Language:
French
Year of publication:
2001
Titel der Quelle:
Tsafon; revue d'études juives du Nord
Angaben zur Quelle:
41 (2001) 39-59
Keywords:
Modiano, Patrick,
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945), in literature
;
Jewish literature History and criticism
Abstract:
Analyzes the quest for identity of the Jewish protagonist of Modiano's first novel, published in 1968, showing influences of Sartre and similarities with Alain Finkielkraut's "Juif imaginaire". Set in the time of the Occupation, "La Place de l'Étoile" squares accounts with a collaborator father and with Vichy France, voicing feelings of discomfort among young people in postwar France, caught between the universalist heritage of the French Revolution and a desire to be different. Having failed to integrate into a hostile environment through mimetism, Schlemilovitch turns into the Jewish stereotype of Nazi propaganda, escaping choice into masochism, like Sartre's "Saint Genet". In the postwar world, benevolent to Jews, Schlemilovitch, like the "Juif imaginaire", structures his identity around a lack - memories of the Shoah, which are not his. Concludes that the novel expresses a painful and pathetic revolt against the indifference and dissolution of being.
URL:
Locate this publication in Israeli libraries
Permalink
