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The Legacy of the Occupation

The Legacy of the Occupation. Patrick Modiano’s Dora Bruder. Representing the unrepresentable. ‘ To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric’ Theodor Adorno. Structure of today’s lecture. Vichy France and the Jews Reading Dora Bruder as social history Patrick Modiano

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The Legacy of the Occupation

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  1. The Legacy of the Occupation Patrick Modiano’s Dora Bruder

  2. Representing the unrepresentable ‘To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric’ Theodor Adorno

  3. Structure of today’s lecture • Vichy France and the Jews • Reading Dora Bruder as social history • Patrick Modiano • Dora Bruder: Histoire/histoire • Memory and Oblivion • Places and Traces • Making connections

  4. The Jewish population in France • History of the Jewish population in France • Emancipation and Anti-Semitism • The Dreyfus Affair • C20th Immigration • Russian pogroms • World War I/Russian Revolution • 1930s rise of Hitler

  5. Vichy France and the Jews • Vichy and Nazi legislation • 1940 ‘Statut des juifs’ • 1941 Revised ‘Statut des juifs’ • Registration and wearing of yellow star • Round-ups and movement restrictions • July 1942 rafle: Les Tourelles and Drancy camp • Statistics

  6. Reading Dora Bruder as social history • Origins of parents • Registration of Jews • Different ‘categories’ of Jews • Exclusion of veterans • Wearing of the yellow star • Police round-ups (‘rafles’)

  7. Patrick Modiano • Born 1945 • Father of Jewish Italian origin • First novel: La Place de l’étoile (1968) • Rue des boutiques obscures (1978) Prix Goncourt

  8. Dora Bruder: Histoire/histoire • Fact, Fiction and Truth

  9. Documents • Newspaper advert • Birth register • School register • Registration of Jews • Police register • Letters to and from camps • Deportation list to Auschwitz

  10. Fictional “sources” • Victor Hugo, Les Misérables • Patrick Modiano, Voyage de noces • Film: Premier Rendezvous • Fredo Lampe, Am Rande der Nicht • Felix Hartlaub, ‘Notes et impressions’ • Roger Gilbert-Lecomte • Maurice Sachs • Jean Genet, Miracle de la Rose

  11. Fact and Fiction And here is what disturbs me: at the end of their flight across a district whose topography and street-names have been invented by Victor Hugo, Cosette and Jean Valjean just manage to escape a police patrol by slipping behind a wall. […] This garden where the pair hide is that of a convent, which Victor Hugosituates precisely at no. 62 Rue de Petit-Picpus, the same address as that of the Convent of the Holy Heart of Mary where Dora was a boarder. (46-7;51-2)

  12. Memory and Oblivion • Memory and Forgetting • Collaboration and Guilt

  13. Traces and Places • Ghosts on Parisian streets • Changes between past and present • “Zone militaire. Défense de filmer et de photographier”

  14. Making connections… • Structure of Dora Bruder • ‘Coincidences’ • Identification of Modiano/narrator with Dora’s story • Modiano’s running away/arrest • Position of reader

  15. D’hier à aujourd’hui D'hier à aujourd'hui. Avec le recul des années, les perspectives se brouillent pour moi, les hivers se mêlent l'un à l'autre. Celui de 1965 et celui de 1942 . (8; 10) La ville était déserte [le 19 septembre], comme pour marquer l’absence de Dora. Depuis, le Paris où j’ai tenté de retrouver sa trace est demeuré aussi désert et silencieux que ce jour-là. (137;144)

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