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‘Moderto Cantabile’ is the somewhat innocuous story of two strangers, Anne Desbaresdes and Chauvin,  who meet at a seedy café every day for a week, following the murder of a young woman by her love outside that café. The sparseness of the language coalesces with the repetition of various symbols (the sunset, a magnolia flower and tugboats) which only serve to add to the ambiguity which underlines the characters motivations and actions. Take for example the description of the various sky-scapes and sunsets which take place during the week in which the novel is set, for example the description of the sunset as Anne Desbaresdes’s recalcitrant son is sullenly undertaking his music lesson   ; “The colour of the sunset suddenly became so magnificent it changed the gold of the child’s hair…the pink sky exploded in a final burst of colour.”  Though this beautiful image, iridising with Anne’s love for her son is soon interrupted by “Dusk began to sweep over the sea. And the sky slowly darkened, except for the red in the west, till that faded as well…”  as the murder takes place.

Anne is fascinated by the murder and visits the café outside which the murder took place and there meets the sullen and sinister, yet strangely seductive, Chauvin, who regales her with the fictional account as to why the man murdered his lover. Anne is drawn in by his stories, the sexual attraction and possible relationship between the two is symbolised by the repetition of various scenes, such as the sunset and sunlight; “The sun as so low in the sky that it shone on the man’s face. His body, leaning lightly against the bar, had been bathed in it for some time.” and “The southern sky was darkened by black streaks, ochre clouds spewed skywards by the foundries.” and “The sunset was a welter of even brighter yellow on the far wall. As often at sunset, the clouds billowed in fat clusters in the still sky, revealing he last fiery rays of the sun…” at the culmination point in the couple’s relationship as they share a cold kiss which puts the embers on the dying flames of their passion. The passion does, however, reach its crescendo the night before when Anne is hosting a dinner party and Chauvin is stalking outside the house, drawn in by the scent of the magnolia which she is keeping on her breast, whose lascivious scent shocks and scandalizes the dinner guests but is carried down-wind to the nose of Chauvin, the scene reaches its climax in a scene of sexual ambiguity, in which we wonder whether he did visit her at night after the dinner party or whether the scenes he describes of him watching her movements in her house are as fictional as the tales they spin about the murdered woman and her lover.

‘Moderato Cantabile’ is a novel of ambiguities, of half-spoken emotions in which the reader is constantly unsure as to what actually happened and how much of the action takes place in the imagination of the two lead characters. It is a novel in which only two characters really exist, in which all of the other characters serve as symbols of or for the characters emotions, in which the endless repetition of certain scenes and motifs only serve to add to the uncertainty which permeates the story. Superficial comparisons can be made to writers from the nouveau roman, especially writers such as Robbe-Grillet, but these comparisons would undermine the startling originality of Dumas’s style.