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丿賵乇丕 亘乇賵丿賷賴
賷賯丕賱 廿賳 丕賱兀賲丕賰賳 鬲丨鬲賮馗 亘兀孬乇 亘爻賷胤 毓賳 丕賱兀卮禺丕氐 丕賱賲賯賷賲賷賳 亘賴丕貙 兀孬乇 丿賮賷賳 兀賵 賵丕囟丨. 亘丕賱賳爻亘丞 賱廿乇賳爻鬲 賵爻賷爻賷賱 亘乇賵丿賷賴 賵丿賵乇丕貙 爻賵賮 兀賯賵賱 廿賳賴 丿賮賷賳. 賱賯丿 賰丕賳 賷鬲賵賱丿 賱丿賷 丕賳胤亘丕毓 亘丕賱丕禺鬲賮丕亍 賵丕賱囟賷丕毓 賮賷 賰賱 賲乇丞 賰賳鬲 兀鬲乇丿丿 賮賷賴丕 毓賱賶 兀丨丿 丕賱兀賲丕賰賳 丕賱鬲賷 兀賯丕賲賵丕 亘賴丕
123 pages, Paperback
First published April 2, 1997
283 people are currently reading
5316 people want to read
About the author
Patrick Modiano
163听books2,054听followersPatrick Modiano is a French-language author and playwright and winner of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature.
He is a winner of the 1972 Grand prix du roman de l'Acad茅mie fran莽aise, and the 1978 Prix Goncourt for his novel "Rue des boutiques obscures".
Modiano's parents met in occupied Paris during World War II and began a clandestine relationship. Modiano's childhood took place in a unique atmosphere: with an absent father -- of which he heard troubled stories of dealings with the Vichy regime -- and a Flemish-actress mother who frequently toured. His younger brother's sudden death also greatly influenced his writings.
While he was at Henri-IV lycee, he took geometry lessons from writer Raymond Queneau, who was a friend of Modiano's mother. He entered the Sorbonne, but did not complete his studies.
Queneau, the author of "Zazie dans le m茅tro", introduced Modiano to the literary world via a cocktail party given by publishing house 脡ditions Gallimard. Modiano published his first novel, "La Place de l鈥櫭塼oile", with Gallimard in 1968, after having read the manuscript to Raymond Queneau. Starting that year, he did nothing but write.
On September 12, 1970, Modiano married Dominique Zerhfuss. "I have a catastrophic souvenir of the day of our marriage. It rained. A real nightmare. Our groomsmen were Queneau, who had mentored Patrick since his adolescence, and Malraux, a friend of my father. They started to argue about Dubuffet, and it was like we were watching a tennis match! That said, it would have been funny to have some photos, but the only person who had a camera forgot to bring a roll of film. There is only one photo remaining of us, from behind and under an umbrella!" (Interview with Elle, 6 October 2003). From their marriage came two girls, Zina (1974) and Marie (1978).
Modiano has mentioned on Oct 9, 2014, during an interview with La Grande Librairie, that one of the books which had a great impact on his writing life was 'Le c艙ur est un chasseur solitaire' (The Heart is a Lonely Hunter), the first novel published by Carson McCullers in 1940.
(Arabic: 亘丕鬲乇賷賰 賲賵丿賷丕賳賵)
He is a winner of the 1972 Grand prix du roman de l'Acad茅mie fran莽aise, and the 1978 Prix Goncourt for his novel "Rue des boutiques obscures".
Modiano's parents met in occupied Paris during World War II and began a clandestine relationship. Modiano's childhood took place in a unique atmosphere: with an absent father -- of which he heard troubled stories of dealings with the Vichy regime -- and a Flemish-actress mother who frequently toured. His younger brother's sudden death also greatly influenced his writings.
While he was at Henri-IV lycee, he took geometry lessons from writer Raymond Queneau, who was a friend of Modiano's mother. He entered the Sorbonne, but did not complete his studies.
Queneau, the author of "Zazie dans le m茅tro", introduced Modiano to the literary world via a cocktail party given by publishing house 脡ditions Gallimard. Modiano published his first novel, "La Place de l鈥櫭塼oile", with Gallimard in 1968, after having read the manuscript to Raymond Queneau. Starting that year, he did nothing but write.
On September 12, 1970, Modiano married Dominique Zerhfuss. "I have a catastrophic souvenir of the day of our marriage. It rained. A real nightmare. Our groomsmen were Queneau, who had mentored Patrick since his adolescence, and Malraux, a friend of my father. They started to argue about Dubuffet, and it was like we were watching a tennis match! That said, it would have been funny to have some photos, but the only person who had a camera forgot to bring a roll of film. There is only one photo remaining of us, from behind and under an umbrella!" (Interview with Elle, 6 October 2003). From their marriage came two girls, Zina (1974) and Marie (1978).
Modiano has mentioned on Oct 9, 2014, during an interview with La Grande Librairie, that one of the books which had a great impact on his writing life was 'Le c艙ur est un chasseur solitaire' (The Heart is a Lonely Hunter), the first novel published by Carson McCullers in 1940.
(Arabic: 亘丕鬲乇賷賰 賲賵丿賷丕賳賵)
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September 18, 2016
When I was nineteen I had a huge crush on Katherine Mansfield. I loved her letters and journal and the tragedy of her short life moved me. So when I went to Paris, the city she loved above all others, I decided to try to find her. There was a hotel she always stayed in. She stayed there when she was happy and in love and she also stayed there when she knew she was going to die. It鈥檚 called The Select Hotel and I was excited to discover it鈥檚 still there, in the Place de la Sorbonne, not far from the Jardin du Luxembourg which she often wrote about in her letters. It鈥檚 quite a swanky hotel now but when I sat down by the fountain and looked up at its windows there was a moment of electrifying wonder when the past suddenly fused into the present moment and I wasn鈥檛 quite sure who was the ghost 鈥� was she a ghost from the past or was I a ghost from the future? At one point I thought there鈥檚 no way on earth Katherine Mansfield would ever have imagined that someone, almost a hundred years later, would be trying to picture her in her room (she always took the same room)鈥�
Even less would an ordinary Jewish French girl called Dora Brudner have imagined that one day in the future a Nobel Prize winning novelist would become obsessed with trying to piece together her life after she mysteriously ran away from a convent where we presume she was being sheltered during the Nazi occupation of Paris. Rarely do we get an insight into the first moment of inspiration that compels a writer to write a novel. Here we do. Modiano comes across a notice in an old newspaper asking for information about the missing Dora Brudner. He discovers a deep driving need to know her, or at least to know what happened to her. The book, reminiscent in many ways of the earlier and and the later , becomes, on one level, a detective story and on a deeper level an intimate dialogue between the present and the past.
The horrible irony, we quickly learn, is Dora鈥檚 parents hadn鈥檛 registered their daughter previously meaning she wasn鈥檛 on any Jewish list but in their desperation to find her eventually are compelled to document her as missing at the local police station. Thus she finds her way onto the Jewish register.
As much as he is trying to fathom out Dora, Modiano is seeking out his own pre-history. During the novel he lets us know how many parallels exist between Dora and her family and himself and his own family. He is constantly aware of time and timing 鈥� how only timing prevented him, as a French Jew, from sharing Dora鈥檚 fate.
The most moving achievement of this novel is Modiano鈥檚 refusal to turn Dora鈥檚 story into a novel. It鈥檚 almost an anti-novel in the sense that he rejects imagination as a tool for piecing together Dora鈥檚 fate. By giving us Dora exclusively through official documents it somehow made her fate much more heartbreaking than any fictional account of her life would have done. 鈥淭he girls鈥� neighbours informed us that she frequently left home without wearing the insignia (the yellow star).鈥� Who were those neighbours? Why did she refuse to wear the yellow star? We will never know. Modiano doesn鈥檛 allow us the pleasure of detailing our emotion. The emotion remains raw. There was a telling critique of all historical fiction and especially Holocaust fiction in this book. The sense that we鈥檙e always getting a sugared version of facts in fiction. This was raw and without solace and gives an amazingly vivid idea of what anyone searching for a Holocaust victim after the war must have gone through 鈥� especially the chilling matter-of-factness of bureaucratic documentation.
Even less would an ordinary Jewish French girl called Dora Brudner have imagined that one day in the future a Nobel Prize winning novelist would become obsessed with trying to piece together her life after she mysteriously ran away from a convent where we presume she was being sheltered during the Nazi occupation of Paris. Rarely do we get an insight into the first moment of inspiration that compels a writer to write a novel. Here we do. Modiano comes across a notice in an old newspaper asking for information about the missing Dora Brudner. He discovers a deep driving need to know her, or at least to know what happened to her. The book, reminiscent in many ways of the earlier and and the later , becomes, on one level, a detective story and on a deeper level an intimate dialogue between the present and the past.
The horrible irony, we quickly learn, is Dora鈥檚 parents hadn鈥檛 registered their daughter previously meaning she wasn鈥檛 on any Jewish list but in their desperation to find her eventually are compelled to document her as missing at the local police station. Thus she finds her way onto the Jewish register.
As much as he is trying to fathom out Dora, Modiano is seeking out his own pre-history. During the novel he lets us know how many parallels exist between Dora and her family and himself and his own family. He is constantly aware of time and timing 鈥� how only timing prevented him, as a French Jew, from sharing Dora鈥檚 fate.
The most moving achievement of this novel is Modiano鈥檚 refusal to turn Dora鈥檚 story into a novel. It鈥檚 almost an anti-novel in the sense that he rejects imagination as a tool for piecing together Dora鈥檚 fate. By giving us Dora exclusively through official documents it somehow made her fate much more heartbreaking than any fictional account of her life would have done. 鈥淭he girls鈥� neighbours informed us that she frequently left home without wearing the insignia (the yellow star).鈥� Who were those neighbours? Why did she refuse to wear the yellow star? We will never know. Modiano doesn鈥檛 allow us the pleasure of detailing our emotion. The emotion remains raw. There was a telling critique of all historical fiction and especially Holocaust fiction in this book. The sense that we鈥檙e always getting a sugared version of facts in fiction. This was raw and without solace and gives an amazingly vivid idea of what anyone searching for a Holocaust victim after the war must have gone through 鈥� especially the chilling matter-of-factness of bureaucratic documentation.
May 7, 2016
December 31st, 1941. A missing person ad is published in the Paris Soir journal. Her name is Dora Bruder, she is fifteen and of Jewish descent. The setting is Paris during the German occupation. Nine months later, the same name appears in a list of deported prisoners to Auschwitz.
鈥淭he search warrant鈥� is much more than a journalistic exploration of Dora鈥檚 disappearance. It is an elegy to the fate of countless people, young and old, artists and professors, men and women, gentry and peasants, French people, lawful citizens from all over Europe, who like this unsuspecting girl, saw their lives chopped off by the abomination of war.
Patrick Modiano鈥檚 direct style denounces an era of boundless suffering, humiliation, and gratuitous violence that presents a striking contrast to the painstakingly accurate tableaux vivant that he paints of a city that has buried its past under the neutral hues of refurbished buildings and repaved streets, employing cement the color of amnesia.
But Dora鈥檚 curtailed life, and also the faded identity of the restless narrator and pursuant of the objective facts that tell her brief story, lingers not only in the deserted Rues of the new city, but also in the more crowded areas that fill with activity during the rush hour.
The muffled screams of Dora鈥檚 destiny, which is a tiny part of our own history, of our collective memory, remains embedded in the traumatic events the same chronicler is fixated on erasing from his encumbered mind. In searching for her, Modiano searches for his lost self, groping in the dark of his own emptiness.
Life is made of what we want to remember as much as what we need to forget. The atmospheric purity of the old city evoked in this convoluted map of historical data and physical spaces; a city that witnessed atrocities that should have never occurred, throbs in the chilling silence of the modern Parisian alleys, whose blinding lights won鈥檛 ever succeed in disguising the chilling fugue intoned by a lost generation that perished in the grips of ruthless history. Their names, personal traits and particular dreams, fears and aspirations might be eroded by the continuous ebb and flow of time until they vanish into thin air, but the trace of their faint voices will linger in the sounds and silences of Modiano鈥檚 nostalgic, transfixing and peculiarly tender lullaby, caught in everlastingness, forever young.
鈥淎nd yet, from time to time, beneath this thick layer of amnesia, one can certainly sense something, an echo, distant, muted, but of what, precisely, it is impossible to say. Like finding oneself on the edge of a magnetic field and having no pendulum with which to pick up its radiations.鈥�
鈥淭he search warrant鈥� is much more than a journalistic exploration of Dora鈥檚 disappearance. It is an elegy to the fate of countless people, young and old, artists and professors, men and women, gentry and peasants, French people, lawful citizens from all over Europe, who like this unsuspecting girl, saw their lives chopped off by the abomination of war.
Patrick Modiano鈥檚 direct style denounces an era of boundless suffering, humiliation, and gratuitous violence that presents a striking contrast to the painstakingly accurate tableaux vivant that he paints of a city that has buried its past under the neutral hues of refurbished buildings and repaved streets, employing cement the color of amnesia.
But Dora鈥檚 curtailed life, and also the faded identity of the restless narrator and pursuant of the objective facts that tell her brief story, lingers not only in the deserted Rues of the new city, but also in the more crowded areas that fill with activity during the rush hour.
The muffled screams of Dora鈥檚 destiny, which is a tiny part of our own history, of our collective memory, remains embedded in the traumatic events the same chronicler is fixated on erasing from his encumbered mind. In searching for her, Modiano searches for his lost self, groping in the dark of his own emptiness.
Life is made of what we want to remember as much as what we need to forget. The atmospheric purity of the old city evoked in this convoluted map of historical data and physical spaces; a city that witnessed atrocities that should have never occurred, throbs in the chilling silence of the modern Parisian alleys, whose blinding lights won鈥檛 ever succeed in disguising the chilling fugue intoned by a lost generation that perished in the grips of ruthless history. Their names, personal traits and particular dreams, fears and aspirations might be eroded by the continuous ebb and flow of time until they vanish into thin air, but the trace of their faint voices will linger in the sounds and silences of Modiano鈥檚 nostalgic, transfixing and peculiarly tender lullaby, caught in everlastingness, forever young.
鈥淎nd yet, from time to time, beneath this thick layer of amnesia, one can certainly sense something, an echo, distant, muted, but of what, precisely, it is impossible to say. Like finding oneself on the edge of a magnetic field and having no pendulum with which to pick up its radiations.鈥�
November 1, 2019
Ever since, the Paris wherein I have tried to retrace her steps has remained as silent and deserted as it was on that day. I walk through empty streets. For me, they are always empty, even at dusk, during the rush-hour, when the crowds are hurrying towards the mouths of the metro. I think of her in spite of myself, sensing an echo of her presence in this neighborhood or that. The other evening, it was near the Gare du Nord.\
Memory, loss, despair and hope, human life wanders about these essential elements of man鈥檚 existence. For his whole life is merry-glum chronicle hopping on the fabric of time and space wherein he conjures up memories of loss from which surges up an air of despair, however he still keeps on moving hoping to make peace with memories, only to further plummet into the dark cervices of memory. And the famous or rather infamous events of the human civilization have been effecting our memories more than anything, for the greatest horrors make deep impressions. And those of us who were lucky enough to survive either type of cataclysmic events must have then begin the process of confronting and reconciling the memories of the catastrophe that befell them; and most of our poetry and art have taken birth as post-memorial commemorations of these catastrophic events. The memories associated with such events surge up out of our beings and perhaps get mingled with those of others but when our beings encounter such memories- which exists on their own and are self-conscious, such rendezvous may impart an allusion of completeness to them. The Search Warrant is journalistic documentation of the havoc created by the best manifestations of humanity in Europe, in which the author uses memory and time, digging into dark recesses of history to build up superbly moving narrative around travesty of human existence.
In writing this book, I am sending out signals, like a lighthouse beacon in whose power to illuminate the darkness I have, alas, no faith. But I live in hope.
Modiano鈥檚 narrator inserts himself into this fictive investigation as he scours the records, and streets, for this missing Jewish girl. His journey takes him to his father鈥檚 past, his own 鈥渞unning away鈥�, and finally, to Auschwitz. In 1988 Patrick Modiano stumbled across an ad between the stock market report and a story of a school visit to Marechal Petain in the personal columns of Paris Soir from December 31, 1941: "We are looking for a young girl, Dora Bruder, 15 years old, five feet tall, round face, gray-brown eyes, gray sportscoat, burgundy pullover, navy blue hat and skirt, brown athletic shoes. Send all information to Mr. and Mrs. Bruder, 41, Boulevard Ornano, Paris."Placed by the parents of a 15-year-old Jewish girl who had run away from her convent school just before New Year's Eve, this ad set Modiano on a quest to find out everything he could about Dora Bruder and why she ran away from the Catholic boarding school that had been hiding her. He found only one other official mention of her name: on a list of Jews deported from Paris to Auschwitz in September 1942. With no knowledge of Dora Bruder aside from these two records of disappearances, Modiano continued to dig for fragments from Dora's past. What little he found in official records or through remaining family members, Modiano transforms into a meditation on the immense losses of the period--lost people, lost stories, and lost history. As he tries to find connections to Dora, Modiano delivers a moving account of the ten-year investigation that took him back to the sights and sounds of Paris under the Occupation and the paranoia of the Petain regime. In his efforts to exhume her from the past, Modiano realizes that he must come to terms with the specters of his own troubled adolescence. The result is a montage of creative and historical material that unfolds as a moving rumination on loss.
The parents lose all trace of their daughter and, on 19 March, one of them disappears in their turn, as if winter that year was cutting off from one another, muddying and wiping out their tracks to the point where their existence is in doubt. And there is no redress. The very people whose job is to search for you are themselves compiling dossiers, the better to ensure that, once found, you will disappear again- this time for good.
The narrative of the book peels off layer by layer, the facts and events, as they might have been taken place, to register absurdity of human existence wherein the human life itself has been reduced to insignias and numbers (Jewish dossier) as if they don鈥檛 have any say in the profound pirouette of time and space and their whole beings are plunged into well of nothingness. However, the beings of such unfortunate manifestations of humanity surge up from nothingness through the history of our dreadful pride but just as shadow of their former selves who are rising up from past to stare into our eyes and to put us in utter shame over our great acts of human injustice. And what could be done now since it may not change the fate of those who born brunt of our inhumane achievements, however it provides us great stuff to think about those 鈥榓chievements鈥�, for some lessons could be learnt from them, and though those unfortunate people have been reduced to documents of horrific history but some of the greatest examples of literature at least restore some of them, who were reduced to numbers and insignias, on space-time continuum through imaginative and journalistic endeavors of authors like Modiano.
In another part of Paris, when I was twenty, I remember having the same sensation of emptiness as I had had when confronted by the Tourelles wall, and without really knowing the reason why.
Once again, I had a sense of emptiness. And I understood why. After the war, most buildings in the district had been pulled down, methodically, in accordance with a government plan.
You feel a sense of profound emptiness while reading this book which is written in a style that is more like a journal, wherein characters are not given much space to be evolved, except for a few characters who are given an air of importance, but the very nature of the narrative create an atmosphere around loss and memory only to underline the inability of fiction to conjure up anything which may convey our appalling deeds lost in history. The use of time and memory in the book is second to none, repetition is also used deftly here perhaps since the book is written in the manner of a journal so to create a connect with the reader who, at times, may found him/ herself detached from the narrative. In a sense, it is not like a traditional novel, perhaps an anti-novel, in which Dora鈥檚 life is conveyed to the reader directly through journalistic details. The direct style of Modiano creates harrowing experience wherein the horrific details of holocaust are straightforward bombarded into your consciousness which plunges in the spell of grave emptiness which is felt inside your heart too and leaves you with a bitter taste. Of all the books I鈥檝e read based of holocaust, The Emigrants by W.G.Sebald comes to mind after reading this book, only to find that while Sebald鈥檚 book is more vivid and picturesque, Modiano鈥檚 novel is like detective journal in which the author infused his imagination to conjure up this beautiful but unsettling narrative.
4/5
Recommended.
Memory, loss, despair and hope, human life wanders about these essential elements of man鈥檚 existence. For his whole life is merry-glum chronicle hopping on the fabric of time and space wherein he conjures up memories of loss from which surges up an air of despair, however he still keeps on moving hoping to make peace with memories, only to further plummet into the dark cervices of memory. And the famous or rather infamous events of the human civilization have been effecting our memories more than anything, for the greatest horrors make deep impressions. And those of us who were lucky enough to survive either type of cataclysmic events must have then begin the process of confronting and reconciling the memories of the catastrophe that befell them; and most of our poetry and art have taken birth as post-memorial commemorations of these catastrophic events. The memories associated with such events surge up out of our beings and perhaps get mingled with those of others but when our beings encounter such memories- which exists on their own and are self-conscious, such rendezvous may impart an allusion of completeness to them. The Search Warrant is journalistic documentation of the havoc created by the best manifestations of humanity in Europe, in which the author uses memory and time, digging into dark recesses of history to build up superbly moving narrative around travesty of human existence.
In writing this book, I am sending out signals, like a lighthouse beacon in whose power to illuminate the darkness I have, alas, no faith. But I live in hope.
Modiano鈥檚 narrator inserts himself into this fictive investigation as he scours the records, and streets, for this missing Jewish girl. His journey takes him to his father鈥檚 past, his own 鈥渞unning away鈥�, and finally, to Auschwitz. In 1988 Patrick Modiano stumbled across an ad between the stock market report and a story of a school visit to Marechal Petain in the personal columns of Paris Soir from December 31, 1941: "We are looking for a young girl, Dora Bruder, 15 years old, five feet tall, round face, gray-brown eyes, gray sportscoat, burgundy pullover, navy blue hat and skirt, brown athletic shoes. Send all information to Mr. and Mrs. Bruder, 41, Boulevard Ornano, Paris."Placed by the parents of a 15-year-old Jewish girl who had run away from her convent school just before New Year's Eve, this ad set Modiano on a quest to find out everything he could about Dora Bruder and why she ran away from the Catholic boarding school that had been hiding her. He found only one other official mention of her name: on a list of Jews deported from Paris to Auschwitz in September 1942. With no knowledge of Dora Bruder aside from these two records of disappearances, Modiano continued to dig for fragments from Dora's past. What little he found in official records or through remaining family members, Modiano transforms into a meditation on the immense losses of the period--lost people, lost stories, and lost history. As he tries to find connections to Dora, Modiano delivers a moving account of the ten-year investigation that took him back to the sights and sounds of Paris under the Occupation and the paranoia of the Petain regime. In his efforts to exhume her from the past, Modiano realizes that he must come to terms with the specters of his own troubled adolescence. The result is a montage of creative and historical material that unfolds as a moving rumination on loss.
The parents lose all trace of their daughter and, on 19 March, one of them disappears in their turn, as if winter that year was cutting off from one another, muddying and wiping out their tracks to the point where their existence is in doubt. And there is no redress. The very people whose job is to search for you are themselves compiling dossiers, the better to ensure that, once found, you will disappear again- this time for good.
The narrative of the book peels off layer by layer, the facts and events, as they might have been taken place, to register absurdity of human existence wherein the human life itself has been reduced to insignias and numbers (Jewish dossier) as if they don鈥檛 have any say in the profound pirouette of time and space and their whole beings are plunged into well of nothingness. However, the beings of such unfortunate manifestations of humanity surge up from nothingness through the history of our dreadful pride but just as shadow of their former selves who are rising up from past to stare into our eyes and to put us in utter shame over our great acts of human injustice. And what could be done now since it may not change the fate of those who born brunt of our inhumane achievements, however it provides us great stuff to think about those 鈥榓chievements鈥�, for some lessons could be learnt from them, and though those unfortunate people have been reduced to documents of horrific history but some of the greatest examples of literature at least restore some of them, who were reduced to numbers and insignias, on space-time continuum through imaginative and journalistic endeavors of authors like Modiano.
In another part of Paris, when I was twenty, I remember having the same sensation of emptiness as I had had when confronted by the Tourelles wall, and without really knowing the reason why.
Once again, I had a sense of emptiness. And I understood why. After the war, most buildings in the district had been pulled down, methodically, in accordance with a government plan.
You feel a sense of profound emptiness while reading this book which is written in a style that is more like a journal, wherein characters are not given much space to be evolved, except for a few characters who are given an air of importance, but the very nature of the narrative create an atmosphere around loss and memory only to underline the inability of fiction to conjure up anything which may convey our appalling deeds lost in history. The use of time and memory in the book is second to none, repetition is also used deftly here perhaps since the book is written in the manner of a journal so to create a connect with the reader who, at times, may found him/ herself detached from the narrative. In a sense, it is not like a traditional novel, perhaps an anti-novel, in which Dora鈥檚 life is conveyed to the reader directly through journalistic details. The direct style of Modiano creates harrowing experience wherein the horrific details of holocaust are straightforward bombarded into your consciousness which plunges in the spell of grave emptiness which is felt inside your heart too and leaves you with a bitter taste. Of all the books I鈥檝e read based of holocaust, The Emigrants by W.G.Sebald comes to mind after reading this book, only to find that while Sebald鈥檚 book is more vivid and picturesque, Modiano鈥檚 novel is like detective journal in which the author infused his imagination to conjure up this beautiful but unsettling narrative.
4/5
Recommended.
April 10, 2023
4+
I love old houses with their creaking floors, antiques that were made to last forever. They speak to me of those that once lived there, paced those floors, opened those drawers. I can only imagine these prior inhabitants.There are so many unknowns, unknowns such as Modiano encountered as he walked the streets that Dora Bruder had walked. These Parisian streets held the secrets of Dora鈥檚 last year and memories of Modiano鈥檚 own troubled youth.
In 1988, Modiano discovered an ad in a 1941 edition of a Paris newspaper. The parents of Dora Bruder were looking for their 15-year-old daughter who had run away from her boarding school. Why would this rebellious Jewish girl leave the safety of her Catholic school when the streets of Paris were teeming with police controlled by Vichy France? (Why did most of us do impetuous things at that age?) The author was intrigued. Modiano had only one other clue to what happened. A record indicated that a Dora Bruder had been deported to Auschwitz in 1942. The author felt compelled to fill in the blanks.What happened in that fateful last year of her life? Modiano鈥檚 novel is an elegy to all who suffered and died during this dark period, the atrocity of the Nazi occupation, and the compliance of the Petain regime.
This is a short book with a very powerful impact. I have read many accounts of the nazi atrocities. None affected me so deeply. Dora鈥檚 most certain anguish, the disbelief she must have felt, are so heartbreaking. Modiano鈥檚 emotive writing will remain with me. Dora will never be forgotten.
I love old houses with their creaking floors, antiques that were made to last forever. They speak to me of those that once lived there, paced those floors, opened those drawers. I can only imagine these prior inhabitants.There are so many unknowns, unknowns such as Modiano encountered as he walked the streets that Dora Bruder had walked. These Parisian streets held the secrets of Dora鈥檚 last year and memories of Modiano鈥檚 own troubled youth.
In 1988, Modiano discovered an ad in a 1941 edition of a Paris newspaper. The parents of Dora Bruder were looking for their 15-year-old daughter who had run away from her boarding school. Why would this rebellious Jewish girl leave the safety of her Catholic school when the streets of Paris were teeming with police controlled by Vichy France? (Why did most of us do impetuous things at that age?) The author was intrigued. Modiano had only one other clue to what happened. A record indicated that a Dora Bruder had been deported to Auschwitz in 1942. The author felt compelled to fill in the blanks.What happened in that fateful last year of her life? Modiano鈥檚 novel is an elegy to all who suffered and died during this dark period, the atrocity of the Nazi occupation, and the compliance of the Petain regime.
This is a short book with a very powerful impact. I have read many accounts of the nazi atrocities. None affected me so deeply. Dora鈥檚 most certain anguish, the disbelief she must have felt, are so heartbreaking. Modiano鈥檚 emotive writing will remain with me. Dora will never be forgotten.
June 11, 2023
鈥淓ver since, the Paris wherein I have tried to retrace her steps has remained as silent and deserted as it was on that day. I walk through empty streets. For me, they are always empty, even at dusk, during the rush hour, when the crowds are hurrying towards the mouths of the m茅tro. I think of her in spite of myself, sensing an echo of her presence in this neighborhood or that.鈥�
Dora Bruder, or The Search Warrant
Patrick Modiano was doing what he does a lot, one day in 1988. He was looking at the past; specifically, he was skimming a 1942 Paris newspaper, looking for clues to his own past. Modiano, the 2014 Nobel Prize-winner for Literature, is known for his lifetime obsessions: Paris, Paris during the Occupation, the Jewish-Italian father that he never really knew in Paris during the Occupation. I鈥檝e now read three of his books this summer and they all centrally involve the mystery of his father in some way, especially as his father's life intersected with the Occupation. The books are about memory, and the failure of memory, about the need to know, and the failure to truly know. And moral compromises, that he observed particularly in his father, and other Parisians, during a terrible time.
What caught Modiano鈥檚 eye in the newspaper was a notice placed by Jewish Emile Bruder and his wife, requesting information about their daughter Dora, who had left her Catholic boarding school and had not been seen since. 46 years had passed since 1942, 6 million lives lost, so many records of the time and of those lives destroyed. So why should Modiano be curious about this one girl? In one sense it is random. Yet Modiano had lived near her neighborhood, though he was born after she died. His father had lived in this area, too, and had been arrested鈥攁t the same time as two teenaged girls鈥攄uring this time.
Like an archeologist unearthing the past, like a detective unearthing what happened, Modiano is on the case for ten years, and he finds a lot of scraps of information鈥攁 photograph here, sketchy police records there. At one point he purchases a letter of a teenaged boy, arrested and headed to Germany on a train, his last letter to assure his parents he will be all right, he鈥檒l be home soon, to help Modiano help us imagine what it is Dora Bruder might have been feeling on her own train to the Holocaust. We have no such letter from Dora, so the fiction writer extrapolates from other documents to understand.
鈥淧erhaps it was one of those mild, sunny winter days when you have a feeling of holiday and eternity--the illusory feeling that the course of time is suspended, and that you need only slip through this breach to escape the trap that is closing around you.鈥�
Perhaps! But he can never really know, of course. And the course of time and erosion of memory proceeds, steadily. Modiano is piecing together a story using tidbits of facts and his own imagination. What was the weather like at the time, what was the texture of her skirt, the color of her eyes, he asks, in an attempt to conjure up one single girl from the Holocaust, to make one living, breathing person come alive and be real, to make us care for one stranger, one person who didn鈥檛 survive an unimaginable tragedy, though he does at times imagine her escaping this doom, as her presence still haunts that very neighborhood they shared. Dora stands in, in a way, too, for the father of which he also knew little whom he also tries to stitch together with facts and his imagination. This is the fiction writer鈥檚 task, to make people real enough for us to care about. Is what he does enough for us? Is it enough for him?
鈥淚n writing this book, I send out signals, like a lighthouse beacon in whose power to illuminate the darkness, alas, I have no faith. But I live in hope.鈥�
However, this is also true for him: 鈥淲henever we evoke the past, it reminds us a little of the House of Usher.鈥� Constant decay, erosion, loss, sadness.
When he begins he writes hopefully:
鈥淣ow that sixty years has passed the archives will gradually reveal their secrets.鈥�
But did they? Who was she? Will Dora finally reveal her secrets? What did she feel at the last? To render her fully human, Modiano needs to know and share that rendering with us, and compellingly. To be fully human, we must see her as fully human, to feel as she felt. The school is gone, most records destroyed. Almost nothing is left to even prove she existed. How can we make the past real, when it is so morally crucial for us to do so? Can we really know her? Modiano鈥檚 answer regarding Dora is the same as for his father:
鈥淭hat is her secret. A poor and precious secret that not even the executioners, the decrees, the occupying authorities, the Depot, the barracks, the camps, History, time--everything that defiles and destroys you--have been able to take away from her.鈥�
The novel鈥擬odiano鈥檚 least mysterious and most direct鈥攊s the record of a noble failure.
There鈥檚 several poignant moments; one:
Emile, having lied about his daughter鈥檚 being a Jew鈥攆alsifying her record鈥攆inally has no other option than to go to the police. 鈥淭he very people whose job it is to search for you are the same that complete the dossiers, the better to ensure, that once found, you will disappear again, this time for good.鈥� An absurd process, in which the father begs to preserve her official record, thus implicating himself in a criminal act of complicity by nudging officials to actually erase her official record, and denying that she is a Jew in order to save her.
Another moment that takes place much later:
"The last photograph of Dora, with her mother and grandmother, unsmiling, haunts me. A sort of typical family photograph, but probably the last taken. And who is the photographer, the father, or is he already gone? This is Dora, with her family, and she is for this moment real, and then gone forever."
Dora Bruder is Modiano鈥檚 meditation on loss, on the necessity and impossibility of fiction to create in any completely satisfying way to the lost past, and a mourning for innocent lives lost during the Occupation of his beloved Paris, for all lost in the Holocaust. I understand that many readers may find the prose too spare, too elliptical, too removed, but I loved it. I found this my favorite of the three books I have thus far read from Modiano. It reminds me of W. G. Sebald鈥檚 Austerlitz, and the films of Alain Resnais, enigmatic and subtly powerful.
Dora Bruder, or The Search Warrant
Patrick Modiano was doing what he does a lot, one day in 1988. He was looking at the past; specifically, he was skimming a 1942 Paris newspaper, looking for clues to his own past. Modiano, the 2014 Nobel Prize-winner for Literature, is known for his lifetime obsessions: Paris, Paris during the Occupation, the Jewish-Italian father that he never really knew in Paris during the Occupation. I鈥檝e now read three of his books this summer and they all centrally involve the mystery of his father in some way, especially as his father's life intersected with the Occupation. The books are about memory, and the failure of memory, about the need to know, and the failure to truly know. And moral compromises, that he observed particularly in his father, and other Parisians, during a terrible time.
What caught Modiano鈥檚 eye in the newspaper was a notice placed by Jewish Emile Bruder and his wife, requesting information about their daughter Dora, who had left her Catholic boarding school and had not been seen since. 46 years had passed since 1942, 6 million lives lost, so many records of the time and of those lives destroyed. So why should Modiano be curious about this one girl? In one sense it is random. Yet Modiano had lived near her neighborhood, though he was born after she died. His father had lived in this area, too, and had been arrested鈥攁t the same time as two teenaged girls鈥攄uring this time.
Like an archeologist unearthing the past, like a detective unearthing what happened, Modiano is on the case for ten years, and he finds a lot of scraps of information鈥攁 photograph here, sketchy police records there. At one point he purchases a letter of a teenaged boy, arrested and headed to Germany on a train, his last letter to assure his parents he will be all right, he鈥檒l be home soon, to help Modiano help us imagine what it is Dora Bruder might have been feeling on her own train to the Holocaust. We have no such letter from Dora, so the fiction writer extrapolates from other documents to understand.
鈥淧erhaps it was one of those mild, sunny winter days when you have a feeling of holiday and eternity--the illusory feeling that the course of time is suspended, and that you need only slip through this breach to escape the trap that is closing around you.鈥�
Perhaps! But he can never really know, of course. And the course of time and erosion of memory proceeds, steadily. Modiano is piecing together a story using tidbits of facts and his own imagination. What was the weather like at the time, what was the texture of her skirt, the color of her eyes, he asks, in an attempt to conjure up one single girl from the Holocaust, to make one living, breathing person come alive and be real, to make us care for one stranger, one person who didn鈥檛 survive an unimaginable tragedy, though he does at times imagine her escaping this doom, as her presence still haunts that very neighborhood they shared. Dora stands in, in a way, too, for the father of which he also knew little whom he also tries to stitch together with facts and his imagination. This is the fiction writer鈥檚 task, to make people real enough for us to care about. Is what he does enough for us? Is it enough for him?
鈥淚n writing this book, I send out signals, like a lighthouse beacon in whose power to illuminate the darkness, alas, I have no faith. But I live in hope.鈥�
However, this is also true for him: 鈥淲henever we evoke the past, it reminds us a little of the House of Usher.鈥� Constant decay, erosion, loss, sadness.
When he begins he writes hopefully:
鈥淣ow that sixty years has passed the archives will gradually reveal their secrets.鈥�
But did they? Who was she? Will Dora finally reveal her secrets? What did she feel at the last? To render her fully human, Modiano needs to know and share that rendering with us, and compellingly. To be fully human, we must see her as fully human, to feel as she felt. The school is gone, most records destroyed. Almost nothing is left to even prove she existed. How can we make the past real, when it is so morally crucial for us to do so? Can we really know her? Modiano鈥檚 answer regarding Dora is the same as for his father:
鈥淭hat is her secret. A poor and precious secret that not even the executioners, the decrees, the occupying authorities, the Depot, the barracks, the camps, History, time--everything that defiles and destroys you--have been able to take away from her.鈥�
The novel鈥擬odiano鈥檚 least mysterious and most direct鈥攊s the record of a noble failure.
There鈥檚 several poignant moments; one:
Emile, having lied about his daughter鈥檚 being a Jew鈥攆alsifying her record鈥攆inally has no other option than to go to the police. 鈥淭he very people whose job it is to search for you are the same that complete the dossiers, the better to ensure, that once found, you will disappear again, this time for good.鈥� An absurd process, in which the father begs to preserve her official record, thus implicating himself in a criminal act of complicity by nudging officials to actually erase her official record, and denying that she is a Jew in order to save her.
Another moment that takes place much later:
"The last photograph of Dora, with her mother and grandmother, unsmiling, haunts me. A sort of typical family photograph, but probably the last taken. And who is the photographer, the father, or is he already gone? This is Dora, with her family, and she is for this moment real, and then gone forever."
Dora Bruder is Modiano鈥檚 meditation on loss, on the necessity and impossibility of fiction to create in any completely satisfying way to the lost past, and a mourning for innocent lives lost during the Occupation of his beloved Paris, for all lost in the Holocaust. I understand that many readers may find the prose too spare, too elliptical, too removed, but I loved it. I found this my favorite of the three books I have thus far read from Modiano. It reminds me of W. G. Sebald鈥檚 Austerlitz, and the films of Alain Resnais, enigmatic and subtly powerful.
June 28, 2024
In writing this book, I send out signals, like a lighthouse beacon in whose power to illuminate the darkness, alas, I have no faith. But I live in hope.
He comes across a heading in the third page of an old copy of the Paris-Soir newspaper, dated 31 December 1941.
It is the notice of the missing Dora Bruder, a teenager who ran away from the convent school she was staying at during the German occupation of France.
Who is Dora Bruder? Why did she run away? Would anybody remember her?
Was she ever found or did she disappear like so many other Jews who were rounded up and herded like cattle toward the slaughter house?
With the passage of time, I find perspectives become blurred, one winter merging into another. That of 1965 and that of 1942.
In this semi-biographical novel, determined to investigate and find out about Dora鈥檚 fate, our narrator follows in her and her immediate family鈥檚 footsteps, asking questions, reading letters, trying to put the divers pieces together and make the puzzle whole.
I鈥檓 writing these pages in November 1996. It seldom stops raining. Tomorrow we shall be in December, and fifty-five years will have passed since Dora ran away.
Special thanks to Michael Lund for directing me towards Modiano. Reading this book, I saw Paris from a different perspective. Not the political but the human side.
He comes across a heading in the third page of an old copy of the Paris-Soir newspaper, dated 31 December 1941.
It is the notice of the missing Dora Bruder, a teenager who ran away from the convent school she was staying at during the German occupation of France.
Who is Dora Bruder? Why did she run away? Would anybody remember her?
Was she ever found or did she disappear like so many other Jews who were rounded up and herded like cattle toward the slaughter house?
With the passage of time, I find perspectives become blurred, one winter merging into another. That of 1965 and that of 1942.
In this semi-biographical novel, determined to investigate and find out about Dora鈥檚 fate, our narrator follows in her and her immediate family鈥檚 footsteps, asking questions, reading letters, trying to put the divers pieces together and make the puzzle whole.
I鈥檓 writing these pages in November 1996. It seldom stops raining. Tomorrow we shall be in December, and fifty-five years will have passed since Dora ran away.
Special thanks to Michael Lund for directing me towards Modiano. Reading this book, I saw Paris from a different perspective. Not the political but the human side.
May 24, 2023
丨氐賱鬲 賴匕賴 丕賱乇賵丕賷丞 毓賱賶 噩丕卅夭丞 賳賵亘賱 賱賱丌丿丕亘 賮賷 丕賱毓丕賲 2014賲.
賵丕賱爻亘亘 丕賱乇卅賷爻賷 賱匕賱賰 丨爻亘 乇兀賷賾 丕賱卮禺氐賷貙 賱賲 賷賰賳 兀亘丿丕賸 亘爻亘亘 噩賵丿丞 丕賱乇賵丕賷丞 兀賵 鬲賮乇賾丿賴丕 兀賵 睾乇丕亘鬲賴丕貙 毓賱賶 丕賱毓賰爻 鬲賲丕賲丕賸貙 丕賱爻亘亘 亘賰賱 亘爻丕胤丞.
兀賳 賴匕賴 丕賱乇賵丕賷丞 鬲乇賰夭 毓賱賶 賲毓丕賳丕丞 丕賱賷賴賵丿 賮賷 兀賵乇賵亘丕 禺賱丕賱 賵賲丕 賯亘賱 丕賱丨乇亘 丕賱毓丕賱賲賷丞 丕賱孬丕賳賷丞貙 賵禺丕氐丞 丕賱賮乇賳爻賷賾賳 賲賳賴賲 賵匕賱賰 亘毓丿 丕賱丕丨鬲賱丕賱 丕賱兀賱賲丕賳賷 賱賮乇賳爻丕.
兀鬲爻丕亍賱!責 賰賲 賳賵亘賱 賱賱丌丿丕亘 賷爻鬲丨賯 丕賱卮毓亘 丕賱賮賱爻胤賷賳賷 賵賲毓丕賳丕鬲賴 毓賱賶 賲丿丕乇 爻亘毓賷賳 毓丕賲丕賸.
賵丕賱爻亘亘 丕賱乇卅賷爻賷 賱匕賱賰 丨爻亘 乇兀賷賾 丕賱卮禺氐賷貙 賱賲 賷賰賳 兀亘丿丕賸 亘爻亘亘 噩賵丿丞 丕賱乇賵丕賷丞 兀賵 鬲賮乇賾丿賴丕 兀賵 睾乇丕亘鬲賴丕貙 毓賱賶 丕賱毓賰爻 鬲賲丕賲丕賸貙 丕賱爻亘亘 亘賰賱 亘爻丕胤丞.
兀賳 賴匕賴 丕賱乇賵丕賷丞 鬲乇賰夭 毓賱賶 賲毓丕賳丕丞 丕賱賷賴賵丿 賮賷 兀賵乇賵亘丕 禺賱丕賱 賵賲丕 賯亘賱 丕賱丨乇亘 丕賱毓丕賱賲賷丞 丕賱孬丕賳賷丞貙 賵禺丕氐丞 丕賱賮乇賳爻賷賾賳 賲賳賴賲 賵匕賱賰 亘毓丿 丕賱丕丨鬲賱丕賱 丕賱兀賱賲丕賳賷 賱賮乇賳爻丕.
兀鬲爻丕亍賱!責 賰賲 賳賵亘賱 賱賱丌丿丕亘 賷爻鬲丨賯 丕賱卮毓亘 丕賱賮賱爻胤賷賳賷 賵賲毓丕賳丕鬲賴 毓賱賶 賲丿丕乇 爻亘毓賷賳 毓丕賲丕賸.
December 28, 2022
Absolutely Modiano's best work
You can read this small book (140 pages) in a couple of hours, and you can summarize the content in a few sentences. But I've learned to be cautious with Modiano. His seemingly simple stories, written in a very smooth style, hide a great complexity and the intensity of the stories can be quite heavy.
In this book for instance there's the story of Dora Bruder, a jewish girl of 15, living in the Paris of 1941, during the occupation by the nazis. She's revolting against her too docile parents, but nevertheless gets caught up in the machinery of the holocaust and taken to Auschwitz. Modiano brings her story in bits and pieces, very carefully naming names and places (in Paris, of course) to make it more realistic. And with great emphasis he focusses on the detestable role of the French collaborators in the hunt on jews. He also describes the forlorn and ambiguous feelings of the jews (and some non-jews) that had to endure this terror (really heartbreaking is the letter of a man in a camp, waiting to be put on a convoy).
The second layer is that of the author himself (I suspect Modiano is autobiographical on this): we see how he becomes obsessed by the newspaper article of 1941 in which the parents of Dora seek help to find their runaway daughter. Frequently he links the events in Dora's life with his own: the neighbourhoods they both lived in, the rebellious phase they went through, the confrontation with the police, the problematic relation with their parents, and so on. He uses every element to get to know more about this Dora.
That's where we find the third layer: the desperate attempt of the author to reconstruct a life that has passed, gone up in smoke (in this case literally); or better: it's not only an attempt to reconstruct, but more to grasp it, or to lay hold of it. Modiano obsessively wants to know what went through Dora's mind, how she experienced the events she had to undergo. And he's quite inventive in this process: he not only looks for witnesses or archival documents, he also makes use of "historical imagination", walking in the footsteps of Dora, literally through the same streets and neighbourhoods and imagining what she saw and felt.
But, with Modiano, we have to conclude that ultimately, this is not possible; it is an illusion to really "grasp" or "get hold of". I've noticed this fundamental pessimism in Modiano before; according to him it is one of the key elements in the human condition; you can not really grasp the past, you can not really grasp others and you even cannot really grasp your own existence.
Personally, I don't share this pessimism. His scepticism is justified, but I have the impression Modiano just expects too much, his desire to grasp is too absolute and in that sense parching. Because, when you look at this book: what he achieves through the novel 'Dora Bruder' is quite something, it is if he has brought her back to life and that is magnificent. Did he bring her back totally, as she really was? Honestly, I don't think that is ultimately relevant. This is a great novel and the highlight of Modiano's oeuvre!
You can read this small book (140 pages) in a couple of hours, and you can summarize the content in a few sentences. But I've learned to be cautious with Modiano. His seemingly simple stories, written in a very smooth style, hide a great complexity and the intensity of the stories can be quite heavy.
In this book for instance there's the story of Dora Bruder, a jewish girl of 15, living in the Paris of 1941, during the occupation by the nazis. She's revolting against her too docile parents, but nevertheless gets caught up in the machinery of the holocaust and taken to Auschwitz. Modiano brings her story in bits and pieces, very carefully naming names and places (in Paris, of course) to make it more realistic. And with great emphasis he focusses on the detestable role of the French collaborators in the hunt on jews. He also describes the forlorn and ambiguous feelings of the jews (and some non-jews) that had to endure this terror (really heartbreaking is the letter of a man in a camp, waiting to be put on a convoy).
The second layer is that of the author himself (I suspect Modiano is autobiographical on this): we see how he becomes obsessed by the newspaper article of 1941 in which the parents of Dora seek help to find their runaway daughter. Frequently he links the events in Dora's life with his own: the neighbourhoods they both lived in, the rebellious phase they went through, the confrontation with the police, the problematic relation with their parents, and so on. He uses every element to get to know more about this Dora.
That's where we find the third layer: the desperate attempt of the author to reconstruct a life that has passed, gone up in smoke (in this case literally); or better: it's not only an attempt to reconstruct, but more to grasp it, or to lay hold of it. Modiano obsessively wants to know what went through Dora's mind, how she experienced the events she had to undergo. And he's quite inventive in this process: he not only looks for witnesses or archival documents, he also makes use of "historical imagination", walking in the footsteps of Dora, literally through the same streets and neighbourhoods and imagining what she saw and felt.
But, with Modiano, we have to conclude that ultimately, this is not possible; it is an illusion to really "grasp" or "get hold of". I've noticed this fundamental pessimism in Modiano before; according to him it is one of the key elements in the human condition; you can not really grasp the past, you can not really grasp others and you even cannot really grasp your own existence.
Personally, I don't share this pessimism. His scepticism is justified, but I have the impression Modiano just expects too much, his desire to grasp is too absolute and in that sense parching. Because, when you look at this book: what he achieves through the novel 'Dora Bruder' is quite something, it is if he has brought her back to life and that is magnificent. Did he bring her back totally, as she really was? Honestly, I don't think that is ultimately relevant. This is a great novel and the highlight of Modiano's oeuvre!
March 7, 2018
La verit脿 basta a se stessa
"Altri, (...) proprio prima della mia nascita, avevano patito pene di ogni sorta per consentire a noi di provare soltanto piccoli dispiaceri" (P. Modiano 猫 nato nel 1945).
Il narratore 猫 scosso, dopo oltre mezzo secolo dalla pubblicazione, da una piccola inserzione su Paris-Soir di fine '41, in cui i genitori ricercano la figlia quindicenne Dora Bruder, evidentemente scomparsa o fuggita.
Eccoci dunque sulle tracce di Dora, alla ricerca di informazioni, documenti, percorrendo le strade di Parigi che si pensa lei abbia percorso: "si dice che se non altro i luoghi serbano una lieve impronta delle persone che li hanno abitati".
Il tempo 'indagato' riguarda essenzialmente gli anni '41 e '42: periodo terribile per la Francia e in particolare per gli ebrei (tra questi, la nostra protagonista) che vi abitavano: infuria la Seconda Guerra Mondiale, coi nazisti invasori, fra resistenza e collaborazionismo.
L'interesse e la profondit脿 del libro per貌 non derivano tanto dalle ricerche 'pratiche', quanto dall'insieme di risonanze e 'corrispondenze' interiori, con intuizioni che varcano la mera ragione ed aprono a pi霉 ampie prospettive che coinvolgono sia noi lettori che colui che scrive e il suo mondo: fra il tempo di Dora e quello della scoperta delle sue tracce emergono momenti in cui quei luoghi sono stati vissuti dall'io narrante con intuizioni premonitrici: "quel pomeriggio, senza sapere perch茅, avevo la sensazione di camminare sulle tracce di qualcuno"; "ricordo che allora, per la prima volta, avevo sentito il vuoto che si prova davanti a ci貌 che 猫 andato distrutto, raso al suolo. Non sapevo ancora dell'esistenza di Dora Bruder". L'attitudine quindi dell'artista alla 'veggenza', alla capacit脿 di captare realt脿 che altri 'non vedono', secondo la lezione dei Simbolisti; ma qui in modo nuovo. Oltre a Dora, il narratore che cosa cerca? Sicuramente si avvertono risonanze che lo riguardano nel profondo.
Lo stile di Modiano 猫 di livello altissimo, con lievit脿 e precisione (qualit脿 che tanto piacevano a I. Calvino); capace, con semplicit脿 e assenza di artifici, di coinvolgere e commuovere il lettore senza alcuna concessione 'commerciale' e facilonerie o stucchevoli colpi di scena : la verit脿 basta a se stessa.
"Altri, (...) proprio prima della mia nascita, avevano patito pene di ogni sorta per consentire a noi di provare soltanto piccoli dispiaceri" (P. Modiano 猫 nato nel 1945).
Il narratore 猫 scosso, dopo oltre mezzo secolo dalla pubblicazione, da una piccola inserzione su Paris-Soir di fine '41, in cui i genitori ricercano la figlia quindicenne Dora Bruder, evidentemente scomparsa o fuggita.
Eccoci dunque sulle tracce di Dora, alla ricerca di informazioni, documenti, percorrendo le strade di Parigi che si pensa lei abbia percorso: "si dice che se non altro i luoghi serbano una lieve impronta delle persone che li hanno abitati".
Il tempo 'indagato' riguarda essenzialmente gli anni '41 e '42: periodo terribile per la Francia e in particolare per gli ebrei (tra questi, la nostra protagonista) che vi abitavano: infuria la Seconda Guerra Mondiale, coi nazisti invasori, fra resistenza e collaborazionismo.
L'interesse e la profondit脿 del libro per貌 non derivano tanto dalle ricerche 'pratiche', quanto dall'insieme di risonanze e 'corrispondenze' interiori, con intuizioni che varcano la mera ragione ed aprono a pi霉 ampie prospettive che coinvolgono sia noi lettori che colui che scrive e il suo mondo: fra il tempo di Dora e quello della scoperta delle sue tracce emergono momenti in cui quei luoghi sono stati vissuti dall'io narrante con intuizioni premonitrici: "quel pomeriggio, senza sapere perch茅, avevo la sensazione di camminare sulle tracce di qualcuno"; "ricordo che allora, per la prima volta, avevo sentito il vuoto che si prova davanti a ci貌 che 猫 andato distrutto, raso al suolo. Non sapevo ancora dell'esistenza di Dora Bruder". L'attitudine quindi dell'artista alla 'veggenza', alla capacit脿 di captare realt脿 che altri 'non vedono', secondo la lezione dei Simbolisti; ma qui in modo nuovo. Oltre a Dora, il narratore che cosa cerca? Sicuramente si avvertono risonanze che lo riguardano nel profondo.
Lo stile di Modiano 猫 di livello altissimo, con lievit脿 e precisione (qualit脿 che tanto piacevano a I. Calvino); capace, con semplicit脿 e assenza di artifici, di coinvolgere e commuovere il lettore senza alcuna concessione 'commerciale' e facilonerie o stucchevoli colpi di scena : la verit脿 basta a se stessa.
January 21, 2022
Echoes in Time
'Dora Bruder' narrates the investigation conducted by the writer about the eponymous young girl.
In a resolutely factual tone, Patrick Modiano recounts how he found about her date of birth, her birthplace, her parents, the places where she lived, and her ultimate fate.
The result is a strikingly matter-of-fact, and yet highly emotional account of the events, as the events in Dora's life sometimes mirror those in the life of Modiano's father or young Modiano's, decades afterwards. Surprisingly enough, curious coincidences involving significant places in this investigation are also found within literature or with other writer's lives (Hugo's Les Mis茅rables, Genet's life...). In the end, the whole picture delineated by Modiano tells volumes about the ghastly impact of the anti-Jew laws and the escalation of events (cf. Vel' d'Hiv Roundup), both still perceptible in the urban fabric of Paris, in spite of wide-scale destruction and amnesia.
Stroke by stroke, the author-narrator widens the scope from Dora's personal address to internment camp 'Les Tourelles' in Paris, to Dachau, to Auschwitz, and from Dora Bruder to virtually every person involved in the events of the 'Final solution' in Paris. Modiano achieves a lasting, encompassing, and haunting montage.
Also read:
Fiction:
Non-fiction:
'Dora Bruder' narrates the investigation conducted by the writer about the eponymous young girl.
In a resolutely factual tone, Patrick Modiano recounts how he found about her date of birth, her birthplace, her parents, the places where she lived, and her ultimate fate.
The result is a strikingly matter-of-fact, and yet highly emotional account of the events, as the events in Dora's life sometimes mirror those in the life of Modiano's father or young Modiano's, decades afterwards. Surprisingly enough, curious coincidences involving significant places in this investigation are also found within literature or with other writer's lives (Hugo's Les Mis茅rables, Genet's life...). In the end, the whole picture delineated by Modiano tells volumes about the ghastly impact of the anti-Jew laws and the escalation of events (cf. Vel' d'Hiv Roundup), both still perceptible in the urban fabric of Paris, in spite of wide-scale destruction and amnesia.
Stroke by stroke, the author-narrator widens the scope from Dora's personal address to internment camp 'Les Tourelles' in Paris, to Dachau, to Auschwitz, and from Dora Bruder to virtually every person involved in the events of the 'Final solution' in Paris. Modiano achieves a lasting, encompassing, and haunting montage.
Also read:
Fiction:
Non-fiction:
November 4, 2014
Patrick Modiano is the winner of Nobel Prize for Literature this year (2014). And the Nobel Prize committee cited the following as the specialty of Modiano's writing: "for the art of memory with which he has evoked the most ungraspable human destinies and uncovered the life-world of the occupation".
Having read this book I can say that the Nobel Committee's statement about Modiano's writing is very true. Personally speaking, the memory and the difficult past have been my favourite themes in the novels. This book deals with both of them.
The author begins a search for a 15 year old girl who went missing in Paris in December 1941. Let me now qualify some of the nouns I used in the previous sentence. The 15 year old girl went missing was a Jewish girl. The Paris in 1941 was under the German Occupation.
The author came across the notice of the missing girl much later while going through the old News Papers. Then, he begins to reconstruct the life of that missing girl by doing an extensive investigation on the girl. What he encounters is the EMPTINESS. When he looks for the past - the past with an unpleasant memory - he realises that the past had been systematically erased to be free of guilty consciences. Of course, he does not say it very directly and openly. But the reader will inevitable get that feeling.
There are, however, some remaining vestiges of history/past which escaped the destructive eye. And these evidences, more than helping us construct the past, increase the feeling of loss and emptiness for they do not give much. They reveal a little and the little is just a flash in the darkness. We are happy for a second and then we fall into the darkness again. Added to these vestiges are the memories of the author himself not of the girl but of the Occupied Paris which he had received from his Jewish father who managed to escape the Holocaust unscathed. The author himself had lived in these places in the later years. So his memories fill in certain gaps or rather act as some short living match sticks that help us to navigate for few seconds the darkness of the past.
In this sense, the writing is very claustrophobic. Reading this book, I felt myself walking through the streets of Occupied Paris as a Jew. The life would have been really difficult.
The writing in many places reminded me of W. G. Sebald. this book specifically reminded me a little of Sebald's . Modiano can not equal Sebald. But then, the Nobel Committee by giving to Modiano the prize might be seeking the consolation for not giving it to W. G. sebald before he died unexpectedly.
Note: I am in the hunt for his some other books.
Having read this book I can say that the Nobel Committee's statement about Modiano's writing is very true. Personally speaking, the memory and the difficult past have been my favourite themes in the novels. This book deals with both of them.
The author begins a search for a 15 year old girl who went missing in Paris in December 1941. Let me now qualify some of the nouns I used in the previous sentence. The 15 year old girl went missing was a Jewish girl. The Paris in 1941 was under the German Occupation.
The author came across the notice of the missing girl much later while going through the old News Papers. Then, he begins to reconstruct the life of that missing girl by doing an extensive investigation on the girl. What he encounters is the EMPTINESS. When he looks for the past - the past with an unpleasant memory - he realises that the past had been systematically erased to be free of guilty consciences. Of course, he does not say it very directly and openly. But the reader will inevitable get that feeling.
There are, however, some remaining vestiges of history/past which escaped the destructive eye. And these evidences, more than helping us construct the past, increase the feeling of loss and emptiness for they do not give much. They reveal a little and the little is just a flash in the darkness. We are happy for a second and then we fall into the darkness again. Added to these vestiges are the memories of the author himself not of the girl but of the Occupied Paris which he had received from his Jewish father who managed to escape the Holocaust unscathed. The author himself had lived in these places in the later years. So his memories fill in certain gaps or rather act as some short living match sticks that help us to navigate for few seconds the darkness of the past.
In this sense, the writing is very claustrophobic. Reading this book, I felt myself walking through the streets of Occupied Paris as a Jew. The life would have been really difficult.
The writing in many places reminded me of W. G. Sebald. this book specifically reminded me a little of Sebald's . Modiano can not equal Sebald. But then, the Nobel Committee by giving to Modiano the prize might be seeking the consolation for not giving it to W. G. sebald before he died unexpectedly.
Note: I am in the hunt for his some other books.
December 10, 2019
螘委渭伪喂 蟽委纬慰蠀蟻慰蟼 蠈蟿喂 魏伪喂 慰 螠慰谓蟿喂伪谓蠈 未蔚谓 胃伪 蟽蠀纬魏伪蟿伪位苇纬蔚喂 伪蠀蟿蠈 蟿慰 尾喂尾位委慰 蟽蟿伪 魏伪位蠉蟿蔚蟻维 蟿慰蠀.
螖慰蟽渭苇谓慰 位委纬慰 蠅蟼 谓蟿慰魏慰蠀渭苇谓蟿慰, 位委纬慰 蠅蟼 伪蟽蟿蠀谓慰渭喂魏蠈 未喂萎纬畏渭伪, 蟿慰 尾喂尾位委慰 伪魏慰位慰蠀胃蔚委 - 萎 蟺蟻慰蟽蟺伪胃蔚委 谓伪 伪魏慰位慰蠀胃萎蟽蔚喂 - 蟿伪 尾萎渭伪蟿伪 渭喂伪蟼 谓蔚伪蟻萎蟼 螘尾蟻伪委伪蟼 魏伪蟿维 蟿畏 未喂维蟻魏蔚喂伪 蟿畏蟼 螕蔚蟻渭伪谓喂魏萎蟼 魏伪蟿慰蠂萎蟼 蟽蟿慰 螤伪蟻委蟽喂.
螠苇蟽伪 伪蟺蠈 蟿畏谓 喂蟽蟿慰蟻委伪 蟿畏蟼 伪谓伪尾喂蠋谓慰蠀谓 慰喂 渭谓萎渭蔚蟼 蟿慰蠀 未喂蠅纬渭慰蠉 蟿蠅谓 螘尾蟻伪委蠅谓 蟽蟿畏 螕伪位位委伪, 伪位位维 魏伪喂 渭蟺位苇魏慰谓蟿伪喂 魏伪喂 蟺蟻慰蟽蠅蟺喂魏苇蟼 伪谓伪渭谓萎蟽蔚喂蟼 蟿慰蠀 委未喂慰蠀 蟿慰蠀 蟽蠀纬纬蟻伪蠁苇伪 伪蟺蠈 蟿畏谓 未喂魏萎 蟿慰蠀 蟺伪喂未喂魏萎 畏位喂魏委伪 蟽蟿慰 - 蔚位蔚蠉胃蔚蟻慰 蟺喂伪 - 螤伪蟻委蟽喂.
螣 螠慰谓蟿喂伪谓蠈 苇蠂蔚喂 蟺蔚蟿蠉蠂蔚喂 渭喂伪 伪蟿渭蠈蟽蠁伪喂蟻伪 渭蔚位伪纬蠂慰位喂魏萎 魏伪喂 蟺喂魏蟻萎, 蟿伪喂蟻喂伪蟽蟿萎 渭蔚 蟿慰 魏位委渭伪 蔚魏蔚委谓畏蟼 蟿畏蟼 蔚蟺慰蠂萎蟼, 蟺苇蟻伪 伪蟺蠈 伪蠀蟿蠈 蠈渭蠅蟼, 蟺蔚蟻喂蟽蟽蠈蟿蔚蟻慰 蔚委未伪 蟿慰 尾喂尾位委慰 蠅蟼 渭喂伪 蟺蟻慰蟽蠅蟺喂魏萎 蔚渭渭慰谓萎 蟿慰蠀, 蟺伪蟻维 蠅蟼 魏维蟿喂 蟺蔚蟻喂蟽蟽蠈蟿蔚蟻慰.
螖慰蟽渭苇谓慰 位委纬慰 蠅蟼 谓蟿慰魏慰蠀渭苇谓蟿慰, 位委纬慰 蠅蟼 伪蟽蟿蠀谓慰渭喂魏蠈 未喂萎纬畏渭伪, 蟿慰 尾喂尾位委慰 伪魏慰位慰蠀胃蔚委 - 萎 蟺蟻慰蟽蟺伪胃蔚委 谓伪 伪魏慰位慰蠀胃萎蟽蔚喂 - 蟿伪 尾萎渭伪蟿伪 渭喂伪蟼 谓蔚伪蟻萎蟼 螘尾蟻伪委伪蟼 魏伪蟿维 蟿畏 未喂维蟻魏蔚喂伪 蟿畏蟼 螕蔚蟻渭伪谓喂魏萎蟼 魏伪蟿慰蠂萎蟼 蟽蟿慰 螤伪蟻委蟽喂.
螠苇蟽伪 伪蟺蠈 蟿畏谓 喂蟽蟿慰蟻委伪 蟿畏蟼 伪谓伪尾喂蠋谓慰蠀谓 慰喂 渭谓萎渭蔚蟼 蟿慰蠀 未喂蠅纬渭慰蠉 蟿蠅谓 螘尾蟻伪委蠅谓 蟽蟿畏 螕伪位位委伪, 伪位位维 魏伪喂 渭蟺位苇魏慰谓蟿伪喂 魏伪喂 蟺蟻慰蟽蠅蟺喂魏苇蟼 伪谓伪渭谓萎蟽蔚喂蟼 蟿慰蠀 委未喂慰蠀 蟿慰蠀 蟽蠀纬纬蟻伪蠁苇伪 伪蟺蠈 蟿畏谓 未喂魏萎 蟿慰蠀 蟺伪喂未喂魏萎 畏位喂魏委伪 蟽蟿慰 - 蔚位蔚蠉胃蔚蟻慰 蟺喂伪 - 螤伪蟻委蟽喂.
螣 螠慰谓蟿喂伪谓蠈 苇蠂蔚喂 蟺蔚蟿蠉蠂蔚喂 渭喂伪 伪蟿渭蠈蟽蠁伪喂蟻伪 渭蔚位伪纬蠂慰位喂魏萎 魏伪喂 蟺喂魏蟻萎, 蟿伪喂蟻喂伪蟽蟿萎 渭蔚 蟿慰 魏位委渭伪 蔚魏蔚委谓畏蟼 蟿畏蟼 蔚蟺慰蠂萎蟼, 蟺苇蟻伪 伪蟺蠈 伪蠀蟿蠈 蠈渭蠅蟼, 蟺蔚蟻喂蟽蟽蠈蟿蔚蟻慰 蔚委未伪 蟿慰 尾喂尾位委慰 蠅蟼 渭喂伪 蟺蟻慰蟽蠅蟺喂魏萎 蔚渭渭慰谓萎 蟿慰蠀, 蟺伪蟻维 蠅蟼 魏维蟿喂 蟺蔚蟻喂蟽蟽蠈蟿蔚蟻慰.
September 16, 2017
In usual style Modiano presents a snapshop of time and masters to unfold every detail in his melodic yet melancholic style-
This time though, the inspiration for his novel is bordering the depressing, it being a young girl, first believed to "just" have gone missing.
Later we find out that she met a much more sinister fate ...
This is about Vichy - and I麓m not talking about the mineral water - but of one of the darkest spots in French history.
Rest in Peace, Dora Bruder.
The below is taken from:
The rescue of 7,000 Jews from Nazi-occupied Denmark in January 1943 has passed from history into legend. With the help of the Danish civil service and police, and the encouragement of King Christian X, almost the entire Jewish population was smuggled out of the country overnight, to neutral Sweden, without alerting the occupying forces.
... Hungary resisted Nazi demands to hand over Jews ...
It was the most daring of all such actions to save Jews from Nazi persecution through the years of World War Two, but great risks were also taken elsewhere. In 1941, in occupied Holland, for example, Communist trade unionists held protest strikes - ending with the deportation of leading demonstrators.
Even some pro-German states took a stand. Fascist Hungary resisted Nazi demands to hand over Jews until the country was invaded in 1944. Italy had anti-Semitic laws, but nevertheless defended French Jews in south-eastern France, which was occupied by the Italian army, and thus saved thousands of lives.
The last example is the most relevant to the tragic French experience, whose consequences are yet to be resolved. More than 60 years after a collaborationist French government helped deport 75,721 Jewish refugees and French citizens to Nazi death camps, the national conscience has still not fully come to terms with the betrayal of a community persecuted by French anti-Semitic laws.
French background
After the 1789 Revolution, France was the first European country to emancipate Jews, and despite periodic resurgences of anti-Semitism the country had Europe's second biggest Jewish community - 330,000 - by 1939. About half were recent refugees from elsewhere in Europe, convinced that they would be protected by France's commitments on political and religious asylum.
... fears ... France was on the verge of a Bolshevik revolution ...
By the turn of the century, however, anti-Semitism was being encouraged by the anti-republican movement Action Francaise, which had a strong following in the Catholic Church, as well as in the army, civil service and the judiciary. The movement supported extremists who believed that Jews could never integrate into a Christian country and were potential traitors.
A virulent racist campaign intensified in 1936, when the Socialist Popular Front government was led by a Jewish prime minister, L茅on Blum. His appointment added to the fears of those convinced that France was on the verge of a Bolshevik revolution, aided by Jews. These fears intensified, and dominated the French administration during the years of World War Two.
The lightning defeat of the French army by the Germans in June 1940 brought down the democratic Third Republic, which was replaced by a French state, headed by 84-year-old Mar茅chal Philippe P茅tain, who had fought in World War One. He set up his capital at Vichy, a spa in the Auvergne. The Germans had divided France into occupied and non-occupied zones, leaving P茅tain's administration in charge of about two-fifths of the country - including the cities of Lyon and Marseille.
Jewish Statute
Despite autonomy from German policies, P茅tain brought in legislation setting up a Jewish Statute in October 1940. By then about 150,000 Jews had crossed what was known as the Demarcation Line to seek protection from Vichy in the south - only to find they were subjected to fierce discrimination along lines practised by the Germans in the north.
... 3,000 died of poor treatment ...
Jews were eventually banned from the professions, show business, teaching, the civil service and journalism. After an intense propaganda campaign, Jewish businesses were 'aryanised' by Vichy's Commission for Jewish Affairs and their property was confiscated. More than 40,000 refugee Jews were held in concentration camps under French control, and 3,000 died of poor treatment during the winters of 1940 and 1941. The writer Arthur Koestler, who was held at Le Vernet near the Spanish frontier, said conditions were worse than in the notorious German camp, Dachau.
During 1941 anti-Semitic legislation, applicable in both zones, was tightened. French police carried out the first mass arrests in Paris in May 1941when 3,747 men were interned. Two more sweeps took place before the first deportation train provided by French state railways left for Germany under French guard on 12 March 1942.
On 16 July 1942, French police arrested 12,884 Jews, including 4,501 children and 5,802 women, in Paris during what became known as La Grande Rafle ('the big round-up'). Most were temporarily interned in a sports stadium, in conditions witnessed by a Paris lawyer, Georges Wellers.
'All those wretched people lived five horrifying days in the enormous interior filled with deafening noise ... among the screams and cries of people who had gone mad, or the injured who tried to kill themselves', he recalled. Within days, detainees were being sent to Germany in cattle-wagons, and some became the first Jews to die in the gas chambers at Auschwitz.
Vichy crimes
Photograph of German troops riding horses down the Champs D'Elysee in Paris German troops parade down the Champs D'Elysee in Paris, 1940 漏 Many historians consider that an even worse crime was committed in Vichy-controlled southern France, where the Germans had no say. In August 1942, gendarmes were sent to hunt down foreign refugees. Families were seized in their houses or captured after manhunts across the countryside. About 11,000 Jews were transported to Drancy in the Paris suburbs, the main transit centre for Auschwitz. Children as young as three were separated from their mothers - gendarmes used batons and hoses - before being sent to Germany under French guard, after weeks of maltreatment.
During 1942, officials sent 41,951 Jews to Germany, although the deportations came to a temporary halt when some religious leaders warned Vichy against possible public reaction. Afterwards, arrests were carried out more discreetly. In 1943 and 1944, the regime deported 31,899 people - the last train left in August 1944, as Allied troops entered Paris. Out of the total of 75,721 deportees, contained in a register drawn up by a Jewish organisation, fewer than 2,000 survived.
Revolt and aftermath
The number of dead would have been far higher if the Italian fascist leader, Benito Mussolini, had not ordered troops in France to defy German-French plans for mass round ups in Italian-occupied south-eastern France. Thousands were smuggled into Italy after Italian generals said that 'no country can ask Italy, cradle of Christianity and law, to be associated with these (Nazi) acts'.
... thousands of families risked death to shelter Jews.
After the Italian surrender in September 1943, arrests in the area restarted, but by then French public opinion had changed. Escape lines to Switzerland and Spain had been set up, and thousands of families risked death to shelter Jews. Since the war, Israel has given medals to 2,000 French people, including several priests, in recognition of this, and of the fact that about 250,000 Jews survived in France.
Post-war indifference to anti-Semitic persecution pushed the issue into the background until Serge Klarsfield, a Jewish lawyer whose Romanian father died in Germany, reawakened the national conscience. He tracked down the German chief of the Secret Service in Lyon, Klaus Barbie, who was hiding in Bolivia but was subsequently jailed for life in 1987. His case threw light on Vichy's complicity in the Holocaust.
Klarsfeld's efforts were frustrated by the Socialist president of France at this time, Francois Mitterrand, who had been an official at Vichy and was decorated by P茅tain. It was not until 1992 that one of Barbie's French aides, Paul Touvier, who had been a minor figure in wartime France, was jailed for life for his crimes.
Facing facts
French courts, responding to Mitterrand's warnings that trials would cause civil unrest, blocked other prosecutions, including that of the Vichy police chief, Ren茅 Bousquet, who organised the Paris and Vichy zone mass arrests. He was assassinated by a lone gunman in June 1993.
... France began to face up to its responsibility in the persecution of Jews.
It was not until Mitterrand retired in 1995 that France began to face up to its responsibility in the persecution of Jews. When the new right-wing president, Jacques Chirac, came to power, he immediately condemned Vichy as a criminal regime and two years later the Catholic Church publicly asked for forgiveness for its failure to protect the Jews.
But the most significant step forward was the trial in 1997 of Maurice Papon, 89, for crimes concerning the deportation of Jews from Bordeaux. He had served as a cabinet minister after the war, before losing a 16-year legal battle to avoid trial. He was released from jail because of poor health, but his ten-year prison sentence has been interpreted as official recognition of French complicity in the Holocaust, although there are still those who continue to defend his actions.
Since the trial, France has opened up hidden archives and offered compensation to survivors - and ensured that schools, where history manuals used not to mention France's part in the deportations, now have compulsory lessons on Vichy persecution. While anti-Semitism is still a social problem in France, there is no official discrimination, and today's 600,000-strong Jewish community is represented at every level of the establishment, including in the Catholic Church, where the Archbishop of Paris is Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger.
In 1942, while on the run from the French police, Lustiger converted to Catholicism, but three years later was told that his mother had died in the Auschwitz gas chambers. It seems fitting that he presently (June 2003) occupies such an important position within French society.
This time though, the inspiration for his novel is bordering the depressing, it being a young girl, first believed to "just" have gone missing.
Later we find out that she met a much more sinister fate ...
This is about Vichy - and I麓m not talking about the mineral water - but of one of the darkest spots in French history.
Rest in Peace, Dora Bruder.
The below is taken from:
The rescue of 7,000 Jews from Nazi-occupied Denmark in January 1943 has passed from history into legend. With the help of the Danish civil service and police, and the encouragement of King Christian X, almost the entire Jewish population was smuggled out of the country overnight, to neutral Sweden, without alerting the occupying forces.
... Hungary resisted Nazi demands to hand over Jews ...
It was the most daring of all such actions to save Jews from Nazi persecution through the years of World War Two, but great risks were also taken elsewhere. In 1941, in occupied Holland, for example, Communist trade unionists held protest strikes - ending with the deportation of leading demonstrators.
Even some pro-German states took a stand. Fascist Hungary resisted Nazi demands to hand over Jews until the country was invaded in 1944. Italy had anti-Semitic laws, but nevertheless defended French Jews in south-eastern France, which was occupied by the Italian army, and thus saved thousands of lives.
The last example is the most relevant to the tragic French experience, whose consequences are yet to be resolved. More than 60 years after a collaborationist French government helped deport 75,721 Jewish refugees and French citizens to Nazi death camps, the national conscience has still not fully come to terms with the betrayal of a community persecuted by French anti-Semitic laws.
French background
After the 1789 Revolution, France was the first European country to emancipate Jews, and despite periodic resurgences of anti-Semitism the country had Europe's second biggest Jewish community - 330,000 - by 1939. About half were recent refugees from elsewhere in Europe, convinced that they would be protected by France's commitments on political and religious asylum.
... fears ... France was on the verge of a Bolshevik revolution ...
By the turn of the century, however, anti-Semitism was being encouraged by the anti-republican movement Action Francaise, which had a strong following in the Catholic Church, as well as in the army, civil service and the judiciary. The movement supported extremists who believed that Jews could never integrate into a Christian country and were potential traitors.
A virulent racist campaign intensified in 1936, when the Socialist Popular Front government was led by a Jewish prime minister, L茅on Blum. His appointment added to the fears of those convinced that France was on the verge of a Bolshevik revolution, aided by Jews. These fears intensified, and dominated the French administration during the years of World War Two.
The lightning defeat of the French army by the Germans in June 1940 brought down the democratic Third Republic, which was replaced by a French state, headed by 84-year-old Mar茅chal Philippe P茅tain, who had fought in World War One. He set up his capital at Vichy, a spa in the Auvergne. The Germans had divided France into occupied and non-occupied zones, leaving P茅tain's administration in charge of about two-fifths of the country - including the cities of Lyon and Marseille.
Jewish Statute
Despite autonomy from German policies, P茅tain brought in legislation setting up a Jewish Statute in October 1940. By then about 150,000 Jews had crossed what was known as the Demarcation Line to seek protection from Vichy in the south - only to find they were subjected to fierce discrimination along lines practised by the Germans in the north.
... 3,000 died of poor treatment ...
Jews were eventually banned from the professions, show business, teaching, the civil service and journalism. After an intense propaganda campaign, Jewish businesses were 'aryanised' by Vichy's Commission for Jewish Affairs and their property was confiscated. More than 40,000 refugee Jews were held in concentration camps under French control, and 3,000 died of poor treatment during the winters of 1940 and 1941. The writer Arthur Koestler, who was held at Le Vernet near the Spanish frontier, said conditions were worse than in the notorious German camp, Dachau.
During 1941 anti-Semitic legislation, applicable in both zones, was tightened. French police carried out the first mass arrests in Paris in May 1941when 3,747 men were interned. Two more sweeps took place before the first deportation train provided by French state railways left for Germany under French guard on 12 March 1942.
On 16 July 1942, French police arrested 12,884 Jews, including 4,501 children and 5,802 women, in Paris during what became known as La Grande Rafle ('the big round-up'). Most were temporarily interned in a sports stadium, in conditions witnessed by a Paris lawyer, Georges Wellers.
'All those wretched people lived five horrifying days in the enormous interior filled with deafening noise ... among the screams and cries of people who had gone mad, or the injured who tried to kill themselves', he recalled. Within days, detainees were being sent to Germany in cattle-wagons, and some became the first Jews to die in the gas chambers at Auschwitz.
Vichy crimes
Photograph of German troops riding horses down the Champs D'Elysee in Paris German troops parade down the Champs D'Elysee in Paris, 1940 漏 Many historians consider that an even worse crime was committed in Vichy-controlled southern France, where the Germans had no say. In August 1942, gendarmes were sent to hunt down foreign refugees. Families were seized in their houses or captured after manhunts across the countryside. About 11,000 Jews were transported to Drancy in the Paris suburbs, the main transit centre for Auschwitz. Children as young as three were separated from their mothers - gendarmes used batons and hoses - before being sent to Germany under French guard, after weeks of maltreatment.
During 1942, officials sent 41,951 Jews to Germany, although the deportations came to a temporary halt when some religious leaders warned Vichy against possible public reaction. Afterwards, arrests were carried out more discreetly. In 1943 and 1944, the regime deported 31,899 people - the last train left in August 1944, as Allied troops entered Paris. Out of the total of 75,721 deportees, contained in a register drawn up by a Jewish organisation, fewer than 2,000 survived.
Revolt and aftermath
The number of dead would have been far higher if the Italian fascist leader, Benito Mussolini, had not ordered troops in France to defy German-French plans for mass round ups in Italian-occupied south-eastern France. Thousands were smuggled into Italy after Italian generals said that 'no country can ask Italy, cradle of Christianity and law, to be associated with these (Nazi) acts'.
... thousands of families risked death to shelter Jews.
After the Italian surrender in September 1943, arrests in the area restarted, but by then French public opinion had changed. Escape lines to Switzerland and Spain had been set up, and thousands of families risked death to shelter Jews. Since the war, Israel has given medals to 2,000 French people, including several priests, in recognition of this, and of the fact that about 250,000 Jews survived in France.
Post-war indifference to anti-Semitic persecution pushed the issue into the background until Serge Klarsfield, a Jewish lawyer whose Romanian father died in Germany, reawakened the national conscience. He tracked down the German chief of the Secret Service in Lyon, Klaus Barbie, who was hiding in Bolivia but was subsequently jailed for life in 1987. His case threw light on Vichy's complicity in the Holocaust.
Klarsfeld's efforts were frustrated by the Socialist president of France at this time, Francois Mitterrand, who had been an official at Vichy and was decorated by P茅tain. It was not until 1992 that one of Barbie's French aides, Paul Touvier, who had been a minor figure in wartime France, was jailed for life for his crimes.
Facing facts
French courts, responding to Mitterrand's warnings that trials would cause civil unrest, blocked other prosecutions, including that of the Vichy police chief, Ren茅 Bousquet, who organised the Paris and Vichy zone mass arrests. He was assassinated by a lone gunman in June 1993.
... France began to face up to its responsibility in the persecution of Jews.
It was not until Mitterrand retired in 1995 that France began to face up to its responsibility in the persecution of Jews. When the new right-wing president, Jacques Chirac, came to power, he immediately condemned Vichy as a criminal regime and two years later the Catholic Church publicly asked for forgiveness for its failure to protect the Jews.
But the most significant step forward was the trial in 1997 of Maurice Papon, 89, for crimes concerning the deportation of Jews from Bordeaux. He had served as a cabinet minister after the war, before losing a 16-year legal battle to avoid trial. He was released from jail because of poor health, but his ten-year prison sentence has been interpreted as official recognition of French complicity in the Holocaust, although there are still those who continue to defend his actions.
Since the trial, France has opened up hidden archives and offered compensation to survivors - and ensured that schools, where history manuals used not to mention France's part in the deportations, now have compulsory lessons on Vichy persecution. While anti-Semitism is still a social problem in France, there is no official discrimination, and today's 600,000-strong Jewish community is represented at every level of the establishment, including in the Catholic Church, where the Archbishop of Paris is Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger.
In 1942, while on the run from the French police, Lustiger converted to Catholicism, but three years later was told that his mother had died in the Auschwitz gas chambers. It seems fitting that he presently (June 2003) occupies such an important position within French society.
February 17, 2022
I can鈥檛 believe I hadn鈥檛 read this story before -
It鈥檚 really sad, with mysterious history.
It鈥檚 both tragic, and compelling鈥攈aunting and beautifully gripping.
Dora is a teen Jewish girl in Paris during the German occupation鈥�.
she ran away to a Catholic school, anticipating it to be
a safe place to hide.
Modiano brings Dora and all those who disappeared to life鈥�
an unforgettable story that feels so very real.
Part memoir- part history- and part journalist commentary. Lots of mixed emotions and thoughts.
鈥淚 remember experiencing for the first time that sense of emptiness that comes with a knowledge of what has been destroyed, razed to the ground. As yet, I was ignorant of the existence of Dora Bruder鈥�.
鈥淎nd suddenly, you have a sensation of vertigo, as if Cosette and Jean Valjean, to escape Javert and his police, have taken a leap into space: Thus far, they have been following real Paris streets, and now, abruptly, Victor Hugo thrusts then into the imaginary district of Paris that he calls Petit Picpus. It is the same sense of strangess that overcomes you when you find yourself walking through and unfamiliar district in a dream. On walking, you realize, little by little, that the pattern of it streets had overlaid the one with which, in daytime, you are familiar鈥�.
鈥淎nd here is what disturbs me: at the end of their flight across a district whose topography and street names had been invented by Victor Hugo, Cosette, and Jean Valjean just manage to escape a police patrol by slipping behind a wall. They find themselves in 鈥榓 sort of garden, very large and of singular appearance; one of those gloomy gardens which seem to be made to be seen in the winter and at night鈥�. The garden where the pair hide is that of a convent, which victor Hugo situates precisely at number 62 Rue Du Petit-Picpus, The same address as that of the Saint-Coeur-de-Marie school where Dora was a boarder鈥�.
鈥淟ike many writers before me, I believe in coincidence and, sometimes, in the novelist鈥檚 gift for clairvoyance鈥攖he word 鈥榞ift鈥� not being the exact term, for it implies a kind of superiority. No, it simply comes with the profession: the imaginative leaps this requires, the need to fix your mind on all points of detail鈥攖o the point of obsession, in fact鈥攕o as not to lose the thread and give into the natural laziness鈥攁ll this tension, this cerebral exercise well lead in the long run to 鈥榝lashes of intuition concerning events past and future鈥�, as the Larousse dictionary puts it, under the heading 鈥榗lairvoyance鈥欌€�.
鈥淧erhaps, like my father, the unknown girl had escaped the common fate in store for them. I believe that she will always remain anonymous, like all those shadowy figures arrested that night. The Jewish Affairs police having destroyed their files, there are no records of arrests made during a round up, nor of individuals picked up on the street鈥�.
Had Patrick not been there to record the history 鈥� there would be no trace of the unidentified girls presence.
鈥淲hat that child taught me is that said true roots Parisian slang lie in its sad tenderness. This phrase evokes Dora Bruder for me so well that I feel I knew her. The children with Polish or Russian or Rumanian names who were forced to wear the yellow star, we鈥檙e so Parisian That they merged effortlessly into facades, The apartment blocks, the sidewalks, the infinite shades of gray that belong to Paris alone. Like Dora Bruder, they all spoke with the Parisian accent, using a slang who鈥檚 sad tenderness Jean Genet had recognized鈥�.
鈥淚 shall never know how she spent her days, where she hid, and who鈥檚 company she passed the winter months ever first escape, for the few weeks of spring when she escaped for a second time. That is her secret. A poor and precious secret that not even the executioners, the decrees, The occupying authorities, the Depot, the barracks, the camps, History, time鈥� everything that defiles and destroys you鈥� have been able to take away from her鈥�.
A small magnificent book.
It鈥檚 really sad, with mysterious history.
It鈥檚 both tragic, and compelling鈥攈aunting and beautifully gripping.
Dora is a teen Jewish girl in Paris during the German occupation鈥�.
she ran away to a Catholic school, anticipating it to be
a safe place to hide.
Modiano brings Dora and all those who disappeared to life鈥�
an unforgettable story that feels so very real.
Part memoir- part history- and part journalist commentary. Lots of mixed emotions and thoughts.
鈥淚 remember experiencing for the first time that sense of emptiness that comes with a knowledge of what has been destroyed, razed to the ground. As yet, I was ignorant of the existence of Dora Bruder鈥�.
鈥淎nd suddenly, you have a sensation of vertigo, as if Cosette and Jean Valjean, to escape Javert and his police, have taken a leap into space: Thus far, they have been following real Paris streets, and now, abruptly, Victor Hugo thrusts then into the imaginary district of Paris that he calls Petit Picpus. It is the same sense of strangess that overcomes you when you find yourself walking through and unfamiliar district in a dream. On walking, you realize, little by little, that the pattern of it streets had overlaid the one with which, in daytime, you are familiar鈥�.
鈥淎nd here is what disturbs me: at the end of their flight across a district whose topography and street names had been invented by Victor Hugo, Cosette, and Jean Valjean just manage to escape a police patrol by slipping behind a wall. They find themselves in 鈥榓 sort of garden, very large and of singular appearance; one of those gloomy gardens which seem to be made to be seen in the winter and at night鈥�. The garden where the pair hide is that of a convent, which victor Hugo situates precisely at number 62 Rue Du Petit-Picpus, The same address as that of the Saint-Coeur-de-Marie school where Dora was a boarder鈥�.
鈥淟ike many writers before me, I believe in coincidence and, sometimes, in the novelist鈥檚 gift for clairvoyance鈥攖he word 鈥榞ift鈥� not being the exact term, for it implies a kind of superiority. No, it simply comes with the profession: the imaginative leaps this requires, the need to fix your mind on all points of detail鈥攖o the point of obsession, in fact鈥攕o as not to lose the thread and give into the natural laziness鈥攁ll this tension, this cerebral exercise well lead in the long run to 鈥榝lashes of intuition concerning events past and future鈥�, as the Larousse dictionary puts it, under the heading 鈥榗lairvoyance鈥欌€�.
鈥淧erhaps, like my father, the unknown girl had escaped the common fate in store for them. I believe that she will always remain anonymous, like all those shadowy figures arrested that night. The Jewish Affairs police having destroyed their files, there are no records of arrests made during a round up, nor of individuals picked up on the street鈥�.
Had Patrick not been there to record the history 鈥� there would be no trace of the unidentified girls presence.
鈥淲hat that child taught me is that said true roots Parisian slang lie in its sad tenderness. This phrase evokes Dora Bruder for me so well that I feel I knew her. The children with Polish or Russian or Rumanian names who were forced to wear the yellow star, we鈥檙e so Parisian That they merged effortlessly into facades, The apartment blocks, the sidewalks, the infinite shades of gray that belong to Paris alone. Like Dora Bruder, they all spoke with the Parisian accent, using a slang who鈥檚 sad tenderness Jean Genet had recognized鈥�.
鈥淚 shall never know how she spent her days, where she hid, and who鈥檚 company she passed the winter months ever first escape, for the few weeks of spring when she escaped for a second time. That is her secret. A poor and precious secret that not even the executioners, the decrees, The occupying authorities, the Depot, the barracks, the camps, History, time鈥� everything that defiles and destroys you鈥� have been able to take away from her鈥�.
A small magnificent book.
October 24, 2015
I had decided not to read Modiano for sentimental reasons many years ago. And then there was the Nobel Prize.I read "Pour que tu ne te perdes..." and I found that it was really well. I promised myself of all read of him. I bought 3 books of him today. I begin with Dora.
At the beginning there is a simple classified ads in a newspaper of 1941. Dora Bruder made a running away. Dora, a rebellious teenager. Modiano decides to inquire into her life. He visits the places where she has lived, walks on her traces. Dora becomes a kind of obsession.
The life of Dora mingles with the history of Modiano. This book makes me think of Yourcenar "Archive of north" when the private is close to History with H. Dora seems the double of Modiano. He could had have the same destiny. Modiano goes much further. With this book, he gives life to the friends of Dora, captives , those which will go in concentration camp. Modiano take their from the nothingness where the Nazis had wanted to lock up them. By naming these phantoms, he gives to them an eternity. He makes an act of resistance. Power of literature.
At the beginning there is a simple classified ads in a newspaper of 1941. Dora Bruder made a running away. Dora, a rebellious teenager. Modiano decides to inquire into her life. He visits the places where she has lived, walks on her traces. Dora becomes a kind of obsession.
The life of Dora mingles with the history of Modiano. This book makes me think of Yourcenar "Archive of north" when the private is close to History with H. Dora seems the double of Modiano. He could had have the same destiny. Modiano goes much further. With this book, he gives life to the friends of Dora, captives , those which will go in concentration camp. Modiano take their from the nothingness where the Nazis had wanted to lock up them. By naming these phantoms, he gives to them an eternity. He makes an act of resistance. Power of literature.
February 10, 2015
Custode del tempo
Secondo libro consecutivo che leggo di Modiano; lettura stimolata da quella breve ma intensa de 芦L'orizzonte禄 e dall'approssimarsi del giorno della memoria, e quindi dalla mia decisione di leggere sempre, in quei giorni, almeno un libro che parli e ricordi la Shoah.
Ma se la prima era stata una lettura inconsapevole - di Modiano sapevo solo che aveva vinto il premio Nobel per la Letteratura e che era uno scrittore ebreo francese - prima di iniziare 芦Dora Bruder禄 ho preferito leggere qualche nota biografica e, soprattutto, il bellissimo discorso tenuto in occasione della premiazione.
Il secondo mi 猫 servito per cercare di far luce in quella magnifica nebulosa* che sono Modiano e la sua scrittura, il primo per meglio individuare, e osservare con pi霉 attenzione, la costante presenza della figura del padre - forse accusato di collaborazionismo, ma per il quale l'autore, che esprime sempre condanna assoluta nei confronti di quanto 猫 stato fatto in Francia ai danni degli ebrei, riesce a conservare una carezza, ad avere un moto di tenerezza e comprensione filiale.
Dora Bruder, per noi, 猫 subito la ragazza giovanissima, sorridente, dall'aria sbarazzina in copertina.
Per Patrick Modiano, Dora Bruder, 猫 l'incontro che avviene, quasi per caso, su un vecchio numero di Paris-Soir del 31 dicembre 1941, sulla rubrica di terza pagina: 芦PARIGI Si cerca una ragazza di 15 anni. Dora Bruder, m. 1,55, volto ovale, occhi castano-grigi, cappotto sportivo grigio, pullover bordeaux, gonna e cappello blu marina, scarpe sportive color marrone. Inviare eventuali informazioni ai coniugi Bruder, 41 boulevard Ornano, Parigi.禄
Quell'incontro, casuale e folgorante, 猫 l'inizio di una ricerca volta a colmare un'assenza bruciante, il vuoto della solitudine interiore, quella sensazione di essere solo 芦sotto quella spessa coltre di amnesia.禄 - 芦Ho la sensazione di essere il solo a reggere il filo che collega la Parigi di quell'epoca a quella di oggi, il solo che si ricordi di tutti questi particolari. A volte, il filo si assottiglia e rischia di rompersi, altre sere la citt脿 di ieri mi appare con riflessi furtivi dietro quella di oggi.禄
La scrittura di Modiano 猫 lenta, ipnotica, come lento e ipnotico 猫 il suo girovagare per i luoghi del passato di Dora Bruder e per quegli stessi luoghi, nel suo passato di ragazzo, di uomo, di adulto; lento e ipnotico nel cercare di catalizzare i flussi della memoria, di scandagliarli, di catalogarli, nella speraranza di riuscire a trovare il bandolo della matassa di quella vita di cui non si hanno pi霉 tracce continue, ma solo intermittenti, di restituirla con urgenza all'eternit脿.
Perch茅 Dora Bruder scompare, irrequieta e ribelle, riappare senza che nulla e nessuno possano dire come e perch茅, scompare di nuovo, per poi tornare a essere, molti anni dopo, solo un nome che, insieme a quello del padre, compare nell'elenco di un gruppo di ebrei catturati per le strade di Parigi, che la vede trasportata dal campo di Drancy ad Auschwitz, il 18 settembre 1942.
Poi pi霉 nulla, il nulla, solo un'assenza che 猫 un vuoto incavo, un'interruzione, che 猫 la stessa delle splendide pagine di Modiano: improvvisa, lacerante, solo un'impronta che non smette di bruciare sulla pelle dell'autore, che marchia a fuoco anche chi legge, come me, che all'improvviso, nel terribile non detto, legge, in quella piccola vita spezzata, tutta la tragedia dell'Olocausto.
Anche se, scrive con commovente emozione Modiano, il suo segreto, quello delle sue due fughe, rester脿 per sempre 芦il suo povero e prezioso segreto禄, quello che nemmeno 芦i carnefici, le ordinanze, le autorit脿 cosiddette di occupazione, il Deposito, le caserme, i campi, la Storia, il tempo - tutto ci貌 che insozza e distrugge - non sono riusciti a rubarle.禄
Vorrei dire, per concludere, che questo lento girovagare, questa geografia dell'anima che si disegna attraverso la toponomastica parigina delle strade, dei palazzi, dei giardini, questo aggirarsi solitario per luoghi dove non c'猫 pi霉 traccia di nulla, meno che meno di quello che 猫 stato e che 猫 solo una vergogna da tacere e da nascondere, questo taccuino che annota meticolosamente, conserva, tramanda, tutti questi incontri fortuiti ma cercati, questi incroci dove qualcuno ha incontrato qualcun altro, oppure l'ha solo sfiorato, guardato senza vederlo, o anche solo intravisto di schiena; beh, questo ricordare, ma soprattutto questa urgenza del cercare, cercare di svelare per restituire alla vita e salvare dall'obl矛o, mi ha fatto pensare a un'altra scrittura - diversa, molto pi霉 complessa, ma alla fine vicina nell'intento - a un altro girovagare dell'anima, che 猫 quello di chi amava, attraverso l'architettura dei luoghi, viaggiare nei meandri della memoria; un altro viaggiare attraverso il tempo, che 猫 quello lacerante di Winfried G. Sebald.
芦Si dice che se non altro i luoghi serbano una lieve impronta delle persone che li hanno abitati. Per Ernst e C茅cile Bruder, per Dora, dir貌: incavato. Ho provato una sensazione di assenza e di vuoto ogni volta che mi sono trovato in un posto in cui avevano vissuto.禄
(*) Formazione celeste che, all'osservazione dalla Terra, appare come una nuvola pi霉 o meno luminosa, costituita da un ammasso di stelle, sostanze gassose e pulviscolo cosmico
27 gennaio 2015
Una delle tante iniziative per non dimenticare
Secondo libro consecutivo che leggo di Modiano; lettura stimolata da quella breve ma intensa de 芦L'orizzonte禄 e dall'approssimarsi del giorno della memoria, e quindi dalla mia decisione di leggere sempre, in quei giorni, almeno un libro che parli e ricordi la Shoah.
Ma se la prima era stata una lettura inconsapevole - di Modiano sapevo solo che aveva vinto il premio Nobel per la Letteratura e che era uno scrittore ebreo francese - prima di iniziare 芦Dora Bruder禄 ho preferito leggere qualche nota biografica e, soprattutto, il bellissimo discorso tenuto in occasione della premiazione.
Il secondo mi 猫 servito per cercare di far luce in quella magnifica nebulosa* che sono Modiano e la sua scrittura, il primo per meglio individuare, e osservare con pi霉 attenzione, la costante presenza della figura del padre - forse accusato di collaborazionismo, ma per il quale l'autore, che esprime sempre condanna assoluta nei confronti di quanto 猫 stato fatto in Francia ai danni degli ebrei, riesce a conservare una carezza, ad avere un moto di tenerezza e comprensione filiale.
Dora Bruder, per noi, 猫 subito la ragazza giovanissima, sorridente, dall'aria sbarazzina in copertina.
Per Patrick Modiano, Dora Bruder, 猫 l'incontro che avviene, quasi per caso, su un vecchio numero di Paris-Soir del 31 dicembre 1941, sulla rubrica di terza pagina: 芦PARIGI Si cerca una ragazza di 15 anni. Dora Bruder, m. 1,55, volto ovale, occhi castano-grigi, cappotto sportivo grigio, pullover bordeaux, gonna e cappello blu marina, scarpe sportive color marrone. Inviare eventuali informazioni ai coniugi Bruder, 41 boulevard Ornano, Parigi.禄
Quell'incontro, casuale e folgorante, 猫 l'inizio di una ricerca volta a colmare un'assenza bruciante, il vuoto della solitudine interiore, quella sensazione di essere solo 芦sotto quella spessa coltre di amnesia.禄 - 芦Ho la sensazione di essere il solo a reggere il filo che collega la Parigi di quell'epoca a quella di oggi, il solo che si ricordi di tutti questi particolari. A volte, il filo si assottiglia e rischia di rompersi, altre sere la citt脿 di ieri mi appare con riflessi furtivi dietro quella di oggi.禄
La scrittura di Modiano 猫 lenta, ipnotica, come lento e ipnotico 猫 il suo girovagare per i luoghi del passato di Dora Bruder e per quegli stessi luoghi, nel suo passato di ragazzo, di uomo, di adulto; lento e ipnotico nel cercare di catalizzare i flussi della memoria, di scandagliarli, di catalogarli, nella speraranza di riuscire a trovare il bandolo della matassa di quella vita di cui non si hanno pi霉 tracce continue, ma solo intermittenti, di restituirla con urgenza all'eternit脿.
Perch茅 Dora Bruder scompare, irrequieta e ribelle, riappare senza che nulla e nessuno possano dire come e perch茅, scompare di nuovo, per poi tornare a essere, molti anni dopo, solo un nome che, insieme a quello del padre, compare nell'elenco di un gruppo di ebrei catturati per le strade di Parigi, che la vede trasportata dal campo di Drancy ad Auschwitz, il 18 settembre 1942.
Poi pi霉 nulla, il nulla, solo un'assenza che 猫 un vuoto incavo, un'interruzione, che 猫 la stessa delle splendide pagine di Modiano: improvvisa, lacerante, solo un'impronta che non smette di bruciare sulla pelle dell'autore, che marchia a fuoco anche chi legge, come me, che all'improvviso, nel terribile non detto, legge, in quella piccola vita spezzata, tutta la tragedia dell'Olocausto.
Anche se, scrive con commovente emozione Modiano, il suo segreto, quello delle sue due fughe, rester脿 per sempre 芦il suo povero e prezioso segreto禄, quello che nemmeno 芦i carnefici, le ordinanze, le autorit脿 cosiddette di occupazione, il Deposito, le caserme, i campi, la Storia, il tempo - tutto ci貌 che insozza e distrugge - non sono riusciti a rubarle.禄
Vorrei dire, per concludere, che questo lento girovagare, questa geografia dell'anima che si disegna attraverso la toponomastica parigina delle strade, dei palazzi, dei giardini, questo aggirarsi solitario per luoghi dove non c'猫 pi霉 traccia di nulla, meno che meno di quello che 猫 stato e che 猫 solo una vergogna da tacere e da nascondere, questo taccuino che annota meticolosamente, conserva, tramanda, tutti questi incontri fortuiti ma cercati, questi incroci dove qualcuno ha incontrato qualcun altro, oppure l'ha solo sfiorato, guardato senza vederlo, o anche solo intravisto di schiena; beh, questo ricordare, ma soprattutto questa urgenza del cercare, cercare di svelare per restituire alla vita e salvare dall'obl矛o, mi ha fatto pensare a un'altra scrittura - diversa, molto pi霉 complessa, ma alla fine vicina nell'intento - a un altro girovagare dell'anima, che 猫 quello di chi amava, attraverso l'architettura dei luoghi, viaggiare nei meandri della memoria; un altro viaggiare attraverso il tempo, che 猫 quello lacerante di Winfried G. Sebald.
芦Si dice che se non altro i luoghi serbano una lieve impronta delle persone che li hanno abitati. Per Ernst e C茅cile Bruder, per Dora, dir貌: incavato. Ho provato una sensazione di assenza e di vuoto ogni volta che mi sono trovato in un posto in cui avevano vissuto.禄
(*) Formazione celeste che, all'osservazione dalla Terra, appare come una nuvola pi霉 o meno luminosa, costituita da un ammasso di stelle, sostanze gassose e pulviscolo cosmico
27 gennaio 2015
Una delle tante iniziative per non dimenticare
December 4, 2020
One afternoon in 1988, Modiano stumbled across an ad for a missing girl, Dora Bruder, in the personal columns of a copy of Paris-Soir dated December 31, 1941. Something鈥攖he strange precision of the details mentioned in the ad, perhaps鈥攃aptivated Modiano's attention, leading him on a search to find out what happened to her, this echo of a girl who went missing nearly five decades ago.
Paris has been rebuilt, and the once meticulous documentation and abundant sites of the crimes it witnessed destroyed, its perpetrators melted into the shadows, so that no matter how much he uncovers and surmises, the narrator is unable to fill certain gaps in his knowledge of Dora Bruder's fate and is cut off from the physical traces of that bitter time by their deliberate obliteration. What he is left with is empty space to fill with himself, aware deeply that it is only timing, sheer timing, that saved him鈥擜 French Jew鈥攆rom the kind of fate suffered by Bruder, her family, and the flicker of other lives that he finds amidst the scant, odd official documentation left behind.
Throughout this book, what we鈥攁nd Modiano himself鈥攁re faced with is a sense of being suspended amidst heaviness and raw emotion, being denied the chance to grasp the past fully, feeling around the edges of an unattainable catharsis. Indeed, this is how history works for most people, from the victims of war to the subjects of coloniality. What is lost is tragically out of reach. And yet there are flashes of unambiguous detail: in the newspaper ad about Dora Bruder, and in the almost tiresome precision with which Modiano describes the Paris that he does know and remember in place of one that we can never really understand.
The Search Warrant may deceive many as simple, even simplistic: it is a very short book, 137 pages that can be read within hours and summarised in a handful of lines. It is composed considerably of meanderings and accompanied by extracts from official documents. Yet, there is so much that Modiano says without saying a lot, so much to haunt the reader while, and after, turning the covers. Even in his failure to grasp what has been lost, Modiano manages to strike at the very heart of the reader.
In their citation for awarding Modiano the Nobel Prize in Literature, the prize committee referred especially to "the art of memory with which he has evoked the most ungraspable human destinies and uncovered the life-world of the occupation." That just about cuts it.
But why bother looking for her鈥攖his girl who was in all likelihood dead? What was the point; what would he achieve on tracing the empty space where her life may once have stood?"Missing, a young girl, Dora Bruder, 15, height 1.55m, oval-shaped face, grey-brown eyes, grey sports jacket, maroon pullover, navy blue skirt and hat, brown gym shoes. All information to M. And Mme Bruder, 41 Boulevard Ornano, Paris."
"In writing this book, I am sending out signals, like a lighthouse beacon in whose power to illuminate I have, alas, no faith. But I live in hope."What Modiano is looking for in the haunting investigation that makes The Search Warrant is memory鈥攏ot only that of one 15-year-old Jewish girl who went missing at the height of German reprisals in Vichy France, but of the city of Paris as it was under the occupation. He is looking, too, for the vestiges of his own past, uncovering the haunting parallels that connect Dora's life with those that him and his family have led. What he finds, instead, is emptiness.
"I remember wandering for hours through the vastness of that hospital in search of [my father]. I found my way into ancient buildings, into communal wards lined with beds, I questioned nurses who gave me contradictory directions, I came to doubt my father's existence, passing and re-passing that majestic church, and those spectral buildings, unchanged since the seventeenth century, which, for me, evoke Manon Lescaut and the era when, under the sinister appelation "Generat Hospital", the place was used as a prison for prostitutes awaiting deportation to Louisiana. I tramped the cobblestoned courtyards till dusk. It was impossible to find my father. I never saw him again."This quote, which on the face of it has nothing to do with the topic at hand, manages to capture chillingly well the fear, failure, confusion and claustrophobia of the decade-long search Modiano set out for, of trying to retrace a past that has been systematically razed, erased, and built over with "cement the colour of amnesia" to free the city of its guilty conscience (I keep coming back to this phrase: what we cement with new realities and landscapes, physical or psychological, is the distance between them and what we're trying to replace. 'Cementing' is therefore always an act of burial).
Paris has been rebuilt, and the once meticulous documentation and abundant sites of the crimes it witnessed destroyed, its perpetrators melted into the shadows, so that no matter how much he uncovers and surmises, the narrator is unable to fill certain gaps in his knowledge of Dora Bruder's fate and is cut off from the physical traces of that bitter time by their deliberate obliteration. What he is left with is empty space to fill with himself, aware deeply that it is only timing, sheer timing, that saved him鈥擜 French Jew鈥攆rom the kind of fate suffered by Bruder, her family, and the flicker of other lives that he finds amidst the scant, odd official documentation left behind.
Throughout this book, what we鈥攁nd Modiano himself鈥攁re faced with is a sense of being suspended amidst heaviness and raw emotion, being denied the chance to grasp the past fully, feeling around the edges of an unattainable catharsis. Indeed, this is how history works for most people, from the victims of war to the subjects of coloniality. What is lost is tragically out of reach. And yet there are flashes of unambiguous detail: in the newspaper ad about Dora Bruder, and in the almost tiresome precision with which Modiano describes the Paris that he does know and remember in place of one that we can never really understand.
The Search Warrant may deceive many as simple, even simplistic: it is a very short book, 137 pages that can be read within hours and summarised in a handful of lines. It is composed considerably of meanderings and accompanied by extracts from official documents. Yet, there is so much that Modiano says without saying a lot, so much to haunt the reader while, and after, turning the covers. Even in his failure to grasp what has been lost, Modiano manages to strike at the very heart of the reader.
In their citation for awarding Modiano the Nobel Prize in Literature, the prize committee referred especially to "the art of memory with which he has evoked the most ungraspable human destinies and uncovered the life-world of the occupation." That just about cuts it.
December 10, 2015
Fifteen-year-old Dora Bruder didn't survive the Holocaust. Neither did her mother or father.
Forget the heroic stories of the French Resistance. Here is the true face of France during World War 2.
At no point in this brief, tragic book did poor Dora Bruder, lost to the conflagration of the Holocaust, come into contact with Germans. Not until the doors of the train she was riding in opened in Auschwitz, that is.
A French policeman randomly stopped her on the street to check if she was Jewish; a French policeman registered her name on a list of Jews in France; A French policeman sent her to a holding pen for Jews; a French policeman signed papers that transferred her to Drancy; French policemen put her in a train headed for Auschwitz and bolted the door.
None of these Frenchman would have gassed her themselves, I am sure. But each of them was willing to register her name in a book, to fill out a form, to write her name on an index card, to pass a defenseless teenage girl on to the next office, the next department, a process that ended in the gas chamber.
After the war, the French destroyed almost every paper and piece of evidence connecting them to these horrifying and shameful crimes against humanity. They even tore down the run-down neighborhood where Dora, and others like her, lived. Fortunately, a few files escaped notice, which is why Patrick Modiano was able to reconstruct these glimpses into one ordinary Jewish girl's catastrophe.
Dora Bruder will tell you all you need to know about the banality of evil.
Forget the heroic stories of the French Resistance. Here is the true face of France during World War 2.
At no point in this brief, tragic book did poor Dora Bruder, lost to the conflagration of the Holocaust, come into contact with Germans. Not until the doors of the train she was riding in opened in Auschwitz, that is.
A French policeman randomly stopped her on the street to check if she was Jewish; a French policeman registered her name on a list of Jews in France; A French policeman sent her to a holding pen for Jews; a French policeman signed papers that transferred her to Drancy; French policemen put her in a train headed for Auschwitz and bolted the door.
None of these Frenchman would have gassed her themselves, I am sure. But each of them was willing to register her name in a book, to fill out a form, to write her name on an index card, to pass a defenseless teenage girl on to the next office, the next department, a process that ended in the gas chamber.
After the war, the French destroyed almost every paper and piece of evidence connecting them to these horrifying and shameful crimes against humanity. They even tore down the run-down neighborhood where Dora, and others like her, lived. Fortunately, a few files escaped notice, which is why Patrick Modiano was able to reconstruct these glimpses into one ordinary Jewish girl's catastrophe.
Dora Bruder will tell you all you need to know about the banality of evil.
February 24, 2015
While reading , I was so strongly reminded of the films of Alain Resnais that I went back and watched a few of them. I drew out the resonances in . Here I will simply say that Modiano's fiction addresses the same gaps in memory as Resnais's film Muriel, or the time of return, locating these lacunae in an actual place in much the same way that the bombed-out city of Boulogne was employed by the director to suggest impermanence. Poet Jean Cayrol, the screenwriter of Muriel (he also wrote the narration for Night and Fog) said that he situated the story in Boulogne, "despite Resnais鈥檚 doubts, because Boulogne is also a town after a drama. There are two towns, the old one spared by the war and the reconstructed town, the topography of which the old inhabitants cannot recognize鈥� As the town plasters over the effects of the war, so do the inhabitants."
In all of his works, Modiano keeps returning to the Parisian neighborhoods from which Jews were deported in the war, or vaguely remembered buildings he visited or resided in as a child. Walking these streets some years later, the narrator of Dora Bruder finds "nothing but a wasteland, itself surrounded by half-demolished walls. On these walls, open to the sky," he continues, "you could still make out the patterned paper of what was once a bedroom . . ." Modiano's lacunae arise from a different source than Resnais's. Too young to remember the Occupation, but aware of the taint it has left on French history and on his family history (Modiano's father dealt in the Black Market and may well have had dealings with the Gestapo), he attempts to fill in the gaps through repeated acts of the imagination. And yet he will not allow these imaginative recreations to endure. In an earlier novel, Voyage des noces, Modiano provided an insight into his motivations for telling stories that dissolve the moment they are held up to the light.
In all of his works, Modiano keeps returning to the Parisian neighborhoods from which Jews were deported in the war, or vaguely remembered buildings he visited or resided in as a child. Walking these streets some years later, the narrator of Dora Bruder finds "nothing but a wasteland, itself surrounded by half-demolished walls. On these walls, open to the sky," he continues, "you could still make out the patterned paper of what was once a bedroom . . ." Modiano's lacunae arise from a different source than Resnais's. Too young to remember the Occupation, but aware of the taint it has left on French history and on his family history (Modiano's father dealt in the Black Market and may well have had dealings with the Gestapo), he attempts to fill in the gaps through repeated acts of the imagination. And yet he will not allow these imaginative recreations to endure. In an earlier novel, Voyage des noces, Modiano provided an insight into his motivations for telling stories that dissolve the moment they are held up to the light.
One feels the need to transmit, not one鈥檚 experience, but simply some of those disparate details connected by an invisible thread which is threatening to break, and which we call the course of a life.Here Modiano maps Dora's brief life onto his own, just for a moment, until the thread breaks.
August 24, 2016
The Known and the Unknown
I really wanted to quote the final paragraph of Modiano's novel, which is infinitely more moving in its simplicity than anything that comes before. But I will desist, and leave it for the reader to discover鈥攏ot because it gives away secrets, but because it does the opposite, preserving a secret for all time. It is the one gift he can offer to the tragic subject of his writing, a teenage Jewish girl living in Paris at the time of the German Occupation.
So failing that, let me come upon it obliquely, as Modiano himself does. Near the beginning of his book, the author recalls visiting the hospital of the Salp锚tri猫re in search of his ailing father, whom he had not seen for many years:
Like his Prix Goncourt novel, , but unlike his recently translated trilogy , I read this in French, and feel it was absolutely essential to do so. Not for Modiano's style, which is direct rather than literary in tone, but the number of original documents he uncovers, whose untranslatable bureaucratic language treats the management of horror as a day's normal business. Modiano's trigger is a mention in a 1941 newspaper that a 15-year-old schoolgirl named Dora Bruder has disappeared. The author knows the area in which her family lived, and revisits the once-familiar streets to soak in the atmosphere. I read with Google Maps zoomed in to various areas of Paris, walking vicariously through the unfamiliar quartiers, imagining how they must have felt in 1941. What intrigues him is that Dora's disappearance does not coincide with the round-ups of French Jews, which did not begin until later the following year. So why did she vanish?
Indefatigably, he looks through records, searching for information. And remarkably, he finds a lot. Unlike the other four Modiano books I have read, which work obliquely by mystery and suggestion, this one is almost full-frontal; it is Modiano's simplest book, and arguably his greatest. There is no question what ultimately happened to Dora Bruder, and the details make painful reading. Fact after fact after fact, not revealed in order, but squeezing Dora's life between them as in a slowly closing trap. Soon, there are no secrets left. Except one鈥攁nd that is the stroke of poetry that turns this painstaking history into a work of art.
With so much fact, is this a novel at all? Yes; the story is in the search, the searcher, and his ultimate failure. You can see Modiano looking at this material, feeling there must be a novel here, if only he can research the facts and then apply his imagination to the rest. Well, the facts he has, and empathy aplenty. But he doesn't write that novel; he will not use his imagination to fictionalize her. To rob her of the secrets of those missing months would be the greatest obscenity of all.
======
It is pure chance, but this novel chimes in interesting ways with a several other European books that I have been reading, in some cases within the last few days:
by Jenny Erpenbeck, who follows a Jewish character very much like Dora's parents. She was born in Galicia at around the same time, then fled to Vienna, then fled again, although Erpenbeck then takes her East rather than West. If, as seems likely, Erpenbeck's book is about a real person, it is another instance of an author using an idiosyncratic technique to reflect a real life in significant vignettes.
by Jenny Erpenbeck. In some ways, Erpenbeck's earlier novel is even closer, in that it focuses as Modiano's does on the history of buildings鈥攊n this case, a single house by a lake in Brandenburg鈥攍eading to the capture of a young Jewish girl, an actual victim and the one named character in her whole novel.
by W. G. Sebald. This is the classic example of the use of cultural archaeology to examine a Holocaust-related subject. Sebald uses old prints and photographs to assemble apparently irrelevant scraps of architectural and military history that eventually all converge on the story of one Jewish boy sent away from Germany on a Kindertransport. Sebald also parallels Modiano's technique of walking the ground himself to imbibe its atmosphere.
by Laurent Binet. Binet's novel about the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, the Protector of Bohemia and architect of the Final Solution, follows Modiano's approach of marshaling an overwhelming set of true historical facts (at least, I assume that Modiano's are true). In both cases, the "novel" is the story of the author uncovering these facts, rather than the history they tell. Compared to Binet, though, Modiano is cooler and far less flamboyant, even though his personal connection to these events (through his curiosity about his father's past) is that much more personal.
by Wolf Haas. Unlike the other books, this is relatively trivial and has nothing to do with the Holocaust. But its unusual approach got me thinking. It is not a novel itself, but an interview between the author and a literary critic about some novel that he is supposed to have written. It was thinking of Haas as writing what you might call an AfterNovel that made me see Modiano as writing a PreNovel. All the time assembling his facts and querying his own recollections, as though saying, "There is a novel in here somewhere, if only I can bring my imagination and empathy to bear." Well, there are facts and empathy aplenty, but the novel as such never gets written. And that is the entire point.
======
*
The cover photograph of the Folio edition, a shot by Ren茅 Jacques from about the same period, is almost identical to one described in the book:
I really wanted to quote the final paragraph of Modiano's novel, which is infinitely more moving in its simplicity than anything that comes before. But I will desist, and leave it for the reader to discover鈥攏ot because it gives away secrets, but because it does the opposite, preserving a secret for all time. It is the one gift he can offer to the tragic subject of his writing, a teenage Jewish girl living in Paris at the time of the German Occupation.
So failing that, let me come upon it obliquely, as Modiano himself does. Near the beginning of his book, the author recalls visiting the hospital of the Salp锚tri猫re in search of his ailing father, whom he had not seen for many years:
I remember having wandered for hours through the immensity of this vast hospital, looking for him. I went into ancient buildings, passed through wards lined with beds, and questioned nurses who gave me contradictory information. I ended almost doubting my father's very existence as I walked back and forth in front of that majestic church and those unreal buildings, unchanged since the 18th century. They made me think of Manon Lescaut and the time when they served as a prison for prostitutes, under the sinister name of General Hospital, before they were deported to Louisiana. I must have pounded those paved courtyards until dusk. I never saw my father again. [translation mine]This paragraph has nothing to do with Modiano's main subject, which is to trace the last months of this girl before her eventual capture. And yet it has everything to do with his motivation and method. It could be said that his entire oeuvre has to do with the search for his father and his failure to find him鈥攐r at least to understand how he could have survived the Occupation as a Jew, unless as a black-marketeer and collaborator with the Germans. His method of inserting himself into the settings of his story, his precise accumulation of detail, his command of the parallels with history and literature, make him into an archaeologist of shame, very much in the manner of W. G. Sebald, though with documents in place of photographs. The one exception is the winter scene on the cover of this Gallimard edition, which sums up the desolate atmosphere of the book in a single shot.*
Like his Prix Goncourt novel, , but unlike his recently translated trilogy , I read this in French, and feel it was absolutely essential to do so. Not for Modiano's style, which is direct rather than literary in tone, but the number of original documents he uncovers, whose untranslatable bureaucratic language treats the management of horror as a day's normal business. Modiano's trigger is a mention in a 1941 newspaper that a 15-year-old schoolgirl named Dora Bruder has disappeared. The author knows the area in which her family lived, and revisits the once-familiar streets to soak in the atmosphere. I read with Google Maps zoomed in to various areas of Paris, walking vicariously through the unfamiliar quartiers, imagining how they must have felt in 1941. What intrigues him is that Dora's disappearance does not coincide with the round-ups of French Jews, which did not begin until later the following year. So why did she vanish?
Indefatigably, he looks through records, searching for information. And remarkably, he finds a lot. Unlike the other four Modiano books I have read, which work obliquely by mystery and suggestion, this one is almost full-frontal; it is Modiano's simplest book, and arguably his greatest. There is no question what ultimately happened to Dora Bruder, and the details make painful reading. Fact after fact after fact, not revealed in order, but squeezing Dora's life between them as in a slowly closing trap. Soon, there are no secrets left. Except one鈥攁nd that is the stroke of poetry that turns this painstaking history into a work of art.
With so much fact, is this a novel at all? Yes; the story is in the search, the searcher, and his ultimate failure. You can see Modiano looking at this material, feeling there must be a novel here, if only he can research the facts and then apply his imagination to the rest. Well, the facts he has, and empathy aplenty. But he doesn't write that novel; he will not use his imagination to fictionalize her. To rob her of the secrets of those missing months would be the greatest obscenity of all.
======
It is pure chance, but this novel chimes in interesting ways with a several other European books that I have been reading, in some cases within the last few days:
by Jenny Erpenbeck, who follows a Jewish character very much like Dora's parents. She was born in Galicia at around the same time, then fled to Vienna, then fled again, although Erpenbeck then takes her East rather than West. If, as seems likely, Erpenbeck's book is about a real person, it is another instance of an author using an idiosyncratic technique to reflect a real life in significant vignettes.
by Jenny Erpenbeck. In some ways, Erpenbeck's earlier novel is even closer, in that it focuses as Modiano's does on the history of buildings鈥攊n this case, a single house by a lake in Brandenburg鈥攍eading to the capture of a young Jewish girl, an actual victim and the one named character in her whole novel.
by W. G. Sebald. This is the classic example of the use of cultural archaeology to examine a Holocaust-related subject. Sebald uses old prints and photographs to assemble apparently irrelevant scraps of architectural and military history that eventually all converge on the story of one Jewish boy sent away from Germany on a Kindertransport. Sebald also parallels Modiano's technique of walking the ground himself to imbibe its atmosphere.
by Laurent Binet. Binet's novel about the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, the Protector of Bohemia and architect of the Final Solution, follows Modiano's approach of marshaling an overwhelming set of true historical facts (at least, I assume that Modiano's are true). In both cases, the "novel" is the story of the author uncovering these facts, rather than the history they tell. Compared to Binet, though, Modiano is cooler and far less flamboyant, even though his personal connection to these events (through his curiosity about his father's past) is that much more personal.
by Wolf Haas. Unlike the other books, this is relatively trivial and has nothing to do with the Holocaust. But its unusual approach got me thinking. It is not a novel itself, but an interview between the author and a literary critic about some novel that he is supposed to have written. It was thinking of Haas as writing what you might call an AfterNovel that made me see Modiano as writing a PreNovel. All the time assembling his facts and querying his own recollections, as though saying, "There is a novel in here somewhere, if only I can bring my imagination and empathy to bear." Well, there are facts and empathy aplenty, but the novel as such never gets written. And that is the entire point.
======
*
The cover photograph of the Folio edition, a shot by Ren茅 Jacques from about the same period, is almost identical to one described in the book:
I thought I remembered it from two or three photos, taken in winter: a sort of esplanade with a bus going by. A truck that had stopped, as though for ever. A snowy field, on the edge of which waits a cart with a black horse. And, away in the background, the mist-shrouded bulk of apartment buildings.With passages like these, although there are only a few, who needs photographs?
November 20, 2023
A detta dell鈥檃utore, Patrick Modiano nato nel 1945, l鈥檌dea di questo libro nasce dalla sua occasionale lettura su un vecchio numero del giornale 鈥淧aris Soir鈥� della notizia nel dicembre 1941 della scomparsa di una ragazza ebrea di 15 anni, appunto quella Dora Bruder che d脿 titolo all鈥檕pera.
Chi fosse Dora e perch茅 lo scrittore si sia interessato cos矛 profondamente alle sorti di questa ragazza lo si intuisce dal momento storico in cui il libro 猫 ambientato, quello della seconda guerra mondiale, della infame collaborazione del governo francese di Petain alla Germania che aveva attaccato e conquistato la Francia con una guerra lampo costringendola alla resa e alla partecipazione al 鈥減rogramma鈥� di pulizia etnica, dell鈥檈marginazione degli ebrei dalla comunit脿 e il successivo internamento e trasposto ai 鈥淐ampi di Lavoro鈥�.
Un libro angosciante fin dalla prima pagina, un viaggio tormentoso nel passato che tanti vorrebbero dimenticare o negare, un鈥檌ndagine nella macchina stritolante della soluzione finale che non ha lasciato scampo a nessuno, nemmeno alle ragazze come Dora, recidendo le loro vite come a un fiore che non sboccer脿.
Chi fosse Dora e perch茅 lo scrittore si sia interessato cos矛 profondamente alle sorti di questa ragazza lo si intuisce dal momento storico in cui il libro 猫 ambientato, quello della seconda guerra mondiale, della infame collaborazione del governo francese di Petain alla Germania che aveva attaccato e conquistato la Francia con una guerra lampo costringendola alla resa e alla partecipazione al 鈥減rogramma鈥� di pulizia etnica, dell鈥檈marginazione degli ebrei dalla comunit脿 e il successivo internamento e trasposto ai 鈥淐ampi di Lavoro鈥�.
Un libro angosciante fin dalla prima pagina, un viaggio tormentoso nel passato che tanti vorrebbero dimenticare o negare, un鈥檌ndagine nella macchina stritolante della soluzione finale che non ha lasciato scampo a nessuno, nemmeno alle ragazze come Dora, recidendo le loro vite come a un fiore che non sboccer脿.
March 9, 2016
In einer Zeitungsausgabe aus dem 2. Weltkrieg st枚脽t der Literat Patrick Modiano auf eine Suchanzeige, die von einem j眉dischen Ehepaar in Paris geschaltet wurde. Sie suchten ihre f眉nfzehnj盲hrige Tochter Dora. Dora Bruder. Wer war Dora Bruder und was ist aus ihr geworden? Modiano, den die Besatzungszeit auch im Zusammenhang mit den Erlebnissen seines eigenen, j眉dischen Vaters umtreibt, begibt sich auf die Suche.
Als w盲hrend der Frankfurter Buchmesse 2014 der Literaturnobelpreis an den franz枚sischen Schriftsteller Patrick Modiano vergeben wurde, schaute ich mir am dtv-Stand gleich einmal an, was es so von ihm gibt. Meine Wahl fiel letzten Endes auf dieses Buch, das sich f眉r mich besonders interessant anh枚rte. Entgangen war mir dabei, dass es sich gar nicht um eine Umsetzung des Themas in Romanform handelt, sondern vielmehr um die Schilderung seiner Spurensuche. Das st枚rte mich jedoch auch nicht, es erschwert h枚chstens ein wenig die Einordnung des Werkes in eine bestimmte Kategorie.
Schon auf den ersten Seiten fiel mir ein Aspekt auf, der mich etwas verwirrte: Modiano wechselt scheinbar beliebig zwischen verschiedenen Zeitformen, verwendet in einem Satz das Pr盲teritum, wechselt dann pl枚tzlich in das Pr盲sens, dann in das Perfekt. W盲hrend der weiteren Lekt眉re konnte ich mir eine Theorie aufstellen, was Modiano damit bezweckt, denn sein gro脽es Thema ist die Erinnerung. Ich interpretiere den Wechsel zwischen den Zeiten so, dass Modiano aufzeigen m枚chte, dass die Vergangenheit in der Gegenwart fortbesteht. So unternimmt er beispielsweise viele Spazierg盲nge in dem Viertel, in dem Dora Bruder wohnte, und erz盲hlt dabei nicht nur, was er 眉ber sie herausgefunden hat, sondern auch, wie er selbst das Viertel in Erinnerung hat, welche Erfahrungen seine Familie in dem Viertel gemacht hat und wie er das Viertel heute wahrnimmt.
Modiano bestreitet einen Kampf, den Kampf gegen das Vergessen, jedoch in einer so wunderbaren Sprache, dass das Wort 鈥淜ampf鈥� fehl am Platze scheint:
鈥淚ch habe den Eindruck, der einzige zu sein, der die Verbindung herstellt zwischen dem damaligen Paris und dem heutigen, der einzige, der sich an all diese Einzelheiten erinnert. Mitunter wird dieses Band schw盲cher und l盲uft Gefahr abzurei脽en, an anderen Abenden erscheint mir hinter der Stadt von heute in fl眉chtigen Spiegelbildern jene von gestern.鈥� (Seite 52)
Und gleich auf der n盲chsten Seite:
鈥淒ieses Gef眉hl des Unheimlichen gleicht dem, das einen 眉berf盲llt, wenn man im Traum durch ein unbekanntes Stadtviertel streift. Beim Erwachen wird einem allm盲hlich bewu脽t, da脽 die Stra脽en dieses Viertels von jenen abgepaust waren, die einem im Tageslicht vertraut sind.鈥�
Gegen das Vergessen ank盲mpfen, die Erinnerung aufrechterhalten, das erscheint mir heute wichtiger denn je. Insofern reicht mir dieses eine Buch, um zu begreifen, warum Modiano mit dem Literaturnobelpreis ausgezeichnet wurde. (Trotzdem werde ich nat眉rlich weitere B眉cher von ihm lesen.)
In 鈥淒ora Bruder鈥� bietet er ein besonderes, ungew枚hnliches Leseerlebnis, das mir sehr gefallen hat.
Als w盲hrend der Frankfurter Buchmesse 2014 der Literaturnobelpreis an den franz枚sischen Schriftsteller Patrick Modiano vergeben wurde, schaute ich mir am dtv-Stand gleich einmal an, was es so von ihm gibt. Meine Wahl fiel letzten Endes auf dieses Buch, das sich f眉r mich besonders interessant anh枚rte. Entgangen war mir dabei, dass es sich gar nicht um eine Umsetzung des Themas in Romanform handelt, sondern vielmehr um die Schilderung seiner Spurensuche. Das st枚rte mich jedoch auch nicht, es erschwert h枚chstens ein wenig die Einordnung des Werkes in eine bestimmte Kategorie.
Schon auf den ersten Seiten fiel mir ein Aspekt auf, der mich etwas verwirrte: Modiano wechselt scheinbar beliebig zwischen verschiedenen Zeitformen, verwendet in einem Satz das Pr盲teritum, wechselt dann pl枚tzlich in das Pr盲sens, dann in das Perfekt. W盲hrend der weiteren Lekt眉re konnte ich mir eine Theorie aufstellen, was Modiano damit bezweckt, denn sein gro脽es Thema ist die Erinnerung. Ich interpretiere den Wechsel zwischen den Zeiten so, dass Modiano aufzeigen m枚chte, dass die Vergangenheit in der Gegenwart fortbesteht. So unternimmt er beispielsweise viele Spazierg盲nge in dem Viertel, in dem Dora Bruder wohnte, und erz盲hlt dabei nicht nur, was er 眉ber sie herausgefunden hat, sondern auch, wie er selbst das Viertel in Erinnerung hat, welche Erfahrungen seine Familie in dem Viertel gemacht hat und wie er das Viertel heute wahrnimmt.
Modiano bestreitet einen Kampf, den Kampf gegen das Vergessen, jedoch in einer so wunderbaren Sprache, dass das Wort 鈥淜ampf鈥� fehl am Platze scheint:
鈥淚ch habe den Eindruck, der einzige zu sein, der die Verbindung herstellt zwischen dem damaligen Paris und dem heutigen, der einzige, der sich an all diese Einzelheiten erinnert. Mitunter wird dieses Band schw盲cher und l盲uft Gefahr abzurei脽en, an anderen Abenden erscheint mir hinter der Stadt von heute in fl眉chtigen Spiegelbildern jene von gestern.鈥� (Seite 52)
Und gleich auf der n盲chsten Seite:
鈥淒ieses Gef眉hl des Unheimlichen gleicht dem, das einen 眉berf盲llt, wenn man im Traum durch ein unbekanntes Stadtviertel streift. Beim Erwachen wird einem allm盲hlich bewu脽t, da脽 die Stra脽en dieses Viertels von jenen abgepaust waren, die einem im Tageslicht vertraut sind.鈥�
Gegen das Vergessen ank盲mpfen, die Erinnerung aufrechterhalten, das erscheint mir heute wichtiger denn je. Insofern reicht mir dieses eine Buch, um zu begreifen, warum Modiano mit dem Literaturnobelpreis ausgezeichnet wurde. (Trotzdem werde ich nat眉rlich weitere B眉cher von ihm lesen.)
In 鈥淒ora Bruder鈥� bietet er ein besonderes, ungew枚hnliches Leseerlebnis, das mir sehr gefallen hat.
July 18, 2017
Who will grieve for this woman? Does she not seem too insignificant for our concern? Yet in my heart I never will deny her, who suffered death because she chose to turn
Anna Akhmatova
Anna Akhmatova
July 14, 2018
Blind Faith (noun);
Belief without true understanding, perception, or discrimination.
We have blind faith in:
Religion
Motorists
Doctors
Medicine
Words
Parents
Adults
Friends
Lovers
Airplanes
Boats
Children
Mascots
Restaurant kitchens
Clowns
Amusement Park Rides
Teachers.
Corporations
Governments
Magistrates
Laws.
MLK was reported as saying once: "Never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany, under his reign, was lawful."
And France was complicit in German Law during the 1930鈥檚 and 1940鈥檚.
Belief without true understanding, perception, or discrimination.
We have blind faith in:
Religion
Motorists
Doctors
Medicine
Words
Parents
Adults
Friends
Lovers
Airplanes
Boats
Children
Mascots
Restaurant kitchens
Clowns
Amusement Park Rides
Teachers.
Corporations
Governments
Magistrates
Laws.
MLK was reported as saying once: "Never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany, under his reign, was lawful."
And France was complicit in German Law during the 1930鈥檚 and 1940鈥檚.
April 27, 2025
驴Alguna vez has levantado del suelo un trozo de papel viejo y te has preguntado qui茅n lo dej贸 caer? 驴Qu茅 vida estaba en marcha cuando esa carta, esa factura o ese recorte de peri贸dico se convirti贸 en olvido?
Patrick Modiano no solo se hizo esa pregunta; convirti贸 la curiosidad en misi贸n. Encontr贸 por casualidad un aviso de 1941 en el peri贸dico Par铆s-Soir: una chica jud铆a de quince a帽os llamada Dora Bruder desaparecida en el Par铆s ocupado. La mayor铆a habr铆a seguido su camino. Modiano no. 脡l camin贸 hacia el pasado y no par贸 hasta hacer de la ausencia de Dora algo que doliera como si fuera tu propia p茅rdida.
Este no es el t铆pico libro "de b煤squeda". No hay detectives ni giros dram谩ticos. Lo que hay es un hombre obsesionado con las huellas borrosas que dejaron aquellos a quienes quisieron borrar para siempre. Modiano pasea por Par铆s como si la ciudad fuera un archivo viviente. Cada calle, cada fachada es un vestigio de lo que fue, y cada paso es una conversaci贸n muda con esos fantasmas que a煤n susurran si te detienes a escuchar.
Dora, sin embargo, permanece esquiva. Nunca llegamos a conocerla del todo, y eso es justo lo que hace esta historia tan devastadora. La vida de Dora se intuye entre documentos fr铆os, fragmentos de informaci贸n que Modiano convierte en poes铆a triste. No te dice qui茅n era, sino qu茅 significa que no est茅. Y esa ausencia habla m谩s fuerte que cualquier historia contada.
Modiano logra plasmar con sutileza c贸mo estas vidas perdidas se confunden con el paisaje urbano, como si su memoria estuviera entrelazada con la misma esencia de Par铆s:
Par铆s no es aqu铆 la ciudad de las luces; es una urbe donde cada esquina tiene un recuerdo que no pidi贸 ser compartido. Cada calle, cada fachada, cada puerta cerrada nos habla de lo que ya no est谩: un caf茅 que ya no sirve caf茅, una tienda que nunca ver谩 su pr贸xima cliente, un cine que vende herramientas en lugar de sue帽os. El papel desgarrado en la pared del cuarto de un ni帽o, flotando en el esqueleto de un edificio medio derruido. El letrero de 鈥淧rohibido el paso, zona militar鈥� frente al cuartel que alberg贸 un centro de detenci贸n de jud铆os. Modiano nos invita a caminar con 茅l, a seguir su paso lento, implacable, como si recorri茅ramos un mapa que, al tocarlo, se deshace entre los dedos.
Cada lugar es una promesa rota, cada huella, una imagen que se desvanece en el aire. Modiano nos conduce, incansable, a la b煤squeda de vestigios de lo que fue, para que descubramos que, al final, ya no queda nada. Y, sin embargo, en ese vac铆o se encuentra una extra帽a forma de presencia. Su prosa, melanc贸lica y contenida, es como una vela a punto de apagarse, cuya llama vacilante, al borde de desaparecer, consigue iluminar lo que ya no est谩 y lo hace eterno. Como si escribir fuera su manera de asegurarse de que alguien, cualquiera, se detenga un momento a recordar lo que el tiempo no ha logrado borrar, como si con cada palabra intentara sellar, por un instante, el recuerdo de lo que nunca debi贸 ser olvidado.
Y es que si algo sabe hacer Modiano, es caminar sobre el borde del misterio sin caerse. Leer Dora Bruder es como si estuvieras armando un rompecabezas con piezas que nunca llegaron a la caja. La historia arranca con la desaparici贸n de una chica en el Par铆s ocupado, s铆, pero pronto te das cuenta de que m谩s que encontrar a Dora, Modiano est谩 recogiendo sombras y ecos: documentos que no existen, papeles quemados, detalles que solo sobreviven en la memoria o en viejas suposiciones. 鈥楾al vez鈥�, 鈥榮eguramente鈥�, 鈥榩uede que鈥� son palabras que resuenan como un mantra mientras Modiano intenta hilar una verdad siempre esquiva.
Pero aqu铆 viene lo m谩s interesante: mientras busca a Dora, el propio Modiano se refleja en esos vac铆os. Su vida y la de ella empiezan a entrelazarse, como si el Par铆s de los a帽os 40 y el Par铆s actual compartieran m谩s que calles y esquinas. Lo ves paseando por esos lugares que ya no existen, comparando tiempos y vidas, como si fuera el 煤nico que a煤n se acuerda de esos detalles que la ciudad ha preferido enterrar. Y aunque el relato juega entre las suposiciones y lo incierto, lo que queda al final es un retrato de la ausencia que se siente m谩s real que cualquier historia cerrada con un lazo. Porque Modiano tambi茅n est谩 persiguiendo algo m谩s: el pasado de su propia familia, su propio pasado; su recuerdo de un Par铆s herido que prefiere olvidar sus cicatrices. El resultado es un relato que camina entre lo personal y lo hist贸rico, donde el silencio pesa tanto como las palabras.
Lo fascinante de Dora Bruder es c贸mo Modiano ilumina el vac铆o sin pretender llenarlo con verdades absolutas ni conclusiones definitivas. Sus 鈥榯al vez鈥�, 鈥榮eguramente鈥� o 鈥榩uede que鈥� no son inventos forzados, sino reflejos de la incertidumbre inherente a una historia forzosamente el铆ptica y fragmentada. Es como si cada documento encontrado, cada fragmento de la vida de Dora, no respondiera preguntas, sino que abriera m谩s grietas en el relato. Porque, al final, Modiano no pretende saberlo todo, sino respetar aquello que ni el tiempo ni la historia lograron arrebatarle a Dora: su secreto. Y quiz谩s ah铆 radique el coraz贸n del libro, en la obstinaci贸n de preservar lo irrecuperable. Porque en la b煤squeda de Dora, Modiano encuentra la manera de decirnos que hay cosas que nunca deber铆an ser olvidadas.
Y ah铆 sigue Dora Bruder, una figura borrosa que parece caminar siempre un paso por delante, como esas cosas que sabes que est谩n ah铆 pero no puedes tocar. Mientras le铆a, no pod铆a evitar imaginarme a Modiano andando por Par铆s con ese aire de detective sin placa, recogiendo migajas de memoria que el tiempo dej贸 caer. 驴Cu谩ntas veces miramos algo sin realmente verlo? Pero 茅l ve, insiste, se queda. Y ah铆 est谩 la magia: en su obstinaci贸n tranquila. Porque cuanto m谩s intenta atrapar a Dora, m谩s la convierte en ese eco persistente que nos recuerda que algunas ausencias nunca se llenan del todo. Y a veces 鈥擬odiano lo sabe鈥� son los que faltan quienes nos siguen m谩s de cerca.
Patrick Modiano no solo se hizo esa pregunta; convirti贸 la curiosidad en misi贸n. Encontr贸 por casualidad un aviso de 1941 en el peri贸dico Par铆s-Soir: una chica jud铆a de quince a帽os llamada Dora Bruder desaparecida en el Par铆s ocupado. La mayor铆a habr铆a seguido su camino. Modiano no. 脡l camin贸 hacia el pasado y no par贸 hasta hacer de la ausencia de Dora algo que doliera como si fuera tu propia p茅rdida.
Este no es el t铆pico libro "de b煤squeda". No hay detectives ni giros dram谩ticos. Lo que hay es un hombre obsesionado con las huellas borrosas que dejaron aquellos a quienes quisieron borrar para siempre. Modiano pasea por Par铆s como si la ciudad fuera un archivo viviente. Cada calle, cada fachada es un vestigio de lo que fue, y cada paso es una conversaci贸n muda con esos fantasmas que a煤n susurran si te detienes a escuchar.
Dora, sin embargo, permanece esquiva. Nunca llegamos a conocerla del todo, y eso es justo lo que hace esta historia tan devastadora. La vida de Dora se intuye entre documentos fr铆os, fragmentos de informaci贸n que Modiano convierte en poes铆a triste. No te dice qui茅n era, sino qu茅 significa que no est茅. Y esa ausencia habla m谩s fuerte que cualquier historia contada.
Modiano logra plasmar con sutileza c贸mo estas vidas perdidas se confunden con el paisaje urbano, como si su memoria estuviera entrelazada con la misma esencia de Par铆s:
鈥漇e les hab铆an puesto estrellas amarillas a ni帽os de nombre polaco, ruso, rumano, pero tan parisinos que se confund铆an con las fachadas de las casas, las aceras, los infinitos matices del gris que existen en Par铆s. Al igual que Dora Bruder, hablaban todos ellos con acento de Par铆s, empleando palabras de aquel argot cuya 芦ternura entristecida禄 hab铆a percibido (鈥�).鈥�Porque Modiano tiene esa habilidad m谩gica para disolver el tiempo hasta que no sabes si est谩s en la Par铆s ocupada de los a帽os 40, en un caf茅 de los 60, o simplemente en la nebulosa de la memoria. Las estaciones se entrelazan, los recuerdos se mezclan y lo que podr铆a ser un truco literario en manos de otro escritor, aqu铆 fluye como la cosa m谩s natural del mundo. M谩s que una l铆nea temporal rota, es una tela tejida con hilos que Modiano va tirando con delicadeza y melancol铆a. En esa mara帽a de instantes solapados, la figura de Dora se convierte no solo en un testimonio de su 茅poca, sino tambi茅n en un eco persistente que resuena en la vida del propio narrador.
Par铆s no es aqu铆 la ciudad de las luces; es una urbe donde cada esquina tiene un recuerdo que no pidi贸 ser compartido. Cada calle, cada fachada, cada puerta cerrada nos habla de lo que ya no est谩: un caf茅 que ya no sirve caf茅, una tienda que nunca ver谩 su pr贸xima cliente, un cine que vende herramientas en lugar de sue帽os. El papel desgarrado en la pared del cuarto de un ni帽o, flotando en el esqueleto de un edificio medio derruido. El letrero de 鈥淧rohibido el paso, zona militar鈥� frente al cuartel que alberg贸 un centro de detenci贸n de jud铆os. Modiano nos invita a caminar con 茅l, a seguir su paso lento, implacable, como si recorri茅ramos un mapa que, al tocarlo, se deshace entre los dedos.
Cada lugar es una promesa rota, cada huella, una imagen que se desvanece en el aire. Modiano nos conduce, incansable, a la b煤squeda de vestigios de lo que fue, para que descubramos que, al final, ya no queda nada. Y, sin embargo, en ese vac铆o se encuentra una extra帽a forma de presencia. Su prosa, melanc贸lica y contenida, es como una vela a punto de apagarse, cuya llama vacilante, al borde de desaparecer, consigue iluminar lo que ya no est谩 y lo hace eterno. Como si escribir fuera su manera de asegurarse de que alguien, cualquiera, se detenga un momento a recordar lo que el tiempo no ha logrado borrar, como si con cada palabra intentara sellar, por un instante, el recuerdo de lo que nunca debi贸 ser olvidado.
Y es que si algo sabe hacer Modiano, es caminar sobre el borde del misterio sin caerse. Leer Dora Bruder es como si estuvieras armando un rompecabezas con piezas que nunca llegaron a la caja. La historia arranca con la desaparici贸n de una chica en el Par铆s ocupado, s铆, pero pronto te das cuenta de que m谩s que encontrar a Dora, Modiano est谩 recogiendo sombras y ecos: documentos que no existen, papeles quemados, detalles que solo sobreviven en la memoria o en viejas suposiciones. 鈥楾al vez鈥�, 鈥榮eguramente鈥�, 鈥榩uede que鈥� son palabras que resuenan como un mantra mientras Modiano intenta hilar una verdad siempre esquiva.
Pero aqu铆 viene lo m谩s interesante: mientras busca a Dora, el propio Modiano se refleja en esos vac铆os. Su vida y la de ella empiezan a entrelazarse, como si el Par铆s de los a帽os 40 y el Par铆s actual compartieran m谩s que calles y esquinas. Lo ves paseando por esos lugares que ya no existen, comparando tiempos y vidas, como si fuera el 煤nico que a煤n se acuerda de esos detalles que la ciudad ha preferido enterrar. Y aunque el relato juega entre las suposiciones y lo incierto, lo que queda al final es un retrato de la ausencia que se siente m谩s real que cualquier historia cerrada con un lazo. Porque Modiano tambi茅n est谩 persiguiendo algo m谩s: el pasado de su propia familia, su propio pasado; su recuerdo de un Par铆s herido que prefiere olvidar sus cicatrices. El resultado es un relato que camina entre lo personal y lo hist贸rico, donde el silencio pesa tanto como las palabras.
Lo fascinante de Dora Bruder es c贸mo Modiano ilumina el vac铆o sin pretender llenarlo con verdades absolutas ni conclusiones definitivas. Sus 鈥榯al vez鈥�, 鈥榮eguramente鈥� o 鈥榩uede que鈥� no son inventos forzados, sino reflejos de la incertidumbre inherente a una historia forzosamente el铆ptica y fragmentada. Es como si cada documento encontrado, cada fragmento de la vida de Dora, no respondiera preguntas, sino que abriera m谩s grietas en el relato. Porque, al final, Modiano no pretende saberlo todo, sino respetar aquello que ni el tiempo ni la historia lograron arrebatarle a Dora: su secreto. Y quiz谩s ah铆 radique el coraz贸n del libro, en la obstinaci贸n de preservar lo irrecuperable. Porque en la b煤squeda de Dora, Modiano encuentra la manera de decirnos que hay cosas que nunca deber铆an ser olvidadas.
Y ah铆 sigue Dora Bruder, una figura borrosa que parece caminar siempre un paso por delante, como esas cosas que sabes que est谩n ah铆 pero no puedes tocar. Mientras le铆a, no pod铆a evitar imaginarme a Modiano andando por Par铆s con ese aire de detective sin placa, recogiendo migajas de memoria que el tiempo dej贸 caer. 驴Cu谩ntas veces miramos algo sin realmente verlo? Pero 茅l ve, insiste, se queda. Y ah铆 est谩 la magia: en su obstinaci贸n tranquila. Porque cuanto m谩s intenta atrapar a Dora, m谩s la convierte en ese eco persistente que nos recuerda que algunas ausencias nunca se llenan del todo. Y a veces 鈥擬odiano lo sabe鈥� son los que faltan quienes nos siguen m谩s de cerca.
October 27, 2012
Dora Bruder is a little book about mostly nothing. It's the story of a man who finds a girl's name in a newspaper, dated December 1941, French Occupation in full swing, and notes that he himself had once walked countless steps past the spot where this girl used to live. So begins the link between Modiano and Dora, and Modiano's successive attempts to uncover more of Dora's story. The novel doesn't have a traditional narrative arc, and it's mostly composed of wanderings, of rememberings, always of, "j'ignore" - but there's something incredibly fascinating and incredibly melancholy about these measly hundred plus pages: perhaps it is the feeling of chasing a phantom. What an entrancing pursuit, what a desolate one.
And chase phantoms is exactly what Modiano does. Dora Bruder fell out of history, and Modiano fished out what parts he could from whatever mentions of her name remained. He bases his story on a couple of birth certificates, multiple photos, letters, endless police records, and, of course, the streets of Paris. Memories of his own adolescence and his father's life find their way into the narrative, and it's uncanny, really, to see how closely run the parallels of all our lives.
I can't put my finger on it: why, when the book concerns itself mostly with admitting, "I don't know, I will never know," that the story remains so touching. We feel as though we practically know Dora, and yet all we have to work with are her address and dates of arrests, incarceration, deportation... There are parts which reproduce letters addressed to the police bureau, letters which contain numerous pleas to release my child, release my grandparents, inquire as to the location of my fiancee... Letters oddly courteous and full of false hope. Perhaps this is it: all throughout the book, the phantoms we chase are waving their hands, holding lights into the night, and we wish we could go back and help them, or greet them at least, but they are too far gone for it to be of any use.
Modiano doubtlessly puts it better than I (be warned, my translations are mostly literal and probably bad): "Je lance des appels, comme des signaux de phare dont je doute malheureusement qu鈥檌ls puissent 茅clairer la nuit." (I launch my appeals, like signals from a lighthouse that I doubt are able to illuminate the night.) "Le b茅ton de la couleur de l鈥檃mn茅sie..." (Concrete the color of amnesia.) "...les noms r茅sonnent d鈥檜n 茅cho lugubre et sentent une odeur de cuir pourri et de tabac froid." (The names resound with a dismal echo, smelling of rotten leather and cold tobacco.) Strange, but exciting, I think, that a book should succeed by speaking only of all things lost, all things buried beneath the winter of time.
And chase phantoms is exactly what Modiano does. Dora Bruder fell out of history, and Modiano fished out what parts he could from whatever mentions of her name remained. He bases his story on a couple of birth certificates, multiple photos, letters, endless police records, and, of course, the streets of Paris. Memories of his own adolescence and his father's life find their way into the narrative, and it's uncanny, really, to see how closely run the parallels of all our lives.
I can't put my finger on it: why, when the book concerns itself mostly with admitting, "I don't know, I will never know," that the story remains so touching. We feel as though we practically know Dora, and yet all we have to work with are her address and dates of arrests, incarceration, deportation... There are parts which reproduce letters addressed to the police bureau, letters which contain numerous pleas to release my child, release my grandparents, inquire as to the location of my fiancee... Letters oddly courteous and full of false hope. Perhaps this is it: all throughout the book, the phantoms we chase are waving their hands, holding lights into the night, and we wish we could go back and help them, or greet them at least, but they are too far gone for it to be of any use.
Modiano doubtlessly puts it better than I (be warned, my translations are mostly literal and probably bad): "Je lance des appels, comme des signaux de phare dont je doute malheureusement qu鈥檌ls puissent 茅clairer la nuit." (I launch my appeals, like signals from a lighthouse that I doubt are able to illuminate the night.) "Le b茅ton de la couleur de l鈥檃mn茅sie..." (Concrete the color of amnesia.) "...les noms r茅sonnent d鈥檜n 茅cho lugubre et sentent une odeur de cuir pourri et de tabac froid." (The names resound with a dismal echo, smelling of rotten leather and cold tobacco.) Strange, but exciting, I think, that a book should succeed by speaking only of all things lost, all things buried beneath the winter of time.
November 29, 2016
La primera novela que cae en mis manos del galardonado con el Premio Nobel es una fant谩stica exploraci贸n de la memoria que arranca cuando el protagonista, alter ego del propio Modiano, encuentra en un viejo peri贸dico el anuncio de desaparici贸n de una joven llamada Dora Bruder. A partir de ese hecho fortuito, el autor se propone realizar una somera reconstrucci贸n de su biograf铆a contando con los datos disponibles que encuentra en varios registros. Al mismo tiempo, Modiano intercala profundas y hermosas reflexiones sobre el paso del tiempo, los recuerdos, el sinsentido de la guerra y la imposibilidad de rellenar esos huecos que la historia ha decidido tejer en su inmenso tapiz. A trav茅s del personaje de Dora Bruder, Patrick Modiano describe el aciago destino de todo el pueblo jud铆o durante la ocupaci贸n alemana y nos permite vislumbrar un peque帽o resquicio de luz en una 茅poca dominada por la violencia y la crueldad burocr谩tica. Mucho mejor en las partes m谩s "literarias" que en la investigaci贸n period铆stica, Dora Bruder es una novela emotiva, conmovedora, gris谩cea, un libro que se presta a ser abarcado en una sentada pero cuya lectura te deja de todo menos indiferente.
March 18, 2018
[anobii Apr, 2015]
L鈥檕rrore e la baguette 鈥�
Parigi, 31 Dicembre 1941. Il Paris-Soir pubblica un annuncio con il quale i genitori di Dora Bruder, ebrei immigrati, cercano notizie della loro figliola quindicenne, fuggita dal collegio del Sacro Cuore di Maria, dove 猫 stata iscritta l鈥檃nno prima, forse perch茅 trovi un riparo sicuro dall鈥檜niverso apocalittico che, da l矛 a poco, investir脿 l鈥檌ntera Europa.
Cinquant鈥檃nni dopo Modiano si imbatte in quell鈥檃nnuncio. Quelle poche righe che restituiscono dall鈥檕blio una ragazza ebrea, probabilmente passata per il camino con milioni di altri innocenti, spingono Modiano ad una personalissima ricerca che si sviluppa tra archivi, librerie, testimonianze, 鈥榗entri d鈥檌nternamento鈥�, vie, piazze, edifici di una vecchia e sinistra Parigi posta sotto il giogo nazista.
Non c鈥櫭� una trama, 猫 una 鈥榲isita guidata鈥� con continui rimandi tra un orrore quotidiano e una nuova citt脿 che quell鈥檕rrore se lo 猫 ormai lasciata alle spalle.
Un 鈥榖anale鈥�, subdolo, orrore montante tra l鈥檌ndifferenza di quelli non coinvolti ('siete lo stesso coinvolti', cantava il poeta) e l鈥檌ngenua, paziente disponibilit脿 delle vittime sacrificali.
La prego, pu貌 essere cos矛 cortese da segnalare alla Prefettura se 猫 ebreo? Tranquillo, 猫 s矛 ebreo, ma cittadino francese! Le dispiace cucirsi sul petto questa stella? Grazie. Le raccomando di non uscire dai confini del suo quartiere. Pu貌 salire su questo convoglio? Porti lo stretto indispensabile e magari soldi e gioielli, non si sa mai 鈥� i denti d鈥檕ro ce li fornir脿 pi霉 tardi 鈥�
脠 di questo che ci narra Modiano, nella sua astratta ricerca di Dora. Trover脿 tracce di lei, dei suoi genitori, di altre persone che come loro saliranno su un carro ferroviario, inconsapevoli di andare incontro ad un orrore senza fine messo su da una banda di impeccabili burocrati della morte.
Il tutto in un鈥檃tmosfera di 鈥榙istrazione collettiva鈥�, ben narrata dal librettino di poche pagine, guarda caso anch鈥檈sso uscito in Francia qualche anno fa, MATIN BRUN.
芦Altri, come lui, proprio prima della mia nascita, avevano patito pene di ogni sorta per consentire a noi di provare soltanto piccoli dispiaceri.禄
E oggi siamo ritornati su 鈥� l鈥檕rlo della notte 鈥�
L鈥檕rrore e la baguette 鈥�
Parigi, 31 Dicembre 1941. Il Paris-Soir pubblica un annuncio con il quale i genitori di Dora Bruder, ebrei immigrati, cercano notizie della loro figliola quindicenne, fuggita dal collegio del Sacro Cuore di Maria, dove 猫 stata iscritta l鈥檃nno prima, forse perch茅 trovi un riparo sicuro dall鈥檜niverso apocalittico che, da l矛 a poco, investir脿 l鈥檌ntera Europa.
Cinquant鈥檃nni dopo Modiano si imbatte in quell鈥檃nnuncio. Quelle poche righe che restituiscono dall鈥檕blio una ragazza ebrea, probabilmente passata per il camino con milioni di altri innocenti, spingono Modiano ad una personalissima ricerca che si sviluppa tra archivi, librerie, testimonianze, 鈥榗entri d鈥檌nternamento鈥�, vie, piazze, edifici di una vecchia e sinistra Parigi posta sotto il giogo nazista.
Non c鈥櫭� una trama, 猫 una 鈥榲isita guidata鈥� con continui rimandi tra un orrore quotidiano e una nuova citt脿 che quell鈥檕rrore se lo 猫 ormai lasciata alle spalle.
Un 鈥榖anale鈥�, subdolo, orrore montante tra l鈥檌ndifferenza di quelli non coinvolti ('siete lo stesso coinvolti', cantava il poeta) e l鈥檌ngenua, paziente disponibilit脿 delle vittime sacrificali.
La prego, pu貌 essere cos矛 cortese da segnalare alla Prefettura se 猫 ebreo? Tranquillo, 猫 s矛 ebreo, ma cittadino francese! Le dispiace cucirsi sul petto questa stella? Grazie. Le raccomando di non uscire dai confini del suo quartiere. Pu貌 salire su questo convoglio? Porti lo stretto indispensabile e magari soldi e gioielli, non si sa mai 鈥� i denti d鈥檕ro ce li fornir脿 pi霉 tardi 鈥�
脠 di questo che ci narra Modiano, nella sua astratta ricerca di Dora. Trover脿 tracce di lei, dei suoi genitori, di altre persone che come loro saliranno su un carro ferroviario, inconsapevoli di andare incontro ad un orrore senza fine messo su da una banda di impeccabili burocrati della morte.
Il tutto in un鈥檃tmosfera di 鈥榙istrazione collettiva鈥�, ben narrata dal librettino di poche pagine, guarda caso anch鈥檈sso uscito in Francia qualche anno fa, MATIN BRUN.
芦Altri, come lui, proprio prima della mia nascita, avevano patito pene di ogni sorta per consentire a noi di provare soltanto piccoli dispiaceri.禄
E oggi siamo ritornati su 鈥� l鈥檕rlo della notte 鈥�
April 18, 2018
All鈥檌nizio sono rimasta quasi disorientata, e forse anche infastidita dall鈥檈lenco delle vie, degli incroci stradali , dei nomi di vecchi alberghi, di vecchi cinema, di vecchie insegne, dalle ricostruzioni topografiche della Parigi occupata degli anni Quaranta, dalla lettura di documenti burocratici pieni di nomi, cognomi, date nascita e persino di numeri di protocollo. Non capivo la necessit脿 di dover nominare tutto con tanta precisione, un tutto apparentemente poco significativo rimasto in tracce sbiadite e frammentarie nella migliore delle ipotesi. Invece poi, lentamente, il disegno dell鈥檕pera 猫 emerso in tutto il suo valore sia letterario che morale, mi sentirei di dire. Modiano nomina le cose per farle esistere, per smascherare dietro le realt脿 visibili il passato da cui provengono, per tornare a dare vita ad un universo che 猫 fatto di dettagli, numeri, cenni scoloriti che ci sta intorno silenzioso e da cui, grazie a Modiano, ci sentiamo interrogati. Pare di sentore risuonare i versi delle Corrispondenze di Baudelaire: per Modiano non la Natura, ma la Storia 鈥溍� un tempio dove incerte parole mormorano pilastri che son vivi, una foresta di simboli che l鈥檜omo attraversa nel raggio dei loro sguardi familiari鈥�.
Modiano riesce, quasi solo scorrendo documenti d鈥檃rchivio e vecchie testimonianze, senza aggiungere pressoch茅 nulla, con la caparbiet脿 di una missione morale, a dare corpo ad un invisibile che la Storia ha inghiottito e che pure ha costituito la Storia stessa. La Storia 猫 quella dell鈥檕ccupazione nazista di Parigi e di una ragazzina ebrea e della sua famiglia svanite nella massa anonima delle vittime. Ha qualcosa di quasi religioso il rispetto con cui Modiano si approccia alla Storia degli invisibili e al contempo di raffinatissimo dal punto di vista letterario: il suo elenco di documenti non si ferma alla cronaca o alla rassegna, ma diventa alto momento di letteratura, in cui, con abilit脿 tutta letteraria, personaggi, luoghi ed eventi sembrano riaffiorare dal nulla o da aride carte per avere corpo, vita, dignit脿.
Modiano riesce, quasi solo scorrendo documenti d鈥檃rchivio e vecchie testimonianze, senza aggiungere pressoch茅 nulla, con la caparbiet脿 di una missione morale, a dare corpo ad un invisibile che la Storia ha inghiottito e che pure ha costituito la Storia stessa. La Storia 猫 quella dell鈥檕ccupazione nazista di Parigi e di una ragazzina ebrea e della sua famiglia svanite nella massa anonima delle vittime. Ha qualcosa di quasi religioso il rispetto con cui Modiano si approccia alla Storia degli invisibili e al contempo di raffinatissimo dal punto di vista letterario: il suo elenco di documenti non si ferma alla cronaca o alla rassegna, ma diventa alto momento di letteratura, in cui, con abilit脿 tutta letteraria, personaggi, luoghi ed eventi sembrano riaffiorare dal nulla o da aride carte per avere corpo, vita, dignit脿.
June 16, 2022
Ne bi bilo lo拧e da se ova, i ba拧 ova nevelika knjiga koristi na predavanjima, kursevima, disertacijama i analizama, iz beskona膷nog niza razloga.
Na primer:
- nepretencioznost u pisanju, u svakoj re膷i, u ritmici, NEpretencioznost koja razoru啪ava
-Kako iz starog novinskog oglasa napraviti istorijsko, istra啪iva膷ko, putopisno knji啪evno remek delo
- Melanholija pariskih ulica u stotinu tomova
- Implementacija li膷nih se膰anja u radnju dela koja ne optere膰uje 膷itaoca, ali budi iskrenu empatiju
- Put do Au拧vica kroz arhipelag mogu膰ih puteva koji su ka njemu vodili
Ne postoji ni pedalj inovativnosti u Modijanovom stvarala拧tvu, ni膷ega 拧to 膰ete urezati na unutra拧nje zidove memorije, ni traga velikim re膷enicama ili pseudodubokim filozofskim mislima. A opet, on je najlep拧i deo francuske suptilnosti, 拧arma i jednostavnosti i svakako najveli膷anstveniji slikar pariskih ulica i arondismana.
Divan autor. Topla i te拧ka knjiga, istovremeno.
Na primer:
- nepretencioznost u pisanju, u svakoj re膷i, u ritmici, NEpretencioznost koja razoru啪ava
-Kako iz starog novinskog oglasa napraviti istorijsko, istra啪iva膷ko, putopisno knji啪evno remek delo
- Melanholija pariskih ulica u stotinu tomova
- Implementacija li膷nih se膰anja u radnju dela koja ne optere膰uje 膷itaoca, ali budi iskrenu empatiju
- Put do Au拧vica kroz arhipelag mogu膰ih puteva koji su ka njemu vodili
Ne postoji ni pedalj inovativnosti u Modijanovom stvarala拧tvu, ni膷ega 拧to 膰ete urezati na unutra拧nje zidove memorije, ni traga velikim re膷enicama ili pseudodubokim filozofskim mislima. A opet, on je najlep拧i deo francuske suptilnosti, 拧arma i jednostavnosti i svakako najveli膷anstveniji slikar pariskih ulica i arondismana.
Divan autor. Topla i te拧ka knjiga, istovremeno.
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