Hello
Gentle Reader
A
nocturne is a piece of musical composition that is traditionally performed at
night. Frédéric Chopin, the famous Polish composer was renowned for his
compositions in the nocturne musical genre. The word: ‘Nocturne,’ itself brings
to mind a dichotomous image of contrary and contradicting impressions. On the
one side: the succulent and sweet ripeness of summer evenings and nights, where
the air is warm, but the earth has begun to cool. Shadow wraps their shawls
around, while stars twinkle and wink in their silver ghostly ether realms,
silent witnesses to a world in slumber. These
warm and intimate nights always belong to the young. Restless and sleepless,
young lovers and admirers, wonder arm and arm, hands enclosed stalking along
shadowed streets, which promise discretion and cover from onlookers and
bystanders who can trade their rendezvous as a currency, or hold it for ransom.
Here amongst the shadows, street lights, and celestial bodies’ overheads, they
can exchange or steal ached but withdrawn kisses, without the tattling glare of
the sun. These nights—the nights of these young lovers—must always come to an
end. Yet among such sweet scents of flowers cooling in the evening, recovering
from the blistering former day, they lay bare both heart and soul and profess
their intentions without the scrutiny of an audience. Beneath the spotlight of
street lamps, they exchange departing kisses while shadows pause on baited
breath, while moths dance in a fluttering frenzy intoxicated on bewitching
intimacy.
On
the divergent side of this twofold portrait is the unsettled landscape of the
nocturne: the dirge and elegy of shadows, void and emptiness. A scene of
extinguished flames followed by trails of swirling violet smoke, snaking in a
glowing phosphorescent dark. The air is not perfumed by the cooling scent of
flower perspiring in forlorn sweet. No,
the air is still and cold, covered in a shroud of silence, which rests within
the stony claws of forgotten and nameless statues. The street lights and their
afterglow from a thick gaze, and the sky rolls with burning nocturnal clouds,
concealing stars and moon. Here and there salt and peppered leaves flee, as the
autumn colours fall. In their wake lie naked twigs and branches, whose wooden
bark beckons no more. Solitary cars trace their paths through the streets,
their destinations unknown. Sole individuals with no company stalk, sulk and
stumble down cracked and beaten pavement. Blooms of flowers remain stagnant,
ripe with rot. Junkies seek cover in the scant remaining bushes who still have
leaves. Insomniac philosophers converse and confess with solitary statues, who
ignore the trivialities of mortality, but envy their freedom. Sirens wail in
the distance. Someone is heading to the emergency room; while another is
heading to jail. The lights of both paramedics and officers colour and flash
through the landscape, a mixture of white and red, or blue and red. The only
establishment open at this time are clubs and bars. The regulars are perched in
their drunken stupors, cooing about better days—youthful days—while cawing at
the state of the world and a bleak future. In the back corners, one can always
find the anomaly to the establishment, they’re not regulars, and have never
been seen before. They are served later and often last. Regardless, they nurse
their drinks with novice naivety. They don’t whisper a word. Elsewhere in
desolate flats another tosses and turns. Regret eats away at the night. The
following day will be riddled with nocturnal depravation, restlessness, and of
course sleeplessness.
Patrick
Modiano’s “Paris Nocturne,” gravitates towards the second perspective of the
nocturne; the one of waltzing shades, forlorn and foreboding shadows whispering
secrets, which both irritate and intrigue, though they never betray their
sources or their enigmatic treasures. “Paris Nocturne,” opens casually enough,
with the a-typical Modiano narrator: an aimless young man wandering the streets
of Paris in the dusk ridden hours after twilight. There is no backstory or
information or clue or inclination as to why this narrator is directionless and
drifting with haunting translucence through the streets of Paris. Unknown and
unacknowledged are the survival traits of Modiano’s narrators and characters,
and this narrator assumes and fits into the clinical profile already
established with finesse. He is able to wear this fatalistic coat without
complaint or issue. It droops and hangs. The leather is familiar and warm,
infused with the scents of previous occupants. The narrator maintains his
authorial gifted talents. He is able to blend and dissolve, sneak and pursue,
spook and sleuth; he cannot allow buried bones to remain undisturbed or accept
memory and its unrealizable narratives. Despite all his talents of savvy street
smarts, his insatiable curiosity riddles him with faults; his interloping
tendencies get the best of him, and his personal convictions for conclusions,
only lead to consequence and questions. In this case: an immediate and freak
vehicle accident occurs. No deaths, merely minor injuries. Yet it becomes the
cataclysmic event which pulsates throughout the novel.
This
particular accident makes an immediate appearance in the novel. Our narrator in
his routine adrift ponderings crosses Place de Pyramides. From the dark of this
plaza, a sea-green fiat emerges and unceremoniously is enroute for a collision
course with narrator; it swerves out of the way but still strikes its target,
before crashing into a nearby barricade. From there the driver—a woman by the name
of Jacqueline Beausergent—and the young man are carted off in a van by a large
man, and taken to a medical clinic. There in white walls, and a small room the
two lay in adjacent beds, staring and wondering of the others fate. Our narrator
is consumed in a dose of ether, and the mysterious Jacqueline Beausergent
vanishes into the nebulous void of the night. Our narrator upon awakening from
his ether riddled sleep finds the woman gone. The same large man who traveled
with the two to the clinic, leaves the narrator plenty of money, and soon he
too fades into the alleys and blackened corridors of Parisian streets. From
there our narrator conducts a Modiano Odyssey, seeking out the catalyst:
Jacqueline
Beausergent and the other faded memories, which she dredges forth.
“Paris
Nocturne,” traverses the familiar landscape of Patrick Modiano’s previous
novels. The unreliable discontent of memory, the static and hazy amnestic blur
of recalling events, a sense of aimless displacement with regards to similar surroundings,
dubious characters with questionable motivations that dance within the shadowy
recesses of society, and absent parents, or distant fathers who slip in before
fading out once again leaving no trace of their ethereal and ephemeral existence,
always evasive of detection; but also disappearing women—such as: Jacqueline
Beausergent—who are enigmatic and cold to approach, who exist in and around the
context, while retaining their position to the peripheral; as usual though
these woman disappear often abruptly and with no reason; and finally there is
that monochromatic metallic scent of ether; the blue wave of sleep, peace, and forgetfulness.
All of these ticks are reached formulaically with “Paris Nocturne,” and yet despite
this, Patrick Modiano maintains both engagement and enjoyment, despite these
tropes reoccurring with reprised roles and chorus repetitions.
“Paris
Nocturne,” however, does find itself dissenting from the routine parameters established
in Modiano’s previous output. Character interaction varies in each novel. Some of
Patrick Modiano’s novels, feature a few characters that orbit and interact with
each other in a strange celestial cacophony, though their orbits are always
doomed to fall apart in its astronomical imbalance; others are merely pass each
other, exchanging a quick nod or salutation before carrying on. Intimacy or ‘deep
rooted,’ connection is impossible. Each character always carries in their hand
a suitcase of discretion, confidentiality, privacy and secrets, which
ultimately ensures their departures are met with immediate urgency, with no
flare or farewells. Yet, “Paris Nocturne,” eschews this, there is little
interaction, little characterization, and only inclinations of dialogue and
meetings. In his search of Jacqueline Beausergent, the narrator reminisces of
his complicated childhood and his otherwise absent father, who participated in
business transactions and activities of commerce which were always frowned upon
by the law, meaning his father would often dispose of him at boarding school or
leave him to his own devices, and once called the cops calling his son a
vagrant to merely get rid of him. A mother is never mentioned. In this, Patrick
Modiano does away with any notion of character interaction, and treads lightly
when it does. In its place, Modiano enacts a fragmented narrative, which
playfully disposes of the notions of time, making it irrelevant and
inconsequential. The prose is lucid and simple, but often precariously skirting
close to stream of consciousness, with its free associations and often paranoid
state of delirium. Yet Patrick Modiano always reels it before getting out of
control. Despite this the narrative still maneuvers with postmodern
fragmentation through the miasma of corrupted memories, riddled with paranoia,
to create a free associated quilt of events and incidents, which are
haphazardly soldered together, in a makeshift sequence which provides no
results. The corrupted father, the run over dog, the loss, the abandonment, it
all circles around his fateful accident which has left him with greater
stability at least financially, but more disillusioned than ever, and with a
greater sense of alienation. Yet further questions arise throughout the novel. What
about Dr. Bouviere, the faux pseudo-doctor parading philosophical guru like
mantras, doctrines, and prescriptions of self-help perceptions. His dubious pantomime
parading postures have ensured he came into contact with a less then appealing
crowd. What part does he truly play? The narrator only attends his lectures, to
find a clue or evidence to his ghostly siren. When asked in a survey if he
would choose: “Do you want to change your life or rediscover a lost harmony?”
the narrator answers: “rediscover a lost harmony.”
“Paris
Nocturne,” is all about the discord and the cacophony, the rippling effects of
a lost or disrupted harmony, now unobtainable. The past is riddled with vague
and open ended questions. The future: uncertain. All the while the present
resists being lived, and is painted in the shallow waters, offering only
ghostly portraits of landscapes an in ink wash. “Paris Nocturne,” maintains the
Proustian noir that Patrick Modiano has perfected. The novel formulaic remains
riveting and interesting. It’s a short read (all the better), and adds yet
another chapter to his oeuvre riddled novel, which remains unknown, yet
harmoniously interacts within itself. This being said, “Paris Nocturne,” is
different. It carries more paranoia, more delirium, more surreal discourse, and
fragmented unreliability and corruption. The entire novel is filtered through
the aimless and influenced perception of the narrator as he attempts to
understand the accident, find his accident inducing siren, and freely associate
the present with memories in order to produce some resemblance of meaning or
logic, all of which resist his attempts of authority and control. Then again,
life is a lot simpler then he thinks and or makes out to be; at least according
to Jacqueline Beausergent. Though Dr. Bouviere states it’s merely an act as: “life
is an eternal return.”
Thank-you
For Reading Gentle Reader
Take
Care
And
As Always
Stay
Well Read
M.
Mary
