Marguerite Duras
Encyclopedia
Marguerite Donnadieu, better known as Marguerite Duras (maʁ.ɡə.ʁit dy.ʁas) (4 April 1914 – 3 March 1996) was a French
writer
and film director
.
(now Vietnam
), after her parents responded to a campaign by the French
government encouraging people to work in the colony.
Marguerite's father fell ill soon after their arrival, and returned to France
, where he died. After his death, her mother, a teacher, remained in Indochina
with her three children. The family lived in relative poverty after her mother made a bad investment in an isolated property and area of farmland in Cambodia
. The difficult life that the family experienced during this period was highly influential on Marguerite's later work. An affair between the teenaged Marguerite and a Chinese
man was to be treated several times (described in quite contrasting ways) in her subsequent memoirs and fiction. She also reported being beaten by both her mother and her older brother during this period.
At 17, Marguerite went to France
, her parents' native country, where she began studying for a degree in mathematics
. This she soon abandoned to concentrate on political sciences
, and then law
. After completing her studies, she became an active member of the PCF
(the French Communist Party
). In the late 1930s she worked for the French
government office representing the colony of Indochina
. During the war
, from 1942 to 1944, she worked for the Vichy government in an office that allocated paper to publishers (in the process operating a de facto book censorship
system), but she was also a member of the French Resistance
. Her husband, Robert Antelme
, was deported to Buchenwald for his involvement in the Resistance, and barely survived the experience (weighing on his release, according to Marguerite, just 84 lbs).
In 1943, for her first novel published Les Impudents, she decided to use as pen name
the surname of Duras
, a village in the Lot-et-Garonne
département, where her father's house was located.
s, interviews, essays and short fiction, including her best-selling, apparently autobiographical work
L'Amant (1984), translated into English as The Lover, which describes her youthful affair with a Chinese man. This text won the Goncourt prize
in 1984. The story of her adolescence also appears in three other forms: The Sea Wall, Eden Cinema and The North China Lover. A film version of The Lover
, produced by Claude Berri
, was released to great success in 1992. A film version of The Sea Wall was first released in 1958, and remade in 2008 by Cambodian
director Rithy Panh
.
Other major works include Moderato Cantabile
, also made into a film of the same name, Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein, and her play India Song, which Duras herself later directed as a film (1975). She was also the screenwriter of the 1959 French film Hiroshima mon amour
, which was directed by Alain Resnais
.
Duras's early novels were fairly conventional in form (their 'romanticism' was criticised 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 group. Her films are also experimental in form; most eschew synchronized sound, using voice over to allude to, rather than tell, a story; spoken text is juxtaposed with images whose relation to what is said may be more-or-less indirect.
Despite her success as a writer, Duras's adult life was also marked by personal challenges, including a recurring struggle with alcoholism. Duras died of throat cancer in Paris, aged 81. She is interred in the Cimetière du Montparnasse.
French people
The French are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups...
writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
and film director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
.
Background
She was born in Gia-Dinh (a former name for Saigon), French IndochinaFrench Indochina
French Indochina was part of the French colonial empire in southeast Asia. A federation of the three Vietnamese regions, Tonkin , Annam , and Cochinchina , as well as Cambodia, was formed in 1887....
(now Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
), after her parents responded to a campaign by the French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
government encouraging people to work in the colony.
Marguerite's father fell ill soon after their arrival, and returned to France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, where he died. After his death, her mother, a teacher, remained in Indochina
French Indochina
French Indochina was part of the French colonial empire in southeast Asia. A federation of the three Vietnamese regions, Tonkin , Annam , and Cochinchina , as well as Cambodia, was formed in 1887....
with her three children. The family lived in relative poverty after her mother made a bad investment in an isolated property and area of farmland in Cambodia
Cambodia
Cambodia , officially known as the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia...
. The difficult life that the family experienced during this period was highly influential on Marguerite's later work. An affair between the teenaged Marguerite and a Chinese
Chinese people
The term Chinese people may refer to any of the following:*People with Han Chinese ethnicity ....
man was to be treated several times (described in quite contrasting ways) in her subsequent memoirs and fiction. She also reported being beaten by both her mother and her older brother during this period.
At 17, Marguerite went to France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, her parents' native country, where she began studying for a degree in mathematics
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
. This she soon abandoned to concentrate on political sciences
Political science
Political Science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior...
, and then law
Law
Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...
. After completing her studies, she became an active member of the PCF
French Communist Party
The French Communist Party is a political party in France which advocates the principles of communism.Although its electoral support has declined in recent decades, the PCF retains a large membership, behind only that of the Union for a Popular Movement , and considerable influence in French...
(the French Communist Party
French Communist Party
The French Communist Party is a political party in France which advocates the principles of communism.Although its electoral support has declined in recent decades, the PCF retains a large membership, behind only that of the Union for a Popular Movement , and considerable influence in French...
). In the late 1930s she worked for the French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
government office representing the colony of Indochina
French Indochina
French Indochina was part of the French colonial empire in southeast Asia. A federation of the three Vietnamese regions, Tonkin , Annam , and Cochinchina , as well as Cambodia, was formed in 1887....
. During the war
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, from 1942 to 1944, she worked for the Vichy government in an office that allocated paper to publishers (in the process operating a de facto book censorship
Censorship
thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...
system), but she was also a member of the French Resistance
French Resistance
The French Resistance is the name used to denote the collection of French resistance movements that fought against the Nazi German occupation of France and against the collaborationist Vichy régime during World War II...
. Her husband, Robert Antelme
Robert Antelme
Robert Antelme was a French writer. During the Second World War he was involved in the French Resistance and deported....
, was deported to Buchenwald for his involvement in the Resistance, and barely survived the experience (weighing on his release, according to Marguerite, just 84 lbs).
In 1943, for her first novel published Les Impudents, she decided to use as pen name
Pen name
A pen name, nom de plume, or literary double, is a pseudonym adopted by an author. A pen name may be used to make the author's name more distinctive, to disguise his or her gender, to distance an author from some or all of his or her works, to protect the author from retribution for his or her...
the surname of Duras
Duras, Lot-et-Garonne
Duras is a commune in the Lot-et-Garonne department in south-western France.The town is traversed by the Dropt river.-Notable people:*David Hume of Godscroft , Scottish historian and philosopher, was the pastor in Duras 1604-1614....
, a village in the Lot-et-Garonne
Lot-et-Garonne
Lot-et-Garonne is a department in the southwest of France named after the Lot and Garonne rivers.-History:Lot-et-Garonne is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on March 4, 1790...
département, where her father's house was located.
Authorship
She was the author of many novels, plays, filmFilm
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
s, interviews, essays and short fiction, including her best-selling, apparently autobiographical work
Autobiographical novel
An autobiographical novel is a form of novel using autofiction techniques, or the merging of autobiographical and fiction elements. The literary technique is distinguished from an autobiography or memoir by the stipulation of being fiction...
L'Amant (1984), translated into English as The Lover, which describes her youthful affair with a Chinese man. This text won the Goncourt prize
Prix Goncourt
The Prix Goncourt is a prize in French literature, given by the académie Goncourt to the author of "the best and most imaginative prose work of the year"...
in 1984. The story of her adolescence also appears in three other forms: The Sea Wall, Eden Cinema and The North China Lover. A film version of The Lover
The Lover (film)
- Production :While adapting the Marguerite Duras novel into the film's screenplay, director Jean-Jacques Annaud and fellow writer Gérard Brach changed the age of "The Girl" from 15½ to 17, but tried to maintain the original structure and literary tone of the original novel. As with the Duras...
, produced by Claude Berri
Claude Berri
Claude Berri , born Claude Berel Langmann, was one of the great all-rounders of French cinema: an actor, writer, producer, director and distributor. "Out of my failure as an actor was born my desire to direct. Then my relative failure as a director forced me to become a producer. In order to get my...
, was released to great success in 1992. A film version of The Sea Wall was first released in 1958, and remade in 2008 by Cambodian
Cambodia
Cambodia , officially known as the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia...
director Rithy Panh
Rithy Panh
Rithy Panh is an internationally and critically acclaimed Cambodian documentary film director and screenwriter.The French-schooled director's films focus on the aftermath of the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia...
.
Other major works include Moderato Cantabile
Moderato Cantabile
Moderato Cantabile is a novel by Marguerite Duras. It was very popular, selling half a million copies and being the initial source of Duras's fame.-Plot:...
, also made into a film of the same name, Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein, and her play India Song, which Duras herself later directed as a film (1975). She was also the screenwriter of the 1959 French film Hiroshima mon amour
Hiroshima Mon Amour
Hiroshima mon amour is an acclaimed 1959 drama film directed by French film director Alain Resnais, with a screenplay by Marguerite Duras. It is the documentation of an intensely personal conversation between a French-Japanese couple about memory and forgetfulness...
, which was directed by Alain Resnais
Alain Resnais
Alain Resnais is a French film director whose career has extended over more than six decades. After training as a film editor in the mid-1940s, he went on to direct a number of short films which included Nuit et Brouillard , an influential documentary about the Nazi concentration camps.He began...
.
Duras's early novels were fairly conventional in form (their 'romanticism' was criticised by fellow writer Raymond Queneau
Raymond Queneau
Raymond Queneau was a French poet and novelist and the co-founder of Ouvroir de littérature potentielle .-Biography:Born in Le Havre, Seine-Maritime, Queneau was the only child of Auguste Queneau and Joséphine Mignot...
); 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
Nouveau roman
The nouveau roman is a type of 1950s French novel that diverged from classical literary genres. Émile Henriot coined the title in an article in the popular French newspaper Le Monde on May 22, 1957 to describe certain writers who experimented with style in each novel, creating an essentially new...
French literary movement, although she did not belong definitively to any group. Her films are also experimental in form; most eschew synchronized sound, using voice over to allude to, rather than tell, a story; spoken text is juxtaposed with images whose relation to what is said may be more-or-less indirect.
Despite her success as a writer, Duras's adult life was also marked by personal challenges, including a recurring struggle with alcoholism. Duras died of throat cancer in Paris, aged 81. She is interred in the Cimetière du Montparnasse.
Filmography as director
- Les Enfants (1984)
- Il Dialogo di Roma (1982)
- L'Homme atlantique (1981)
- Agatha et les lectures illimitées (1981)
- Aurelia Steiner (Melbourne) (1979)
- Aurélia Steiner (Vancouver) (1979)
- Le Navire Night (1979)
- Césarée (1978)
- Les Mains négatives (1978)
- Baxter, Vera Baxter (1977)
- Le Camion (1977)
- Des journées entières dans les arbres (1976)
- Son nom de Venise dans Calcutta désertSon nom de Venise dans Calcutta désertSon nom de Venise dans Calcutta désert is a French film directed by Marguerite Duras in 1976. Calcutta in Duras's depiction is a place full of hidden sorrow under a veil of joy and charm...
(1976) - India SongIndia SongIndia Song is a 1975 French drama film directed by Marguerite Duras. India Song stars Delphine Seyrig, Michel Lonsdale, Mathieu Carriere, Claude Mann, Vernon Dobtcheff and Didier Flamand. The film centres on Anne-Marie , the promiscuous wife of the French Vice-Consul in India, and was based on an...
(1975) - La Femme du Gange (1974)
- Nathalie GrangerNathalie GrangerNathalie Granger is a 1972 French drama film directed by Marguerite Duras.-Cast:* Lucia Bosé - Isabelle * Jeanne Moreau - Other Woman* Gérard Depardieu - Salesman* Luce Garcia-Ville - Teacher* Valerie Mascolo - Nathalie Granger...
(1972) - Jaune le soleil (1972)
- Détruire, dit-elle (1969)
- La Musica (1967)
Further reading
- Leslie Hill Marguerite Duras: Apocalyptic Desires (Routledge, 1993)
- Martin Crowley Duras, Writing, and the Ethical (Oxford University Press, 2000)
- Robert HarveyRobert Harvey (literary theorist)Robert Harvey is a literary scholar and academic. He is Professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook where he teaches comparative literature, literatures written in French, and theory...
, Bernard Alazet, Hélène Volat, Les Écrits de Marguerite Duras. Bibliographie des oeuvres et de la critique, 1940-2006. Paris, IMEC, 2009. 530p.
External links
- "In Love with Duras" an essay in The New York Review of Books, by Edmund White, June 26, 2008
- "The Timeless Marguerite Duras": an article in the TLS by Emilie Bickerton, 25 July 2007