In the café of lost youth

1965: View from the Arc de Triomphe, Paris

In the Café of the Lost Youth ( French Dans le café de la jeunesse perdue: roman , 2007) is a novel by Nobel Prize winner Patrick Modiano , in which café-goers as well as a detective and an abandoned husband think about a young woman, most of whom are traces of life remain vague. She has two names (Louki / Jacqueline) and it is said that she ended her own life by throwing herself off the balcony in the presence of another woman. The weightlessness that Louki has longed for is felt by the reader when reading the beautiful prose, which sometimes "somehow floats" itself.

For the first time, Modiano uses several first-person narrators, three male narrators and the main character of the novel itself within a novel. In this way, various functions of memory are represented. The novel received a lot of international attention. The work was published by Hanser in 2012 in a German translation by Elisabeth Edl .

The title “Dans le café de la jeunesse perdue” is part of a quote from Guy Debord , which is prefixed as a motto and in turn parodies the beginning of Dante's Divine Comedy . In the opening section of the story, the narrator first assigns the term “lost youth” to a philosopher whom he characterizes as sentimental, and secondly he describes the guests at “Le Condé” as “lost youth”.

content

Paris, at an uncertain time in the 1950s or 1960s. In the cafe "Le Condé" the Paris Rive Gauche around the Odéon attracts a young woman who seems lonely, the attention of various guests and is "baptized" to a new name, which she takes Louki after a brief hesitation. Assumptions and certainties about Louki and her life are told from different perspectives, usually indefinitely.

An anonymous narrator appears at the beginning, who was studying at the Paris Mining College at the time . This alone was one reason why he did not belong to the closer bohemian circle of the "Condé". He describes how he first saw Louki in the “Condé”, who was the owner of the café and who else were regular guests, including well-known names in Paris at that time, such as the writers Arthur Adamov and Maurice Raphaël, the poet Olivier Larronde or the Dancer Jean Babilée. Louki seemed rather lost among the regulars, sometimes sitting alone in the back of the café, sometimes among the loudest of them, but also there mostly silent and reserved.

Then private investigator Pierre Caisley tells how he was hired by Louki's abandoned husband to track her down. He describes how he found out her hotel via a message from a police spy and then discovered that she had made an appointment at the "Condé". During his research in the café, it became clear to him that he would let this order come to nothing so that she could "get to safety". At the beginning of his story he boasted that his former boss Blémant admired him for having such a good personal memory, but in the end he had doubts about his trade.

In the middle of five parts Louki tells the story herself, starting with the fact that when she was fifteen she was mistaken for nineteen. She never met her father and grew up with her mother. She was picked up on several of her nocturnal forays, and she was surprised that people “were (at all) interested in (her) case”. Then one day she met a certain Jeannette Gaul, through whom she got into somewhat dodgy company and who introduced her to the consumption of "snow". But it didn't mean much to her. What she was basically always looking for was that "feeling of weightlessness".

The last two parts tell in flashback from the perspective of the writer Roland. He had met Louki at esoteric sessions, in the apartment of a Guy de Vere. Roland tries to make it clear right away that the whole thing had nothing to do with “moving tables”. During a walk that followed, Roland noticed immediately that Louki was not really happy in their marriage. She preferred to tell him about the people at the "Condé". Later she took him there a few times, they spent nights together in hotels, they went to the cinema together, they roamed together through the Parisian districts that Roland called “neutral zones”. You can tell more and more that Roland reports all this from a long time lag, so when he says that he still hears Louki's voice occasionally calling his name today. - In the final section it is said that one day he found out from guests at the “Condé” that Louki had thrown himself out of the window. Roland's story ends with meeting Pierre Caisley in the hospital, who said it happened in the presence of Jeannette Gaul. Louki's last words were: “The time has come. Let it go."

interpretation

The novel is an attempt to get truth about a young woman. However, Modiano's universe is primarily ambiguous and this uncertainty has an effect on the reader, according to Jurate Kaminskas in a 2012 article. Louki is tracking four different narrators, including herself, and different literary forms are tried out in their tension the construction of the novel moves: realistic novel, biography, auto-fiction and crime novel. The resistance that the young woman shows when she appears contradicts the attraction of the image that others have of her.

In the end, you only have a vague idea what actually happened and when, says Henri Astier in his review for the Times Literary Supplement in July 2008, but what still haunts you is the Parisian urban landscape, the Modiano with incoherent and still draw vivid, half-finished brushstrokes. Geographical precision is combined with a blurred chronology, a stylistic device known from other works by Modiano. Astier relates Roland and Louki to each other: Louki prefers to avoid the Montmartre-Pigalle district, where she grew up and was out at night as a teenager. She seeks refuge in the Latin Quarter . For Roland it feels dangerous there, from his youth. He, on the other hand, prefers to seek out “neutral zones” that, in his view, lie beyond the Arc de Triomphe . This leads to creative transitions, because both follow an emotional inner geography.

Colin Nettelbeck, in his interpretation of 2010, considers Modiano's testimony of the 1960s to be just as valuable as the work of historians and sociologists. The process of remembering, with which phantoms come to life in Modiano's universe, and the intoxicating rhythm of the narrative voice made the work. For the first time, Nettelbeck continues, Modiano uses different perspectives in this work, with the aim of depicting four functions of memory. The different layers of meaning would be constituted in the course of the narrative: At the beginning, the framework data of the story are presented in an indirect way in which Louki's enigmatic aura is evoked around a specific Parisian intellectual scene and bohemian artist. From this first, memoir-style perspective, Louki seems to represent the tragic climate inherent in the collective adventure of café guests. In the second perspective, a professional detective adds more information about Louki. Behind his person is also a past, the years of the German occupation and immediately after, which threatens to emerge again and which adds another dark level of meaning to the ensemble of people in “Le Condé”. As a third perspective, Modiano uses that of Louki himself, which from a formal point of view could be an independent unit. Despite her hopeful revolt, which is expressed in the vagabonding of young adults, Jacqueline does not prove to be resistant to the risks of other manners: not those out of friendship and love, nor the teachings of intellectual-spiritual circles. Even if the acquaintance with Jeannette had turned out to be beneficial for Louki to get away from the husband, it was no coincidence that Louki killed himself in the presence of Jeannette, according to Nettelbeck. And apparently Louki has not been able to find any stabilization through her love affair with Roland. The fourth perspective, from Roland, is confused, but clarifies something in two places: firstly, looking back at the early days of their relationship, when Louki began to bring Roland to “Le Condé”, and secondly, as soon as the phantom of Louki is noticeable that is no longer alive. At the end of the day, Nettelbeck combines his interpretation with reflections on the biography of the work and sees a further context of meaning, full of phantoms, in Modiano's examination of the legacy of literary modernism. However, in the willingness of the male characters to show compassion, he sees signs that Modiano is increasingly writing to reconcile himself.

With her argument, Kaminskas works out that there is reflection on a metadiscursive level about how a literary figure can (not) be created. Among the café-goers is Bowing, who meticulously notes who comes and goes when. It records the distances people take when they come to the Condé or go back to their place of rest. The anonymous narrator of the opening passage, on the other hand, avoids Bowing's method and is rather fascinated by everything that makes Louki's invisibility, her slow, inconspicuous movements, for example. He himself remains without a name, which in the romantic tradition of realism is synonymous with: having no identity, no autonomy. Louki / Jacqueline, on the other hand, has two names: on the right of the Seine she is Jacqueline, on the left the Seine is Louki. While it moves mainly from north to south, Roland's paths are horizontal in the city map. Kaminskas also notes that each of the narratives towards the end of its own passage frustrates the reader's attention because the search for the appropriate method is given up with which the literary figure could be brought out of the shadows. Kaminskas sums up that instabilities can be found on all levels of the text, which underline that the figure Louki / Jacqueline resists narrative possibilities - as if to escape access by fleeing.

Alan Morris also dealt with the character Bowing. Bowing's name also evokes the time of the occupation. Its namesake is connected to the Bonny Lafont Gang and the paramilitary North Africa Brigade - as are three other characters in this story: Dr Vala, Bernolle and Maurice Raphaël. Bowing's presence and activity in the Condé, where he is not a normal guest, is accordingly commented by Dr Vala as being like a raid: they are all trapped in it. Morris sees Bowing as a reflection of the actual writer of the novel. By transforming himself into a member of the French Gestapo, Modiano is again in his father's shoes and is close to his troubling paternal inheritance, says Morris.

Jacqueline Harispe, Guy Debord and other phantoms

As is so often the case with Modiano, a real event is the starting point for the fiction that he develops from it. Denis Cosnard has compiled the essential information for this: In November 1953, the 19-year-old Jacqueline Harispe committed suicide. She had worked as a mannequin for Dior and was called Kaki by her friends. Like Louki, Jacqueline Harispe took her own life by throwing herself out the window of a hotel on Rue Cels. As a child, in the care of an American student, Modiano met her in the “Chez Moineau” café. Other regular guests of the fictional “Condé” were there, in the real “Chez Moineau”: Jean-Michel (Mension) and Fred (Hommel).

Guy Debord, the author of Die Gesellschaft des Spektakels (1967), is coded as one of the references in the text, says Nettelbeck. Modiano could have evoked two 40th anniversaries as a context in 2007, the year of publication: in addition to the one for Debord's book, also that of the preparations for the celebrations for the Paris May 1968 , so Nettelbeck. Like the protagonist Louki-Jacqueline, Debord can be felt in the story as a ghostly figure - and he too took his own life - and “Debord” should be seen as the cultural baggage of the collective dimension of this work.

In addition, Modiano could allude to Georges Gurdjieff with the figure of the guru master of Louki and Roland, Guy de Vere . De Vere would be a kind of anemic Guy Debord, but for the circles in which Louki moves, Modiano says that the presence of these two influential people is about equally harmful, says Nettelbeck. And - Guy De Vere is a name in Edgar Allan Poe's poem Lenore .

reception

The international reception of the original French version began in English-speaking countries as early as 2008, even without a translation, and translations into Catalan, Castilian, Persian, Arabic and Russian were available by the end of 2009. Japanese and Italian followed in 2010 and 2011. A German-language version was only published in 2012.

Reading experience

Reading the novel leaves a deep impression of poetry as well as that of a discomfort that cannot be localized: a strange sensation that grips the reader by the throat. The weightlessness that Louki longs for is felt by the reader "through the beautiful, sometimes casual, sometimes somehow floating prose", as Gerrit Bartels feels in his review in Tagesspiegel on June 10, 2012. Pascal Gavillet describes for Tribune de Genève on October 4th 2007 that there is an anxiety about the feeling of loss, of memories that are diminishing and also of orientation that is being lost. In Les Echos on October 2, 2007, Denis Cosnard said that you just couldn't help but follow the gently sloping road and with it a Louki, which is inescapably going downhill. Patrick Kéchichian wrote in Le Monde on October 5th, 2007 that some books make us tougher and that others, which are more valuable and necessary, make us more sensitive and take our arms off us - like this portrait of a woman who is so close and so lost, drawn by Modiano along the border between light and shadow, shocking.

Reviews

• Henri Astier: "Patrick Modiano - Dans le café de la jeunesse perdue", in: The Times Literary Supplement , No. 5492 (2008): 32, July 4, 2008
• Paul Gellings: "Le Roman - Dans le café de la jeunesse perdue", in: La Nouvelle revue française , No. 584 (2008): 28
• Anita Brookner : “Dans le café de la jeunesse perdue, by Patrick Modiano”, in: The Spectator (London), no. 9360 (2008): 32, Jan. 19, 2008
• Beat Mazenauer: “ Old Paris. Patrick Modiano remembers Paris in the 1960s and lets himself be seduced into nostalgia ”, in: literaturkritik.de , March 15, 2012
• Gerrit Bartels: “ Patrick Modiano's novel Café of the Lost Youth . The happiness of weightlessness ”, Tagesspiegel , June 10, 2012

Research literature

• Mathieu Rémy: “Psychogéographie der la jeunesse perdue”, in: Lectures de Modiano , edited by Roger-Yves Roche Table of Contents , C. Defaut, Nantes 2009, ISBN 978-2-35018-081-6 , pp. 199–220
• Alexandre Clément: "Patrick Modiano et Guy Debord errent in Paris" ( Memento of October 21, 2014 in the Internet Archive ). alexandre.clement.over-blog.com , December 28, 2009 (Clément argues that the different perspectives prove how fragile memories are and that each person has their own subjective perception of reality.)
• Colin Nettelbeck: "Comme l'eau vive: mémoire et revenance dans dans le café de la jeunesse perdue (2007)", in: Modiano, ou, Les intermittences de la mémoire , edited by Anne-Yvonne Julien and Bruno Blanckeman, table of contents ( pdf), Hermann, Paris 2010, ISBN 978-2-7056-6954-6 , pp. 391-412
• Jurate Kaminskas: "Traces, traces et figures: Dans le cafe de la jeunesse perdue de Patrick Modiano ", in: French Cultural Studies , Vol. 23, no. 4 (November 2012): 350-357 abstract
• Alan Morris: “Un Passé qui ne passe pas: the memory of the Occupation in Patrick Modiano's Accident nocturne and Dans le café de la jeunesse perdue ”, in: Margaret Atack and Christopher Lloyd (eds.), Framing Narratives of the Second World War and Occupation in France 1939-2009. New readings , table of contents Manchester University Press, Manchester 2012, ISBN 978-0-7190-8755-4 , pp. 232–241

expenditure

Print

• Dans le café de la jeunesse perdue , Gallimard, Paris 2007, ISBN 978-2-07-078606-0
• En el cafè de la joventud perduda , translated by Joan Casas, Proa, Barcelona 2008, ISBN 978-84-843-7416-9
• En el café de la juventud perdida , translated by Maria Teresa Gallego Urruti, Anagrama, Barcelona 2008, ISBN 978-84-339-7749-6
• Dar kāfih-yi javānī gum shudih , translated by Sāsān Tabassum, Ufuq, Tihrān 1388 [2009], ISBN 978-9-643-69544-6
• Maqhā al-shāb al-ḍaʻi , translated by Bātrīk Mūdyānū and Muḥammad al-Mizdyawī tarjam, al-Dār al-ʻArabīyah lil-ʻUlūm, Bayrūt 2009, ISBN 978-9-953-87739-6
• Кафе утраченной молодости (Kafe utrachennoĭ molodosti), translated by IM Svetlov, Amfora, Sankt-Peterburg 2009, ISBN 978-5-367-01181-4
• Nel caffè della gioventú perduta , translated by Irene Babboni, Einaudi, Torino 2010, ISBN 978-8-806-19381-2
• 失 わ れ た 時 の カ フ ェ で (Ushinawareta toki no kafe de), translated by Yūichi Hiranaka, Sakuhinsha, Tōkyō 2011, ISBN 978-4-861-82326-8
• In the Café of Lost Youth , translated by Elisabeth Edl, Hanser, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-446-23856-5
• Ở quán cà phê của tuổi trẻ lạc lối , translated by Thị Bạch Lan Trần, Nhà Xuất Bản Văn học, Hà Nội 2014

Audio book

• Staged reading: In the Café of the Lost Youth: Roman , translated by Elisabeth Edl, involved: Anna Hartwich, Sandra Hüller, Matthias Brandt, Henning Nöhren, Thomas Sarbacher, NDR Kultur, 3 CDs (216 minutes), audio book Hamburg, Hamburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-899-03365-6 .

Web links

• Excerpt in German , Die Welt , October 11, 2014 (from the first part, from p. 17 of the French-language edition)
• Reading sample , German-language edition, from the 4th page of the second part, 9 pages
• Review notes at perlentaucher.de with reference to reviews of the German-language edition from: Süddeutsche Zeitung (from March 15, 2012), Die Zeit (from March 15, 2012), Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (from March 16, 2012), Neue Zürcher Zeitung (from March 24, 2012)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Gerrit Bartels: “ Patrick Modiano's novel Café of the Lost Youth . The happiness of weightlessness ”, Tagesspiegel , June 10, 2012
2. ^ ^{A b c d e} Colin Nettelbeck: "Comme l'eau vive: mémoire et revenance dans dans le café de la jeunesse perdue (2007)", in: Modiano, ou, Les intermittences de la mémoire , edited by Anne-Yvonne Julien and Bruno Blanckeman, Hermann, Paris 2010, pp. 391-412
3. ↑ 1950s or 1960s? Les Inrockuptibles magazine published photos of Ed van der Elsken on October 16, 2007 , which he took in the “Chez Moineau” café in the early and mid-1950s, as well as captions by Patrick Modiano. One of the photos from 1953 shows a young woman who, Modiano writes, had the same tragic fate as his fictional character Louki. Other regulars at the “Condé”, Fred (Hommel) and Jean-Michel (Mension), can also be seen in van der Elsken's photos from “Chez Moineau”. - On the other hand, an example: Louki is said to have said to Roland that the English musician Jimmy Campbell is also said to have been in the “Condé” - then we would be in the 1960s.
4. ↑ Colin Nettelbeck explains that the secret agent Robert Léon Arthur Blémant (1911–1965) is meant here .
5. ↑ ^{a b} Jurate Kaminskas: "Traces, traces et figures: Dans le café de la jeunesse perdue de Patrick Modiano ", in: French Cultural Studies , Vol. 23, no. 4 (November 2012): 350-357
6. ^ Henri Astier: " Patrick Modiano - Dans le café de la jeunesse perdue ", in: The Times Literary Supplement , No. 5492 (2008): 32, July 4, 2008
7. ↑ Nathalie Crom, Dans le café de la jeunesse perdue / Roman - Patrick Modiano , telerama.fr , October 16, 2007, updated September 18, 2013
8. ^ (Modiano) "L'un des membres du groupe, Bowing, celui que nous appelions" le Capitaine ", s'était lancé dans une entreprise que les autres avaient approuvée. Il notait depuis bientôt trois ans les noms des clients du Condé, au fur et à mesure de leur arrivée, avec, chaque fois, la date et l'heure exacte ”, p. 18
9. ^ (Modiano) "Tout ce qui la rendait invisible au regard de Bowing m'avait frappé. Sa timidité, ses gestes lents, son sourire, et surtout son silence ”, p. 23
10. ↑ As proof of his reading, Morris mentions that on p. 117 the question is actually asked “Suis-je responsable de mon père?” (Am I responsible for my father?), In: Alan Morris: “Un Passé qui ne passe pas: the memory of the Occupation in Patrick Modiano's Accident nocturne and Dans le café de la jeunesse perdue ”, in: Margaret Atack and Christopher Lloyd (eds.), Framing Narratives of the Second World War and Occupation in France 1939-2009. New readings , Manchester University Press, Manchester 2012, pp. 232-241
11. ↑ Denis Cosnard, Dans la peau de Patrick Modiano . Fayard, Paris 2010, ISBN 978-2-213-65505-5 , pp. 264-269.
12. ↑ Edgar Allan Poe, Lenore
13. ↑ ^{a b c d} Dans le café de la jeunesse perdue de Patrick Modiano , alalettre.com , without date