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Chargement... Written on the Body (original 1992; édition 1994)par Jeanette Winterson
Information sur l'oeuvreÉcrit sur le corps par Jeanette Winterson (1992)
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In the end, the narrator appears more touching than revolutionary. But that is no complaint. The novel finds its subversiveness in its central theme -- that love by its nature must make its own rules: "It will not stay still, stay silent, be good, be modest, be seen and not heard, no. It will break out in tongues of praise, the high note that smashes the glass and spills the liquid." This fourth effort from British writer Winterson ( Sexing the Cherry ) is a high-concept erotic novelette, a Vox for the postmarital crowd. The narrator, a lifelong philanderer (``I used to think marriage was a plate-glass window just begging for a brick''), has fallen in love with Louise, a pre-Raphaelite beauty. ... One wonders, as Winterson intends, and then wonders some more. For Louise--and the narrator's love for her--never seems quite real; in this cold-hearted novel love itself, however eloquently expressed, is finally nothing more than a product of the imagination. Like The Passion, Winterson's clever, prize- winning novel, Written on the Body seeks to dazzle the reader with self-conscious brilliance but cannot conceal its cruelty, the bloody chamber behind its opulent facade. Appartient à la série éditorialeFischer Taschenbuch (12730) Prix et récompensesListes notables
Fiction.
Literature.
Romance.
LGBTQIA+ (Fiction.)
HTML:The most beguilingly seductive novel to date from the author of The Passion and Sexing the Cherry. Winterson chronicles the consuming affair between the narrator, who is given neither name nor gender, and the beloved, a complex and confused married woman. ??At once a love story and a philosophical meditation.? ??New York Times Book Rev Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
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Google Books — Chargement... GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)823.914Literature English English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1945-1999Classification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne:
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La réponse totalement immodeste prête à sourire. Et pourtant, si c'était vrai?
'Why is the measure of love loss?.'
C'est sur cette question que Jeanette Winterson ouvre son magnifique roman qui effeuille les vertiges et les vestiges de l'amour. Les sommets de l'amour érotique avec la personne dont on est éperdument amoureux, le vide abyssal de sa perte.
'I have a head for heights it's true, but no stomach for the depths.'
dit le narrateur du livre, très probablement une narratrice d'ailleurs, à y lire de près... C'est un des éléments très réussis du roman que d'avoir fait abstraction du genre de la personne qui évoque la femme aimée.
Mystère et universalité du sentiment amoureux.
Jeanette Winterson excelle à décrire, dans la langue poétique et éblouissante qui est la sienne, les trébuchements et la beauté sans pareille, la nuit et le jour de l'amour.
Car les douleurs que provoque l'amour peuvent être si intenses qu'on peut avoir envie de passer son chemin et mener une existence plus peinarde, sans les aspérités de la passion qui rend aveugle et imprudent :
'I had lately learned that another way of writing FALL IN LOVE is WALK THE PLANK. I was tired of balancing blindfold on a slender beam, one slip and into the unplumbed sea. I wanted the clichés, the armchair. I wanted the broad road and twenty-twenty vision.'
'Over the months that followed my mind healed and I no longer moped and groaned over lost love and impossible choices. I had survived shipwreck and I liked my new island with hot and cold running water and regular visits from the milkman. I became an apostle of ordinariness. I lectured my friends on the virtues of the humdrum, praised the gentle bands of my existence and felt that for the first time I had come to know what everyone told me I would know; that passion is for holidays, not homecoming.'
Mais quiconque ayant éprouvé le caractère sublime de la passion amoureuse pourrait s'en passer, vraiment?
Après avoir rencontré Louise, le narrateur dira :
'With Louise I want to do something different. I want the holiday and the homecoming together.'
'Contentment is the positive side of resignation. It has its appeal but it's no good wearing an overcoat and furry slippers and heavy gloves when what the body wants is to be naked.'
La rencontre avec Louise, beauté pré-raphaélite, est un choc érotique et amoureux. L'amour nourrit autant l'éros que l'éros nourrit l'amour. On aurait tendance en effet à oublier combien le plaisir érotique développe le sentiment amoureux et accroît ses dimensions.
Et la sensualité de l'écriture de Winterson est à cet égard en tous points remarquable pour célébrer l'exaltation, le goût et le rayonnement des corps. Il n'est pas si fréquent, dans la littérature, de découvrir des pépites comme celle-ci :
'She arches her body like a cat on a stretch. She nuzzles her cunt into my face like a filly at the gate. She smells of the sea. She smells of rock pools when I was a child. She keeps a starfish in there. I crouch down to taste the salt, to run my fingers around the rim. She opens and shuts like a sea anemone. She's refilled each day with fresh tides of longing. [...] The light breaks colours under her eyelids. She wants the light to penetrate her, breaking open the dull colds of her soul where nothing has warmed her for more summers than she can count. Her husband lies over her like a tarpaulin. He wades into her as though she were a bog.'
'What other places are there in the world than those on a lover's body?
[...] Written on the body is a secret code only visible in certain lights; the accumulations of a lifetime gather there. In places the palimpsest is so heavily worked that the letters feel like braille. I like to keep my body rolled up away from prying eyes. Never unfold too much, tell the whole story. I didn't know that Louise would have reading hands. She has translated me into her own book.'
Le corps, vu comme une terre unique et infinie dans sa richesse, ne figurant sur aucune carte mais ne révélant sa géographie propre qu'aux yeux de la personne qui aime.
La romancière sait également évoquer le pouvoir des mots de la personne aimée que l'on garde en soi comme un trésor enfoui, le caractère narcissique de la passion amoureuse. On se mire, s'admire et s'abîme dans l'autre, probablement plus profondément encore lorsque la personne aimée est du même sexe :
'I've hidden those words in the lining of my coat. I take them out like a jewel thief when no-one's watching. They haven't faded. Nothing about you has faded. You are still the colour of my blood. You are my blood. When I look in the mirror it's not my own face I see. Your body is twice. Once you once me. Can I be sure which is which?'
Written on the body décrit remarquablement, par ses mots justes, son style concis et poétique, l'énormité, le caractère irréparable que peut représenter la perte de l'être aimé, situation pourtant "banale" que tout un chacun est amené un jour ou l'autre à traverser.
'You'll get over it...' It's the clichés that cause the trouble. To lose someone you love is to alter your life for ever. You don't get over it because 'it' is the person you loved. The pain stops, there are new people, but the gap never closes. How could it? The particularness of someone who mattered enough to grieve over is not made anodyne by death. This hole in my heart is in the shape of you and no-one else can fit in. Why would I want them to?'
Written on the body est incontestablement un hymne à l'amour et au plaisir érotique. C'est un texte propre à aiguillonner et à injecter une piqûre de rappel à toute personne ayant perdu le sens de l'amour dans un quotidien tiède :
'I miss you Louise. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it. What then kills love? Only this : Neglect. Not to see you when you stand before me. Not to think of you in the little things. Not to make the road wide for you, the table spread for you. To choose you out of habit not desire, to pass the flower seller without a thought. To leave the dishes unwashed, the bed unmade, to ignore you in the mornings, make use of you and night. To crave another while pecking your neck. To say your name without hearing it, to assume it is mine to call.'
Le livre regorge de tant de phrases qui frappent par leur beauté d'écriture et d'évocation que l'on pourrait en extraire des citations à l'envi.
La lecture du superbe récit autobiographique de Winterson : Why be happy when you could be normal?, publié en 2011, peut utilement compléter son incursion dans l'univers de l'écrivain.
Written on the body, quant à lui, trône parmi ces livres à part qui ont la forme, le fond, la grâce. Incontestablement le livre de choix qu'il faut offrir à la la personne qu'on aime. ( )