The Collected Works of Ursula K. Le Guin: What Is Eternity

Author: (French) Marguerite Yourcenar
Translator: Su Qiuyun
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-03-01
Features: Through the history of a family, the vicissitudes of a nation are reflected. The river of time flows eternally, and humanity also thrives within it. Marguerite Yourcenar completed the final chapter, The Hard Way Back, in her later years, but she was unable to finish writing What Is Eternal. However, as she was only fifty pages away from concluding the work, the incomplete portion does not significantly detract from the overall piece. Leaving a slight blemish may be the perfect ending for a great novel, allowing those heart-stirring moments and events to drift endlessly in the immortal realm of time.
Chapter: The Ordinary Years
Michel was alone. Truly, he had always been alone. His childhood might not have been lonely. As a child, he had an older sister named Gabrielle, the girl standing beside him in some old photographs, but she died young. Later, he had a younger sister, and when he cut ties with the family, she was still just a child. Apart from being with his father, he was always alone. The time spent with his father was wonderful, but rare. His father seemed to be hidden away by a mother who neither loved her husband nor her son. Not long ago, when he lived with two wives, he was still alone. He had both joy and arguments with his first wife, and while living with his second wife was filled with warmth, it also had its share of bitterness and sweetness (he was too kind-hearted to distinguish between the two, even in his grief). He was also alone with the son he had with his first wife. He rarely saw this melancholic son. He shouldn’t have left the child in the strange and distant grandparents’ home far from home. He was alone with his daughter, who had just been born two months earlier. He visited her only once in the morning and once in the evening, watching her bathe, nurse, and use the toilet. His daughter was merely a small creature thrust into his hands amid the turmoil of the world; he had no reason to love her. He was also alone with his young English mistress. He traveled to England to pursue her but didn’t know how to kiss her passionately. He was alone with the few friends he had. He often felt manipulated by his friends, sometimes deceived, and even unknowingly betrayed. During his middle and high school years, whether at private or public schools, he was still alone. The family insisted on sending him to school, where he discovered for the first time how mediocre the children of wealthy families could be. The priests who nurtured them, though adept in Latin and outwardly dignified, were actually hypocritical, and even the secular professors were unlearned. He was also alone when he served in the army, though the people were kind, and the uniform made it worse, but his fellow soldiers in the barracks were not his friends. He was alone in the sailors’ bars of Liverpool or Amsterdam, though the bars were filled with rough fun, sometimes stirring his fleeting affection and desire for women.
In August 1903, Michel hid alone in the third-floor room of Black Mountain Castle, feeling he could no longer endure loneliness. He had moved into this room after losing his wives twice in four years.
Afterword: If Marguerite Yourcenar completed the final chapter, The Hard Way Back, in her later years, she was unable to finish writing What Is Eternal. However, as she was only fifty pages away from concluding the work, the incomplete portion does not significantly detract from the overall piece. In any case, she believed the work had reached a stage where, before drafting the chapter The Hard Way Back, she hoped that even if she couldn’t complete the entire manuscript as planned, the chapters already written could still be published. Although Marguerite Yourcenar left no writing plan, she discussed her intentions with her relatives, so she provided some details about the unfinished parts. First, she considered it important to resolve the fates of Michel and Yana. Both died of cancer, and their deaths were only a few years apart. Additionally, she wanted to organize her early works, particularly The New Eurydice. As a conclusion, she planned to briefly and comprehensively describe the life she lived in Austria, Italy, and Greece a few years after her father’s death, especially before the outbreak of World War II.
On November 8, 1987, Marguerite Yourcenar suffered a sudden stroke. Before that, despite enduring excruciating headaches, she had been working on What Is Eternal. Given how little we know about her, we cannot help but recall a prescient line from her Northern Archives: “If my time and energy allowed, I might have continued writing until 1914, until 1939, until the pen slipped from my hand.”
Jean Berniére (Jean Berniére, a Quebecer who was very familiar with Marguerite Yourcenar; Yourcenar entrusted him with organizing her archives in the United States in her will and transferring them entirely to the Harvard University Library.)