Ce court roman de Marguerite Duras s'apparente à une pièce de théâtre. Il s'agit d'un dialogue entre une jeune fille bonne à tout faire et un homme plus âgé, que son activité de représentant dans le commerce fait voyager de ville en ville. Tous les deux sont solitaires et malmenés par la vie. Cependant, tandis qu'elle porte un jugement sombre et très sévère sur son existence, lui entrevoit des éléments plus lumineux et essaie de lui faire porter un regard plus lumineux sur son présent et son avenir.
Le dialogue, très durassien, peut agacer à divers endroits par ses accents inattendus guettés par l'artifice. Il n'en demeure pas moins un texte tout à fait intéressant sur la difficulté à se défaire de sa condition initiale, à quitter sa cage psychologique. Comme toujours, elle arrive à mettre le doigt sur la quintessence de l'existence à travers un échange douloureux et avec la sincérité que seuls deux parfaits inconnus peuvent s'octroyer. ( )

“Sometimes it seems strange, don’t you think, that there should be so many
children everywhere, and yet none of them are your own?”
“I suppose so, yes, when you come to think of it. But then, as you said, there
are so many already.”
“All the same…”
“But if you were fond of them, if they give you pleasure to watch, doesn’t it
matter less?”
“Couldn’t the opposite also be true?”

The story is flat yet deep and absorbing. I usually find it exhausting to read too many dialogue but this book, despite composed exclusively in dialogue, proves to be a breezy read, maybe because the deep conversation between two strangers is unusually intriguing.

( )

Marguerite Duras novella, The Square, takes place in an un-named Paris park. It's probably one of the many small parks we found in every part of the city we walked through from Place d'Italie to St. Denis. But it can be the Luxembourg Gardens if I choose.
In The Square a young woman and an older man share a bench in the park one afternoon. A maid for a weathly family, she watches the child she is in charge of and dreams of the marriage she hopes Saturday evenings at the local dance hall will someday lead to. A travelling salesman, he has never been more than an observer, immersed in his newspapers and watching the people who pass by. He does not make enough money to settle down or support a wife.

The two discuss their lives, share the views, in what should produce an adolescent piece of writing full of forced attempts at the profound. Instead, I found two lonely people sharing an afternoon. People I believed in and who had something to say about life. ( )