The Negativity of the Transference

In Moderato Cantabile by Marguerite Duras (1980 [1958]), Anne Desbaresdes takes her much loved little boy to have a piano lesson. She hears a scream and rushes into the bar below. A crime has been committed: a man has killed his wife. The following day, she returns and meets another man. She is troubled and drinks wine. He listens to her, and a dialogue ensues, slowly and interrupted by silences. It is repeated on the following days, oscillating between two themes: on the one hand the crime of passion and, on the other, the life of this unhappy woman. About the man we learn nothing or almost nothing, he remains in the shadows. This may be seen as a metaphor for the analytic session. Soon, what makes Anne continue to come is no longer the child's piano session, but rather the moment in the bar when she speaks to this unknown man. The traumatic dimension emerges in the dialogue. It has all the strangeness of consultations. And like analysis, it is repeated day after day.

The nature of the relationship between Anne and the man who listens to her is not clear. We can feel that there is a sensual attraction and the first image that comes to mind is, of course, one of an emerging love affair, a romantic encounter. Is it a real encounter? Uncertainty reigns: we never know how this couple, who have difficulty forming a relationship and who meet at fixed times and for a determined period, will evolve. There is one feeling that remains throughout our reading: the expectation that something will happen. What is going to happen? This expectation is trying, unpleasant, irritating; the relationship needs too much alcohol to function.

What's more, negative images are permanently cropping up due to the very skilful overlapping of two sequences. For there exists a double of the couple formed by the protagonists, that of the man who killed his wife in the very place where they are meeting. This dramatic past infiltrates the present of the narrative. The reader cannot help asking himsel