EVENT REVIEW: CELEBRATING PATRICK MODIANO

Last week saw a three-day mini festival take place at the French Institute to celebrate the work of Nobel Prize winner, Patrick Modiano. Modiano's translators, Euan Cameron and Frank Wynne were present to talk about their work with British publishers Bill Swainson and Christopher MacLehose. Georgia de Chamberet gives us an insight into Modiano's life and a summary of the events that took place at the French Institute:

Modiano was born in 1945. His father was a Jew – discovered much later on in his life – who refused to wear the obligatory yellow star, and lived off shady Black Market earnings during World War Two. “Am I responsible for my father and all those shadowy figures who spoke to him in muffled tones in hotel lobbies or back-rooms, carrying suitcases – contents unknown.” His Flemish mother was an actress. His brother died of an unspecified illness when he was a child. He had a terrible, broken childhood. When his translator, Euan Cameron, asked him about his parents, Modiano answered that he would have loved to have known his parents before he was born.

The high fallutin’ high society Paris of Modiano’s early novels is that of the Occupation during World War Two. A carnival of characters live under Nazi domination in a murky world. It is hard to pass on guilt: everything is opaque, and everyone is implicated, somehow. An atmosphere of ambiguousness, compromise and complicité is pervasive in his work. There is a fine line between resistance and collaboration both in the heart, and in reality. The author of historical fiction relies on imprecise episodic memories underpinned by a vivid imagination. Modiano addresses memory and “truth” in history through his writing, and tries to put some kind of order into the muddle of life. He is suspicious of memory, of what is remembered and forgotten, since facts and events can be embellished, or completely left out, thereby giving a bias to the narrative. But he trusts written records – official and unofficial – which prompt those memories, and give them credibility. To what extent an objective narrative of that period can be recreated remains a moot point – it is, perhaps, more a question of puncturing the silence; le non-dit. To this day, mentioning the Nazi Occupation can create an atmosphere of shuffling unease in certain French families especially when the question is asked: “What did your father/grandfather do during the war . . . and your mother/grandmother?”

Modiano’s first novel Place de l’étoile – an ambiguous reference to the yellow star worn by Jews, and the Place de L’Étoile with the Arc de Triomphe at its centre – exploded on to the Parisian literary scene in 1968 like a V-2 rocket. He rages on the page and no one is spared . . . from the élites of la vieille France, to polo players and playboys, les juifs collabos and antisemitic writers supporting the Vichy government (Drieu la Rochelle, Robert Brasillach, Louis-Ferdinand Céline) . . . “Part two of my study is called: Robert Brasillach or Nuremberg’s bridesmaid. ‘Some of us did sleep with Germany’ he admitted, ‘it is a memory imbued with tenderness’.” Whether they are selling socks to the Wehrmacht, bootleg Cognac to the Gestapo, well-bred young beauties to white slave traders, or working for the French Gestapo out of its rue Lauriston HQ, everyone is on the make and on the take, one way or another.

To read this article in full, please visit the Georgia de Chamberet's blog here.

You can listen to recordings of the three events that took place by visiting our Culturethèque website here.