The little jewel
The Little Bijou (French original title: La Petite Bijou ) is a novel by the French writer Patrick Modiano . It was published in 2001 in the Éditions Gallimard . The German translation by Peter Handke was published in 2003 by Carl Hanser Verlag .
content
In the rush hour traffic of the Paris Métro -Station Châtelet the 19-year-old Thérèse falls about a 50-year-old woman in a worn yellow coat. The tired and bitter woman reminds Thérèse of her mother, who left her twelve years ago and who allegedly died in Morocco . She follows the woman in the direction of Vincennes to the Bérault station and finally to a housing estate. In the next few days she looked in vain for the woman in the yellow coat until she met her again after weeks. She follows her again, but does not find the courage to speak to her. At least she learns from the concierge that she calls herself Madame Boré and is nicknamed “Fool Death” because of alternating phases of life weariness and exuberance.
Thérèses mother, born Suzanne Cardères, took on various names over the course of her life. She came to Paris as a young girl to become a ballerina - a dream she had to give up after suffering an ankle injury. She was later called “La Boche ”, called herself Comtesse Sonia O'Dauyé, allowed herself to be endured by nameless men and starred in a feature film at the side of her daughter, to which she gave the stage name “Die Kleine Bijou ”. She hardly felt any feelings for her daughter, whom she displayed like a piece of jewelry. Thérèse learned early to take care of herself. Her closest companion was a small poodle, until her mother lost it in the park. The memory of the lost dog still haunts her. The only man by her mother's side with whom Thérèse developed a relationship was Jean Bori, allegedly her mother's brother, but who she now believes could have been her father.
Thérèse, who grew up with a friend of her mother's, now has a room in a former hotel in which her mother once stayed, on Rue Coustou in the 18th arrondissement . After she left school at the age of fourteen, she earns a living by changing jobs, currently as a nanny for the Valadier family in Neuilly . The seven-year-old daughter, who is never called by name and lives lonely in a large, almost unfurnished house, reminds Thérèse of herself as a child. She has a distant relationship with a young man who, like her, drifts through life without finding a fixed point. He withholds his first name from her, wants to be called “Moreau” or “Badmaev” and listens to radio programs in various languages for an unknown client. His favorite language is the “ Persian of the steppe ”. One day he says aloud the question that Thérèse kept asking herself: why her mother actually left her alone.
In the Gare de Lyon district , Thérèse is overwhelmed by memories of her childhood. She feels like breaking all bridges and having to leave Paris immediately. A pharmacist looks after her carefully, brings her home and, when Thérèse is afraid of being left alone, spends the night with her. The next day the Valadiers disappeared without a trace and the house is sealed. Thérèse returns to her room and swallows a whole pack of sleeping pills that the pharmacist gave her. She survived the suicide attempt and woke up in the hospital in the premature baby room, where she was quartered due to lack of space. She feels as if her life is only just beginning.
reception
“What did you actually read there?” Asks Christoph Bachmann at the end of Die Kleine Bijou and himself replies that it is a “strangely beguiling [...] gothic novel from the spirit of existentialism ”. The reader enters a “world of floating values and facts deliberately left in the penumbra”. Andreas Schäfer “doesn't know exactly what is actually happening. Figures, times, places, everything has melted under your eyes. ”Modiano, as a“ master of the fleeting, delicate, of setting images and feelings in motion ”this time“ exaggerated the art of volatility ”. Wolf Scheller describes “foggy charades with the most economical gestures” in a “masterful story”.
Wolfgang Schneider sees Modiano in his obsessive “conjuring up lost time ” as the successor to Marcel Proust . He describes the novel, "one of the most beautiful that Modiano has written", as a "masterpiece" and "little jewel". A chance encounter triggers a “memory crisis” after which the first-person narrator wanders through the city like in a nightmare, is haunted by her repressed childhood and encounters her own revenant in the form of a little girl. Despite sometimes exaggerated symbolism, it is Modiano's "art of leaving things in a suggestive blurring."
Jochen Jung praises the first sentence, which is “ time lapse and zoom at the same time”. The life of the title character, who develops from the persecutor to the persecuted, is a mystery for which there is no solution, so "the mystery became the novel itself". Backgrounds of the figures, such as the reference to the mother's collaboration , are only hinted at. A poem by Attila József is quoted in Hungarian , in which a child calls for its mother. Modiano showed great "caution in dealing with [his] characters". As a student of the nouveau roman he wrote "a completely un-German literature, light, floating, self-absorbed and very artistic."
For Roman Luckscheiter, Modiano "exposes the reader to the sudden reminiscences, the lack of orientation and helplessness of the main character." The coordinate system of the metro stations is the only stop "in a blurred continuum of memory and imagination". The story leads “into the narrow universe of a suffering self and avoids pathos through the artful coolness of pathology .” This is due to the short sentences and the peculiar choice of words as well as the congenial translator Peter Handke.
expenditure
- Patrick Modiano: La Petite Bijou . Editions Gallimard, Paris 2001, ISBN 2-07-076227-0 .
- Patrick Modiano: The little gem . Translated from the French by Peter Handke . Hanser, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-446-20272-2 .
- Patrick Modiano: The little gem . Translated from the French by Peter Handke. btb, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-442-73255-7 .
- Patrick Modiano: The little gem . Translated from the French by Peter Handke. dtv, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-423-14243-4 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Review notes on Die Kleine Bijou at perlentaucher.de
- ↑ Andreas Schäfer : Patrick Modiano exaggerates the art of volatilization in "Die kleine Bijou": The woman in the yellow coat . In: Berliner Zeitung of June 23, 2003.
- ↑ Wolf Scheller: The French Nobel Prize Laureate Patrick Modiano and the great art of remembering. In: Badische Zeitung of October 10, 2014.
- ↑ Wolfgang Schneider: The appearance and the nothing . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung from June 16, 2003.
- ↑ Jochen Jung : When the little jewel followed the woman in the yellow coat . In: Die Zeit from April 24, 2003.
- ^ Roman Luckscheiter: The Persian steppe begins in Paris . In: Frankfurter Rundschau of April 5, 2003.