Liquid Passions: Marguerite Duras

Abstract

'Ma vie, elle est dans les livres. Pas dans l'ordre, mais qu'est-ce que ~a fait?' This comment by Marguerite Duras may be interpreted as a reference to the autobiographical dimension of her work and as an allusion to the fact that she dedicated most of her life to writing. Her work, comprising more than a hundred texts and films, must be one of the most extensive in contemporary French culture. Writing represented, for Duras, an essential motivating force to the extent that it gradually became an absolute necessity, comparable to an addiction in its very compulsiveness. For more than thirty years of her literary career, from the early 50s to the late 80s, Duras also suffered from progressively severe alcohol addiction and, according to Frederique Lebelley, underwent hospital treatment for alcoholism on four occasions during this period. The centrality of alcohol in her life is mirrored in her work, in its recurrence as a key motif, and in the prominence of fictional characters who are either heavy drinkers or who are explicitly described as alcoholics.3 In this article I propose first to analyse the significance of alcohol in Duras's work (focusing on Le Marin de Gibraltar [1952], Moderato cantabile [1958], Dix heures et demie du soir en he [1960], Le Vice-consul [1966] and Emily L [1987]), and then to examine the different functions of alcohol in her life, with reference to interviews and essays in which Duras commented on her own alcoholism.