Temporal Issues in Simple Passion

Annie Ernaux is slightly more obsessive than Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction; her unrestrained desire resembles a bipolar patient in the throws of an episode, more than someone in love. She associates apparently unrelated things with the moments of sexual passion she experienced with A. In Florence, Michelangelo’s David reminded her of A, “I was unable to tear myself away from Michelangelo’s David, filled with wonder that a man, and not a woman, had portrayed the beauty of a male body so sublimely” (37).  In order to recall certain events, she goes back to the places of origin, or reads certain books, or wears certain makeup. Annie said, “If I went to the same place I had been to last year, when he was here, I would wear the same suit as before, trying to convince myself that identical circumstances produce identical effects and that he would call me that evening” (43).  

She also frequently breaks in and out of past and present tense, “The past tense used in the first part of the book suggests endless repetition and conveys the belief that ‘life was better in those days.’ It also generated a pain that was to replace the past trauma of waiting for his phone calls and visits” (47).  Annie portrays the contrived concepts of present and past, by switching between the two tenses for stylistic purposes rather than adding to the truth of when the events actually took place.

This gives rise to the fact that once something is written, even in present tense, it has already happened and therefore, now is in the past. The notion that every recorded event, as soon as it is written is in the past, demonstrates her unwillingness to see their relationship as in the past, by writing it that way. Instead, she purposely chooses to write in the present midway in order to express that their affair will always be existing in the present for her, because she is constantly reliving the past through the clothes she wears and books she reads. Annie is unwilling to let go of their cold, almost passionless affair, and endeavors to immortalize what happened between them and the inexplicable desire she felt through writing.

All in all, as a whole, this short story attempts to recreate the feeling of desire and its expression in an affair that ended up badly. Ironically, Annie herself predicts the affair’s tragic ending early on, “If he told me that he had indeed seen the film, I was inclined to believe that he had chosen it that evening because of us and that, acted out on the screen, our story must have seemed more intense, or at least more legitimate. (Naturally, I soon dismissed the idea that our liaison might appear dangerous to him—in film, any passion existing outside marriage invariably end in disaster.)” (27). Even though there are many clues given to the readers that this liaison will end badly, and, at times, her pitiful desire is hard to read, Annie accurately captures the feelings most have when they are tormented with desire or unrequited love, which often times are more similar to a mental patient than a person in simple passion.