Chevreuse by Patrick Modiano, or the memorial quest for elusive past
Abstract
Following in the footsteps of vanished existences is one of the motifs of Patrick Modiano’s writings. Chevreuse is a variation on this theme, featuring a character who tries to recover his past threatened by oblivion. It is, however, singular that the modality of this memorial quest is introspective. This article will explore how the narrative navigates the tension between the apparent looseness of the plot, which becomes mimetic of the experience of remembering itself, and the attempt to create, by means of writing, a network allowing the memories to make sense of one another. From this perspective, we will study the two valences of the writing which embrace the convolutions of a lacunar memory on its becoming a hermeneutic instrument; then we will demonstrate that this ars memoriae endows itself with a poetics of dream and imagination to overcome this ambivalence and to proceed to the mental recreation of a disappeared world.
Keywords:
Patrick Modiano, memory, introspection, mise en abyme, writingReferences
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