flipA Glass of Chilled White Wine
A Glass of Chilled White Wine
Why this dish? Duras wrote with painful lucidity about her relationship with alcohol — white wine, whiskey — which held an excessive and destructive place in her life (detox cures). Chilled white wine accompanied her daily writing life on Rue Saint-Benoît and at Neauphle-le-Château.
A simple glass of dry white wine, served chilled. Presented here with honesty: not as a pleasure to celebrate, but as a real and heavy element of Duras's life, which she herself described as an addiction. For adults only; to be discussed in class as a dark part of her biography.
Wine, I speak of it without lying. I drank to hold on, to write, not to hear. A glass of cold white wine in the morning, and then the spiral. I wrote it because it must be said: alcohol gives nothing, it takes. I nearly died from it. Let those who read me young know: that glass is not a celebration, it is a prison that shines.
- •Dry white wine — one glass (drink (adults))
A Glass of Chilled White Wine
A simple glass of dry white wine, served chilled. Presented here with honesty: not as a pleasure to celebrate, but as a real and heavy element of Duras's life, which she herself described as an addiction. For adults only; to be discussed in class as a dark part of her biography.
Why this dish? Duras wrote with painful lucidity about her relationship with alcohol — white wine, whiskey — which held an excessive and destructive place in her life (detox cures). Chilled white wine accompanied her daily writing life on Rue Saint-Benoît and at Neauphle-le-Château.
Wine, I speak of it without lying. I drank to hold on, to write, not to hear. A glass of cold white wine in the morning, and then the spiral. I wrote it because it must be said: alcohol gives nothing, it takes. I nearly died from it. Let those who read me young know: that glass is not a celebration, it is a prison that shines.
Ingredients (period version)
- Dry white wine — one glass (drink (adults))
Ingredients
- Chilled dry white wine (or, for all audiences, well-chilled white grape juice) — one glass (drink — non-alcoholic version recommended for family/school settings)
Method
- Chill the bottle (8–10°C).
- Pour a glass, to be sipped slowly — or, for children and in school contexts, replace purely with well-chilled white grape juice.
- Above all: accompany this “dish” with the honest story of Duras’s struggle with alcohol, for that is what gives it educational meaning.
How it was made : Wine was a daily accompaniment at the 20th-century French table. But for Duras, alcohol went beyond social use to become an addiction she confronted during severe detox treatments, notably in 1982 at the American Hospital of Neuilly, and which she transposed into her writing.
The contemporary twist : Instead of a glass, offer a fact sheet: show how a great writer can be both brilliant and fragile — an opportunity to talk about health and addiction without taboo.
Sources : Marguerite Duras, *La Vie matérielle*, P.O.L, 1987 (chapter on alcohol) · Laure Adler, *Marguerite Duras*, Gallimard, 1998
Marguerite Duras · Charactorium
