Ölüm Hastalığı

by Marguerite Duras, Haldun Bayrı (Translator), Nilüfer Güngörmüş (Translator)

Ölüm Hastalığı, 1982 tarihini taşıyan bir Duras metni: "Sevdiğini öldürecek gibi olma duygusunu, onu kendinize, yalnız kendinize saklama, bütün yasalara rağmen, bütün ahlaki baskılara rağmen onu alma, kaçırma isteğini duydunuz mu? Hiç bu isteği duydunuz mu? der.
Hiçbir zaman, dersiniz."

Genres: Fiction, France, Short Stories, Classics, French Literature, Literature, Romance

44 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1982

About the author

Marguerite Germaine Marie Donnadieu, (4 April 1914 -3 March 1996) known as Marguerite Duras, 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.

Reviews

[Jim Fonseca · Rating 3 out of 5]

A novella, really a short story. A man hires a woman to spend several weeks with him by the sea. He “can’t love” but wants to lean how. Although he hires her, she tells him she’s not a prostitute. Death in this story refers to his inability to love.



Here’s a passage that gives you a good idea of the writing style that uses extremely short sentences almost exclusively :

“The tears wake her. She looks at you. She looks at the room. And again at you. She strokes your hand. Asks: Why are you crying? You say it’s for her to say, she’s the one who ought to know.
She answers softly, gently: Because you don’t love. You say that’s it.
She asks you to say it clearly.
You say: I don’t love.
She says: Never?
You say: Never.
She says: The wish to be about to kill a lover, to keep him for yourself, yourself alone, to take him, steal him in defiance of every law, every moral authority – you don’t know what that is, you’ve never experienced it?
You say: Never.
She looks at you, repeats: A dead man’s a strange thing.”



Here’s the blurb from GR and on the book jacket:

The woman is no one in particular, a "she," a warm, moist body with a beating heart-the enigma of Other. Skilled in the mechanics of sex, he desires through her to penetrate a different mystery: he wants to learn love. It isn't a matter of will, she tells him. Still, he wants to learn to try . . .This beautifully wrought erotic novel is an extended haiku on the meaning of love, "perhaps a sudden lapse in the logic of the universe," and of its absence, "the malady of death." "The whole tragedy of the inability to love is in this work, thanks to Duras' unparalleled art of reinventing the most familiar words, of weighing their meaning." - Le Monde; "Deceptively simple and Racinian in its purity, condensed to the essential." - Translation Review.



At the end the author gives a few pages of instructions about staging this story for the theatre or making a film of it. Written in 1982, it was staged as a play in 2018. Wikipedia tells us that during the time when Duras wrote this story, she was drinking 6 to 7 liters of wine a day and was in and out of the hospital, sometimes so incapacitated that she could not write. She dictated this story to her nurse.

The story did not appeal to me. Perhaps if I was into poetry and treated is as a haiku it would be more appealing. So unless you are into poetry, I don’t really recommend it.


I’ve read quite a few works by Marguerite Duras. Here are links to my other reviews (more or less in order of how much I enjoyed them) :

The Sea Wall

Emily L

Four Short Novels

Hiroshima Mon Amour

Abahn Sabana David

Top photo of a French beach in Basque country from nyt.com
Middle photo from meredithcorp.io
The author from groveatlantic.com

[Helga Martiros · Rating 4 out of 5]

You say you're lost. But that you don't know what you're lost to. Or in.

In her usual lyrical and minimalist style, Duras centers this haunting short story on a man who pays a woman to spend a few days with him; to teach him to love and feel something, anything other than emptiness.
You see, he is unable to love or to feel. He is lost in darkness and solitude.
But she is unlike anyone else. Surely she would be able to resurrect him from the dead.

You say you want to try, for several days perhaps. Perhaps for several weeks. Perhaps even for your whole life. Try what? she asks.
Loving, you answer.

But is it possible to learn how to love?

You're going to die of death. Your death has already begun.

[Richard Derus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rating: 4* of five

2022 UPDATE $2.99 on Kindle!

I discovered the joys of reading Marguerite Duras after I began working for John Calder at Riverrun Press in New York. It was a fabulous fringe benefit indeed.

Women are the bitterest, cruelest, most reductive misogynists known to Humankind.

You say she mustn't speak, like the women of her ancestors, must yield completely to you and to your will, be entirely submissive like peasant women in the barns after the harvest when they're exhausted and let the men come to them while they're asleep. So that you may gradually get used to that shape molding itself to yours, at your mercy as nuns are at God's. And also so that little by little, as day dawns, you may be less afraid of not knowing where to put your body or at what emptiness to aim your love.

[Magdalen · Rating 4 out of 5]

You say you can't know why, that you don't understand the malady you suffer from.

She smiles, says this is the first time, that until she met you, she didn't know death could be lived.


Your death has already begun.

Ένα μεγάλο ευχαριστώ στην Ιωάννα για την πρόταση της.

Το μόνο που μου έρχεται να πω είναι ένα quote του Oscar:
"Suffering is permanent, obscure, and dark. and has the nature of infinity"

Και κλείνω πάλι με quote από το βιβλίο.

Even so you have managed to live that love in the only way possible for you. Losing it before it happened.

[Paula Mota · Rating 3 out of 5]

Porque logo que falou comigo vi que sofria da doença da morte. (...) Pergunta-lhe como é que ela sabe. Ela diz simplesmente que sabe. Diz que é possível sabê-lo sem saber como é que se sabe.

Muito teatral na mise-en-scène e nas falas, este pequeno texto que, de facto, Marguerite Duras achou que poderia ser encenado. Mesmo sabendo que Duras é sobretudo linguagem e imagem, este é o texto mais estranho, abstracto e desconexo que já li dela; e não tenho como não acreditar que para isso contribuíram os seis litros de vinho que a autora bebia todos os dias, na fase em que o escreveu.

Há em si um pranto cuja razão desconhece. Um pranto que fica retido em si, que não chega a poder unir-se-lhe de forma a conseguir chorá-lo. Diante do mar sombrio, encostado à parede do quarto onde ela dorme, chora por si como o faria um desconhecido.

[Brodolomi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Daleko je ovo od njenih najboljih romana, ali je na ovih četrdeset strana upakovano sve što je esencija Dirasove u njenoj poslednjoj i najproduktivnijoj fazi. Delom novela, delom skica za pozorišni komad, delom pesma u prozi, a opet, svojim minimalističkim pripovedanjem, izbeljenim i anemičnim, podseća i na pokušaj da se prepriča neki od filmova koje je režirala. Najviše podseća na film „Agata i neograničena čitanja” jer u oba imamo nemoguće ljubavnike u centru, u prostoru i vremenu ispražnjenom od značenja. U filmu su nemogući ljubavnici brat i sestra Agata – referenca na incestuozne ljubavnike iz Muzilovog „Čoveka bez osobina” - i prisutni su na filmskoj traci glasom, koji pripada drugačijem dijagetičkom nivou nego događaji koji su ispripovedani putem slika. U „Bolesti smrti” imamo to slično, ali drugačije izvedeno. Imamo pripovedača koji sa posebnog nivoa pripoveda u drugom licu uputstva šta nemogući ljubavnik treba da radi i da kaže ljubavnici, što u praksi zvuči kao da čitate transkript režiserovih instrukcija glumcu pri pripremanju pozorišne predstave. O paru ne znamo mnogo, osim da je on, verovatno, homoseksualac koji je došao kod nepoznate žene, da proba da voli žensko telo, a ona pristaje da mu pruži ljubav uz novčanu nadoknadu, iako tvrdi da nije prostitutka. I to je sve od zapleta, ostalo je pillow talk, doduše vrlo čudan jer ga izgovara pripovedač u vidu instrukcija – tako da dobijajamo iluziju, ništa manje čudnog, ljubavnog trougla.

Iako je knjiga kratka, ima u njoj svega što poseduju Dirasine knjige iz osamdesetih: minimalistički stil, poigravanje dijagetičkim nivoima, likovima je prerano postalo suviše kasno, amnezije, vinjak atmosfere, izbeljenosti, otvorene i skrivene autobiografije, svest o razlici između označenog i označitelja, manirizma, psiholoških uvida (koji su se od intuitivnih lakan-kan pretvorili u lakan-valcere) i druge raznolike francuzštine – od Ružmonove ideje da je dominantan mit ljubavi na Zapadu mit o nemogućoj ljubavi, Batajeve fantazmagorije o ljubavnom činu kao ritualu žrtvovanja i uništenja, pa do činjenice da ljubavnica u ovoj noveli obično spava, što je očigledna referenca na Albertinu koja u „Traganju za izgubljenim vremenom” neočekivano često drema, jer je Marsel najsrećniji dok je ona u snu. Diras je meni uvek dirljiva na neki poseban način, gotovo kao postkoitalna melanholija, koja naposletku jeste egocentrična tuga, ili kako bi pripovedač uputio imperativ glavnom junaku: „Kad ste plakali, bilo je to zbog vas samog, a ne zbog divne mogućnosti da je dosegnete kroz različitost koja vas razdvaja”.

[Lee Foust · Rating 4 out of 5]

I adore short, abstract fictions like this one. I think no American literary movement has come close to affecting me like the French Nouveau Roman of the 1950-60s. Of these authors I so admire, however, Duras's work is, for me, a tad up and down. But I found this one very fine. Stark. Erotic, but not sexy. Existential, if you will. A paid relationship pared down to poetic lines, as if metered. Generalizations so full of meaning they became weightless and therefore profound-sounding, ridiculous if you want them to be, almost meaningless in their stark beauty. They strike you--funny or heavy, take it as you will; I find such writing worth the risk of laughter, of ridicule.

As in my last review, pretentious is the word that comes to mind. Only I can only use this word as a compliment for I think that's what art pretty much always does--it takes a small portion of the meaninglessness of the world and blows it up into a self-important work, an object, a thing to be admired. An aesthetic object is fraught with undue significance. This, to me, is how the human brain works as well. This habit of mind is the place from whence mythology, painting, religion, music, politics, and literature all emerge. Big crybabies screaming for some thwarted desire. Look at me! Look at my suffering! Love me! I enjoyed the reversal here, the self-important john, buying a woman to test his own heartlessness--as if the act of purchasing a human being had not already proved that he was living death. The woman struck me as bemused.

---------

Just did a re-read of this one as I'm teaching a Female European Writers course thus June in summer school. It's weird and maybe too sexy/perverse for American college students so on the list it goes. Should be a hoot to see them struggle with such sexual abstraction.

[philosophie · Rating 4 out of 5]

You ask how loving can happen-the emotion of loving. She answers: Perhaps a sudden lapse in the logic of universe. She says: Through a mistake for instance. She says: Never through an act of will. You ask: Could the emotion of loving come from other things too? You beg her to say. She says: It can come from the flight of a night bird, from a sleep, from a dream of sleep, from the approach of death, from a word, from a crime, of itself, from oneself, often without knowing how.

Πράξη μέσα από την απραξία, ένα διαλογικό κείμενο που θα μπορούσε να είναι μονόλογος, δύο φωνές του ίδιου υποκειμένου, ο θάνατος κι η ζωή προσωποποιημένοι. Απαισιόδοξη, ερωτική γραφή, όμοια με όνειρο, μια ιστορία στατική δοσμένη με κινηματογραφική δομή.

Η Marguerite Duras γράφει:

If I ever filmed this text I'd want the weeping by the sea to be shot in such a way that the white turmoil of the waves is seen almost simultaneously with the man's face. There should be a correlation between the white of the sheets and the white of the sea. The sheets should be a prior image of the sea. All this by way of general suggestion.

προσθέτοντας και τονίζοντας αλλού την απουσία μουσικής αλλά και ομοψυχίας, μέσα από την απομάκρυνση των δυο πρωταγωνιστών επί σκηνής, δημιουργώντας ταυτόχρονα ένα συγκεκριμένο τέμπο, δίνοντας τη μελαγχολική ατμόσφαιρα που κυριεύει το κείμενο και που συνυπάρχει με τη διάχυτη και προγραμματική σεξουαλικότητα.

[Nate D · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a kind of pure concentrate of late Duras, the brief scenario focused into a streamlined intensity of plot and signifiers. A repeated series of nights, an (absent) love, an absence, tears=waves, and night, always night, only night. She also takes the form to its furthest extent -- unstable tenses unsettle and amplify the salience of the "story", these are words carving out meaning from the very point of their conveyance, the signs are the signified, rather than an attempt to convey a narrative truth that exists untouched outside them. It's great. I feel that I should re-read this already, even.

[Rozhan Sadeghi · Rating 4 out of 5]

در حد فاصل ۳ ساعت، ۳ بار این کتاب رو خوندم. یک بار فارسی و دو بار انگلیسی.
محتوای فوق‌العاده‌ای نداره. همون داستان تکراری مردی که عشق رو نمی‌شناسه و زنی که قراره با عشق آشنا کنه اون رو.
اما فرم ونثرش شاعرانه‌ست، نثرش بی‌نظیره و به خاطر همین دلیل به تنهایی ارزش چند ده بار خوندن رو داره.

[Narjes Dorzade · Rating 5 out of 5]

« صورت در خواب مانده
صورت لال است
صورت مثل دست‌ها می‌خوابد»

از دوباره‌خوانی دوراس؛ در متن بلانشو.
و موخره‌ی دوراس بر کتاب:

«اگر قرار باشد از این متن فیلم بسازم، می‌خواهم که اشک‌های روی دریا طوری باشد که درهم شکستن موج‌های دریا و صورت مرد تقریبن همزمان دیده شود. که رابطه‌ای بین سفیدی‌ی ملحفه‌ها و سفید‌ی‌ی دریا وجود داشته باشد که ملحفه‌ها تصویری از دریا باشد.»

[Tara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this in about an hour. Barely a novella, this surreal, erotic story packs a punch. There are notes at the end from Duras that indicate staging, which to me means she wrote this to be staged or filmed. There is an omniscient narrator above the He/She actors playing out the age old struggle between male and female, yin and yang. The only elements are white sheets and a black roiling sea that continually roars in the background. Some great observations on love and the lack of it.

[Proustitute (on hiatus) · Rating 3 out of 5]

"If I ever filmed this text I'd want the weeping by the sea to be shot in such a way that the white turmoil of the waves is seen almost simultaneously with the man's face. There should be a correlation between the white of the sheets and the white of the sea...

All this by way of general suggestion."

[مهسا · Rating 3 out of 5]

You ask: Why is the malady of death fatal? She answers: Because whoever has it doesn't know he's a carrier, of death. And also because he's like to die without any life to die to, and without even knowing that's what he's doing...The fact that you ask the question proves you can't understand.

[Χαρά Ζ. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great piece of art.
I am sorry, i have to add something here. This book was "given" to me by a person who i love deeply. Thank you, my dear, for this beautiful gift, and also, thank you, for everything.

[Isabela. · Rating 5 out of 5]

El amor y la soledad son cosas tan complejas que no puedes vivir una sin la otra.

[Edita · Rating 5 out of 5]

You go out again onto the terrace facing the black sea. Inside you there are sobs you can't explain. They linger on the brink of you as if they were outside, they can't reach you and be wept. Facing the black sea, leaning against the wall of the room where she's sleeping, you weep for yourself as a stranger might.
[...]
You can't understand how it's possible for her not to know of your tears, for her to be protected from you by herself, for her to be so completely unaware of how she fills the whole world.You lie down beside her. And, still for yourself, you weep.

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 5 out of 5]

A narrator tells the story of a man who pays a woman to stay with him for a period of time so that he can try 'loving'. (She is not a prostitute.) He's never loved a woman, never desired one, never even looked at one. But he knows how to give sexual pleasure. The woman sleeps most of the time. Occasionally they have sex. The man is trying. Some of the time they spend together seems intimate. But can there be intimacy without love? The man is a solitary individual—there is space all around him that no one else can enter. The woman sees him as living death, living a 'deadly routine of lovelessness'. She cannot fathom it but she sees it in him. Duras's control of language and of her material is masterful. The story forms a perfect arc and is exactly as long as it needs to be. It is flawless.

[Sheggy · Rating 4 out of 5]

اولین چیزی که بعد از خوندن این کتاب به ذهنم رسید این جمله از پائولو کوئلیو بود:
بیایید از یاد نبریم: عشق لطافت است. یک روح سخت، اجازه نمی دهد دست خداوند آنرا مطابق میل خود شکل بخشد

مطمئنا شده که همه آدما یه ملال کشنده ای رو تو زندگی احساس کنن که اگه با شهامت جلوش نمونن، تهش میشن یه مُرده ای مثل همین کاراکتر مرد داستان
تصمیم نداشتم این کتابو بخونم و خواندنش کاملا اتفاقی بود اما از اون حادثه های پرمعنی که گاهی که دقت کنیم، فقط گاهی رخ میدن! فکری که پشت این کتاب قرار داره خودش فلسفه ای هست کامل و مجزا


تا این شب، نفهمیده بودید چطور می شود نسبت به آنچه چشم می بیند، آنچه دست ها، آنچه بدن لمس می کند؛ جاهل بود. این جهالت را کشف می کنید


از او می پرسید: مرض مرگ به چه شکلی کشنده است؟ جواب می دهد: کسی که به آن مبتلاست نمی داند که حامل آن، حامل مرگ است. و نیز این طور، کسی که حامل مرض مرگ است می میرد بدون زندگی ای که پیش از آن بمیرد، بدون هیچگونه شناختی از مردن در هیچ زندگی ای


متوجه می شوید که این رنگ چشم نیست که تا ابد مرز غیرقابل عبور بین او و شما خواهد بود. نه، رنگ نیست، می دانید که بین سبز و خاکستری ست، نه، رنگ نیست، نه، نگاه است. نگاه


هق هق هایی در شماست که دلیلش را نمی دانید. در نزدیکی شما متوقف مانده اند، گویی بیرون از شما هستند، نمی توانند به شما برسند تا گریه شان کنید. روبروی دریای سیاه، پشت به دیوار اتاقی که او می خوابد، مثل یک غریبه روی خودتان گریه می کنید


درک نمی کنید که چطور ممکن است که او اشک های شما را نادیده بگیرد، که توسط خودش از شما محافظت شود، که نداند تا این اندازه تمام دنیا را به هم ریخته است


همچنان حوالی سپیده دم است. ساعت هایی ست که به وسعت فضاهای آسمان است. خیلی زیاد است، زمان نمی داند از کجا بگذرد. زمان دیگر نمی گذرد


دیگر نگاه نمی کنید. دیگر هیچ چیز را نگاه نمی کنید. چشم هایتان را می بندید تا خود را در تفاوت تان پیدا کنید، در مرگتان


می گوید: این خواست که در مرز کشتن معشوق باشید، او را برای خودتان تنها بخواهید ، بگیریدش، در مقابل تمامی قوانین، در مقابل تمام امپراطوری های اخلاق، بدزدیدش، این را نمی شناسید؟ هیچ وقت نشناختید؟
می گویید: هیچ وقت
نگاه تان می کند، تکرار می کند: مُرده چیز عجیبی ست


از او می پرسید که آیا فکر می کندمی توان شما را دوست داشت؟
می گوید که به هیچ وجه نمی توان. از او می پرسید: به خاطر مرگ؟ می گوید بله، بخاطر این بی مزه گی، این بی حرکت بودن حس تان، به دلیل این دروغ که دریا سیاه است


بصورتی نامحسوس به شما می گوید: شما از "مرگ" می میرید! مرگ تان آغاز شده است. گریه می کنید. به شما می گوید: گریه نکنید، احتیاجی نیست، از این عادت بر خود گریستن دست بکشید، احتیاجی نیست



تنها در دنیا، همانطوری که دلتان می خواهد، همانطوری که دلتان می خواهدبه حرف زدن ادامه می دهید. می گویید که به نظرتان عشق همیشه چیز عوضی ای بوده، که هیچوقت نفهمیده اید، که همیشه از دوست داشتن طفره رفته اید، که همیشه خواسته اید آزاد باشید که دوست نداشته باشید. می گویید که سردرگم شده اید. می گویید که نمی دانید بخاطر چی، در چی سردرگم شده اید



می گوید امیدوار است هیچ وقت آنطور که شما چیزی از دنیا نمی دانید، چیزی از دنیا نداند! می گوید: نمی خواهم به شکلی که شما می دانید، چیزی بدانم؛ با این یقینی که از مرگ ریشه می گیرد، این یکنواختی بی علاج، یکجور و یکنواخت، هر روز و هر شب زندگیتان، با این وظیفه ی کشنده ی عدم دوست داشتن! می گوید: روز شده، همه چیز آغاز می شود، جز شما. شما، هیچ وقت آغاز نمی شوید



می پرسید که حس دوست داشتن چطور پیش می آید؟ جواب می دهد: شاید از نقصی ناگهانی در منطق جهان. می گوید: مثلا از یک اشتباه. می گوید: هیچ وقت از یک خواست (درخواست؟). می پرسید: حس دوست داشتن می تواند از چیزهای دیگری ناشی شود؟ می گوید: از همه چیز، از پرواز پرنده ای در شب، از یک خواب، از رویای یک خواب، از نزدیکی مرگ، از یک کلمه، از یک جنایت، از خود، یکباره بدون اینکه دلیلش معلوم باشد



وقتی گریه کردید، روی خودتان تنها بود که گریه کردید و نه روی ناممکن بودن تحسین برانگیز رسیدن به او؛ از خلال تفاوتی که شما را از هم جدا می کند



خیلی زود دست می کشید، دیگر دنبالش نمی گردید، نه در شهر، نه در شب، نه در روز. اما به این صورت توانستید تنها شکل از این عشق را که برایتان مقدور بود، زندگی کنید، با از دست دادنش پیش از آنکه اتفاق بیفتد

[مهسا]

ترجمه و ویراستش افتضاح بود. از اونجایی که برای سوییچ کردن رو متن اصلی خیلی تنبلی کردم، باید دوباره بخونم.

[Pavle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kratka priča koja pozira kao novela o bolesti ne-života; pomalo prozaična, jednolična filozofija ispripovedana na prefinjeniji način. Prvi susret sa Duras je morao biti ovo s obzirom na pozadinu gde je tekst nastao nakon nedeljnog bindža svakodnevnog mlaćenja petolitre belog vina.

3+

[Shankar · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was an interesting read though it appeared that I was reading something really smutty. The larger message on death and someone wanting to know love was lost on me.

Why would this lady - prostitute or otherwise- simply submit to the man in context ? It appeared to me that the story was anti feminist. Why could this not have been written differently ? Maybe I am over reacting. But maybe this theme has been used elsewhere.

The means is not justifying its intent - was my takeaway ( what did I take away from?!!!).

[sologdin · Rating 1 out of 5]

Fairly dreadful. Likely the ideological origin point for items such as Memories of My Melancholy Whores on the one hand and Pretty Woman on the other, insofar as it features an older dude in an unconventional relationship with a sex worker--though it’s mostly concerned with the guy’s hessean crisis.

[Ali · Rating 5 out of 5]

a short review for a short story.

The Malady of Death left me with a mayhem of questions about myself. Unaware, She, the author, stripped me naked.

[Nihan Alak · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yazar vermek istediği mesajı öyle derinlere gömmüş ki üstüne düşündükçe durmadan yeni bir şeyler kavrıyorum. Oldukça etkileyici ve yer yer zordu.

[Roberta Pearce · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was turned onto Marguerite Duras’ work by a comment made in an interview of Camilla Monk, wherein Ms. Monk credited Ms. Duras as one of her influences in romance. I’ve spent the last couple days scrounging up books and watching the phenomenal Hiroshima Mon Amour. I’m a bit exhausted. But still going, adding The Lover and The Ravishing of Lol Stein to my TBR. [Pretty sure “Lol” isn’t really “LOL”.]

Just had to add that aside; I need a bit of lightness after a few days of Ms. Duras. Not that Malady was oppressively dark, but it wasn’t easy. The plot upshot: A man hires a woman [not a prostitute, though] to have an extended fling with him over the course of several days. Over those days, it's determined that he is incapable of love, due to his "malady".

I’m not entirely sure where to start in my assessment of it, or where that assessment will take me. So I will start with a line that haunts me; the line that became the crux of all my questions: She’s more mysterious than any other external thing you’ve ever known.

It’s so complicated – on the surface, it’s a romantic statement about the mysteries of a woman and how they can tangle a man. But the “external” bit adds the complexity: Is the protagonist even more of a mystery to himself than this woman, a virtual stranger? That’s not good. That disturbs. Intrigues.

Further complicating the statement is the use of second person. And I’ll have to digress into two problems I have with the narration. First of all, there are no quotation marks to delineate dialogue, so this monstrous little gem leapt out at me [emphasis mine]:

And then you do it. I couldn't say why. I see you do it without knowing why. You could go out of the room and leave the body, the sleeping form. But no, you do it, apparently as another would, but with the complete difference that separates you from her. You do it, you go back towards the body.

It’s not dialogue – I’m quite certain of it, but if anyone reading this disagrees, please provide evidence. If I’m correct, where did “I” come from? And going back to that “external”, is it the POV of the protagonist “I” or the narrator’s assessment of the protagonist “you”? And where does that leave the rest of the tale?

The conundrum worsens [and strengthens my opinion about that "I"] when viewed in light of Ms. Duras’ afterword with staging notes, wherein it’s stated that the narrator is not the “you”, but literally the narrator:

The man the story is about would never appear. Even when he speaks to the young woman he does so only through the man who reads his story. [. . .] The man reading the text should seem to be suffering from a fundamental and fatal weakness—the same as that of the other, the man we don't see.

I know I’m not likely to solve all of my problems with this novella, but it hardly matters. It has made me think of so many new things. About writing and style and love and death and how thoughts can cling like leeches and it’s not a problem. I love works like this. So fraught with subtext that there can be no escape for me. I’m on the fence about the actual writing [granted, it’s in translation], but for how the work is in my head now, five many-pointed stars.

[Nouru-éddine · Rating 4 out of 5]

ما الموت الذي تقصده دوراس؟ - ليس عدم القدرة على الحب، وليس الموت الذي هو انقطاع الحياة، وليس هو دموع فقد العزيز والحبيب.
الموت الذي تقصده دوراس هو موت انتشائي - أعتقد - هو موت اللحظة التي تلي انهاك الجسدين من شدة عنف ممارسة الحب بينهما. أن تكون ممددة بكامل جسدها فوق بطنها، غير قادرة على الحركة، وهو بجانبها - إنهما في هذه اللحظة يعيشان أجمل لحظات الموت.

[maria ⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚ · Rating 4 out of 5]

A story so short it is almost an exercise, a practice of craft. Remarkable in how it could create such a large atmosphere and depth of characters in such a small continent. It is somewhat uncomfortable but not very challenging. It is erotic while also being sexless, though there is sex. You kind of have to be there.

[Livia · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Nor will you, or anyone else, ever know how she sees, how she thinks, either of the world or of you, of your body or your mind, or of the malady she says you suffer from. She doesn't know, herself. She couldn't tell you. You couldn't find out anything about it from her.”