Marguerite Duras: Emily L. (1987)

Almost every afternoon in summer, Marguerite Duras and Yann Andréa would drive from Trouville to the Hôtel de la Marine in Quillebeuf, usually via Pont-Audemer, a round trip of slightly under eighty miles. This is just what the two unnamed characters in Emily L. do, at a time when, Duras’s biographer Laure Adler says, the couple were drinking six or eight litres of wine a day without eating. It’s hardly surprising that the narrator is terrified of the masses of Koreans she sees around her on the café terrace: sounds like a dose of the DTs.

The narrator and her friend seem to be at a negative turning point in their relationship, but that’s not the focal point of interest here: it’s the much-travelled English Captain and his wife (later known as Emily L.) who are the principal subjects here, he with his strong Pilsner beers, and his alcoholic wife with her double bourbons. An early few sentences about them sets the tone:

‘Perched on their stools almost motionless, heads leaning forwards, dangling, they were […] a little ridiculous. You could have called them plants, something like that, of no definite state, a sort of vegetable, human plants, no sooner born than already dying, no sooner living than already dead.’ (My translation.)

Emily L.’s history comes in instalments, but to sum up: she comes from a wealthy family, and after the death of her parents she inherited a boat and property. She has been many places in the boat with her husband the Captain (a nickname the patronne gives him), but  their relationship seems to have run aground, they seem to be in terminal Despair Street.

Probably once beautiful, Emily L. wrote nineteen poems in her youth which were (unknown to her) published by her father, and (also unknown to her) they’ve been translated into a few European languages, she quite a celebrity if only she knew it, but the Captain has always seen her poems as a rival and steers the pair into safe Malaysian waters where Emily L. remains anonymous. Emily L. has already dismissed these poems as juvenilia, but the turning point in her poetry came when she was writing a poem following the still-birth of her child, an unfinished poem that the Captain burned in jealous hatred, and which Emily L. searched all over for. She never wrote anything after that.

She only learns of the existence of the booklet from the warden of their house, who looks after it when they are (almost always) away on mindless cruises. He loves Emily L., she loves him, but their relationship will never see day. Perfection,  perhaps. Emily L. was Marguerite Duras’s favourite character, and there’s more than a little Duras in her.

My Marguerite Duras posts:
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Marguerite Duras: La Pute de la côte normande
Marguerite Duras: L'Homme assis dans le couloir
Marguerite Duras: Agatha
Marguerite Duras: Emily L.
Marguerite Duras: Les Yeux bleus cheveux noirs
Marguerite Duras: L'Amant | The Lover
Marguerite Duras: Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein
Marguerite Duras: L'Amante anglaise
Laure Adler: Marguerite Duras
Marguerite Duras: Cimetière du Montparnasse
Marguerite Duras: Un barrage contre le Pacifique
Marguerite Duras: L'Après-midi de Monsieur Andesmas
Marguerite Duras: Les Petits Chevaux de Tarquinia
Marguerite Duras: Le Marin de Gibraltar | The Sailor from Gibraltar
Marguerite Duras: La Douleur | The War: A Memoir
Yann Andréa: Cet amour-là
Marguerite Duras and Xavière Gauthier: Les Parleuses
Marguerite Duras: Savannah Bay
Marguerite Duras: Détruire, dit-elle | Destroy, She Said
Marguerite Duras: L'Amour
Marguerite Duras: Dix heures et demie du soir en été
Marguerite Duras: Le Square | The Square
Marguerite Duras: Les Impudents
Marguerite Duras: Le Shaga
Marguerite Duras: Oui, peut-être
Marguerite Duras: Des journées entières dans les arbres
Marguerite Duras: Suzanna Andler
Marguerite Duras: Le Vice-Consul | The Vice Consul
Marguerite Duras: Moderato cantabile
Marguerite Duras: La Vie matérielle
Marguerite Duras: La Vie tranquille
Marguerite Duras: La Pluie d'été