The art of memory

The laureate of the Nobel Prize in the field of literature was the French writer and screenwriter Patrick Modiano. He was awarded the awards "for the art of memory, thanks to which he described the most incomprehensible human destinies and revealed the life world of occupation." The award ceremony will be held in December in Stockholm. The monetary prize this year is 10 million Swedish crowns (about $ 1.5 million).

Patrick Modiano is known for his monstrous shyness and even more monstrous tongue -tied. He does not speak phrases, speaks with scraps, excerpts of phrases, he must be deciphered. In the verbal block there may be five or six attempts to start saying something and three or four-to finish. And at the same time, he is one of the best modern writers, a subtle stylist, Glen Guld of the French language.

Speaking of Modiano, I want to go astray on a confused mumble or on an encoded, Mandelstam: "The tongue of cobblestones is more understandable to me ....".

And this makes sense, a solution lives and yells here, because, as one of the reviewers writes, denying the total, for decades, for decades, for decades, the nostalgia of Modiano for Paris of the 50s and 60s, “his books, is not a Proustic search for the lost time, but rather an exciting metaphysical attempt to penetrate the secret of a person, which is the Patrick. Modiano to the rank of the best poets of our era. "

The name of his novel “Cafe of Lost Youth” was lented by Gi Deborah, which tells us about a different lost youth, about a phrase thrown very close to the “Cafe Konde”, on the neighboring Ryu Fleurus, Gertrude Stein to the young inhabitant of the quarter: “All of you are the lost generation.”

Lost for whom? For those who belong to this generation.
Hemingway, who was said, drove the Red Cross trucks along the roads of the First World War-because of the poor vision, he was not allowed to go to the front line. His youth once and for all was marked by the era of monstrous bloodshed, so his youth was lost.

But Patrick Modiano was born in the 45th, after the war. However, almost all of his books are painted gray and khaki of the military era of occupied Paris, where his father, Italian Jew, Albert Modiano, met his mother, Belgian actress Louise Kolipein, on a rapidly flying death threat. They lived in a semi -underground, hiding.

The ephemeral relations of the military era, for the most part, were exactly the same as the relations of his parents,, according to Patrick Modiano himself, were random. Hence the childhood almost without father: boarding houses and boarding schools. Sometimes ten minutes from the parental house.

But in his case, the "cafe of lost youth" should not even be rhyme with youth, but with the teenage period.

"I was inspired by personal memories, almost childish, but without a desire to put them right in the frame. Or, rather, they turned into something imaginary. Although, of course, I wrote in the wake of extremely specific children's memories of these cafes, in which I often had to be. In general, by chance, since in that era I was engaged in a student of the school of graceful arts, because my parents were completely of me. I threw me out of these causes for seven or eight years, and the images of those days were very much printed, all this was a part Memories, I restored a lot from my childhood ... ”says Patrick Modiano.

Patrick Modiano studied at the prestigious lyceum of Henry of the fourth. But although the Henry Quatre lyceumists usually simply crossed the Pantheon Square and San Jacques and automatically, mechanically, fell into the Sorbonne, Modiano refused the university.

He was 15 years old when he met one of his mother’s friends, a writer-screenshop, Raymon Keno. Keno, the author of the bestseller "Zazi in the subway", taught geometry in the lyceum of Henry of the fourth. He introduced the young Modiano into the world of literary salons and publishing cocktails.

The manuscript of his first book "Star Square" was approved by him, and from his light hand in 67 was published in "Gallimar". The novel was awarded the Roger Numier Prize. From that moment on, Patrick Modiano lived only one-in St. Petersburg the 19th century would be told "compounds."

In the 69th year, his "night guard" came out, in the 72nd-"district boulevards". Roman received the Grand Prix of the French Academy. In the 74th year-"Lakomb Lussen", according to which Louis Mal made a film. In the 75th year, the rifle "Villa sadness". In the 77th-"Family certificate". In the 78th "Dark Street", which brought the Modiano Goncurovsky prize. Modiano published almost from the book every two years. I will note the most significant: “From the deepest oblivion”, “Little Miracle”, “Lost World” and “Dora Brusder”.

There is a common, very popular opinion that after the "Star Square" (1967), Modiano writes the same book.

Modiano himself answers as follows: in our era it is impossible to write as Dumas, Hugo or Zola wrote. Epel, novels-strokes, romanes, multi-volume novels-all this is now impossible. Hence the style of fragments, mosaics, fragmentation style.

But, no matter what he says, Modiano really writes the same book, in almost the same musical manner. If you consider Prose of Proust - Symphony, Modiano - the master of piano sketches. In extreme cases, eleven -minute quartet improvisations.

Time, perhaps, is compressed in his memory in one, but what he spreads on paper is a certain opposite of linearity, this is a prose of stop cadres, individual photographs. Which, however, in itself are separate lives.