en
Philippe Besson

In the Absence of Men

Сообщить о появлении
Загрузите файл EPUB или FB2 на Букмейт — и начинайте читать книгу бесплатно. Как загрузить книгу?
'I am sixteen. I am as old as the century' It is 1916. Vincent is sixteen, on the brink of manhood. Vincent is aristocratic and privileged, frequenting the salons of Paris while France is at war and the city almost deserted of men. In that brutal summer, Vincent's beauty and precocity captivate two men: Marcel, some thirty years his senior, a writer and celebrated socialite; and Arthur, the twenty-one year old son of one of the servants, who is now a soldier at the front. Both relationships become love affairs of a kind — of the mind or of the body. Vincent intuitively tries to keep his passions separate, but over the weeks of indolent Parisian summer and far-off war, confidences are made, absences endured, secrets revealed. All of these men will suffer, and Vincent will lose the last vestiges of his childhood innocence. In the Absence of Men is a stunning first novel: in its daring in representing Marcel Proust as a character, in the beauty of its prose and in its delicacy of feeling. It is a quite remarkable debut.
Эта книга сейчас недоступна
141 бумажная страница
Уже прочитали? Что скажете?
👍👎

Впечатления

  • Theodore Maurice August "Vanderboom" Scarletделится впечатлением2 года назад
    👍Worth reading
    💞Loved Up
    🚀Unputdownable
    💧Soppy

Цитаты

  • Theodore Maurice August "Vanderboom" Scarletцитирует2 года назад
    You can do nothing, Marcel. You perhaps less than anyone else cannot keep me here.

    I carry my dead with me.

    I take him on this journey from which I will not return except perhaps in death.
  • Theodore Maurice August "Vanderboom" Scarletцитирует2 года назад
    I shall not write to you again. This is my last letter. I am leaving.

    I am leaving because I must, because I cannot do otherwise, because I cannot escape the truth.

    I am leaving to shake off the deafening silence, the slow death, the terrible mediocrity; to escape the war which is the cause of my grief, the mud, childhood, family, the earth, all the ties that bind, everything that holds one back.

    I am leaving because as this foul and rainy autumn takes hold, I need to find sunlight. Clear waters.

    I dream of Italy, of Africa, of the Orient. I dream of exile. I dream of scaling mountains, crossing great plains, treacherous lakes, quiet countryside. I dream of walking to the sea, of journeying deep into desert lands, endless landscapes. I dream of coming to the far-flung reaches of a continent, to the ends of the earth, to the point where all bearings are lost. I dream of indecipherable languages, of suffocating heat, of strange vistas, of ominous clamour, of beautiful light.

    I dream that I may think of nothing, searching in the emptiness for a kind of peace.

    I can guess what troubles await me, not least the need to survive, accepting the vilest occupations simply to live one day more, wandering among beggars in the foul alleys of strange cities, breaking stones to build churches deep in the desert, risking madness. I fear none of these things. I accept all of these things. Better yet, I long for them. I think that hardship and uncertainty are the only things which might save me.
  • Theodore Maurice August "Vanderboom" Scarletцитирует2 года назад
    The mother’s eyes fix me still, but her tears have dried. In their place, there is an expression that is both calm and terrible. She has taken her confession to its end. She has said all there is to say. She is relieved. She has done her duty.

    She sits there, unmoving, weary. She has finished. She, she has finished. For me it has only begun.

    Now I am alone, utterly alone. Stop for a moment and try to measure the enormity of my solitude. All I have for company is a secret which weighs on me, and the pain of loss, the knowledge that what awaits me cannot equal what I have already known. There is his absence like a wound, an amputation, the outward sign of something incomplete which can never be made whole. That is the greatest loss. If I think of this as a game of pitch and toss, I can never win more than I have lost. Why play, then? And yet, I cannot remain indifferent. And yet, to desire another is inconceivable. There is no hope for me with men.

    For her, it is finished. For me it has just begun.
fb2epub
Перетащите файлы сюда, не более 5 за один раз