Marguerite Duras, le judaïsme et l’interdit du N/nom dans Le camion et La pluie d’été

Abstract

In the script and film, Le camion (1977) by Marguerite Duras, a single biblical name – “Abraham” – emerges from a backdrop of indistinct characters and places. During the film, the name becomes taboo. Thirteen years later, a similar phenomenon occurs in La pluie d’été (1990) when the verse “I, son of David, King of Jerusalem” from Ecclesiastes repeats regularly throughout the text and generates a feeling of discomfort and embarrassment. Furthermore, in this novel, characters are “polynymous”, shifting from one identity to another, one name to another. Here, the act of naming is entirely unique and provokes a deep sense of fear that manifests in the text through the characters’ paroxysmal reactions: cries, screams, howls, and silence. The main focus of this article will be to study the source of this malaise and to determine the prohibitions and taboos that lead to this incredible loss of speech. Thus, in the first part of the article, I examine how and why Duras populates Le camion and La pluie d’été with biblical, Jewish names and the way in which “Abraham” and the “the son of David” in these works become concentrated into a single word and identity: “Jew” or Juden”. In the second part of the article, I explore how the characters’ paroxysmal reactions relate to the difficulty and importance of assigning a name, both in terms of individual identity, but also in terms of the prohibitions and interdictions against divine representation and verbalization in the Hebrew Bible.