes from the beginning that the style of the whole novel appears gloomy and desolate, but it is impossible to ignore the fierce surging feelings hidden behind the desolation. The heroine calls it desire, but this desire is gradually fermented into love in the warm and humid tropical climate.

Wong Kar-wai has said that every encounter is a long goodbye reunion.

But their encounter is more like the same kind they met in a desperate environment, and their feelings for each other gradually heat up under the waves of darkness, which is sweet despair.

The last words of The Lover: "He told her that, as in the past, he still loved her, and he could not fail to love her, and he said that he loved her and would love her until death." ”

This is the line specially arranged by Duras for the hero at the end, a tribute to the hopeless love between the hero and the heroine. The emotions were still as intense as before, but as if this star had not been last night, looking back, the grand and desperate love had long withered. Time has built a wall between the present and the past, and a wall between the two of them.

Back to the beginning of the novel: I am old, and one day, in the hall of a public place, a man came up to me. He introduced himself and said to me, "I know you and will always remember you." At that time, you were still very young, and everyone said you were beautiful, and now, I have come to tell you that for me, I think you are more beautiful now than when you were younger. You were a young woman then, and I love your battered face even more than you did then. ”

After experiencing the vicissitudes, all the youth disappears and eventually matures, and anyone is the most beautiful. So, just wait silently, wait for the years to wash away the lead, wait for time to take away the dirt, wait for the most beautiful self.