SOURCE: An interview with Marguerite Duras, translated by Katherine Ann Jensen, in Shifting Scenes: Interviews on Women, Writing, and Politics in Post-68 France, edited by Alice A. Jardine and Anne M. Menke, Columbia University Press, 1991, pp. 71-8.

[In the following interview, Duras remarks on feminism and how the response to her work has differed in France and the United States.]

[Jardine:] Question 1: What does it mean to you to write at the end of the twentieth century?

[Duras:] Writing … I've never asked myself to be aware of what time period I was living in. I have asked myself this question in relation to my child and his future activities, or in wondering what would become of the working class—you see, in relation to political considerations or issues. But not as concerns writing. I believe writing is beyond all … contingency.

Question 2: Is it valid/of value to write as a woman, and is it part of your writing today?

I have several opinions about that, several things to say. Perhaps I should give a personal example. I don't have any major problems anymore in terms of the reception of my books, but the way men in society respond to me hasn't changed.

That hasn't changed at all?

No, each time I see critics who are … Misogyny is still at the forefront.

Only in France or …

I haven't read the foreign papers. The Lover, you know, has been translated in twenty-nine countries. There have been thousands and millions of copies sold. I don't think that in America there's been as much [misogyny] … because a lot of women write articles [on my work]. I don't think there's been any misogyny, strictly speaking, aimed at me in America.

I have the same impression.

No, actually, there is someone at the New York Times who doesn't like me at all, because I was once rather nasty to him. It was after a showing of India Song. The auditorium was full, I remember that, and at the end the students were really pleased and gave me a big ovation. The audience was asked to speak; I was there to answer. So this guy got up, you know, from the Times, very classic, old. He began, "Madame Duras, I really got bored with your …"

He said that?! in public?

Yes, it was a public thing. So I said: "Listen, I'm really sorry, but it's hardly my fault. There must be something wrong with you." He just looked at me. (Usually this works well.) "Please excuse me, but I can't do anything for you." It was really terrible. Since then, people tell me, "I can't invite you anymore because he'll never forgive you." It doesn't matter to me. I'm very happy.

I have the impression that misogyny, in the most classic sense of the term, exists in France much more than in the United States. Even if it's on the tip of American men's tongues or the tip of their pens, they stop themselves now because there's been so much … They swallow their words because they know what will happen afterward if they don't; whereas here in France, it seems to me that they get away with it. No one says anything. And that's why, for me, to write as a woman in France begins to have a very different meaning….

But I have safety valves. That is, from time to time, I write articles about critical theory, and that scares the critics.

I can imagine.

But … it scares women too. It has to do with écritureféminine. There are a lot of women who align themselves with men. Recently, a guy did a whole page in a journal about me to say that I don't exist, that I'm … I don't remember what. So in that instance, I said that he was the victim of great pain at the thought of my existence. And I can't do anything about that.

It's not worth the energy.

No. It's not a question of energy. It's just that in France, if you don't pay attention, you can get eaten up.

As a woman or as a writer generally?

As a woman writer. There are two potential attacks: those from homosexuals and those from heteros.

And they're different?

At first, no; but in the end they each think that they do such different things, although it's not true at all. They do the same things. It's about jealousy, envy … a desire to supplant women. It's a strange phenomenon. I write quite a lot about homosexuality … because I live with a man who's homosexual … as everyone knows … but I write outside all polemic. You see, Blue Eyes, Black Hair is outside any polemic. Homosexuals are often not interested in their experiences, they think they've said everything there is to say. That's a limitation. They're not interested in knowing what a woman can get from that experience. What interests them is knowing what people think about homosexuality, whether you're for or against it, that's all.

You have been describing men's reactions to your work as a woman writer. I too have been intrigued by the question of how men respond to woman and women. My latest book, Men in Feminism, coedited with Paul Smith, is a collection of articles addressing the complicated relationship men have to feminism, and women have to feminist men. My book Gynesis intervenes in this debate by examining how the metaphor of woman operates in several key French texts by men from the last twenty-odd years, for example, those by Blanchot, Deleuze, Derrida, and Lacan.

You know, even before those writers, there was Beauvoir. She didn't change women's way of thinking. Nor did Sartre, for that matter. He didn't change anything at all. Is Gynesis coming out in France?

Yes. One of the interesting problems that has come up with my translator is how to find an expression for the term "man writer." In the United States, you see, we're trying to deuniversalize: we say woman writer. We try to give terms genders. But in French, it doesn't work at all. If my translator uses "man writer," everyone will say it's horrible.

It's too late.

Yes, it's too late. But I can't just put the gender of the writer in the footnotes either. When I say "writer," I mean "man writer" because that's how the universal returns.

Because "writer" historically means male, is that it?

Yes, the universal.

But even when they were making distinctions between men and women writers twenty-five years ago, in newspaper headlines, there were no women writers or men writers. There were "novels by women," "novels by men," and books by women or books by men. But that was always a minor distinction, always in a footnote.

It's odd, in French you can get woman out of the universal, but not man (you can say woman writer [femme écrivain] but not man writer [homme écrivain]).

Question 3: Many women writing today find themselves, for the first time in history, at the center of such institutions as the university or psychoanalysis. In your opinion, will this new placement of women help them to enter the twentieth-century canon, and if so will they be at the heart of this corpus or (still) in the footnotes?

I think that the women who can get beyond the feeling of having to correct history will save a lot of time.

Please explain.

I think that the women who are correcting history, who are trying to correct the injustice of which they're victims, of which they always were and still are victims—because nothing's changed, we have to really get that: in men's heads everything's still the same….

You really think so?

I'm sure, yes. The women who are trying to correct man's nature, or what has become his nature—call it whatever you want—they're wasting their time.

What you're saying is really depressing.

I think that if a woman is free, alone, she will go ahead that way, without barriers; that is how I think she'll create fruitful work.

All alone?

Yes. I don't care about men. I've given up on them, personally. It's not a question of age, it's a question of intellectuality, if you like, of one's mental attitude. I've given up on trying to … to put them on a logical track. Completely given up.

It's true that in the United States, after so many years, especially in the university, after so much effort to change what and how we read, what and how we interpret, etc., the new generations may be feeling a sort of exhaustion and boredom with that struggle.

That's what I think.

Yes, but it's really complicated … this desire not to be always criticizing, always in negation.

Yes, it's an impasse.

I have always believed in the importance of this struggle, but I recognize more and more why young women can say that the struggle isn't for them.

I'm certainly not leading it.

But you did lead it at a certain period, didn't you?

No. Maybe you're thinking about a woman from the women's movement who interviewed me. I don't remember anymore. I said there was a women's writing, didn't I?

Yes.

I don't think so anymore. From the position I have today, a definitive one, the most important writer from the standpoint of a women's writing is Woolf. It's not Beauvoir.

Yes, but for me, there's more of a schizophrenia to it, because when I think of my intellectual, institutional, political life, Beauvoir is the one who plays the part of the phantasmatic mother … I must do everything, read everything, see everything … but in my desire for writing, it's Woolf. They go together.

Yes, exactly. It's not all of Woolf. A Room of One's Own is the Bible.

And in my imagination, Marguerite Duras, you are there with Woolf.

Yes, well, still. You know, when I was young, I was very free. I was part of the Resistance during the Algerian War. I took a lot of risks, I risked … even with Algeria, I ran the risk of being imprisoned. Maybe it's in that sense that I'm still free.

That is, because you've already taken risks.

Because I haven't written on women. Or very little. I see women as having pulled themselves through. That is, they've taken the biggest step. They're on the other side now. All the successful books today are by women, the important films are by women. The difference is fabulous.

So perhaps, according to you, we have to turn away somewhat from the reactive struggle and move instead toward creativity.

Yes, that's what I think.

Do you think this is going to happen by itself? I'd like to believe it, but I'm not sure.

I believe that a book like The Lover—which was a slap in the face for everyone, for men—is a great leap forward for women, which is much more important. For a woman to claim international attention makes men sick. It just makes them sick.

I didn't see it like that from the United States.

That's how it was. I don't know how it was for Americans because I got an important American prize … and six Americans voted for me. You see, there were 700 voters, then 500, then 300, and finally 70 and then less—you know at different stages of the competition. In the end, there were nine voters. The six Americans all voted for me. The three Frenchmen (France has never had a prize in America) all voted against me.

You're kidding?

Some papers, and probably they were right … said that they didn't want a writer from the Left to have the first American prize. But that's not it. It's because I was a woman writer. Of course, we must recognize that those three people were on the Right, I think that women on the Left are less alienated; whereas on the Right, so many women with government responsibilities are just followers. It's striking how visible that is.

Question 4: Today we are seeing women produce literary, philosophical, and psychoanalytical theory of recognized importance, and parallel to this, we are seeing a new fluidity in the borderlines among disciplines and genres of writing. Will this parallelism lead only to women being welcomed alongside men, or to a definitive blurring of these categories?

I don't know, it's dangerous. Because men's criteria have been tested a long time, and men manipulate them astutely and diplomatically. Men aren't politicians, they're diplomats, and that's a degree lower.

Question 5: Given the problematic and the politics of the categories of the canon, and given the questions we've been dealing with here, do you think your oeuvre will be included in the twentieth-century canon, and if so, how will it be presented? In your opinion, what will be the content of the canon?

This is an indiscreet question….

No it isn't. I don't know what it will be, I don't know, how can I say this, who will be deciding. The only thing that reassures me is that, now, I've become a little bit of an international phenomenon—even a pretty big one. And what France won't do, other countries will. So I'm safe. But those are the terms that I have to use. I'm not safe in France. I'm still very threatened.

You think so really?

Yes, I'm sure, I know, I'm sure.

For me though, coming from the outside, that's incredible, incomprehensible even.

But they never attacked Simone de Beauvoir.

What do you mean?

They never attack Simone de Beauvoir. They never attack Sarraute. But in my case, I've been involved in men's things. First, I was involved in politics. I was in the Communist Party. I did things that are considered in bad taste for a woman. That's the line England took for a long time. In England, they said that Marguerite Duras could never be a novelist because she was too political. Now, my literary oeuvre, my literary work has never gotten mixed up with politics. It never moves to rhetoric. Never. Even something like The Sea Wall remains a story. And that's what has saved me. There's not a term, not a trace of dialectic in my fiction. Well, there might be some in The Square, perhaps, a kind of theory of needs from Marx that was figured in the little girl, the maid who did everything, who was good for everything, but that was the only time, I think.

But still, your book Les Parleuses has come out from Nebraska Press with a great deal of success.

How was that translated?

Woman to Woman.

Isn't that a little outmoded now, Les Parleuses?

Not in the United States. Here maybe. No, not even here; people recognize that there are really beautiful things in it.

The speaking women, that is?

Yes, the image of two women engaged in speaking to each other.

You know, when I gave that title to my publisher, he was afraid it would have a negative effect. But I said I wanted it because others would say that women just gossip.

Right….

Question 6: And a last question just for you: we are asking you these questions about the future destiny of the work of contemporary women, when, in fact, your work seems to have been canonized already. Actually, you are one of the few people who has been able not only to see her work emerge from an unfair obscurity into the limelight but who has seen it attain worldwide recognition. How has becoming a celebrity influenced a vision that was intentionally critical and other?

You know, The Lover came late in my life. And even its fame wasn't something new for me. I had already had two things make it on the worldwide scene, and so I was used to that phenomenon—of something operating totally independently of you. It happens like an epiphenomenon, it takes place in inaccessible regions. You can't know why a book works, when it works that well. First, it was Hiroshima, mon amour, which was seen all over the world. And then I had Moderato cantabile, which must have had the same effect as The Lover, for it was translated everywhere. Such a small book that was a worldwide hit, it's strange. Well, I was no young girl in the face of those events. As for the end of your question, "a vision that was intentionally critical and other"—that doesn't have anything to do with it. I understand the implication in your question that being famous somehow intimidates, inhibits. No, no, on the contrary….

But there's a mythology that says that being famous is a defeat in mass culture.

Yes, I know that…. That reminds me of what Robbe-Grillet told me one day. He said, "When you and I have sold 500,000 copies, that will mean we don't have anything else to say." Well, so I don't have anything else to say—and he has another book.