Revolutionary Writing in Marguerite Duras' L'Amour

Author(s): Deborah B. Gaensbauer

Source: The French Review, Vol. 55, No. 5 (Apr., 1982), pp. 633-639
Published by: American Association of Teachers of French
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THE FRENCH REVIEW, Vol. LV, No. 5, April 1982 Printed in U.S.A.

Revolutionary Writing in Marguerite Duras'

L 'Amour

by Deborah B. Gaensbauer

IN AN INTERVIEW FOR CAHIERS DU CINEMA, Marguerite Duras spoke of "un clivage

entre le desespoir et l'espoir.... Oi ils se tiennent. Et qu'on ne peut pas encore
qualifier. Je crois qu'il 6chappe a la qualification. C'est ce que j'appelle le vide, le
point zero. Peut-etre le vide c'est trop dire ... le point zero. Ou la sensibilite se
regroupe, si vous voulez, se retrouve."' Duras was concerned with the political
climate of the sixties in the interview and speaking from the perspective of a
member of the French Communist Party. However, the significance of her
preoccupation with destruction and emptiness goes well beyond her particular
party interests at the time. Duras has since vehemently rejected affiliation with
the Communist Party, but not in the least her commitment to writing as a
revolutionary act: "I hold that it is madness and a lie to say that the writer is not
committed. A writer commits himself from the very moment he picks up the pen.
Revolutionary demands and literary demands are one and the same."2 In fact, in
the Cahiers du Cinema interview, Duras describes a problem that she has
continued to face as an avant-garde novelist with a revolutionary purpose: how to
render the zero point, a point beyond a story and beyond blatant propaganda,
where the intolerable emptiness of the text forces recognition of the need for the
recovery of sensitivity.
From the first, Duras' novels have had a revolutionary quality, developing
themes of spiritual emptiness as a means of social criticism. The emotional and
financial destitution of the maid and traveling salesman in Le Square, the drunken
isolation of Anne Desbaresdes in Moderato Cantabile or of Maria in Dix heures
et demie du soir, and the paralyzing loneliness of the aging father in L 'Apres-
midi de Monsieur Andesmas are well-known examples of Duras' treatment of
these themes. But of all her novels, it is L 'Amour in which Duras comes closest
to achieving the revolutionary "point zero" described in the Cahiers interview
(Paris: Gallimard, 1971). In none of the novels preceding L'Amour, in spite of
innovative experimentation with form, particularly adaption of cinema techniques
to her novels, was Duras able to create such a successful coincidence of revolu-
tionary form and message. Even in Abahn Sabana David, published just before
L 'Amour, Duras was still too haunted by the events of May '68 to abandon topical
1 "La Destruction la parole" (entretien avec Marguerite Duras par Jean Narboni et Jacques Rivette),
Cahiers du Cinema (Nov. 1969), p. 54.
2 "An Interview with Marguerite Duras" (conducted by Germaine Bree), tr. Cyril Doherty, Contem-
porary Literature, 13 (1972), 427.
633

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634 FRENCH REVIEW

political references and a richly angry style incompatible with the notion of a
revolutionary void. Moreover, as a militant feminism has become increasingly
apparent in Duras' more recent films, novels, and commentaries-Nathalie Gran-
ger, Le Camion, and Les Parleuses are good examples of this-the global, imper-
sonal, catastrophic quality of L 'Amour may remain unique in Duras' development
as a social novelist.
L 'Amour is revolutionary in the dictionary sense of a call for drastic change in
a social system. It is equally revolutionary in the sense proposed by Roland
Barthes in Le Degre zero de I'ecriture: "Chaque fois que l'ecrivain trace un
complexe de mots, c'est l'existence meme de la litterature qui est mise an question;
ce que la moderite donne a lire dans la pluralite de ses ecritures, c'est l'impasse
de sa propre Histoire" (Paris: Seuil, 1953, pp. 87-88). L 'Amour is not a descriptive
criticism of social disintegration but an almost joyous act of destruction, a ritual
that sacrifices both that most precious theme of Western fiction, the love story,
and the structure of the bourgeois novel, which, for generations, has been a major
propagator of that theme as a social myth. In L 'Amour the elements of character,
relationships, time, and memory are destroyed in the course of Duras' revolution-
ary itinerary toward the void.
To come so close to realization of "le point zero" in L'Amour required
resolution of problems of both technique and vision that had limited the revolu-
tionary impact of Duras' earlier novels. The technical issue to be resolved was to
achieve an intensification of the notion of emptiness without accumulation of
layers of description or analysis. The contrast between L 'Amour and Le Ravisse-
ment de Lol V. Stein, the original story of Lol, makes dramatically clear the radical
change in style necessary for Duras to go beyond the sensitive descriptions of
lonely, empty characters in the earlier novels to the stark rendering of a void in
L 'Amour. In Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein, the theme of emptiness is imposed
on the reader by the narrator, who actively participates in the story. Lol's insanity
and the hollowness of her existence are presented in the limited framework of her
love for Michael Richardson and her relationships with friends, husband, and
children-a relatively normal social experience where Lol simply does not fit.
Duras interrupts the narrative to explain that the word to describe Lol's situation
cannot be found yet but then attempts to show what it is nevertheless by a long
and inappropriately rich description of emptiness:

('aurait ete un mot-absence, un mot-trou, creuse en son centre d'un trou, de ce trou oiu
tous les autres mots auraient ete enterres. On n'aurait pas pu le dire mais on aurait pu
le faire r6sonner. Immense, sans fin, un gong vide, il aurait retenu ceux qui voulaient
partir, il les aurait nommes, eux, l'avenir et l'instant. Manquant ce mot, il gache tous les
autres, les contamine, c'est aussi le chien mort de la plage en plein midi, ce trou de chair
(Paris: Gallimard, 1964, p. 48).

Duras said of L 'Amour that it would be written with what wasn't said in Le
Ravissement de Lol V. Stein (Bree, p. 418). The explanation is suitably negative
and not meant to be taken in the sense of filling in the gaps. By refining further
the adaptions of film techniques that she had already used extensively in her
novels Detruire dit-elle and Abahn Sabana David, Duras was able to replace

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DURAS' L'AMOUR 635

descriptive analysis of emptiness with an essentially physical experience of it in

L 'Amour. The experience of negation in L 'Amour is never presented in psycho-
logical or intellectual terms. The disintegration or absence of feelings is measured
only in physical terms, conveyed by geometrical patterns and light and sound
effects. It is not so much communicated by the minimally sketched characters as
by the carefully delineated patterns of shifting sand and sea or of color and light
seen from the limited perspective of a camera-like narrator. The "sound" is
contributed by indications for the swelling or diminution of a background music,
the song of S. Thala-"une marche lente aux solonnels accents. Une danse lente,
de bals morts, de fetes sanglantes"-which, like the patterns, is substituted for a
description of relationships (pp. 38-39).
The characters in L'Amour, like those in Duras' films, have an insubstantial
identity. Called only "Elle" in L'Amour, the woman on the beach is no longer
precisely Lol V. Stein, the blond, silky, ethereal creature of the earlier novel, but
only a "force arretee, d6placee vers l'absence, arretee dans son mouvement de
fuite. L'ignorant s'ignorant" (p. 10). Solitude and emptiness in L'Amour are no
longer related to Lol's particular social circumstances, for "Elle" is but a presence-
absence, projected, then absorbed, by the shifting sands on the beach at S. Thala.
The introduction of the traveler, whose appearance is the catalyst for the "story,"
is equally spare: "Nous nommerons cet homme le voyageur-si par aventure la
chose est necessaire-a cause de la lenteur de son pas, l'egarement de son regard"
(pp. 13, 14). Of the appearance of the women's guardian, "l'homme," it is related
only that "ses yeux sont bleus, d'une transparence frappante. L'absence de son
regard est absolue" (p. 16). Constantly in motion, "l'homme" is part of the
triangular configuration introduced in the first two pages of the story, a pattern
that substitutes itself for an explanation of the characters' attachment to each
other and their relationship to the larger world represented by S. Thala:

L'homme qui regarde se trouve entre cette femme et l'homme qui marche au bord
de la mer.
Du fait de l'homme qui marche, constamment, avec une lenteur egale, le triangle se
deforme, se reforme, sans se briser jamais.
Cet homme a le pas regulier d'un prisonnier. [...]
Trois, ils sont trois dans la lumiere obscure, le reseau de lenteur. (Pp. 8-9)

The photographic, unemotional, non-speculative narrative technique in

L 'Amour functions to reduce further the traditional affective content of the novel.
When the characters move beyond the range of the camera-like narrative vision
or disappear in the darkness, the text empties. There is literally a physical gap of
white space on the page:

Elle marche. Elle le suit.

Ils s'6loignent.
Ils contoument S. Thala, semble-t-il, ils ne penetrent pas dans l'epaisseur.
Il fait nuit.

Nuit.
La plage, la mer sont dans la nuit. (Pp. 20-21)

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636 FRENCH REVIEW

The space between the two "nuit"'s is not meant to be filled in by the reader's
imagination. Its empty silence is crucial to the sense of the text.
Duras has described the "space" of her writing as "un lieu ou la respiration est
rarifiee, il y a une diminution de l'acuite sensorielle. Tout n'est pas entendu, mais
certaines choses seulement.... C'est un lieu noir et blanc. Si couleur il y a, elle
est rajoutee."3 There is a near absence of color in L'Amour. It is dominated by
black and white, which not only limits its affective range but also gives any color
detail the kind of startling unrealistic intensity it would have if it suddenly
appeared in a black and white film. When the blue of the eyes of "l'homme" is
described, for example, it is not a piece of realism tied to a communicative regard.
Rather, in the sterility of the black and white context, the blue eyes take on a
surrealistic quality. They represent a practically non-functional organ, an impos-
sible detail empty of meaning both in itself and for others.
This peculiar, limited manner of seeing in L'Amour, which is crucial to the
hauntingly empty quality of the work, is much more complicated than the
adaption of the technical emphasis of camera technique to the novel. Duras has
a remarkable capacity not to see, to deny experience, to empty a scene and limit
the contents of an experience, as with "la femme," who is barely a presence:

-Objet du d6sir absolu, dit-il, sommeil de nuit, vers cette heure-ci en general oui
qu'elle soit, ouverte a tous les vents-il s'arrete, il reprend-objet de d6sir, elle est a
qui veut d'elle, elle le porte et l'embarque, objet de l'absolu desir. (Pp. 50, 51)

The denial of affective experience in L'Amour is crucial to the process of

destruction of time and memory. Just as the importance of the regard is suggested
by the constant mention of the term, but only to be negated as "regards vides" or
"regards transparents," so the concept of time in L 'Amour is reduced to a mere
signal. Indications of time are frequent but only as artificial stage directions:
"Jour," "Nuit," "Nuit toujours," "Trois jours," "Soleil. Soir." Like the regard, the
content of time in L'Amour is effectively destroyed by a pattern of action and
counteraction and by the constant use of negative verbs and destructive terms
such as pourrissant, rongement, putrefaction, absent, desert. Whenever actions,
ideas, or descriptions are advanced, they are overwhelmed by the preponderance
of negative verbs and images of destruction that are further emphasized by the
choppy, broken rhythm of the disposition of the lines on the page:

le mouvement de
la mer commence a se voir, la houle affleure
et se r6sout en eclatements blancs. II dit:
-La couleur disparait.
La couleur disparait.
Puis, a son tour, le mouvement.
Les dernieres mouettes de la mer sont
parties. Le sable, de nouveau, recouvre
la plage. I1 dit:
-I1 n'y a plus rien. (P. 26)

3 Marguerite Duras and Xaviere Gauthier, Les Parleuses (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1974), p. 12.

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DURAS' L'AMOUR 637

"Le sable c'est le temps," Duras has explained.4 In L 'Amour, the image of sand/
time is bound to the motion of space not as a commonplace relationship but as an
impossibility:

L'histoire. Elle commence. Elle a commence avant la marche au bord de la mer, le

cri, le geste, le mouvement de la mer, le mouvement de la lumiere.
Mais elle devient maintenant visible. C'est sur le sable que deja elle s'implante, sur
la mer. (P. 13).

Where sand is time, the fabric of memory cannot hold together. Memories, the
very core of social experience, are made as fluid and empty in L'Amour as the
passage of time. Michel Foucault, comparing the art of Maurice Blanchot and
Marguerite Duras, described it as "art de la pauvrete, ou encore ce qu'on pourrait
appeler: la memoire sans souvenir. Le discours est entierement chez Blanchot,
comme chez Duras, dans la dimension de la memoire, d'une m6moire qui a ete
entierement purifi6e de tout souvenir, qui n'est plus qu'une sorte de brouillard."5
Memories in L 'Amour disintegrate like the pays de sable; they are depersonalized,
interchangeable. The guardian, a madman, absorbs the memories of others. It is
he, not the woman, who hears the music of the ball that destroyed Lol V. Stein
and that dances the dance her memory has lost.
A peak of intensity is reached in L'Amour, as in Le Ravissement de Lol V.
Stein, when the "Voyageur" and the woman undertake a journey back to the
source of her memories. Dressed in white, clutching a little girl's white handbag
containing nothing but a mirror, she makes a "dernier voyage a travers l'epaisseur
de S. Thala." There is the tension of something about to take place here, in part
because the parallel with the earlier novel revives the expectation that something
must happen, more so because the woman has gone beyond the safety of her
limits. Memories are fleetingly revived: her eighteenth summer, a husband now
dead, the children taken away. Yet there is no crisis, no resolution; the memories
are stripped of emotional content and then submerged in Duras' spare, negative,
destructive style. The experience is ultimately destroyed by the numbing of the
heat of the sun. The woman does not actively refuse the experience; rather, it is
negated by the elements and her overwhelming need to return to the oblivion of
the womb-like sleep that sustains the remnants of her existence:

Les yeux s'ouvrent, ils regardent sans voir, sans reconnaitre rien, puis ils se
referment, ils retourent au noir.
I1 n'est plus la. Elle est seule allongee sur le sable au soleil, pourrissante, chien mort
de l'idee, sa main est restee pres du sac blanc. (P. 25)

This is precisely the moment of the title passage. "Amour." The word is
pronounced by the "Voyageur" as he ceases to soothe and pour sand over the
body of the sleeping woman. Typographically isolated on the page, the word falls

4 Marguerite Duras and Michelle Porte, Les Lieux de Marguerite Duras (Paris: Editions de Minuit,
1977), p. 85.
5 Michel Foucault and Helene Cixous, "A propos de Marguerite Duras," Cahiers de la compagnie
Madeleine Renaud-Jean-Louis Barrault, 89 (1975), 10.

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638 FRENCH REVIEW

on her non-receptiveness. The word is not treated ironically but with a seriousness
that makes it devastating. It evokes no sentiment, no past, no future. Having
become a notion as fugitive as the sandy setting, it signals a catastrophe. "Amour"
is the "mot-absence," the "mot-trou" sought after in vain in Le Ravissement de
Lol V. Stein. In this disaster, relationships and communication are impossible:

-Vous ne dites plus rien. Elle se souvient:

-C'est vrai-elle s'arrete, la voix redevient tendre -vous n'etes rien. (P. 136)

Moments like this in L 'Amour have been aptly characterized by Alain Vircondelet
as "debris du language . .. typographie lav6e, blanchie, qui se saisit, s'appr6hende
de maniere directe. La lecture n'est donc plus suivie, mais sans cesse remise en
question, la linearit6 n'etant plus respectee."6
As the woman's eyes reopen, the novel comes to an end, fading out like a film,
or emptying like one of the tidal pools on the beach at S. Thala. In the background,
S. Thala burs in a fire set by the mad guardian. The ritual of another day is
broached in the final words of the novel, another day as empty of meaning as the
others, only "le bruit vous savez...? de Dieu?... ce truc...?" (p. 143). The day that
is dawning can only bring the void, a S. Thala denied and burned. Without S.
Thala, Lol is nothing: "L'histoire de Lol V. Stein ... est l'histoire de S. Thala, c'est
une seule et meme chose" (Duras and Porte, p. 96).
To what purpose have the values of memory and love, which were fundamental
in Duras' previous works even when lacking, been emptied of significance in the
context of L 'Amour? To achieve emptiness with words, to portray a revolutionary
nothingness, is the Mallarm6an challenge that has haunted perhaps more than
any other the generations of revolutionary writers of fiction in France during the
twentieth century. Duras' welcoming recognition of the zero point and the loss of
identity it implies is a kind of revival of the Dadaist's serious call for destruction
of a worn but still vicious society to make a place for something new and better.
Duras eagerly invites us to a confrontation with emptiness:

Une perte progressive d'identit6 est l'experience la plus enviable qu'on puisse con-
naitre. C'est en fait ma seule preoccupation: la possibilite d'etre capable de perdre la
notion de son identite. C'est pour cette raison que la question de la folie me tente
tellement dans mes livres. Aujourd'hui nous souffrons tous de cette perte d'identite.
C'est la maladie la plus repandue-il faut l'apprecier dans ce qu'elle a de bon.7

Hannah Arendt, in the midst of her despair over the "organized loneliness that
threatened to ravage the world as we know it," offered the recognition that "every
end in history necessarily contains a new beginning; this beginning is the promise,
the only 'message' which the end can ever produce."8

6 Marguerite Duras ou le temps de detruire (Paris: Seghers, 1972), pp. 110-11.

7 Bettina L. Knapp, "Interviews avec Marguerite Duras et Gabriel Cousin," French Review, 46
(1971), 655.
8 The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2nd ed. (Cleveland and New York: World Publishing Company,
1958), pp. 478-79.

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 DURAS' L'AMOUR 639

It is not inappropriate to compare the author of L'Amour to Hannah Arendt,

for Duras' L 'Amour is an act of rebellion against the painful emptiness it portrays
and an impetus to the seeking of emotions and values that are worthy of the
qualification "human." As Duras was to say later of her film Le Camion: "I1 n'y
a de poesie-vraie-qui ne soit pas revolutionnaire."9 This is the sense of Duras'
point z6ro: an experience of emptiness meant to move her readers to acknowledge
with her the need for sensibility to recover itself.

REGIS COLLEGE (DENVER)

9 Le Camion suivi de "Entretien avec Michelle Porte" (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1977), pp. 114-15.

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