NDLI: Relieving pain in Marguerite Duras’s ‘La douleur’ and ‘Albert des Capitales’

Content Provider	Springer Nature Link
Author	Comfort, Kathy
Copyright Year	2015
Abstract	This study will focus on how psychic pain is externalized in two short texts from Marguerite Duras’s La douleur. I will first argue that the collection’s opening work, “La douleur,” may be viewed as a trauma testimony, as a sub-genre of autobiography. Duras the narrator shows us how her psychic pain generates physiological symptoms. In the course of the narrative, we come to understand that her symptoms are the same as the ones she images her husband, Robert L., suffering from in Dachau. Duras also projects her pain onto her surroundings, transforming the Paris of her mind’s eye into the bleak landscape where she believes her husband has perished. In “Albert des Capitales,” we find what amounts to an externalization of psychological suffering through behavior as the protagonist, Thérèse, transforms herself from victim to victimizer during the interrogation of a “donneur,” a suspected collaborator. Her ordering the torture of the donneur is the result of the psychic pain caused by the uncertainty of her husband’s fate. “La douleur” and “Albert des Capitales,” I will argue, are two sides of the same coin, two different women—both Duras’s avatars—who find themselves in equally stressful circumstances but who unconsciously process their stress in divergent ways.
Starting Page	551
Ending Page	569
Page Count	19
File Format	PDF
ISSN	03244652
Journal	Neohelicon
Volume Number	42
Issue Number	2
e-ISSN	15882810
Language	English
Publisher	Springer Netherlands
Publisher Date	2015-07-17
Publisher Place	Dordrecht
Access Restriction	One Nation One Subscription (ONOS)
Subject Keyword	French literature 20th-century literature Marguerite Duras La Douleur: war Occupation narrative Comparative Literature
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Arts and Humanities Law

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1	Ministry of Education (GoI), Department of Higher Education	Sanctioning Authority	https://www.education.gov.in/ict-initiatives
2	Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	Host Institute of the Project: The host institute of the project is responsible for providing infrastructure support and hosting the project	https://www.iitkgp.ac.in
3	National Digital Library of India Office, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	The administrative and infrastructural headquarters of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in
4	Project PI / Joint PI	Principal Investigator and Joint Principal Investigators of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in Prof. Saswat Chakrabarti will be added soon
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