A Lover’s Discourse By Xiaolu Guo (Not Roland Barthes)
Reading Guo has been a textual delight. Her approach to language is utterly unique. The bafflement of the unnamed protagonist in her understanding of English is amusing in a way that does not mock her but rather gives an insight to life as a Chinese woman trying to find her home in a post-Brexit London. In travelling to Europe, she attempts to find a place where she can find the grounding that she has never felt – not even in China. However, similar to most of humanity, she looks for it in the wrong place. In another person. She believes that being loved will bring her the stability needed to settle. She may settle for a man but this doesn’t bring her a sense of rootedness.
Together with her partner, who she calls ‘the elderflower picker’ (p. 6) they discuss the weak points of their strong discourse. Mostly they disagree. I wouldn’t say they argue but they are not affable discussions! The protagonist and her partner are antagonists. By picking up on these things, however, they have made each other and their arguments stronger. I enjoy that rarely do they fall back on the argument of ‘lost in translation’. Occasionally they do and they make fun of themselves and each other for it but mostly their knowledge of more than one language helps them to interrogate the words themselves in their discussions.
An amusing part of their lives together would have to be the chapters they spend in the houseboat that they bought together. It reminded me of a paragraph I had read in Franco Cassano’s Southern Thought about the urge to live on the sea, a boundless, convergent space. He references Nietzsche’s demand that “Philosophers must jump aboard, get on the ships, and become familiar with the uncertainty of the sea” (p. 30) in reaction to the emphasis on rootedness that people were beginning to feel. They believed we should push ourselves and experience the limitless sea and its possibilities. In A Lover’s Discourse, this is what her partner yearns for: transience, adventure and the philosophical consideration that their conversation turns to. The natural drift of the boat does not, unsurprisingly, help her feel more ‘concrete’ (p. 82) but she goes along with what he wants anyway as they swap their freedom of constant running water, energy and hygiene for life together on a boat.
A slight criticism I do have is that she is not that relatable in terms of money. She buys a houseboat, does a bit of travelling and moves house a few times and all without a job. It slightly preoccupied me when thinking about how she would be able to do it but I guess the logical explanation is that her partner supported her (or maybe she inherited money from her parents?). Either way I guess I wanted that explained as it bothered me in terms of believability.
As well as feeling a kind of impermanence Guo’s Chinese lady talks of feelings of wordlessness, ‘Wu Yu’ (p.43). In the literal sense she feels speechless as she has not left her flat in a while – to which I’m sure quite a few of us non-essential workers can relate to! When previously writing about the Goldsmiths Prize shortlist, I wanted to see whether the theme of ‘extremis’ that the authors wrote on were able to evolve and relate to the extremis we are currently experiencing. I actually forgot that I wrote this – although it must have been floating around in my subconscious somewhere – and I felt quite connected to the character at this moment as I am newly moved to London and in lockdown. Luckily, I have a person that comes home from work every evening but it is a strange experience not hearing your own voice all day. Or others. Or having an exchange with another individual – no matter how meaningless. The only thing she hears is the news and they are constantly talking about Brexit. Some things never change I think as I doomscroll through Covid updates.
The other kinds of wordlessness she experiences is a kind of loss of language. A miscommunication between cultures that results in her losing hers to the British. There is an implication that she begins to take on that which she does not deem to be hers. Although, it is unclear as she does not elaborate what that would be. In reply to the Wu Yu that she expresses, her partner answers that in her loss of one language she has gained another. She focuses on the lack and this implies that she feels a foundation in her language and culture. Perhaps suggesting that she does not feel completely rootless? It could even be argued that she is losing herself to him and not to Britishness (he is German and Australian) but is unable to see this as she is blinded by love – or any other applicable romantic cliché.
As she sits wordlessly at home, she interrogates the word flat: “Flat is a sad concept of home. My flat did not feel like home at all. It was more like a space defined by legal status, where I, as a foreigner, could cook and sleep legally.” (p.43). I suppose another word for flat is 2-dimensional and a house is a 3-d version of the flat which (unless you’re really fancy bitch) spans only across and not up. Also, it is rather a dreary word. Something I have never before considered as I exist in this one plane, stuck inside. Don’t get me wrong, I am completely grateful for a roof over my head and to be able to live in London, but literarily the word flat sucks as a space to call your own.
Confession time! I have not read Roland Barthes’ A Lover’s Discourse. I have read some of his essays, however, including From Work to Text and the more commonly known Death of the Author. She does reference the latter when talking about ideas of reproduction and originality (her thesis p.30) and also when she is talking about her inability to relate to male authors as classic novels were ‘too male, too indigestible and too exhaustive’ (p. 92). The only time she does enjoy reading a male author is with Barthes as she claims that he can’t stop talking, just like a woman, and she could read him without barriers.
She also talks of Duras’ The Lover to which she compares herself to the French girl rather than the Chinese man. She believes being female overrides everything else, even being Chinese, which echoes her rootless feelings as the cultural barrier between her and the French girl falls away. She discusses with her partner her liking for Duras’ work and he mocks Duras for being a narcissist. Here would have been an exemplary moment to cite Death of the Author and to come out on top in one of their many discussions but instead she focuses on the author too thinking, not only that the author is not separated from the art, but also the artist is not separated from the self as they are reflections of ourselves (this could be argued as a narcissistic way to look at this). This seems to be Guo linking Barthes to her character as they become co-authors to A Lover’s Discourse. I also wondered how many differences there were between Guo and her character as well?
The moment where she finds out that Roland Barthes’ A Lover’s Discourse is no more than a ‘solipsistic monologue’ (p. 81) is rather interesting as it leans into that whole idea of not meeting your heroes as it spoils the magic. She finds out that he is a homosexual and so the discourse is between two men and not man/woman, to which she related to the feminine character. She claims that discourse ceases to exist in this way which I felt slightly uncomfortable about. I am not entirely sure whether the discourse disappears as her binary idea of relationships is not fulfilled or simply because Barthes did not have a long-term partner and therefore did not have the material to build up a discourse, just an idea of one in his head. I’d be disappointed if it were the former but I’ll leave that one up to you…
Barthes also had an interesting relationship with his mother which gives her a chance to compare her relationship with her parents to him and to her partner. They talk of Barthes inability to have a partner as he is still too connected with his mother and not leaving enough space for other people. She feels that as her and her partner are not particularly close to their parents (the literal roots they grew from) they are closer to each other. She does, however, compare him to her father claiming their love is ‘beyond sexual’ (p. 87). As mentioned, it seems like she is looking for somewhere to call home in someone else. Whilst I agree that home is where the people you love are, she looks for happiness within another person and not herself, believing love will lead her to the feelings of belonging that she lost in her parents and, as Guo explains here, in the industrialisation of her formerly rural home.