Marguerite Duras

{{short description|French writer and film director}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=July 2022}}

{{Infobox writer

| image = Marguerite Duras 1993.jpg

| alt = Duras, 1993

| caption = Duras in 1993

| pseudonym =

| birth_name = Marguerite Donnadieu

| birth_date = {{Birth date|1914|4|4|df=y}}

| birth_place = Gia Định, Cochinchina, French Indochina (present-day Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam)

| death_date = {{Death date and age|1996|3|3|1914|4|4|df=y}}

| death_place = Paris, France

| occupation = {{flatlist|

| education = Lycée Chasseloup Laubat (Saigon)

| alma_mater = University of Paris

| period = 1943–1995

| genre =

| subject =

| movement =

| partner =

| children =

| relatives =

| awards =

| signature =

| website =

| spouses = {{plainlist|

}}

Marguerite Germaine Marie Donnadieu ({{IPA|fr|maʁɡ(ə)ʁit ʒɛʁmɛn maʁi dɔnadjø|lang}}, 4 April 1914 – 3 March 1996), known as Marguerite Duras ({{IPA|fr|maʁɡ(ə)ʁit dyʁas|lang}}), was a French novelist, playwright, screenwriter, essayist, and experimental filmmaker. Her script for the film Hiroshima mon amour (1959) earned her a nomination for Best Original Screenplay at the Academy Awards.

Early life and education

Duras was born Marguerite Donnadieu on 4 April 1914, in Gia Định,{{cite book|url=https://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb119013498.public|title=Bnf: Notice de personne: Duras, Marguerite (1914–1996)|language=fr|access-date=18 September 2018}} Cochinchina, French Indochina (now Vietnam). Her parents, Marie (née Legrand, 1877–1956) and Henri Donnadieu (1872–1921), were teachers from France who likely had met at Gia Định High School.{{cite news|last1=Riding|first1=Alan|title=Marguerite Duras, 81, Author Who Explored Love and Sex|newspaper=The New York Times|date=4 March 1996 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1996/03/04/nyregion/marguerite-duras-81-author-who-explored-love-and-sex.html|access-date=14 April 2017}}{{Cite book|last=Adler|first=Laure|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RRxxlYQTzNYC|title=Marguerite Duras: A Life|date=2000-12-15|publisher=University of Chicago Press|isbn=978-0-226-00758-8|language=en}} They both had previous marriages. Marguerite had two brothers: Pierre, the older, and the younger Paul.

Duras' father fell ill and he returned to France, where he died in 1921. Between 1922 and 1924, the family lived in France while her mother was on administrative leave. They then moved back to French Indochina when she was posted to Phnom Penh followed by Vĩnh Long and Sa Đéc. The family struggled financially, and her mother made a bad investment in an isolated property and area of rice farmland in Prey Nob, a story which was fictionalized in Un barrage contre le Pacifique (The Sea Wall).

In 1931, when she was 17, Duras and her family moved to France where she successfully passed the first part of the baccalaureate with the choice of Vietnamese as a foreign language, as she spoke it fluently. Duras returned to Saigon in late 1932 where her mother found a teaching post. There, Marguerite continued her education at the Lycée Chasseloup-Laubat and completed the second part of the baccalaureate, specializing in philosophy.

In autumn 1933, Duras moved to Paris, graduating with a degree in public law in 1936. At the same time, she took classes in mathematics. She continued her education, earning a diplôme d'études supérieures (DES) in public law and, later, in political economy.{{Cite book|last=André|first=Labarrère|title=Marguerite Duras|publisher=Editions de l'Herne|year=2005|isbn=2851971492|pages=364}} After finishing her studies in 1937, she found employment with the French government at the Ministry of the Colonies. In 1939, she married the writer Robert Antelme, whom she had met during her studies.

During World War II, from 1942 to 1944, Duras worked for the Vichy government in an office that allocated paper quotas to publishers and in the process operated a de facto book-censorship system. She also became an active member of the PCF (the French Communist Party) and a member of the French Resistance as a part of a small group that also included François Mitterrand, who later became President of France and remained a lifelong friend of hers. Duras' husband, Antelme, was deported to Buchenwald in 1944{{cite web|language=fr

|url=http://www.bddm.org/liv/details.php?id=I.265.#ANTELME|title=Transport parti de Compiègne le 17 août 1944 (I.265.)|access-date=31 July 2018}} for his involvement in the Resistance, and barely survived the experience (weighing on his release, according to Duras, just 38 kg, or 84 pounds). She nursed him back to health, but they divorced once he recovered.

In 1943, when publishing her first novel, she began to use the surname Duras, after the town that her father came from, Duras, Lot-et-Garonne.{{Cite magazine|last=Kushner|first=Rachel|title="A Man and a Woman, Say What You Like, They're Different": On Marguerite Duras|url=https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/a-man-and-a-woman-say-what-you-like-theyre-different-on-marguerite-duras|access-date=2020-09-29|magazine=The New Yorker|date=10 November 2017|language=en-us}}

In 1950, her mother returned to France from Indochina, wealthy from property investments and from the boarding school she had run.

Career

Duras was the author of many novels, plays, films, interviews, essays, and works of short fiction, including her best-selling, highly fictionalized autobiographical work L'Amant (1984), translated into English as The Lover, which describes her youthful affair with a Chinese-Vietnamese man. It won the Prix Goncourt in 1984.{{cite web|url=https://www.academiegoncourt.com/?article=1229180042|title=Le Palmarès|website=Académie Goncourt}} The story of her adolescence also appears in three other books: The Sea Wall, Eden Cinema and The North China Lover. A film version of The Lover, produced by Claude Berri and directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud, was released in 1992. Duras's novel The Sea Wall was first adapted into the 1958 film This Angry Age by René Clément, and again in 2008 by Cambodian director Rithy Panh as The Sea Wall.{{Citation needed|date= May 2018}}

Other major works include Moderato Cantabile (1958), which was the basis of the 1960 film Seven Days... Seven Nights; Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein (1964); and her play India Song, which Duras herself later directed as a film in 1975. She was also the screenwriter of the 1959 French film Hiroshima mon amour, which was directed by Alain Resnais.{{cite web|url=https://www.criterion.com/films/217-hiroshima-mon-amour|title=The Criterion Collection – Hiroshima Mon Amour|website=The Criterion Collection}} Duras's early novels were fairly conventional in form, and were criticized for their "romanticism" by fellow writer Raymond Queneau; however, with Moderato Cantabile, she became more experimental, paring down her texts to give ever-increasing importance to what was not said. She was associated with the nouveau roman French literary movement, although she did not belong definitively to any one group. She was noted for her command of dialogue.{{cite journal|year=2012|title=Marguerite Duras|url=https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/174178/Marguerite-Duras|access-date=4 April 2012|work=Encyclopædia Britannica}}

In 1971, Duras signed the Manifesto of the 343, thereby publicly announcing that she had had an abortion.{{Cite web|url=http://www.cidem.org/themes/egalite_hommes_femmes/ega_infos/eclairages/ega_k003.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20010423084113/http://www.cidem.org/themes/egalite_hommes_femmes/ega_infos/eclairages/ega_k003.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=2001-04-23|title=manifeste des 343|date=2001-04-23|access-date=2019-05-28}}

According to literature and film scholars Madeleine Cottenet-Hage and Robert P. Kolker, Duras' provocative cinema between 1973 and 1983 was concerned with a single "ideal" image, at the same time both "an absolute vacant image and an absolute meaningful image," while also focused on the verbal text. They said her films purposely lacked realistic representation, such as divorcing image from sound and using space symbolically.{{cite journal |last1=Cottenet-Hage |first1=Madeleine |last2=Kolker |first2=Robert P. |date=October 1989 |title=The Cinema of Duras in Search of an Ideal Image |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/394689 |journal=The French Review |publisher=American Association of Teachers of French |volume=63 |issue=1 |pages=88–98 |jstor=394689 |access-date=12 May 2022 }}

Many of her works, such as Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein and L'Homme assis dans le couloir (1980), deal with human sexuality.Alex Hughes, "Erotic Writing" in Hughes and Keith Reader,

Encyclopedia of contemporary French culture, (pp. 187–88). London, Routledge, 1998, {{ISBN|0415131863}}

Towards the end of her life, Duras published a short, 54-page autobiographical book as a goodbye to her readers and family. The last entry was written on 1 August 1995 and read "I think it is all over. That my life is finished. I am no longer anything. I have become an appalling sight. I am falling apart. Come quickly. I no longer have a mouth, no longer a face".{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1996/03/04/nyregion/marguerite-duras-81-author-who-explored-love-and-sex.html|title=Marguerite Duras, 81, Author Who Explored Love and Sex|last=Riding|first=Alan|date=1996-03-04|work=The New York Times|access-date=2020-02-05|language=en-US|issn=0362-4331}} Duras died at her home in Paris on 3 March 1996, aged 81.{{Cite news|title=Passion into Prose: Obituary: Marguerite Duras|last=Coward|first=David|date=4 March 1996|work=The Guardian|page=12}}

Personal life

During the later stages of World War II, she endured separation from her husband, Robert Antelme, following his imprisonment in Buchenwald. It was during his captivity that she wrote La Douleur. Believing that fidelity was an absurd notion, Duras began an affair with writer Dionys Mascolo while still married to Antelme, creating a ménage à trois, she later fathered her son, Jean Mascolo.{{Cite web|url=https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1995-03-19-9503190038-story.html|title=Overstepping Boundaries: A Life of Maguerite Duras|last=Vircondelet|first=Alain|date=1996-03-15|newspaper=Chicago Tribune|access-date=2020-04-15}}

Duras had a wide circle of influential friends, ranging from writers and artists to intellectuals and even criminals. Her friend, the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, once remarked, "Marguerite Duras turns out to know what I teach without me," in praise of her novel Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein.{{Cite news |last=Moi |first=Toril |date=2023-04-13 |title=Don't look back |url=https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n08/toril-moi/don-t-look-back |access-date=2024-08-04 |work=London Review of Books |language=en |volume=45 |issue=8 |issn=0260-9592}}{{Cite news |last=Garis |first=Leslie |date=1991-10-20 |title=The Life and Loves of Marguerite Duras |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1991/10/20/magazine/the-life-and-loves-of-marguerite-duras.html |access-date=2024-08-04 |work=The New York Times |language=en-US |issn=0362-4331}}

During the final two decades of her life, Duras experienced significant health problems. In 1980, she was hospitalized for the first time due to a combination of alcohol and tranquilizers. She also underwent detoxification to address her alcohol addiction. After being hospitalized again in October 1988, she fell into a coma that lasted until June 1989.{{Cite web|url=https://www.encyclopedia.com/women/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/duras-marguerite-1914-1996|title=Duras, Marguerite (1914–1996)|access-date=2020-04-15|website=/www.encyclopedia.com}}

In parallel with her health issues during the 1980s, Duras began a relationship with Yann Andréa, a homosexual actor. Yann Andréa helped Duras through her health difficulties. Duras would detail these interactions and companionship in her final book, Yann Andréa Steiner.{{Cite web|url=https://www.encyclopedia.com/women/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/duras-marguerite-1914-1996|title=Duras, Marguerite (1914–1996)|access-date=2020-04-15|website=/www.encyclopedia.com}}

Duras' health continued to decline in the 1990s. She died on 3 March 1996.

Reception and legacy

Samuel Beckett regarded first hearing the 1957 radio adaptation of Le Square as "overwhelmingly moving" and a significant moment in his life.{{Cite news |last=Tayler |first=Christopher |date=2015-03-19 |title=Under-the-Table-Talk |url=https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v37/n06/christopher-tayler/under-the-table-talk |access-date=2025-06-12 |work=London Review of Books |language=en |volume=37 |issue=06 |issn=0260-9592}}

The 2021 French mini-series Une affaire française (aka A French Case) depicts Duras (played by a chain-smoking Dominique Blanc) in a damning light, as she insinuates herself into the investigation of a 1984 child murder case by accusing the mother of the crime.{{cite web | url = https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15553020/reference/ | title = A French Case, episode 5: Sublime, Forcément Sublime | website = imdb.com | access-date = February 3, 2023}}

The account by Yann Andréa of his relationship with Duras was brought to the screen in a 2022 Claire Simon film entitled Vous ne désirez que moi (a phrase directed at Andréa by Duras) with Swann Arlaud as Andréa and Emmanuelle Devos as journalist Michèle Manceaux,[https://www.lemonde.fr/culture/article/2022/02/09/vous-ne-desirez-que-moi-la-derniere-passion-destructrice-de-marguerite-duras_6112962_3246.html « Vous ne désirez que moi » : la dernière passion destructrice de Marguerite Duras ("You desire only me" : the final destructive passion of Marguerite Duras. Review by Mathieu Macheret. Le Monde, 9 February 2022] accessed 6 September 2023. subsequently issued on DVD by Blaq Out.

Bibliography

= Novels and stories =

= Collections =

  • L'Été 80 (Les Éditions de Minuit, 1980)
  • Outside (Albin Michel, 1981). Outside, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (1986)
  • La Vie matérielle (POL, 1987). Practicalities, trans. Barbara Bray (1990)
  • Les Yeux verts (Cahiers du cinéma, n.312–313, June 1980 and a new edition, 1987). Green Eyes, trans. Carol Barko (1990)
  • C'est tout (POL, 1995). No More, trans. Richard Howard (1998)[https://sevenstories.com/books/3357-no-more No More] at Seven Stories Press.

= Theatre =

  • Les Viaducs de la Seine et Oise (Gallimard, 1959). The Viaducts of Seine-et-Oise, trans. Barbara Bray, in Three Plays (1967)
  • Théâtre I: Les Eaux et Forêts; Le Square; La Musica (Gallimard, 1965)
  • The Square, trans. Barbara Bray and Sonia Orwell, in Three Plays (1967)
  • La Musica, trans. Barbara Bray (1975)
  • L'Amante anglaise (Gallimard, 1968). L'Amante anglaise, trans. Barbara Bray (1975)
  • Théâtre II: Suzanna Andler; Des journées entières dans les arbres; Yes, peut-être; Le Shaga; Un homme est venu me voir (Gallimard, 1968)
  • Suzanna Andler, trans. Barbara Bray (1975)
  • Days in the Trees, trans. Barbara Bray and Sonia Orwell, in Three Plays (1967)
  • India Song (Gallimard, 1973). India Song, trans. Barbara Bray (1976)
  • L'Eden Cinéma (Mercure de France, 1977). Eden Cinema, trans. Barbara Bray, in Four Plays (1992)
  • Agatha (Les Éditions de Minuit, 1981). Agatha, trans. Howard Limoli (1992)
  • Savannah Bay (Les Éditions de Minuit, 1982; revised, 1983). Savannah Bay, trans. Barbara Bray, in Four Plays (1992); also by Howard Limoli (1992)
  • Théâtre III: La Bête dans la jungle; Les Papiers d'Aspern; La Danse de mort (Gallimard, 1984)
  • La Musica deuxième (Gallimard, 1985). La Musica deuxième, trans. Barbara Bray, in Four Plays (1992)

= Screenplays =

  • Hiroshima mon amour (Gallimard, 1960). Hiroshima mon amour, trans. Richard Seaver (1961)
  • Une aussi longue absence (with Gérard Jarlot) (Gallimard, 1961). Une aussi longue absence, trans. Barbara Wright (1961)
  • Nathalie Granger, suivi de La Femme du Gange (Gallimard, 1973)
  • Le Camion, suivi de Entretien avec Michelle Porte (Les Éditions de Minuit, 1977). The Darkroom, trans. Alta Ifland and Eireene Nealand (Contra Mundum Press, 2021)
  • Le Navire Night, suivi de Cesarée, les Mains négatives, Aurélia Steiner (Mercure de France, 1979). The Ship "Night", trans. Susan Dwyer

= Interviews =

  • Les Parleuses, with Xavière Gauthier (Les Éditions de Minuit, 1974). Woman to Woman, trans. Katharine A. Jensen (1987)
  • La Passion suspendue, with Leopoldina Pallotta della Torre (Le Seuil, 2013). Suspended Passion, trans. Chris Turner (2016)

= Compilations in English =

  • Four Novels: The Square, Moderato Cantabile, 10:30 on a Summer Night, The Afternoon of Mr. Andesmas (Grove, 1966)
  • Three Plays: The Square, Days in the Trees, The Viaducts of Seine-et-Oise (Calder & Boyars, 1967){{Cite book |last=Duras |first=Marguerite |url=http://archive.org/details/threeplays0000unse_v1p3 |title=Three plays |date=1967 |publisher=London : Calder & Boyars |others=Internet Archive}}
  • Three Novels: The Square, Ten-thirty on a Summer Night, The Afternoon of Monsieur Andesmas (Calder, 1977)
  • Four Plays: La Musica (La Musica Deuxième), Eden Cinema, Savannah Bay, India Song, trans. Barbara Bray (Oberon Books, 1992)
  • Agatha / Savannah Bay: 2 Plays, trans. Howard Limoli (Post-Apollo Press, 1992)
  • Two by Duras: The Slut of the Normandy Coast / The Atlantic Man, trans. Alberto Manguel (Coach House, 1993)

Filmography

File:Cimetière du Montparnasse - septembre 2018 - 7.JPG, with pens, pencils, and feathers, in and around, potted plants, on her grave.{{Cite web|url=https://www.flickr.com/photos/monceau/43768497471/|title=Pens, pencils and some feathers - tributes to Marguerite Duras around the potted tree on her grave|date=31 July 2018|accessdate=25 June 2024|via=Flickr}}

https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-aJQjj38IpGg/W7w2Uu_dlLI/AAAAAAAAIJw/kI5p6wmVUOge8SHhsY5iKpBRmzK48WKIQCLcBGAs/s1600/IMG_3795.jpg{{Cite web|url=https://murderiseverywhere.blogspot.com/2018/10/bonjour-from-paris.html|title=bonjour from Paris|date=9 October 2018|accessdate=25 June 2024}}{{Cite web|url=https://www.landrucimetieres.fr/spip/spip.php?article861|title=DURAS Marguerite (Marguerite Donnadieu : 1914-1996) - Cimetières de France et d'ailleurs|website=www.landrucimetieres.fr|accessdate=25 June 2024}}{{Cite web|url=https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/marguerite-duras-grave-montparnasse-cemetery.html|title=Marguerite duras grave montparnasse cemetery hi-res stock photography and images|first=Alamy|last=Limited|website=Alamy|accessdate=25 June 2024}}]]

=Director=

=Actor=

  • India Song (1975) – (voice)
  • The Lorry (1977) – Elle
  • Baxter, Vera Baxter (1977) – Narrator (voice, uncredited)
  • Le Navire Night (1979) – (voice)
  • Aurélia Steiner (Vancouver) (1979) – Narrator (voice)
  • Every Man for Himself (1980) – (voice)
  • Agatha et les Lectures illimitées (1981) – (voice)
  • Les Enfants (1985) – Narration (voice, uncredited) (final film role)

Awards and honors

  • 1958: Prix de Mai for Moderato cantabile
  • 1962: Prix de la Tribune de Paris for L'Après-midi de Monsieur Andesmas
  • 1972: Official selection at Venice Film Festival for the film Nathalie Granger
  • 1975: Prix de l'Association française des cinémas d'art et d'essai à Cannes for India Song
  • 1976: Prix Jean-Cocteau for the film Des journées entières dans les arbres
  • 1983: Grand prix du théâtre de l'Académie française
  • 1984: Prix Goncourt for L'Amant
  • 1986: Ritz Paris Hemingway Award for The Lover{{Cite news |last= |date=1986-04-09 |title=MARGUERITE DURAS WINS RITZ HEMINGWAY PRIZE |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1986/04/09/books/marguerite-duras-wins-ritz-hemingway-prize.html |access-date=2025-06-18 |work=The New York Times |language=en-US |issn=0362-4331}}

References

{{Reflist}}

Further reading

  • {{cite journal |last1=van Wert |first1=William F. |title=The Cinema of Marguerite Duras: Sound and Voice in a Closed Room |journal=Film Quarterly |date=Autumn 1979 |volume=33 |issue=1 |pages=22–29 |doi=10.2307/1212061 |jstor=1212061 |url=https://dn790006.ca.archive.org/0/items/The_Cinema_of_Marguerite_Duras/The_Cinema_of_Marguerite_Duras.pdf |access-date=12 August 2024}}
  • {{cite book |first1=Manuel Vázquez |last1=Montalbán |author-link=Manuel Vázquez Montalbán |first2=Willi |last2=Glasauer |author-link2=Willi Glasauer |title=Scenes from World Literature and Portraits of Greatest Authors |location=Barcelona |publisher=Círculo de Lectores |year=1988}}.
  • {{cite book |first1=Robert |last1=Harvey |author-link=Robert Harvey (literary theorist) |first2=Bernard |last2=Alazet |first3=Hélène |last3=Volat |title=Les Écrits de Marguerite Duras: Bibliographie des oeuvres et de la critique, 1940–2006 |location=Paris |publisher=IMEC |year=2009 |pages=530}}
  • Selous, Trista (1988), The Other Woman: Feminism and Feminity in the Work of Marguerite Duras, New Haven: Yale University Press. {{ISBN|9780300042870}}.
  • {{cite book |first1=Deborah N. |last1=Glassman |title=Marguerite Duras: Fascinating Vision and Narrative Cure |year=1991 |location=Rutherford, New Jersey; London |publisher=Fairleigh Dickinson University Press; Associated University Presses |isbn=0838633374 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JX0-S9Pu4cIC |via=Google Books }}
  • {{cite book |first1=Leslie |last1=Hill |author-link=Leslie Hill |title=Marguerite Duras: Apocalyptic Desires |location=London, New York City |publisher=Routledge |date=10 July 1993 |isbn=0415050480 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AsBdN04TK9cC |via=Google Books }}
  • {{cite book |first1=Marilyn R. |last1=Schuster |title=Marguerite Duras Revisited |year=1993 |isbn=0805782982 |location=New York City |publisher=Twayne}} {{ISBN|9780805782981}}.
  • {{cite book |first1=Alain |last1=Vircondelet |title=Duras: A Biography |year=1994 |location=Normal, Illinois |isbn=1564780651 |publisher=Dalkey Archive Press}} {{ISBN|9781564780652}}.
  • Adler, Laure. (1998), Marguerite Duras: A Life, Trans. Anne-Marie Glasheen, London: Orion Books.
  • {{cite book |first1=Martin |last1=Crowley |title=Duras, Writing, and the Ethical |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=0198160135 |year=2000}} {{ISBN|9780198160137}}.