Words and Facts in Duras' The Ravishing of Lol Stein
1.
One of the most interesting pages, for me, in The Ravishing of Lol Stein is page 106. On this page, Jack and Lol speak for the first time in privacy, and Lol reveals herself to have watched Jack and Tatiana make love. Lol, describing the scene between Jack and Tatiana, states that “Tatiana was naked beneath her dark hair.” This sentence affects Jack profoundly. He describes it “explod[ing],” and “blow[ing] the meaning apart.” He describes himself as “no longer understanding that it means nothing.”
I am interested in Jack’s reaction to this sentence because in some ways it resembles my own reaction to this novel. At times while reading the novel, I “failed to understand” the sentences—specifically the sentences where Tatiana or Lol seemed to suddenly appear in Jack’s presence, even though these appearances do not make logical sense within the novel. Such sentences “blow the meaning apart,” on a logical level, but also suggest something profound: that a linear narrative cannot capture memory, identity or reality.
I find it interesting how the articulation of Tatiana’s nakedness seems to change the “fact” of her nakedness. Jack is taken aback by the “intensity of the sentence,” not by the intensity of the fact. The words have the effect of “transform[ing]” the fact; the words place Tatiana “between Lol Stein and [Jack].” Somehow the words have altered the fact, as Jack describes, “the fact no longer contains the fact.”
Before I write something stupid (if I haven’t done so already), I need to admit that I don’t know what to make of this last line. Like Jack, I find this sentence “impossible to make any sense whatsoever out of it.” If I had to, I would guess that he is getting at the point that words fail to capture meaning; words do not function as neat and tidy signifiers, but become their own “facts.” Lol is not merely describing Tatiana naked, but bringing her “between” them; by describing Tatiana naked, Lol has initiated a new relationship between the three of them. If Jack is suggesting that words are not merely signifiers but their own facts, that would explain the baffling sentences throughout the novel; I am expecting them to signify something, to be representational, but they are merely facts in themselves that may not fit neatly with the other facts.
