An 'enduring' writer

The works of Marguerite Duras

March 5, 1998
Web posted at: 5:45 p.m. EST (2245 GMT)

(CNN) -- Her name was Marguerite Duras. A web search turns up dozens of references in many languages, and so many descriptions:

"One of the greatest authors of the 20th century," "One of France's most important literary figures," "An enduring part of Paris' intellectual elite."

But who was she?

Born in Vietnam in 1914, Marguerite Duras attended high school in Saigon and then moved to Paris. She worked as a government secretary, and went on to write 34 novels from 1943 to 1993. She was winner of the 1984 Goncourt Prize -- France's most distinguished literary prize -- for her novel L'Amant (The Lover), a lyrical work of art that tells of a young European woman and her older Chinese lover in 1930s Indochina.

Apart from her novels she also directed more than 15 films, and was honored in 1975 with France's Cinema Academy Grand Prix for the film "India Song."

She died two years ago on March 3, 1996.

What defined her? Why was she revered? Consider the words of San Francisco journalist Mark Mardon in his review of "The Lover":

"Finished reading, you wonder where the day went, what was happening in the world while you were drifting, how you and the memories of a woman who was a girl in Saigon in the 1920s could have become so inextricably entwined that the present lost its meaning. Frozen smiles and stiff poses, like fractured shadows in a tropical forest, will have hypnotized you, then engulfed you."

Or read the words of Jean-Louis Arnaud in a magazine article about Duras:

"Destruction. A key word when it comes to Marguerite Duras, who uses her novels, her plays and her films to study herself in as many mirrors; she identifies herself with her work to the point that she no longer knows what is autobiographical fact and what is fiction. Love, life and death Like all her characters, the author suffers the ruthless law of destruction, but her own vitality and her talent are such that, in them, she taps into perennial springs of rapture."

Other selected works

• "Les Impudents" (1943)

• "Dam Against the Pacific" (1950)

• "The Kidnapping of Lol V. Stein" (1964)

• "Savannah Boy" (1983)

• "Hiroshima mon amour" (Screenplay) (1960)

Related sites:

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• Ministére des Affaires étrangères
• Love Amid Decay

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