The Black Notebook
Please come on over to my live blog at https://travelwritersonline.blogspot.com/
Night Grasses
- English-language
readers will be pleased to hear that in 2016 another of Patrick Modiano’s
novels was translated from French and is available in the UK. If, like me,
and Subscribers to this blog, you have become addicted to Modiano’s writing then
this one should be a real treat.
The original French version, called L’herbe
des nuits has been around in paperback, at least, since May 2014, its literal
translation would have been, well, Nights’
Grass, Night Grasses, the story
itself holds a clue as the narrator searches for the lost words of a manuscript
from the 1960s, one is put in mind of the lines from a poem by Mandelstam:
What pain -
hunting for the lost word, lifting these sore eyelids,
And, with
lime in your blood, gathering night grasses for alien tribes
From Osip Mandelstam's poem
'January 1, 1924'
Literary Tourism
But my
interest is that Modiano’s novel may unlock literary tourism to the book’s
opening location in Paris, the secret but ever-changing backstreets of
Montparnasse. In the
opening lines from Jean-Paul Sartre's (1945) Age of Reason, the same area of Montparnasse sets the backdrop for
the action as the main character is introduced:
‘Au milieu de la rue Vercingétorix, un grand type saisit
Mathieu par le bras’
‘Half-way down the Rue Vercingétorix, a tall man seized Mathieu by the arm’
The narrow
street called Rue Vercingétorix is still there, on my photograph you can
pinpoint it. Looking south along Avenue
du Maine, Rue Vercingétorix starts in the cluster of brown buildings and cuts
behind the tall white Paris Pullman Hotel in the centre of my picture, emerging onto
the roundabout of the Plaisance where the circular building can be seen, out on
the right of the image. In two of my
lifetimes I have stayed in and explored this area, the first when the huge
hotel was still owned by Le Méridien, a brand created by Air France in
1972. This airline ownership explains
why Les cars Air France, those white coaches, would bring me direct from the
terminal buildings at Roissy-CDG to the hotel without taking the RER.
Modiano’s novel
Modiano’s
novel provides
readers with even more tantalising clues to locations that can still be found
today. In particular look for the
building at number 11, rue d’Odessa where Modiano’s character, Paul
Chastagnier, used to park his red Lancia before walking round into the next
street to the Unic Hotel at 56, rue du Montparnasse, 75014 Paris. With so many characters staying at the Unic,
including Jean, the narrator and his heroine, Dannie, I am sure the current
owners will be re-theming their rooms and foyer for Modiano enthusiasts,
gathering in night grasses for those alien tribes who read his novels in
English. To end on some French for
today, here is Mandelstam’s verse translated from its original Russian:
Quelle douleur - chercher la parole perdue,
Relever ces paupières douloureuses
Et, la chaux dans le sang, rassembler pour les tribus étrangères
L'herbe des
nuits.
From where is this photograph taken?
ReplyDeleteFrom the Tour Montparnasse viewing deck. https://travelwritersonline.blogspot.com/
Delete