Bref, me voilà face à ce livre, court en plus, et là, je sais que ce n'est pas la peine de lutter, donc je l'achète... autant faire simple, ça m'évitera d'y retourner dévorée d'impatience dans la journée ou la semaine. l'acheter, c'est le sortir de ma tête. j'ai réussi à l'oublier - j'avais malheureusement à faire - jusqu'à aujourd'hui... et là, sur mon lit, paresseusement allongée, j'ai pu me laisser aller au plaisir de suivre la jolie plume de Mac Ewan.
Comme dans Atonement, sa plume est faite d'aller retour, confrontation des points de vue des personnages, mais pas nécessairement des mêmes scènes revues et rejouées, non, ce n'est pas cela, c'est davantage comme entendre un couple tour à tour nous confier ses problèmes, ils ne mettent pas forcément l'accent sur les mêmes choses, ni de la même façon. Car c'est bien d'un couple dont il s'agit, un jeune couple, ils se sont mariés le matin, ils ont 22 ans, ils sont à l'hôtel, tous les deux vierges et c'est leur nuit de noce. ce sont des gens de bonne famille, ils croient plus de choses qu'ils n'en savent réellement. et le désastre auquel cela aboutit, sa préparation et ses conséquences permet à l'auteur de creuser au cœur de leur relation. de leur amour. leur rencontre, tous ces petits moments qui, ces petites choses qui, vus des deux points de vue, particulièrement de celui du jeune marié. On ne peut s'empêcher d'être touché, vraiment, par la détresse de ces personnages. l'humiliation du marié, la détresse, la tristesse et la panique de Florence, jeune oiseau effarouché complètement frigide qui s'envole à la première catastrophe. on a de la compassion pour eux, et aussi ce petit regard - ils sont bien gentils... qui vient de ce que nous qui savons nous apitoyons sur les errances de ce couple, complètement à côté de la plaque... c'est si peu de chose. et oui, mais pas pour eux. pour eux c'est autre chose, pour eux c'est bien plus et ça remet tout en question... toute leur relation se fait la chambre d'écho de leur chambre à coucher, et ça, ça quand le sexe aujourd'hui est si facile et veut parfois dire si peu, même si on les regarde en souriant de s'y prendre si mal... ne peut que toucher et insinuer une petite pointe d'admiration pour une telle pureté et intégrité de sentiment.
Alors ce livre, je ne sais pas trop quoi en faire... vraiment pas, je ne sais encore ce qu'il veut me dire... un livre, quand on le lit, on s'arrange toujours pour le faire entrer en résonance avec notre propre vie en s'émerveillant comme surpris après de ce qu'il était pile le livre qu'il nous fallait à ce moment là. je réfléchis vers ce qui m'y a poussé et je doute... nostalgie de la bonne éducation d'avant, quand le sexe avant le mariage était proscrit... certainement pas ? peut-être plutôt une certaine tendresse pour l'innocence de ces personnages quand aujourd'hui, si on y réfléchit, on est dans une société où il faut assurer. il n'assurent pas, et c'est pour ça qu'on les aime... qu'il nous touchent. leur innocence est belle, et en rire ou en sourire me donne la vague impression d'être rouée...
Mais je divague, l'intérêt du livre, vraiment, avant tout, c'est la peinture de ces petites choses, la façon dont l'auteur creuse à l'acide ce qui fait la nature même de leur affection l'un pour l'autre... après, on aura le droit de réfléchir à l'importance du sexe dans une relation, obsédés que nous sommes, mais d'abord, un peu de poésie...
Tiens allez, j'ajoute une critique anglaise que je trouve excellente...
Etrangement, pour elle, Mac Ewan, c'est le romancier des moments clefs, comment un moment fait basculer une vie. oui, certes, il est complètement cela. mais ce qui m'a frappé chez lui, c'est la façon dont il montre dont toute la vie entre en résonance avec ce moment. Tout l'avant, toute la perception qu'on en a, tout l'après... j'aime les fenêtres sur d'autres moments qu'il ouvre autour d'un instant.
Is life a series of little moments, or is it shaped around one or two colossal moments? Ian McEwan evidently believes the latter for in much of his fiction, he writes about the power of one definitive moment in the lives of ordinary people. Saturday revolves around a random car accident and its unforeseen effects in a post 9/11 world. Atonement explores the impact of a seemingly unimportant incident and its far-reaching effects during World War II. His new novella, On Chesil Beach examines a missed opportunity between two lovers in early 1960s England.
McEwan has a remarkably distinctive voice. His narratives move feverishly forward, cutting between the past and present. His writing is spare and lyrical, confident though subtle. But what is most affecting about his work, further illuminated by his recent novella, is what he is able to do with this big moment. When it is presented to his characters, the judgments they render give a clear picture of a specific era, and ultimately, of the whole civilization to which they belong.
On Chesil Beach is about one night in England in July 1962, "a time when conversation about sexual difficulties was plainly impossible." It echoes the first lines of Philip Larkin's oft-mentioned Annus Mirabilis: "Sexual intercourse began/ In nineteen sixty-three/ (which was rather late for me) – /Between the end of the Chatterley ban/ And the Beatles' first LP." Two young virgins, Edward Mayhew and Florence Ponting, are finally alone on their wedding night. They sit straight-backed in their chairs at an oppressively formal dinner, move food around on their plate, listen helplessly to the news. They are individually preoccupied with visions of the ensuing sexual act, though they dare not voice anything. "Edward and Florence- free at last!" McEwan proclaims in the opening pages. But clearly, they are not.
They meet the summer after graduating university- he studied history and she studied violin- and for Edward, it is love at first sight. Their ritualized courtship advances slowly; thankfully, McEwan tells you this outright in a few sentences. Their half-realized love grows, but McEwan only illustrates this in a few short scenes. It takes until the end of the book to be convinced they are genuinely in love, and if there is a flaw, it is that the period detail doesn't leave enough room for the emotions of his characters. Of course, this is precisely his point.
The differences between the two abound. Edward is from an unconventional, middle class family; Florence is from a frigid, aristocratic family. Edward likes rock and roll; Florence enjoys classical music. Edward is desperate to have sex; Florence is disgusted with it. And herein lies their big problem. Whenever Edward tries to kiss Florence, she recoils. When he unzips his zipper, she considers it impolite. The marriage proposal comes after Florence removes her hand from a suggestive position, and Edward, in a state of ecstasy and excited expectation, can bear it no longer. Throughout, their rift perpetually grows larger: his lust, her revulsion, his sexual frustration, her claustrophobia.
"Why were these lovers in a modern age so timid and so innocent," McEwan asks at the beginning of the second part. He asks again, later, "what stood in their way?" And this time he answers it directly, "their personalities and pasts, their ignorance and fear, timidity, squeamishness, lack of entitlement or experience or easy manners, then the tail end of a religious prohibition, their Englishness and class, and history itself."
On Chesil Beach is primarily a period piece of a young couple living on the cusp of the 60s rebellion. The question was never if their relationship could have worked. "Social change never proceeds at an even pace," McEwan writes. We are all products of our time and our culture; Edward and Florence are no exception. They are born when it is still uncertain whether they will speak German or English and though the anti-bomb rallies in Trafalgar Square have begun, they are a few years too early to be a part of the social upheaval. Their love is tainted by the constraints of their era, an era that obscures, casts shadows, and limits possibility.
What they can never speak of is that he masturbates frequently and has a secret thrill for bar fights. Or that she suffered a vaguely incestuous relationship with her father and abhors sexual touch. Or that he has a brain-damaged mother who has been kept isolated from the rest of town, and that he never knew what was wrong with her until he was fourteen because he never asks. Necessary conversations, particularly between two people with such troubled histories, cannot exist within the boundaries allowed by their society. The intrinsic chaos of human relationships is kept in line by formal dinners, slow walks on the beach, headbands, and tennis matches. They are condemned to the conventions of English propriety. McEwan makes it obvious to everyone but the couple themselves, that their problems "were already present in those first few seconds, in their first exchange of looks." This decade was not for them.
The finale takes place on Chesil Beach after the worst has come true in the bedroom. The chords strike large and this is McEwan at his best, writing sentences that could practically be sung. Edward's big moment is in the form of a conversation, and he doesn't know what to do with it. Though both Edward and Florence begin to break down barriers of English propriety, they are the wrong ones. They fight, but unaccustomed to such openness, it is almost as if each is acting only for themselves and in the name of their new freedom of expression, reckless to say anything to exercise it, unaware of the consequences. They walk away broken and spend their lives apart. McEwan has much sympathy for them because love could never conquer their times. There is also empathy to be felt, because to empathize with them is to feel a universal agony of restraint, restraint of which Edward and Florence, tragically, are old pros. The epithet? "This is how an entire course of a life can be changed- by doing nothing."
It is interesting to think about how their relationship would have played out in July 2007. Today. lustful passion is easily acted out between the sheets, but declarations of love are abundantly harder. The modern love story seems to be a mirror image of Edward and Florence. Is this where our tragedy of lovers lies? That we live in an era when, if a big moment presents itself, the timid, quivering love, waiting to surface, to be declared, gets squashed by two lovers having a romp around the sheets.
-Katherine Ryder
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