In the introductory pages to Se perdre, Annie Ernaux informs us that the subject of her latest work is the same as that of Passion simple, published a decade ago in 1992 (see WLT 67:1, p. 152). Both works give accounts of Ernaux's love affair in 1988-89 with a married Soviet diplomat, referred to as S. Shortly following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the weakening of Soviet borders, S returned home from his post in Paris, putting an end to the liaison.

For Ernaux, S's attractiveness resides as much in his Soviet nationality, perceived as exotic, as in his unsuitability for her. He is nearly fifteen years her junior, a fonctionnaire whom Ernaux describes as unintellectual. He has a strong taste for ostentatious luxuries such as expensive cars and a decidedly unsensual proclivity for keeping his socks on in bed. She, of course, is a former professor whose current life as a writer is hermetic by comparison with that of her lover. While Passion simple was “about” the love affair, Se perdre, by contrast, consists of entries Ernaux wrote in her diary as the affair was taking place. In Ernaux's words, the diary therefore conveys another “truth” about the experience.

Ernaux explains that she gives us her diary unedited and unchanged, except for the use of initials to preserve anonymity. Short entries are identified by date, day of the week, even the time of day or evening: “Lundi 26 … 10 h 45. Il a appelé, mais il ne sait pas quand il viendra.” We follow the development of the affair from recollections of the first encounters, through a knowing exploration of eroticism and physical tenderness as well as emotional attachment, of a kind (“Je crois que ça s'appelle la passion maintenant”), as recounted from day to day. Ernaux's book faithfully records phone calls, rendezvous, short negotiations with the outside world. The reader may find this catalogue repetitive. At times, summary statements possibly meaningful to the writer may frustrate the reader by their general opacity. In bed, writes Ernaux somewhat confoundingly, “nous avons presque tout fait de ce qui peut se faire.”

On the banal scaffolding of the daily diary entry, Ernaux constructs an emotional façade whose contours evoke the sublime. Ernaux's “fusion” with her lover is felt metaphysically as a kind of transcendence of the self, as well as enacted physically. “Fusion” with S entails self-annihilation. Following a nocturnal encounter, Ernaux finds herself exhausted, enervated, practically unable to function. At moments, a lucid, although not ironic, perspective balances the tendency toward cliché as well as the pull of the sublime: “Pourtant,” writes Ernaux, “cela se résume à ceci: il baise, il boit de la vodka, il parle de Staline.”

If Se perdre adds another “truth” to the story told in Passion simple, the twin texts may be said to investigate the relationship between experience and its representation in writing. In Se perdre tension between writing and experience is an explicit theme. Indeed, to live and to write turns out to be a conundrum. On the one hand, Ernaux states, “Je ne fais pas l'amour comme un écrivain, c'est-à-dire en me disant que ‘ça servira’ ou avec distance” Living (rather than writing) excludes reflection in the moment of doing, whereas writing implies detachment, from living and the deformation of experience “used” for artistic purposes. On the other hand, the urge to write is as strong as that to live. Ten days (or four pages) later, there comes a point when “écrire, l'dée que je pourrais écrire sur ‘cette personne’, les rencontres, remplace l'idee de la mort.” To write experience is to betray it, but presumably the diary more closely approximates experience than do other types of writing, traducing it less. The yearning toward perfection, a recurring motif in Se perdre, thus characterizes both Ernaux's experience of the love affair and her esthetic in writing.