In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Words/Images/CrossingsLa mer écrite of Marguerite Duras
  • Mechthild Cranston

Que pourrait-on montrer autre que ce qu'on voit? Ce qui est simplement vrai et qui échappe à l'homme.

Marguerite Duras, La mer écrite 38

L'Image absolue, her critics recall, was the first title Marguerite Duras projected for L'Amant, the work for which she won the Prix Goncourt in 1984. Originally conceived as commentary to accompany an album of family portraits, the book appeared, in the end, without the pictures. L'Amant does, however, make textual reference to several photographs, including one of the child Marguerite and her mother: "J'ai quatre ans. Ma mère est au centre de l'image" (21) [I am four. My mother is at the center of the image]. The child's age is significant, because when she was four years old, Marguerite Donnadieu's father died. She sees his death in her mother's face of living despair: "Était-ce la mort de mon père déjà présente, ou celle du jour?" (22) [was it my father's death that was already present, or the day's?]1

While this photograph of the child at four has special significance for the author, the most important picture Duras recovers—via the text—from her childhood, the image absolue of L'Amant's original title, is one that, like her father's was never taken: a photograph of the girl at fifteen and a half, crossing the Mekong river:

C'est au cours de ce voyage que l'image se serait détachée, qu'elle aurait été enlevée à la somme. Elle aurait pu exister, une photographie aurait pu être prise, comme une autre, ailleurs, dans d'autres circonstances. Mais elle ne l'a pas été. L'objet était trop mince pour la provoquer. Qui aurait pu penser à ça? Elle n'aurait pu être prise que si on avait pu préjuger de l'importance de cet événement dans ma vie, cette traversée du fleuve. Or, tandis que celle-ci s'opérait, on ignorait encore jusqu'à son existence. Dieu seul la connaissait. C'est pourquoi, cette image, et il ne pouvait pas en être autrement, elle n'existe pas. Elle a été omise. Elle a été oubliée. Elle n'a pas été détachée, enlevée à la somme. C'est à ce manque d'avoir été faite qu'elle doit sa vertu, celle de représenter un absolu, d'en être justement l'auteur.

(17) [End Page 55]

(It was during this trip that the image is thought to have come detached, removed from the whole. It could have existed, a photograph could have been taken like any other, elsewhere, in other circumstances. But it did not happen. The object was too slight to provoke it. Who would have thought it? It could have been taken only if we had been able to foresee the importance of this event in my life, this river crossing. However, while it was taking place, nobody even knew of its existence. Only God knew of it. That is why this image, and it could not be otherwise, does not exist. It was omitted. It was forgotten. It was not detached, removed from the whole. It is to this omission of having been produced that it [the image] owes its power: the power of representing an absolute, of being, in fact, its author.)

Shortly after this speculation about her missing picture, Duras comes upon a photograph of her son at twenty: "C'est cette photographie qui est au plus près de celle qui n'a pas été faite de la jeune fille du bac" (21) [It is this photograph that comes closest to the one that was not taken of the young girl on the ferry], she comments.

In mid-career, Duras's interest in the visual arts and, some critics suggest, writer's block, oriented her toward the cinema2 From La Musica (1966) to Les Enfants (1985), she kept returning to cinematography as an alternate and/or complementary form of artistic expression. Those familiar with her films know, however, that for Duras language always remained primary...

pdf