The End Of The Affair by Graham Greene

First broadcast 19980413. First repeated 20000103. Graham Greene's story of the loss of love and one man's losing battle with his own agnosticism. Dramatised for radio by John Harvey. With Alex Jennings as Bendrix and Emma Fielding as Sarah. Director Sally Avens

Set in London during and just after World War II, the novel examines the obsessions, jealousy and discernments within the relationships between three central characters: writer Maurice Bendrix; Sarah Miles; and her husband, civil servant Henry Miles. Bendrix and Sarah fall in love quickly, but he soon realizes that the affair will end as quickly as it began. The relationship suffers from his overt and admitted jealousy. He is frustrated by her refusal to divorce Henry, her amiable but boring husband. When a bomb blasts Bendrix's flat as he is with Sarah, he is nearly killed. After this, Sarah breaks off the affair with no apparent explanation. Two years later, Bendrix is still wracked with jealousy when he sees Henry crossing the Common that separates their flats. Henry has finally started to suspect something, and Bendrix decides to go to a private detective to discover Sarah's new lover. Through her diary, he learns that, when she thought he was dead after the bombing, she made a promise to God not to see Bendrix again if God allowed him to live again. Greene describes Sarah's struggles with Catholicism. After her sudden death from pneumonia, several almost-miraculous events occur, advocating for some kind of meaningfulness to Sarah's faith. By the last page of the novel, Bendrix may have come to believe in a God as well, though not to love him. background information: Graham Greene's own affair with Lady Catherine Walston played into the basis for The End of the Affair. The British edition of the novel is dedicated to "C" while the American version is made out to "Catherine." Greene's own house at 14 Clapham Common Northside was bombed during The Blitz. "...for decades literary experts have argued about the importance of the relationship between Graham Greene and his lover Catherine Walston. Now, previously-unseen love poems written by Greene prove her to be the love of his life. The novelist's relationship with Lady Walston, the frustrated wife of a civil servant, led to the classic 1951 novel The End of the Affair, which has twice been made into a film. But the existence of the poems he wrote about his mistress has, until now, been a closely-guarded secret. The poems have only ever been seen by a handful of people because they were contained in two tiny volumes which Greene wrote for the couple's small circle of friends. (...) In one of the poems, also called Two Years Later, Greene recounts the highs of the first 24 months in the couple's affair. He contrasts the fiercely passionate nature of the relationship with the more staid partnership he enjoyed with his first wife Vivien. He also makes reference to an aeroplane flight, possibly the one which Lady Walston bought for Greene shortly after they met and just before they embarked on the affair. It also celebrates the wonders of Italy, which was to provide the backdrop to their illicit romance. Greene writes: "In a plane your hair was blown/And in an island the older car/Lingered from inn to inn/Like a fly on a map/A mattress was spread on a cottage floor/And a door closed on a world, but another door/Opened, and I was far/From the old world sadly known/Where the fruitless seeds were sowed/And they called that virtue and this sin/Did I ever love God before I knew the place I rest in now, with my hand/Set in stone, never to move?/For this is love, and this I love/And even my God is here." ..."

In 1999, the novel was again made into a movie (The End of the Affair), directed by Irish director Neil Jordan. Jordan also wrote the screenplay and produced the film with Stephen Woolley. It starred American actress Julianne Moore as Sarah Miles, English actor Ralph Fiennes as Maurice Bendrix, and Irish actor Stephen Rea as Henry Miles. Julianne Moore was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance.

20000103-AP-End of the Affair, The (Graham Greene).mp3

"The film was not a good film, and at moments it was acutely painful to see situations that had been so real to me twisted into the stock clichés of the screen. I wished I had gone to something else with Sarah. At first I had said to her, 'That's not what I
wrote, you know,' but I couldn't keep on saying that. She touched me sympathetically with her hand, and from then on we sat there with our hands in the innocent embrace that children and lovers use. Suddenly and unexpectedly, for a few minutes only, the film came to life. I forgot that this was my story, and that for once this was my dialogue, and was genuinely moved by a small scene in a cheap restaurant. The lover had ordered steak and onions, the girl hesitated for a moment to take the onions because her husband didn't like the smell, the lover was hurt and angry because he realized what was behind her hesitation, which brought to his mind the inevitable embrace on her return home. The scene was a success: I had wanted to convey the sense of passion through some common simple episode without any rhetoric in words or action, and it worked. For a few seconds I was happy - this was writing: I wasn't interested in anything else in the world. I wanted to go home and read the scene over: I wanted to work at something new: I wished, how I wished, that I hadn't invited Sarah Miles to dinner.
Afterwards - we were back at Rules and they had just fetched our steaks - she said, 'There was one scene you did write.'
'About the onions?'
'Yes.' And at that very moment a dish of onions was put on the table. I said to her - it hadn't even crossed my mind that evening to desire her - 'And does Henry mind onions?'
'Yes. He can't bear them. Do you like them?'
'Yes.' She helped me to them and then helped herself.
Is it possible to fall in love over a dish of onions? It seems improbable and yet I could swear it was just then that I fell in love. It wasn't, of course, simply the onions -it was that sudden sense of an individual woman, of a frankness that was so often later to make me happy and miserable. I put my hand under the cloth and laid it on her knee, and her hand came down and held mine in place. I said, 'It's a good steak,' and heard like poetry her reply, 'It's the best I've ever eaten.'
There was no pursuit and no seduction. We left half the good steak on our plates and a third of the bottle of claret and came out into Maiden Lane with the same intention in both our minds. At exactly the same spot as before, by the doorway and the grill, we kissed. I said, 'I'm in love.'"

"When I began to realize how often we quarrelled, how often I picked on her with nervous irritation, I became aware that our love was doomed: love had turned
into a love-affair with a beginning and an end. I could name the very moment when it had begun, and one day I knew I should be able to name the final hour. When she left the house I couldn't settle to work: I would reconstruct what we had said to each other: I would fan myself into anger or remorse. And all the time I knew I was forcing the pace. I was pushing, pushing the only thing I loved out of my life. As long as I could make-believe that love lasted, I was happy - I think I was even good to live with, and so love did last. But if love had to die, I wanted it to die quickly. It was as though our love were a small creature caught in a trap and bleeding to death: I had to shut my eyes and wring its neck."

graham-greene-the-end-of-the-affair.pdf

Replies

James June 27, 2010 at 6:05am

"The film was not a good film, and at moments it was acutely painful to see situations that had been so real to me twisted into the stock clichés of the screen. I wished I had gone to something else with Sarah. At first I had said to her, 'That's not what I
wrote, you know,' but I couldn't keep on saying that. She touched me sympathetically with her hand, and from then on we sat there with our hands in the innocent embrace that children and lovers use. Suddenly and unexpectedly, for a few minutes only, the film came to life. I forgot that this was my story, and that for once this was my dialogue, and was genuinely moved by a small scene in a cheap restaurant. The lover had ordered steak and onions, the girl hesitated for a moment to take the onions because her husband didn't like the smell, the lover was hurt and angry because he realized what was behind her hesitation, which brought to his mind the inevitable embrace on her return home. The scene was a success: I had wanted to convey the sense of passion through some common simple episode without any rhetoric in words or action, and it worked. For a few seconds I was happy - this was writing: I wasn't interested in anything else in the world. I wanted to go home and read the scene over: I wanted to work at something new: I wished, how I wished, that I hadn't invited Sarah Miles to dinner.
Afterwards - we were back at Rules and they had just fetched our steaks - she said, 'There was one scene you did write.'
'About the onions?'
'Yes.' And at that very moment a dish of onions was put on the table. I said to her - it hadn't even crossed my mind that evening to desire her - 'And does Henry mind onions?'
'Yes. He can't bear them. Do you like them?'
'Yes.' She helped me to them and then helped herself.
Is it possible to fall in love over a dish of onions? It seems improbable and yet I could swear it was just then that I fell in love. It wasn't, of course, simply the onions -it was that sudden sense of an individual woman, of a frankness that was so often later to make me happy and miserable. I put my hand under the cloth and laid it on her knee, and her hand came down and held mine in place. I said, 'It's a good steak,' and heard like poetry her reply, 'It's the best I've ever eaten.'
There was no pursuit and no seduction. We left half the good steak on our plates and a third of the bottle of claret and came out into Maiden Lane with the same intention in both our minds. At exactly the same spot as before, by the doorway and the grill, we kissed. I said, 'I'm in love.'"

"When I began to realize how often we quarrelled, how often I picked on her with nervous irritation, I became aware that our love was doomed: love had turned
into a love-affair with a beginning and an end. I could name the very moment when it had begun, and one day I knew I should be able to name the final hour. When she left the house I couldn't settle to work: I would reconstruct what we had said to each other: I would fan myself into anger or remorse. And all the time I knew I was forcing the pace. I was pushing, pushing the only thing I loved out of my life. As long as I could make-believe that love lasted, I was happy - I think I was even good to live with, and so love did last. But if love had to die, I wanted it to die quickly. It was as though our love were a small creature caught in a trap and bleeding to death: I had to shut my eyes and wring its neck."
graham-greene-the-end-of-the-affair.pdf

This reply was deleted.

Classic & Contemporary Drama

Replies