Simple Passion

Naturally I feel no shame in writing these things because of the time which separates the moment when they are written--when only I can see them--from the moment when they will be read by other people, a moment which I feel will never come. By then I could have had an accident or died; a war or a revolution could have broken out. This delay makes it possible for me to write today, in the same way I used to lie in the scorching sun for a whole day at sixteen, or make love wihout contraceptives at twenty: without thinking about the consequences

Sometimes I wonder if the purpose of my writing is to find out whether other people have done or felt the same things or, if not, for them to consider experiencing such things as normal. Maybe I would also like them to live out these very emotions in turn, forgetting that they had once read about them somewhere.

When I was a child, luxury was fur coats, evening dresses, and villas by the sea. Later on, I thought it meant leading the life of an intellectual. Now I feel that it is also being able to live out a passion for a man or a woman.

I experienced pleasure like a future pain.

From the very beginning, and throughout the whole of our affair, I had the privilege of knowing what we all find out in the end: the man we love is a complete stranger.

I do not wish to explain my passion—that would imply that it was a mistake or some disorder I need to justify—I just want to describe it.

A partir du mois de septembre l'année dernière, je n'ai plus rien fait d'autre qu'attendre un homme : qu'il me téléphone et qu'il vienne chez moi.

I discovered what people are capable of, in other words, anything: sublime or deadly desires, lack of dignity, attitudes and beliefs I had found absurd in others until I myself turned to them. Without knowing it, he brought me closer to the world.

Quite often I would write down on a sheet of paper the date, the time, and “he’s going to come,” along with other sentences, fears—that he might not come, that he might not feel the same desire for me.

When someone confided in me, a man or a woman who admitted they were having, or had had, "a crazy love affair with a guy" or "a very close relationship with someone," I occasionally felt like opening up. But once the excitement of sharing our secrets was over, I resented having let myself go, if only a little. Those conversations, when I had continually responded to the other person by saying "me too, it's the same for me, I did that too," suddenly seemed futile, removed from the reality of my own passion. Rather, something was lost through these outbursts.

One afternoon when he was there, I burned the living-room carpet down to the weft by placing a boiling coffee pot on top of it. I didn’t care. Quite the contrary. I was happy every time I caught sight of the mark as I remembered that afternoon with him. I

Once I start trying out the text, once it appears before me in public characters, I shall be through with innocence.

Para mí no había cronología en esta relación, sólo conocía la presencia o la ausencia.

Yo no era más que tiempo que pasaba a través de mí.

Cuando era niña, para mí el lujo eran los abrigos de pieles, los vestidos de noche y las mansiones a orillas del mar. Más adelante, creí que consistía en llevar una vida de intelectual. Ahora me parece que consiste también en poder vivir una pasión por un hombre o una mujer.

Él me había dicho: «No escribas un libro sobre mí». Pero no he escrito un libro sobre él, ni siquiera sobre mí. Me he limitado a expresar con palabras lo que su existencia, por sí sola, me ha dado. Una especie de obsequio devuelto.

Throughout this period, all my thoughts and all my actions involved the repetition of history. I wanted to turn the present back into the past, opening on to happiness.

Todo era una carencia sin fin, salvo el momento en que estábamos juntos haciendo el amor. Y, aun así, me obsesionaba el momento que vendría a continuación, cuando se hubiera marchado. Vivía el placer como un dolor futuro.

Yet it is that surreal, almost non-existent last visit that gives my passion its true meaning, which is precisely to be meaningless, and to have been for two years the most violent and unaccountable reality ever.

Gone with the Wind" are just as decisive as the Oedipus complex

Quelques fois je me disais qu'il passait peut-être toute une journée sans penser une seconde à moi. Je le voyais se lever, prendre son café, parler, rire, comme si je n'existais pas. Ce décalage avec ma propre obsession me remplissait d'étonnement. Comment était-ce possible. Mais lui-même aurait été stupéfait d'apprendre qu'il ne quittait pas ma tête du matin au soir. Il n'y avait pas de raison de trouver plus juste mon attitude ou la sienne. En un sens, j'avais plus de chance que lui.

I do not wish to explain my passion – that would imply that it was a mistake or some disorder I need to justify – but simply to describe it.

I often strike a balance between a strong desire and an accident of which I am either the instigator or the victim, an illness, or some other tragedy. Knowing whether I would agree to pay the imaginary price of disaster is a sure means of assessing the strength of my desire, possibly also of challenging fate: ‘I don’t care if the house burns down so long as I manage to finish writing this book.

The man who returned that evening wasn't the man I was carrying inside me throughout the year when he was here, and when I was writing about him. I shall never see that man again. Yet it is that surreal, almost non-existent last visit that gives my passion its true meaning, which is precisely to be meaningless, and to have been for two years the most violent and unaccountable reality ever.

No quiero explicar mi pasión —lo que equivaldría a considerarla un error o un desvarío por los que hay que justificarse—, sino sencillamente exponerla.

The man who returned that evening wasn’t the man I was carrying inside me throughout the year when he was here, and when I was writing about him. I shall never see that man again. Yet it is that surreal, almost non-existent last visit that gives my passion its true meaning, which is precisely to be meaningless, and to have been for two years the most violent and unaccountable reality ever.

yo estaba segura de que jamás había habido en mi vida nada más importante —ni tener hijos, ni aprobar oposiciones, ni viajar lejos— que eso, estar en la cama con ese hombre a media tarde.