Vampiric... ( )

Je n'ai pas du tout été touchée par cette pièce dont le texte m'a paru affecté et inhabité. Elle gagnerait probablement beaucoup de relief sur scène, avec de bons comédiens qui sauraient lui donner vie et sens. ( )

La maladie de la mort is a surrealistic short novel about a man who pays a woman to stay with him in a house near the sea. All day and all night, the young woman lies, sleeping or slumbering in bed. The man, who has never had a lover, cannot bring himself to love, to possess the woman. From unrecorded words she murmurs in her sleep, the man's condition is pronounced as La maladie de la mort.

La maladie de la mort is an enigmatic tale with the quality of an allegory. The story was almost conceived like the oracle in Delphi, as during the dictation Marguerite Duras was heavily intoxicated. The man, sometimes thought to be gay, may stand for all men, and his inability to love, not just for the act of love, but inability for true love. Elsewhere, Marguerite Duras has said that she sees herself as a woman who has always lived in houses near the sea, and that her writing, as the true writing of all women should be, about desire. The inaction of the man effectively shows him to be impotent, while the woman in her passivity seems to take control.

La maladie de la mort has a very poetic quality, and reads almost as much as a dramatic monologue. ( )

Maybe if I were an existentialist I would have appreciated this more. Depressed individual hires a woman to stay with him by the sea for a few days to try to learn how to love. He wasn't successful, but at least nobody got murdered, we think, though that could explain the disappearance. Hmmm. There was just entirely too much sleeping going on. ( )

I think I may need to reread this in French. I took an English edition with me on a holiday and feel I missed half of the book somehow. Did I like it? Hard to say. It was interesting and I don't regret reading it. It had some really beautiful sentences even in translation. I also think I don't really understand it yet. It seemed to be both about the gap between men and women and, obviously, death or perhaps depression, but I only really gained a very vague idea. So if anyone did form a better idea of it, let me know. I hate missing out. ( )