杜拉斯的情人(英文_)

THE LOVER

Part I

ONE DAY, I was already old, in

the entrance of a public place a man came up to me. He introduced himself and

said:'I've known yo

u for years. Everyone says you were beautiful when you were young,

but

I want to tell you I think you're more beautiful now than then. Rather than

your face as a young woman, I perfer your face as it is now.

Ravaged.'

I often think of the image only I can see now, and of which I've never spoken. It's always there, in

the same silence, amazing. It's the only image of myself I like, the only one in which I recognize my

self,

in which I delight.

Very early in my life it was too late. It was already

too late when I was eighteen. Between eighteen

and twenty-five my face took off in a new direction. I grew old at eighteen. I don't know if it's the

same for everyone. I've never asked. But I believe

I've heard of the way time can suddenly accelerate

on people when they're going through even the

most youthful and highly esteemed stages of life.

My ageing was very sudden. I saw it spread over

my features one by one, changing the relationship

between them, making the eyes larger, the expression sadder, the mouth more final, leaving

great creases in the forehead. But instead of being

dismayed I watched this process with the same sort of interest i might have taken in the reading of a

book. And I knew I was right, that one day it

would slow down and take its normal course. The

people who knew me at seventeen, when I went

to France, were surprised when they saw me again

two years later, at nineteen. And I've kept it ever

since, the new face I had then. It has been my face.

It's got older still, of course, but less, comparati

vely, than it would otherwise have done. It's scored with deep, dry wrinkles, the skin is cracked. But

my face hasn't collapsed, as some with fine features have done. It's kept the same contours, but

its substance has been laid waste. I have a face laid waste.

THE LOVER

Part II

So, I'm fifteen and a half. It's on a ferry crossing the Mekong river. The image lasts all the way acro

ss. I'm fifteen and a half, there are no seasons in that

part of the world, we have just one season, ho

t,

monotonous, we're in the long hot girdle of the earth, with no spring, no renewal.

1

I'm at a state boarding school in Saigon. I eat and

sleep there, but I go to classes at the French high

school. My mother's a teacher and wants her girl

to have a secondary education. 'You have to go to

high school.' What was enough for her is not

enough for her daughter. High school and then a

good degree in mathematics. That was what had

been dinned into me ever since I started school. It

never crossed my mind I might escape the mathe-

matics degree, I was glad to give her that hope.

Every day I saw her planning her own and her

children's future. There came a time when she

couldn't plan anything very grand for her sons

any more, so she planned other futures, makeshift

ones, but they too served their purpose, they

blocked in the time that lay ahead. I remember my

younger brother's courses in book-keeping. From

the Universal Correspondence School - every

year, every level. You have to catch up, my mother

used to say. It would last for three days, never four.

Never. We'd drop the Universal School whenever

my mother was posted to another place. And begin

again in the next. My mother kept it up for ten

years. It wasn't any good. My younger brother

became an accountant's clerk in Saigon. There was

no technical school in colonies; we owed my

elder brother's departure for France to that. He

stayed in France for several years to study at the

technical school. But he didn't keep it up. My

mother must have known. But she had no choice,

he had to be got away from the other two children.

For several years he was no longer part of the

family. It was while he was away that my mother

bought the land, the concession. A terrible business,

but for us, the children who were left, not so ter-

rible as the presence of the killer who would have been,

the child-killer of the night, of the night of the

hunter.

2

The Lover-Duras

The Lover (French title: L'Amant) is an autobiographical novel by Marguerite Duras, published in

1984 by Les ?

ditions de Minuit. It has been translated to 43 languages. It was awarded the 1984

Prix

Goncourt.

The

Lover

is

also

a

1992

movie

based

on

this

novel,

directed

by

Jean- Jacques

Annaud and starring Jane March and Tony Leung Ka Fai. The cast also included Lisa Faulkner. The

film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Cinematography.

Summary of the movie

Set

against

the

backdrop

of

French

colonial

Vietnam,

The

Lover

reveals

the

intimacies

and

intricacies

of

a

clandestine

romance

between

a

pubescent

girl

(Jane

March),

from

a

financially

strapped

French

family

and

an

older,

wealthy

Chinese

man

(Tony

Leung

Ka-Fai).

The

story

is

narrated by Jeanne Moreau, portraying a writer looking back on her youth. In 1929, a 15 year old

nameless girl is traveling by ferry across the Mekong Delta, returning from a holiday at her family

home in the village of Sadec, to her boarding school in Saigon. She attracts the attention of a 32

year old son of a Chinese business magnate, a young man of wealth and heir to a tidy fortune. He

strikes up a conversation with the girl; she accepts a ride back to town in his chauffeured limousine.

Compelled

by

the

circumstances

of

her

upbringing,

this

girl,

the

daughter

of

a

bankrupt,

manic-depressive widow, is newly awakened to the impending and all- too-real task of making her

way alone in the world. Thus, she becomes his lover, until he bows to the disapproval of his father

and breaks off the affair. For her lover, there is no question of the depth and sincerity of his love,

but it isn't until much later that the girl acknowledges to herself her true feelings. Duras' real-life

Chinese lover was named

Lee. The last

she heard of him, he became a born again

Christian and

loved his family very much. He died and was buried in the same city in Vietnam where Duras first

met him. Duras was only 15 at the time of her love affair, which is the age of the heroine in the

novel.

Marguerite Donnadieu, better known as

Marguerite Duras

(French IPA: [ma

?

g

?

'

?

it dy'

?

as]) (April

4, 1914

–

March 3, 1996) was a French writer and film director. She was born in Saigon, French

Indochina (now Vietnam), her father died,her mother raised her with her two brother , they were

very poor,the mother went practicly mad, she ( the mother) use to beat her children and even made

marguerite a sort of she got 18 she went to France, her parents' native country, to

study law, but

became a writer instead. She changed her name in

1943 for Duras, the name of

a

village in the Lot-et-Garonne dé

partement, where her father's house was located. She is the author

of

a

great

many

novels,

plays,

films

and

short

narratives,

including

her

best-selling,

ostensibly

autobiographical work L'Amant (1984), translated into English as The Lover. Following the making

of a film of the same name(s) (1992, L'Amant, The Lover) based on her work, Duras then published

a

slightly

different

work,

L'Amant

de

la

Chine

du

Nord.

Other

major

works

include

Moderato

Cantabile, also made into a film of the same name, Le Ravissement de Lol V

. Stein, and her film

India Song. She was also the screenwriter of the 1959 French film Hiroshima mon amour, which

was

directed

by

Alain

Resnais.

Duras's

early

novels

were

fairly

conventional

in

form

(their

'romanticism'

was

criticised

by

fellow

writer

Raymond

Queneau);

however,

with

Moderato

3