Paris est une enquête
Les romans du prix Nobel sont pleins de noms de rue, de lieux, de stations de métros, d'hôtels.
Suivez le guide.
Tentons cette expérience : reprendre un à un les romans de Patrick Modiano, les lire, s’arrêter sur chaque nom et numéro de rue, les consigner sur un carnet.
Et voir de là, comme un carbone, la trajectoire parisienne de Modiano se dessiner, et même se diviser en deux rives : entre les romans qui prennent racine dans un quartier, l’explorent jusque dans ses recoins perdus - là un hôtel, là un garage, là un café, là un cinéma, là un bureau de police. Et ceux qui au contraire, tentent la traversée – à pied et de nuit, de préférence – jusqu’à ce que ce passage d’une rive à l’autre devienne faille temporelle. Entre les deux, une poignée de romans qui font la ronde autour d’un Paris menaçant ou n’abordent la capitale que par ses grands boulevards. De boulevard en square, d’hôtels en garage, chaque Modiano tend un miroir au lecteur qui ne peut pas s’empêcher de plonger dans ces rues, y trouver des échos à ses propres parcours, des correspondances souterraines avec son cheminement intime dans Paris.
Cliquez sur un livre pour avoir un résumé du livre, une carte et les adresses illustrées. (en préparation) "cadre bleu, c'est activé"
"The Paris where I lived and which I survey in my books no longer exists, Modiano told the Nouvel Observateur in 2007. I write only to find it again. It's not nostalgia, I dont regret no du
everything that was before. It's simply that I have made Paris my inner city, a dreamlike, timeless city where eras overlap... "
15, quai de Conti 75006
Patrick Modiano recalls some memories related to the apartment where he lived as a child.
At the end of a day in June 1942, in a twilight as mild as that of today, a bicycle taxi stops below in the recess of the Quai Conti which separates the Mint from the Institute. A young girl gets off the bike-taxi, it's my mother. she has just arrived in Paris by train from Belgium.
"Family record book"
Primary school
2, rue du Pont de Lodi
Patrick Modiano and his brother Rudy attended this municipal school from 1953 to 1956.
"It was a traditional communal school with teachers like in greater Meaulnes. On the other side of the street, Picasso had his studio. We sometimes met him at the Boutique Verte, the store where he got the newspaper and where we bought our Carambars."
The bridge of Arts
Opposite the apartment, the Pont des Arts allows you to pass in a few strides from the left bank to the right bank. Modiano will cross this symbolic border very early to join his mother who plays au Fountain Theater. And to discover new neighborhoods.
"Passing on the right bank, I had the feeling of entering a space of freedom but also of disturbing adventure. It is linked to very specific memories of a police station, which was installed in the square courtyard of the Louvre, just before rue de Rivoli. For me, it symbolizes a kind of customs post. We reached the left bank by the very provincial Pont des Arts, which was rather charming. On the other hand, I could not access the left bank right, at least in my imagination as a 14-year-old child who still thought he was breaking the law, that by crossing this dark and threatening customs guarded by policemen in caps..."
Home of Robert Desnos
19 rue Mazarine
"From 1962 to 1964, I passed every morning, on the way to high school, in front of 19 rue Mazarine where I knew he had lived and that he had been arrested. And each time I thought of him"
(the World of June 4, 2015)
Patrick Modiano reveals that he unwittingly borrowed the title of his first novel from Robert Desnos, a poet he has always admired. He did not know that "La place de l'Étoile"was the name of a little-known play written by Desnos in 1920. I was defeated, he remembers, I had the impression of having stolen this title from Desnos, from this man who had died the year of my birth, in the conditions that we know, conditions that have been so important for my generation and which mark my work so much."
At Fraysse
21 rue de Seine
"For some time Bosmans had been thinking about certain episodes of his youth (…) He had stopped near the old Café Fraysse and looked into her eyes, petrified, as if he were facing a Gorgon."
-The Skyline
The Akademia
31 rue de Seine