South Atlantic Modern Language Association

A Short Story of Marguerite DurasAuthor(s): Alfred CismaruSource: South Atlantic Bulletin, Vol. 34, No. 4 (Nov., 1969), pp. 22-24Published by: South Atlantic Modern Language AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3196964 .

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Page Twenty-two SOUTH ATLANTIC BULLETIN November, 1969

A Short Story of Marguerite Duras The year 1954 saw the publication

of Marguerite Duras' Des Journees entieres dans les arbres, her only collection of short stories to date. The book contains four titles: Des Journdes enti&res dans arbres, Le Boa, Madame Dodin and Les Chan- tiers. Des Journ6es has attracted a considerable amount of attention, especially in its play version of 1966 under the adept direction of Jean- Louis Barrault and benefiting from the experienced play-acting of Madeleine Renaud. All four titles, however, are good examples of al- most plotless compositions pursuing the vein of the New Novel through repetitions, anonymity of characters, and infrequency of incidental de- tail. Yet, the author does not make a clean break with the past: sum- maries are still possible, the totally dismal atmosphere of the masters of the New School is absent, and false, awkward hope still glitters, from time to time, in the heart of the personages.

In spite of Marguerite Duras' reputation as a novelist and film writer, in this country her short stories have given rise, so far, to practically no comment at all. The purpose of the present essay is to fill a long-standing lacuna in do- mestic Durasian scholarship by dis- cussing Des Journees entikres dans les arbres, the longest and perhaps the best story in the collection mentioned.

The nostalgic connotation of the words des journees entieres dans les arbres, pointing as it does to children climbing trees for the joy of pure ascension or the intriguing mischievousness of discovering bird nests, fills the one-hundred or so pages of the first story. There is a touching feeling of loss that grips the reader immediately, to stay with him and grow as the almost con- tinuous dialogue of the composition unfolds, cryptically at first, but more and more plainly as the nar- rative advances. The loss, of course, is that of the days of old, the care- free days, the moments of sheer innocence, of play. And the void that we are left with is only poorly filled by tangible objects, by ma- terial riches that we have grown too old to enjoy or even care about.

For that is the situation of the central character, the nameless mother who returns from the

Colonies to see her son, Jacques, a middle-aged man, a boy who had liked tree-climbing, frolicking, and absenting himself from school, a boy who had not quite grown up yet in spite of his chronological age. It is this son among all others whom Mother loves and whom she comes to visit, perhaps because she senses that he needs her, or perhaps, as one critic has put it, because she wants to "s'assiirer qu'il n'est pas sorti de son enfance, c'est-&-dire d'une sorte d'esclavage biologique,"l that she could still, secretly, enjoy. This mother, unlike Ma of the earlier Un Barrage contre le Paci- fique (1950), has done well abroad, has become the proprietor of a fac- tory and has acquired jewels, brace- lets that she wears on each arm and rings that cover almost all her fingers. Her son, on the contrary, has not changed very much. He is lethargic, sleeps all day, and at night dances with old, single women in a night club where his concubine, Marcelle, has a somewhat similar job. Moreover, he is a drunkard, a gambler, a thief on occasion (he steals some of his mother's jewelry the one night that she sleeps in his apartment, in order to sell it and gamble with the money); but he is also a gay sort of man, capable of passion at times, sensitive and childish, a dreamer whose degrada- tion has a measure of voluptuous- ness for it is willed without being calculated. His is a world of in- activity and consent, perpetuated and cultivated with care, much as that of Sara and her friends in Les Petits chevaux de Tarquinia (1953). In vain his mother offers him status and fortune in the Colonies: "I1 est comme Ca," the same critic pursues, "et c'est comme ga qu'il va vieillir, o triste et delicieuse victoire de cette femme ... qui cache en vain sa soif de domination."2

In Des Journdes, Marguerite Duras' pen excels indeed. Her pene- trating analysis of the three main characters, mother, son, and mist- ress, almost exclusively by means of dialogue, is masterfully handled. The author's descriptive interven- tions are reduced to the barest mini- mum and are never more than a few lines long. In this story just

about every spoken word has an intense, a pounding, dramatic value, as if the pen were that of a play- wright and not of a novelist.s "Mais que j'ai faim," says the mother al- most as soon as we meet her. "Jour et nuit . . . j'ai si faim que je ron- gerais un os et j'ai soif."4 These statements, repeatedly made, act as a refrain and they constitute but one example of the writer's ability to bare immediately the psycho- logical make-up of her personage.5 How neatly, then, her jewelry- studded hands fall into place, and the twenty-room house she owns and boasts about but has no real use for, and the factory in which her eighty employees are busy mak- ing her a fortune that she does not quite know how to spend. Is hers a hunger for money for the power, the freedom it can provide? Not really. Rather for the things one can buy with it. Things to be sure, not quality: had she any real ap- preciation of jewelry, for example, she would purchase and wear fewer items of a more expensive and sub- dued character. Hers is also a hunger for much smaller, animal needs: a choucroute, which she eats heartily, on several occasions, dur- ing the short visit she pays to her son, a glass of Beaujolais. "Ah! les joies de la choucroute," she exclaims at one point, "on en parle aishment sans les connaitre! Une bonne choucroute . .. soixante-quinze ans passes . . . deux guerres . . . quand j'y pense. . .. En plus de tout le reste" (82).

Her apparently disconnected but closely-knit aberrations point, of course, to the infirmities of old age, to the decay humans are subjected prior to death. She hears with diffi- culty, for example, does not see too well either, and is unable to think coherently or to recall except through the fluid opacity of a septu- agenarian. The little that she says is replete with contradictions and reveals an unstable personality

1. Robert Abirached, "Marguerite Duras: Des Journe s entite da, e arbrue," La NouveU Revue . Iranai8 , XXVII (1966), 456.

2. Ibid., p. 8$45.

3. At the time of the publication of Des Journdes entihres dane Ile arbrea the events which form the basis of her first play, Lee Viaducs de la Seine-et-Oise, took place in France, and it is quite probable that she be- gan thinking about the theater in 1954.

4. Marguerite Duras, Des Journes entires dane les arbres (Paris: Gallimard, 1954) p. 13, subsequent page numbers in parenthesis in my text refer to this edition.

6. Extreme hunger and thirst, physical and intellectual, constitute the theme of Ionesco's celebrated play La Soil et la laimt (1966), presented in Paris at the same time as the dramatic version of Des Journdes.

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November, 1969 SOUTH ATLANTIC BULLETIN Page Twenty-three

whose sensitivity only serves to en- hance the pathetic quality. She is much like other aged characters of the masters of the New Novel and the New Theater, Ionesco and Beck- ett for example, a decrepit in di- vidual, physically and intellectually in an advanced stage of decompo- sition.6

The plight of growing old is even more visible in the son, for while he has aged, he still leads, essenti- ally, the carefree existence of his tree-climbing days. And Marcelle too, the moving symbol of a cheated life (abandoned by her parents, raised in a loveless atmosphere, caught in the facile web of prosti- tution because of necessity, or lazi- ness, or both), of love erased by time, of an ardent desire for some- thing different, for a pulsating life which would not be threatened from all sides, which would be devoid of fear, of hunger, of uncertainty, Mar- celle too has forgotten how to look to the future, has consented, has acknowledged and accepted that dubious state of survival in which so many of Marguerite Duras' per- sonages sink. For her the status quo is not only possible, it is desirable because the unknown could only be worse: she might lose her job at the club, she might become ill, Jacques could leave her. She must be constantly careful, then, at work, in her conversations with Mother, in the way she dresses and exhibits emotions. In the play version, the reviewer aptly noted her "visage nu, une marche pleine d'hesitation, des mains tremblantes, une bouche pile qui denote a la fois sa tendresse et sa ferocite, une voix, pure, trem- blante, intense, calme, ironique, l4gere,"7 for the actress's appearance and tone, changing and conflicting, denote so well the permanent inner struggle which the author wished to convey. As a matter of fact, the dramatic qualities of Des Journdnes' descriptions and dialogue 1 end themselves so effectively to stage production that Christine Garnier has been moved to remark: "Saisis- sant auteur, admirable atrice: on ne salt, au sortir de l'Odon . . . qui louer de plus? Mme Duras ou Mme Renaud? On a le coeur serr6, on est fascind, on salt que l'envo^te- ment durera des journdes entibres.

S. . Jamais mieux que dans ces

Journies entieres dans les abres, n'a-t-elle su rendre les clairs- obscurs, les sable mouvants [of human relationships] et nous 6mou- voir avec des [mere] somnam- bules."8 Yet, Des Journdes' pages remain the pages of a story. They never become exercises, dramatic or otherwise, and if we agree with the conclusion of Armand Hoog that "Marguerite Duras has written nothing better,"9 it is in the story itself that we must seek the clues to its bewitching interest.

The starting point could hardly be simpler: a mother returns to visit her son after an absence of years. The visit will last approxi- mately twenty-four hours, during which the characters will talk, eat and drink, go to the club where Jacques and Marcelle work, return home, sleep, get up. Nothing will really take place. If the son steals, gambles and loses, he simply con- firms a reader's early interpretation; and the very few paragraphs that these events occupy do not give the plot any movement. What impresses, what touches, is the dialogue: the unfinished sentences, the brief, con- cise, incisive, staccato utterances, the alogical apostrophes, the curious interpolations, the sad and moving expressions of disenchantment and despair of the personages:

-Parlez-moi quand meme un peu de votre vie a tous les deux S.. faites un petit effort.

-Toujours pareil, dit le fils. -Vraiment? -Pareil absolument, r6peta le

fils (28-29). To the familiar theme of immo-

bility is added, repeatedly, the devastating proof of an aging per- son's decaying reason and loss of memory: "Pourtant, en gendral, ton pere et moi-meme ... je ne dis pas maintenant . . on avait plut6t de bons sentiments il me semble, chercha-t-elle dans ses souvenirs" (53).

The Existentialist's nausea is like- wise an integral part of the story: "Voilk que je repense & ces hommes dans mon usine. ('a me revient comme une nause. .. . Comme une naus&e . . . je ne sais pas pourquoi" (54). Much like the engulfing roots of the tree in Jean-Paul Sartre's

La Nausee (1938) causing nausea in Roquentin's stomach, the recollec- tion of her material possessions brings about a distasteful, physical reaction to Marguerite Duras' char- acter. But unlike Roquentin, she is unable to reason out the origin of her response, nor does she have the intellectual or physical drive to seek even the shadow of a remedy.

The painful realization that in real life contradictions are often compatible, a theme often encount- ered in anti-novels,10 and expressed frequently in Des Journees, adds to the intriguing qualities of the dia- logue: "C'est la meme chose en fin de compte . . . travailler . . . pas travailler ... il suffit de commencer, de prendre l'habitude," (63) says Mother, trying half-heartedly to convince Jacques to follow her to the Colonies. As a matter of fact, all three main characters contradict themselves often, and are awk- wardly unaware, at the time they speak, of what they have said a few moments before. Thus, the mother's affection for her son, the apparent reason for her visit, becomes a mere conjecture when she admits: "Si je suis la c'est pour la forme, parce que je me suis dit que mon devoir etait de venir voir mon fils, tenter encore l'impossible. .... Rien de plus, le devoir, mais mon coeur est la-bas" (71); this in spite of the fact that before, repeatedly, she had expressed scorn for riches, had commented on the too many rooms in her house and the too many workers in her factory and the ex- cessive sums of money she had but was too old to use.

Finally, the protagonists' inability to pursue a topic for more than a few lines, their wandering minds and instability, their subjectivity and egocentricity are admirably pointed out by the author through the characters' vain efforts at real communication, at understanding. For although the story is almost exclusively made up of dialogue, Des Journies contains nothing more than subconversations and long monologues, interrupted, broken, hesitating, dangling. There are many which could be given as examples, but one of the most moving occurs in the episode in which Mother and Marcelle begin to talk on a subject of common interest, Jacques, then

6. Yet, the paralytic characters of Beckett and the moral corpses of Ionesco differ in that their disintegration is almost always absolute. 7. Robert Abirached, op. cit., p. 847.

8. Christine Garnier, "Revue dramatique," La Revue des doux mondes (February 1966), 455-456.

9. Armand Hoog, "The Itinerary of Mar. guerite Duras," Yale French Studies, XXrv (1959), 72.

10. Marguerite Duras had explored this theme already in Lee Petites chevaux de Tar- quinia: Sara's ultimate decision, for example, based on the principle that leaving is no different from staying.

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Page Twenty-four SOUTH ATLANTIC BULLETIN November, 1969

each reverts, from time to time, to purely personal preoccupations while apparently continuing the conversation:

-Je crois meme que je l'aime, dit-elle.

La mare, A ces mots, fr6mit. -H61as, murmura-t-elle. -Lui non, lui ne m'aimera

jamais. Mais la mere 6tait encore une

fois repartie vers le spectacle de son enfant dansant.

-I4 me le dit d'ailleurs. Jamais ii ne m'aimera, jamais, jamais.

La mere revint a elle, l'exam- ina les yeux vides.

-Il ne voulait pas aller A l'6cole, dit-elle, jamais. ... Tout vient de la. C'est comme ga que ga a commenc6.

-Et pourquoi? La mare ouvrit ses mains et

les 6tendit dans l'impuissance. -Je ne le sais pas encore, je

ne le saurai jamais. Elles se turent un petit mo-

ment puis Marcelle revint a ses propres preoccupations.

-Si au moins il me laissait rester chez lui . . . je ne de- mande rien d'autre que ga, qu'il me laisse rester 1l.

-Il y a des enfants, les autres par exemple, qui font leur chemin tout seuls, on n'a pas besoin de s'en occuper. D'autres, rien a faire. Ils sont eleves pa- reil, ils sont du meme sang, et voilA qu'ils son si diff6rents.

Marcelle se tut. La mare se souvint d'elle (65-66).

And the monologue-dialogue goes on in unaltered fashion, the two women talk mostly to themselves, only sporadically recalling the pres- ence of the other.

Des Journees is also noteworthy for the brilliant stylistic sallies of the writer. Only an attentive page by page reading could do justice to the mysterious allusions, the in- triguing associations, the surrep- titious statements, the moving nos- talgia, the paralyzing repetitions and the choucroute stench that emanate from Marguerite Duras' pen. Consider, for example, the sadly ironic words of Mother who, speaking of other children, of those who have made a real place for themselves in life, quips: "ils ont fait des etudes, eu des situations, fait des mariages, tout comme on avale des confitures" (33). Or the regret she expresses for not having been wise enough to enjoy the good

old days, the days when she was poor financially but rich in health and in children.

Elle se toucha las bras, se les palpa comme vile marchandise.

-Plus rien, reprit-elle. Plus d'enfants. Plus de cheveux. Re- garde un peu les bras que j'ai 1a. . . . Plus rien que cette usine. . . . Quand je pense, je vous vois encore, quand je pense que vous 6tiez tous 1A& dormir comme des anges dans tous les coins de la maison .. S1l'ombre des stores, verts, tu te souviens . . . et que moi je pleurais parce que j'avais des dettes. Que vous etiez 1l et que je pleurais. . . H61as! Pleine de lait, forte comme un boeuf, et je pleurais" (57-58).

Or the epilogue of the well- constructed scene at the night club, when Mother refuses to pay the bill on the grounds that she was over- charged for the little she has drunk, and the crowning remark she makes after she does pay: "C'est presque aussi cher qu'un matelas, c'est curi- eux" (79), pointing to an associ- ation between drinking and aban- donment to sleep or death, a subtle, engaging association which surely originates in her intuition only. Or the profoundly poignant reasons she gives to Marcelle for leaving so soon after her arrival: "Si je pars voyez- vous, c'est parce que ga ne res- semble & rien que je sois ici . .. . rien du tout. . . . D'avoir eu des enfants, ga ne ressemble & rien, ga ne signifie rien. Rien. Vous ne pouvez pas imaginer & quel point, & vous donner le vertigle. Je ne dis pas de les avoir . . . mais de les avoir eu. . . . Si je restais il ne pourrait que me tuer, le pauvre petit. Et moi, je ne pourrais que le comprendre" (86).

This is the most feared thing of all, of course, for then she would lose him entirely, he would become like the others, all of one piece, predictable, sane, safe: that is to say, he would no longer be in a state of biological slavery and she, as the mother of an infant, would cease to exist. In one of her last speeches, guarding against this pos- sibility, she remarks: "Si tu savais

S.. les autres . . . elles sont fibres des leurs, et quand ils viennent les voir, qu'est-ce qu'on voit? Des bourgeois, des veaux, trop nourris, et b~tes, et qui ne savent rien ... Non, mon petit, je suis fibre que tu sois comme ga, encore, A ton Age

0 . . maigre comme un chat... mon petit" (96). What she does not rea- lize is that she does understand him after all, even more than her other children, for with him her intuition is her wisdom, and she can feel and display a host of emotions that she is incapable of in the case of the others. In her next to the last speech, this realization comes to the surface, porous for the reader but certainly still opaque to her own declining intellectual capacities: "C'est une autre fiert6 [hers] que je suis seule a comprendre. Et c'est seulement de ga que je souffre, mon petit, c'est tout, d'etre seule & la comprendre et de penser que je vais mourir et que personne, apres moi, ne l'aura" (96). It is obvious, then, that her haughtiness is not pleasur- able because it cannot be shared: with the exception of her son, she could ill afford to show it to anyone else. It is, as she says, more a source of pain than of joy. Moreover, were she to stay close to her son for a longer period of time she would run the risk of seeing him change, hence of losing the lofty position she now appears to have. Therefore she must leave the only person she can domi- nate, resume the total loneliness of the Colonies and assent to distance, absence, death.

In Des Journ'es, then, three un- fortunate people, mother, son, and mistress, spend part of a day and one night together: hardly the ma- terial for a story. A great deal of dialogue, though, a limited number of precise details: barely enough for even the briefest fictional narration. Yet, the world of the dispossessed is admirably described, the com- plexity of contradictory emotions is conveyed with touching simplicity, and the loneliness of immobile char- acters who accede to their miserable situation is perfectly identified. Cer- tainly not a traditional story, these Des Journe'es, perhaps not even a story at all. But Marguerite Duras is here too close to reality to aspire to lesser goals.

AiLFRED CISMARU, St. Michael's College.

Bibliokleptomania This classic essay on book thiev-

ery, by Lawrence S. Thompson of the University of Kentucky, origin- ally appeared in the Bulletin of the New Yorke Public Library in 1944. It has now been reissued in pam- phlet form by the Peacock Press, Box 12142, Oakland, California 94604. It costs $2.00.

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