A Lover’s Discourse
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
Village of Stone
A Concise Chinese–English Dictionary for Lovers
20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth
UFO in Her Eyes
Lovers in the Age of Indifference
I Am China
Once Upon a Time in the East
Nine Continents
Xiaolu Guo
A Lover’s Discourse
Grove Press
New York
Copyright © 2020 by Xiaolu Guo
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for class-room use, or anthology, should send inquiries to Grove Atlantic, 154 West 14th Street, New York, NY 10011 or [email protected].
Jacket design and illustration © Suzanne Dean incorporates Woman, Bonfanti Diego © Getty images; Man, DEEPOL by Plainpicture/Oleksii Karanov; illustrations of black elderberry by Mary Eaton © National Geographic/Bridgeman; Swallow © Bridgeman; Wasp by John Curtis © Bridgeman Images and Elderberry by Walther Muller from Hermann Adolph Koehler’s Medicinal Plants © Florilegius/Bridgeman
From A Lover’s Discourse by Roland Barthes. Published by Jonathan Cape Reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Limited © Roland Barthes 1979. From Empire of Signs by Roland Barthes. Copyright © Skira., 1970. Translation Copyright © Farrar Strauss and Giroux. First published in Great Britain in 1983 by Jonathan Cape. Reprined by permission of The Random House Group Limited.
‘Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head’ Words and Music by Hal David and Burt Bachrach © 1969 BMG Gold Songs (ASCAP) / New Hidden Valley Music Co. (ASCAP) All Rights Administered by BMG Rights Management (US) LLC. Used by Permission of Hal Leonard Europe Limited. All Rights Reserved. © 1969 WC Music Corp. (ASCAP) Licensed courtesy of Warner Chappell Music Ltd.
‘Wind of Change’ Words & Music by Klaus Meine© Copyright 1997 BMG Rights Management GmbH BMG Rights Management (UK) Limited, a BMG Company.
All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured.
Used by permission of Hal Leonard Europe Limited.
Published simultaneously in Canada
Printed in the United States of America
First Grove Atlantic Hardcover edition edition: October 2020
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available for this title.
ISBN 978-0-8021-4952-7
eISBN 978-0-8021-4954-1
Grove Press
an imprint of Grove Atlantic
154 West 14th Street
New York, NY 10011
Distributed by Publishers Group West
Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire.
—Fragments d’un discours amoureux,
Roland Barthes
Contents
One – 西 – WEST
Two – 南 – SOUTH
Three – 东 – EAST
Four – 北 – NORTH
Five – 下 – DOWN
Six – 上 – UP
Seven – 左 – LEFT
Eight – 右 – RIGHT
Notes on Citations
Love at first sight is a hypnosis.
—Roland Barthes
– I don’t believe in love at first sight.
– What do you mean? Wasn’t it clear the moment you picked the elderflowers by the park and we looked at each other? Or was it in that book club?
A few years after we moved in together, we had this conversation about love at first sight. I remember you said:
‘I don’t believe in love at first sight.’
I was taken aback. I thought we were definitely in love at first sight.
‘What do you mean? Wasn’t it clear the moment you picked the elderflowers by the park and we looked at each other? Or was it in that book club?’
You gave me a damp smile, as if my confusion proved that you were right.
But doesn’t love always start from first sight? I mean, before one reaches one’s thirties or forties. It’s only when we have a second thought about our first sighted love, that we might change our mind. You might ask, why does this happen before one reaches midlife? I don’t have a theory yet, but I think when we are young, our impulses take over our mind. Romantic love is always an impulse in my case. I am not old or wise enough to understand yet what else love could be.
All I knew in that first moment at the park was that you saw the way I had looked at you. Perhaps I should not be so sure that you saw how I looked at you. Well, you were still a complete stranger. You were from a culture I had no knowledge or deep understanding of. Besides, you were very tall and I was short. Height sometimes disorients our perspective.
西
WEST
The Elderflowers
– What will you do with them?
– The elders? I will head them and boil them up.
I didn’t know your name when we first met. No one introduced us. The only thing I remember is that you were picking roadside elderflowers.