How the French Invented Love
“I’M VERY LUCKY, OBVIOUSLY, IT’S AS IF IT WERE HIS PROFESSION. . . . HE CALLS ME A WHORE, A SLUT, HE SAYS I’M HIS ONLY LOVE, AND THAT’S WHAT HE OUGHT TO SAY . . . ALL IS SWEPT AWAY IN THE TORRENT, IN THE FORCE OF DESIRE.Marguerite Duras, The Lover, 1984Girl on bicycle crossing a bridge in Vietnam built by Gustave Eiffel in 1904. Photograph by Reid S. Yalom, 2010.The world of Marguerite Duras is dominated by love—fierce, relentless passion that bursts into creaturely happiness mingled with hearta...che. Duras’s men and women experience ecstasy, tenderness, longing, jealousy, suffering, revenge. Their lives are ravaged by love’s course. In her fiction and films, you can sense the pulse of love beating under every word.Maria, the protagonist of Duras’s novella 10:30 on a Summer Night, is haunted by memories of lovemaking with her husband Pierre, now painful memories because she sees him consumed with desire for her friend Claire. With Claire and their daughter in tow, Maria and Pierre are traveling in Spain on their way to Madrid, but due to a violent summer storm, they stop for the night in an overflowing small-town inn, where the only place to sleep is on a hallway floor.Maria, sensing the frustrated desire between Pierre and Claire, imagines: This must have been the first time they kissed.MoreLess
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