Marguerite Duras: Agatha (1981)

Marguerite Duras was encouraged to write her ‘incest book’ Agatha after partly reading Robert Musil’s L’Homme sans qualités, in which the incestuous love between Ulrich and Agathe takes place: it brought back a flood of memories about her brother Paulo Donnadieu, with whom she had had an incestuous relationship. In Alexandra Saemmer’s Duras et Musil : drôle de couple ? drôle d’inceste ? (2001), the author points out that in the French translation of the Austrian work, the author concentrates on the chapters ‘Souffles d’un jour d’été’, evoked on page 64 of Agatha. Duras had, as she notes in Le Monde extérieur, Outside 2 (1993), found Musil’s work ‘eminently obscure, unreadable, irresistable’.

Duras’s film Agatha et les lectures illimitées (also 1981) – which was filmed in Trouville, contains almost identical dialogue to the book, and is with virtually motionless images – is played by Yann Andréa and Bulle Ogier, with the voices of Andréa and Duras herself.

The book is a conversation, with many silences, between brother and sister, both aged thirty, Lui and Elle (or Agatha), and takes place in and around ‘La Villa d’Agatha’. They have spent their youth there and speak of many different activities (including, very coyly, their secret incestuous love) in the house at different ages. Only now, they create a distance between themselves, calling each other 'vous'. Agatha is seeing her brother for the final time because early in the morning she will get up to take a plane. They are obviously still in love, and although the man begs her to stay a little longer, even says he’ll kill himself, the woman is irrevocably determined to leave.

For Duras, incestuous love is never-ending, has no resolution, is unworkable, is cursed, and is pure.

My Marguerite Duras posts:
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
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

Marguerite Duras: Les Yeux bleus cheveux noirs | Blue Eyes Black Hair (1986)

Les Yeux bleus cheveux noirs (trans. as Blue Eyes Black Hair) is a novel containing limited dramatic directions: a similar Marguerite Duras play, Maladie de la mort (trans. as Malady of Death) was published four years before, in 1982. Duras also gives a brief explanation about the two protagonists in La Pute de la côte normande (also published in 1986). As yet I’ve only read the novel.

Les Yeux bleus cheveux noirs is paradoxical throughout, and strongly reminded me of Samuel Beckett, particularly Endgame, its interdependence, its madness, despair, asphyxiation, etc. It also called to mind the plays of Bernard-Marie Koltès not just for the homosexual element, but for the transaction, as if life is a (terrifying but necessary) business deal of some kind. There is certainly no escape.

There are no names here, just a man and a woman. The woman joins the man in a café, they move to another when that closes, and from then they go to the man’s place: he says he’ll pay her for being there, but not for sex. Although it’s never specifically mentioned, the man is evidently homosexual, and therefore incapable of pleasing her sexually. But she continues living there.

This is a huis clos situation, but although the woman goes out to have (violent) sex with a man in this seaside town –  modelled on Trouville where Duras lived with the homosexual Yann  Andréa, to whom she dedicates the book – she will always return. They are living out their own insanity.

She will always return and lie naked on the bed next to the naked man in the naked room, also stripped bare of any other furniture, any other means of communication with the outside world. She is naked apart from a black veil. At the man’s place she spends most of the time sleeping, and also cries a great deal, although probably far less than the man. They detest each other, but love each other, and remain inseparable, like twins who can’t break free because if one of them went they would both die. This is a chilling book, but this is the one that taught me how great a writer Marguerite Duras is.

My Marguerite Duras posts:
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
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

Cimetière du Montparnasse revisited #13: Yann Andréa

Oddly, in spite of going there each year, I'd not before taken a photo of the inscription on the grave of Marguerite Duras/Yann Andréa.

My Marguerite Duras posts:

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
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

Yann Andréa: Cet amour-là (1999)

Yann Lemée was born in Guincamp, Brittany, in 1952, and Marguerite Duras in Gia Định, near Saigon, in 1914: he lived with her during the final sixteen years of her life, and what may sound like an odd couple with thirty-eight years dividing them sounds odder because Lemée (renamed Andréa by Duras) was a practising homosexual. But they had a very profound love. Andréa first wrote of Duras and her second detox in M.D. (1982). As its name suggests, Cet-amour-là is about 'that love', and was published three years after her death, after she left him as her literary executor. It's a kind of personal epitaph, an attempt to come to terms with grief.

Cet-amour-là isn't linear, it hops about all over Andréa's sixteen years with Duras, repeats itself,  loops back on itself, dwelling particularly on Duras's grave in 'Mont-Parnasse' and on the time they spent together in Duras's flat Roches noires in Trouville, or her house in Neauphle-le-Château, or the flat in rue Saint-Benoît in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. He writes to her, speaks to her, and her words come from the page unpunctuated. He is often despairing, with talk of suicide, pages obviously full of loss, existential crisis, lack of will.

Duras left Andréa with a flat, still on rue Saint-Benoît, and close to the Café de Flore, which Andréa takes some time to revisit after his loss. He spends many days just drinking, leaving bottles strewn about the flat, just eating delivered meals, not washing or cleaning his teeth, he stinks. Until he finally calls his mother, and she and her partner come to collect Andréa, and take him to their home in Agen, Lot-et-Garonne.

When he's ready to return to Paris to eventually clean his flat up, on the way he visits Duras's father's grave, which she wanted him to drive her to but he'd feared she'd die at any moment, die in the car. Andréa barely mentions anything about his homosexuality, unless his enthusiasm for barmen in white jackets (only mentioned once), or his solitary walks can be read as euphemisms. And then, in January 1999, his book is finished and he goes off for a two-week holiday to Patmos with unnamed friends.

Yann Andréa died in his flat in 2014 at the age of sixty-one.

My Marguerite Duras posts:
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
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