#eileen chang
Text
La seule et unique chose à proscrire, c’est celle-ci : aimer quelqu’un qui ne vous aime pas, ou bien qui vous jette après vous avoir aimé. Une femme qu’on jette, ses os peuvent-ils résister à un tel traitement ?
Eileen Chang, Deux brûle-parfums
#Eileen Chang#Deux brûle-parfums#livre#livres#book#citation#citation française#citation en français#littérature#littérature chinoise#literature#quote#nouvelle
48 notes
·
View notes
Text
Eileen Chang, Little Reunions
18 notes
·
View notes
Text
#illustration#digital commisions#digital painting#digital art#procreate#peacock#eileen chang#lust caution
20 notes
·
View notes
Text
How Eileen Chang Revived My Fascination With the 'Femme Fatale'
Content Warning: Lust, Caution contains scenes of graphic violence, nudity, and discussions of murder (the book only hints at these things). The movie also depicts sexual assault. Viewer discretion is advised.
Spoilers for Lust, Caution (book and film) ahead!
femme fa·tale (noun)
1 : a seductive woman who lures men into dangerous or compromising situations
2 : a woman who attracts men by an…
View On WordPress
#ang lee#assassination plot#chinese history#eileen chang#espionage thriller#femme fatale#historical fiction#leehom wang#lust caution#second sino-japanese war#spy movie#spy thriller#tang wei#Tony Leung Chiu-wai#world war ii
24 notes
·
View notes
Text
Love by Eileen Chang. Translated by Eileen Cheng-yin Chow
#poems#love by eileen chang#eileen chang#eileen chengyin-chow#love (1944)#chinese poems#love poems#miyamiwu.src
23 notes
·
View notes
Text
little reunions, eileen chang
72 notes
·
View notes
Text
“He was not optimistic about the way the war was going, and he had no idea how it would turn out for him. But now that he had enjoyed the love of a beautiful woman, he could die happy - without regret. He could feel her shadow forever near him, comforting him. Even though she had hated him at the end, she had at least felt something. And now he possessed her utterly, primitively - as a hunter does his quarry, a tiger his kill. Alive, her body belonged to him; dead, she was his ghost.”
Eileen Chang: Lust, Caution
6 notes
·
View notes
Text
用一轉身離開，用一輩子去忘記。
人生最大的幸福，是發現自己愛的人正好也愛著自己；
而且沒有錯過。
一 張愛玲 (1920-1995) Chang Ai-ling or Zhang Ailing or by her pen name Liang Jing (梁京) 她是美籍華裔散文家、小說家、劇本作家及劇本評論家。 She was a Chinese-born American essayist, novelist, and screenwriter. She is a well-known feminist in Chinese history, known for portraying life in the 1940s Shanghai and Hong Kong.
About her book : Love in a Fallen City 傾城之戀 & same named movie : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_in_a_Fallen_City_(film)
【傾城之戀】(上) 電影電視版 Love in a Fallen City A | English Subtitles
youtube
【傾城之戀】(下) 電影電視版 Love in a Fallen City B | English Subtitles
youtube
24 notes
·
View notes
Text
Books Read in December:
1). A Memoir of My Former Self: A Life in Writing (Hilary Mantel)
2). Big Swiss (Jen Beagin)
3). On Histories and Stories (A.S. Byatt)
4). Fire (Kristin Cashore)
5). The Fun Stuff (James Wood)
6). Tom Lake (Ann Patchett)
7). Love (Hanne Ørstavik, trans. Martin Aiken)
8). Written on Water (Eileen Chang, trans. Andrew F. Jones & Nicole Huang)
9). An Editor’s Burial (ed. David Brendel)
10). Walk the Blue Fields (Claire Keegan)
#my literary life#booklr#book list#adult booklr#hilary mantel#jen beagin#kristin cashore#james wood#ann patchett#hanne ørstavik#eileen chang#david brendel#claire keegan
5 notes
·
View notes
Text
The only thing Manlu had were memories of her time with Yujin; stark and lonely though they might be, those memories were worth keeping. But now her sister had stepped on them, smashed them to pieces, till they lodged like slivers in her heart. She couldn’t touch those memories again – if she did, her heart would break.
Eileen Chang, Half a Lifelong Romance
4 notes
·
View notes
Text
“She had, in a past life, been an actress; and here she was, still playing a part, but in a drama too secret to make her famous.”
~Eileen Chang in Lust, Caution
25 notes
·
View notes
Text
Une sale histoire, comme le sont les humains ; on se salit toujours à leur contact.
Eileen Chang, Deux brûle-parfums
#Eileen Chang#Deux brûle-parfums#livre#book#citation#citation française#citation en français#littérature#littérature chinoise#quote#quotes#nouvelle#literature
48 notes
·
View notes
Text
Eileen Chang, Little Reunions
13 notes
·
View notes
Text
Written on Water by Eileen Chang, translated by Andrew F. Jones
Mankind is naturally inclined to mind other people's business. Why shouldn't we take the occasional stealthy glance at one another's private lives, if the person being looked at suffers no real damage and the one who looks is afforded a moment of pleasure? In matters involving the provision and procurement of pleasure, there's no need to be overly fussy. What, in the end, is there to fuss about? Misery endures, but life is short. (Notes on Apartment Life, p. 33)
***
I sketched with the knowledge that I would very soon lose the ability to do so. And from this I derived a lesson, an old lesson. If there is something you want to do, do it right away; even then, you might already be too late. Man is the most changeable of creatures. (From the Ashes, p. 58)
***
The vehicle of the times drives inexorably forward. We ride along, passing through thoroughfares that are perhaps already quite familiar. Against a sky lit by flames, they are capable nevertheless of shaking us to the core. What a shame that we occupy ourselves instead searching for our reflections in the shop windows that flit so quickly by—we see only our faces, pallid and trivial. In our selfishness and emptiness, in our smug and shameless ignorance, every one of us is like all the others. And each of us is alone. (From the Ashes, p. 60)
***
A child on a bicycle dashes down the street just to show off. He lets out a shout, lets go of the handlebars, and effortlessly shoots past, swaying atop the seat. And in that split second, everyone in the street watches him pass, transfixed by an indefinable admiration. Might it be that in this life that moment of letting go is the very loveliest? (A Chronicle of Changing Clothes, p. 84)
***
I still remember the first time I saw the sea in Hong Kong: the lifeless, artificial shade of blue reminded me of the ocean on a retouched color postcard. Later, I stumbled across much the same metaphor in an English book: "You could cut out the Persian Gulf and send it home as a postcard, the blue of the water was so deep and so dull." The discovery that someone else has long ago given voice to your own words, and said them much better than you ever could, is disconcerting enough. But to discover that he didn't say it as well as you might have done is heartbreaking. (Let's Go! Let's Go Upstairs, p. 107)
***
My friend Yanying says: "Every butterfly is the spirit of a dead flower who has come back in search of itself." (The Sayings of Yanying, p. 125)
***
The discussions taking place among writers as to our present course and our path forward seem to me an unimaginable liberty—as if there were any choice in the matter. No doubt the garden of literature is broad and inclusive: when visitors buy their tickets and enter its precincts, they can have their pictures taken on the Nine-Bend bridge, swarm over to the zoo, or roam as they wish across the grounds. Their freedom of movement is truly enviable. But I believe that writers themselves should be like trees in the garden, growing naturally within its confines, with their roots extending deep into the ground below. As they grow, their viewpoint will begin to grow wider, and as their field of vision expands, there is no reason why they shouldn't be able to develop in new directions, for when the wind blows, their seeds will disperse far into the distance, engendering still more trees. But that is the most difficult task of all. (What Are We to Write?, p. 139)
***
No wonder those who have children keep on having them. They see children as amusing little blockheads, lovable and laughable encumbrances. They fail to see what is so very frightening about children's eyes—such earnest eyes, the eyes of the angels on Judgment Day.
Without any real credentials, we blithely make eyes such as these, their little minds capable of criticism and judgment, their bodies capable of experiencing the most exquisite pain as well as pleasure. Without credentials, we make people, and stumbling between hunger and satiety, between knowledge and ignorance, we raise them to adulthood. Making people is quite a dangerous occupation. Mothers and fathers are not gods, but they are forced into occupying a position of divinity. And even if you play that divine role with great care, even if you prepare meticulously for the arrival of your child, there is no way to guarantee what sort of person the child will eventually become. If conditions do not favor a child even before he is born, then he can hardly be expected to succeed later in life. Such are the operations of fate.
Of course, the more arduous the situation, the more apparent will become the tremendous love parents bear for their children. Either the parent or the child must be sacrificed to circumstances, and it is from this hard truth that we have derived the moral virtue of self-abnegation. (Making People, pp. 142-43)
***
My mother also told me that in drawing pictures one should always avoid using red in the background, because the background must be kept at a distance from the rest of the image, and red seems to leap right out of the picture and into your eyes. The walls of the bedroom I shared with my little brother, though, were painted just the sort of orangey red that refuses to keep its distance. I had chosen the color, and when I drew pictures, I still liked to color the walls behind all the little people red, because things looked warmer and cozier and more intimate that way. (Whispers, p. 164)
***
On the wall of the classroom in my old school there hung a reproduction of the Mona Lisa, the famous painting of the Italian Renaissance. Our teacher told us, "Notice the strange smile on her face." And it was truly a disquieting smile, lovely yet ambiguous. It looked as if it might disappear at any moment, and even though the smile remained in place as I carefully examined the painting, I was left all the same with an unaccountable sensation of loss. Our teacher told us that when the master was working on this painting, he had exerted himself to the utmost searching for rare and exotic objects from across the globe to place in front of this woman, all in order to get her to smile that particular smile. I didn't like this explanation. Green tortoises, mummy's feet, or mechanical toys: none of these would necessarily elicit a smile like that. To make someone smile that particular smile would surely be more difficult. Or perhaps easier than one might think. When a woman remembers a gesture or a little habitual motion that her lover tends to make, there is a childishness to her expression, lovable and at the same time pitiful, for she is suddenly suffused by a tender lenience that radiates outward, casting her past and her future in its shade. And at that moment, there might well be a smile as evanescent as this one in her eyes. (On Painting, p. 203)
***
Time is like space: there are areas that are worth money as well as vast stretches of wasteland. (Epilogue: Days and Nights of China, p. 233)
2 notes
·
View notes
Quote
They were in love. He told her all kinds of things: who at the bank was his real friend, and who was just pretending; how his family squabbled; his secret sorrows; his schoolboy dreams . . . unending talk, but she was not put off. A man in love likes to talk; a woman in love changes her ways and doesn't want to talk. She knows, without even knowing that she knows, that after a man really understands a woman, he won't love her anymore.
Eileen Chang, Sealed Off
16 notes
·
View notes
Text
Books I Want to Read: Love in a Fallen City by Eileen Chang (trans. Karen S. Kingsbury)
Written when Chang was still in her twenties, these extraordinary stories combine an unsettled, probing, utterly contemporary sensibility, keenly alert to sexual politics and psychological ambiguity, with an intense lyricism that echoes the classics of Chinese literature. Love in a Fallen City, the first collection in English of this dazzling body of work, introduces American readers to the stark and glamorous vision of a modern master.
#godzilla reads#love in a fallen city#Eileen Chang#books in translation#chinese literature#Chinese lit#books to read#tbr#books#booklr#bookworm#bookish#booklover#book blog#book blurb#book addict#pretty books#nyrb classics#books and literature
13 notes
·
View notes
Last Seen Blogs
agusssion
gus
glassror
Glass Room of Requipment
pro-ship-self-ships
the cringiest, most problematic
ppkm-week
Ppkm Week
sincerelyaye-blog
Dream big.