La Douleur Research Articles

Pleasure and Pain in Nineteenth-Century French Literature and Culture

This collection of essays arises from a selection of the papers presented at the Fourth Annual Conference of the Society of Dix-Neuviémistes held in Edinburgh in 2006. The wide remit of that conference is reflected in the titles of the sections: ‘The Novel’, ‘Crime and Punishment’, ‘Écritures féminines’, ‘Defining Sexual Experience’, and ‘Aesthetics, Beauty and the Visual Arts’, the last fulsomely embellished with black and white and colour illustrations. The Editors' Introduction is clear, wide ranging, and thoughtful (although a little more than a nod in the direction of Freud might have been welcome). Henri Mitterand's opening piece entitled ‘Jouir/souffrir: le sensible et la fiction’ is magisterial in its breadth. Mitterand confronts this ‘couple antinomique’ head-on, considering not only the representation of pleasure and pain in nineteenth-century prose fiction, but also their contemporary philosophical and psychological treatment and the aesthetic pleasure of the reader generated by the form of the literary work. In the contributions that follow, many deal more with the representation of pain than that of pleasure in the nineteenth century; Michael Tilby's contribution is the principal exception, focusing on the manifestations of the philosophical and physiological nature of pleasure in Balzac's works. A considerable number choose to focus more specifically on the duality of pain and pleasure, particularly in its sexual expression. The breadth of the subject allows for the study of a number of less canonical, particularly women, writers, both novelists and poets (Anna de Noailles, Malvina Blanchecotte), as well as of cultural ‘figures’ in the broadest sense: the terror and fascination evident in the general public's attitude towards Larcenaire and, a fortiori, in nineteenth-century writings on the guillotine; the pleasure and pain of what were presented as various sexual disorders, both male and female, in contemporary medical and pseudo-medical discourses; and redefinitions of beauty and ugliness in art. Inevitably, there is some unevenness in the quality of the contributions, but the majority are clearly argued and enlightening and an excellent index has been provided. There is the occasional typographical error (even two on p. 266, in Claire Moran's highly stimulating contribution on the self-representation of the artist as Christ), and, most disappointingly, a whole chapter with the wrong running head: Rachel Mesch's very clear and thoughtful essay on ‘Power and Pleasure in Fin-de-Siècle Women's Writing’ (pp. 159–71) has been given that of Gretchen Schultz's in the following section (‘La Rage du plaisir and la rage de la douleur’, on lesbian pleasure and suffering, pp. 175–86). Errors notwithstanding, this is an important and very rich volume, testifying more than most to the wide and interconnecting range of disciplines concerned with the culture, literature, and society of the ‘long’ French nineteenth century.

The Bed and the Book: J.-K. Huysmans's Crucibles of Suffering

In J.-K. Huysmans's later novels, the bed and the book are crucibles in which suffering effects an alchemical transmutation: of bodily degradation into spiritual enlightenment, of existential nonsense into order, style, and beauty. A gendered topos, a woman's bed corresponds to the page on which male intelligence is displayed. As the alchemy of language transforms a man's ideas into poetry, "cette divine Alchimie qu'est la douleur" ( Sainte Lydwine de Schiedam ) gives a purpose to women's torments, refining an abject body into an instrument of redemption. While men sit writing at their desks, "la femme se tord en silence sur un lit" ( Sainte Lydwine ). This essay examines these two symbolic sites: the bed and book as retorts in which the alchemical processes of art and religion take place.

Le Chant de la douleur dans les poésies de Christine de Pizan: Essai (review)

Reviewed by: Le Chant de la douleur dans les poésies de Christine de Pizan: Essai Stephanie L. Hathaway Kosta-Théfaine, Jean-François, Le Chant de la douleur dans les poésies de Christine de Pizan: Essai (Collections ‘Le tunnel de Platon’), Nantes, Éditions du Petit Véhicule, 2007; pp. 158; paperback; R.R.P. €16.00; ISBN 9782842735715. This short volume focuses on the motif of grief and suffering in select lyric poems of Christine de Pizan, posing several new approaches to the theme and texts. Kosta-Théfaine’s book consists of essentially three essays that explore [End Page 210] the expression of grief and suffering in the courtly idiom, suggesting a less gender-oriented reading, as well as a renewal of courtly themes in Christine’s novel expression. The reader is well served by ample textual passages and a selection of the poems is included in the appendices. The first section suggests grouping the selected ballades, rondeaux and virelais according to theme, not form. Kosta-Théfaine outlines that those poems he has chosen for this study, though they were not all written at the same time, are concerned with the feelings of grief and sorrow, deuil and douleur. In his brief survey, he asserts that lyric helps Christine overcome her loss, just as it does for the general grief felt over the loss of figures in the community, in that literature is seen as internally purifying. The following section deals with the oscillation between lamentation lyric and courtly lyric, and Kosta-Théfaine touches, albeit not always convincingly, on what he sees as French patriotism in the form of courtly verse as a vehicle for the expression of grief and lament. The final section looks cleverly at the courtly elements of this lyric poetry, suggesting both historical and contemporary perspectives in reading. Kosta-Théfaine identifies the elements in Christine’s poems that correspond to the courtly themes of the twelfth- and thirteenth-century troubadours, such as the lover admiring his lady from afar, and the necessity of the lover to paint himself as inferior in order to describe his lady as both superior and unique. Here the interesting point is made that, while traditional courtly lyric expressed the lamentation in the masculine voice, Christine’s not only expresses the lamenting of the lady in the act of love, but also that the masculine and feminine voices seem to be interchangeable. The conclusion is that there is no pleasure in love, but only suffering, and that as the masculine and feminine voices appear interchangeable, both the lady and the lover suffer equally and death is the only release. Comparisons are made to other poets such as Ovid and Machaut throughout, as well as engagement with secondary literature, but in some sections the reader would certainly benefit from more thorough commentary. On the whole, however, this is a valuable survey of a theme that contributes to the study of Christine’s works and life, as well as interpretation of medieval French poetry and medieval courtly poetry in general. [End Page 211] Stephanie L. Hathaway Departments of French and Germanic Studies University of Sydney Copyright © 2009 Stephanie L. Hathaway

Antiepileptic drugs to treat pain in rheumatic conditions. Recommendations based on evidence-based review of the literature and expert opinion

Objectives Neuropathic pain is commonly encountered in rheumatology practice, often associated with nociceptive mechanisms. It is caused by nervous system lesions, and the usual treatments with analgesics and anti-inflammatory drugs are mostly ineffective. Antiepileptic drugs (AED) have proved effective in relieving neuropathic pain. AED are recently used by rheumatologists since the role of neuropathic pain in rheumatological conditions has only recently been documented. Nevertheless, the tendency seems to be reversed when these drugs are used inappropriately. The CEDR ( Cercle d'Etude de la Douleur en Rhumatologie), a specific interest group of the French Society of Rheumatology that focuses on pain in rheumatology, undertook to develop recommendations for the use of AED in Rheumatology. Methods A list of questions concerning the prescription of AED in painful rheumatic conditions was validated by a working group of 7 experts from the CEDR. The list of questions was used to draw up the recommendations. A literature review was performed using electronic databases (Medline, Embase and Cochrane library between 1980 and 2007) without limitations on the type of publication: case reports, clinical trials, literature review and guidelines about therapeutic management of neuropathic pain. Selected studies were scored for quality. Based on the literature and clinical experience, recommendations were developed using the Delphi method. Results We identified 29 studies concerning the use of AED in painful rheumatic conditions and 16 studies were considered valid and scored for quality. These few studies, the guidelines published for neuropathic pain treatment and the clinical experience of each expert, were used to develop 11 recommendations for the use of AED in painful rheumatic conditions. Conclusion These recommendations can be used as guidelines to help prescribers to use AED for the management of pain in rheumatic conditions until further scientific evidence becomes available.

Deepa Mehta’s Film Water: The Power of the Dialectical Image

Le film de Deepa Mehta Water examine la marginalisation de veuves indoues oubliées qui tentent par tous les moyens de survivre dans des conditions de pauvreté et de misère atroces. Le film témoigne du courage de la réalisatrice face à l’intimidation des forces patriarcales qui ont essayé de lui mettre des bâtons dans les roues. Le fait que Mehta ait put produire son film dans de telles circonstances confirme sa nature intrépide et son amour tenace du métier. Cela témoigne également de la confiance que le producteur David Hamilton lui porte. Water présente des images inoubliables composées avec sensibilité et subtilité pour créer beauté et émotion. La douleur muette des veuves indoues, représentée par des images saisissantes, engage le spectateur dans un échange dialectique. Par une lecture attentive du film de Mehta, cet article vise à élucider la manière par laquelle la réalisatrice réussit à créer un film porteur de sens et un texte social extrêmement important. La méthodologie analytique de cette étude est inspirée par les exposés de Walter Benjamin sur l’image dialectique et les questions de « reproduction » et de « reproductibilité » de l’oeuvre d’art.

Lyotard, Beckett, Duras and the Postmodern Sublime

Andrew Slade's study is admirable in scope: it promises an account of Beckett's and Duras's work in the light of the postmodern sublime, a notion forever associated with Jean-François Lyotard. Slade uses Lyotard's différend as a way in to this central proposition, linking the experience of the sublime to the intractable dilemma of the dispute for which no viable solution can be found without harming the interested parties. The ensuing problem of unspeakability opens up rich possibilities, as Slade implies, in relation to postmodernism and narratives, like those of Beckett and Duras, which have been problematically classed as postmodern. The discussion of Beckett begins with the claim that ‘humanity’ is almost entirely absent from Beckett's work (p. 53); Beckett, Slade argues, relocates the human within the inhuman, in a move which sharply recalls Lyotard. Such a conception of the human is specifically attributed to Beckett's ‘The Capital of the Ruins’ (1946), a journalistic piece on the destruction of St Lô and Beckett's involvement in the Red Cross hospital founded there after the war. Slade disagrees with the relegation of the piece to a marginal position in the Beckett corpus: this is not just reportage, he argues, but exemplifies the ‘struggle for modern consciousness’ (p. 56). Slade's brief analysis (of just four pages) in fact confirms the journalistic nature of the text: the description of destruction has none of the dense structure of Beckett's literary work. The chapter on Beckett refers to two texts: ‘The Capital of the Ruins’ and Worstward Ho. The latter introduces one of Slade's most promising ideas on Beckett, that of ‘Beckettlessness’. Carrying Lyotard's preoccupation with rewriting over into analysis of Beckett, Slade claims that ‘many of Beckett's critics hope to accomplish what none of Beckett's works could — they hope to finish’ (p. 59). There are hints here of the problem of writing ‘after’ Beckett: given the insistent declaration of the end in Beckett's work, the critical enterprise is peculiarly disabled: attempts to bring about closure are pre-emptively thwarted. Unfortunately, though, the argument leads to aggressive and unsupported claims (‘Beckett's practice of criticism […] is a rambling, confused and unpleasant profusion of words’, p. 63), and reference to Beckett criticism is very thin. Leslie Hill and Thomas Trezise are invoked only as sufferers of the affliction of Beckettlessness. Slade's chapter on Duras, meanwhile, promises to extend the analysis of the sublime to the notions of witness and testimony which lurk behind Lyotard's différend. Duras's work, he argues, stands in a complex relation to survivor literature, dealing as it does with the atrocities of Hiroshima and Auschwitz: ‘in her narrations she becomes as a survivor due to the nature of the collective traumatisation involved in both sites’ (p. 88). The in-depth consideration of testimony which is promised here does not materialize, despite brief references to Agamben (p. 96), and Slade's readings of La Douleur and Hiroshima, mon amour are again weakened by their lack of focus and by the almost complete absence of reference to existing criticism on Duras. Many readers, then, may object not to the agenda which Slade pursues, but to its execution, which is only partly redeemed by an intriguing view of ‘the affliction of wanting to be done with Beckett’.

Échelle EDAAP 1. La douleur de la personne polyhandicapée : la comprendre et évaluer ses spécificités d’expression par une échelle

Apprehending the pain experienced by a multiple handicapped patient requires knowledge of how the patient expresses pain and a careful observation of his-her behavior. It is essential to recall the importance of bodily expression, the patient's only means of communication. This article presents an observer-assessment pain scale for multiple handicapped adolescent or adult patients developed at the Hendaye Marin Hospital as well as the instructions for use. The Expression de la Douleur Adulte ou Adolescent Polyhandicapé (EDAAP) scale was validated statistically in 2007. This scale enables healthcare personnel to screen for painful situations without specialized medical assistance. We recall that pain is unacceptable, whatever the person's condition, a principle that most certainly applies to the dependent multiple handicapped patient. Emphasis must be placed on overall care in order to help the patient accept his-her body and acquire a certain degree of confidence (basal stimulation).

Aproximación al poema Joan Miró de Paul Éluard

Parmi les nombreux artistes présents dans les vers d’Éluard se trouve Joan Miró. L’artiste fait l’objet de tout un poème portant son nom et qui figure dans le livre Capitale de la douleur. Ce recueil suscita l’enthousiasme de Breton en ces termes: «Capitale de la douleur c’est paraît-il, un scandale pour certains si la passion et l’inspiration se persuadent qu’elles n’ont besoin que d’elles-mêmes». L’étude du poème Joan Miró s’attache à révéler les signes de reconnaissance entre deux modes de création artistique, celui de la peinture et celui de la poésie, par le jeu de la métaphore et de la métamorphose.

Validation of a French‐Canadian Version of the Pain Disability Index

To examine the psychometric properties of the Index de l'incapacité reliée à la douleur, a French-Canadian version of the Pain Disability Index (PDI). A total of 176 chronic pain patients (94 women, 82 men) completed the French-Canadian version of the PDI (PDI-CF), as well as other pain-related measures. A subset of 52 patients (27 women, 25 men) also completed a lifting task designed to assess physical tolerance and pain behaviour. Confirmatory factor analysis of the PDI-CF supported the two-factor structure of the original PDI. Reliability analyses revealed that the PDI-CF total score had a high degree of internal consistency, comparable with the original PDI. The PDI-CF total score was significantly correlated with self-reported pain, pain catastrophizing, depressive symptoms, fear of movement or (re)injury, lift duration and pain behaviours. The results suggest that the PDI-CF is a reliable and valid measure of self-reported disability that is psychometrically similar to the original scale.

French translation of the Multidimensional Pain Inventory: L'inventaire multidimensionnel de la douleur.

The Multidimensional Pain Inventory (MPI) is a widely used tool in the evaluation of pain conditions. This questionnaire has been translated and validated in multiple languages. However, there is no validated French-language version available for clinicians and researchers interested in evaluating people living with pain. The main objective of the present project was to make available a validated French-language evaluation tool for the cognitive, behavioural and emotional aspects of pain. Following a reverse translation of the MPI, a French-language version of the questionnaire, the Inventaire multidimensionnel de la douleur, that was presented to 227 participants living with chronic pain, was obtained. These participants were all involved in a rehabilitation program in four different settings. A series of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses was executed. Although three items were removed from the original version of the MPI, the three sections of the Inventaire multidimensionnel de la douleur had good psychometric properties. The results concerning the questionnaire's structure were very similar to those obtained with the original tool and during its translation into other languages. People wishing to evaluate pain in French-speaking populations now have access to a French-language version of the MPI.

Relation entre l’intensité de la douleur de l’accouchement et celle du postpartum blues

The aim of this study was to highlight a link between childbirth pain and mood disorders in the immediate postpartum. We met 43 women at three days postpartum in a maternity unit in Toulouse (France) between January and April 2004. The mean age of the mothers was 30 years (S.D., 4.8 years; range, 18-39 years). Mothers were excluded if they did not speak French, if they had past psychiatric history, and if their baby was premature, ill, or stillborn. Pain was measured using a French version of the McGill pain questionnaire (Melzack, 1975) [Br J Psychiatry 171 (1997) 550-555]. This questionnaire called questionnaire douleur Saint-Antoine (QDSA) is composed of 58 words and 16 classes (Boureau et at., 1984) [Thérapie 39 (1984) 119-129]. Classes 1-9 provide data on the sensory qualities of pain while Classes 10-16 reflect affective characteristics. Blues symptoms was assessed with the French version of the maternity blues questionnaire of Kennerley and Gath (1989) [Br J Psychiatry 145 (1984) 620-625]. For each 28 items women have to decide how much change there is from their usual self, by ticking one choice out of five, from "much less than usual" to "much more than usual". We used the French version of the EPDS (Cox et al., 1987) [Br J Psychiatry 150 (1987) 782-786]. This scale was used to assess the intensity of depressive mood. The results revealed a significant positive correlation between the pain scores and the "maternity blues" questionnaire scores, and between pain scores and EPDS score at three days postpartum. This study shows a stronger association between intensity of postpartum blues and affective aspect of childbirth pain (r=0.48; p<0.05) than between blues and sensorial aspect of pain (r=0.40; p<0.05). The level of depressive mood was found to be associated with affective (r=0.32; p<0.05) but not with sensory qualities of childbirth pain (r=0.28; p<0.05). In a multiple regression analysis predicting intensity of postpartum blues, we entered sensorial and affective scores of QDSA, age, and postpartum blues scores. The subjects to predictors ratio was adequate for multiple regression analysis as it was around the traditional guideline of at least ten participants per predictor [Howell DC. Statistical methods for psychology. Fourth ed. Duxbury press; 1997]. This model accounted for 31% of the variance of intensity of blues (F3,39=5.9, p=0.002). Affective dimension of pain was the only significant predictor (p=0.36, p=0.047). In another multiple regression analysis predicting intensity of depressive mood, we entered the same predictors. This model accounted for 20% of the variance of blues intensity (F3,39=3.26, p=0.03). Age was the only significant predictor (beta=-0.31, p=0.04). These results confirm our hypothesis that intensity of the childbirth pain is associated with mood disorders in the immediate postpartum. Several explications can be advanced. First, maternity blues could be a reaction to stress caused by childbirth pain. Moreover, pain can be felt as a failure for women who prepared themselves to a painless labor. Indeed, the prepared childbirth training pretends to give women the ability to overcome pain through physical and mental training. Thus, their responsibility in coping with the labor is heavy and might make them feel guilty if they fail. In addition, since "the labor itself should be experienced as a positive moment" [Chertock L. Féminité et maternité: étude clinique et expérimentale sur l'accouchement sans douleur. Paris: Desclée de Brouwer; 1996], pain might be at the origin of a great disappointment [Acta Obstet Gynecol Scand 83 (2004) 57-61]. It should be noted that we used the QDSA as a measure of past pain and not as a measure of immediate pain, as Melzack recommended [Pain 1 (1975) 277-299]. According to the results of this study, our hypothesis assuming a link between the intensity of labor pain and mood disorders in early postpartum appears to be confirmed. The intensity of postpartum blues is the best predictor of postnatal depression. Hence, knowledge of the risk factors, such as pain, could help to improve the efficiency of detection, and let professionals focus on the psychological impact of labor and especially on post-traumatic stress disorders.

Baudelaire and the Translation of Modernity

YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY BAUDELAIRE AND THE TRANSLATION OF MODERNITY ZAHI ZALLOUA INVOLVING questions of fidelity and distance, and the reduction of the foreign to the familiar, translation enacts an ethical relation. Perhaps because of its potential to provoke ethical questioning, translation – as both an instrument of comprehension and a self-reflexive discovery of alterity – preoccupied Charles Baudelaire throughout his career, from his early rendering of Edgar Allen Poe into French to his “retranslation,” in a larger sense, of modern life in his move from poetry to prose. Etymologically derived from trans (across) and latus (the past participle of ferre, to carry), translation evokes the idea of transportation or transfer. In the Middles Ages, for instance, the notions of translatio studii and translatio imperii carry with them this sense of transfer, the transfer of knowledge and political power from one civilization to another, respectively . In its more common usage, translation conveys the transmission of meaning from one language to another. In a wider sense, however, translation is more or less synonymous with the activity of interpretation : to translate is to make something comprehensible, accessible in terms of something else. As such, translation includes the act of rephrasing within a single language, as well as the use of one medium to reinterpret concepts expressed in another. This broader definition opens up a space for a consideration of form: what is communicated becomes inseparable from how it is communicated. This essay explores Baudelaire’s engagement with translation as a means for unsettling understandings about poetry and reality and, more urgently, for thinking differently about the experience and framing of modern life. Beginning with an analysis of Baudelaire’s art criticism and profound attraction to the visual arts, especially painting and caricature, I YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY 67 will examine the insights into modernity that each genre provided him, insights that he sought, in turn, to translate into poetic language.1 I will then turn to the ethical dilemmas of translation that increasingly concerned Baudelaire, especially in his later prose poems, which betray a growing attention to what can be described as the limits of translatability. In painting, no artist, for Baudelaire, surpassed Delacroix’s imaginative and powerful depictions of the human condition. The poet’s unqualified admiration for Delacroix is evidenced by his many laudatory remarks regarding the painter’s works in the Salons. As early as the Salon de 1846, Baudelaire asserts that “Delacroix est universel,”2 placing him alongside two masters of literature, Dante and Shakespeare: “Delacroix affectionne Dante et Shakespeare, deux autres grands peintres de la douleur humaine; il les connaît à fond, et il sait les traduire librement. En contemplant la série de ses tableaux, on dirait qu’on assiste à la célébration de quelque mystère douloureux” (OC 2: 440). The translation metaphor (translation as imaginative interpretation) is telling since it underscores the literariness of Delacroix’s art (establishing a “correspondence” between his images and their texts), as well as his creative (free) approach to the originals, which stand out themselves as excellent translations in their own right. Delacroix’s retranslation of Dante and Shakespeare – his artistic interpretation of their own poeticized perception of the human condition – is not an act of duplication or slavish fidelity, but an imaginative practice in itself. Translation creates as it transfigures the original, and it is this act of poiesis that Baudelaire admires and will seek to imitate. But what is perhaps most significant here is what brings these three figures together: “la douleur humaine,” or more specifically, the painting of “la douleur humaine.” By describing Dante and Shakespeare as “grands peintres de la douleur humaine,” Baudelaire complicates not only the notion of fidelity, but also the prior68 ROMANCE NOTES 1 For prior studies that address the relation between Baudelaire’s art criticism and poetry in terms of translation, see, in particular, Michèle Hannoosh’s “Painting as Translation in Baudelaire’s Art Criticism,” Forum for Modern Language Studies 22 (1986): 2233 ; Sara Pappas’s “Managing Imitation: Translation and Baudelaire’s Art Criticism,” Nineteenth Century French Studies 33, 3-4 (2005): 320-341; Sima Godfrey’s “Baudelaire ’s Windows,” L’Esprit Créateur 22, 4 (1982): 83-100. 2 Charles Baudelaire, Œuvres complètes (OC...

Trauma culture: the politics of terror and loss in media and literature

It may be said that every trauma is two traumas or ten thousand - depending on the number of people involved. How one experiences and reacts to an event is unique and depends largely on one's direct or indirect positioning, personal psychic history, and individual memories. But equally important to the experience of trauma are the broader political and cultural contexts within which a catastrophe takes place and how it is managed by institutional forces, including the media. In Trauma Culture, E. Ann Kaplan explores the relationship between the impact of trauma on individuals and on entire cultures and nations. Arguing that humans possess a compelling need to draw meaning from personal experience and to communicate what happens to others, she examines the artistic, literary, and cinematic forms that are often used to bridge the individual and collective experience. A number of case studies, including Sigmund Freud's Moses and Monotheism, Marguerite Duras' La Douleur, Sarah Kofman's Rue Ordener, Rue Labat, Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound, and Tracey Moffatt's Night Cries, reveal how empathy can be fostered without the sensationalistic element that typifies the media. From World War II to 9/11, this passionate study eloquently navigates the contentious debates surrounding trauma theory and persuasively advocates the responsible sharing and translating of catastrophe.

The treatment of chronic pain in Québec: a study of hospital-based services offered within anesthesia departments

Little or no information exists on the services that are currently available for the treatment of chronic pain across the different regions of Canada. As a first step, this study documented the hospital-based resources and services offered for the management of chronic non-cancer pain within anesthesia departments in Québec. In collaboration with the Association of Anesthesiologists of Québec and the Société québécoise de la douleur, a provincial survey was conducted to assess the availability of services for chronic pain management within hospital-based anesthesia departments along with the volume of clinical activities, staff composition, treatments offered and space facilities. The response rate was 100%. Fifty of the 69 departments (73%) offered services for the management of chronic non-cancer pain but the services were often limited. Twenty-six percent (13/50) of the departments provided some form of multidisciplinary assessment and treatment but only three had a core team comprised of an anesthesiologist, a nurse, a psychologist, and a physical therapist. Examination of patient waiting lists of the surveyed departments revealed disturbing results: approximately 4,500 patients were waiting for their first appointment to see a pain consultant, and nearly 3,000 (67%) had been waiting for nine months or more. Although this survey did not include the services offered in departments other than anesthesia, the results show the extent to which the province of Québec is under-resourced for the management of chronic pain patients both in terms of access to treatment and quality of the services offered.

Liberation: the view from France1

Liberation: the view from France1

Early books and pamphlets on anaesthesia.

Early books and pamphlets on anaesthesia.

Figures of Scandal in the Later Narratives of Marguerite Duras

If Duras' writing has always addressed key existential questions, it has also shown a noticeable trend over the decades away from its earlier preoccupation with social mores and towards the exploration of metaphysical questions, central among which is the question of death. Earlier heroines such as Anne Desbaresdes and Loi V. Stein (1) appeared largely as figures of silent revolt who shunned the dictates of a staid bourgeois society, and at great risk to themselves chose to forge their own path towards self-fulfilment. They thus tended to attract readings that focused on the process of sexual and social emancipation. Later heroines, however, such as those that figure in Duras' works in the 1980's, distinguish themselves by the fact that they invariably place themselves in untenable moral and political positions. Among these one could cite their willing participation in the reign of sexual violence, underage sexuality, emotional cruelty and wilful self-destruction. It may be that the morality informing these works is questionable. However, the real challenge posed by such works lies in the search for a suitable analytical framework that would help account for the metaphysical turn that inspires Duras' writing during this period. It is in order to meet this challenge that the present study introduces the notion of scandal. Scandal in Duras can be best approached by considering the writer's decision to publish La Douleur while her ex-husband was still alive. Her biographer Laure Adler sums it up aptly: Depuis longtemps Duras viole les regles de la bienseance. Avec la publication de La Douleur en avril 1985, elle prend le risque de violer celles de l'amour et de l'amiti,. (2) Duras, in other words, now seems to want to attack the universally recognised human virtues, such as love and friendship, that hold society together. It would have been socially responsible and humanly sensitive, one might suggest, to leave the manuscript of La Douleur, in which she portrays her ex-husband Robert Antelme's agony on his return from the front, in the blue wardrobe of her house in Neauphle-le-Chateau for several more years, but she not only rushed the publication but personally sent a copy to her ex-husband's wife. This is not to deny that there are convincing arguments in favour of its publication, for instance, that it is important to her personally as a means of coming to terms with her past, or that it is important for the French people generally to re-examine the heady days of liberation. However, the decision to publish the work when she did, and without the permission of the person she portrays, can be construed as an act that defies social propriety and human sensitivities; equally, it shows her to be impervious to any feelings of shame that may be associated with her own role in the action of the novel.J Far from being anecdotal, then, the events surrounding the publication of La Douleur suggest that scandal is endemic to Duras' work; indeed, it will be the point of this study to show that scandal is a force that informs several of the works she produced during the decade of the 1980's. Linguistically and conceptually, the term scandal can be traced to the ancient Greek skandalon, meaning snare for an enemy, cause of moral stumbling. (4) Christian thought has made much of this concept, as key passages from Saint Thomas Aquinas explicitly demonstrate, (5) but the seeds of Aquinas' formulation are already present in much of Plato, particularly in his psychology where he deals with the unruly part of the soul, also named the passions. Drawing a line between the Christian and Platonic philosophies, one can define scandal as the physical trigger that hurls individuals into a spiral of suffering. It is the material cause of a person's moral ruin, whether it be embodied in an individual agent such as the devil, or in a singular representation such as a word or an image that in its appeal captivates people and drawing them into its illusion, leads them to their downfall. …

Writing and Ethics: Representations of the Holocaust and the Occupation in the 'New Autobiographical' Texts of Alain Robbe-Grillet and Marguerite Duras

This study of the stories of the Occupation in Marguerite Duras' La Douleur and Alain Robbe-Grillet's Le Miroir qui revient seeks to throw light on the relation between the work of these two writers and the roles they themselves have played in history. Their textual 'coming out', at once a confession and a self-justification, coincides with the recovery in France of the buried memory of this period. The writing of the encounter between individual and collective memory in the desire for disclosure and closure does not, however, tell the whole story. Rather, these autobiographical texts reveal the limitations of an ethics of writing, of the deconstruction of any totalizing truth, and the recognition that we are at once of the race of those who were burned in the crematoria and of the race of Nazis.

At the Sharp End of Waiting: A Study of La Douleur by Marguerite Duras

At the Sharp End of Waiting: A Study of La Douleur by Marguerite Duras1 Élise Noetinger Ce livre n'est pas un livre. Ce n'est pas une chanson. Ni un poème. Ni des pensées. Mais des larmes, de la douleur, des pleurs, des désespoirs qu'on ne peut pas encore arrêter ni raisonner. Des colères politiques fortes comme la foi en Dieu. Plus fortes encore que cela. Plus dangereuses parce que sans fin. —Marguerite Duras, Ecrire (Paris: Gallimard, 1993), 74 ALTHOUGH DURAS HAS BEEN, over the past 20 years, a key author for critics interested in the study of femininity, the attitude and declarations of the author herself can lead to a certain confusion. Indeed, she defined with accuracy what she meant by exploring a feminine territory of writing when she referred to "organic" writing, a "zone obscure," a writing that would reject "plagiarism."2 Jacques Lacan, Danielle Bajomée, Trista Selous, Marcelle Marini, Emma Wilson, Leslie Hill, James Williams, Stephanie Anderson, Janine Ricouart, to cite a few, have attempted, with various degrees of success, to define the territory of textual femininity.3 Sharon Willis refines a definition of Durassian feminine writing when she relates it to the Lacanian notion of "Unreal": "It is neither Reality, nor History, nor a Text. The Real designates that which is categorically unrepresentable, non human, at the limits of the known. It is emptiness, the 'zero point' of death, the proximity of feminine jouissance."4 We do not intend here to develop another study of femininity with reference to La Douleur; my purpose rather is to analyse what could be qualified as féminine in Duras' account of her husband's return from Buchenwald. What does she give us to read and to see that could be essentially feminine? It seems necessary to insist on these notions of "reading" and "seeing," as they combine the double question raised by the bilingual title of the present collection: Ecritures féminines de la guerre/'Feminine Representations of War. From representation to writing, the space of creation is unfolded, a symbolic space, a narrative space, a reading space and a metaphoric space that suspends direct reference in order to allow interpretation.5 To what extent does femininity give this account a different vision of war from that of Robert Antelme, Primo Levi or Jorge Semprun, for instance?6 Why is it not a testiVol . XL, No. 2 61 L'Esprit Créateur mony, a record, a diary or a salvation movement without which life would not have been possible? Clearly La Douleur, published in 1985 shortly after the highly praised L'Amant, is a problematic text. It is not widely studied, considering the plethora of critical works devoted to Duras. Leslie Hill, in Apocalyptic Desires, gives a factual study of the text and pays helpful attention to the various "états du texte" (123-35). Except for a few occasional references in studies on pain in Duras' work, such as that of Bajomée, on body and scream in Willis' analysis, it is hard not to notice the critical void that surrounds this text. It is not a new phenomenon: when La Douleur was first published in its current state in 1985, generic questions (what is this text?), ethical questions (what is her right to write this?) and emotional questions (how could she do this to Robert Antelme, her former husband with whom she had maintained very good contacts?) were raised: "Pourquoi a-t-elle décidé, dix ans après "Pas mort en déportation" (la publication d'un premier état du texte dans Sorci ères en 1976), et quarante ans après les faits, de publier ce livre? Il est dédié à Nicolas Régnier et Frédéric Antelme, le fils de Robert et Monique. Voulaitelle léguer et transmettre une partie de son histoire et celle de son ancien mari à la famille de celui-ci? (...)"7 I would like to argue that the obscenity of war as represented and written by Duras lies less in the obvious images of pain than in the means of expression that frame her writing. The text seems entirely based on the notion...

“True Down to the Last Detail”: Narrative and Memory in Marguerite Duras’s “Monsieur X.”

Marguerite Duras's (1985) [1] is a collection of six disparate texts concerning her experience of World War II. essay focuses on the second text in the volume, Monsieur dit ici Pierre Rabier [Monsieur called here Pierre Rabier]. Monsieur X. tells the of Duras's chance encounter near the end of the Occupation with a French Gestapo agent who several weeks earlier had arrested her husband, Robert Antelme, for involvement in the Resistance. It also tells of the relationship she subsequently maintained with him in order, she says, to obtain information about her husband's whereabouts. At the time of these events, Francois Mitterr and was the leader of Duras's and Antelme's Resistance group, and in Une Jeunesse francaise [A Frenchman's Youth]: Francois Mitterrand, 1934-47, Pierre Pean offers alternative versions of many of the events Duras recounts in Monsieur X. That there are differences in these two authors' stories is not surprising. But the bold and characteristically impru dent claim Duras makes in the foreword to Monsieur X., that This is a that is true down to the last detail (90, 71), does tempt her readers to take interest in counterclaims. [2] Duras's statement can of course be taken simply as artistic hyperbole intended to alert readers of her fiction that Monsieur X. is indeed a true story, however accurate in its details. But taking Duras at her word and investigating discrepancies between her version of the affair and Nan's is a worthwhile task nevertheless, for it sheds light, as I will show, on the very sticky process of turning memories into narrative. While some of the differences between Duras's and Pean's accounts can be attributed simply to divergent interpretations of events by the various actors involved, others are more difficult to explain. Certain details in Une Jeunesse that contradict or at least differ from those in are presumably verifiable facts (taken from court transcripts or corroborated by several witnesses, for example) and thus seem to belie Duras's prefatory assertion. If we admit some aspects of Pean's account to be more accurate than Duras's, to what then can we attribute the inaccuracies in the latter text? Did Duras deliberately fictionalize some details, as she did with Rabier's name, thus making a significant if above-board exception to her unequivocal statement (It's out of respect for the wife and child of that man, called here Rabier, she writes, that...I take the precaution of not calling him by his real name [90, 71])? Did she change some details in order to render her more dramatic, as Lesl ie Hill suggests she did in the first autobiographical text in the volume, La Douleur (125-26)? Or are the mistakes due simply to faulty memory? While an attempt to determine a final truth about the historical events recounted in Monsieur X. would be very naive indeed, taking note of the variances between different versions of the is, again, worthwhile, for such an analysis reveals something about how remembering and narrating-activities in which the authors of and actors in these two narratives are inevitably engaged-intersect. An analysis of the several different voices and moods in Duras's and Pean's texts allows us to explore how memory-often though of as a fragmented, disorderly, and unreliable source-and narration-an inherently completing, ordering, and meaning-imposing force-both can and cannot be reconciled in the genesis of a historical or autobiographical narrative. In the first half of the this essay, I will look at Monsieur X. by itself, paying particular attention to elements of its narration such as mood, tense, and chronology. In doing so I will explore in Monsieur X. the relation between what Gerard Genette calls story (the signified or contents) and narrative (the signifier, statement, discourse or text itself) (27). …