Getting lost with Annie Ernaux: love decalogue | Women Writers
A Journey into unconventional passion and the ageless allure of love with the Nobel Prize Winner 2022.
Female Voices - Women Writers to Remember
by Alessia Pizzi
N.9 - March 2024
What to do with all this desire?
Annie Ernaux
Last winter, on a Saturday full of sadness, I ventured to the centre of Romein search of a bookshop. I took the bus and observed the cold, dark city at each stop, while the lights of a nearby Christmas tried to warm the air. Arriving at the bookstore, just below the stairs at the entrance, I see in evidence a beautiful book entitled “Getting Lost by Annie Ernaux, winner of the Nobel Prize 2022”. I am a little ashamed to think that I had heard this name before, but had never read anything by the author in question, so I decide to buy the book.
So, more than two months after that dark day, I am here to tell you about how Annie Ernaux with her book shocked my perception as a reader. “Getting Lost” is a book about blind pleasure, a passion with no apparent meaning that, nevertheless, makes all the sense in the world. Without logic, yet absolutely necessary. It may be trite to say it, and maybe even a bit silly, but there really is genius in this writer who decides to feed her audience the transcript of a diary of perdition, laying bare the rawest thoughts of a woman in the midst of living a consuming desire.
In this ode to bewilderment, Annie Ernaux makes us all feel less lonely and almost legitimises the fragility of exhausting waits in front of the telephone, of jealousies "towards the wife", of a sexuality without conventions.
“Mother and whore”
When she writes this diary, Annie is a woman in her late fourties who is carried away by her passion for a younger, married man: we would never imagine that a writer could have a boring life or that a mother could live a sexuality so far removed from modesty and prejudice. What is striking about the text, which is in fact a book full of precious aphorisms, is the total laying bare of a human being in a diary where even a future Nobel Prize-winning writer is in fact a woman in need of the body of another.
Need of a man, so terrible, close to death wish
In the time of this passion, marked by the days of a diary but effectively outside the canonical dimension, the writer feels disgust for any kind of activity other than making 'attuned' love to this boy. What is most astonishing is the almost clinical analysis of her own writing, the total awareness of her condition. When Annie is without 'S.', she'lives without living'. And against all melancholic romanticism, even phrases like 'I'll put sperm on your belly' become the last bastion of tenderness and intimacy. The writer profoundly shatters any cliché about passion and the fact that it is exclusively linked to contexts such as marriage or a lasting relationship: is it really so obvious that it is not? At least once you must have been overwhelmed and thought that passion would turn into a project, but most of the time it did not. In this book, Ernaux legitimises the aimless bewilderment, and writes important sentences for a woman who is also a mother - 'All that will remain for me is writing' - also shattering the idea that a woman as a mother loses her feminine dimension.
How difficult is it in fact to look at mothers as also women, starting with our own?
He's coming, that's all.
Fairytales for adults
There is one thing I believe Annie Ernaux has in common with Patrizia Cavalli: reading both of them, although one writes prose and the other poetry, I feel incapable of narrating anything about love. The more I search for words, the more, reading these writers, I understand that in the simplicity of a described action lies the great power of truth. And I feel deeply unfit to express it.
It is no coincidence that Ernaux's diary opens with a sentence that at first reading might seem a long way from maturity:
I want to live a fairy tale
(anonymous writing on the steps of the basilica of Santa Croce in Florence).
Society tells us that there is a time to dream and a time to plan, but this is all bullshit: we want the fairytale to the last day on earth. And indeed, perhaps it is only with age that we can truly savour the honesty of the moment we live in its purity, without the need to embellish the experience. As children, we almost need to legitimise what we feel by associating it with a canonical dimension: as adults, it is enough for us to savour something that truly gives meaning to existence, even if it is a married guy who wants to spread his seed over our belly.
The more I advance in years, the more I give myself to love
I decided to draw up a decalogue based on my reading of the book.
Decalogue of love according to Annie Ernaux
Do it like it's every last time
Find a partner who makes you feel like a virgin
Ask yourself if you live perfect days
When you grow up love gets better
Desire is free from judgement and logic
Whatever your role is, you are role-less
The partner's age doesn't matter (as long as he is adult)
The age to love is always right
When you taste love everything else seems boring
Passion is not necessarily linked to a relationship
The Nobel Prize (female) winners in literature
From 1901 to 2023, 17 women have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Among them are six poets. Here's the list:
Selma Lagerlöf (Sweden, 1909):Author of novels based on historical Scotland, often in a fairy-tale mode.
Grazia Deledda (Italy, 1926): The only Italian writer awarded the Nobel for her prose.
Sigrid Undset (Norway, 1928): Norwegian author of significant historical novels.
Pearl S. Buck (United States, 1938): American storyteller, renowned for her tales about China.
Gabriela Mistral (Chile, 1945): World-famous Chilean poet.
Nelly Sachs (Sweden, 1966): Swedish poet and playwright of German origin, known for verses about the Holocaust.
Nadine Gordimer (South Africa, 1991): Novelist and essayist dedicated to anti-apartheid activism.
Toni Morrison (United States, 1993): The first African-American woman to win the Nobel, giving voice to women.
Wisława Szymborska (Poland, 1996): Polish poet, noted for her ironic and reflective poetry.
Elfriede Jelinek (Austria, 2004): Author known for stories about public and private life in Austrian society.
Doris Lessing (United Kingdom, 2007):Author known for her social activism, especially for women's rights.
Herta Müller (Germany/Romania, 2009): Considered one of the greatest authors of recent years, focusing on essays and poetry.
Alice Munro (Canada, 2013): Celebrated for her revolutionary temporally structured short stories.
Svetlana Alexievich (Belarus, 2015): Author known for her accounts of the Soviet Union and post-communist Russia in the 20th century.
Olga Tokarczuk (Poland, 2018): Published poetry and novels, awarded for her "narrative imagination."
Louise Glück (United States, 2020): An unmistakable poetic voice with an austere tone.
Annie Ernaux (France, 2022): Writer known for her innovative works and distinctive style, especially in memoirs.
The Six Winning Poetesses and Their Motivations
Gabriela Mistral:
"Her lyrical work, inspired by powerful emotions, has made her name a symbol of the idealistic aspirations of the entire Latin American world."
Nelly Sachs:
"For her exceptional lyric and dramatic writing, interpreting the destiny of Israel with poignant force."
Wisława Szymborska:
"For poetry that, with ironic precision, allows historical and biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality."
Herta Müller:
"She has described the landscape of the dispossessed with the power of poetry and the candor of prose."
Olga Tokarczuk:
"For her narrative imagination, which, with passionate encyclopedic representation, sees beyond borders as a way of life."
Louise Glück:
"For her unmistakable poetic voice that, with austere beauty, makes individual existence universal."
The Nobel part of this article is taken from my website poetessedonne.it