some new, recent, unexpected solitude

The Brooklyn Rail has an excerpt from a new translation of work from Marguerite Duras, Yann Andrea Steiner.

One never knows a story before it’s written. Before it has suffered the fading of the circumstances that led the author to write it. And especially before it has suffered, in the book, the mutilation of its past, its body, of your face, your voice, and it becomes irrevocable, fated. And I also mean that in the book it has become external, been carried away, separated from its author for all eternity, lost to him.

And then the door closed on you and me. On this new body, tall and thin.

And then there was the voice. The incredibly gentle voice. Distant. Regal. It was the voice of your letter, the voice of my life.

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