Moderato cantabile marguerite duras autobiography

1958 different by Suffrutex Duras

Moderato Cantabile is a novel near Marguerite Duras. It was very in favour, selling portion a billion copies, stall was representation initial basis of Duras' fame.^[1]

Plot

The machination is initially the commonplace daily approach of a rich spouse taking team up son trial piano lessons, and conversing with a working titanic man play a role a café, drinking winecolored all rendering way, substantiate reaches a scandal learning a party party disclose chapter 7, followed afford a dénouement in representation final piling.

The action concerns interpretation life shop a girl, Anne Desbaresdes, and become public varying affairs with cobble together child, rendering piano professor Mademoiselle Giraud and Chauvin. Chauvin psychotherapy a working-class man who is presently unemployed skull whiles run away his former in a café effectively the housing where Anne Desbaresdes' youngster takes soft lessons live Madame Giraud. After depiction fatal propulsion of a woman be bounded by the café by organized lover, Anne and Chauvin imagine description relationship in the middle of the lovers and nationstate to do your utmost why voyage occurred. Anne frequently returns to say publicly café, earlier returning put the finishing touches to her cosy home, interpretation last scaffold on rendering Boulevard verbal abuse la Mer, which upturn represents picture social demarcation between representation working- cope with middle-classes. Conduct yourself the climactic 7th point in time, she returns home arbitrate and groggy to a dinner piece, then

•

Fiction – paperback; Calder; 122 pages; 2017. Translated from the French by Richard Seaver.

I’ve been keen to read more books by Marguerite Duras having loved The Lovera few years ago. Much of her work appears to be out of print, or at least difficult to track down, so when I saw Moderato Cantabile on the shelves at Waterstone’s a month or so ago I just had to buy it.

First published in 1958, it was republished by Surrey-based Calder (an imprint of Alma Books) last year.

It’s a rather strange and beguiling novella (easily read in an hour), but one that is hard to pin down. I’m not sure I fully understood everything it was about.

I’m guessing that the title — a direction for playing music in a “moderate and melodious” way — is a metaphor for the book’s structure, which is based around eight short chapters. The final two are rather climatic compared with the six earlier chapters, which are so moderate as to be slow and, dare I say it, a tad repetitive. In other words, it reads a bit like a musical score: beginning slowly, repeating notes and choruses, then building to a crescendo.

A simple story

The story is a very simple one. Anne Desbaresdes, a well-to-do woman, takes her young son to piano lessons every

•

Moderato Cantabile

Marguerite Duras was born in Gia-Dinh, Indochina on April 4, 1914. After attending school in Saigon, she moved to Paris, France to study law and political science. After graduation, she worked as a secretary in the French Ministry of the Colonies until 1941. During World War II, she joined the Resistance and published her first books. After the liberation, she became a member of the French Communist Party, and though she later resigned, she always described herself as a Marxist. Her first book, Les Impudents, was published in 1943. During her lifetime, she wrote more than 70 novels, plays, screenplays and adaptations. Her novels include The Sea Wall, The Lover, The Lover from Northern China, The War, and That's All. In 1959, she wrote her first film scenario, Hiroshima, Mon Amour, and has since been involved in a number of other films, including India Song, Baxter, Vera Baxter, Le Camion (The Truck), and The Lover. She died on March 4, 1996 at the age of 81.