Happening Annie Ernaux Quotes

Maybe the true purpose of my life is for my body, my sensations and my thoughts to become writing, in other words, something intelligible and universal, causing my existence to merge into the lives and heads of other people.

In my student bathroom, I had given birth to both life and death.

I shall try to conjure up each of the sentences engraved in my memory which were either so unbearable or so comforting to me at the time that the mere thought of them today engulfs me in a wave of horror or sweetness.

Neither of us had mentioned the word abortion, not even once. This thing had no place in language.

This can be said about shame: those who experience it feel that anything can happen to them, that the shame will never cease and that it will only be followed by more shame.

Today smugglers are vilified and pursued like abortionists were thirty years ago. No one questions the laws and world order that condone their existence. Yet surely, among those who trade in refugees, as among those who once traded in foetuses, there must be some sense of honor.

Es posible que un relato como este provoque irritación o repulsión, o que sea tachado de mal gusto. El hecho de haber vivido algo, sea lo que sea, da el derecho imprescriptible de escribir sobre ello. No existe una verdad inferior.

(I realize this account may exasperate or repel some readers; it may also be branded as distasteful. I believe that any experience, whatever its nature, has the inalienable right to be chronicled. There is no such thing as a lesser truth. Moreover, if I failed to go through with this undertaking, I would be guilty of silencing the lives of women and condoning a world governed by male supremacy.)

On another afternoon I entered Saint Patrice’s Church just off the Boulevard de la Marne to tell a priest that I’d had an abortion. I immediately realized this was a mistake. I felt bathed in a halo of light and for him I was a criminal. Leaving the church, I realized that I was through with religion.

To convey my predicament, I never resorted to descriptive terms or expressions such as “I’m expecting,” “pregnant” or “pregnancy.” They endorsed a future event that would never materialize. There was no point naming something that I was planning to get rid of. In my diary I would write, “it” or “that thing,” only once “pregnant.

When I made love and climaxed, I felt that my body was basically no different from that of a man.

There were the other girls, with their empty bellies, and there was me.

L'interminable lenteur d'un temps qui s'épaississait sans avancer, comme celui des rêves.

Il n'a pas répondu et, sans me regarder, il s'est lancé dans la diatribe habituelle contre les hommes qui abandonnent les filles après avoir pris leur plaisir.

Thousands of girls have climbed up stairs and knocked on a door answered by a woman who is a complete stranger, to whom they are about to entrust their stomach and their womb. And that woman, the only person who can rid them of their misfortune, would open the door, in an apron and patterned slippers, clutching a dish towel, and inquire, “Yes, Miss, can I help you?

...(in the past I would listen to a record three, five, ten times running, waiting for something that never happened). A book offers more deliverance, more escape, more fulfilment of desire. In songs one remains locked in desire. (The lyrics are not that important, only the melody matters; so I understood nothing of what the Platters or the Beatles were saying.) There are no places, no scenes, no characters, only oneself and one’s longing. Yet the very starkness and paucity of music allow me to recall a whole episode of my life and the girl I used to be when I listen to I’m Just a Dancing Partner thirty years later. Whereas the beauty and fullness of The Beautiful Summer and In Search of Lost Time, which I have reread two or three times, can never give me back my life.

Il m'arrivait d'oublier que j'était enceinte de deux mois. C'est sans doute à cause de cet effacement de l'avenir, par lequel l'esprit endort lui-même l'angoisse de l'échéance, qu'il sait pourtant inévitable, que des filles laissaient passer les semaines, pus les mois, jusqu'au terme.

Estaba por todas partes. En los eufemismos y las lítotes de mi agenda, en los ojos saltones de Jean T., en los matrimonios forzados, en el filme "Los paraguas de Cheburgo", en la vergüenza de las mujeres que abortaban y en la reprobación de las otras. En la imposibilidad absoluta de imaginar que un día las mujeres pudieran decidir abortar libremente. Y, como de costumbre, era imposible determinar si el aborto estaba prohibido porque estaba mal o estaba mal porque estaba prohibido. Se juzgaba con relación a la ley, no se juzgaba la ley.

Lire dans un roman le récit d'un avortement me plonge dans un saisissement sans images ni pensées, comme si les mots se changeaient instantanément en sensation violente. De la même façon, entendre par hasard La javanaise, J'ai la mémoire qui flanche, n'importe quelle chanson qui m'a accompagnée durant cette période, me bouleverse.

Une adresse et de l'argent, cétait les seules choses au monde dont j'avais besoin à ce mont-là.

Les filles comme moi gâchaient la journée des médecins. Sans argent et sans relations -- sinon elles ne seraient pas venue échouer à l'aveuglette chez eux --, elles les obligeaient à se rappeler la loi quoi pouvait les envoyer en prison et leur interdire d'exercer pour toujours.

A skutočný cieľ môjho života je možno iba tento: aby sa moje telo, moje pocity a myšlienky stali písmom, teda niečím zrozumiteľným a všeobecným, aby sa moja existencia rozpustila v hlavách a životoch ostatných.

Now I know that this ordeal and this sacrifice were necessary for me to want to have children. To accept the turmoil of reproduction inside my body and, in turn, to let the coming generations pass through me.

El hecho de que la forma en la que yo viví la experiencia del aborto, la clandestinidad, forme parte del pasado no me parece un motivo válido para que se siga ocultando. La ley, que casi siempre se considera justa, cae en la paradoja de obligar a las antiguas víctimas a callarse porque «todo aquello se acabó», haciendo que lo que sucedió continúe oculto bajo el mismo silencio de entonces.

Je sens que le récit m'entraîne et impose, à mon insu, un sens, celui du malheur en marche inéluctablement. Je m'oblige à résister au désir de dévaler les jours et les semaines, tâchant de conserver par tous les moyens - la recherche et la notation de détails, l'emploi de l'imparfait, l'analyse des faits - l'interminable lenteur d'un temps qui s'épaississait sans avancer, comme celui des rêves.

J'ai tué ma mère à ce moment-là

Au Japon, on appelle les embryons avortés "mizuko", les enfants de l'eau

Mais, de la même façon que rien n'aurait pu m'empêcher d'avoir un avortement, rien ne pouvait l'arrêter d'en faire. À cause de l'argent naturellement, peut-être aussi d'un sentiment d'être utile aux femmes.

This is the first time I am writing about what happened. Until now, I have found it impossible to do so, even in my diary. I considered writing about it to be a forbidden act that would call for punishment.

Porque por encima de todas las razones sociales y psicológicas que pueda encontrar a lo que viví, hay una de la cual estoy totalmente segura: esas cosas me ocurrieron para que diera cuenta de ellas. Y quizás el verdadero objetivo de mi vida sea este: que mi cuerpo, mis sensaciones y mis pensamientos se conviertan en escritura, es decir, en algo inteligible y general, y que mi existencia pase a disolverse completamente en la cabeza y en la vida de los otros (1999, pp. 114-115)

Girls who abort and unwed mothers from working-class Rouen were handed the same treatment.

love children are the most beautiful of all.' What a terrible statement.

People judged according to the law, they didn't judge the law.

I was intoxicated, wrapped up in wordless intelligence.

Paradoxically, when a new law abolishing discrimination is passed, former victims tend to remain silent on the grounds that "now it's all over." So what went on is surrounded by the same veil of secrecy as before.

I believe that any experience, whatever its nature, has the inalienable right to be chronicled. There is no such thing as a lesser truth.

Whenever I think about that week's vacation in ........., I picture a shimmering stretch of snow and sunshine reaching into the dark recesses of January. No doubt because our primitive memory chooses to portray the past as a basic juxtaposition of light and shade, day and night.

From then on, that Sunday was like a veil that came between me and everything I did. I would play, I would read, I would behave normally but somehow I wasn't there. Everything had become artificial. I had trouble learning my lessons, when before I only needed to read them once to know them by heart. Acutely aware of everything around me and yet unable to concentrate., I lost my insouciance and natural ability to learn. (...) I waited for the scene to be repeated. I was positive it would happen again. I found the presence of customers comforting, dreading the moments when my parents and I were alone, in the evenings and on Sunday afternoons. I was on the alert as soon as they raised their voices; I would scrutinize my father, his expression, his hands. In every sudden silence I would read the omens of disaster. Every day at school I wondered whether, on returning home, I would be faced with the aftermath of a tragedy.

Standing on the platform at Malesherbes Métro station, I realized that I had gone back to the Passage Cardinet in the hope that something might happen to me.

For lunch, I was given a large piece of boiled meat on some tired cabbage leaves with prominent ribs and veins, filling the whole plate. I couldn’t touch it. I felt that I had been served my own placenta.

I was afraid my mother would ask me why my period was late. I was sure she kept an eye on my underwear as she sorted through the dirty linen I would bring her once a month.

I returned to my accommodation on foot. In my diary I wrote: “I am pregnant. It’s a nightmare.

One week later Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. By then I had lost interest in that sort of thing.

the pain I was about to inflict on myself would be nothing compared to the suffering experienced in death camps. This thought gave me courage and heightened my determination. Also, knowing that hundreds of other women had been through the same thing was a comfort to me.

Et, comme d'habitude, il était impossible de déterminer si l'avoirtement étair interdir parce que c'était mail, ou si c'était mal parce que c'était interdit. On jugeait par rapport à la loi, on ne jugeait pas la loi.

I’m no plumber!' This sentence and so many other ones that punctuated this part of my life - ordinary sentences by people who uttered them without thinking - still resonate inside my brain. I wasn't 'expecting' it and nothing can deaden its impact, neither familiarity nor sociopolitical analysis. Fleetingly, I glimpse a man in a white coat with rubber gloves, beating me black and blue, yelling, I'm no plumber! In my mind, this sentence continues to split the world in two, ramming home the distinction between, on the one hand, doctors, on the other, workers or women who abort, between those who rule and those who are ruled.

Girls like me were a waste of time for doctors. With no money and no connections - otherwise we wouldn't accidentally end up on their doorstep - we were a constant reminder of the law that could send them to prison and close down their practice for good. They would never tell us the truth, that they weren't prepared to sacrifice their career for some young doe-eyed damsel foolish enough to get knocked up. Or maybe their sense of duty was such that they would have chosen to die rather than break a law that could cost women their lives. They must have assumed that most women would go through with the abortion anyway, in spite of the ban. All in all, plunging a knitting needle into a womb weighed little next to ruining one's career.

Only now can I visualize the room. It defies analysis. All I can do is sink into it. I feel that the woman who is busying herself between my legs, inserting the speculum, is giving birth to me. At that point I killed my own mother inside me. For many years I saw that room and those curtains the same way I had seen them from my reclining position on the bed. Now it might be a room streaming with light, with Ikea furniture, belonging to a young executive who has bought the whole floor. However, I am convinced that the walls still resonate with the memory of the girls and women who went there to have a probe thrust into them.

I want to become immersed in that part of my life once again and learn what can be found there. This investigation must be seen in the context of a narrative, the only genre able to transcribe an event that was nothing but time flowing inside and outside of me. The diary I kept back then will provide the necessary dates and evidence to establish what happened. Above all I shall endeavour to revisit every single image until I feel that I have physically bonded with it, until a few words spring forth, of which I can say, 'yes, that's it. I shall try to conjure up each of the sentences engraved in my memory which were either so unbearable or so comforting to me at the time that the mere thought of them today engulfs me in a wave of horror or sweetness.

I felt as if the man whom I had half-heartedly agreed to see again had come all the way from Italy with the sole purpose of giving me AIDS.