POLITICAL LOSS

Marguerite Duras, Green Eyes, translated from the French by Carol Barko (New York: Columbia U. Press, 1990) (From "Political Loss": "For many people the true loss of political meaning is to join a party unit, to submit to its rule, its law. For any people, too, when they talk about an apolitical stance, they are primarily talking about an ideological loss or shortcoming. I can't speak for you, for your thoughts. For me, political loss is primarily the loss of self, the loss of one's anger as much as of one's gentleness, the loss of one's hatred, of one's faculty for hatred as much as of one's faculty for loving, the loss of one's imprudence as much as one's moderation, the loss of excess as much as loss of measure, the loss of madness, of one's naivete, the loss of one's courage like one's cowardice, like that of one's horror in the face of everything as much as that of one's confidence, the loss of one's tears like the one's joy. That's what I think." Id. at 6, italics in original.).