La Maladie de la mort

The man has asked the woman to be there, and may have even paid for her presence. What plays out between them is an exploration of the absence of desire, but at the same time the expression of infinite love. The sheets in which the woman is lying may represent a shroud, the man’s lack of desire may signify his death. It is certain at least that the text recounts the infinite mystery of the relationship between two people and as such touches on the unknowable.And one day the woman disappears...Written during the harshest period of her illness – in 1982 Duras was suffering from acute cirrhosis coupled with severe depression – dictated sentence by sentence, sometimes while she was in a semi-coma, to her companion Yann Andréa before being revised and corrected, The Malady of Death plunges us into the deepest contradictions of the soul. It was by writing this piece that Duras gradually regained the creative energy and strength of her later years.