The Malady of Death

Marguerite Duras

• Publisher: Grove Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780802130365
• eBook ISBN: 9780802190581
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

"[An] erotic, existential mystery . . . part philosophical meditation, part fantasy" from the Prix Goncourt-winning author of The Lover ( The Guardian).
A man hires a woman to spend several weeks with him by the sea. The woman is no one in particular, a "she," a warm, moist body with a beating heart—the enigma of Other. Skilled in the mechanics of sex, he desires through her to penetrate a different mystery: he wants to learn to love. It isn't a matter of will, she tells him. Still, he wants to try . . .
This beautifully wrought erotic novel is an extended haiku on the meaning of love, "perhaps a sudden lapse in the logic of the universe," and its absence, "the malady of death."
"The whole tragedy of the inability to love is in this work, thanks to Duras' unparalleled art of reinventing the most familiar words, of weighing their meaning."— Le Monde
"Deceptively simple and Racinian in its purity, condensed to the essential."— Translation Review
Praise for Marguerite Duras's international bestseller, The Lover
"Powerful, authentic, completely successful . . . perfect."— The New York Times Book Review
"An exquisite jewel of a novel, as multifaceted as a diamond, as seamless and polished as a pearl."— Boston Herald
  
"A vivid, lingering novel . . . a brilliant work of art."— Cleveland Plain Dealer

Copyright © 1986 by Marguerite Duras

Translation copyright © 1986 by Barbara Bray

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Any members of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to Grove / Atlantic, Inc., 154 West 14^th Street, New York, NY 10011.

Originally published in 1982 by Les Editions de Minuit, Paris.

Published simultaneously in Canada

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Duras, Marguerite

The malady of death.

Translation of: La maladie de la morte.

1. Duras, Marguerite—Translations, English. 1. Title.

PQ2607.U8245A2 1986 843'912 83-49427

ISBN 0-8021-3036-4 (pbk.)

e-ISBN 978-0-8021-9058-1

Cover photography by David Hamilton

Cover design by Robert Anthony, Inc.

Design by Hannah Lerner

Grove Press

an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

154 West 14^th Street

New York, NY 10011

13 14 15 16 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9

You wouldn't have known her, you'd have seen her everywhere at once, in a hotel, in a street, in a train, in a bar, in a book, in a film, in yourself, your inmost self, when your sex grew erect in the night, seeking somewhere to put itself, somewhere to shed its load of tears.

*

You may have paid her.

May have said: I want you to come every night for a few days.

She'd have given you a long look and said in that case it'd be expensive.

And then she says: What is it you want?

You say you want to try, try it, try to know, to get used to that body, those breasts, that scent. To beauty, to the risk of having children implicit in that body, to that hairless unmuscular body, that face, that naked skin, to the identity between that skin and the life it contains.

You say you want to try, for several days perhaps.

Perhaps for several weeks.

Perhaps even for your whole life.

Try what? she asks.

Loving, you answer.

She asks: Yes, but why?

You say so as to sleep with your sex at rest, somewhere unknown.

You say you want to try, to weep there, in that particular place.

She smiles and says: Do you want me, too?

You say: Yes. I don't know that yet and I want to penetrate there too, and with my usual force. They say it offers more resistance, it's smooth but it offers more resistance than emptiness does.

She says she has no opinion on the subject. How should she know?

She asks: What other conditions?

You say she mustn't speak, like the women of her ancestors, must yield completely to you and to your will, be entirely submissive like peasant women in the barns after the harvest when they're exhausted and let the men come to them while they're asleep. So that you may gra...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Works by Marguerite Duras
• Title
• Copyright