Marguerite Duras, the writing and the experience

Abstract

Here I intend to analyze the writer’s activity in two literary works by Marguerite Duras: the novel L’amant, and the short story entitled Écrire, especially the critical thinking about the act of writing, which both works have, from an intersection between philosophy and literature. I suggest analyzing the action that experience, both of the characters and of the one that recites, exerts on the writing as well as to what extent the act of writing constitutes itself as an experience. In L’amant – the work that will take up most of the analysis – we face a narrative that develops from the confrontation with time, on the part of the narrator, and from her experiences as a teenager. The short story Écrire – whose discussion will be subordinated to the previous analysis – acquires an essayistic aspect, in which the first-person narration thinks and writes about the act of writing, and its inner relation with the unknown.