Apenas o primeiro texto me pegou real oficial. Achei Roma meio confuso e o texto final tem uma beleza, mas não a ponto de mudar a minha opinião de que gostei do livro, nada de grandes ânsias.

Quatre escrits de Marguerite Duras que ens parlen de com escriure o de com escriu ella, en quines condicions i en quina situació. En algun moment ens diu la cèlebre frase que no tot allò que està escrit sol ser literatura. Bé, que cal seguir fent esforços per millorar.
Lectura interessant on ens queda prou clar i es demostren les ferides que va deixar el nazisme a França, la Duras en fa referència uns quants cops, i ens fa veure com els odia.

A rather slight piece containing what appears to be some of the thoughts floating about in Duras' head on the subject of writing, circa 1993. These tend to take the form of short paragraphs or single lines, though two at least become vignettes and "chapters" of a sort. Overall, the work gives the impression of the sort of notes you might write when preparing to give a speech where you want just the right phrase- attacking and re-attacking a single idea from different angles.

At first, Duras' thoughts focus (loosely) around the country house she writes in and the "solitude" she finds there, both literally and figuratively. It's reminiscent of A Room of One's Own, really, only less incisive and cutting, and more... image seeking. Woolf sought to set out and make a case for, at least for the most part, a practical set of conditions for success. Duras is seeking only to describe them- and they are almost exclusively mental conditions (given some material help from certain external aids) created by the writer herself.

Then the thing takes a roundabout left turn brought on by a free association somewhere in her descriptions of the village near her house and suddenly we are talking more and more about death. Writing as death, death as bringing on and inspiring writing, death's impact on her "solitude", it's impact on her memories and the formation of her psyche- especially the lingering impact of the Second World War. And we end, Before Sunset-like, wandering through ruined Rome and discussing death and life and writing and unspoken longing until we wander right off the page.

I struggled to interpret this one. My historian's brain kept placing this in the context of its publication- 1993 brought about a resurgence of interest in WWII (the Maastricht Treaty process had dragged up a lot of old, unseasonable memories, Mitterand's checkered past with Vichy was about to come to light, the last Nazis were being rounded up and put on trial, WWI vets were scarce and WWII vets had begun to die in larger numbers, and there was a high-profile suicide on the socialist Left). Is that what all this rage against the Germans and the heavy-handed description of the death of the fly - seriously, it went on for several pages- was about? I understand it as an exploration of the writer's observational instinct, but I think that that was a secondary concern in Duras' thoughts at best.

Or was she genuinely just another dying relic of a bygone age- France was full of them at this time- for whom the past was nearer than the seemingly surreal, unsatisfying present? It makes sense. There's a big element of the public discussion in France that's still that way.(There's a lament for '68 in here, too.)

That might explain why her writing felt somewhat dated as well- for example the existentialist/minimalist toned final chapter in Rome. It felt like a frozen, boiled down shadow of Hiroshima, Mon Amour. Someone more well versed than me would have to tell me whether Duras always wrote like this- that is if her writing had not changed significantly since the war, or whether this is a throwback.

It all made for a rather aimless, anachronistic, occasionally preachy experience. I can see how this fits into the fabric of its time, but I'm outside the cultural memories that might make this particular sort of melodrama work for me.

However, I should highlight some individually lovely lines. This is still Duras. These are the reason to read:

"There should be a writing of non-writing. Someday it will come. A brief writing, without grammar, a writing of the words alone. Words without supporting grammar. Lost. Written, there. And immediately left behind."

"The inside of the church is truly admirable. One can recognize everything. The flowers are flowers, the plants, the colors, the altars, the embroideries, the tapestries. It's admirable. Like a temporarily abandoned room awaiting lovers who haven't arrived yet because of bad weather."

"A solitary house doesn't simply exist. It needs time around it, people, histories, "turning points," things like marriage or the death of that fly, death, banal death the death of one and the many at the same time; planetary, proletarian death. The kind that comes with war, those mountains of war on Earth."

"Before me, no one had written in this house. I asked the mayor, my neighbors, the shopkeepers. No. Never. I often phoned Versailles to try to find out the names of the people who had lived in this house. In the list of the inhabitants' last names and their first names and their professions, there were never any writers. Now, all those names could have been the names of writers. But no. Around here there were only family farms. What I found buried in the ground were German garbage pits. The house had been in fact occupied by German officers. Their garbage pits were holes. There were a lot of oyster shells, empty tins of expensive foodstuffs... And much broken china. We threw all of it out. Except the debris of china, without a doubt Sevres porcelain: the designs were intact. And the blue was the innocent blue in the eyes of certain of our children."

And finally:

"There is a madness of writing that is in oneself, an insanity of writing, but that alone doesn't make one insane. On the contrary. Writing is the unknown. Before writing one knows nothing of what one is about to write. And in total lucidity.

It's the unknown in oneself, one's head, one's body. Writing is not even a reflection, but a kind of faculty one has, that exists to one side of oneself, parallel to oneself, another person who appears and comes forward, invisible, gifted with thought and anger, and who sometimes through his own actions, risks losing his life."

لا أدري ماذا أقول عنه ، من يقرأ العنوان يظن أن الكتاب يتحدث عن الكتابة ، و من يقرأ المضمون يكتشف أن الكتاب يتحدث عن الوحدة ، فقد تحدثت عن الوحدة و عن بيتها في نوفل شاتو اكثر مما تحدثت عن الكتابة .