SEX AND THE BOOK / THE FAREWELL BETWEEN TWO LOVERS AND THE END OF PASSION ACCORDING TO MARGUERITE DURAS - LOVE-E-PSYCHOLOGY

Sex & The Book / The farewell between two lovers, the end of passion and the death of eros according to Marguerite Duras

Marguerite Duras, pseudonym of Marguerite Donnadieu, was born in Saigon in 1914. Daughter of a school principal and a French teacher, she spent her childhood and adolescence in Indochina, surrounded by the indomitable nature of the exotic colonial land. Orphaned of both parents, she is raised in a boarding school. At that time, he intertwined a forbidden relationship - for reasons of age, race and social background - with a rich and young Chinese man. It will be this story to inspire his most illustrious novel, The lover, from 1984. She moved to Paris in 1932 and married the writer Robert Antelme, with whom she participated in the Resistance during the Nazi occupation. She is the author of numerous novels, short stories, plays and screenplays, including that of the film by Resnais, Hiroshima, mon amour. As if that weren't enough, he dedicated himself to directing himself. Her entire production is characterized by a strong desire for experimentation that makes her one of the most important authors of the second half of the twentieth century.

He was panting and weighed on her with his whole body, hurting her. They seemed lost creatures looking for their way out, the light on the sea, rowing as desperate towards the shore. At the height of the violence came pleasure. He cut off her legs, made her belly a basin of heat, came out of her parted lips, which murmured him in a moan. "This pleasure, this pleasure that you give me ...". He said it. At first with an insult, then with great sweetness. Then, they dared to look at each other.

Horror. This is the title of Duras's story from which the short and very intense lines you have just read are taken. There is a he and a she, both nameless. Two exes who make a date after being apart for six months. He has just returned from a business trip to Algiers and she, left alone in Paris, had done nothing but wait for the moment when she would finally see him again. Yet - now that he's there, right in front of her - she can't prove anything at all. He touches her hand and she has the instinct to withdraw it. It no longer has any effect on her. "Something had abandoned that man", she thinks, without realizing that it was she who allowed him to abandon her heart in those months, little by little. What to do now? Here the horror of the title takes possession of the woman. He is there to take her to bed and then, perhaps, start their story all over again. May it be. The two take a hotel room. She tears off her clothes and then begins to undress him. He does it with anger, with disgust, provoking him, making fun of him. The man freezes, he feels like beating her. They stop talking and have sex as if it were torture, with desperation. Every thought that goes through them is tremendous and so they try not to think. Until she reaches orgasm and in that pleasure she finds a flash of love, perhaps just a memory of what it was. A liberating instant of sweetness.

The next morning he is satisfied with himself, he is convinced that he has her back in his hand, he starts discussing their future together. But can a man really believe that he has subdued a woman for the simple fact of giving her pleasure? Time and distance have made it different, or maybe it is she herself who has changed - it doesn't matter. If love is over, there is no sex that can heal the wound. And that's why, while he falls asleep, she watches Paris wake up outside the window, then closes it in silence and, without thinking twice, leaves.

by Giuliana Altamura

Opening photo taken from the blog Bookside Table

Here you can read the previous appointment with the column, Sex & The Book / Passion, seduction and ageless eroticism: pleasure according to Colette