Les Mots d'Amour

So the short story in the New Yorker from a few weeks ago was written by Jeffrey Eugenides. He's a darling of the literary establishment right now. However, I've never read any of his books, though his name is familiar, having been associated with the film The Virgin Suicides and a novel that's on my list, Middlesex. I read the short story, Extreme Solitude and liked it because 1)I fetishize my college years and 2) I fetishize poststructuralist theory, or at least the idea of it.

Extreme Solitude takes place at Brown University in the 1980s. The heroine, Madeleine, is an undergrad English major who decides to take a seminar in semiotics and bumps into the work of Derrida and Roland Barthes' A Lover's Discourse in addition to a strapping young, "unpretentious" philosopher named Leonard. It's about how she falls in love with Leonard despite Barthes' watchful and poetic deconstruction of love, which she is also kind of into. The two contradict each other. Madeleine and Leonard, these are smart and handsome WASPS who are impossibly emotionally sensitive, too. So annoying, but because Eugenides is a good writer, I liked the story.

The story culminates when Madeleine says "I love you" to Leonard. To this, Leonard offers Barthes' problematic definition of love:

je-t'-aime / I-love-you

The figure refers not to the declaration of love, to the avowal, but to the repeated utterance of the love cry.

1. Once the first avowal has been made, "I love you" has no meaning whatever; it merely repeats in an enigmatic mode-so blank does it appear-the old message (which may not have been transmitted in these words). I repeat it exclusive of any pertinence; it comes out of the language, it ... The situations in which I say I-love-you cannot be classified: I-love-you is irrepressible and unforeseeable... I-love-you belongs neither to the realm of linguistics nor in that of semiology...in the proferring of I-love-you, desire is neither repressed (as in what is uttered) nor recognized (where we did not expect it: as in the uttering itself), but simply: released, as an orgasm. Orgasm is not spoken, but it speaks and it says I-love-you… This formula responds to no ritual; the situations in which I say I-love-you cannot be classified.

* * *

One does not need to take a seminar in semiotics to know this is true. The problem is, "love" or whatever feels so intense at the time that it's happening and language is inadequate to capture the bewildering feelings of it and how it passes away, too. Therefore, to Barthes' definition I offer the lyrics to Edith Piaf's Mots d' Amour (translation follows):


C'est fou c' que j' peux t'aimer,
C' que j' peux t'aimer, des fois,
Des fois, j' voudrais crier
Car j' n'ai jamais aimé,
Jamais aimé comme ça.
Ça, je peux te l'jurer.
Si jamais tu partais,
Partais et me quittais,
Me quittais pour toujours,
C'est sûr que j'en mourrais,
Que j'en mourrais d'amour,
Mon amour, mon amour...

C'est fou c' qu'il me disait
Comme jolis mots d'amour
Et comme il les disait
Mais il ne s'est pas tué
Car, malgré mon amour,
C'est lui qui m'a quittée
Sans dire un mot.
Pourtant des mots,
'y en avait tant,
'y en avait trop...

C'est fou c' que j' peux t'aimer,
C' que j' peux t'aimer, des fois,
Des fois, je voudrais crier
Car j' n'ai jamais aimé,
Jamais aimé comme ça.
Ça, je peux te l'jurer.
Si jamais tu partais,
Partais et me quittais,
Me quittais pour toujours,
C'est sûr que j'en mourrais,
Que j'en mourrais d'amour,
Mon amour, mon amour...

Et voilà qu'aujourd'hui,
Ces mêmes mots d'amour,
C'est moi qui les redis,
C'est moi qui les redis
Avec autant d'amour
A un autre que lui.
Je dis des mots
Parce que des mots,
Il y en a tant
Qu'il y en a trop...

Au fond c' n'était pas toi.
Comme ce n'est même pas moi
Qui dit ces mots d'amour
Car chaque jour, ta voix,
Ma voix, ou d'autres voix,
C'est la voix de l'amour
Qui dit des mots,
Encore des mots,
Toujours des mots,
Des mots d'amour...

C'est fou c' que j' peux t'aimer,
C' que j' peux t'aimer, des fois...
Si jamais tu partais,
C'est sûr que la la la la la la la la...


TRANSLATION:

It's crazy 's that I can love you,
that I can love you, sometimes,
Sometimes, I want to cry
Because I have never loved,
Never loved like that.
That I can swear to you.
If ever you went away,
Went away and left me,
Left me forever
Surely I would die,
I would die of love,
My love, my love ...

It's crazy that he told me
the pretty words of love
And like he said
But he did not die
Because, despite my love,
It was he who left me
Without saying a word.
Yet the words
There were so many,
There were too many...

Well today
These same words of love,
It is I who say them again,
It is I who repeat
With as much love
to another besides him.
I'm saying words
Because of words
There are so many
There are too many ...

Basically it was not you.
As it was not even me
Who said these words of love
For each day, your voice,
My voice or other voices,
It is the voice of love
Who says words,
And more words,
Always words
Words of love ...