“Sympathetic Ink” (Patrick Modiano, Encre sympathique, Gallimard, 2019), the 29th novel by the 2014 Nobel Prize winner, is similar to its predecessors but also different from them. The same hypnotic, bewitching Modiano atmosphere. Like many others captivated by the magic of the great writer, I will never tire of his writing, diving into his rich, refined and poetic world.
In the novel “Sympathetic Ink,” Modiano reveals in a special way his literary “I believe,” looking at himself as he writes, what is called the ares poetica. The novel is written before our eyes. On page 63, for example, Jean-Patrick announces that he has reached page 63. And this is in addition to the wanderings, in which he accustoms his readers, to the Paris that was and is not or to the Paris that has preserved its houses and sites.
In this article, we will visit Modiano's study and discover some of the secrets of his writing. We will then leave his apartment to follow in his footsteps through Paris in the 1960s. A trip to Modiano's Paris is a descent into the labyrinths of memory, and it will be interesting to follow the parallels between the city and its events and the soul of the writer and the soul of his readers.
Detective investigation
The novel “Sympathetic Ink”, Hidden Ink, opens as a thriller and maintains this character throughout the book until the resolution at the end. The book is written mostly in the first person by Jean Eben, a double of Patrick Modiano, whose full and official name is Jean Patrick Modiano.
Jean Eben is employed as a rookie detective at the agency of It, whom readers had already met in Modiano's previous novel, from about forty years ago, "The Street of the Dark Shops" (winner of the Goncourt Prize in 1978, in the Hebrew translation by Avital Inbar, which was published a year after the original). It assigns the apprentice to follow the trail of a woman named Noël Lefebvre who disappeared one day, not returning home after work.
Noel was employed at the Lancel handbag store near the Paris Opera when she disappeared. Every detail in Modiano’s lean novel, which features suitcases, bags, trains and buses, and even a boat, has significance, as does Noel’s last workplace.
The folder on the investigation into the disappearance of Noël Lefebvre that Ett gives to Jean is almost empty, light blue, almost white. From this ambiguity, Jean must glean information about the missing woman. Ett has ordered the investigation from a shady guy named Georges Bernos, owner of a dance club that Noël used to frequent.
Jean Sarr to the post office in15th District With a document that allows him to take the letters intended for Noel from there, to a cafe where he meets an associate of Noel's, a shady actor named Gerard Mord, to the apartment where Noel lives with a partner named Roger Behber, to14th District Val16th District In search of clues that will lead him to the solution of the mystery, assuming that the missing woman is still alive. The investigation branches out and diverges, adding characters and places, outside of Paris, Haute-Savoie Province And outside of France, Rome.
The reader, who until the opening of the book had never heard of Noel Lefebvre, a complete stranger, is filled with worry and anxiety for her fate. Unlike other books I have started reading recently, some I have finished and some I have not, in which I felt no identification with the heroes and the authors, this book, like Modiano's predecessors, made me feel great concern for that Noel and for the young-adult remembered in his past, Modiano's double.
A sympathetic ink, also a sympathetic Jean, evoking sympathy, touching human chords in his tiny music, in his wanderings between times, between the layers of his existence that pile up one on top of the other.
Layers and layers of memories
Slowly, he discovers that Jeanne Chenoel, apparently a stranger to him, was born in a village near the city of Annecy and was his childhood friend. Together they traveled on a Sunday bus that left the city of Annecy and took her to her home and him to the boarding school where he was a pupil. Patrick Modiano did, indeed, spend the early sixties at a boarding school in the Haute-Savoie region and knows how to play with autobiographical elements that he mixes and blurs with facts from the imagination.
Jean's temporary job as a private detective prepares him for his true calling as a writer investigating his past. The reconstruction of Noelle's life is, in fact, the reconstruction of the life of Jean, Patrick's double, thirty years after carrying out the mission for It.
An endless game of reflections when Noelle is part of Jean and when Jean is part of Patrick. Siamese twins or even triplets, quadruplets, quintuplets, etc., glued to each other in their silhouettes. A woman who is a stranger to his identity suddenly becomes close to him and illuminates him with radiance.
The erotic triangles in which Noel participated as the female rib in her turbulent youth take on a symbolic meaning, namely psychoanalytic, poetic, philosophical. Psychoanalytic because the writer's characters are a part of him, reflecting aspects of himself or destinies from which he escaped. Poetic because these characters make up the contents of his books, serving as raw materials for him. Philosophical because Modiano believes that a certain mystery must always be maintained, otherwise prison doors will close on him and condemn him to death. And what would the world be worth without anything mysterious, without an abandoned plot, without a deserted and empty space? What will the writer explore? And what will remain for the reader if everything is presented to him, ready and processed, without him being able to participate in the act of creation and complete the unknown himself?
Jean describes himself as being fifty years old when he wrote the novel. Patrick Modiano was already over seventy when he wrote the book under Jean's name. The reader watches the stages of Patrick Modiano's life with snow in his eyes but also increasingly clarifies the archaeology and geography that compose them.
This is a novel about the apprenticeship of a writer who learned the craft of writing thanks to fatherly figures like It, who played the role of a mentor-psychologist. From the start, Jean was talented at examining the hearts and minds of others, but It put him on the right track by showing him the techniques of detective work and psychoanalysis, which are necessary for a writer to get into the skin of his characters and feel better in his own skin.
And so, with the help of writing, the lame dog, as Modiano felt in his youth, became a virtuoso skier who skied between peaks, who found his destiny and happiness. And to those who claim that Modiano always writes the same book, I will say that in each and every book that makes up his work, treasures are hidden, reserved for those who know how to discover them.
A detective investigation spiced with psychoanalysis, autobiography, barre poetics, and philosophy. And what about history? It's time to leave Patrick Modiano's book-filled study and wander Paris according to the roadmap of "Sympathetic Ink." Reading the book awakens in Modiano's fans the strong desire to see with their own eyes the streets he walks and the sites he observes.
A trip to Paris, the visible and the hidden, in the footsteps of Modiano
The trip begins with a farewell song written by singer Vincent Delarme, inspired by the writer Patrick Modiano. In the song, a young man kisses his girlfriend, “The Modiano Kiss,” after noticing the writer’s profile in a gray raincoat near Square Carpeaux.
(Square Carpeaux) inMontmartre.
The song recreates the somewhat nostalgic, misty Modiano atmosphere of dim streetlights in the rain, as reflected in the pages of his books read by high school students. The girl cannot believe that it is indeed Modiano standing by the cafe with his back to her, and the guy mentions “Patrick Modiano’s Honeymoon.” In this context, it is interesting to note that after hearing the song, Modiano said in amazement that after his marriage he and his wife lived for a while near Square Carpo…
Instead of a map: Under the title of each station is its address, and each address is a link. Click on it, and the place will immediately open in Google Maps.
The post office in the 15th arrondissement
Noël Lefebvre's letters were kept in a post office on Rue de la Convention in the 15th arrondissement, and on several occasions Sir Jean was given a power of attorney to collect them. There is still a post office on this street at 204 bis, rue de la Convention.
Doubt about Noel's address
88 rue de la Convention , and 13 rue Vaugelas
The investigation file that Ett gave to Jeanne lists the address 88 rue de la Convention as her place of residence.
Is the address that It gave Jean correct? Doubtful. Gerard Mord, the actor who was close to Noel and her partner Roger, gives Jean another address, 13 rue Vaugelas, in the same district, but on a different street, where both Noel and Roger lived for a period of time.
From Gerard's words, Jean learns that Noel and Roger were married. He did not know this detail either. Together, Gerard and Jean visit the abandoned apartment where Noel and Roger lived, and from there Jean steals Noel's diary, which he feels is written in sympathetic ink. New lines suddenly appear in it.
The Perimeter Boulevard
Between the two massive rows of buildings on Boulevard Brune, in the 14th arrondissement, Jean found himself one afternoon while trying to find people's addresses from Noel's notebook. The rows seemed to him to go on forever, and he realized that he would soon find a home. Not only nostalgia blows through the pages of the book, but also a sense of alienation and abandonment.
Georges Bernos's house
At this address, 194 Avenue Victor Hugo, in the 16th arrondissement, lives Georges Bernos, a character in Modiano's novel, the man who commissioned the investigation of Noel Lefebvre from It, the director of the detective agency.
According to Danny Cosnard's blog , dedicated to Patrick Modiano, the man and the work, Modiano did not invent the character of Georges Bernas. In a private house, in reality, at the same address that Modiano gives in the novel, there did live a Jew named Georges Bernas, who was born in St. Petersburg in 1906 and arrived in Paris in an unknown year.
Bernos's occupations described in Modiano's novel are similar to those of the man in his real life. Bernos ran cinemas in Brussels, as he does in the novel. As for his other occupations in the novel, running a dance club, a restaurant, and a car parts store, it is not known whether Modiano invented them from his imagination or derived them from some historical source.
What Modiano does not say is that Georges Bernos sold scrap metal to the Germans during the occupation and made a fortune. He probably fled France when he realized that the winds were about to change direction. In Modiano's novel, which does not explicitly mention the occupation period, there is no mention of these details.
It is interesting to note that in the conversation between Gerard and Jean, Gerard asks Jean how he met Noelle. Jean lies to him and says that he met her through Georges Bernos. Gerard asks Jean who Georges Bernos was and Jean, who knows nothing about Bernos other than his address, answers that he was his and Noelle's doctor and that they met in the waiting room.
Jean says that he lied to Gerrard to get details about Noel from him. He posed as someone close to Noel and fabricated the story about Bernos the doctor and the meeting in the waiting room. That's the end of the novel.
But according to Denis Cousnar, Bernos the doctor existed in reality! Except it was a different Bernos. Israel Aaron Bernos, a doctor, apparently the uncle of Georges Bernos, the manager of entertainment venues. Are you confused? This is Modiano's intention, juggling between reality and fiction to show us and himself how elusive the truth is.
We'll sort things out anyway. In Modiano's novel, one of the main characters is Georges Bernos, who ordered the investigation into the disappearance of Noël Lefebvre. Jean, who knows nothing about Georges Bernos at the beginning of the novel, lies and says that Georges Bernos is a doctor by profession.
Noel Lefebvre, Jean's successor and friend, went to the doctor Bernos's clinic to get a prescription for sedatives. In the waiting room, Jean continues to be alone, he met Noel because Bernos was also his own doctor. Modiano not only did not invent the character of Georges Bernos, but he did not invent Bernos the doctor either...
In the novel, there is one Bernos, Georges Bernos, in reality there are two, Georges Bernos, an entertainment venue manager, and Israel Aaron Bernos, a doctor. Danny Kosnar continues to provide information in his interesting blog, saying that Israel Aaron Bernos was born in Kiev in 1888 and arrived in Paris long before 1917.
Israel Aharon Bernos served as a military doctor throughout the war and in 1920 received citizenship. French And he became Arnold Bernos, director of a clinic in Avignon-Montagne. On February 6, 1934, Arnold Bernos happened to be inThe bloody demonstration at Place de la Concorde, in which 37 people died and about 275 were injured. Arnold Bernos treated about XNUMX wounded and gained a reputation for his exemplary behavior during the tragic and bloody event.
To summarize: In Modiano's novel, there is one Bernos, Georges Bernos, a dubious man. In reality, there were two people named Bernos, Georges Bernos and Arnold Bernos. Georges Bernos, indeed a dubious man in real life who collaborated with the Germans, and Arnold Bernos, apparently his uncle, who was an outstanding and dedicated doctor in the service of France.
In 1948, Georges Bernos was tried in absentia in a French court and sentenced to the confiscation of all his assets, including the municipal estate he had purchased at the beginning of the occupation at number 194, Avni. Victor HugoAt this point, in that urban mansion, reality and fiction merge.
Danny Cousnard goes on to say that the house was demolished in the early 1960s and a modern building was built in its place. Modiano's novel describes a scene in which Jean visited the house at this address one summer. The door was opened by a man sitting in the office of a real estate company and explained that he had been the secretary of Georges Bernos, who had recently died in Lausanne. The house would be demolished in a few months, for real estate reasons, the man added.
Whether Bernos really died in Lausanne, as a character in the novel says, or whether he died elsewhere, perhaps in South America, to which he fled, according to one of the testimonies outside Modiano's novel, is unknown. But the stone and brick city mansion he purchased with money he earned from selling scrap metal to the Germans was indeed demolished and a modern building was built to take its place.
A dead-end street near Opera Square with a theater at the end
Jeanne went into the handbag shop “Lancel” where Noelle worked to meet her colleague who had become particularly attached to her. On the cul-de-sac, rue Édouard VII, which leads to the Théâtre Édouard VII (7 Place Édouard VII), she told Jeanne that she and Noelle also used to meet at a restaurant run by Bernos on a similar cul-de-sac near the Champs-Élysées.
A dead-end street near the Champs-Elysees with a school at the end
Noel used to meet her friends at a restaurant called “Crovel” (in Hebrew, a sail), near the Champs Elysées , rue Robert Estienne, which I don’t know if it was Modiano’s imagination or existed in the past. Rue Robert Estienne also ends in a dead end at the end of which there is now a kindergarten and an elementary school.
School has an important place in Modiano's novel as an image of initiation and preparation for life itself: school is life and life in its beginnings, childhood and adolescence, are a school. On the other hand, the theater at the end of the dead end near the opera refers to the theme of makeup, acting, and fakery in the novel, another important motif in Modiano's world, which constantly asks itself what is true and what is false, wondering about the possibility of honesty.
From looking at the Wikipedia entry for Rue Robert Etienne, I learned that where the school is now located at the end of the street, there used to be an abandoned area, a wild compound, and I couldn't help but think of that mysterious, unexplained void that Jean says in the novel that he needs like a living space so that he won't be imprisoned in the clarity of death.
“La Marine” Dance Club
Noel frequented the dance club “Le Marine” on the Quai de Grenelle, run by Georges Bernos. What remains of the place after thirty years?
Jean takes the Javel metro, gets on the platform and arrives at the Pont Grenelle. The buildings he expected to see have been destroyed, as if after a shelling, leaving room for wild space, abandoned lots, emptiness, like the one Jean needs, otherwise he will feel trapped. Of the first building, only the facade remains, and if it weren't for the sign with the inscription in red letters, one might think it was a garage. So says Jean. With Modiano, even buildings disguise themselves...
The garage on Trocadero Square
The club disguises itself as a garage but there is also a real garage, Garage du Trocadéro, R. Béavioure, Spécialiste Chrysler. Jean found Roger, who was married to Noel, at the Garage du Trocadéro, as a Chrysler specialist. Roger is married to another woman, younger than him, and is very afraid that she will discover his past.
He hid his previous marriage from her, and his face contorted when Jean tried to coax him into telling her about Noel. The woman who worked with Noel at the Lancel store also reacted in a similar way, with a kind of sadness and discomfort, and preferred to avoid her.
The Water Passage
After leaving the office of Roger, the garage manager, Jean headed towards Le Passage des eaux, literally translated as “The Water Passage.” This passage, which connects two streets, is so named because of the iron-rich spring that was discovered there and then disappeared. Water, as we know, is constantly flowing and changing, but to Jean, on the contrary, it seemed as if time had stood still.
The path does not obey the usual laws, as if it has broken free from the laws of time and place. The gates of the buildings are hidden and their windows are not clear to which building they belong. Beyond the wall on the left, Jean thinks he sees a park or the edge of a forest.
He is sure to run into acquaintances from thirty years ago on the path, and none of them have changed. Everything has frozen. It will be enough to tap on one of the windows for a familiar face to peek out from it. And he even thinks he sees Noel, crossing the path, holding a small child in her hand.
The novel ends with a trip to Rome, which, in Jean's opinion, unlike Paris, is a city that does not change. Indeed, in this novel, the narrator, who was in his youth, in the sixties, until the end of the world, is aware of the collapse of the theatrical scenery of houses and streets in Paris. He has the right, and in these years he has been allowed to witness the last days of the Paris that has disappeared. But as in his own life, every ending is the possibility of a new beginning.
Note
I wrote two different, separate reviews of Patrick Modiano's novel "Sympathetic Ink," one for this website with an emphasis on Francophile aspects, and the other for Meirav Golan's culture blog with an emphasis on literary analysis. The two reviews complement each other.
Want to read more about Patrick Modiano?
You are invited to read Arie Yas's article, Patrick Who? on the Nobel Prize and the French chanson.
A comprehensive, high-quality, and fascinating article. Thanks to Orna…
Thank you very much, Joel, glad you liked it.
A collection of additional happy responses I received after the article was published, a few days after my 69th birthday, a wonderful coincidence:
Miriam Twig: Dear Orna, as usual I really enjoyed reading it, a fascinating and intriguing article. Has the book been translated into Hebrew? Thank you very much.
Orna Lieberman: Thank you very much. This book has not been translated into Hebrew, but many other books by Modiano have been translated into this language.
Thank you very much for the informative article. :Sarit Chalamish
Vincent Delarme is one of my favorite singers and I knew the song but not its subject. Very intriguing and I think I will try to read the book in French.
Orna Lieberman: It's interesting that you knew this song. I knew Delram, but I heard this song for the first time only after I sat down to write the article.
About this book.
Ofra Ben-Ami: Very fascinating!!! Thank you for this text and its companion on the literary blog.
Orna Lieberman: Thank you for carefully reading both articles.
:Dafna Haimovich: I read Orna Lieberman's fascinating article carefully and with great interest. I opened the link to Aryeh Yas's article about Patrick and the French chanson, which incorporates music into the article and connects it to writing. I really enjoyed both thought-provoking articles. Many thanks.
Orna Lieberman: Thank you very much. Aryeh Yas's article is indeed great.
And I recommend everyone read it along with my article.
Ruth Shimoni: Save the writing for reading in installments, to preserve the pleasure.
You make love to the Hebrew language!
Orna Lieberman: I really like this image. It suits me. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much. What fun to start the new year like this. A pleasure.
Thank you very much, Pini. What a pleasure for me to start the new year with your comment. Happy New Year with lots of pleasures!!!
Amiram Tsabari wrote:
I was immersed in your wonderful writing, thank you, Orna!
Benzi Goren wrote:
Thank you very much, Orna. Modiano is a wonderful writer and so is your post.
Irit Hadari wrote:
What detective skills are required here, and wow… you have it, pleasure!!
I received an unexpected compliment from a photographer originally from Israel who now lives in the south of France:
I love your articles so much!! Especially when you write about the history of buildings, sites and people in Paris. I literally "swallow" them in one breath. I'm captivated!!
I just discovered that the book has been translated into English. For those who don't read French, this is an opportunity to become familiar with an important book in Modiano's oeuvre.
Patrick Modiano, Invisible Ink, Yale University Press, 2020
https://www.amazon.fr/Invisible-Ink-Patrick-Modiano/dp/0300252587
Sophie Rakhlenko
An instructive, comprehensive, and in-depth article that is itself a kind of detective story about Patrick Modiano's characters and the author's writing style.
Thank you very much, Orna, also for your guided wandering through the streets, avenues, and squares of Patrick Modiano's Paris,
And all this accompanied by spectacular photographs and even musical accompaniment to Vincent Delerm's poem Le Baiser Modiano, which you first discovered for me.
Thank you very much!