I have known strong minds with imposing, undoubting, Cobbett-like manners, but I have never met a great mind of this sort. And of the former, they are at least as often wrong as right. The truth is, a great mind must be androgynous. Great minds—Swedenborg’s for instance—are never wrong but in consequence of being in the right, but imperfectly. [Back to text]
6 While the man is hunting and fighting, the woman works with her wits, with her imagination: she brings forth dreams and gods. On certain days she becomes a seeress, borne on boundless wings of reverie and desire. The better to reckon up the seasons, she watches the sky; but her heart belongs to earth none the less. Young and flower-like herself, she looks down toward the enamoured flowers, and forms with them a personal acquaintance. As a woman, she beseeches them to heal the objects of her love (Michelet, ‘Introduction’ in La Sorcière: The Witch of the Middle Ages. Lionel J. Trotter trans., London: Simpkin, Marshall and Co., 1883). [Back to text]
7 Dionys Mascolo, ‘Birth of Tragedy’ in Marguerite Duras by Marguerite Duras, p. 140. [Back to text]
8 In an interview with Mathilde de la Bardonnie published in Libération on 18 August 1998, two years after his mother’s death and a year after the death of his father, Jean Mascolo was to say: ‘I adored my mother and she adored me for forty-nine years. Even if we were often a pair of terrors. My father was my best friend. She taught me freedom, how to preserve a wildness and, most importantly, how to cook.’ [Back to text]
• • • PLACES
1 This began life as a film (of 1976) directed by Michelle Porte. It was transcribed and published as a book by Éditions de Minuit in 1978. [Back to text]
2 Marie Donnadieu, née Legrand, died on 23 August 1956 after the publication of The Sea Wall and Whole Days in the Trees, but long before Duras had written of the Chinese lover. In a 1988 text published in the collective volume edited by Marcel Bisiaux and Catherine Jajolet, A ma mère. 60 écrivains parlent de leur mère (Paris: Éditions Pierre Horay, 1988) and reprinted in Le Monde extérieur (Paris: POL, 1993), she writes:
I believe I loved my mother more than anything, and that ended all of a sudden. I think it was when I had my child. Or, also, when the film made from The Sea Wall [René Clément’s 1958 film, This Angry Age] came out. After that she didn’t want to see me. In the end, she let me visit her, though she said ‘You should have waited till I died.’ I didn’t understand, thinking she was just being awkward, but that wasn’t it at all. What we believed to be entirely praiseworthy in her, she saw only as her failure. It was a complete break and I gave up trying to make it up with her because I couldn’t see any possible grounds for an understanding. Other instances of discord followed.
After the publication of Whole Days in the Trees, Duras never saw her mother again until she died. [Back to text]
3 Published in serial form in Libération every Wednesday over two months from 16 July to 17 September 1980. It was collected into a single volume by Éditions de Minuit in 1982. [Back to text]
4 In the album La Mer écrite (Paris: Marval, 1996), published in the month following her death, Duras provides a commentary to photographs by Hélène Bamberger. These are texts from the summer of 1994, edited by Yann Andréa. [Back to text]
5 The film Nathalie Granger was shot at the house in Neauphle. [Back to text]
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• • LIST OF INTERVIEWS • •
‘Le Square: un roman de Marguerite Duras était conçu comme une pièce’, interview by Henri Marc, Franc-Tireur (14 September 1956).
‘Rendez-vous dans un Square avec Marguerite Duras’, interview by Claude Sarraute, Le Monde (18 September 1956).
‘Non, je ne suis pas la femme d’Hiroshima’, interview by André Bourin, Les Nouvelles littéraires (18 June 1959).
Interview by Marcel Frère, Cinéma 60 (February 1960).
‘C’est la Seine-et-Oise qui est coupable . . . ’, interview by Nicole Zand, Le Monde (22 February 1963).
Interview by Madeleine Chapsal, L’Express. Reprinted in Madeleine Chapsal, Quinze écrivains (Paris: Julliard, 1963) and in Ces voix que j’entends encore (Paris: Fayard, 2011).
‘Les hommes d’aujourd’hui ne sont pas assez féminins’, interview by Pierre Hahn, Lettres et Médecins (March 1964).
‘Une journée étouffante’, interview by C. M., La Gazette de Lausanne (19–20 September 1964).
‘Une interview de Marguerite Duras’, by Jacques Vivien, Paris-Normandie (2 April 1965).
‘L’Amour est un devenir constant comme la révolution’, interview by Yvonne Baby, Le Monde (7 March 1967).
‘L’Amante anglaise ou la chimie de la folie’, interview by Claude Sarraute, Le Monde (20 December 1968).
‘Détruire, dit-elle, lu par Pierre Dumayet, commenté par Marguerite Duras’, Le Monde (5 April 1969).
‘La folie me donne de l’espoir’, interview by Yvonne Baby, Le Monde (17 December 1969).
‘Marguerite Duras tourne India Song: texte, théâtre, film’, interview by Colette Godard, Le Monde (28 July 1974).
‘Parce que le silence est féminin’, interview by Pierre Bregstein, Cinématographe 13 (May–June 1975).
‘Son nom de Venise dans Calcutta désert’, interview by Claire Clouzot, Écran 49 (July–August 1976).
‘Je ne me laisserai pas récupérer’, interview by Anne de Gasperi, Les Nouvelles littéraires (25 November 1976).
Interview by Anne de Gasperi, Le Quotidien de Paris (8 January 1977).
‘Le feu d’artifice de Marguerite Duras’, interview by Jack Gousseland, Le Point (14 February 1977).
‘Le désir est bradé, saccagé’, interview by Michèle Manceaux, Marie-Claire 297 (May 1977).
‘Le Noir atlantique’, Des Femmes en mouvement 57 (11 September 1981).
‘Le décor de Savannah Bay’, interview by Roberto Plate, Cahiers Renaud-Barrault 106 (September 1983).
‘L’Attente du père’, interview by François Peraldi, Études freudiennes 23 (1984).
‘C’est fou c’que j’peux t’aimer: entretien de Marguerite Duras avec Yann Andréa’, interview by Didier Eribon, Libération (4 January 1984).
‘Ils n’ont pas trouvé de raisons de me le refuser’, interview by Marianne Alphant, Libération (13 November 1984).
‘Duras-Zouc, entretien avec Zouc’, Le Monde (13 December 1984; in this case, Duras is the interviewer).
‘Comment ne pas être effrayée par cette masse fabuleuse de lecteurs?’, interview by Pierre Assouline, Lire 112 (January 1985). Reprinted in Pierre Assouline, Écrire, Lire et en parler (Paris: Laffont, 1985).
‘Duras tout entière . . . Un entretien avec un écrivain au-dessus de tout Goncourt’, interview by Pierre Bénichou and Hervé Le Masson, Le Nouvel Observateur (14–20 November 1986).
‘Marguerite Duras: “La littérature est illégale ou elle n’est pas” ’, interview by Gilles Costaz, Le Matin (14 November 1986).
‘Marguerite Duras par Anne Sinclair’, interview by Anne Sinclair, Elle 8 (December 1986).
‘Au peigne fin’, interview by André Rollin, Lire 136 (January 1987).
‘L’exacte exactitude de Denis Belloc’, Libération (19–20 September 1987; Duras is the interviewer).
Interviews with Michel Platini, Libération (14 and 15 December 1987; Duras is the interviewer).
‘Duras dans les régions claires de l’écriture’, interview by Colette Fellous, Le Journal littéraire (December 1987).
‘L’ultima immagine del mondo’, interview by Edda Melon, 18 February 1988. Published in Italian in the new edition of the translation of L’Amante anglaise (Feltrinelli, 1988).
‘La vie Duras’, interview by Marianne Alphant, Libération (11 January 1990).
‘Duras parle du nouveau Duras’ (on La Pluie d’été), interview by Pierrette Rosset, Elle 2297 (5 January 1990).
‘J’ai vécu le réel comme un mythe’, interview by Aliette Armel, Le Magazine littéraire (June 1990).
‘Duras dans le parc à amants’, interview by Marianne Alphant, Libération (13 June 1991).
‘Vous faites une différence entre mes livres et mes films?’, interview by Jean-Michel Frodon and Danièle Heymann, Le Monde (13 June 1991).
‘Les nostalgies de l’amante Duras’ (on Yann Andréa Steiner), interview by Jean-Louis Ezine, Le Nouvel Observateur (24 June–1 July 1992).
The Suspended Passion Page 13
