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Thérèse and Isabelle
"This is all the raw urgency of female adolescent sexuality: its energy and intensity, the push-pull of its excitement, its dangers and glories, building to a coming explosion."—Kate Millett, author of Mother Millett
"Read it in one sitting. . . . Literally breathless. This first-person torch song for 'the pink brute' reminds us why French schoolgirls are the emblem for naughty passions as literary classics."—Sarah Schulman, author of The Gentrification of the Mind
"School-aged, yet sage in their desires, Thérèse and Isabelle called forth an endless night—a dark and delicate space for them to explore the complexity of their love. I have waited a very long time to slip back into the unexpurgated, delicious darkness with these iconic lesbian lovers."—Amber Dawn, author of How Poetry Saved My Life
Thérèse and Isabelle is the tale of two boarding school girls in love. In 1966 when it was originally published in France, the text was censored because of its explicit depiction of young homosexuality. With this publication, the original, unexpurgated text—a stunning literary portrayal of female desire and sexuality—is available to a US audience for the first time. Included is an afterword by Michael Lucey, professor of French and comparative literature at the University of California, Berkeley.
Violette Leduc (1907–1972) has been referred to as "France's greatest unknown writer." Admired by Jean Genet, Nathalie Sarraute, and Albert Camus, Leduc was championed by Simone de Beauvoir when she published her scandalous autobiography La Batarde (1964).
176 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1954
151 people are currently reading
4378 people want to read
About the author
Violette Leduc
23 books243 followersViolette Leduc was born in Arras, Pas de Calais, France, the illegitimate daughter of a servant girl, Berthe. In Valenciennes, the young Violette spent most of her childhood suffering from an ugly self-image and from her mother's hostility and overprotectiveness.
Her formal education, begun in 1913, was interrupted by World War I. After the war, she went to a boarding school, the Collège de Douai, where she experienced lesbian affairs with a classmate and a music instructor who was fired over the incident.
In 1926, Leduc moved to Paris and enrolled in the Lycée Racine. That same year, she failed her baccalaureate exam and began working as a telephone operator and secretary at Plon publishers.
In 1932 she met Maurice Sachs and Simone de Beauvoir, who encouraged her to write. Her first novel L'Asphyxie (In the Prison of Her Skin) was published by Albert Camus for Éditions Gallimard and earned her praise from Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean Cocteau and Jean Genet.
Leduc's best-known book, the memoir La Bâtarde, was published in 1964. It nearly won the Prix Goncourt and quickly became a bestseller. She went on to write eight more books, including La Folie en tête (Mad in Pursuit), the second part of her literary autobiography.
Her formal education, begun in 1913, was interrupted by World War I. After the war, she went to a boarding school, the Collège de Douai, where she experienced lesbian affairs with a classmate and a music instructor who was fired over the incident.
In 1926, Leduc moved to Paris and enrolled in the Lycée Racine. That same year, she failed her baccalaureate exam and began working as a telephone operator and secretary at Plon publishers.
In 1932 she met Maurice Sachs and Simone de Beauvoir, who encouraged her to write. Her first novel L'Asphyxie (In the Prison of Her Skin) was published by Albert Camus for Éditions Gallimard and earned her praise from Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean Cocteau and Jean Genet.
Leduc's best-known book, the memoir La Bâtarde, was published in 1964. It nearly won the Prix Goncourt and quickly became a bestseller. She went on to write eight more books, including La Folie en tête (Mad in Pursuit), the second part of her literary autobiography.
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Displaying 1 - 29 of 286 reviews
July 28, 2016
In the mid-1950s, Violette Leduc wrote a novel called Ravages. The first hundred and fifty pages comprised a semi-autobiographical depiction of two schoolgirls in a torrid lesbian relationship, which Leduc said she hoped would be ‘no more shocking than Mme Bloom’. Yes they said Yes it is more shocking yes. Her publishers refused to print it, and the novel appeared without its opening section in 1955 (and did very well). Ten years later, a different publisher agreed to print the excised material as a stand-alone novella, although they still insisted on certain cuts for legality: this was the original 1966 form of Thérèse et Isabelle, the fully uncensored version of which did not appear in French until the year 2000, nearly thirty years after its author had died.
It is very explicit in places, but also deeply poetic. Leduc said her aim was to ‘render as minutely as possible the sensations experienced during physical love’ and while at times this feels like a slightly limited goal, she succeeds at it brilliantly. In terms of purely physical sensations, this short book contains the best sex scenes I've ever read. And yet they're not all that sexy – to me, anyway – because it is purely physical sensation: there is almost no emotional background, no build-up, no characterisation of either Thérèse or Isabelle that goes beyond each girl's overwhelming desire for the other.
Nevertheless the language is remarkable. Leduc has a tendency to come out with these gnomic, existential remarks, which don't always make perfect sense but which demand to be quoted for their sheer inventive pleasure:
At times these lapidary flourishes work very well; at other times, they topple over into high-flown nonsense (‘I was seized by the glove of infinity’, and much more in the same vein). There is also something a bit…oppressive about the tone for my tastes, with zero sense of humour and much earnestness. Admittedly these characters are only seventeen, and sex does tend to feel like the end of the world at that age, but still, wow!, talk about intense. Just hours after hooking up, Thérèse is already fantasizing about cutting off the hands of everyone else that touches her new lover, while Isabelle is raising the prospect of the two of them jumping off a cliff together so that neither outlives the other. It made me laugh because of the whole running joke in the LGBT world that gay women are super clingy super fast (you remember the classic gag: what does a lesbian bring to a second date? A U-Haul). At the same time I was impressed by it, just because of how few writers are attempting this sort of thing now.
I became fixated on the pronouns. They were still referring to each other by the formal vous until nearly halfway through the story! It was blowing my mind. You would think by the time you're knuckle-deep inside another person that one of you would have coughed politely and said, ‘Actually, do you mind if we tutoie each other?’ It's one of those little things that make me realise how much mental space is separating me from this world of 1950s provincial France.
All the more reason to experience it, though. The book is short and it builds, like a good quickie, to an intense and powerful climax where all of Leduc's characteristics work to best effect. An orgasm is captured in words like you would hardly believe possible (in a riot of synaesthesia: ‘my eyes heard, my ears saw’), and there are several more flashes of unexpected simile (Thérèse, trying to learn how to give oral sex, describes her gestures as feeling ‘like a scratched record repeating itself’ – this is fantastic).
For post-climactic comedown, Leduc leaves us with two final sentences that are the more devastating for being so simple after all the poetry that has gone before. It's a beautiful piece of work – limited in what it sets out to do, perhaps, and a little overblown at times, but nonetheless studded with frantic and extraordinary delights.
(Dec 2013)
It is very explicit in places, but also deeply poetic. Leduc said her aim was to ‘render as minutely as possible the sensations experienced during physical love’ and while at times this feels like a slightly limited goal, she succeeds at it brilliantly. In terms of purely physical sensations, this short book contains the best sex scenes I've ever read. And yet they're not all that sexy – to me, anyway – because it is purely physical sensation: there is almost no emotional background, no build-up, no characterisation of either Thérèse or Isabelle that goes beyond each girl's overwhelming desire for the other.
Nevertheless the language is remarkable. Leduc has a tendency to come out with these gnomic, existential remarks, which don't always make perfect sense but which demand to be quoted for their sheer inventive pleasure:
La caresse est au frisson ce que le crépuscule est à l'éclair.
(The caress is to the shiver what dusk is to the lightning-bolt.)
Quand on aime on est toujours sur le quai d'une gare.
(When one is in love, one is always on a railway-station platform.)
Je la regarde comme je regarde la mer le soir quand je ne la vois plus.
(I watch her the way I watch the sea in the evening when I can no longer see it.)
Ma bouche rencontra sa bouche comme la feuille morte la terre.
(My mouth met her mouth as a dead leaf meets the earth.)
J'entrais dans sa bouche comme on entre dans la guerre
(I entered her mouth the way you enter a war.)
At times these lapidary flourishes work very well; at other times, they topple over into high-flown nonsense (‘I was seized by the glove of infinity’, and much more in the same vein). There is also something a bit…oppressive about the tone for my tastes, with zero sense of humour and much earnestness. Admittedly these characters are only seventeen, and sex does tend to feel like the end of the world at that age, but still, wow!, talk about intense. Just hours after hooking up, Thérèse is already fantasizing about cutting off the hands of everyone else that touches her new lover, while Isabelle is raising the prospect of the two of them jumping off a cliff together so that neither outlives the other. It made me laugh because of the whole running joke in the LGBT world that gay women are super clingy super fast (you remember the classic gag: what does a lesbian bring to a second date? A U-Haul). At the same time I was impressed by it, just because of how few writers are attempting this sort of thing now.
I became fixated on the pronouns. They were still referring to each other by the formal vous until nearly halfway through the story! It was blowing my mind. You would think by the time you're knuckle-deep inside another person that one of you would have coughed politely and said, ‘Actually, do you mind if we tutoie each other?’ It's one of those little things that make me realise how much mental space is separating me from this world of 1950s provincial France.
All the more reason to experience it, though. The book is short and it builds, like a good quickie, to an intense and powerful climax where all of Leduc's characteristics work to best effect. An orgasm is captured in words like you would hardly believe possible (in a riot of synaesthesia: ‘my eyes heard, my ears saw’), and there are several more flashes of unexpected simile (Thérèse, trying to learn how to give oral sex, describes her gestures as feeling ‘like a scratched record repeating itself’ – this is fantastic).
For post-climactic comedown, Leduc leaves us with two final sentences that are the more devastating for being so simple after all the poetry that has gone before. It's a beautiful piece of work – limited in what it sets out to do, perhaps, and a little overblown at times, but nonetheless studded with frantic and extraordinary delights.
(Dec 2013)
January 24, 2022
Un des plus beaux textes lus depuis longtemps.
La poésie de Violette Leduc est délicieusement suggestive, spectrale, rugueuse, et d’un érotisme suffoquant.
L’une des plus belles descriptions de plaisir et d’orgasme féminin jamais lue de ma vie, aussi.
Une ode brûlante aux amours féminines passionnelles!
Extraits:
« Isabelle arrivait du pays des météores, des bouleversements, des sinistres, des ravages. »
« J’assouplis les trépassés, je suis ointe jusqu’aux os avec les huiles païennes »
« Je me détachais de mon squelette, je flottais sur ma poussière. Le plaisir fut d’abord rigide, difficile à soutenir. La visite commença dans un pied, elle se poursuivit dans la chair redevenue candide. Nous avons oublié notre doigt dans l’ancien monde, nous avons été béantes de lumière, nous avons eu un irruption de félicité. Nos jambes broyées de délice, nos entrailles illuminées… »
Beauté!!
La poésie de Violette Leduc est délicieusement suggestive, spectrale, rugueuse, et d’un érotisme suffoquant.
L’une des plus belles descriptions de plaisir et d’orgasme féminin jamais lue de ma vie, aussi.
Une ode brûlante aux amours féminines passionnelles!
Extraits:
« Isabelle arrivait du pays des météores, des bouleversements, des sinistres, des ravages. »
« J’assouplis les trépassés, je suis ointe jusqu’aux os avec les huiles païennes »
« Je me détachais de mon squelette, je flottais sur ma poussière. Le plaisir fut d’abord rigide, difficile à soutenir. La visite commença dans un pied, elle se poursuivit dans la chair redevenue candide. Nous avons oublié notre doigt dans l’ancien monde, nous avons été béantes de lumière, nous avons eu un irruption de félicité. Nos jambes broyées de délice, nos entrailles illuminées… »
Beauté!!
November 26, 2023
Any worries I had that this would turn into some cheesy piece of soft-core porn like the absolutely terrible Emmanuelle were taken away once I learned that Leduc was championed by the great intellectual writer Simone de Beauvoir, and had other fans of her work like Albert Camus and Jean Genet. This, compared to a pile of crap like Emmanuelle, was like a sensual work of art. Leduc was, before really getting the interest of the general pubic, a true writer's writer. I read the full uncensored version of Thérèse et Isabelle (a censored version was understandable back in the day, as it was as one the first novles to explore feminine sexuality with such sincerity and intensity it was labelled as scandalous) but I have to say, in todays world, it's more of a 15 certificate that it is x-rated. Yes, it does get explicit in places; yes there are many a scene involving Thérèse and Isabelle enjoying Each other's bodies during a boarding school romance, but at no point did it ever feel sensationalized or smutty. It was to me just a beautiful piece of erotica, that deeply moved me in ways I didn't think possible. The writing style, which I admired, contained bursts of very short sentences that reminded me of some of Marguerite Duras's work. Apparently there is a really good English translation, but I say, if one can read in French, it's the sort of book that benefits doing so.
January 28, 2018
This is an autobiographical French novella about a schoolgirl lesbian relationship that was written and censored in the 1950s. In present day, we're getting the full text published as intended. I appreciate the courage it took to write the story and I'm glad to get a slice of it now.
As an American reader, I first wondered if the translation was stiff or inaccurate because the word choices and metaphors seemed odd. There's a certain jarring quality to the read. Then I realized that, no, it was more the style of the author's writing in the first place. Somewhere along the way, I caught the rhythm of the prose, though, and went with it.
The story of the relationship is an odd mix: part metaphor, part every day description with poetry and traditional narrative slammed together and interwoven from sentence to sentence. Because of that, in some ways it's hard to follow. Not in the mind numbing academic way but that our brain needs to reconcile the non-explicit, unsaid action and the metaphor, to come up with the layered meaning.
What is absolutely clear, though, is the passion felt by this young couple. In the end, I came away understanding a full story and, I think, the evocative intention of the writing even if I didn't quite get the lines used at the time.
The book does not shy from being sexually explicit but the metaphors act as purple prose on steroids.
There's definitely a lyricism and beauty to the text.
I'm sure those who have a love for poetry or those who are interested in historical accounts of lesbian narratives would enjoy this a great deal. For me, not a follower of poetry, it ended up being an interesting and better than okay read.
3.5 stars
As an American reader, I first wondered if the translation was stiff or inaccurate because the word choices and metaphors seemed odd. There's a certain jarring quality to the read. Then I realized that, no, it was more the style of the author's writing in the first place. Somewhere along the way, I caught the rhythm of the prose, though, and went with it.
The story of the relationship is an odd mix: part metaphor, part every day description with poetry and traditional narrative slammed together and interwoven from sentence to sentence. Because of that, in some ways it's hard to follow. Not in the mind numbing academic way but that our brain needs to reconcile the non-explicit, unsaid action and the metaphor, to come up with the layered meaning.
What is absolutely clear, though, is the passion felt by this young couple. In the end, I came away understanding a full story and, I think, the evocative intention of the writing even if I didn't quite get the lines used at the time.
The book does not shy from being sexually explicit but the metaphors act as purple prose on steroids.
There's definitely a lyricism and beauty to the text.
I'm sure those who have a love for poetry or those who are interested in historical accounts of lesbian narratives would enjoy this a great deal. For me, not a follower of poetry, it ended up being an interesting and better than okay read.
3.5 stars
July 31, 2023
once again c'est juste grandiose je pourrais mourir pour la pieuvre de Thérèse, l'amour qui est comme le quai d'une gare, le soleil des cheveux, la peau de sel et les miroirs à cinq doigts et toutes ces phrases dont je ne sais absolument pas ce qu'elles veulent dire mais que je comprends parfaitement. "La caresse est au frisson ce que le crépuscule est à l'éclair" ? Foutrement aucune idée de ce que ça signifie. Mais c'est vrai, et ça je le sais.
November 7, 2022
(2.5, rounded to 3)
Content Warning: homophobia.
Thérèse and Isabelle are two schoolgirls, attending the same boarding school in France. Though Thérèse has convinced herself that she hates Isabelle, she is also fascinated by her, spending much of her time thinking of Isabelle's beautiful flaxen hair. After an encounter one night, the two girls fall hopelessly into a deep, erotic love, knowing that it can't last and yet holding onto each other with remarkable violence.
Originally published in 1966, Thérèse and Isabelle was heavily censored for its frank depictions of love between women, not to mention its explicit eroticism. I've wanted to read this for a long time; it's considered a bit of an obscure classic of lesbian literature, and Violette Leduc is such a fascinating person -- everything I read about her intrigues me more. While the content does include many sex scenes between the two girls, it's not explicit like we think of today. You can turn on HBO and see worse. At the time, in fact, there were actually far more graphic erotic novels, many of them also challenged (Miller's Topic of Cancer and Burroughs' Naked Lunch come to mind), but Leduc's is singular in the fact that it depicts female pleasure with no qualms.
For the reasons I've listed above, it's worth a read, but my main problem is simply that the language is so abstract that it takes away entirely from the purpose of the story. There's more of a focus on the emotional aspect of their sexual relationship than the actual physical action, which elevates the depth of feeling when you are reading about them. It's the kind of obsessive love that only young women can truly understand, a desire to consume and be consumed that leaves all else either nonexistent or simply unimportant.
But back to the language: this doesn't seem to be an error of translation, but rather simply Leduc's style, carving out such obtuse metaphors that it sometimes took me several rereadings of a sentence to truly grasp what it is that Leduc is trying to say. It isn't that I'm unused to obscure or unique styles of prose, but in my opinion, some passages are actually painful to get through because it feels as if they are saying so much without saying anything at all.
I enjoyed the concept of this story more than its actual content, but nonetheless, I do think it's worth a read if you are particularly interested in Leduc (as this is based off not only her own experience as a lesbian, but specifically her experience being in love with another schoolgirl during her adolescence), but the style certainly won't be for everyone.
Content Warning: homophobia.
Thérèse and Isabelle are two schoolgirls, attending the same boarding school in France. Though Thérèse has convinced herself that she hates Isabelle, she is also fascinated by her, spending much of her time thinking of Isabelle's beautiful flaxen hair. After an encounter one night, the two girls fall hopelessly into a deep, erotic love, knowing that it can't last and yet holding onto each other with remarkable violence.
Originally published in 1966, Thérèse and Isabelle was heavily censored for its frank depictions of love between women, not to mention its explicit eroticism. I've wanted to read this for a long time; it's considered a bit of an obscure classic of lesbian literature, and Violette Leduc is such a fascinating person -- everything I read about her intrigues me more. While the content does include many sex scenes between the two girls, it's not explicit like we think of today. You can turn on HBO and see worse. At the time, in fact, there were actually far more graphic erotic novels, many of them also challenged (Miller's Topic of Cancer and Burroughs' Naked Lunch come to mind), but Leduc's is singular in the fact that it depicts female pleasure with no qualms.
For the reasons I've listed above, it's worth a read, but my main problem is simply that the language is so abstract that it takes away entirely from the purpose of the story. There's more of a focus on the emotional aspect of their sexual relationship than the actual physical action, which elevates the depth of feeling when you are reading about them. It's the kind of obsessive love that only young women can truly understand, a desire to consume and be consumed that leaves all else either nonexistent or simply unimportant.
But back to the language: this doesn't seem to be an error of translation, but rather simply Leduc's style, carving out such obtuse metaphors that it sometimes took me several rereadings of a sentence to truly grasp what it is that Leduc is trying to say. It isn't that I'm unused to obscure or unique styles of prose, but in my opinion, some passages are actually painful to get through because it feels as if they are saying so much without saying anything at all.
I enjoyed the concept of this story more than its actual content, but nonetheless, I do think it's worth a read if you are particularly interested in Leduc (as this is based off not only her own experience as a lesbian, but specifically her experience being in love with another schoolgirl during her adolescence), but the style certainly won't be for everyone.
November 2, 2024
4.5/5
purée de papayes c’est tellement bien écrit lisez violette leduc
purée de papayes c’est tellement bien écrit lisez violette leduc
February 23, 2025
Questo romanzo ha una storia editoriale molto complessa, fatta di rimozioni ed epurazioni e censura. In questa versione che ne restituisce l’aspetto iniziale, data alle stampe quasi trent’anni dopo la morte della sua autrice, è ancora facile intuire per quale motivo abbia incontrato tanti ostacoli quando venne proposto per la prima volta a metà del Novecento, poiché, in effetti, ancora oggi qualcuno potrebbe levarcisi contro con lo scudo ipocrita del moralismo. Andiamo sempre tanto avanti per poi accorgerci di star girando intorno ed essere tornati al punto di partenza.
In uno stile densissimo di metafore e similitudini, che dissimulano con l’allusione poetica l’aspetto più terreno della sessualità senza però comprometterne affatto il significato, Leduc ripercorre la storia, in buona parte autobiografica, di una bruciante iniziazione erotica e amorosa tra due ragazze. Le pagine sgocciolano voluttà: le protagoniste si cercano la notte, per frugarsi, mordersi e riempirsi, sfuggono ai loro doveri per sfregarsi l’un l’altra e si scopano con impazienza e fame. Tutto, qui dentro, è un manifesto necessario di quel desiderio femminile che in bocca gli uomini – ma non solo – viene spesso negato, sminuito o infamato.
Lo stile, a tratti eccessivo nell’inseguire lo svirgolo poetico, mi ha un po’ annoiato e il colpo di grazia, per me, è arrivato con l’eccessiva melensaggine degli scambi di battute tra Thérèse e Isabelle. Dialoghi pure legittimi, poiché scambiati tra due adolesceme infoiate, ma parecchio oltre i miei limiti di sopportazione – è che pure quando l’adolescemo ero io, non ho mai trovato alcuna attrattiva nel sesso e, ora che scricchiolo, mi è ancora più indigesto. Così sebbene alcune pagine mi abbiano rapito e fuor di me comunque ne riconosco il valore letterario e l’importanza sociale, non posso negare di averlo interrotto a metà più volte per leggere altro, nonostante la brevità.
Colpa mia che l’ho letto per ostinazione, perché nonostante abbia approfondito molta letteratura queer sono lacunoso con quella lesbica e perché ogni tanto mi diverto a leggere narrativa erotica solo per verificare se sono ancora esangue (temo, comunque, che mi piaccia farlo solo quando è, all’opposto rispetto al caso di Leduc, talmente mal scritta da essere trash).
Chiudo con un’impressione, che secondo me qualcuno potrebbe approfondire scrivendoci una tesi – oppure no, che cazzo ne so io che sono scappato dall’università: per molti aspetti, a partire dalla comune ambientazione collegiale, mi è parso che Thérèse e Isabelle fosse l’opposto speculare di un incastro quasi perfetto con I beati anni del castigo di Fleur Jaeggy.
Dove Jaeggy è tagliente e austera, Leduc è smussata e cedevole; dove Jaeggy ossessiona per distacco, Leduc lo fa per contatto; dove Jaeggy trascina per anni un’impressione quasi la passione fosse la fiammella tremula di una candela, Leduc arde d’immediatezza quasi incendiaria; dove Jaeggy è mente, Leduc è corpo. Eppure entrambe, con stili opposti, si appellano spessissimo al non detto e alla concatenazione per associazioni non razionali, ed entrambe raccontano il medesimo taciuto desiderio femminile.
In uno stile densissimo di metafore e similitudini, che dissimulano con l’allusione poetica l’aspetto più terreno della sessualità senza però comprometterne affatto il significato, Leduc ripercorre la storia, in buona parte autobiografica, di una bruciante iniziazione erotica e amorosa tra due ragazze. Le pagine sgocciolano voluttà: le protagoniste si cercano la notte, per frugarsi, mordersi e riempirsi, sfuggono ai loro doveri per sfregarsi l’un l’altra e si scopano con impazienza e fame. Tutto, qui dentro, è un manifesto necessario di quel desiderio femminile che in bocca gli uomini – ma non solo – viene spesso negato, sminuito o infamato.
Lo stile, a tratti eccessivo nell’inseguire lo svirgolo poetico, mi ha un po’ annoiato e il colpo di grazia, per me, è arrivato con l’eccessiva melensaggine degli scambi di battute tra Thérèse e Isabelle. Dialoghi pure legittimi, poiché scambiati tra due adolesceme infoiate, ma parecchio oltre i miei limiti di sopportazione – è che pure quando l’adolescemo ero io, non ho mai trovato alcuna attrattiva nel sesso e, ora che scricchiolo, mi è ancora più indigesto. Così sebbene alcune pagine mi abbiano rapito e fuor di me comunque ne riconosco il valore letterario e l’importanza sociale, non posso negare di averlo interrotto a metà più volte per leggere altro, nonostante la brevità.
Colpa mia che l’ho letto per ostinazione, perché nonostante abbia approfondito molta letteratura queer sono lacunoso con quella lesbica e perché ogni tanto mi diverto a leggere narrativa erotica solo per verificare se sono ancora esangue (temo, comunque, che mi piaccia farlo solo quando è, all’opposto rispetto al caso di Leduc, talmente mal scritta da essere trash).
Chiudo con un’impressione, che secondo me qualcuno potrebbe approfondire scrivendoci una tesi – oppure no, che cazzo ne so io che sono scappato dall’università: per molti aspetti, a partire dalla comune ambientazione collegiale, mi è parso che Thérèse e Isabelle fosse l’opposto speculare di un incastro quasi perfetto con I beati anni del castigo di Fleur Jaeggy.
Dove Jaeggy è tagliente e austera, Leduc è smussata e cedevole; dove Jaeggy ossessiona per distacco, Leduc lo fa per contatto; dove Jaeggy trascina per anni un’impressione quasi la passione fosse la fiammella tremula di una candela, Leduc arde d’immediatezza quasi incendiaria; dove Jaeggy è mente, Leduc è corpo. Eppure entrambe, con stili opposti, si appellano spessissimo al non detto e alla concatenazione per associazioni non razionali, ed entrambe raccontano il medesimo taciuto desiderio femminile.
July 25, 2022
this is so melodramatic it makes me feel better about myself
more importantly, now more than ever i wish my french was better because i feel a lot was lost in translation and it definitely impacted how i perceived and experienced the book - some of the more beautiful passages really indicated the potential of the book
more importantly, now more than ever i wish my french was better because i feel a lot was lost in translation and it definitely impacted how i perceived and experienced the book - some of the more beautiful passages really indicated the potential of the book
November 20, 2022
"Incontrandoti ho trovato un senso per il mio niente."
Illegale quanto sia scritto bene
Illegale quanto sia scritto bene
June 29, 2024
2.5☆ - takes 'melodramatic lesbians' to new heights
heavily inspired by the author’s own unrequited love for simone de beauvoir, ‘therese and isabelle’ is a story of consuming first loves and pulsing female adolescent sexuality as we follow two boarding school girls as they learn to act on their desire for one another.
i know that separating the art from the artist is a long-contested discourse, but i think that taking violette leduc’s life into consideration really contextualises this novel. ‘therese and isballe’ was censored before it was even released due to its graphic and shameless celebration of lesbian love. the author herself underwent electroshock therapy, faced constant rejection despite emerging progressive queer novels and writers at the time in paris, and was generally marginalised for being a female writer who explicitly and defiantly spotlighted lesbian love and female desire within her work. the publishers had, in de beauvoir’s words, “cut her tongue out” by refusing to publish this novel in its entirety.
there are many things this book does right. as a queer novel, it embodies the persistent, relentless fear and anxiety of being queer exceptionally well: feeling like the world is out to get you. it also embodies the beauty, wonder, and passion that come with sapphic love and desire. initially, i felt trepidation about a novel following schoolgirls and their desires, but this book is so much more than a highly sexual love affair. i ended up being quite moved by this story; the ending left me feeling rather empty and sad. a reminder that same-sex love in this period is fleeting and rare and can be ripped away from you.
all that aside, the construction of this novel didn’t really work for me. the best way i could describe this writing is ornate. it’s pretty on paper, decorative, but intangible. it may be that the translation was funky, but the metaphors and descriptions in this book didn’t always make sense or mean much. the prose reads as clunky and abstract in a way that was distracting and tedious, rather than engrossing. the narration really loses itself in overblown writing. although leduc succeeds in her aim of ‘trying to render as accurately as possible, as minutely as possible, the sensations felt in physical love’, the meandering writing style really redacted from this novel and my enjoyment of it.
that paired with the melodramatic nature of these two girls and their feelings for one another (which to some degree makes sense. they are schoolgirls in love for the first time, and teenagers are dramatic. but it felt dramatic to the point of nonsense at times), this book got boring really quick.
overall, a text i admire as a fearless, integral piece of sapphic fiction that deserves recognition due to the circumstances in which this novel was born, and for its persistence to exist in an industry so set against female, queer voices. it just didn’t quite work for my personal taste as a reader.
to end with a quote from the endnote —
heavily inspired by the author’s own unrequited love for simone de beauvoir, ‘therese and isabelle’ is a story of consuming first loves and pulsing female adolescent sexuality as we follow two boarding school girls as they learn to act on their desire for one another.
i know that separating the art from the artist is a long-contested discourse, but i think that taking violette leduc’s life into consideration really contextualises this novel. ‘therese and isballe’ was censored before it was even released due to its graphic and shameless celebration of lesbian love. the author herself underwent electroshock therapy, faced constant rejection despite emerging progressive queer novels and writers at the time in paris, and was generally marginalised for being a female writer who explicitly and defiantly spotlighted lesbian love and female desire within her work. the publishers had, in de beauvoir’s words, “cut her tongue out” by refusing to publish this novel in its entirety.
there are many things this book does right. as a queer novel, it embodies the persistent, relentless fear and anxiety of being queer exceptionally well: feeling like the world is out to get you. it also embodies the beauty, wonder, and passion that come with sapphic love and desire. initially, i felt trepidation about a novel following schoolgirls and their desires, but this book is so much more than a highly sexual love affair. i ended up being quite moved by this story; the ending left me feeling rather empty and sad. a reminder that same-sex love in this period is fleeting and rare and can be ripped away from you.
all that aside, the construction of this novel didn’t really work for me. the best way i could describe this writing is ornate. it’s pretty on paper, decorative, but intangible. it may be that the translation was funky, but the metaphors and descriptions in this book didn’t always make sense or mean much. the prose reads as clunky and abstract in a way that was distracting and tedious, rather than engrossing. the narration really loses itself in overblown writing. although leduc succeeds in her aim of ‘trying to render as accurately as possible, as minutely as possible, the sensations felt in physical love’, the meandering writing style really redacted from this novel and my enjoyment of it.
that paired with the melodramatic nature of these two girls and their feelings for one another (which to some degree makes sense. they are schoolgirls in love for the first time, and teenagers are dramatic. but it felt dramatic to the point of nonsense at times), this book got boring really quick.
overall, a text i admire as a fearless, integral piece of sapphic fiction that deserves recognition due to the circumstances in which this novel was born, and for its persistence to exist in an industry so set against female, queer voices. it just didn’t quite work for my personal taste as a reader.
to end with a quote from the endnote —
’Virginia Woolf foresaw Leduc’s position, asserting that if a woman were to write accurately and precisely about her feelings, she would find no man— that is, no one at all— to publish her. Now we have Thérèse et Isabelle as a whole work of art, with its original coherence and trajectory at last complete.’
September 18, 2023
Breathless and gushing, as first love should be. It is a smothering, clinging time of youth where all of the light of the world escapes from the various holes in your partner’s body. Mine was named Shannon; older, beautiful, inculcating. “I could list the detail of everything you ever wore or said or how you stood the day.” Indeed. That was 32-years ago, but I can barely remember yesterday. There is a protracted, nearly cannibalistic baptism in our first ‘loves’ that we do well to keep as the gifts they ultimately are—it’s how we lot first found indication of the possibility of having our own value. A million kisses, Shannon, wherever you are, and thank you.
Leduc is simply a master at capturing the torrent of ache that’s structural to first love. This caught me as particularly, perfectly adolescent and so, so lovely:
“I contemplated her, I was remembering her in this present, I had her beside me from last moment to last moment. When you are in love you are always on a railway platform.”
Until then they, or you, or them, or it, or abcde, are taken by another, shinier lure and is gone. And the atoms tumble. If you were me, this meant tears in beers and surety that I’d loved and lost my one chance at anything at all. I was 15 and purple. Time’s proven me both right and wrong; I have never loved so completely or under so hypnotic a spell again. No one ever can—it’s one of life’s greatest awakenings, and also what starts the process of developing our hearts’ scar tissue needed to function within the terror gauntlet of the larger social-romantic bloodsport of modern life.
As for our heroines, I have only this to offer. Thérèse and Isabelle, this one is for you:
“It's all we're skilled in
We will be shipbuilding
With all the will in the world
Diving for dear life
When we could be diving for pearls
When we could be diving for pearls
When we could be diving for pearls”
Previous readers will know the pearl to which the Good Ship Robert Wyatt refers.
Leduc is simply a master at capturing the torrent of ache that’s structural to first love. This caught me as particularly, perfectly adolescent and so, so lovely:
“I contemplated her, I was remembering her in this present, I had her beside me from last moment to last moment. When you are in love you are always on a railway platform.”
Until then they, or you, or them, or it, or abcde, are taken by another, shinier lure and is gone. And the atoms tumble. If you were me, this meant tears in beers and surety that I’d loved and lost my one chance at anything at all. I was 15 and purple. Time’s proven me both right and wrong; I have never loved so completely or under so hypnotic a spell again. No one ever can—it’s one of life’s greatest awakenings, and also what starts the process of developing our hearts’ scar tissue needed to function within the terror gauntlet of the larger social-romantic bloodsport of modern life.
As for our heroines, I have only this to offer. Thérèse and Isabelle, this one is for you:
“It's all we're skilled in
We will be shipbuilding
With all the will in the world
Diving for dear life
When we could be diving for pearls
When we could be diving for pearls
When we could be diving for pearls”
Previous readers will know the pearl to which the Good Ship Robert Wyatt refers.
October 4, 2015
I wasn't so sure about this at the start and even half-way through I was like What the hell is going on with this language? Is this a bad translation or does the author just play by her own rules? There are some great sentences and descriptions strewn throughout but then they're followed by something so bonkers, it felt constantly jolting. In sort of a Kathy Acker/William Burroughs/Bataille kind of style. But it also had a Gertrude Stein poetry vibe strumming through it. About 2/3 of the way through this "underground French classic" I was won over and just let the author do whatever the heck she wanted. It basically reads like one epic sex scene between two schoolgirls in 1920s France (the book was first published in the 50s). The afterwords made me further curious about this author (who, go figure, was often called "dramatic" and "difficult") and her often censored work. Now, I want to watch the movie about her life too. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2976920/
Therese and Isabelle is a memorable burst of dramatic erotic tension.
Therese and Isabelle is a memorable burst of dramatic erotic tension.
July 16, 2022
It’s the pink brute. I love it, it devours me. I adore it without illusions.
Written in breathless, impressionistic prose, this love story takes place over a period of only a few days. Thérèse and Isabelle are two girls attending boarding school in France during the 1950s. Once they realize their attraction to one another, looking for opportunities to be alone together in the busy boarding school becomes their singular focus. Leduc’s writing is fast-paced and experimental, euphemistic yet remarkably frank in its discussion of bodies. Some might feel that this style approaches purple prose, but I personally admired how eloquently Leduc draws so many abstract connections in Thérèse’s mind. This book is emotionally turbulent, full of feelings of joy, frustration, and shame. A subtle message for the reader underlies the otherwise sensual and highly interior narrative: “I had disappeared because I could not love her in public: the scandal I had spared us would fall upon me alone.”
Be sure to read the notes on censorship by Carlos Jansiti and the afterword by Michael Lucey. They contain moving and illuminating discussions of the life of Violette Leduc, a well-connected but ultimately unsuccessful bisexual author who broke new ground in the French literary world.
Written in breathless, impressionistic prose, this love story takes place over a period of only a few days. Thérèse and Isabelle are two girls attending boarding school in France during the 1950s. Once they realize their attraction to one another, looking for opportunities to be alone together in the busy boarding school becomes their singular focus. Leduc’s writing is fast-paced and experimental, euphemistic yet remarkably frank in its discussion of bodies. Some might feel that this style approaches purple prose, but I personally admired how eloquently Leduc draws so many abstract connections in Thérèse’s mind. This book is emotionally turbulent, full of feelings of joy, frustration, and shame. A subtle message for the reader underlies the otherwise sensual and highly interior narrative: “I had disappeared because I could not love her in public: the scandal I had spared us would fall upon me alone.”
Be sure to read the notes on censorship by Carlos Jansiti and the afterword by Michael Lucey. They contain moving and illuminating discussions of the life of Violette Leduc, a well-connected but ultimately unsuccessful bisexual author who broke new ground in the French literary world.
February 11, 2016
From Therese and Isabelle (p. 197):
My blood rushed toward her in jubilation. I turned the flashlight on.
Her pubic hair was not twinkling; it had grown thoughtful. I embalmed Isabelle with my lips, with my hands. Pale sleeping girls were breathing all around her; shades hungry for pallor whirled above her. I opened her lips and killed myself before looking. My face was touching it, my face moistening it. I began to make love to it out of plain friendship.
"Better than that."
I could not do more.
Isabelle thrust my face deep.
"You shall speak, you shall say it," she said.
There was a collision of clouds in my intestines. My brain was wild with greed.
"You are beautiful..."
I was picturing her. I was not lying.
Two petals were trying to swallow me. It was as if the eye of the flashlight saw better because it was the first to see.
My blood rushed toward her in jubilation. I turned the flashlight on.
Her pubic hair was not twinkling; it had grown thoughtful. I embalmed Isabelle with my lips, with my hands. Pale sleeping girls were breathing all around her; shades hungry for pallor whirled above her. I opened her lips and killed myself before looking. My face was touching it, my face moistening it. I began to make love to it out of plain friendship.
"Better than that."
I could not do more.
Isabelle thrust my face deep.
"You shall speak, you shall say it," she said.
There was a collision of clouds in my intestines. My brain was wild with greed.
"You are beautiful..."
I was picturing her. I was not lying.
Two petals were trying to swallow me. It was as if the eye of the flashlight saw better because it was the first to see.
May 29, 2025
Mais quelle claque!!
Décidément 2025, quelle année de lecture pour moi! Je me rends compte que ce qui peut faire la différence à mes yeux entre un bon bouquin et un excellent ouvrage c’est véritablement la plume.
Et dans ce livre, une plume poétique, ça transpire l’érotisme mais c’est doux, universel, c’est la fusion entre du magma et de la dentelle.
Violette Leduc, c��est l’autrice qui réussit à décrire des émotions sur lesquelles je n’arrive pas à mettre de mots.
« Les petites lumières dans ma peau convoitèrent les petites lumières dans la peau d'Isabelle, l'air se raréfia. Nous ne pouvions rien sans les météores qui nous entraîneraient dans leur course, qui nous jetteraient l'une dans l'autre.
Nous dépendions des forces irrésistibles.
Nous avons perdu conscience mais nous avons opposé notre bloc à la nuit du dortoir. La mort nous ramenait à la vie : nous sommes rentrées dans plusieurs ports. Je ne voyais pas, je n'entendais pas, pourtant j'avais des sens de visionnaire. Nous nous sommes enlacées : un miracle s'éteignait au lieu de rayonner. »
« Ma sueur, ma salive, le manque d'espace, ma condition de galérienne condamnée à jouir sans trêve depuis que je l'aimais m'envoûtaient. Je m'abreuvais de saumure, je me nourrissais de cheveux.
Je vois le demi-deuil du nouveau jour, je vois les haillons de la nuit, je leur souris. Je souris à Isabelle et, front contre front, je joue au bélier avec elle pour oublier ce qui meurt. Le lyrisme de l'oiseau qui chante et précipite la beauté de la matinée nous épuise : la perfection n'est pas de ce monde même quand nous la rencontrons. »
Décidément 2025, quelle année de lecture pour moi! Je me rends compte que ce qui peut faire la différence à mes yeux entre un bon bouquin et un excellent ouvrage c’est véritablement la plume.
Et dans ce livre, une plume poétique, ça transpire l’érotisme mais c’est doux, universel, c’est la fusion entre du magma et de la dentelle.
Violette Leduc, c��est l’autrice qui réussit à décrire des émotions sur lesquelles je n’arrive pas à mettre de mots.
« Les petites lumières dans ma peau convoitèrent les petites lumières dans la peau d'Isabelle, l'air se raréfia. Nous ne pouvions rien sans les météores qui nous entraîneraient dans leur course, qui nous jetteraient l'une dans l'autre.
Nous dépendions des forces irrésistibles.
Nous avons perdu conscience mais nous avons opposé notre bloc à la nuit du dortoir. La mort nous ramenait à la vie : nous sommes rentrées dans plusieurs ports. Je ne voyais pas, je n'entendais pas, pourtant j'avais des sens de visionnaire. Nous nous sommes enlacées : un miracle s'éteignait au lieu de rayonner. »
« Ma sueur, ma salive, le manque d'espace, ma condition de galérienne condamnée à jouir sans trêve depuis que je l'aimais m'envoûtaient. Je m'abreuvais de saumure, je me nourrissais de cheveux.
Je vois le demi-deuil du nouveau jour, je vois les haillons de la nuit, je leur souris. Je souris à Isabelle et, front contre front, je joue au bélier avec elle pour oublier ce qui meurt. Le lyrisme de l'oiseau qui chante et précipite la beauté de la matinée nous épuise : la perfection n'est pas de ce monde même quand nous la rencontrons. »
June 18, 2020
Descubrí a Violette Leduc con la reedición de su libro “La bastarda” hace unos meses. Violette, pupila y amiga de Simon de Beauvoir. Violette, que en 1955 redactó un episodio autobiográfico que no pasó la censura por su contenido erótico. Violette, que escribió el episodio sáfico más erótico y bello que he leído en toda mi vida. “Thérèse e Isabelle” «Abrazábamos a todas las Isabelles y las Thérèses que en un futuro se amarían con otros nombres.»
La prosa poética de este libro es estremecedora hasta el punto de necesitar leer una sola página hasta en cinco ocasiones. No por falta de entendimiento, por puro goce. Desconozco si este libro se lee o se posee, pero el poso tras finalizarlo es tan placentero como el más bajo de los orgasmos. Bajo no por intensidad, sino por el rubor de disfrutarlo. «Le dejé la marca de mis dientes en el cuello, respiré la noche en el cuello de su vestido. Se estremecieron las raíces del árbol. La estreché contra mí, ahogando al árbol, la estreché contra mí, asfixiando la voz, la estreché contra mí, apagando la luz.»
El talento de Leduc me arroba de deleite de tal manera que siento frustración por no haberla conocido antes, por no haberla leído antes, por no haberla reclamado antes. Para mí y para todas. Me niego a clasificarlo en el margen de libro erótico entre mujeres. Es una obra escrita de una manera tan sublime que cualquier otro libro que toque, aunque sea levemente, el erotismo, se sentiría cohibido al ver el talento con el que se describen los primeros encuentros s.xuales entre dos personas. El descubrimiento, la diversión, el morbo, lo salvaje y lo incierto. El amor. «Su mejilla hibernó entre mis ingles. Apunté con mi linterna, pude ver su pelo desparramado, pude ver que en mi vientre llovía seda. La linterna se deslizó, Isabelle me espoleó.» «Los dedos de Isabelle se abrían y cerraban como el capullo de una margarita, liberando los pechos de ataduras y rojeces. Me despertó el balbuceo de las lilas bajo mi piel, la primavera había llegado.»
Editado por Mármara en 2015, y siendo aún la primera de sus ediciones, desconozco como de lejos llegará, o si simplemente desaparecerá al no haberse popularizado. Me siento tentada de hacerme con otra copia por si esta primera se deteriora. Me siento tentada de guardar esa nueva copia en algún cajón, bien protegida, para que su contenido esté conmigo toda la eternidad. Lo acabo de terminar y tengo ganas de volver a empezar.
La prosa poética de este libro es estremecedora hasta el punto de necesitar leer una sola página hasta en cinco ocasiones. No por falta de entendimiento, por puro goce. Desconozco si este libro se lee o se posee, pero el poso tras finalizarlo es tan placentero como el más bajo de los orgasmos. Bajo no por intensidad, sino por el rubor de disfrutarlo. «Le dejé la marca de mis dientes en el cuello, respiré la noche en el cuello de su vestido. Se estremecieron las raíces del árbol. La estreché contra mí, ahogando al árbol, la estreché contra mí, asfixiando la voz, la estreché contra mí, apagando la luz.»
El talento de Leduc me arroba de deleite de tal manera que siento frustración por no haberla conocido antes, por no haberla leído antes, por no haberla reclamado antes. Para mí y para todas. Me niego a clasificarlo en el margen de libro erótico entre mujeres. Es una obra escrita de una manera tan sublime que cualquier otro libro que toque, aunque sea levemente, el erotismo, se sentiría cohibido al ver el talento con el que se describen los primeros encuentros s.xuales entre dos personas. El descubrimiento, la diversión, el morbo, lo salvaje y lo incierto. El amor. «Su mejilla hibernó entre mis ingles. Apunté con mi linterna, pude ver su pelo desparramado, pude ver que en mi vientre llovía seda. La linterna se deslizó, Isabelle me espoleó.» «Los dedos de Isabelle se abrían y cerraban como el capullo de una margarita, liberando los pechos de ataduras y rojeces. Me despertó el balbuceo de las lilas bajo mi piel, la primavera había llegado.»
Editado por Mármara en 2015, y siendo aún la primera de sus ediciones, desconozco como de lejos llegará, o si simplemente desaparecerá al no haberse popularizado. Me siento tentada de hacerme con otra copia por si esta primera se deteriora. Me siento tentada de guardar esa nueva copia en algún cajón, bien protegida, para que su contenido esté conmigo toda la eternidad. Lo acabo de terminar y tengo ganas de volver a empezar.
January 17, 2021
When books you like recommend to you other books you end up liking...This was blurbed in the end notes of La Bastarda (they’re by the same publisher) and it seemed interesting when I read about it so I picked it up, and it did not disappoint.
The thing I loved most about it was the writing. It was so well done and especially considering that it was a translated work, I’m blown away by how well the language flowed (kudos to the translator). I enjoyed the story itself as well (who among us does not remember the weirdly intense ‘love’ they felt for their high school crushes?). It was a bit (read: a lot) overwrought in places but again…the weird intensity of teen feels must be acknowledged. Overall a good read.
It got me craving a reread of Dorothy Strachey’s Olivia just to stay in the boarding school sapphic love vibes. Would recommend this if that’s your vibe.
The thing I loved most about it was the writing. It was so well done and especially considering that it was a translated work, I’m blown away by how well the language flowed (kudos to the translator). I enjoyed the story itself as well (who among us does not remember the weirdly intense ‘love’ they felt for their high school crushes?). It was a bit (read: a lot) overwrought in places but again…the weird intensity of teen feels must be acknowledged. Overall a good read.
It got me craving a reread of Dorothy Strachey’s Olivia just to stay in the boarding school sapphic love vibes. Would recommend this if that’s your vibe.
April 2, 2023
Terriblement bien écrit, c'est si poétique et beau.
Une étoile en moins parce que les protagonistes sont mineures donc c'est un peu dérangeant par moments mais je suppose que l'époque à laquelle a été écrit le livre peut expliquer ce choix.
Parfois un peu longuet sur les descriptions mais encore une fois, magistralement écrit.
« La muse secrète de mon corps c'était elle. »
« Ne bougez pas. Je vous vois, dis-je perdue en elle. »
« Isabelle voulait l'union dans la peau. Je récitais mon corps sur le sien, je baignais mon ventre dans les arums de son ventre, j'entrais dans un nuage. »
« Je ramassai l'édredon, je luttai contre le fléau. Nous avions créé la fête de l'oubli du temps. […] J'entrais dans sa bouche comme on entre dans la guerre : j'espérais que je saccagerais ses entrailles et les miennes. »
« J'ai trouvé en te rencontrant un sens à mon néant. »
Une étoile en moins parce que les protagonistes sont mineures donc c'est un peu dérangeant par moments mais je suppose que l'époque à laquelle a été écrit le livre peut expliquer ce choix.
Parfois un peu longuet sur les descriptions mais encore une fois, magistralement écrit.
« La muse secrète de mon corps c'était elle. »
« Ne bougez pas. Je vous vois, dis-je perdue en elle. »
« Isabelle voulait l'union dans la peau. Je récitais mon corps sur le sien, je baignais mon ventre dans les arums de son ventre, j'entrais dans un nuage. »
« Je ramassai l'édredon, je luttai contre le fléau. Nous avions créé la fête de l'oubli du temps. […] J'entrais dans sa bouche comme on entre dans la guerre : j'espérais que je saccagerais ses entrailles et les miennes. »
« J'ai trouvé en te rencontrant un sens à mon néant. »
October 7, 2022
J’ai adoré les phrases incroyablement créatives de Violette Leduc pour imager le plaisir corporel et les sensations de l’amour physique. Il y avait vraiment des passages qui étaient de vraies pépites. Ce livre a été également un sympathique voyage dans le temps et permet de refléter ce qui a changé depuis 1954, époque où ce livre novateur a été censuré. J’ai tout de même trouvé que l’histoire traînait en longueur, se répétait mais cela représente aussi je pense le rythme de l’époque. Et certains moments étaient un peu niais mais vite rattrapés par certains grands moments de poésie.
July 19, 2024
“We had created this celebration of oblivion to time. We hugged to us all the Isabelles and the Thérèses who would be in love after us, with other names; we ended up clutching each other in the midst of creakings and tremblings. We had rolled, entwined, down a slope of darkness. We had stopped breathing to bring a stop to life and a stop to death.”
While reading this I could feel that there was a kind of poetic genius to the story, but it felt far away from me. I couldn’t fully grasp it and immerse myself but I respect it as objectively beautiful nonetheless.
While reading this I could feel that there was a kind of poetic genius to the story, but it felt far away from me. I couldn’t fully grasp it and immerse myself but I respect it as objectively beautiful nonetheless.
December 7, 2015
This book is basically pages and pages of what it feels like to fall deeply in love- the good, the bad, the fear and all the titillating details. Although I struggled with the language from time to time, it is actually a very well translated book, which could not have been easy. No one can really take an extremely passionate love affair and turn into an artistic masterpiece quite like the French.
Read
February 21, 2022This is just horny and cute. Why it's been censored? I'm so angry. 🤬
December 29, 2021
Unglaublich kreativ und explizit erzählte erotische Internatsliebesgeschichte, die vor allem in einer Bettnische des Schlafsaals hinterm Vorhang spielt. Zwar konnte ich nicht jedem sprachlichen Bild folgen. Doch es ist beeindruckend, wie Leduc frei von male gaze die intimsten Handlungen und Empfindungen zweier Mädchen beschreibt.
May 8, 2016
"I look at her as I look at the sea in the evening when I can no longer see it."
"Perfection is not part of this world even when we come upon it here."
"We are talking. It's a shame. What is said is murdered. Our words that will not grow any bigger or any lovelier will wilt inside our bones."
"What will we do in the night to come? Isabelle knows. Tomorrow; in this class, in front of this desk. I will know what we have done."
"Isabelle was living as she had lived before drawing me into her box. Isabelle was deceiving me, Isabelle fascinated me, Isabelle was starving me."
In 1954, Violette Leduc completed a three-episode novel called Ravages. One of the episodes involved the sexual awakening of two young girls, Thérèse and Isabelle, in a French boarding school. Sexuality, heterosexuality and male homosexuality had already emerged in French literature by this time, but this was something new, and the male publishing establishment deemed this story of lesbian desire "scandalous." Leduc, devastated at the cuts she had to make to her book, never really recovered from the experience. Never recovered from the truncation of her art or the overall rejection of the literary establishment.
This edition restores the entirety of Thérèse and Isabelle to its original form in what is said to be the finest translation yet, and I have to trust this is so. In the back there are bonus essays on the censorship of this book and of the circumstances of Leduc's own life that inform its pages.
The book is an intensely poetic study in concentrated yearning, simultaneously precise and imprecise, like love. While reading it, I found it both enrapturing and off-putting, not because of the sexual frankness, of course, but because its highly poetic language was just as much a barrier to me as it was an illumination. The book teases, just as its two protagonists do with each other, and it is charming and lovely, but in our age of instant gratification I may have to admit to being spoiled. Overcoming my conditioning toward more transgressive lit is hard.
It is very often swoon-inducing, however, and its descriptions of female orgasm are beautiful and unique. I loved the book's concern with time and memory; the way that Thérèse -- the book's first-person narrator -- relates past, present and future as she places this central moment of her life into that continuum. It's a very French way of doing things.
While living in the moment, both girls consciously express their concern to one another about whether each will be missed in the future. It's an overriding concern, a fear, and of course each assures the other that they will always be remembered. We believe them but feel a sadness knowing one or the other or both may not, because in our own lives we wonder the same about people with whom we've had deep connections. It's a very touching and authentic conceit in the book.
If you read this, do make sure to get the Feminist Press edition with the cover shown on my review. That is the definitive one to have, and the bonus essays in the back are well worth reading.
(KevinR@Ky 2016)
"Perfection is not part of this world even when we come upon it here."
"We are talking. It's a shame. What is said is murdered. Our words that will not grow any bigger or any lovelier will wilt inside our bones."
"What will we do in the night to come? Isabelle knows. Tomorrow; in this class, in front of this desk. I will know what we have done."
"Isabelle was living as she had lived before drawing me into her box. Isabelle was deceiving me, Isabelle fascinated me, Isabelle was starving me."
In 1954, Violette Leduc completed a three-episode novel called Ravages. One of the episodes involved the sexual awakening of two young girls, Thérèse and Isabelle, in a French boarding school. Sexuality, heterosexuality and male homosexuality had already emerged in French literature by this time, but this was something new, and the male publishing establishment deemed this story of lesbian desire "scandalous." Leduc, devastated at the cuts she had to make to her book, never really recovered from the experience. Never recovered from the truncation of her art or the overall rejection of the literary establishment.
This edition restores the entirety of Thérèse and Isabelle to its original form in what is said to be the finest translation yet, and I have to trust this is so. In the back there are bonus essays on the censorship of this book and of the circumstances of Leduc's own life that inform its pages.
The book is an intensely poetic study in concentrated yearning, simultaneously precise and imprecise, like love. While reading it, I found it both enrapturing and off-putting, not because of the sexual frankness, of course, but because its highly poetic language was just as much a barrier to me as it was an illumination. The book teases, just as its two protagonists do with each other, and it is charming and lovely, but in our age of instant gratification I may have to admit to being spoiled. Overcoming my conditioning toward more transgressive lit is hard.
It is very often swoon-inducing, however, and its descriptions of female orgasm are beautiful and unique. I loved the book's concern with time and memory; the way that Thérèse -- the book's first-person narrator -- relates past, present and future as she places this central moment of her life into that continuum. It's a very French way of doing things.
While living in the moment, both girls consciously express their concern to one another about whether each will be missed in the future. It's an overriding concern, a fear, and of course each assures the other that they will always be remembered. We believe them but feel a sadness knowing one or the other or both may not, because in our own lives we wonder the same about people with whom we've had deep connections. It's a very touching and authentic conceit in the book.
If you read this, do make sure to get the Feminist Press edition with the cover shown on my review. That is the definitive one to have, and the bonus essays in the back are well worth reading.
(KevinR@Ky 2016)
March 27, 2012
Violette Leduc spent three years working on the first part of her novel Ravages. When the manuscript of the book was presented to her publisher Gallimard in 1954, her readers there — Raymond Queneau and Jacques Lemarchand — decided the first third of the book should be nixed because it described a torrid lesbian affair between two schoolgirls. Ravages was offered around to other French imprints but no one was prepared to issue it without cuts. In the end a censored version of the novel appeared in 1955 under the aegis of Gallimard. Parts of the cut text were reworked and incorporated into Leduc’s 1964 memoir La Bâtarde. The success of this mid-sixties autobiography led first to the printing of a limited private edition of the censored opening of Ravages under the title Thérèse and Isabelle, and then to the novella appearing commercially as a Gallimard book in 1966...
Read my review in full here: http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/an-ero...
Read my review in full here: http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/an-ero...
January 3, 2018
Thérèse and Isabelle is a short but explosive story of the passion between two young women. It was initially censored for profane/immoral content, and given the taboos attached to articulations of female sexuality - especially lesbian sexuality - it is easy to understand why. Without ever using explicit language, and even translated from the original French, this book contains extraordinarily vivid depictions of sex, longing, and desire between women. Violette Leduc captures a great many things without referring to them directly, which adds a certain je ne sais quoi to her writing style.
It's a deeply seductive story. But, truth be told, the endless cycle of anticipation and sex got a bit repetitive. And the ending, delivered in two brief sentences, made the narrative feel unbalanced. Still, I'm glad that the unabridged text of Thérèse and Isabelle was finally printed - these stories should never have been hidden in the first place.
It's a deeply seductive story. But, truth be told, the endless cycle of anticipation and sex got a bit repetitive. And the ending, delivered in two brief sentences, made the narrative feel unbalanced. Still, I'm glad that the unabridged text of Thérèse and Isabelle was finally printed - these stories should never have been hidden in the first place.
May 8, 2017
*3.5 stars
I wish I was fluent in French so I could read this in its original form. While some of the translation is absolutely beautiful, some of it ... is not. I also had some difficulties determining tense, which, again, probably had to do with translating it to English.
I also really enjoyed reading the discussion of the censorship of Violette Leduc's work at the end of the book and reading about the attempts to get it published originally. And it infuriates me that people ignore Leduc's self identification as a lesbian (she's often labelled bisexual) because she briefly married a man in an attempt to conform socially - a marriage that led to a suicide attempt and an abortion that nearly to her death. Anyway.
If anyone knows of a good translation of Asphyxia or Ravages, lemme know.
I wish I was fluent in French so I could read this in its original form. While some of the translation is absolutely beautiful, some of it ... is not. I also had some difficulties determining tense, which, again, probably had to do with translating it to English.
I also really enjoyed reading the discussion of the censorship of Violette Leduc's work at the end of the book and reading about the attempts to get it published originally. And it infuriates me that people ignore Leduc's self identification as a lesbian (she's often labelled bisexual) because she briefly married a man in an attempt to conform socially - a marriage that led to a suicide attempt and an abortion that nearly to her death. Anyway.
If anyone knows of a good translation of Asphyxia or Ravages, lemme know.
May 7, 2013
Violette Leduc, baseada na sua própria experiência, escreve um pequeno romance no qual relata a paixão vivida entre duas adolescentes, que juntas se descobrem e ao amor.
As descrições dos encontros amorosos entre as duas jovens, apesar de explícitas e ousadas, têm passagens de uma grande beleza e ternura - não chocando qualquer mente menos preparada – levando-me a pensar numa frase que ouvi há dias: “O amor não tem sexo…”
Este pequeno livro tem uma introdução bastante interessante - com algumas passagens escritas por Simone de Beauvoir – que nos apresenta a autora, a sua vida e obra.
As descrições dos encontros amorosos entre as duas jovens, apesar de explícitas e ousadas, têm passagens de uma grande beleza e ternura - não chocando qualquer mente menos preparada – levando-me a pensar numa frase que ouvi há dias: “O amor não tem sexo…”
Este pequeno livro tem uma introdução bastante interessante - com algumas passagens escritas por Simone de Beauvoir – que nos apresenta a autora, a sua vida e obra.
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