Elle est unique Marguerite Duras. Je l'aime bien, hein, mais c'est vrai que ses dialogues, c'est quelque chose !

“Hiroshima mon Amour” es una la película de 1959 dirigida por Alain Resnais, reconocido documentalista que ingresaba al género de ficción, con el guion poético, complejo y preciso de Marguerite Duras. Esta obra contiene el guion original de la cinta, la sinopsis, anotaciones sobre los personajes y algunos parlamentos omitidos. Duras fue una destacada intelectual que imprimió en su prosa algunos debates del psicoanálisis y del arte contemporáneo, en ese sentido, fue una escritora interdisciplinar que, en algunas de sus novelas, incluyó anotaciones sobre cómo debería ser su adaptación cinematográfica. A Resnais le encargaron filmar una película sobre el horror de Hiroshima y sus secuelas, acudió a Durás, que escribió un relato ficticio sobre el amor, a medio camino entre la vida y la muerte. Una francesa que terminó un rodaje en Hiroshima se encuentra enlazada con un japonés, son amantes, no conocemos sus nombres. A través de diálogos e imágenes Durás y Resnais crean una obra que cuestiona ciertas dicotomías interpelando al lector/espectador a una mirada más atenta a la realidad. Escenarios terribles, deformaciones y caos, desesperanzas y ceniza se funden en la piel de los amantes, que, entregados al deseo, se debaten en el amor y en el olvido, en el pasado y el presente; o más bien, entienden que no hay diferencia entre el pasado y el presente, lo pretérito no dejó de ocurrir, sigue aconteciendo en el presente, en cada instante, son dos lados de un cristal, las caras de una misma moneda. La separación es inevitable, ella partirá al día siguiente: “Dentro de unos cuantos años, cuando te haya olvidado, y cuando otras historias como ésta, por la fuerza de la costumbre otra vez, vuelvan a suceder, me acordaré de ti como del olvido del amor mismo. Pensaré en todo esto como en el horror del olvido. Lo sé ya desde ahora”.

El proceso de “Hiroshima mon amour” provocó un giro en el argumento y alcance inicial de la película, que quería retratar “el horror por el horror”, para contar una historia de amor, análoga a la tragedia de Hiroshima. Para Duras, la historia de amor debe ser universal, más allá de la imposibilidad de conocerse y amar en Hiroshima; debe prevalecer sobre la guerra, sobre la muerte. Avanzan los amantes taciturnos a los rincones íntimos de su ser, conocemos el pasado de la francesa en Nevers, amando de forma prohibida a un soldado alemán durante la ocupación de la segunda guerra, que, abatido frente a sus ojos, le enseñó dolor y humillación. La tragedia la llevará a la perfidia, a la locura, a la desesperanza de no poder morir de amor, porque la vida brota de la muerte y la muerte flota en la vida como flujos de correspondencia, como materiales en simbiosis. Marguerite cuestiona viejos paradigmas amatorios, si el amante parte de este mundo, es mejor quedarse y mantener viva la llama, que morir junto a él y extinguirla. Por supuesto la historia está incompleta, Duras no cuenta historias, abre puertas, presenta indicios, muestra caminos al lector; recreando sus propias experiencias para despojar el alma de hipocresías y cuestionar convenciones intelectuales con un lirismo que acaricia, que abraza con el fuego de la guerra y la pasión.

Tremur. Imagini socante ale mortii. Si simpla dezamagire ca dragostea nu te-a ucis.

Two expressions popped up in my mind as I read the screenplay.
“萍水相逢” and “ 邂逅”.
Both expressions/ words are so frequently used in the Chinese language that, I am afraid, much of the romance and drama contained in them have been lost when they are casually uttered.
“萍水相逢” , to translate literally, means the the encounter of ( two) drifting duckweeds; while 邂逅 can be translated as “ chance encounter “, there is a touch of romance as well as a sense of excitement brought out by the boundless possibilities of this encounter hinted by this word that cannot be fully conveyed by its translation of “ chance encounter “.
Although, “ chance encounter “ itself , to me, is already an expression full of drama.
“Chance meetings occur everywhere in the world. What is important is what these ordinary meetings lead to.”(p.8)

This is a story of a chance encounter.
Two rootless duckweeds, nameless, ravaged by war and destruction, collide into one another. Blinding sparkles and scorching flames ensue.
But this is so much more than a story of a mere chance encounter.
It’s also a story of the complex nature of love, of memory and forgetting, and of the horror of war examined through love.

Our unnamed protagonist, a French woman, goes to Hiroshima for a movie on peace that she plays a role in.
Shortly before she is supposed to leave, she meets a Japanese architect and they have a both physically and emotionally intense affair.
Through their conversations, the traumatic events that happened to the French woman during the war are revealed.

All my friends in real life know that I don’t believe in love at first sight. I have been a believer of the testament of time.
However, this book/movie makes me think maybe profound connections can in fact be established from a short but intense encounter.
Maybe after much suffering and trauma, one carries around with oneself an aura, something like glints from shattered glasses, that attracts the ones who recognize and understand.
The Japanese architect’s family was in Hiroshima when the bomb dropped, the French woman lost her first love right before the end of the war in Nevers. They see each other, and recognize each other.
“He:
Have you ever noticed that it’s always in the same sense that people notice things?”
She：
No.I noticed you, that’s all.”(p.33)
Or maybe, a location, such as Hiroshima, one that’s once completely annihilated, is conducive to such love affairs. A place where death has been preserved. It reminds one of the end of the world, where a kind of desperate yet powerful passion can sprout, much like the “ the new vegetation rising from the sands” with vitality that’d never been seen before during the nuclear fallout in Hiroshima.
“How could I have known that the city was made to the size of love?”
How could I have known that you were made to the size of my body?” (p.25)
“their embrace-so banal, so commonplace-takes place in the one city of the world where it is hardest to imagine it: Hiroshima.
Nothing is "given" at Hiroshima. Every gesture, every word, takes on an aura of meaning that transcends its literal meaning.”

But to ponder on the nature of a passionate love affair is only to scratch the surface of this screenplay / movie.
Through their dialogues, you get a sense that the French woman is torn between the desire to remember and the desire to etch the memories in her soul. She is simultaneously fighting both desires.
“You see, Nevers is the city in the world, and even the thing in the world, I dream about most often at night. And at the same time it’s the thing I think about the least.” (p.37)
I think anyone who has been through grief and loss can relate to such conflicting emotions.
To forget is to betray.
To remember is to relive the pain.
It seems that, when one’s fighting against the past, there is no way to win.
And what can cause more grief and loss than a war ?
The war has ended but the fight with the past has not.
Nevers, France. Hiroshima, Japan. Two places grieving. Two places, all at once, struggling to remember and forget with all their might.
This struggle with memory intertwines with the love affair, intensifies it, dooms it and sublimates it.
What will never cease to touch me is the following conversation between them:
“She ( Calmly): Why talk of him rather than the others?
He: Why not?
She: No. Why?
He: Because of Nevers. I can only begin to know you, and among many thousands of things in your life, I am choosing Nevers.”(p.51)
Memories shape a person, and sometimes it’s all we have and all we are. However we try, we can not escape from ourselves.
The Japanese man understands this. While he tries to reach towards the very core of her being, he needs to see Nevers. Nevers, the place that bears insufferable pain for the French woman, the place that she dreams about every day but does not dare to speak of, defines her.
“He: It was there, I seem to have understood, that I almost…lost you…and that I rushed ever knowing you…”
He: It was there, I seem to have understood, that you must have begun to be what you are today.” (p51)
He is the person who sees her for her memories, for her traumas, her madness and her anger.
Yet, She recognizes this love is hopeless. Just like her love in Nevers.
“ A hopeless love, killed like the Nevers love. Therefore already relegated to oblivion. Therefore eternal.” (p.12)
But, unlike the love in Nevers that leaves only scars, I would like to think their love, both short-lived and eternal, also hints at something hopeful. Through this affair, they have faced the past, and maybe they can now start healing.

The first 15 minutes of the movie might be one of the greatest opening scenes of all the movies I have seen.
I think the director Alain Resnais has shown what Duras tries to convey through her play very faithfully.
We have two naked bodies, interlocking but also pushing against one another. They are sweaty with desire, and seemingly covered with dust, evocative of the aftermath of a nuclear fallout. Then we get the dialogue of the woman and all that she says she saw in Hiroshima,
Juxtaposed with the erotism are the horrifying images of the nuclear fallout. The result is shocking, disquieting and sacrilegious.
The woman insists that she saw everything in Hiroshima, while the man dispassionately replies “No, you saw nothing”.
For this Duras provides a perfect explanation:
“Thus their initial exchange is allegorical. In short, an operatic exchange. Impossible to talk about Hiroshima. All one can do is talk about the impossibility of talking about Hiroshima. The knowledge of Hiroshima being stated à priori by an exemplary delusion of the mind.
This beginning, this official parade of already well-known horrors from Hiroshima, recalled in a hotel bed, this sacrilegious recollection, is voluntary. One can talk about Hiroshima anywhere, even in a hotel bed, during a chance, an adulterous love affair. The bodies of both protagonists, who are really in love with each other, will remind us of this. What is really sacrilegious, if anything is, is Hiroshima itself. There's no point in being hypocritical and avoiding the issue.” (p.9)
This reminded me of the time when I was at a dinner party and the topic of the conversation moved to wars, and everyone’s face sank with a mournful expression and soon we all fell silent…someone, timely, cracked a silly joke and the party spirit was revived. The entire night seemed so surreal everytime I thought about it.
This also reminded me of the French woman’s response to the Japanese man, when asked what Hiroshima meant for her.
She says “ The end of war, I mean, the end. Amazement… at the idea that they had dared…amazement at the idea that they had succeeded. And then too, for us, the beginning of an unknown fear. And then, indifference. And also the fear of indifference.”
The shadows of war can be seen everywhere in this movie and in the screenplay. The images of the nuclear fallout, the parades for peace with anti-war posters, the reason why the woman was in Hiroshima in the first place was because she was acting in a movie about peace ( isn’t any movie about peace also about war?)
But first and foremost, the horror of war is seen through love and memories.
Through their collective trauma from war, the Japanese man and the French woman notice, see and understand each other. Without the horrors of the war, their love would be impossible.
But it is also examined through the memories of the woman and her struggle with those memories.
At the beginning of the play, the French woman says “ I’ve always wept over the fate of Hiroshima. Always.”
There might be an element of the superficial sadness that tourists experience, but the brutal reality of her fate might convince the readers/viewers otherwise.
She might have not seen everything, but in a sense, she also did see everything. That “everything” she saw is the endless horror of war and the torment that war can impose on each individual who goes through it.
“She:Hi-ro-shi-ma.
Hi–ro-shi-ma. That’s your name.
He: That’s my name. Yes. Your name is Nevers. Ne-vers-in France.”

I couldn’t stop thinking about the movie after I saw it earlier this week.
And I thought about it some more after I read the screenplay.
The movie is highly faithful to the play with some minor changes. I highly recommend watching the movie and reading the play.

"Hiroshima. C'est ton nom."

Ele olha-a enquanto dorme. Ela acorda com o olhar intenso dele pousado nela. Um olhar profundo que lhe abana os sentidos e a leva para longe dali.
Entre lençóis amarrotados de volúpia Ela faz uma regressão a Nevers. Essas memórias são como uma chaga aberta que dói sem parar. Numa espécie de transe Ela revive o amor que a guerra lhe arrancou, ressuscitando o desejo e a dor, dando veracidade a todos esses sentimentos que a erosão do tempo calou, mas não curou.

Este livro reveste-se de camadas e desdobra-se em memórias.
Naquela névoa envolvente da Duras vagueamos entre o presente e o passado. Ele e Ela fecundam um amor que se sabe que não chegará a nascer, mas merece ser vivido no momento presente.

Duras sempre guardou nas suas palavras as suas dores, a melancolia entrelaçada com luxúria. O resultado são os diálogos riquíssimos, que soam como um clamor para serem lidos nas entrelinhas (ver fotos). Neste guião, escrito em 1959 para Alain Resnais, a marca autoral de Duras está bem evidente e muito bem conseguida. Além do roteiro cinematográfico, esta edição da Quetzal está enriquecida com apêndices, que complementam a experiência de leitura. Depois de ler senti vontade de rever o filme, que é muitíssimo fiel ao trabalho da autora.
Aconselho vivamente esta leitura.

« (He takes her arms [wrists], she faces him, her head thrown back. She suddenly breaks away from him. He helps her by an effort of self-abstraction. As if she were in danger. He looks at her, she at him, as she would look at the city, and suddenly, very softly, she calls him. She calls him from afar, lost in wonder. She has succeeded in drowning him in universal oblivion. And it is a source of amazement to her.)… They look at each other without seeing each other. Forever. »

« Love serves life by making dying easier. This garden could make you believe in God. »

« For lack of something better, saltpeter can be eaten. The salt of the stones. Riva eats the walls. She also kisses them. She is in a universe of walls. A man’s memory is in these walls, one with the stone, the air, the earth. »

الواقع أنهما ليسا بعد أحدً في نظر بعضهما ، ان لهما اسمي مكانين .، اسمين ليسا منهما ، كما لو أن كارثة امرأة مجزورة الشعر في نوفير وكارثة هيروشيما تتجاوبان تماماً ..
وستقول له : هيروشيما ذلك هو اسمك .. "





هي قصة الفيلم الذي تم انتاجه عام 1959 و الذي يحمل نفس الاسم و يعد من اهم اعمال السينما الفرنسية .. يتحدث عن الحب والحرب والارتباط الوثيق الذي قد ينشا داخل كل من أصيب بهما في نفس الوقت .. البطلة فرنسية الجنسية سافرت الى هيروشيما من اجل العمل في فيلم يتحدث عن السلام فتلتقى بمهندس معماري ياباني قبل عودتها الى فرنسا وتنشأ بينهم قصة حب لمدة يوم وعلى انقاض تجاربهم القديمة .. ولان التصنع قد يكون مقبول في اي مكان إلا في هيروشيما فقد قاما بتبادل ذكرياتهم طوال ذلك اليوم واستعرضا ما عانوا منه سواء في هيروشيما او نوفير بلدة البطلة من ويلات حروب وفقد للاحباء ..

ليست رواية بشكلها الكامل التقليدي .. والحقيقة لست ادري هل تم عرض الفيلم اولا ثم نقله بعد ذلك وكتابته على الورق ام ان الرواية كتبت اولا ثم تم عملها كفيلم سينمائي ، انا شاهدت الفيلم اولا وعندما قرأت الرواية بعد ذلك كانت بالنسبة لي مجرد نقل لاحداث الفيلم ومشاهده على الورق حتى ان الحوار اغلبه تم استخدام فيه ضمير الغائب .. اراها جيدة لو شاهدت الفيلم ونال اعجابك خصوصا انها توضح بعض الافكار التى قد تكون مبهمة بعض الشيء في الفيلم و تتناول ايضاً تحليل للكاتبة لبعض المشاهد التى جاءت بالفيلم

Marguerite Duras ile ikinci buluşmamız Hiroşima Sevgilim. Ünlü yönetmen Alain Resnais tarafından sinemaya uyarlanan filmin senaryosunu okuyoruz aslında. Oyun veya senaryo okumakla aram pek iyi değildir maalesef. Kurguya girmekte çok zorlanırım. Fakat bu kitap hiç böyle olmadı. Su gibi aktı, beni de içine kolayca çekti.

Hiroşima’ya barış konulu film çekimi için giden Fransız bir kadın ile Japon mühendisin birkaç gün süren aşklarını okuyoruz. İkinci Dünya savaşı sonrası herkesin bireysel yaralar aldığı, kimi eski aşkların ve yaraların anlatıldığı duygu yoğunluğu son derece yüksek bir metin. Şu anı okurken geçmişe de gittiğimiz, özellikle kadın karakter üzerinden ilerleyen bireysel acıdan toplumsal belleğe uzanan hatırlama temelli bir kurgu inşa edilmiş. Yazar da bolca not ve betimlemeyle anlamayı kolaylaştırmış.

Hanımefendi özel bir kalem. Sanki ne yazsa okuması keyifli oluyor gibi bir izlenim ediniyorum. Daha çok buluşacağız kendisiyle.

har aldrig förmått mig att se filmen, men efter att ha läst manus (för det är just ett manus) inser jag att jag nog måste

I was going to say this was a completely waste of time, but it wasn’t. I think it’s necessary to read something bad to appreciate the good. I found this book particulary annoying since it’s considered a classic and a masterpiece. Christ, James Joyce is a classic and his books are all masterpieces. This is just an insult to literature.
I get it, Duras is showing the uneasy relationship between love and pain after the IIWW. It shows different perspectives about war and how difficult is to love after such a pierceing tragedy, but the pain it shows doesn’t make it at all a good book. Some people should stop admiring books that are considered modern and transgressor just for the fact. The fact that you don’t understand a book at all, doesn’t make it a masterpiece. This is just bad literature in a script form.

ليست رواية لكنها سيناريو فيلم هيروشيما حبيبي وأتصور أن مشاهدة الفيلم ستكون أكثر إمتاعا من هذا الكتاب ... بصراحة لم يعجبني على الإطلاق