It was such a pleasure reading this excerpt of Annie Ernaux's work. Its one of those pieces of writing that is so perfect that the reader wants to revisit it over and over, each time a line or a word shines brighter than before - presents new meaning. The idea of looking at the girl a woman once was and be able to integrate the two identities in some way is extremely relatable. It is hard to relate to the person who looks at me from a faded picture from decades ago - that was me too.
Yet if I were to meet her today, we would have absolutely nothing in common. That person had a world view so different from mine that it would be hard to agree on just about anything. Her dreams were not her own dreams and she did even know that. How do you communicate with such a person. J is at that early stage of her life with experiences coming at her at a pace much faster than she can process. She too at some point in her life will see the world as described in Ernaux's writing. This is true for just about every woman I know well.
This girl of 1958, who from a distance of fifty years is able to resurface and provoke my interior collapse, must have a hidden, indomitable presence inside me. If the real is that which acts, produces effects, as in the dictionary definition, this girl is not me but is real inside me—a kind of real presence.
This being the case, am I to dissolve the girl of ’58 and the woman of 2014 into a single “I”? Or proceed in a way that is, if not the most precise (a subjective evaluation), certainly the most adventurous, that is, to dissociate the former from the latter through the use of “she” and “I,” in order to present the facts and deeds to the furthest possible degree, and go about it in the cruelest possible way: in the manner of people we hear talking about us through a door, referring to us as she or he, which makes us feel we are dying on the spot.
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