(…) essayant de me souvenir, sentant au fond de my des terres reconquises sur l'oubli qui s'assechent et se rebâtissent (…)
Marcel Proust, The Swann
(…) while I try to remember, and feel how deep within me areas wrested from oblivion are being drained and replanted (…)
Marcel Proust, On the way to Swann, t: Eva Rechel-Mertens/Luzius Keller
Is the French Nobel laureate in Literature, Patrick Modiano, an author of memory? Or of forgetting and disappearance? This question resurfaced while reading his new, 30th book. Chevreuse, especially to see him, the author, in the process of writing, before me, existentially, born in 1945, looking back on his novels. Already in La Place de l'Étoile (The square's name has been changed since 1970 to Place Charles-de-Gaulle), in this early fictional autobiography of the French Jew Raphaël Schlemilovitch, Modiano's Proustian references begin when the first-person narrator is asked: "Do you think you're Marcel Proust, Schlemilovitch? That's really bad! Surely you won't waste your youth by..." In search of lost time "Copying?" 1 Like Proust ResearchFor Modiano, the book is a process of remembering and a document of forgetting, as he explains in his Nobel Prize speech, a kind of writing addiction, an urge for the next escape movement:
Sur le point d'achever un livre, il vous semble que celui-ci commence à se détacher de vous et qu'il respire déjà l'air de la liberté, comme les enfants, dans la classe, la veille des grandes vacances. Ils sont distraits et bruyants et n'écoutent plus leur professor. When you first read the paragraphs you read, you receive a certain hostility in the hat of your liberation. Et il vous quitte à peine avez-vous tracé the dernier mot. C'est fini, il n'a plus besoin de vous, il vous a déjà oublié. This means that the readers will learn how to read in a lui-même way. You will experience this moment in a great video and the sentiment that you have left behind. It also has a variety of insatisfaction due to the fact that it lies between the books and you, which also have a good impact. This insatisfaction and the sentiment of the quelque chose d'inaccompli vous poussent à écrire le livre suivant pour rétablir l'équilibre, sans que vous y parveniez jamais. À mesure que les années passent, les livres se succèdent et les lecteurs parleront d'une “œuvre”. You may also have a sentiment that will last a long time in advance.
Patrick Modiano, Nobel Prize speech 2014 2
When you finish a book, you have the impression that it begins to detach itself from you and is already breathing the air of freedom, like the children in the classroom on the eve of summer vacation. They are distracted and noisy and no longer listen to their teacher. I would even say that as you write the final paragraphs, the book displays a certain hostility towards you because it wants to be free of you. And it leaves you as soon as you have written the last word. It's over, it no longer needs you, it has already forgotten you. From now on, it is the readers who will discover it for themselves. At that moment, you feel a great emptiness and a sense of abandonment. And also a kind of dissatisfaction with this connection between the book and you, which was severed too quickly. This dissatisfaction and the feeling that something remains unfulfilled drives you to write the next book to restore the balance, without ever truly succeeding. Over the years, the books come and go, and readers will speak of a "complete body of work." But you will feel that it was one long, desperate attempt to escape.
Even in the penultimate novel Encre sympathique We find healing forgetting: “You know, sir, there are times in life that one would rather not remember… And in the end we even forget them… And that’s a good thing… I had a rather difficult youth…” 3 It is the contexts and nuances that allow poetological principles and leitmotifs to change in the history of a work, because: "It is said that Patrick Modiano always writes the same novel – some may interpret this as uniformity. In truth, it is an extraordinary quality." Dirk Fuhrig He thus clarified that a reader's problem with Modiano is actually a literary accolade for his poetics: to read Patrick Modiano as a work, structured in time and constantly confronting memory and disappearance, makes him appear as "a Marcel Proust of our time," in the words of Peter Englund, Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy. However, in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Modiano also emphasized that the Proustian quest could no longer be pursued with the force and openness of Marcel Proust, however stable his nineteenth-century society may have been, yet it still produced a detailed and vivid portrait. Modiano observed, however, "that memory today is much more uncertain and constantly struggles with amnesia and forgetting. Because of this layer, this mass of forgetting that covers everything, we only manage to grasp fragments of the past, interrupted traces, elusive and almost incomprehensible human destinies." 4
I believe Modiano will remain inaccessible to a segment of the literary public because literature today seeks, or is compelled to seek, to appear more documentary, as an intervention of memory rather than a process of remembering. Modiano, however, repeatedly states in Chevreuse his long and consistent flight:
The note on fur and mesure the pensées qui traversaient son esprit. In general the matin or fin d'après-midi. The sufficiency of the detail is similar to that of another light. C'était cela: a detail. Le mot “pensee” ne convenait pas du tout. It's on the sun. A quantity of details finished by remplir les pages de son cahier bleu et, à première vue, ils n'avaient aucun lien les us avec les other et, dans leur brièveté, ils auraient été incompréhensibles à un lecteur éventuel.
Plus it's accumulating on the white pages in the same light, plus there are chances in the suite - and it's on the outside - the tirer chooses au clair. The character's appearance is futile and it's a shame for the décourager.
Son professor of philosophy lui avait confié jadis que les different periods d'une vie – enfance, adolescence, âge mûr, vieillesse – correspondent also à plusieurs morts successives. The même pour les éclats de souvenirs qu'il tâchait de noter le plus vite possible: quelques images d'une période de sa vie qu'il voyait défiler en accéléré avant qu'elles ne disparaissent définitivement dans l'oubli.
Patrick Modiano, Chevreuse
He wrote down the thoughts that came to mind. Usually in the morning or late afternoon. It only took a single detail, something that might seem insignificant to someone else. That was all: a single detail. The word "thought" was entirely inappropriate. It was too solemn. A series of details filled the pages of his blue notebook, seemingly unrelated at first glance and incomprehensible to any potential reader due to their brevity.
The more they piled up on the blank pages and seemed disjointed, the more likely he was that he would later get to the bottom of them – of that he was sure. And their apparent hopelessness should not discourage him.
His philosophy teacher had once told him that the different stages of life—childhood, adolescence, middle age, old age—corresponded to several successive deaths. The same was true for the flashes of memory he tried to jot down as quickly as possible: a few images from a phase of his life that he saw pass before they vanished forever into oblivion.
In Modiano's novels, people disappear, and as in the penultimate book... Encre sympathique This leads to a kind of detective novel when a detective agency is assigned to the case of the missing Noëlle Lefebvre and eventually stumbles upon clues to her new life in Rome. Even though Modiano himself incorporates Proustian pastiches into his writing, the significant difference to Proust's work must be noted. Research As Anna-Louise Milne argues, “The reader is left with mere fragments, and the visions glimpsed through doorways and courtyards offer no transcendence such as we find, for example, in Proust’s fictional universe. The connections between Modiano’s Paris and Proust’s world are conceivable, but only as a kind of short circuit. (...) This district of Paris (Faubourg Saint-Germain, KN) appears as a backdrop in several sequences of his novels, particularly through references to an apartment he lived in on the Quai de Conti, and especially to his bedroom in that apartment. Like Proust's first-person narrator, Modiano's literary self feels detached from the surroundings of his childhood, but while this confusion in In search of Through retrospective understanding and the project of the monumental novel, which completely "reconstructs" the Faubourg, the historical presences or "friends" who also lived within the walls of the bedroom on the Quai de Conti remain sketchy evocations, appearing only tentatively in Modiano's light, enigmatic texts. Indeed, Paris becomes increasingly elliptical in his work as the narrative is reduced and the structure fragmented. Yet, the more difficult it becomes to glimpse the city, the greater the demand on the power of literature to "unveil" it. 5
Modiano also emphasizes this fact in his latest book when he... Research explicitly mentioned. My initial question, whether Modiano is today an author of remembering or of forgetting, is addressed by Fabrice Gabriel in Le Monde Answered dialectically: “Perhaps Modiano, a young man of 76, had never been so close to Proust: not because of the formulations, but in this very special way of narrating – finding – his lost time, from material snippets, the texture of a word, the echo of a pavement from the past…” Chevreuse It is the story of a life experience already lived, which is reassembled by memory and which can conclude on the last pages with the promise of a work, namely the one we are currently reading.” 6 For example, Marie Schmidt to the German edition of Encre sympathique The author now judges that Modiano, in his later work, “re-titles his memoirs with literature of forgetting.” ChevreuseThe writer's path into the past remains blocked to others; at one point in the book he speaks of prose and poetry being made not only of words, but also of silence. 7 This new Proustian veneration could therefore be understood in the fleeting opposition between flashes of memory and attempts at rewriting:
It is available in the travel bag and a block of paper with letters. On the debut of an après-midi de grande chaleur, the était assis à l'une des tables du café, sur la petite place, à l'ombre, et il écrivit une première phrase qui serait peut-être celle d'un roman. Puis il rédigea quelques notes, au hasard. The aim is to make the calculation available in different times. Au bout de quinze ans, des souvenirs d'enfance que vous aviez oubliés jusqu'ici vous reviennent, et vous êtes un amnésique qui retrouve un peu de mémoire. Cela, you're working with certain people don't ignore the existence and you're researching what you're saving, everything, that's what you chose. Quinze ans, c'est déjà beaucoup, et un laps de temps suffisant pour que les other témoins aient disparu. Mais ces personnes qui ont besoin de votre témoignage n'ont pas les mêmes raisons que vous de partir à la recherche du temps perdu. Il ya entre ces “imbéciles” et vous un certain quiproquo. And you can't wait to see what you're doing with the help of the guide, so you can engage us and other people on the same slopes.
Patrick Modiano, Chevreuse 8
He had packed a pad of writing paper in his travel bag. At the beginning of a very hot afternoon, he sat at one of the tables in the café, in the small square, in the shade, and wrote a first sentence, which could have been the opening of a novel. Then he jotted down a few notes at random. He would have liked to report on what he had experienced recently. After fifteen years, childhood memories return that you had forgotten until then, and you are an amnesiac who is regaining your memory. You owe this to certain people you didn't know existed, who were looking for you because they knew you had experienced something fifteen years earlier. Fifteen years is a long time, and enough time for the other witnesses to disappear. But these people, who need your testimony, don't have the same reasons as you for setting out. in search of lost timeThere may be some exchange between you and these "fools." And yet, you can't truly understand them or be their guide, even if you both followed the same path into the past.
The theory that Patrick Modiano keeps writing the same book could also refer to the title of his current book: Chevreuse, which in Proust in Du côté des Guermantes The Duchess Marie de Rohan, mentioned in Modiano's first book, plays an erotic role among others: "The following week was simply idyllic: The Marquise slipped from one costume to another to arouse his desire. Besides the queens of France, he raped Madame de Chevreuse, the Duchesse de Berry, the Chevalier d'Éon, Bossuet, Saint Louis, Bayard, Du Guesclin, Joan of Arc, the Count of Toulouse, and General Boulanger." 9 Im Family record book A striptease dancer adopts the stage name Claude Chevreuse, but also the Chevreuse Valley, which Proust mentions because Albertine liked to take trips there with her friend Andrée, can be read as a Proust reference by Modiano: 'Oh yes, she loved it so much when we went to the Chevreuse Valley together.' It seemed to me that this valley, by some subsequent, demonic act of creation, added to the indeterminate and virtually non-existent universe in which Albertine and Andrée's walks had taken place, a valley by the grace of the devil, to the work of God. 10
Whether the category of late work, as Marie Schmidt used it for Modiano, can even apply when Proust's image in The regained time The unfinished cathedral also applies to Patrick Modiano's memoir literature: "How many enormous cathedrals remain unfinished! One nurtures such a work, one strengthens its weak parts, one maintains it, but then it is this work that grows, that marks our grave, protects it from rumors and for a time from oblivion." 11 Modiano's novel Chevreuse He doesn't eroticize this valley like Proust did, as a space of lesbian love; it was already in A pedigree (2005) was the subject. While the valley represents for Bosmans a past car journey 30 years ago, the exact time of which he cannot remember, the arrival in the past is imbued with the perceived idyllic freshness of the locus amoenus, 12 Finally, upon Bosman's return to Auteuil's apartment, the Chevreuse Valley becomes a transcendent space of a still time of childhood:
Bientôt, il sentit qu'il avait traversé une frontière et qu'il était arrivé dans la vallée de Chevreuse. This is the cause of the family's pay and this air fraîcheur qui vous saisissait brusquement. The entry into a zone where the temperatures are suspended, and the effects of the vérifia, after the aperçut que les aiguilles de sa montre étaient arrêtées.
To ensure that it is available on the route, the impression of the moment is available to the heart of the après-midi d'été interminables de l'enfance or le temps n'était pas suspendu, mais tout simplement immobile, et où l'on passait des heures à regarder La fourmi tourner par saccades sur la margelle du puits.
Patrick Modiano, Chevreuse
Soon he had the feeling of having crossed a border and arrived in the Chevreuse Valley. It wasn't the familiar landscape or the sudden freshness of the air that enveloped him. But he was entering a zone where time seemed to stand still, and he confirmed this when he noticed that the hands of his watch had stopped moving.
As he walked down the street, he felt transported back to the endless summer afternoons of his childhood, when time didn't stop but simply stood still, and one could watch the ants crawling around the edge of the fountain for hours.
This article is written in German and can be found at https://rentree.de. Automatic translations into English and French are available. English, French.
Notes- "Vous vous prenez pour Marcel Proust, Schlemilovitch? C'est très grave! Vous n'allez tout de même pas gaspiller votre younge en recopiant In search of lost time Patrick Modiano La Place de l'Étoile. Translated by: Elisabeth Edl.>>>
- Patrick Modiano, Conference Nobel. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2021.>>>
- « Voyez-vous, monsieur, il ya des périodes de la vie dont on préfère ne pas se souvenir… Et d'ailleurs, on finit par les oublier… Et c'est très bien comme ça… J'ai eu une jeunesse assezz difficile… », Patrick Modiano, Encre sympathique>>>
- "J'ai l'impression qu'aujourd'hui la mémoire est beaucoup moins sûre d'elle-même et qu'elle doit lutter sans cesse contre l'amnésie et contre l'oubli. À cause de this couche, de this masse d'oubli qui recouvre tout, on ne parvient à capter que des fragments du passé, des traces interrompues, des destinées humaines fuyantes et presque insaisissables.” Patrick Modiano, Conference Nobel. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2021.>>>
- "The reader is left with the mere fragments, and the visions glimpsed through doors and courtyard entrances offer none of the transcendence we find, for example, in the fictional universe produced by Proust. The connections between Modiano's Paris and Proust's world can be imagined, but only as a form of short-circuit. (…) This area of Paris (Faubourg Saint-Germain, KN) emerges as a backdrop in a number of sequences in his novels, particularly through references to an apartment in which he lived on the quai de Conti and more specifically to his bedroom within the apartment. Like Proust's narrator, Modiano's literary 'I' experiences a sense of disconnection from his childhood surroundings, but whereas this confusion is redeemed in In search of by retrospective understanding and the project of the monumental novel that completely 'reconstitutes' le Faubourg, the historical presences or 'friends' who also lived within the walls of the quai de Conti bedroom remain sketchy evocations that emerge only tentatively within Modiano's slight, enigmatic texts. Paris, indeed, becomes increasingly elliptical in his work as narration is pared down and structure fragmented. But arguably, as it becomes ever more difficult to get perspective on the City, the claims made for the powers of literature to 'reveal' the City grow greater.” Anna Louise Milne, The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of Paris (Cambridge University Press, 2013), 15.>>>
- “Peut-être Modiano, jeune homme de 76 ans, n'a-t-il jamais été aussi proche de Proust: not pour le phrasé, mais dans this façon si particulière de raconter - de retrouver - son temps perdu, à partir de bribes matérielles, texture d'un mot, écho d'un pavé d'autrefois… Chevreuse “It is a recollection of a déjà vécu, recomposé par la mémoire et qui pourra se clore, dans les dernières pages, par la promesse d'une œuvre, celle-là même que nous lisons.” Fabrice Gabriel, “« Chevreuse », by Patrick Modiano: a vie recomposée), Le Monde, October 6, 2021.>>>
- “L'un de ses livres de chevet, avec les Mémoires du cardinal de Retz et quelques other ouvrages, était un traité de morale qui s'intitulait L'Art de se taire. Depuis son enfance, il avait toujours essayé de pratiquer cet art-là, un art très difficile, celui qu'il admirait le plus et qui pouvait s'appliquer à tous les domaines, même à celui de la littérature. “Son professor ne lui avait-il pas appris que la prose et la poésie ne sont pas faites simplement de mots mais surtout de silences?”>>>
- Emphasis: KN>>>
- "La semaine qui suivit fut vraiment idyllique: la marquise changeait sans cesse de costume pour réveiller ses désirs. Exception faite des reines de France, il viola Mme de Chevreuse, la duchesse de Berry, le chevalier d'Éon, Bossuet, Saint Louis, Bayard, Du Guesclin, Jeanne d'Arc, le comte de Toulouse and the General Boulanger.” Patrick Modiano, La Place de l'Étoile. Translated by: Elisabeth Edl.>>>
- "« Ah ! oui, elle aim bien qu'on aille se promener dans la vallée de Chevreuse. » À l'univers vague et inexistant où se passaient les promenades d'Albertine et d'Andrée, il me semblait que celle-ci venait par une creation postérieure et diabolique, d'ajouter à l'œuvre de Dieu une vallée maudite.” Marcel Proust, Albertine disparue, t: Eva Rechel-Mertens/Luzius Keller.>>>
- "Combien de grandes cathédrales restent inachevées ! On le nourrit, on fortifie ses parties faibles, on le préserve, mais ensuite c'est lui qui grandit, qui désigne notre tombe, la protège againsttre les rumeurs et quelque temps contre l'oubli." Marcel Proust, Time Regained. T: Eva Rechel-Mertens/Luzius Keller.>>>
- "On entrait dans la vallée de Chevreuse. Il le sentit à la fraîcheur de l'air et à la lumière douce, vert et or, qui filtre à travers le feuillage des arbres. Oui, c'était peut-être la sensation de revenir après quinze ans dans le passé." Patrick Modiano, Chevreuse.>>>
