Patrick Modiano, Nobel Prize in Literature 2014

See: The Modiano Family Tree - C5

Patrick Modiano (born 30 July 1945) is a French novelist. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2014, having previously won the Austrian State Prize for European Literature in 2012 and the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca from the Institut de France for his lifetime achievement in 2010. His other awards include the Prix Goncourt in 1978 for his novel Rue des boutiques obscures and the Grand prix du roman de l'Académie française in 1972 for Les Boulevards de centre

Early life

Modiano was born in Boulogne-Billancourt. His father, Albert Modiano (1912—1977, born in Paris), was of Jewish origin, on paternal side descendant from a famous Sephardic family of Salonica. His mother, Louisa Colpijn, was a Belgian (Flemish) actress also known as Louisa Colpeyn. Modiano's parents met in occupied Paris during World War II and began their relationship semi-clandestinely. Modiano's childhood took place in a unique atmosphere: between the absence of his father—of which he heard many troubled stories—and his mother's frequent tours, with which he completed his secondary education by government aid. This brought him closer to his brother, Rudy, who died of a disease at age 10 (the works of Patrick Modiano from 1967 to 1982 are dedicated to him). Recalling this tragic period in his famed memoir Un Pedigree (2005), he said: "I couldn't write an autobiography, that's why I called it a 'pedigree': It's a book less on what I did than on what others, mainly my parents, did to me." This disappearance announced the end of the author's childhood, who continued to hold a marked nostalgia for this period.

Modiano studied at the École du Montcel primary school in Jouy-en-Josas, at the Collège Saint-Joseph de Thônes in Haute-Savoie, and then at the Lycée Henri-IV high school in Paris. While he was at Henri-IV, he took geometry lessons from writer Raymond Queneau, who was a friend of Modiano's mother. He received his baccalaureate at Annecy but did not continue his higher education.

Writing career

His meeting with Queneau, author of Zazie dans le métro, was crucial. It was Queneau who introduced Modiano to the literary world, giving him the opportunity to attend a cocktail party thrown by the publishing house Éditions Gallimard. In 1968 he published his first book La Place de l’Étoile, a wartime novel about a Jewish collaborator, after having read the manuscript to Queneau. The novel displeased his father so much that he tried to buy all existing copies of the book. Earlier while stranded in Paris during the Algerian war Modiano had asked his father for little financial assistance but his father called the police.

The 2010 release of the German translation of La Place de l'Étoile won Modiano the German Preis der SWR-Bestenliste (Prize of the Southwest Radio Best-of List) from the Südwestrundfunk radio station, which hailed the book as a major Post-Holocaust work. The 42-year delay of the book's translation to German—surprising in that most of Modiano's works are translated to that language—is due to its highly controversial and at times satirically anti-semitic content. La Place de l'Étoile has not yet been published in English.

In 1973, Modiano co-wrote the screenplay of Lacombe Lucien, a movie directed by Louis Malle which focuses on the involvement of a boy in the "French Gestapo" after being denied admission to the French Resistance. The movie caused controversy due to the lack of justification of the main character's political involvement.

Personal life

Modiano married Dominique Zehrfuss in 1970. In a 2003 interview with Elle she said: "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 the film. There is only one photo remaining of us, from behind and under an umbrella!" Their marriage produced two daughters, Zina (1974) and Marie (1978).

Writing

Modiano's novels all delve into the puzzle of identity, of how one can track evidence of one's existence through the traces of the past. Obsessed with the troubled and shameful period of the Occupation—during which his father had allegedly engaged in some shady dealings—Modiano returns to this theme in all of his novels, book after book building a remarkably homogeneous work. "After each novel, I have the impression that I have cleared it all away," he says. "But I know I'll come back over and over again to tiny details, little things that are part of what I am. In the end, we are all determined by the place and the time in which we were born." He writes constantly about the city of Paris, describing the evolution of its streets, its habits and its people.

L'Horizon

In Modiano's 26th book L'Horizon (2011), the narrator, Jean Bosmans, a fragile man pursued by his mother's ghost, dwells on his youth and the people he has lost. Among them is the enigmatic Margaret Le Coz, a young woman he met and fell in love with in the 1960s. The two loners spent several weeks wandering the winding streets of a now long-forgotten Paris, fleeing a phantom menace. One day, however, without notice, Margaret boarded a train and vanished into the void—but not from Jean's memory. Forty years later, he is now ready to look for his vanished love. The novel not only epitomizes Modiano's style and concerns but also marks a new step in his personal quest, after a mysterious walkabout in Berlin. "The city is my age," he says, breaking another lingering silence to describe Berlin, almost a completely new city rebuilt from the ashes of war. "Its long, geometric avenues still bear the marks of history. But if you look at it right, you can still spot ancient wastelands beneath the concrete. These are the very roots of my generation." Symbolic roots that gave rise, over the years, to one of the most wonderful trees in French literature.

Nobel Prize

Modiano was awarded the 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature "for the art of memory with which he has evoked the most ungraspable human destinies and uncovered the life-world of the occupation," besting popular favorites such as Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Japanese author Haruki Murakami, Belarusian investigative journalist and author Svetlana Alexievich, and Syrian poet Adunis.

Works

• La Place de l'Étoile (1968)
• La Ronde de nuit (1969); English translation: Night Rounds (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971)
• Les Boulevards de ceinture (1972) (Grand prix du roman de l'Académie française); English translation: Ring Roads (London: Gollancz, 1974)
• Lacombe Lucien (1974); screenplay co-written with Louis Malle; English translation: Lacombe, Lucien: The Complete *Scenario of the Film (New York: Viking, 1975)
• Villa triste (1975)
• Livret de famille (1977)
• Rue des boutiques obscures (1978) (Prix Goncourt); English translation: Missing Person (London: Jonathan Cape, 1980)
• Une Jeunesse (1981)
• Memory Lane (1981, drawings by Pierre Le-Tan)
• De si braves garçons (1982)
• Quartier Perdu (1984); English translation: A Trace of Malice (Henley-on-Thames: Aidan Ellis, 1988)
• Dimanches d'août (1986)
• Catherine Certitude (1988) (illustrated by Sempé); English translation: Catherine Certitude (Boston: David R. Godine, 2000)
• Remise de Peine (1988)
• Vestiaire de l'enfance (1989)
• Voyage de noces (1990); English translation: Honeymoon (London: Harvill / HarperCollins, 1992)
• Fleurs de Ruine (1991)
• Un Cirque passe (1992)
• Chien de printemps (1993)
• Du plus loin de l'oubli (1995); English translation: Out of the Dark (Lincoln: Bison Books / University of Nebraska Press, 1998)
• Dora Bruder (1997); English translations: Dora Bruder (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), The Search Warrant (London: Random House / Boston: Harvill Press, 2000)
• Des inconnues (1999)
• La Petite Bijou (2001)
• Accident nocturne (2003)
• Un pedigree (2004)
• Dans le café de la jeunesse perdue (2007)
• L'Horizon (2010)
• L'Herbe de nuit (2012)
• Pour que tu ne te perdes pas dans le quartier (2014)

ז'אן פטריק מוֹדִיאנוֹ (נולד ב־30 ביולי 1945) הוא סופר צרפתי ממוצא יהודי, חתן פרס גונקור (1978) ופרס נובל לספרות (2014).

קורות חיים

פטריק מודיאנו נולד בבולון-ביאנקור (אנ'), פרוור של פריז בירת צרפת, ב-1945, לאחר תום מלחמת העולם השנייה. הוא היה בנם של אלברטו מודיאנו, איש עסקים יהודי איטלקי, יליד פריז, בן למשפחה יהודית שמוצאה מאיטליה ושחייתה שנים רבות בסלוניקי, ולואיזה קולפיאן, שחקנית בלגית ממוצא פלמי. ב־1957 מת ממחלה אחיו הצעיר רודי, והוא בן עשר (מודיאנו הקדיש לו כמה מיצירותיו).

ב־1968, בגיל 23, פרסם מודיאנו את הרומן הראשון שלו, "כיכר אֶטואל", ומאז הוא עוסק בכתיבה. הוא כתב רומנים, ספרי ילדים ותסריטים (בהם לסרט "לקומב, לוסיאן" (1974), ביחד עם הבמאי לואי מאל). עבודתו עוסקת בנושאים של זיכרון, שכחה וזהות.

ב־12 בספטמבר 1970 נשא לאישה את דומיניק זרפוס (Dominique Zerhfuss). לשניים נולדו שתי בנות. בתם מארי מודיאנו (אנ') היא זמרת וסופרת.

בשנת 1978 זכה מודיאנו בפרס גונקור. ב־2012 זכה בפרס אוסטריה לספרות אירופית.

ב־2014 זכה בפרס נובל לספרות. בנימוקי הפרס נכתב שזכייתו היא "אמנות הזיכרון, עמה הוא עורר את הגורל האנושי הבלתי-נתפס, וחשף את עולם החיים של העיסוק".

מספריו:

• כיכר אֶטואל (La Place de l'Étoile)‏, 1968 (תורגם לעברית על ידי אביבה ברק בספר "2 רומאנים" בהוצאת הקיבוץ המאוחד)
• מִשמַר לילה (La Ronde de nuit)‏, 1969 (תורגם לעברית על ידי אביבה ברק בהוצאת זמורה ביתן מודן)
• שדרות הטבעת (La Ronde de nuit)‏, 1972 (תורגם לעברית על ידי יהושע קנז בספר "2 רומאנים" בהוצאת הקיבוץ המאוחד)
• וילה נוּגה (Villa triste)‏, 1975 (תורגם לעברית על ידי אביטל ענבר בהוצאת זמורה ביתן מודן)
• רחוב החנויות האפלות (Rue des boutiques obscures)‏, 1978 (תורגם לעברית על ידי אביטל ענבר בהוצאת עם עובד)
• נעורים (Une Jeunesse)‏, 1981 (תורגם לעברית בהוצאת זמורה ביתן)
• מֶמוֹרִי לֵיין (Memory Lane)‏, 1981 (תורגם לעברית על ידי מרים טבעון בהוצאת זמורה ביתן)
• ימי ראשון של אוגוסט (Dimanches d'août)‏, 1986 (תורגם לעברית על ידי אביטל ענבר בהוצאת מסדה)
• מה קרה לדורה ברוּדר? (Dora Bruder)‏, 1997 (תורגם לעברית על ידי חגית בת־עדה בהוצאת זמורה ביתן)
• מותק הקטנה (La Petite Bijou)‏, 2001 (תורגם לעברית על ידי חגית בת־עדה בהוצאת זמורה ביתן מודן)
• תאונה לילית (Accident nocturne)‏, 2003
• שושלת יוחסין (Un pedigree)‏, 2004
• בית הקפה של הנעורים האבודים (Dans le café de la jeunesse perdue)‏, 2007 (תורגם על ידי ניר רצ'קובסקי, ראה אור ב-2014 בהוצאת אחוזת בית)
• עשבי הלילה (L'Herbe de nuit)‏, 2012 (תורגם על ידי ניר רצ'קובסקי וראה אור בספר "בית הקפה של הנעורים האבודים" בהוצאת אחוזת בית)

==ז'אן פטריק מוֹדִיאנוֹ==