The Ravishing of Lol Stein (Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein) was published by Gallimard in 1964. Jacques Lacan wrote an essay about it (“Hommage fait à Marguerite Duras, du Ravissement de Lol V. Stein”) declaring that Duras knew, without knowing that she knew, what psychoanalysis labors to articulate — that she had written the truth of feminine desire and masculine fantasy in a form that clinical discourse could not achieve.
The story, in outline, is simple: at a dance in S. Thala, the young Lol V. Stein watches her fiancé Michael Richardson become enchanted by another woman, Anne-Marie Stretter. They dance together all night and leave together at dawn, while Lol watches. This abandonment shatters Lol — she goes mad, retreats into catatonia, and eventually makes a conventional marriage that appears to be recovery.
Ten years later, Lol returns to S. Thala and begins obsessively reconstructing the scene of the dance — now watching through windows as her friend Tatiana (who resembles Anne-Marie Stretter) conducts an affair with Jacques Hold, who narrates the novel. But Hold’s narration is unreliable — he desires Lol, fantasizes about her watching, and cannot distinguish between what he observes and what he invents. The title’s ambiguity is central: “ravissement” means both “ravishing” (violation) and “rapture” (ecstasy), and the novel refuses to specify which meaning applies.
Duras creates a text that operates like desire itself: circular, repetitive, never arriving at satisfaction, always approaching and retreating from a primal scene that cannot be possessed or understood.
Collecting The Ravishing of Lol Stein
First edition (Gallimard, Paris, 1964): French paperback (NRF blanche series).
Market values:
- First French edition (Gallimard): $30–$80
- First English translation (Grove Press, 1966): $15–$40
- Signed copies: $80–$200