| Title | : | LHerbe des nuits |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 2070138879 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9782070138876 |
| Language | : | French |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 176 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 2012 |
LHerbe des nuits Reviews
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The author won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2014 and the Prix Goncourt.
A man whom we assume is now in his 70’s looks back on his life as a student in Paris in the 1960’s. He attended the City University and his girlfriend at the time involved him in a life of mysteries. Fifty years later he’s still trying to figure it all out.
For a while she lived in the American student housing, but she was neither an American nor a student. She has a friend, a Moroccan man, who lives in an apartment complex in a separate apartment from his wife. No one has ever met his wife. A bunch of unsavory characters hang out with them in the hotel lobby. At various times each of them tells the main character something like “stay away from him, he’s into nasty business,” or “don’t get involved with that one, he’ll lead you astray or get you into trouble.” They warn him that his girlfriend has “false papers.” “You’re lucky your hands aren’t dirty.” Almost always anyone he meets with tells him “don’t tell anyone we met; don’t tell anyone we talked.”
His girlfriend takes him to a country cottage, but they can’t turn on the lights and they have to hide if anyone comes to the door. She takes him to someone’s apartment (she has a key) to “retrieve things that belong to her.” No one seems to do anything for a living.
Eventually he gets questioned by the police in a series of interviews in which they ask him about the woman and the men who hang out in the hotel, but he truly knows little. Just like in real life, a lot of times we never know why; we never solve all the mysteries; we go through life not knowing how or why this or that happened.
As the man wanders the old neighborhoods he hung out in 50 years ago, he reflects on real historical figures who lived there before him, such as Baudelaire’s Haitian-born mistress, Jeanne Duval, She’s one of these folks who maybe “never died” He revisits all these locations 50 years later and sees neighborhoods that have disappeared, and those that have deteriorated or gentrified. Not surprisingly, none are what they used to be. So we get a lot of local color of old and new Paris. He uses an old notebook, a diary from the time, as his guide.
A poignant symbol of all this change and by-gone people and neighborhoods is his recollection of a woman neighbor who was an actress. She performed in the same play every night. He wonders, what did it all mean now that she is dead, most of her audience is dead, her house and the theater are all demolished – it’s like none of it ever happened. What did it matter that she spoke those words in a play?
Some samples of the writing:
“I remember I always felt on edge in that neighborhood.” (A feeling of menace is expressed like a mantra throughout the story.)
Of the gentrified neighborhood buildings, he writes “…they made you feel as if you were looking at a taxidermied dog, a dog you had once owned, that you had loved when it was alive.”
“It was the same feeling you get from staring at a lit window: a feeling of both presence and absence.”
His girlfriend disappears of course. Years later we get the feeling he is still in love with her and has been all these years, and in his searching through these old neighborhoods fifty years later, he’s still looking for her.
top photo from France Between the 1950's and the 1960's from vintag.es
bottom photo from messynessychic.com -
نص أدبي يبحث في الذاكرة في أجواء باريسية
يفتح الراوي مذكرته السوداء ويعود إلى تفاصيل الماضي في محاولة لفهمه
ينتقل بين الماضي والحاضر في أحياء وشوارع ومقاهي باريس
علاقات حب وصداقة غامضة غريبة في جو مشبوه ومراقبة أمنية
ليصل إلى حادث اختطاف واختفاء سياسي مغربي معارض فترة الستينيات
سرد هادئ ومشوق يرسم في النهاية صورة واضحة لحقيقة الأشخاص والأحداث -
(Review originally published on my blog, February 2016) I hadn't planned for such a recent translation to be the first Modiano I read, but its appearance on my local library's 'New Books' shelf was irresistible. In the end, I consumed this brief, hallucinatory novel in one gulp.
Within its pages is an account of a journey: that of a writer named Jean, who wanders Paris in search of the truth about a woman he loved long ago. It's a mystery of sorts - the woman, Dannie, may or may not have done something terrible, and this is shrouded in secrecy, as is the exact nature of her relationship with a gang of shady criminals. But it's also a dreamy stream-of-consciousness that's at its strongest when ruminating on the power of memory, allowing the narrator to slip back and forth in time until the lines between present-day reality and echoes of the past become blurred. Memories merge with the act of remembering. Indeed, the story starts with the line: 'And yet, it was no dream'; Jean might be making a statement here, but he's just as likely to be trying to convince himself.They were only a few centimetres away from me behind the window, and the second one, with his moonlike face and hard eyes, didn't notice me either. Perhaps the glass was opaque from inside, like a one-way mirror. Or else, very simply, dozens and dozens of years stood between us: they remained frozen in the past, in the middle of that hotel foyer, and we no longer lived, they and I, in the same space of time.
The key to Jean's search, and apparently the evidence that none of this was a dream, is his black notebook. He uses the notebook as a guide, trying to traverse the Paris of his past - but he's almost always thwarted, finding the city changed. The story frequently captures the mingled pleasure and pain of revisiting youthful haunts; somehow you expect magic, and get nothing but a vague, off-kilter familiarity and a sense of the inexorable passage of time.Could I possibly have left behind a double, someone who would repeat each of my former movements, follow in my old footsteps, for all eternity? No, nothing remained of us here. Time had wiped the slate clean. The area was brand-new, sanitised, as if it had been rebuilt on the site of a condemned block. And even though most of the buildings were still the same, they made you feel as if you were looking at a taxidermied dog, a dog you had once owned, that you had loved when it was alive.
Some of the locations Jean frequented as a young man, such as the country house he and Dannie visited, seem not to exist - did they ever? Then there's the places and people he knew only by code names to begin with. Everything is elusive; even Paris itself is amorphous. Some of the story is told through the medium of Jean's interrogation by a detective; yet another man chasing the truth about Dannie. That idea of the one-way mirror will keep recurring, the image of the present and the past standing on opposite sides of a sheet of glass, close enough to touch. So it is that in dreams you watch others live through the uncertainties of the present, while you know the future.
The Black Notebook is like a Parisian parallel to Tomás Eloy Martínez's
The Tango Singer in its vivid portrayal of a city and the pursuit of a shadowy, shifting figure; it also reminded me of
First Execution by Domenico Starnone - it's not as explicitly metafictional, but the books share a sense that the story could go anywhere, that memories are malleable and events already long in the past have a multitude of possible outcomes. It might be a quick read, but its depths seem fathomless. I'll certainly be seeking out more Modiano. -
Notturno a Parigi
"Per me non c'è mai stato nè presente né passato. Tutto si confonde" .
Uno scrittore percorre le strade di Parigi, con molti ricordi risalenti a decenni prima, agli anni '60, ai suoi vent'anni.
Tra le varie figure, ormai poco più che fantasmi di un ambiente equivoco, spicca l'immagine di una donna, già sfuggente allora, mai più rivista.
Dominante è il tema della memoria, sempre più sfocata.
Siamo nella Parigi degli Esistenzialisti, non certo nei quartieri turistici, bensì su strade solitarie dove i passi risuonano e perfino il parco attiguo è disadorno, rifugio di gatti randagi.
Scenario di morta stagione, quando il grigio è dominante, quasi che i vividi colori fossero di troppo per quelle anime che prediligono la notte, come protette dal buio appena rischiarato da rari lampioni che diffondono una incerta opalescenza.
"... una musica jazz proveniente da una libreria..."
Anche negli interni "la luce era un po' velata, come se le lampadine ricevessero un voltaggio insufficiente" , quasi catapultati in un quadro di Toulouse-Lautrec.
In queste atmosfere rarefatte aleggia però l'ombra di un delitto.
La sobria scrittura ha l'andamento di un sottofondo musicale, volta a "cogliere, inconsapevolmente, un vago riflesso della realtà".
Questo libro non è il capolavoro di Modiano, ma ha la bellezza delle opere minori, tali non perché più imperfette di altre; solamente non esigono di lasciare un segno indelebile con cui identificare un autore. Si tratta però di un tassello importante del grande mosaico poetico di un artista. -
"دلم برای انهایی میسوخت که باید در یادداشت های روزانه شان کلی قرار ملاقات ثبت کنند،بعضی شان را از دو ماه قبل.همه چیز برایشان ازپیش تعیین شده بود واحتمالا هیچ گاه منتظر کسی نبودند.احتمالا هیچ گاه نمی فهمیدند که زمان می تپد،وسعت یافته،بعد دوباره ارام میشود وکم کم ان احساس رهایی و بیکرانگی را به شما میدهد که دیگران ان را در مواد مخدر جستجو میکنند،اما من ان را فقط در انتظار میبابم.درنهایت تقریبا مطمئن بودم که تو میایی."
"و امروز که می نویسم ،نیم قرن بعد-یا حتا یک قرن بعد،دیگر شمردن سالها را بلد نیستم-یک لحظه،ان احساس پوچی را که دارم،فراموش میکنم.تاکسی که ساعت هشت شب منتظر بود،ترس از دیر رسیدن بعد بالا رفتن پرده،پالتو خزدار به خاطر زمستان و برف،حرکاتی که معمولی بودند و منسوخ شده اند،قطعه ی نمایشی که هیچ کس ان را هیچ گاه نخواهد دید،خنده ها و تشویق های گم شده،خود تئاتر که خرابش کرده اند....ما برای چیزهایی این چنین بی اهمیت زندگی کرده ایم....."من واقعا شیفته مودیانو و جهان رویایی و خلسه وارش هستم از همان اولین باری که خیلی ناگهانی رمان در کافه جوانی گمشده را خواندم ... ان روزها هنوز برنده ی نوبل نبود اما ازهمان اولین صفحات به نویسنده مورد علاقه ام تبدیل شد... دنیای مودیانو پرسه میان رویا و خواب و خاطره و گذشته است و در این اثر چنان ماهرانه این هر سه را در هم امیخت که خواننده از این امیزش لذت وافری میبرد ... درست مثل نقاشی با ابرنگ که چند رنگ را بی فکر رو تابلو در هم می امیزی .. رنگها سایه و روشن میدهند وترکیب محسور کننده ای ایجاد میکنند.شخصیت داستان مثل همه ی اثار مودیانو در گیر فردی به نام دنی است.. زنی از گذشته و زمان حال رویا بیداری و خاطره هایش در هم میغلتند تا به دنی و داستانش شکل دهند من این بی وزنی محسور کننده؛ این سبکی و رهایی درکلمات؛ که در اثار مودیانو موج میزند را می پرستم... باز هم پرسه زنی در پاریس هست اما نه به غلظت اثار قبل....... بله همه ی ما برای چیزهای اینچنین بی اهمیت زندگی می کنیم ... دنی��ی مودیانو کمی به روزمرگی ملال اور ما رنگ می دهد ... او استاد نقاشی خاطره رویا و کابوس و گذشته و اینده است.... -
Last of the three Modiano's novels bought saturday. I find again this incredible style. It is rather spelbinding. I am charmed. Modiano, the french litterature greatest stylist. There is all his favourites themas : identity research, wanderings in Paris the night, glass of Cointreau in night coffee, rain on paving stones, waste grounds...
After having read these 3 books, which are the remarks that I can do ? First, the principal carachter is always Paris, but a fantasmated Paris, the one of Doisneau, Cartier-bresson or Céline. The city that Malraux did not succeed in saving from property developers.
Paris becomes a carnal body, a living organism which bleeds and convulses. It is paradoxally the alone carachter to have a kind of sensuality. Because there is no desire in Modiano's novel. I think now what it is that I did not like in his books when I was a teenager, this absence of « sentiments amoureux » (it is better in french). Love sublimated by style ? It is with that it is seen that we age. -
Conjuring with Names
I believe you write somewhere that we live at the mercy of certain silences….
Patrick Modiano's work is built entirely on those "certain silences," things that may or may not have happened in the past, and that leave only the faintest of clues behind them. Clues that Jean, a writer much like the author himself and narrator of this 2012 novella, has written down in an old black notebook. They consist mainly of names, but with Modiano, names are more than enough:Dannie, Paul Chastagnier, Aghamouri, Duwelz, Gérard Marciano, "Georges," the Unic Hôtel, Rue du Montparnasse….
Over the first few pages, this list of names will be repeated many times, reordered, annotated, extended, giving the reader a sense of déjà vu before he has even read a complete chapter. Modiano does not use names to inform the reader, so much as to lull him into his own limbo, where the present fuses with the past. Modiano conjures with names, and those names are of three types: places, fictional people, and real ones.
Every Modiano novel occupies its own particular topography. You can follow his streets, squares, and metro stations on a map. But the map for this book would be one that has altered over time. Jean wanders the streets he had walked as a young man and notices the things that have changed: the cafés that have disappeared, the apartment buildings torn down, the new towers taking their place. And he goes back even further. "It was an obsession of mine," he says, "to want to know what had occupied a given location in Paris over successive layers of time." So he makes notes in the black notebook:Sommet Brothers—Leathers and Pelts
"I no longer saw a very clear distinction between past and present," he says of himself, and he writes that way too. Any one page may contain a description of what he is doing now in 2012, something he remembers doing in 1965, or something that he dreams of having done, whether now or then. Yes, it is confusing, but that is why one reads Modiano—to share a confusion that closely mirrors one own fading memories, shafts of understanding, nostalgia, and regret.
Beaugency Tanneries
A. Martin & Co.—Rawhide
[…]
Hundred Maidens Hospital
Brassaï: Passerby in the Rain
Very few of the fictional characters in this novella are central to the plot. There is Jean the narrator, of course, and there is Dannie, the young woman of 21 with whom he falls in love. Much of his time, though, is spent waiting for Dannie while she conducts her mysterious errands, picking up mail at a poste restante, entering a building by one door and coming out by another, removing documents from an apartment while its occupant is out. He suspects that she may have a double or triple life, and perhaps other names. Aghamouri, another of the names from that first list, may see some of these other sides of her. He is a Moroccan, and indeed many of the others have connections to Morocco, though mostly they remain in deep shadow.
But one does not read Modiano for his fiction so much as his enigmatic brushes with history. Almost all the dozen books I have read so far by him refer back to the German occupation of Paris in the Second World War, during which Modiano suspects his father, a Jew, used his underworld contacts to aid the Gestapo. But it seems that well has now run dry. The only such reference here is a brief paragraph about bogus Resistance men shooting an innocent woman by mistake. Set in 1965, this novella explorres the fallout from another war, the Algerian War of Independence of 1954–62. For modern English-speaking readers, this episode may be little more than a name, but for Frenchmen of Modiano's generation it was a national trauma that forever changed the country. They would also recognize the cause célèbre that underlies the entire book, though never mentioned by name: the abduction and presumed murder of Mehdi Ben Baraka, a left-wing Moroccan politician and associate of both Che Guevara and Malcolm X; his disappearance has never been conclusively explained to this day.
Mehdi Ben Baraka
There is one further aspect of Modiano's use of names that intrigues me, but which I cannot fully explain. That is his use of real figures, mostly dead, as part of the intellectual landscape of his books. In this novel, it occurs partly in the subjects that Jean says interest him as a writer, partly in the original people commemorated in his place names. I found out, for example, that the writer of the song "Dannie" from which Jean's friend took her name, and whom Jean bumps into a couple of times, is the poet Jacques Audiberti—but I don't know his work well enough to know what flavor he adds to the mix. Other names that are repeated again and again are the late 19th-century poet Tristan Corbière, the 18th-century writer Restif de la Bretonne, Baudelaire's mistress Jeanne Duval, and the pseudonymous Baronne Blanche. One connection that I suspect but cannot prove is that several of these figures may be of mixed race, which might tie in with the Moroccan theme. But of this I am sure: Modiano does not sprinkle these names on casually, but as a master chef handles his spices. For those with the knowledge and the palate to savor them, they must make an intriguing dish. And even consumed in partial ignorance, a Modiano novel is a sensory experience like no other. -
Even in translation you will instantly recognize the work of Patrick Modiano.
Minimalistic, always searching for a time lost and always on foot through a Paris which is forever changing.
Notebook in hand, Jean tries to keep time from moving, taking down a list of public benches - and the whereabouts of the people he doesn´t really know.
Whereas I never really tire of Modiano´s style, The Black Notebook will never become a favorite of mine. Too much hindsight - which is also a Modiano way - but mostly reflections on times that went by in search of an identity that never surfaces. -
The Black Notebook is Nobel Prize winner Patrick Modiano's most recent novel. Like the other work of Modiano that I have read, Suspended Sentences, The Black Notebook has a dreamlike quality; at least, the line between the dream world and reality is very thin.
Jean, the narrator, has found an old notebook of his with notes from a time when he was involved with a young woman named Dannie. At least, Dannie is one of her aliases. According to the police inspector who brings Jean in for questioning, Dannie may be involved in a murder. The notebook contains many references to places where Jean and Dannie went and Jean feels as though, in some way (or some world) these places still exist.
As in the other book, places in Modiano's universe are vivid presences, as important as the characters in the book. Streets in Paris, sections, restaurants, the suburbs surrounding Paris are named and described in more detail than are the people in these works. There is a magnetic pull to these places, an evocative sense that somehow they hold secrets that will reveal reality to the one who truly connects with them. There is a feeling that going through the door of a hotel or home once visited will connect that person with the world of the time when the person stayed there. It's as though the world is a mirror (an image that is used by Modiano) but that there is another side, like the mirror in a police interrogation room that reflects a deeper reality in which all mysteries are revealed.
Modiano's style is the kind that people either love or, if not hate, are bored by. I am captivated by it. I love the dreamlike flow of the prose and the sense that beneath our ordinary encounters lie unknown possibilities. The narrator floats through his life with only the places he passes through as anchors to his experiences. Anything can happen in this world (although the drawback is that it seems that no one experience is superior to any other). There is both promise and threat in this world and a sense that no matter what, it will all pass into the river of time.
Thanks to NetGalley and publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Mariner Books along with the author for giving me the opportunity to read this work in exchange for an honest review. It is an opportunity for which I am very grateful. -
بعد عمله (آحاد أغسطس) وبعد قراءة هذا النص (عُشبُ الليالي) بكلتا علامتي الـ(ضم) في الـ(ش) وفي الـ(ب) أعتقد لم أشتري له نصًآ إلا في حال مدح لي من أثق بهما في الترجمة. ربما يكون النص جميلًا في لغته وخانته الترجمة.. ربما. وفوق ذلك النص ليس بتلك الجودة العالية رغم أن الرواية جميلة، ولن يخدعنا حصوله على نوبل.
تناول القضية قصة خطف المغربي (بن بركة) في الستينات في فرنسا وسط أجواء من الغموض والبوليسية والكثير من الأحداث المفككة التي جعلتني أفرح بنهاية النص. لن أقل لأحد لا تقرأ الرواية أو اقرأ الرواية. هذه وجهة نظري
شكرًا لدار النشر على هذه الجملة في هذا الموقع :
عندما نغلق هذه الرواية، الممتزجة مع السيرة الذاتية، يتملكنا إحساس بالخفة وبالفراغ.....".. أنتهى" -
The Black Notebook stands out among Patrick Modiano’s novels as both especially brief and especially direct. The Black Notebook centers on the aging Jean’s recollections of his decades-ago, abbreviated affair with Dannie. Older now, perhaps in his late 60s or early 70s, Jean wonders about the reality of his affair: ”And yet, it was no dream. Sometimes I catch myself saying those words in the street, as if hearing someone else’s voice. A toneless voice. Names come back to me, certain faces, certain details. No one left to talk with about it. One or two witnesses must still be alive. But they’ve probably forgotten the whole thing. And in the end, I wonder if there really were any witnesses. / No, it wasn’t a dream. The proof is that I still have this black notebook full of my jottings.” (p 1)
For Jean, memory exists outside of real time, as did his relationship with Dannie. ”Today it seems to me that I was living another life, inside my daily life. Or rather, that this other life was connected to my drab everyday existence and lent it a phosphorescence and mystery that it didn’t really have.” (p 12). ”. . . [W]riting it today, half a century later — or even after a century; I’ve forgotten how to count the years — I momentarily escape the sense of emptiness I feel. . . I sometimes felt I had lost my memory and couldn’t understand what I was doing there. Until Dannie returned.” (p 76)
Jean’s excavation of his memory and his search for the reality of Dannie are aims unto themselves. Jean realizes he’s searching for his memories, rather than actually searching for Dannie. Here’s Langlais, a Parisian detective, speaking with Jean. Langlais ”. . . spread his eyes and looked at me with eyes full of compassion. / ‘Do you think she’s still alive?’ I asked him? / ‘Do you really want to know?’ I had never put the question to myself so plainly. If I were being honest, the answer would be, No. Not really.” (p 108). The act of remembering takes Jean out of his dreary present: ”The past? No, it’s not about the past, but about episodes in a timeless, idealized life, which I wrest page by page from my drab current existence to give it some light and shadow.” (p 35) Jean realizes that ”Now that I’ve been writing these pages, I do think that there is, in fact, a way to combat oblivion: to go into certain areas of Paris where you haven’t set foot in thirty or forty years and spend the afternoon, as if on a stakeout” . . . even a ”few times I thought I recognized Dannie. . .” (p. 100). Jean, now an old man, speaks to Dannie in his mind”You must be hiding out in one of those neighborhoods. Under what name? Sooner or later I’ll find the street. But every day the hours grow shorter, and every day I tell myself it will be for another time.” (p 131)
The Black Notebook revisits some signature themes that occur again and again in Modiano’s novels. Uncertain identities and backgrounds: Dannie tells Jean that she’s Casablanca-born, and later learns that in fact born ”quite simply in Paris during the war, two years before me. . . Mirabeau Clinic” (p 122) and that she did eight months for shoplifting. Dannie’s name? Is it Dannie, or Mireille Sampierry, or Dominque Roger? Both Jean and Dannie viscerally feel that shifting identities and uncertain personal backgrounds don’t reflect who they are or the reality of their affair. Here Jean asks Dannie, ”’And is your name still Dannie on your false papers?’ / ‘Don’t make fun of me, Jean.’ . . . / In the middle of the bridge, she stopped short and said: ‘Whether those papers are real or fake, does it really make any difference to us?’ / No, no difference at all. Back then, I wasn’t certain of my own identity, so why should she have been any more so?” (p 84). Jean then and even now knows even less of his identity than he knew of Dannie’s: ” Still today, I have doubts about the authenticity of my birth certificate, and until the very end I’ll be waiting for someone to hand me the long-lost document that shows my real name, my real date of birth, the names of the real parents I never knew.” (p 84) Nostalgia about Paris’ lost cityscape:. Readers of most Modiano novels know that cities, usually Paris, but sometimes Marseille, serve as important characters unto themselves. The Paris of Jean’s youth wasn’t warm or charming, but rather threatening: ”A menace hovered over everything, giving life a peculiar coloration.” (p 25) Aghamouri, Dannie and Jean’s mysterious Moroccan associate, warns Jean to
”’Watch out for yourself . . . Dannie and I, it’s as if we had the plague . . . Around us, you’re in danger of catching leprosy . . .’” (p 71). But despite that remembered menace, Jean now mourns lost cityscapes: ”. . . the neighborhood had lost its soul. It longer had the heart, or the talent.” (p 11).
Sadly, I’m nearing the end of the Modiano novels translated into English. Modiano’s French is straight-forward and unadorned, and it translates well into English. The Black Notebook isn’t among the most textured or the richest of Modiano’s novels, but as always with Modiano his treatment of memory, youth, and yearning is wonderful. For anyone who wants to start reading Modiano and wants to avoid the confusion that sometimes accompanies reading him, The Black Notebook is an excellent introduction to him. 4.5 Modiano stars -
Chez Modiano Paris devient une âme et le passé un roman
Pourtant je n'ai pas rêvé
Inizia così L'erba delle notti ed è chiara da subito l'atmosfera della narrazione ,ammaliante ed enigmatica ...
Il punto di partenza è un piccolo taccuino nero, pieno di appunti trascritti negli anni 60 ,quando Jean era un ragazzo , ci sono date di appuntamenti, numeri di telefono ,nomi : Paul Chastagnier, Aghamouri, Duwels, Georges, Gérard Marciano , quelli della banda dell'Unic Hôtel
Tra questi spicca il nome di una ragazza, che affascina Jean fin dal primo incontro,la misteriosa e sfuggente Dannie ,che forse si chiama Mireille Sampierry ,o Dominique Roger ?
Qual è il suo segreto? In quale brutta faccenda si è cacciata ?
Sul filo della memoria si rincorrono frammenti di ricordi alla ricerca di una verità inafferrabile, tra presente e passato, esperienze vissute con la leggerezza di un ragazzo - che non si faceva troppe domande - ed episodi di una "vita sognata"
Bellissima la Parigi in queste pagine , le passeggiate notturne sottobraccio,senza meta ,per le strade illuminate dai lampioni ,tra i caffè aperti fino a tardi ,come il "66"
Una Parigi in bianco e nero,piena di charme
come quella di Louis Malle, sulle note struggenti di Miles Davis
Nuit sur les Champs-Elysées
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Lh38G2a...#
Quella notte temevo di aspettarla invano. Dopotutto l'aspettavo spesso di notte, senza mai esser certo che sarebbe venuta. Oppure arrivava all'improvviso, verso le quattro del mattino. Mi addormentavo di un sonno leggero e il rumore della chiave che girava nella serratura mi svegliava di soprassalto. Quando restavo in quel quartiere ad aspettarla, le serate erano lunghe ,ma mi sembrava normale. Compativo quelli che dovevano segnarsi sull'agenda molti appuntamenti, alcuni addirittura con due mesi d'anticipo. Per loro tutto era fissato, e non avrebbero mai atteso nessuno.
Non avrebbero mai saputo che il tempo palpita, si dilata, poi si placa , e a poco a poco trasmette una sensazione di vacanza e di infinito che altri cercano nella droga, ma che io trovavo semplicemente nell'attesa.
4 stelle ! -
Dopo il Caffè della gioventù perduta, L’erba delle notti è la conferma della profonda sintonia che mi lega a questo autore francese. Ho ritrovato qui infatti tutti gli elementi che mi avevano avvinto e emozionato nel Caffè. Anche qui domina una figura di donna misteriosa e sfuggente, evocata attraverso i luoghi di Parigi frequentati insieme all’io narrante. Una donna che lo struggimento dei ricordi ci fa intuire profondamente amata eppure mai posseduta. Una donna apparentemente libera, eppure in fuga a causa – forse – di un omicidio involontario.
La scrittura nostalgica, evocativa, musicale avvince svelandoci pagina dopo pagina, o sarebbe meglio dire, luogo dopo luogo, il mistero di una donna che nella memoria si è trasformata nei luoghi che ha frequentato. Amo in Modiano la poesia di un racconto apparentemente ingenuo, disarmato di fronte all’inconoscibilità di ciò che abbiamo vissuto. Inutile razionalizzare, interpretare, spiegare. Possiamo solo, con amore e nostalgia, ricordare. -
Patrick Modiano (1945) ha puesto una vara altísima para mis lecturas de este año 2015. Esta obra es magistral. Breve, circular, efímera, brumosa, pero clara y precisa al mismo tiempo. Hay un vagabundeo mental impresionante y una búsqueda por la “verdad” llevada con solvencia.
Cuando estudiaba en la Universidad, escribí una ponencia sobre Bolaño en la cual tomaba prestadas unas ideas de Félix de Azúa en su monográfico sobre Baudelaire, sobre que el chileno podía estar obsesionado con la visión del poeta (él mismo siempre se sintió poeta) porque eran estos autores quiénes podían representar al “detective” actual de la modernidad.
El cruce entre arte y policiaco da material suficiente para que alguien realice una tesis doctoral, algo que verse entre la tendencia actual de series televisivas donde los protagonistas son detectives o policías, hasta toda la literatura al respecto.
Modiano escribe una breve novela sobre la búsqueda del pasado, la búsqueda de la verdad en el pasado, partiendo de las pruebas de las escenas en el presente. Un presente que se desdibuja y trasciende los espacios y el tiempo actuales y que se mueve en un transgresor lenguaje que cruza la frontera entre el presente y el pasado, y entre la vigilia y el sueño. Lo imaginado, lo recreado, la invención y lo asumido.
A la luz de La hierba de las noches (2014), me da curiosidad la obra de este autor que le “da la vueltas a las cosas”, que va y viene con sus cuestionamientos, que nos entrega ese subproducto de la posmodernidad literaria que es el narrador no fiable. Los ídolos cayeron hace años. La historia dobló las manos. Tenemos la microhistoria. La historia de los de abajo. De los nulos. Tenemos chingos de historias con chingos de puntos de vistas y todos son acertados.
Hay crimen, hay misterio. Hay silencios y hay también preguntas que nunca son formuladas y algunas que sí lo son y no son respondidas y nadie indaga más del asunto. Se adivina el amor entre las líneas. Una juventud perdida. Un Paris (como dice la contraportada) espectral, con sombras de personas. Apenas siluetas pixeleadas en un monitor antiguo. Hay vida como en cualquier parte que haya personas, con la diferencia de que en estos sucesos, estuvo presente siempre un "poeta", un ser que veía lo que otros no. Que volvió a la "escena del crimen" metafóricamente, metafísicamente hablando. Y que, si bien no resolvió el misterio, al menos se acercó a plasmarlo soberbiamente en una novela. -
حدودا بیست صفحه اول یکم نا امیدم کرد و پیش خودم گفتم نکنه باز یه داستان بی سر و ته مثل گشت شبانه باشه ولی کم کم شیوه ی نوشتن و داستان به سبک خود مودیانو شبیه شد مثل کتاب های بهار لعنتی و خاطرات خفته. داستان اینطوریه که ژان بعد از سالها نشسته و از روی دفترچه سیاهش که همیشه همراهش بوده و چیزهایی توی اون یادداشت میکرده داره داستان خودش و دختری به اسم دنی رو تعریف میکنه. داستانی که اندکی مرموزه و در جاهایی هم جنایی. اگر از طرفداران مودیاتو و سبک نوشتنش باشید حتما از این کتاب خوشتون میاد فقط تا ده پونزده درصد اول کتاب تحمل کنید
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Impossibile aggiungere parole al bellissimo commento di @Emilio....
Modiano mi piace: perché? Perché ha una scrittura “ musicale “, merito anche della traduzione ? Non lo so perché non conosco il francese . Non saprei neanche raccontare la trama, non è importante, ma so che verso la fine ho rallentato la lettura, perché mi dispiaceva terminarlo. -
3.5
REVIEW IN ENGLISH
Patrick Modiano's topics (from what I have read) are about Paris and the past, one that no longer exists or is disappearing before the eyes of the protagonist. These themes with a tinge of nostalgia are the most I have identified from his works. This novel combines these themes with a mystery.
Jean is a writer who recalls his past in Paris, which happened some twenty years earlier (in the sixties) when he met a girl named Dannie and her strange group of friends, who always met at the Unic Hôtel. He does not mix with their affairs but he is very curious about what this girl is in and why she is more a shadow than a person.
The novel has inspiration of a real life issue that happened in France. On October 29, 1965, in the heart of Paris, Mehdi Ben Barka, a leader of the Moroccan leftist in exile, dissapeared and was never seen again. Decades later, testimonies and information have surfaced, confirming that this possible murder was done with the permission of the French government. This event is taken up in a fictional way from the point of view of a character, a writer, who tries to reconstruct the past and a specific moment of his life.
In more than 150 pages, there is always great voids that the reader have to fill while flipping the pages. The reader starts lost in a labyrinth, and has to accumulate the pieces and details of the story. Who is Dannie? Will we know? Who were her friends at the hotel? were they dangerous? Many questions are set to be answered and others are left in the air with not complete solutions.
Modiano's writing is so sincere and evocative, and always manages to captivate me; Although sometimes he leaves you with more doubts than answers. But is not life always like that? Half said stories, lost memories that return to haunt you, people who you never see again and moments of your life that lurk you years after they happened. For things like that is that I recommend this work a lot.
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RESEÑA EN ESPAÑOL
Las temáticas generales (de lo que he leído) de Patrick Modiano van en torno a un París del pasado, uno que ya no existe o que está desapareciendo antes los ojos del protagonista. Estas temáticas con un tinte de nostalgia son de las que más he identificado de las obras de este autor y esta novela combina estos temas con un misterio.
Jean es un escritor que rememora su pasado en París, lo que le pasó unos veinte años antes (en los años sesenta) cuando conoció a una muchacha llamada Dannie y a su extraño grupo de amigos que se reunian en el Unic Hôtel. Él no se mezcla con sus asuntos pero tiene una gran curiosidad sobre en qué está metida esta muchacha y por qué es más una sombra que una persona.
La novela tiene una inspiración sobre un asunto real que sucedió en Francia. El 29 de octubre de 1965 en el corazón de París, secuestraron a Mehdi Ben Barka, un líder de la izquierda marroquí en el exilio, que jamás se le volvió a ver. Con el tiempo han ido apareciendo testimonios e informaciones que confirman que esto se realizó con el permiso del gobierno francés. Este evento es retomado de una forma ficcional desde el punto de vista de un personaje, un escritor, que intenta reconstruir el pasado y un momento concreto de su vida.
Modiano pensando en su siguiente libro. Fuente: Larepública.pe
En las novelas tan breves del autor siempre hay una gran serie de vacíos que se van llenando con el tiempo y con las páginas. El lector inicia perdido en un laberinto que tiene que ir acumulando las piezas para ir encajando los detalles. ¿Quién es Dannie? ¿Lo sabremos? ¿Quienes eran sus amigos del hotel? Muchos interrogantes están puestos para ser respondidos y otros se quedan en detalles pero no soluciones completas.
La narrativa de Modiano, tan sincera y evocadora, siempre logra cautivarme; aunque sus historias puede que te dejen con más dudas que respuestas . ¿Pero no son así muchas cosas en la vida? Eventos a medias, recuerdos perdidos que regresan, gente que nuca se vuelve a ver y claro, momentos de la vida que nos acechan años después de sucedidos. Por cosas como esa es que recuerdo con mucho entusiasmo su obra. -
Vague vague vague. The author plays a foul game with the reader by suggesting that he will reveal the connection between past events, while he never does. He does not ask his companions questions when it would be logical, does not include certain information in his 'black book' when it is important, while his excuses not to do this are always artificial, it is an authors trick. Here and there are names of writers and quotes and titles of books mentioned which seem insightful but turn out to lead nowhere. He encounters an admired poet, one Jacques, who wrote a poem that, by chance? is titled Dannie, like his friend. That poet is called Jacques Audibert and indeed wrote 'Dannie'. Does this bring us closer to understanding this book? No. All loose threads, false tracks. Also the title The night's lawn seems to have little to do with the content. Much mourning for oblivion, wandered by empty streets, doubt. The main character Jean (?), the names of the characters are all insecure as well, has a kind of relationship with one Dannie, but that relationship is as vague as the rest. I can not identify with it. Vague characters looking for a real story. Emperor's new clothes!
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I read Modiano not for the plot or characters, not even for Paris. I read him for the unique atmosphere he creates. It is like walking through the patchy morning fog: suddenly it lifts revealing you something unexpected and beautiful for a moment or two... and the it thickens again leaving you disorientated and lost waiting for another bright spot.
His protagonist refuses to live life linearly. I imagine him almost squinting when he is trying to find these patches of vivid brightness in the fog of his past and remain there for some time with all his senses, oblivious to "today". We all feel this way occasionally; Modiano unlocks my own memories by association which I did not even know existed.
I certainly tried to find the door to the little place in a different city where I stayed many years ago, where a lot of things happened which mean a lot to me. And I was very surprised, almost shocked that I did not know anymore which of one of these doors lining up in front of me I used to enter at least twice a day. I thought I would never forget this place. Can I rely then on my memory what happened there? Or it is just a story I am telling myself....
Ps
He also effortlessly articulates certain observations which I relate to wholeheartedly:
"The truest encounters take place between two people who intimately know nothing about each other"
"I have not recorded its into my black notebook the way we tend not to write down the most intimate details of our lives for fear that, once on the paper, they no longer be ours. " -
لو كان مؤلف تلك الرواية شخصاً آخر غير باتريك مودينو لكنت تغاضيت عن الكثير ولكن بما أن المؤلف هو الفائز بجائزة نوبل للآداب هذا العام فإن الوضع يصبح مختلفاً .
هذه هى القراءة الثانية لى لنفس الكاتب وبعد انتهائى من القراءة وجدت نفسى اسأل نفس السؤال الذى بادر إلى ذهنى ف الرواية الأول .. لماذا حصل مودينو ع جائزة نوبل ؟
ولكن السؤل هذه المرة يصبح أكثر جدية خاصة وأن باتريك حصل ع نوبل عن تلك الرواية !! فعلام حدث ذلك وكيف ؟
لن أقول أن الرواية سيئة ولكنها ليست جيدة بما فيه الكفايا من وجهة نظرى لكى تؤهل صاحبها إلى الفوز بجائزة عريقة مثل نوبل !!
وقبل شروعى ف قراءة " عشب الليالى " قرأت عدة مقالات عنها أشارت إلى أن تلك الرواية تجسد قصة السياسى المغربى " المهدى بن بركة " .. ولكن بعد انتهائى من القراءة وجدت نفسى لم اخرج من الروية بشئ ع الإطلاق !!
الرواية عبارة عن متاهة وعبارات متناثرة هنا وهناك فلا تعلم ما الهدف منها .. قد يكون من الجائز إذا لم أكن أعلم من البداية أنها قصة المهدى بن بركة لما كنت شعرت بكل تلك الكمية من الغضب عقب انتهائى لشعورى بأننى لم استفد شيئا ع الاطلاق !!
وحتى لو كانت مجرد رواية ذات قصة خيالية من تأليف باتريك فلا أعلم مغزاها .. فم�� خلال قراءتى السابقة فأنى اعلم أن أى عمل يتحدث عن قصة حقيقية لابد أن يكون واضحاً وبه معلومات كافية وسرد وافى للحقائق ولكن ف تلك الرواية لم أجد اى شئ من هذا سوى اللف والدوران !!
يبدو أن باتريك الوحيد الذى يعلم فائدة تلك الرواية دون أحد غيره !!
تكفى نجمتين فقط ! -
This is another very nice Modiano, with all its familiar ingredients: the very real Parisian setting (in this book especially the neighborhoods in and around Montparnasse), the search for a woman the narrator (Jean ..., now a writer) has known 20 years ago for a short time, some "Dannie", who appeared to be in trouble, but he couldn't get more out of her and then she disappeared; the diffuse observations and memories and the ubiquous sense of mystery and nighttime reveries. On the meta-level Modiano confronts us again with the paradox of the relativity of time (past and present blend into one another), while the past definitely is another country (which is virtually unattainable).
Absolutely beautiful read, and one of the last works of Modiano; winning the Nobel Prize clearly is not favorable for the artistic creativity.. -
تجربه ی خیلی جدیدی بود این کتاب برام.از اون کتابایی که ی جایی از زمان باید برگردم دوباره بخونمش.دنیای کامل متفاوت و جدیدی که تا حالا مثلشو نخونده بودم و از این بابت کتاب جالب بود برام.
نقطه ضعف هایی مثل روان نبودن جریان داستان،خسه کننده شدن و پرداختن زیاد به جزئیات،داشت ولی من این قدر غرق در کشف و یا در واقع رمز گشایی جریان داستان و اتفاقا و شخصیت راوی بودم که این نقطه ضعفا رو تونستم نادیده بگیرم.
اولین کتابیه که از این نویسنده خوندم و احتمالا کتابای دیگه ی نویسنده رو هم بخونم.ولی از یه بابت مطمئنم اونم اینه که سبکش اینقدر نو بود که به نظرم به مذاق هرکسی خوش نمیاد و دوست داشتن یا نداشتن کتاب خیلی سلیقه ای میشه.
اما کتاب برام تداعی کننده ی خاطراتی بود که یه جوارایی مطمئنیم که تجربشون کردیم ولی از یه طرف این قدر همیشه ازشون دور بودیم که انگار فقط رویاهایی هستن که خودمون ساختیمشون و از این بابت واقعا کتاب به دلم نشست چون تا حالا ندیده بودم که نویسنده ای روی همچین نکته ای دست بذاره. -
Patrick Modiano est à son meilleure dans ce roman à trois étoiles. Modiano est passé maitre à créer une ambiance unique où le lecteur éprouve "un sentiment à la fois de présence et d'absence ... où il y a ni présent ni passé." (p. 56) Autrement dit, le lecteur de Modiano se fait fourrer dans limbes et n'en sort jamais. C'est spécial comme expérience.
Modiano suit sa recette avec moins d'écarts qu'Agatha Christie. Il y a un protagoniste -narrateur qui est déchiré entre son instinct de refouler la mémoire d'une époque pénible de sa vie et sa curiosité dangereuse de connaitre la vérité sur son passé. Un étranger arrive avec des indices et encourage le protagoniste à enquêter sur son passé. Ce que trouve le protagoniste ne le rend jamais plus heureux.
Dans "L'Herbe des nuits" Modiano présente une variante très intéressante. Le roman se déroule en 2012. L'héros, a réussi à oublier un meurtre commis en 1966 par une femme dont il était amoureux. Cette fois quand l'étranger lui offre de l'éclairer complètement sur l'affaire, l'héros choisit carrément de rester dans l'ignorance.
"Vous croyez qu'elle est encore vivante?" lui ai-je demandé.
"Vous désirez vraiment savoir?"
Je ne m'étais jamais posé la question d'une manière aussi précise. Je lui ai répondu de façon honnête: "Non. Pas vraiment." (p. 148)
Je suis loin d'être un fan de Patrick Modiano mais je trouve qu'il fait son truc extrêmement bien dans "L'Herbe des nuits". -
Fino a pochi mesi fa, come molti immagino, non conoscevo Modiano. Mi ero ripromesso di leggere qualcosa di suo e questo è, letteralmente, il primo libro che mi è passato per le mani. Niente male come inizio!
L’impasto narrativo è decisamente valido.
Lo stile mi ha riportato a due autori che ammiro: Murakami, per l’alone di mistero, per la realtà che si confonde coi sogni e i ricordi sbiaditi dal tempo e Javier Marias per le ricostruzioni macchinose ma affascinanti.
C’è un taccuino nero dove sono riportati alla rinfusa vecchi appunti, indirizzi, nomi di un passato sfocato, nel quale Jean, il protagonista, vorrebbe fare ordine a distanza di anni.
Si parla di una “brutta faccenda”, il fascicolo di un’indagine e dei tizi poco chiari che stazionano nella hall di un hotel.
E poi c’è Dannie, uno di quei personaggi femminili inafferrabili, senza passato ma dalle molte identità, comparsa dal nulla nella foschia di Montparnasse.
I piani temporali si confondono, le scene si ripetono, i dettagli tornano alla luce poco alla volta.
Una Parigi tutt’altro che turistica incornicia una storia davvero ben scritta. [74/100] -
Mi resta un taccuino nero pieno di appunti...
...diario? frammenti di memoria? [...]Tra tutti questi appunti, alcuni hanno una risonanza più forte di altri. Soprattutto quando nulla turba il silenzio. [...] Sei solo, all'erta, come se volessi captare segnali morse che ti invia, da molto lontano, un corrispondente sconosciuto. Certo, molti segnali sono disturbati e, per quanto tu possa tendere l'orecchio, si perdono per sempre.
Qualcuno dice che i romanzi di Modiano sono tutti uguali, ripetitivi, e, una volta lettone uno, per gli altri sarà un continuo "déjà lu". Ecco, a me suscitano invece qualcosa di talmente piacevole, dolce e nostalgico che ci torno sempre con grande piacere: ne respiro le atmosfere quiete e malinconiche e mi perdo con i pensieri e i ricordi. Come in un luogo di montagna torno volentieri per godere di quel panorama, sempre lo stesso, eppure mutevole per colori, profumi, rumori, nella giornata e nelle stagioni, così torno volentieri a un romanzo di Modiano, certa di trovarvi sintonie di emozioni.
E L'erba delle notti è uno dei migliori che io abbia letto, almeno dal mio punto di... sentire: mi ha deliziato coi contrasti di luci e di ombre, di rumori e di silenzi; nei passaggi tra la realtà e i ricordi, con le immagini sfocate e le voci attutite dal tempo. E ho sentito il bisogno di rileggerlo subito, per rimanere immersa ancora un po' in quelle atmosfere.
Innumerevoli le citazioni che mi verrebbe spontaneo di aggiungere, ma che perderebbero, qui, la particolare poesia del contesto: sono da scoprire e assaporare nella lettura intera. Così come mi sembrerebbe banale ora tracciare la trama del romanzo: è solo da leggere. -
As with the other Modiano novels I've read, this is a short book so much poetry and atmosphere in its lines, I just have to stop and absorb. He has said he writes the same book over and over again, but what a book it is. Reputedly somewhat autobiographical, but Paris has never been so haunting or so menacing. ("It was an obsession of mine to want to know what had occupied a given location in Paris over successive layers of time.") Fifty years after the fact, he traverses the same arrondisements he had as a young man in the company of a mysterious woman, trying to piece together her story and thus learn his own. Modiano never gives easy answers and leaves puzzles up to the reader to try and dissemble, but it is the beauty of his language and the haunting quality of his imagery that stays with the reader rather than the plot. The French name for this is The Grass of Night, much more his style than the cryptic Black Notebook
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At 131 pages this is a mesmerizing novel about nothing.
Jean, a writer, takes a walk down memory lane reminiscing about a girlfriend of long ago, a decade in fact, who disappeared never to be found again.
The girlfriend, Dannie, was involved in “an ugly incident” (perhaps) so this becomes a mystery that is never completely resolved.
The book has a ‘noir’ feel about it but in no way resembles any genuine noir book you have ever read. -
I read this great Adam Thirlwell quote about Modiano that i think really nails it, he said 'You read each Modiano novel for its place in a giant sequence: a new restatement of a single unsolvable crime'. Personally i love an author that goes over and over the same themes (i always think of Paul Auster) because i just find it really human and fascinating to be kinda obsessive like that. So, yeah, reading a Modiano often feels like reading any other Modiano, and this one has all his usual themes, lost (literally she is missing) love, an unsolved crime, memory & time and how they aren't solid, a haunting nostalgia for a specific time & place, these are all things i can get behind...and it's good, it stays with you. I like Modiano a lot.
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Une voix plus ferme et claire imprègne les pages de ce livre, comme si le narrateur s'était brusquement raidi. Et pourtant, la nostalgie qui l'entoure à chaque pas, liée au progrès moderne et au monde contemporain dépersonnalisé et sans aucune identité, doublée en outre par l'incertitude, est plus profonde, visible, voire douloureuse que jamais. 4,6/5
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Another great book by what is turning out to be my favorite living French novelist,
Patrick Modiano.
The Black Notebook looks across the years of its narrator's life, as he remembers his relationship with a strange young woman named Dannie and some of her dodgy friends. He uses his notebook as a key to his feelings at the time, which apparently made a lasting impression on him.
Because of his own background and his own highly unorthodox upbringing, Modiano writes convincingly about people who try desperately to understand the past as a possible key to their present, which is never quite so brilliant as their past.
