I was 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 am here to tell you, for me, I think you are more beautiful now than when you were younger, when you were a young woman, and I love your battered face more than you did then. - "Lover"
"Lover" is the masterpiece of the famous French female writer Marguerite Duras, telling the love story of white girl Jane and China Ko Shao Tony, and won the highest award in French literature in 1984 - the Goncourt Literary Prize, which was a sensation in the entire French literary world. It was a huge success on the screen in 1992, triggering a vigorous "Duras fever". The novel has been translated into forty-three languages so far, and there are five Chinese translations alone, which shows its influence in the world literary world.
It has to be said that Margaret Duras is an extremely prolific and gifted writer, she has written more than sixty novels, plays and film scripts in her lifetime, of which exotic romantic love stories that span time and space are her favorite subjects. As a novel with a strong autobiographical color, in a way, the work "Lover" is actually Duras's dissection of his past in his memories. She pieced together the scattered fragments of her memories with great affection, the memories were like pearls, and the pen in Duras's hand was a string of pearls, which gradually became clear as everything that had been. "Lover" is a particularly classic love novel, which has a very important position in the history of love novels, and the author will analyze the artistic characteristics of this novel from 3 different aspects.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" >, a unique perspective: using a first-person narrative to highlight the tension of the text and achieve the fusion of writing and reality</h1>
The application of different personal narratives in the same text will inevitably lead to different textual tensions, and can deeply affect the formation of the reader's acceptance of the perception mechanism, resulting in a completely different aesthetic experience. Using different personal narratives is not just a simple writing habit of the author, but the result of its careful operation. Duras's preference for the use of first-person narrative in fiction writing both demonstrates her skillful narrative skills and gives her novels a unique artistic appeal.
The novel "Lover" adopts a first-person perspective, which is more suitable for the expression and expression of emotions, but one of the most noteworthy points is that Duras is standing at the latitude of today to reminisce about the past. "That's on a ferry on the Mekong. Throughout the river crossing, that image continued. The storyline of the entire book is always narrated around the memories of "I", and the content of the memories is carried out in chronological order of the past. That is to say, the I in the book live in the image of the past, and my thoughts, thoughts, and sees are all based on the past me.
Recalling the past and placing yourself in a long memory is the most characteristic narrative method of Duras in his novel "Lover". If we look at it from the perspective of the narrator "I" reminiscing about the past, it naturally has a divine perspective, and compared with the vision of the "I" being recalled when experiencing events, the treatment of things is a completely different degree of cognition, and this contrast is often a contrast between maturity and naivety, a contrast between seeing through everything and ignorance. For the reader, it is inevitable that it is too calm and self-controlled, and there is less of the innocence and nature of a girl.
In addition to the storyline, duras's narrative technique alone is very successful in terms of the literary technique of the novel, and she succeeds in creating a naïve, bold, somewhat debauched but sympathetic image of a young girl. "I believe that my mother only called her only eldest son my child. That's what she usually calls it. Two other children, she said: two smaller. "The mother who has been in despair for many years, the grumpy big brother like a demon, the second brother who is not good at words, and the life that is poor and powerless, and can be seen to the end at a glance." It can be said that the broken and loveless family is the main factor that leads Jane astray.
The use of first-person narration interferes with the reader's acceptance, invisibly strengthening the emotional communication between the author and the reader, thereby obtaining a sense of reality outside the text. "Lover" cleverly uses first-person narrative techniques to shape a runaway girl into a sympathetic classic image, vividly expressing the author's inner world, narrowing the distance between the protagonist and the reader, thus naturally reflecting the main theme of the work.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > second, concise language style: depict complex feelings in simple language, and interpret the charm of words in unique ways</h1>
I was 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 am here to tell you, for me, I think you are more beautiful now than when you were younger, when you were a young woman, and I love your battered face more than you did then. ”
This is the opening sentence of "Lover", just the simple five words of "I am old" write the vicissitudes and heaviness of life, and the reader is instantly hit by the powerlessness expressed by the author, but Duras then turns sharply" Compared with your appearance at that time, I love your devastated face more" What is more pleasing to an old and fading woman than this sentence, the words are simple and unpretentious, but full of affection and moving.
A perusal of Lovers reveals that most of Duras's sentences are like this. The narrative of each sentence is short and repetitive, and the rhythm between sentences and paragraphs is slow and peaceful, making the development of the whole plot slow again. There are no famous sentences that make people feel amazing at a glance, no exquisite rhetoric, let alone complicated vocabulary. However, Duras's sentences always reveal a kind of minimalist beauty, each sentence has its own place, and you will feel that it is just right to put it here. This is really not a simple romance novel, it is like a beautiful piece of porcelain, delicate, chic, with a moving posture.
For example, Duras's description of the Chinese man's apartment: "There is the smell of caramel invading the room, and the smell of fried peanuts, the smell of Chinese soup, the aroma of grilled meat, the smell of various green grasses, the aroma of jasmine... The smell of charcoal burning, here the charcoal fire is packed in the basket, the charcoal fire is packed in the basket and sold along the street, so the smell of the city is the smell of the bushes, the remote villages in the forest. "The room was real and the scent was as if there were none. For the reader, however, describing the furniture in the room is less likely to bring in the character than depicting the scent of the room. Scent has a special ability, when you smell it, you seem to be immersed in it, the room instantly has a sense of picture. And this is the unique charm of duras writing.
<h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" > three, unique image expression: the hat on the top of the head is not only a sign of the protagonist's growth, but also a warning to step into the abyss</h1>
"On that day, it was worth noting the hat worn by the little girl, a flat-brimmed men's hat, rosewood color, and a tweed hat with a wide black frieze. She wore such a hat, and the image was indeed ambiguous and ambiguous. ”
Although the heroine of the novel is a white girl, because of the early death of her father, the failure of her mother's investment, her brother's addiction to gambling, and her family is very poor. She could only wear her mother's remaining dress, which was almost transparent. Tie a belt used by my brother on the waist, and the high heels on the feet, although they are inlaid with beautiful gold stripes, are also the price-cutting products that no one wants. But this is not the most peculiar, the man's tweed hat worn by this young girl is an indispensable part of her strange costume.
"In that period, in the colonies, women and girls did not wear this kind of men's hat." But the girl herself liked her new look: "Under the hat worn by men, the nasty thinness of the body, the defects brought about by childhood, have changed their appearance." That kind of prototype from nature, the predestined qualification has also faded away. On the contrary, it becomes such a woman's choice, a choice with a very personality. "Like many teenagers, teenage girls try to make themselves unique through their own choices. After putting on this rosewood tweed hat, she was completely different, and she felt that she had matured. We can think of this hat as an important sign of the heroine's growth.
In the book, this rosewood tweed hat is both a synonym for growth and a symbol of ambiguity. There is a passage in "Lover": "Such a little girl in a tweed hat, standing in the flash of the muddy river, alone on the deck of the ferry, with her elbows on the side of the ship." The pale red man's hat forms the whole landscape here. It's the only color here. The innocent and beautiful maiden stood alone on the deck, like an unripe apple, emitting a sweet smell of seductive crime. It was at this time that the male protagonist Tony noticed the girl in the tweed hat, and the story between the two began.
< h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > concluding remarks</h1>
Judging from the title of the "Lover" novel alone, we have already expected that this is a love story that is doomed to be fruitless. But it is precisely because of this fate that is doomed to tragedy that the love between the male and female protagonists is more and more precious. "He told her that, as in the past, he still loved her, and he couldn't help but love her, and he said he loved her and would love her until he died." "Lover" has made Duras in the literary world, and "Lover" has also witnessed Duras's self-growth and change, and she has written the sorrow of love and the essence of love with the pen in her hand. It can be seen that "Lover" is not just a simple love novel, Duras's definition of love is worth pondering for each of us.