Criticism > Short Story Criticism > Duras, Marguerite - Jeanne K. Welcher (essay date 1983)

Duras, Marguerite - Jeanne K. Welcher (essay date 1983)

Jeanne K. Welcher (essay date 1983)

SOURCE: “Resolution in Marguerite Duras's ‘Moderato Cantabile,’” in Twentieth Century Literature, Vol. 29, No. 3, 1983, pp. 370-78.

[In the following essay, Welcher discusses Duras's use of music and mythology to express her characters' otherwise inexpressible motivations and actions in Moderato cantabile.]

As its title announces, Moderato Cantabile by Marguerite Duras is a novel centered on contrasts.1 These range from the paradox of murdering one's beloved; through fine discriminations—“cantabile,” yes, but moderately so; to allusions and inferrable mythic parallels, especially to the myth of Dionysus.

We are struck first by the book's contrasts in style—its extraordinary limpidity, its evident complexities. In a filmmaker's approach Duras presents stark imagery, without background or depth. Her invisible narrator records appearances but virtually no...

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