In every case, the creative elements related to Duras’s life, and the way in which she interprets and reframes them, contribute to the extraordinary unity of all of her work, including novel, theater, and film. The Vice-Consul, later filmed as India Song, exemplifies how characters from earlier works may later take on new and sometimes bolder characterizations, such as the beggar-woman’s harsh, unfeeling mother and the enigmatic vice-consul, whose violent, anti-social behavior in both the novel and film evoke that of the older brother depicted in Duras’s works from the beginning. Hence, it would be difficult to overestimate the role of The Impudent Ones in paving the way for a fuller elucidation of the entire corpus of Duras’s work.
A further factor shedding light on the subject of Duras’s narrative style is the reception of the novel at the time of its publication. Submitted as La famille Taneran in 1941 to the large French publisher Gallimard, it was read and appreciated by the highly esteemed Raymond Queneau, even though the publisher turned it down, citing mainly a lack of cohesiveness in the writing style and plot. In 1943, despite noting similar weaknesses, the publisher Plon decided to bring out the novel as Les impudents. Not only was the title changed, but it was at this point that Marguerite adopted the pseudonym Duras, taken both from the novel’s setting and from the region most connected in her mind to her father, and becoming her name for all posterity.
Although the novel did not create much of a stir when it was published, it was well-received by critic Ramon Fernandez, who discusses it very positively in the newspaper Panorama, in May 1943, at the time of the novel’s publication. He lauds the author for her skillful handling of the characters, her excellent mastery of their psychology, and the creation of an intense and tragic atmosphere. He finds that the main character’s inner thoughts express a rare candor, while her feelings and actions seem both strange and natural. The novel abounds, he claims, in astute impressions of both the landscape and the human soul, to which the reader may have been oblivious, but can relate at the same time. Fernandez concludes that once the author has honed her writing style, which sometimes wavers, she will have perfected her unquestionable talent.
As Duras gained greater recognition for her following works, she herself became aware of the shortcomings of her first novel and began to omit it when referencing her work, resulting in the novel’s disappearance from the bibliographies of her works for quite some time. As her style evolved, however, and she became more affirmed as an author, eventually gaining acclaim as the award-winning author of The Lover, readers began to take an increased interest in Duras’s first novel, long neglected, and it was republished by Gallimard in 1992.
The problems of lucidity and cohesiveness, first recognized by the two French presses that dealt with the novel, still present a challenge to the reader and the translator today, not only in regard to the plot, which at times lacks clarity, but also in relation to the interplay between characters. Unclear antecedents for pronouns and oblique grammatical constructions are among the stylistic challenges that often make it difficult to determine precisely who is speaking or the intended meaning of a given phrase or sentence. To overcome these ambiguities and facilitate a greater enjoyment of the text, the goal of the present translation has been to render the reading of the novel as intelligible as possible for the reader. This has been accomplished through the addition of occasional words and phrases, not in the original, to provide smoother transitions as the text unfolds, and by the replacement of pronouns by proper nouns in dialogues and interactions that are less than clear. In every case, adherence to the original meaning of the text has been of utmost concern.
In recent years, The Impudent Ones has taken on new meaning for readers and scholars around the world, as it has come to be appreciated not only for its significance to the rest of Duras’s work, but increasingly for its intrinsic value as a novel. Although already translated into a number of other languages, this first translation of the novel into English, some seventy-eight years after its original publication, will now allow the novel to be accessed by a much broader readership. In doing so, it will reveal to a new public the starting point of the exceptional qualities of observation and description that characterize Duras’s celebrated later works, while affording a view of the renowned author as she first gains a foothold in the world of writing. Of no less consequence, The Impudent Ones also provides a record of a time, place, and personal connection that were undeniably of great significance to Marguerite Duras, not only as she began her career, but throughout her life.
THE STORY BEHIND THE IMPUDENT ONES
JEAN VALLIER
In February 1941, Gaston Gallimard, the founder and owner of the famed French publishing house that bore his name, received a manuscript in the mail, accompanied by the following letter:
Monsieur,
My name is perhaps not totally unknown to you, because I co-authored the book The French Empire, published by your house last year. But the manuscript I am submitting to you today—La famille Taneran—has no connection to this first book, which was for me but a work for hire. I now wish to make my debut as a novelist. The manuscript I am sending you was read by Messrs. Henri Clouard, André Thérive and Pierre Lafue, who liked it very much and strongly encouraged me to have it published. I trust their opinion. I hope that it will correspond to yours. I should be glad in any case to receive your answer without too much delay.
This letter, addressed to the publisher of literary giants such as Proust, Gide, and Paul Valéry, was not written by a timorous would-be novelist. Apart from the fact that her name had appeared the year before on the cover of L’empire français, she had reason to believe that the names of the three gentlemen who vouched for the quality of her manuscript would not fail to impress her correspondent: Henri Clouard and André Thérive were at the time two of France’s most influential literary critics, and Pierre Lafue, a novelist and a respected critic himself, was a governmental agent who had played a part in the publication of her first book and was now one of her most devoted friends. She knew he had privileged access to Gaston Gallimard.
Contrary to the legend of poverty and abuse still hanging over the story of her early life, when the future Marguerite Duras wrote her first novel—thanks in great part to the college education her mother enabled her to receive—the young writer had grown into a secure, self-assured young woman.{2} Now twenty-six and married, she had joined the Parisian bourgeoisie and was not easily daunted—a side of her nature she would continue to display for the rest of her life.
Born near Saigon in 1914, Marguerite Donnadieu was the daughter of two teachers who worked in the educational system put in place by the French in Indochina, a colony comprised of what is now Vietnam, as well as Cambodia and Laos. Her father, Henri Donnadieu, born in southwestern France in 1872, held a university degree in natural sciences, which he taught occasionally in Saigon and Hanoi between assignments as a school director and education supervisor. Her mother, born Marie Legrand in the Pas-de-Calais in 1877, trained at a teacher’s college in Lille before going to Indochina in 1905, where she taught and was ultimately placed in charge of several establishments for Vietnamese girls. When they met, Henri had two sons from a previous marriage who returned to France after their mother died. He married Marie Legrand in Saigon in 1908 and had two sons with her before Marguerite’s birth: Pierre, her frère aîné, in 1910, and Paul, her petit frère, in 1911.