‘To write is [...] to remain silent’: Silence in the Work of Marguerite Duras

Abstract

The work of Marguerite Duras, marked by an obsession with ‘the unnameable’, describes the author haunted by her own phantasms, which she justifies by linking the motif of silence to the female condition, defying in the process the dominant literary tradition. From the viewpoint of the author, silence, presented in various guises, emerges as an intimate need, a singular necessity that can express unnamed emotions. This concept emphasizes the evolution of Duras’s minimalist writing, which depicts desire as an eternal theme identified with the rejection of logical and rational language. Meaningful silence is a way of discussing absence, loss, and emptiness. By means of such an original treatment of silence (perceived thus as a source of creative possibilities) the author is enabled to express the ineffable—a vital element to her own vision of reality