WRITING
Marguerite Duras : Writing
TRANSLATED BY
MARK POLIZZOTTI
UNIVERSITY OF
MINNESOTA PRESS
MINNEAPOLIS
LONDON
Originally published in French as Écrire.
Copyright 1993 Éditions Gallimard.
First published in English by Lumen Editions,
a division of Brookline Books, 1999
First University of Minnesota Press edition, 2011
English translation copyright 1998, 2011 by Mark Polizzotti
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Published by the University of Minnesota Press
111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290
Minneapolis, MN 55401-2520
http://www.upress.umn.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Duras, Marguerite.
[Écrire. English]
Writing / Marguerite Duras ; translated by Mark Polizzotti.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-8166-7753-5 (pbk.)
1. Duras, Marguerite—Fiction
and memoir. 2. Authorship—Fiction and literary essay. 3. Creation (Literary, artistic, etc.)—Fiction.
I. Polizzotti, Mark. II. Title.
PQ2607.u8245e2813 2011
843′.912—dc22 2011020428
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
The University of Minnesota is an
equal-opportunity educator and employer.
20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
I DEDICATE THIS BOOK TO THE MEMORY OF W. J. CLIFFE, DEAD AT THE AGE OF TWENTY, IN VAUVILLE, MAY 1944, AT AN UNDETERMINED HOUR.
CONTENTS
Writing
The Death of the Young British Pilot
Roma
The Pure Number
The Painting Exhibition
I called the event that happened in Vauville “The Death of the Young British Pilot.” I first told it to Benoît Jacquot, who had come to see me in Trouville. It was his idea to film me talking about the death of that young pilot, who was twenty years old. And so a film was made by Benoît Jacquot. The visuals were by Caroline Champetier de Ribes and the sound by Michel Vionnet. The setting was my Paris apartment.
Once the film was completed, we went to my house in Neauphle-le-Château. I talked about writing. I wanted to try to talk about that: Writing. And so a second film was made, using the same crew and produced by the same company (Sylvie Blum and Claude Guisard of I.N.A.).
The text called “Roma” was initially a film entitled “Dialogue in Rome,” financed by Italian national television (R.A.I.) at the request of my friend Giovanella Zanoni.
M. D.
PARIS, JUNE 1993
Writing
It is in a house that one is alone. Not outside it, but inside. Outside, in the garden, there are birds and cats. And also, once, a squirrel, and a ferret. One isn’t alone in a garden. But inside the house, one is so alone that one can lose one’s bearings. Only now do I realize I’ve been here for ten years. Alone. To write books that have let me know, and others know, that I was the writer I am. How did that happen? And how can one express it? What I can say is that the kind of solitude found in Neauphle was created by me. For me. And that only in this house am I alone. To write. To write, not as I had up until then, but to write books still unknown to me and not yet decided on by me and not decided on by anyone. It was there that I wrote The Ravishing of Lol Stein and The Vice-Consul, and then others after them. I understood that I was alone with my writing, alone and far away from everything. That might have lasted for ten years; I’m not sure anymore. I’ve rarely counted the time spent waiting for Robert Antelme and Marie-Louise, his younger sister. After that I stopped counting.
I wrote The Ravishing of Lol Stein and The Vice-Consul upstairs, in my room, the one with the blue wardrobes that, sadly, some young masons later ruined. Sometimes I also wrote here, at this table in the living room.
I preserved the solitude of those first books. I carried it with me. I’ve always carried my writing with me wherever I go. Paris. Trouville. New York. It was in Trouville that I ended the madness of becoming Lola Valerie Stein. It was also in Trouville that the name Yann Andrea Steiner appeared to me with unforgettable clarity. That was one year ago.
The solitude of writing is a solitude without which writing could not be produced, or would crumble, drained bloodless by the search for something else to write. When it loses its blood, its author stops recognizing it. And first and foremost it must never be dictated to a secretary, however capable she may be, or ever given to a publisher to read at that stage.
The person who writes books must always be enveloped by a separation from others. That is one kind of solitude. It is the solitude of the author, of writing. To begin with, one must ask oneself what the silence surrounding one is—with practically every step one takes in a house, at every moment of the day, in every kind of light, whether light from outside or from lamps lit in daytime. This real, corporeal solitude becomes the inviolable silence of writing. I’ve never spoken of this to anyone. By the time of my first solitude, I had already discovered that what I had to do was write. I’d already gotten confirmation of this from Raymond Queneau. The only judgment Raymond Queneau ever pronounced was this sentence: “Do nothing but write.”
Writing was the only thing that populated my life and made it magic. I did it. Writing never left me.
My room is not a bed, neither here nor in Paris nor in Trouville. It’s a certain window, a certain table, habits of black ink, untraceable marks of black ink, a certain chair. And certain habits that I always maintain, wherever I go, wherever I am, even in places where I don’t write, such as hotel rooms—like the habit of keeping whiskey in my luggage in case of insomnia or sudden despair. During that time I had lovers. I was rarely without at least one lover. They got used to the solitude in Neauphle. And its charm sometimes allowed them to write books in turn. I rarely gave those lovers my books to read. Women should not let lovers read the books they write. When I had finished a chapter, I hid it from them. This thing is so true, for me, that I wonder how one can manage elsewhere or otherwise when one is a woman and one has a husband or lover. One must also, in such cases, hide the love of one’s husband from lovers. Mine has never been replaced. I know this every day of my life.
This house is the place of solitude. And yet it looks out onto a street, a square, a very old pond, the village schools. When the pond is frozen over, children come to skate and keep me from working. I let the children do as they like. I watch over them. Every woman who has had children watches over those children—disobedient, wild, like all children. But what anxiety: the worst kind, every time. And what love.
One does not find solitude, one creates it. Solitude is created alone. I have created it. Because I decided that here was where I should be alone, that I would be alone to write books. It happened this way. I was alone in this house. I shut myself in—of course, I was afraid. And then I began to love it. This house became the house of writing. My books come from this house. From this light as well, and from the garden. From the light reflecting off the pond. It has taken me twenty years to write what I just said.
One can walk from one end of this house to the other. Yes, and one can also come and go. And then there is the garden. In it, there are thousand-year-old trees and trees that are still young. And there are larches, apple trees, a walnut tree, plum trees, a ch
erry tree. The apricot tree is dead. Outside my room is the fabulous rose bush from The Atlantic Man. A weeping willow. There are also Japanese cherries, and irises. And beneath a window of the music room there is a camellia, which Dionys Mascolo planted for me.
First I furnished this house and then I had it repainted. And then, maybe two years after that, my life with it began. I finished Lol Stein here; I wrote the ending here and in Trouville, by the sea. Alone, no, I wasn’t alone; there was a man with me at the time. But we didn’t speak. As I was writing, we had to avoid talking about books. Men cannot stand a woman who writes. That’s a cruel thing for men. It’s hard for all of them. Except for Robert A.
Still, in Trouville there was the beach, the sea, the vastness of the sky and sands. That’s what solitude was here. It was in Trouville that I stared at the sea until nothing was left. Trouville was the solitude of my entire life. I still have that solitude around me, impregnable. Sometimes I close the doors, shut off the telephone, shut off my voice, don’t want anything.
No matter what I say, I will never discover why one writes and how one doesn’t write.
Sometimes when I’m here alone, in Neauphle, I recognize objects such as a radiator. I remember that there was a large plank on the radiator and that I often sat there, on that plank, to watch the cars go by.
Here, when I’m alone, I don’t play the piano. I play fairly well, but I don’t play much because I don’t think I can play when I’m alone, when there’s no one but me in the house. It’s hard to endure. Because it seems to make sense all of a sudden. But only writing makes sense in certain personal cases. Since I manipulate it, practice it. Whereas the piano is a distant object, inaccessible now and (for me) forever. I think that if I had played piano professionally, I would never have written books. But I’m not sure. Actually, I think that’s false. I think I would have written books no matter what, even with music running parallel. Unreadable books, but whole nonetheless. As distant from words as the unknown object of an objectless love. Like the love of Christ or of J. S. Bach—the two of them breathtakingly equivalent.
Solitude also means, either death or a book. But first and foremost it means alcohol. It means whiskey. Up until now, I have never, really never been able—or else I’d have to search way back … I have never been able to start a book without finishing it. I have never written a book that wasn’t already its own justification while it was being written, no matter what book it was. Everywhere. In every season. And I discovered this passion in Les Yvelines, in this very house. I finally had a house in which I could hide in order to write books. I wanted to live in this house. What for? That’s how it began, as a joke. Maybe to write, I told myself; maybe I could. I had already started books that I’d abandoned. I had even forgotten their titles. The Vice-Consul? No, I never abandoned that one; I often think of it. I no longer think of Lol Stein. No one can know Lol V. Stein, not you and not me. I’ve never entirely understood what Lacan said about her. I was floored by Lacan, that statement of his: “She must never know that she’s writing what she writes, because she would be lost. And that would be a tragedy.” That statement has become a kind of identity principle for me, “permission to speak” in a sense totally alien to women.
Finding yourself in a hole, at the bottom of a hole, in almost total solitude, and discovering that only writing can save you. To be without the slightest subject for a book, the slightest idea for a book, is to find yourself, once again, before a book. A vast emptiness. A possible book. Before nothing. Before something like living, naked writing, like something terrible, terrible to overcome. I believe that the person who writes does not have any ideas for a book, that her hands are empty, her head is empty, and that all she knows of this adventure, this book, is dry, naked writing, without a future, without echo, distant, with only its elementary golden rules: spelling, meaning.
The Vice-Consul is a book in which everywhere people screamed with no voice. I don’t like that expression, but when I reread the book that’s what I find: something like that. It’s true, the Vice-Consul screamed every day … but from a place kept secret from me. As one might pray each day, he screamed. It’s all true: he yelled very loud, and in the Lahore night he would fire on the Shalimar Gardens in order to kill. Kill anyone, but kill. He killed simply to kill. So long as “anyone” was all of India in a state of decomposition. He screamed in his home, his Residence, and when he was alone in the dark night of deserted Calcutta. He’s mad, the Vice-Consul, mad with intelligence. Every night he kills Lahore.
I never found him in anyone else, only in the actor who played him, my friend, the wonderful Michael Lonsdale—for me, even when playing other parts, he’s still the Vice-Consul of France in Lahore. He is my friend, my brother.
The Vice-Consul is the one I believe in. The Vice-Consul’s scream, “the only true politics,” was also recorded here, in Neauphle-le-Château. It was here that he called her, she, here, yes. She, A.-M. S., Anna-Maria Guardi. Delphine Seyrig was She. And everyone in the film wept. They wept freely, without knowing the meaning of their tears, inevitable—real tears, like the tears of the destitute.
In life there comes a moment, and I believe that it’s unavoidable, that one cannot escape it, when everything is put in doubt: marriage, friends, especially friends of the couple. Not children. Children are never put in doubt. And this doubt grows around one. This doubt is alone, it is the doubt of solitude. It is born of solitude. We can already speak the word. I believe that most people couldn’t stand what I’m saying here, that they’d run away from it. This might be the reason why not everyone is a writer. Yes. That’s the difference. That is the truth. No other. Doubt equals writing. So it also equals the writer. And for the writer, everyone writes. We’ve always known this.
I also think that without this primary doubt, there can be no solitude. No one has ever written in two voices. One can sing in two voices, and make music, and play tennis; but write? No, never. From the start I wrote books that were called political. The first was Abahn Sabana David, one of the ones I still hold dearest. I think that’s a detail, that a book can be more or less difficult to lead than ordinary life. It’s just that difficulty exists. A book is difficult to lead toward the reader, in the direction of his reading. If I hadn’t begun writing, I would have become an incurable alcoholic. It’s a practical state in which one can be lost and unable to write anymore … That’s when one drinks. As soon as one is lost with nothing left to write, to lose, one writes. So long as the book is there, shouting that it demands to be finished, one keeps writing. One is forced to keep up with it. It’s impossible to throw a book out forever before it’s completely written—that is, alone and free of you who have written it. It’s as horrible as a crime. I don’t believe people who say, “I tore up my manuscript, I threw the whole thing out.” I don’t believe it. Either what was written didn’t exist for them, or else it wasn’t a book. And when it isn’t a book, one always knows it. When it can never be a book, no, that one doesn’t know. Ever.
I would hide my face when I went to bed. I was afraid of myself. I don’t know how and I don’t know why. And that was the reason I drank liquor before going to sleep. To forget me, forget myself. It immediately enters your bloodstream, and then you can sleep. Alcoholic solitude is harrowing. The heart—yes, that’s right. It suddenly beats very fast.
When I was writing in the house, everything wrote. Writing was everywhere. And sometimes when I saw friends, I hardly recognized them. Several years were spent like that, difficult ones for me, yes, this might have lasted for ten years. And even when close friends came to see me, that, too, was horrible. My friends knew nothing about me: they meant well and they came out of kindness, believing they would do me good. And strangest of all is that I thought nothing of it.
This is what makes writing wild. One returns to a savage state from before life itself. And one can always recognize it: it’s the savageness of forests, as ancient as time. It is the fear of everything, distinct and inseparable fr
om life itself. One becomes relentless. One cannot write without bodily strength. One must be stronger than oneself to approach writing; one must be stronger than what one is writing. It’s an odd thing—not only writing, the written word, but also the howls of animals in the night, of everyone, of you and me, of dogs. It’s the massive, appalling vulgarity of society. Pain is also Christ and Moses and the Pharaohs and all the Jews, and all the Jewish children, and it’s also the most violent form of happiness. I still believe that.
I bought this house in Neauphle-le-Château with money from the film rights to my book The Sea Wall. It was mine; it was in my name. The purchase came before my writing mania, that volcano. I think this house had a lot to do with it. The house consoled me for all the pain of my childhood. In buying it, I immediately knew I had done something important for myself, something definitive. Something for me alone and for my child, for the first time in my life. And I looked after it. And I cleaned it. I “took great care” of it. Afterward, when I became absorbed in my books, I took less care of it.
Writing goes very far … To the point of being over and done with. Sometimes it’s untenable. Everything suddenly takes on meaning with respect to what is written: it’s enough to drive you insane. You no longer know the people you know and the ones you don’t know you think you’ve been expecting. No doubt it’s simply that I was already, a little more than others, tired of living. It was a state of pain without suffering. I did not try to protect myself from other people, especially people who knew me. I wasn’t sad. I was desperate. I had launched into the most difficult task I ever faced: my lover from Lahore, writing his life. Writing The Vice-Consul. I must have spent three years on that book. I couldn’t talk about it, because the slightest intrusion into the book, the slightest “objective” opinion would have erased everything, of that book. Another kind of writing by me, corrected, would have destroyed the writing of the book and my own knowledge of that book. The illusion one has—entirely correct—of being the only one to have written what one has written, no matter if it’s worthless or marvelous. And when I read my reviews, most of the time I responded to the fact that people said it was like nothing else. In other words, that it reconnected with the initial solitude of the author.
Writing Page 1