Simple Passion(s)

I read Annie Ernaux’s Simple Passion today. It’s one of those rare pieces of writing which captivates completely. Everything else fades away; the rattling of the northern line, anxieties about the busy day ahead and the laundry I forgot to put away. All I cared about was her doomed and all-consuming love affair with ‘A’.

Her prose is so immediate, so unapologetic and brazen: “I had no future other than the telephone call fixing our next appointment. I would try to leave the house as little as possible except for professional reasons (naturally, he knew my working hours), forever fearing that he might call during my absence. I would also avoid using the vacuum cleaner or the hairdryer as they would have prevented me from hearing the sound of the telephone.” Through unveiling her undiginities and total devotion to this man she barely knew, she reveals the true and fickle nature of infatuation. She manages to encapsulate in words how it feels to totally lose oneself in the pursuit of love, even if deep down she knows it will never be returned. Ernaux succeeds in recreating the fleeting, dreamlike memory of total infatuation. Something nearly all of us have experienced but our memory dilutes or deletes in an effort to protect us.

Throughout the course of the brief affair she entirely loses her sense of self: “I have only vague memories of the things I did, the films I saw the people I met. I behaved in an artificial manner. The only actions involving willpower, desire and what I take to be human intelligence were all related to this man.” Ernaux recalls how she no longer ceased to exist in reality but solely in the eyes of her largely absent lover, that is to say hardly at all.

I like the way she starts the essay, on the first page she claims: “it occurred to me that writing should aim to replicate that feeling of anxiety and stupefaction, a suspense of moral judgement.” But I loved the way she ended her confessional work: “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 man or a woman.”

I simply love her work. I could read her essays all day and it would feel as though time hadn’t passed, much the same as how she felt during her love affair. She titles her essay Simple Passion and the name could not be more apposite. Brilliant writing is one of the simplest passions in my life and perhaps again akin to her love affair, it’s the closest we get to otherworldly dreams and perfection.