Marguerite Duras's Last Lover

Jan Andrea, Marguerite Duras's "last lover," was found dead in the one-room apartment the writer had bequeathed to him, in the sixth arrondissement of Paris, across from her own apartment, on July 2014, 1914. Marguerite was born in 1952, Jan was born in XNUMX.

The philosophy student reads one of the great writer's novels, "The Little Horses of Tarquinia," where he happens upon an apartment he shares with two roommates and falls desperately and completely in love. Young Jan adopts the drinking habits of the book's heroes and drinks only bitter Campari. From now on, the admirer enters Marguerite's world and never leaves it.

All other writers seem to him bland, uninteresting, worthless. Jan will read only Diras throughout his life. In 1975, Jan meets the author who came to talk to the audience after the screening of her film “India Song” at the Le Luxe cinema in Cannes, Normandy, and expresses his desire to write to her. Marguerite writes down for the carefree, fragile, and delicate young man her address in the sixth arrondissement of Paris: 6^e  rue Saint-Benoît, 5

Jan writes to her the very next day and does not stop for the next five years, every day, without receiving a reply. At the end of this period, a delivery finally arrives: Diras’s book “The Man Sitting in the Hallway.” Surprisingly, Jan is not enthusiastic this time and stops writing so as not to be forced to lie. Diras wonders, becomes worried, sends him more and more of her works. Jan renews his letters.

Marguerite Duras and Yann formalize their relationship

In 1980, Yann calls Marguerite who is in Tréville, in an apartment she bought in the mythical “Black Rocks” hotel whose luxurious suites are for sale. The writer invites him to a toast. Gives him directions where to buy a bottle of red wine. Tréville is not far from Ken. Yann is 28, Marguerite is 66. Marguerite offers Yann to stay the night in her son’s bed.

Jan and Marguerite travel through Honfleur, sing Piaf, Jan prints her weekly column in “Libération”, edits a table. Drinking the wine that Jan bought with his few pennies turns into cohabitation for the next sixteen years until Duras’s death. Jan enters her life, her books and her films. He serves her as a partner, a friend, an assistant, a secretary, a driver, a brother, a therapist. Jan is by her side so that her books can be published, he faithfully feeds her until the day she dies. Their relationship was not always smooth sailing. A detailed account is found in Jan’s book “This Love”.

Marguerite changes his last name. From now on, he will no longer be called Jan Lemma, his father, but Jan Andrea. Andrea was the name of Marguerite's mother, whose lack of love left traces in her all her life. Jan Andrea's passion for men is not kept in a closet. But his life revolves around Marguerite. So do his books. He lives in her shadow. In the last months of her life, Jan continues to be as patient, friendly and polite as ever towards those seeking her well-being, but positions himself as a wedge of understanding for her friends. It is no longer possible to ask her well-being directly, to hear her voice.

After Marguerite's funeral in 1996, 44-year-old Jan moves into the one-room apartment he inherited from his girlfriend, across from hers. Marguerite appointed him as the executor of her literary estate. He makes all the decisions regarding the publication of her works. His only son, who is five years older than him, has no choice but to accept the verdict. After two years, Jan realizes that he has not yet finished his life. He still wants to live. When he calls his mother, she rushes to take him to her, she who accepted his relationship with the older woman as natural, obvious and necessary.

Since 2001, the year his last book was published, Jan has disappeared, as if by magic, from the public eye. The executor of the Duras estate does not give interviews, no longer sits at the Café de Flor, and no one knows how or where he lives. Four months after the centennial celebrations of the great artist's birth, which were held on April 4, 2014, from which he also missed out, his body was found in the same one-room apartment he received as a gift from his confidante. The cause of death is unknown, but there are no criminal suspicions.

You are invited to watch the video in which Jan talks about Marguerite Duras ten years after her death.