2023-08-24 05:14:08
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The address, 5, rue Saint-Benoît, a narrow building in an opulent street in the 6th arrondissement of Paris, is well known to François Mitterrand. This is where Marguerite Duras lives, where they met in 1943. The young woman and her husband, Robert Antelme, settled there before the war, long before this modest apartment became a refuge. for resistants, a den of intellectuals and, for her, a cocoon of writing. Duras decided to start a series of interviews in this place to The Other Journal with “Morland”, nom de guerre of the President of the Republic. On July 25, 1985, they both sit on a sofa bed, and Marguerite laughs.
“What a duet! It was to who would be the most intelligent, funny, charming, it was a contest of elegance of the spirit “, recalls Marie-Laure de Decker, interviewed by The world shortly before his disappearance on July 15. Friend of the writer and photographer of the monthly created by Michel Butel, she follows the tandem to the Elysée, where the other sessions will take place. “They lasted about an hour, an hour and a half. They were very quiet, neither tired nor tense. They were enjoying this conversation, like old friends., she testifies. “Marguerite” all haloed with the glory of her Goncourt for The Lover (editions de Minuit, 1984), is never impressed by anything or anyone.
“Sometimes she started saying nonsense, nuance the photographer who perceives a slight annoyance in Mitterrand. I remember his claims about a submarine [confondu avec un porte-avions] where she released at full blast. » The enthusiasm she feels for the ultraliberal President Ronald Reagan (1981-1989), her nonsense about American society where the poor would be poor by choice, because of their taste for freedom, complete the cycle of these five conversations. She, so innovative in her writing, whether admired or mocked, evokes the “prehistoric fear of the Stalinist state”while in the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev (in power from 1985 to 1991) launched perestroika, a series of economic and social reforms heralding democratization.
hide their past
“After publication in The Other Journal, Mitterrand never wanted these interviews with Duras to be published.entrust to Monde Laure Adler, despite the existence of a contract signed with Gallimard in 1987. The writer and journalist met regularly with the president for a year, before becoming his adviser at the Elysée, from 1989 to 1993. “He spoke to me a lot about literature and quite a bit about Duras. » When she insists on seeing the book published, Mitterrand stiffens. “I think that in his eyes these conversations did not pass well over time. Other texts seemed to him more important for posterity, better contextualized.adds the author of a very documented biography, Marguerite Duras (Gallimard, 1998).
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