Many listened – especially here in Israel – when the name of the latest Nobel Prize laureate for literature was announced.
Patrick who? ? Who is he anyway? And what about our Amos Oz? – What can we do, after all, we are the land of Canaan, as Ephraim Kishon called it, for the Israeli inability to defend.

The story of Patrick Modiano – from a very personal angle – should begin with an original French musician.
Very, very out of step, Hugh de Courson. But first of all, I have a request for you.
There's no point in reading this article in order. Well. Actually, you can read it in order, but since I, your servant, don't like ruts either and am always looking and trying to find something different, a different angle and a different way, I suggest a small change in reading habits this time too.

Therefore, here are simple instructions for use:

1. Since this is an online article, intended for the eye and ear, every time you come across a link, stop.
2. Click on the link.
3. Listen to the amazing music. And it's really great, the music I included in the article.
4. Then keep reading. Until the next link.
5. And again, stop, listen and enjoy, and continue reading… until the next link. And so on. Until the happy ending.

And now we can start right away. And with music. “Lambarena” by Hugh de Courson.

And for those who didn't recognize it: it was Bach. Yes. Bach. In African sauce. And that's what Hoge de Courson and his musicians,
They do this special and rare recording, which you heard, which they called: Bach in Africa. They took it and shook it.
And shake this sacred cow and the supposedly sacred text of playing Bach and Mozart and classical music
In general, and they put pepper and salt and salsa and drums and barking dogs in it, but, most importantly, they broke through a fence and a mental fixation, and breathed new, vibrant life into it.

De Courson is a French musician, a classmate of Patrick Modiano, this year's Nobel Prize winner for literature,
And in their youth, they both dreamed of a musical career and wrote several joint compositions and songs together. One of the first of them was called “Surprise Me, Benoit.” De Courson tried in those days of the 70s
For the sake of Francoise Hardy, a beautiful young singer, to sing one of his songs. I wrote them especially for you, he complimented her. But Françoise was not enthusiastic. At the last minute, he said: I have another song, but I’m not sure it’s for you, and sent her “Surprise me Benoit.” Françoise was surprised. Who wrote the lyrics, she asked. A friend of mine from school, stammered Hugh de Courson. The friend, of course, was Patrick Modiano.

Surprise me, Benoit, said the song. Go on your hands, on your head, eat razors, cut off your ears, because it's so boring here...

And now, click on the link, and also notice how beautiful Francoise Hardy was. And enjoy:

Needless to say, the song was a hit. And Françoise brought Patrick Modiano to the Petit Conservatoire de la
Mireille's famous chanson. The small conservatory for chanson, was a school and a weekly television program
which raised the best singers and musicians of France. Miriam gave Françoise a task. Feed Modiano, she said. And we all, in those years, did – happily – everything Miriam asked. And so it came about that the beautiful Françoise Hardy, who sang about “all those boys and girls of Paris", she took the slim and handsome Patrick Modiano to restaurants and meals and made sure he ate.

Modiano later said that on their first meeting, Françoise took him to a concert by Barbara, a singer.
The famous chansonnier, who sang “The Long Brown Lady.” Now, click on the link, and see Georges Moustaki and Barbara, in one of the most beautiful chansonniers of France:

Here and there, in various articles today, I see a question popping up: Wait, Modiano, wasn't he the one who was part of Mireille Berle's group at the beginning of his career? Mireille, for those who don't know, (and in Israel, unfortunately, we don't know, even though I dedicated several programs to her on radio and television), Mireille is the "pioneer mother of French chanson," as she is defined, paving the way for many and good. And even I, the smallest of the thousands of Menashe and Ephraim and Haifa and the Krayot, even I owe her a lot. Much more than I could ever tell.

Strange. At the last Acre Festival, I sat with George Eskander at the Acre Festival, told him that there was no doubt that he would be the winner of the Best Actor award at the festival, [and by the way, he really did win], and I told him about Mireille. Because Mireille sharpened in us the sense of discerning true talent. And always gave us the same task: to nourish and feed it. Again, click on the link. Mireille and a band sing about the gardener who limps and drinks Mireille – C'est un jardinier qui boîte.

And here's something else you didn't know about Patrick Modiano, Nobel Prize winner: Françoise Hardy, who received the
The task, in Miriam's command, to make sure he eats, claimed he was floating. Slippery. Strange. You never know
Whether what he was telling was true or some fiction he had invented. When we asked him, casually, how he was doing, he would mumble something about tuberculosis or pneumonia and chest pains. When we pressed him with questions, he would stutter, which got worse the more we pressed. To me in those days he seemed like someone who wanted to be erased. That we wouldn't notice his presence at all.

But what could be done, and fate would have it otherwise. Modiano was then a thin and handsome guy, who could not be ignored.
From him. Only in the presence of one person did he feel truly comfortable: Emmanuel Berl. Mireille's husband, a Jewish-French writer and thinker, who, by the way, really contracted tuberculosis in his youth, which almost killed him, but lived a very long and creative life, until the age of 84. Berl was the spiritual father of us all. Perhaps because he was an old man with a lot of knowledge and original and unconventional thinking, and perhaps most of all, because he was young in spirit. Much more than us. His latest book, written together with Modiano. It is actually two books in one package. The first part, “Interrogation,” is a fascinating conversation between Emmanuel and Patrick, and the second part, written by Emmanuel Berl alone, is called: “What a beautiful day, let's take a walk to the cemetery…” At the time, I began translating the book into Hebrew, in order to offer it and publish it in Israel, because I had promised Mireille, but for some reason, we did not get help.

Now I searched and found the pages, which have since turned yellow, and from them I will first bring a short passage, which is
Essentially a confession from Patrick, a confession that says it all: It seems to me, Modiano writes, that I bore and irritate him. He
I'd rather talk about the future, but that doesn't work with me. He's all hope for tomorrow, and I'm all nostalgia,
To yesterday. And then, when, out of kindness, he agrees and brings up from the depths of yesterday people and events that were, I am overcome with a strange feeling that this man with the mane of red hair is actually younger than me. …

And again: please click on the link, and see and hear the beautiful Françoise sing about the boys and girls her age.
On the streets of Paris… Francoise Hardy – Tous Les Garcons.

Modiano's entire work deals with the past. A very specific past and in a very specific place: Paris under Nazi occupation. It is strange that Patrick, who was born after the war to a Jewish father and a Flemish mother, deals with such an obsession precisely during that dark period of the City of Lights. Perhaps out of a sense of guilt that he cannot get rid of, he repeatedly describes people who betray and even collaborate with the Nazi occupier. Each one has his own reasons. Like Brecht's Maria Sanders. A prostitute of Jews, that is what the Nazis wrote on the sign that Maria Sanders hung on her chest. They shaved her head and dragged her into the street, to teach the residents of the street and the entire world what to do to an Aryan German girl who defiled her people when she fell in love with a young Jewish man. Her mother warned her, but you can't command someone to fall in love with your heart. And Maria Sanders' heart followed that handsome Jewish boy, even though he had a nose that the Nazis didn't like. What became of Maria Sanders after she was exposed and humiliated in the town square is unknown. Apparently, she was turned into a prostitute for Aryan soldiers in one of the Nazi concentration camps. But Brecht wrote the ballad about Maria Sanders, and her name at least is etched in the depths of human memory. A searing testimony and warning of what xenophobia can do.

And as usual, now, click on the link, and see and hear the wonderful Italian singer Mileva sing the
The Ballad of Maria Sanders, by Brecht.

Like Patrick Modiano, De Courson seeks to break through the boundaries of time and place. To find points of connection between
Nations and people, who seemingly, at first glance, have no connection. But if with Patrick Modiano it is about crossing lines between enemies, with De Courson it is about collaboration between musicians from separate worlds.
In French, the word COLLABORATION has two meanings. One is positive, in the sense of a bridge.
Shared, and the other negative, in the sense of a collaborator. This wound of collaborators, which preoccupies Modiano, remains gaping and bleeding. One of his most beautiful books, “What Happened to Dora Broder,” begins with a small advertisement he found in an old issue of “Paris-Soir,” an old newspaper from 1941, the years of the Nazi occupation, about the disappearance of a 16-year-old girl. Modiano embarks on a search not only to find out what happened to Dora Broder in those years, but also what happened to his father, the same Jew who hid in Paris under false names for years. And the tears do not dry. And the wound is still gaping. And painful. In another book, “Family Identity Card,” Modiano sets out to register his first daughter, who has just been born, at the French Ministry of the Interior, but then it turns out that his own identity card has large holes. He does not know exactly when he was born, or what his parents’ names were in those days. A sheet of blue paper. Folded in four. My parents’ marriage certificate, Modiano writes. My father was registered under a false name, because the wedding took place during the Nazi occupation. On February 24, 1944, at five o’clock in the afternoon, Guy Jaspard de Jong and Marie Louise Se appeared before us at the town hall in Megève, and declared their consent to marry…

What did my mother and father do in February 44 in the Mezhv? And what is this “de Jong” that my father added to his pseudonymous first name?..
And the questions never cease. On the contrary. The wound opens even more…

De Courson, the musician, on the other hand, believes that if words can separate, music can and should unite.
Let us not tear it to pieces, from Bach's Johannes Passion. In the original and so beautiful version by Hugh de Courson.

Please click on the link:

We can't end without another great quote from Patrick Modiano, about the essence of music and the ability to listen.
For others, even if they are no longer here. On the street of dark shops, Modiano writes, one can still hear at the entrance to the buildings the echo of the footsteps of those who used to pass there, and then disappeared. Something still continues to vibrate and play in the air there, a voice that is gradually evaporating, but it can still be heard, if one only opens one's ear and heart to listen, to listen.

And if you ask me, there is no deeper and more beautiful definition than this for everything that is human and alive and pulsating in every person and every piece of music.
And now, the last link, Yves Montaigne, the one and only, doubtless asks, doubtless asks, if you do indeed hear the
That song that those who dream and fight for freedom sing in the dark. The song of the partisans.

Please click on the link. And thank you for clicking: