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Marguerite Duras
From Wikipedia
Marguerite Donnadieu (April 4, 1914 - March 3, 1996), better known as Marguerite Duras, was a writer and film director.
She was born in Gia Dinh, French Indochina, and went to France, her parents' native country, to study law, but became a writer instead. She changed her name in 1943 for Duras, the name of a village in the Lot-et-Garonne départment, where her father's house was located.
She is the author of a great many novels, plays, films and short narratives, including her best-selling, ostensibly autobiographical work L'Amant (1984), translated into English as The Lover. Following the making of a film of the same name(s) based on her work, Duras then published a slightly different work, L'Amant de la Chine du Nord. Other major works include Moderato Cantabile, also made into a film of the same name, Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein and her film India Song. 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. Her films are also experimental in form, most eschewing synch sound, using voice over to allude to, rather than tell, a story over images whose relation to what is said may be more-or-less tangential.
You can find the bibliography at wikipedia. But I guessed that her The Lover, which was made into the same titled movie, was known by some of you.
From The Lover:
One day, I was already old, in the entrance of a public place, a man came up to me. He introduced himself and said: "I've known you for years. Everyone says you were beautiful when you were young, but I want to tell you I think you're more beautiful now than then. Rather than your face as a young woman, I prefer your face as it is now. Ravaged."
** quotes from Duras:
* "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 be never be dictated to a secretary, however capable she may be, nor ever given to a publisher to read at that stage."
*The woman is the home. That's where she used to be, and that's where she still is. You might ask me, What if a man tries to be part of the home -- will the woman let him? I answer yes. Because then he becomes one of the children.
*I see journalists as the manual workers, the laborers of the word. Journalism can only be literature when it is passionate.
*"Between eighteen and twenty five," she wrote, "my face took off in a new direction. My ageing was very sudden. I saw it spread over my features one by one... And I've kept it ever since, the new face I had then. It has been my face. It's got older still, ofcourse, but less, comparatively, than it would otherwise have done. It's scored with deep, dry wrinkles, the skin is cracked. But my face hasn't collapsed... It has kept the same contours, but its substance has been laid waste. I have a face laid waste"...
Looking forward to hearing more viewpoints about her.
From Wikipedia
Marguerite Donnadieu (April 4, 1914 - March 3, 1996), better known as Marguerite Duras, was a writer and film director.
She was born in Gia Dinh, French Indochina, and went to France, her parents' native country, to study law, but became a writer instead. She changed her name in 1943 for Duras, the name of a village in the Lot-et-Garonne départment, where her father's house was located.
She is the author of a great many novels, plays, films and short narratives, including her best-selling, ostensibly autobiographical work L'Amant (1984), translated into English as The Lover. Following the making of a film of the same name(s) based on her work, Duras then published a slightly different work, L'Amant de la Chine du Nord. Other major works include Moderato Cantabile, also made into a film of the same name, Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein and her film India Song. 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. Her films are also experimental in form, most eschewing synch sound, using voice over to allude to, rather than tell, a story over images whose relation to what is said may be more-or-less tangential.
You can find the bibliography at wikipedia. But I guessed that her The Lover, which was made into the same titled movie, was known by some of you.
From The Lover:
One day, I was already old, in the entrance of a public place, a man came up to me. He introduced himself and said: "I've known you for years. Everyone says you were beautiful when you were young, but I want to tell you I think you're more beautiful now than then. Rather than your face as a young woman, I prefer your face as it is now. Ravaged."
** quotes from Duras:
* "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 be never be dictated to a secretary, however capable she may be, nor ever given to a publisher to read at that stage."
*The woman is the home. That's where she used to be, and that's where she still is. You might ask me, What if a man tries to be part of the home -- will the woman let him? I answer yes. Because then he becomes one of the children.
*I see journalists as the manual workers, the laborers of the word. Journalism can only be literature when it is passionate.
*"Between eighteen and twenty five," she wrote, "my face took off in a new direction. My ageing was very sudden. I saw it spread over my features one by one... And I've kept it ever since, the new face I had then. It has been my face. It's got older still, ofcourse, but less, comparatively, than it would otherwise have done. It's scored with deep, dry wrinkles, the skin is cracked. But my face hasn't collapsed... It has kept the same contours, but its substance has been laid waste. I have a face laid waste"...
Looking forward to hearing more viewpoints about her.
