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PARTISAN REVIEW
Novels, these days, seldom omit the obligatory scene of sexual coupling
but Lessing-who always before this has allowed her women time in bed–
keeps Sarah chaste, though aching for her Julie's raptures. The ultimate
irony of Lessing's title is that reciprocated love does not, in fact, happen
again for this victim of the love god. Though she is still what Stephen calls
a "love woman," Sarah must painfully pluck his dart out of her own breast.
The process of recovery from her unfulfilled love for Henry is long and
painful and occupies many of the novel's final pages.
The action of Lessing's story moves first from London to Provence,
where, in the very village where Julie Vairon had played out her real drama
long before, Sarah and Stephen's play, set to Julie's own music, opens for a
spectacular first showing. The ironies of popularization are already present
in the touristic fanfare of the Julie Vairon festival, built around the story of
this outcast for whom two new hotels are now named. The time will later
come when "Julie" will be a pop song throughout the world. But, in the
midsummer's-night's-dream atmosphere of theater illusion and the exotic
surroundings of the Midi, Sarah's fevered feelings gain plausibility.
The narrative, which flows continuously from first to last page with–
out chapter breaks, pursues a helical course, each rehearsal or performance
of the play occasioning new reference to some part of the Julie story, new
reflections on the puzzle of human love. Even Stephen finds dream and
reality indistinguishable when he falls in love, briefly, with the actress who
plays Julie while the actress, herself, is merged with her own role and in
love with the actor who plays Julie's lover-just as Sarah is. Then,Julie
Vc1iron
is put on again, with a change of cast, for a run in England with
rehearsals in London and an opening at Stephen's Oxfordshire estate. The
new Julie is in love with Stephen while Sarah's fixation on Henry , who
responds yet withdraws, continues. More and more it is obvious that, as one
often says, Sarah is "in love with love." "The sufferings she was going
through obviously had nothing to do with Bill , or Henry. People carry
around with them this weight of longing, usually, thank heavens,
well
out
of sight and 'latent'-like an internal bruise--and then, for no obvious rea–
sons, just like that, there he was (who?), and onto him is projected the
longing, with love." But her agonies pose immemorial questions. Why,
when one is old, does one still love, and love youth more than anything?
Is ita matter of persisting physical desire merely, or a narcissism that seeks
a renovated selfhood in the other, or the recrudescence of old insecurities,
the craving for a love denied in childhood, denied even at one's mother's
breast? Are Sarah's belated infatuations "little inflanunations" or the grand
passion come at last and too late?
This old sweet song at twilight turns out to be no "love story"-and
hardly a story at all. Lessing's practiced art depicts, vivaciously, just the
