The Occupation Trilogy: La Place de l'Étoile – The Night Watch – Ring Roads

NOTES ON LA PLACE DE L’ÉTOILE

Léon Rabatête: a thinly-disguised parody of Lucien Rebatet (1903–1972), a French author, journalist, and intellectual; an exponent of fascism and virulent anti-Semite.

Ferdinand Bardamu: a character in Céline’s Voyage au bout de la Nuit. Modiano calls him Doctor Louis-Ferdinand Bardamu, echoing Céline’s title and first names. The first pages of the novel are a parody of the anti-Semitic tracts Céline wrote and published.

Stay strong, Madelon: a reference to the popular French WWI song ‘La Madelon’ (aka ‘Quand Madelon’) about an innkeeper’s daughter who flirts with everyone but sleeps with no one.

Cahen d’Anvers: Louis Raphaël Cahen d’Anvers (1837–1922), French banker, scion of two wealthy Jewish banking families.

I was compared to Barnabooth: a reference to the title character in Valery Larbaud’s novel The Diary of A.O. Barnabooth whose story mirrors that of our hero’s ‘Venezuelan inheritance’.

‘Laversine’ … ‘Porfirio Rubirosa’: all references to the polo. Porfirio Rubirosa was a famous Dominican polo player; Cibao-La Pampa, the team he founded; the Coupe Laversine is a celebrated tournament; Silver Leys is a polo club in the UK.

three photos taken by Lipnitzki: Boris Lipnitzky (1887–1971), famous Ukrainian — French photographer.

Jean-François Des Essarts: the name deliberately echoes that of Jean des Esseintes in Huysmans’ novel À Rebours. Modiano’s character is based on Roger Nimier, the founder of the literary movement ‘les Hussards’.

The Finaly Affair: Robert and Gérald Finally, two Jewish children born in Vichy France, were taken in by a member of the Catholic network when their parents were arrested. After the war, the woman refused to return the orphaned children, whose parents had died in the camps and illicitly had the children baptised in 1948. A national scandal ensued, which involved Cardinal Pierre-Marie Gerlier and Abbé Roger Etchegaray. The children were finally reunited with Jewish relatives in Israel in 1953.

francisques: ‘double-bladed fasces’ — the fascist emblem of the Vichy regime.

PPF: Parti Populaire Française, a French fascist and Nazi political party led by Jacques Doriot before and during the Second World War.

‘Saint Jacob X: Actor and Martyr’: a reference to Jean-Paul Sartre’s Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr.

‘La Casquette du père Bugeaud’: a French military song.

Maurice Sachs (1906–45): (born Maurice Ettinghausen) French writer. The son of a Jewish family of jewellers, he converted to Catholicism in 1925. During the war, he extorted money from Jews to help them flee the Unoccupied Zone and may have been a Gestapo informer. He was later imprisoned and died during the long march from Fuhlsbüttel prison in 1945.

Lola Montès: the title of a Max Ophüls film which was based loosely on the life of the nineteenth-century dancer Lola Montez.

Le Boeuf sur le Toit: a famous Parisian nightclub.

Drieu la Rochelle (1893–1945): French novelist and essayist, la Rochelle was a leading proponent of French fascism in the 1930s, and a collaborationist during the Nazi occupation. After the liberation of Paris in 1944, he went into hiding and committed suicide later that year.

Night and fog: a reference to Nuit et Brouillard, the 1955 French holocaust documentary by Alain Resnais.

Brasillach: Robert Brasillach (1909–45), French journalist and editor of the fascist newspaper Je suis partout. He was executed as a collaborator in 1945.

Hitler Youth Quex: a 1932 Nazi propaganda novel (Hitlerjunge Quex) based on the life of Herbert ‘Quex’ Norkus.

André Bellessort (1866–1942): French writer and poet.

This, then, was our youth … regained: a quote from Claude Jamet’s memoir of Brasillach before the war.

Julien Benda: (1867–1956): French philosopher and novelist, author of The Betrayal of the Intellectuals.

Maurras: Charles Maurras (1868–1952), a French author and poet, he was the principal thinker behind Action Française, a supporter of Vichy, he was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Je suis partout: (I am everywhere) a right wing anti-Semitic French newspaper founded by Jean Fayard in 1930. It supported the Nazis during the occupation and, during the war, was edited by Robert Brasillach.

P.-A. Cousteau: Pierre-Antoine Cousteau (1906–58), French far right journalist and contributor to Je suis partout.

Pujo: Maurice Pujo (1872–1955), French journalist and co-founder of the Comité d’Action Française which later became Action française.

Maxime Real del Sarte (1888–1954): French sculptor and political activist involved with the right-wing Action française.

Jean Luchaire (1901–46): French journalist and politician, later head of the French collaborationist press during the Nazi occupation. He was executed for collaborationism in 1946.

Carlingue: the informal name for the French Gestapo, which was headquartered on the Rue Lauriston.

Brinon: Fernand de Brinon (1884–1947), French lawyer and journalist, he was among the principal architects of French collaboration with the Nazis. He was found guilty of war crimes in 1947 and executed.

Abetz: Otto Abetz (1903–58), the German ambassador to Vichy France during the Second World War.

General Commissariat for Jewish Affairs: Commissariat général aux questions juive, the administrative committee tasked with enforcing the anti-Semitic policies of the Vichy Government.

Stülpnagel: Otto von Stülpnagel (1878–1948), head of the occupied forces and military governor of Paris. He committed suicide while awaiting trial after the war.

Doriot: Jacques Doriot (1898–1945), Communist turned fascist who, with Marcel Déat, founded the Légion des Volontaires Français.

Déat: Marcel Déat (1894–1955), founder of the Rassemblement national populaire (National Popular Rally), a political party in the Vichy Government; later appointed Minister of Labour and National Solidarity.

Jo Darnand: Joseph Darnand (1897–1945), a decorated French soldier during the First World War, Darnand went on to become a leading collaborator during the Second World War, founding the collaborationist militia, Service d’ordre legionnaire, which later became the Milice.

Franc-Garde: armed wing of the Milice. In 1943–44, it fought alongside the German army against the Maquis.

… beautiful lines by Spire: André Spire (1868–1966), French poet, and writer.

L’Aiglon: Napoleon II ‘the Eaglet’ who died aged twenty-one.

Süss the Jew: the eponymous character in the 1940 Nazi propaganda film Jud Süß commissioned by Joseph Goebbels.

The ‘Horst-Wessel-Lied’: song penned by Horst Wessel in 1929, usually known as ‘Die Fahne hoch’ (‘The Flag on High’), it was adopted as the Nazi Party anthem in 1930.

Colonel de la Rocque: François de La Rocque (1885–1946), leader of the French right-wing Croix de Feu during the 1930s and later the French nationalist Parti Social Français.

Brocéliande: in French literature, a mythical forest said to be the last resting place of Merlin the magician.

Tante Léonie: character in Proust’s In Search Of Lost Time at whose house Marcel stays in Combray.

Maurice Dekobra (1885–1973): French writer of adventure novels.

Stavinsky: Alexandre Stavinsky (1888–1934), French ‘financier’ with considerable influence among government ministers and bankers. After his death in 1934, it was discovered that he had embezzled 200 million francs from the Crédit municipal de Bayonne, a scandal which rocked the French government.

Novarro: Ramón Novarro (1899–1968), Mexican actor, one of the great stars of the silent cinema.

the anti-Jewish exhibition at the Palais Berlitz: Le Juif et la France, a notorious anti-Semitic propaganda exhibition staged in Paris during the Nazi occupation.

Bagatelles pour un massacre: title of a collection of virulently anti-Semitic essays by Louis-Ferdinand Céline, translated as Trifles for a Massacre.

Rue d’Ulm! Rue d’Ulm!: the address of the prestigious École Normale Supérieure.

Jallez and Jephanion: the writer Jallez and the politician Jerphanion are the inseparable friends in Jules Romain’s novel Les Hommes de bonne volonté (The Men of Good Will).

to join the LVF: Légion des volontaires français (contre le bolchévisme), the Legion of French Volunteers (Against Bolshevism), a collaborationist French militia founded on July 8, 1941.

Rastignac: a character in Balzac’s La Comédie humaine, Eugène de Rastignac is portrayed as a naïve but fervent social climber — he went by the name ‘Rastignac de la butte Montmartre’.

… to quote Péguy: Charles Péguy (1873–1914) French poet and essayist, he coined the phrase ‘les hussards noirs’ in 1913 to refer to his teachers.

He insisted that … to notice him: parodying the phrase ‘if the Jew did not exist, the anti-Semite would invent him’ in Sartre’s Anti-Semite and Jew.

my old friend Seingalt: Casanova, who signed his Memoirs (as he did many other works) Jacques Casanova de Seingalt.

Paul Chack (1876–1945): French Naval officer and collaborationist writer.

Monsignor Mayol de Lupé (1873–1955): Catholic priest who served as chaplain for the Légion des volontaires français and later for the SS.

Henri Béraud (1885–1958): French novelist and journalist. Virulently Anglophobic and anti-Semitic, he supported the Vichy Government. After the liberation, he was sentenced to death for collaboration. The sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment.

… attack on Mers-el-Kébir: as a direct response to the signing of the French — German armistice, the British Navy bombarded the French Navy off the coast of Algeria in July 1940, resulting in the deaths of 1,297 French servicemen.

‘Maréchal, nous voilà’: a French song pledging loyalty to Maréchal Pétain.

Romanciers du terroir: a group of turn-of-the-century French novelists best known for their realistic depiction of rural life.

Mistral: Frédéric Mistral (1830–1914), French novelist awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1904.

Bichelonne: Jean Bichelonne (1904–44), French businessman and civil servant, later head of the Office central de repartition des produits industriels in the Vichy government.

Hérold-Paquis: Jean Auguste Hérold aka Jean Hérold-Paquis (1912–45), a French journalist who fought for Franco during the Spanish Civil War and was later appointed Delegate for Propaganda to the Hautes-Alpes region by the Vichy Government. Executed for treason in 1945.

admirals Esteva, Darlan and Platón: three admirals who served in the Vichy regime.

Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821): Joseph-Marie, Comte de Maistre, philosopher and writer who famously defended the monarchy after the French Revolution.

Maurice Barrès (1861–1923): French symbolist writer, politician who popularised the notion of ethnic nationalism in France. An influential anti-Semite, he broke with the left wing to become a leading anti-Dreyfusard, writing: ‘That Dreyfus is guilty, I deduce not from the facts themselves, but from his race’.

Charles Martel (68?–741): Frankish military leader who defeated Abdul Rahman’s son, halting the advance of the Islamic caliphate circa 736.

fleurs-de-lis on a field Azure: the heraldic arms of ‘France Ancienne’.

I was secretary to Joanovici: Joseph Joanovici (1905–65), a French Jewish iron supplier, who supplied both Nazi Germany and the French Resistance. After the war, he was found guilty of collaboration and sentenced to prison. In 1958 he escaped from France to Israel but was refused the right to request to naturalize and returned to France. He was released in 1962.

Frison-Roche: Roger Frison-Roche (1906–99) French mountaineer, explorer and novelist

Bordeaux: Henry Bordeaux (1870–1963), French lawyer, essayist and writer. His novels reflect the values of traditional provincial Catholic communities.

Capitaine Danrit: penname of Émile Driant, (1855–1916), French writer, politician, and a decorated army officer. He died at the Battle of Verdun during the First World War.

Édouard Drumont (1844–1917): French journalist and writer who founded the Antisemitic League of France in 1889. He later founded and edited the French anti-Semitic political newspaper La Libre Parole.

Each man in his darkness goes towards his Light: a quotation from Les Contemplations by Victor Hugo.

a new ‘Curé d’Ars’: a reference to Saint John Vianney, a French parish priest, known as the Curé d’Ars.

My heart, smile towards the future now …: from the poem ‘La dure épreuve va finir’ by Paul Verlaine

The fireside, the lamplight’s slender beam: from the poem ‘Le foyer, la lueur étroite de la lampe’ by Paul Verlaine.

furia francese: the ‘French fury’ — attributed to the French by the Italians at the Battle of Fornovo.

Giraudoux’s girls love to travel: Jean Giraudoux (1882–1944), French novelist, essayist, diplomat and playwright.

Charles d’Orléans (1691–1744): eighteenth-century French man of letters.

Maurice Scève (c. 1501–64): French Renaissance poet much obsessed with spiritual love.

Rémy Belleau (1528–77): sixteenth-century French poet known for his paradoxical poems of praise for simple things.

even a thousand Jews … Body of Our Lord: an oblique reference to the line in Proust’s Sodom and Gomorrah: ‘A strange Jew who boiled the Host’.

They strolled together … spring waters: alluding to a Swann’s Way, the first volume of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time where the narrator dreams that Mme de Guermantes will show him the grounds of her house.

‘The energy and charm … eyes of rabbits’: paraphrasing a passage from Proust’s The Guermantes Way.

The Embarkation of Eleanor of Aquitaine for the Orient: an allusion to Claude Lorrain’s 1648 painting The Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba.

The Fougeire-Jusquiames Way: alluding to Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust. The passage that Modiano follows offers a variation on the Proustian bedtime scenes of Combray.

the Princesse des Ursins: Marie Anne de La Trémoille, a lady at the Spanish Court during the reign of Philip V.

Mlle de la Vallière: Louise de La Vallière (1644–1710), mistress of Louis XIV.

Mme Soubise: Anne de Rohan-Chabot, a mistress of Louis XIV.

La Belle aux cheveux d’or: a story by Countess d’Aulnoy usually translated as The Story of Pretty Goldilocks or The Beauty with Golden Hair.

‘It was, this “Fougeire-Jusquiames,” … with heraldic details’: paraphrasing The Guermantes Way by Marcel Proust.

Arno Breker (1900–91): German sculptor, whose public works in Nazi Germany were praised as expressions of the ‘mighty momentum and will power’ (‘Wucht und Willenhaftigkeit’).

The still pale moonlight, sad and fair: from the poem ‘Clair de Lune’ by Paul Verlaine.

Perhaps too, in these last days … anti-Semitic propaganda had revived: a quote from Sodom and Gomorrah by Marcel Proust.

The Jew is the substance of God … only a mare: a parody of the nineteenth-century anti-Semitic text Der Talmud Jüde, by August Rohling, a professor at the German University of Prague.

‘Hitlerleute’: ‘Hitler’s people’ — a fascist song using the same tunes as the official hymn of the Italian National Fascist Party.

Baldur von Schirach (1907–74): Nazi youth leader later convicted of crimes against humanity.

Marizibill: title of a poem by Guillaume Apollinaire about a prostitute in Cologne and her Jewish pimp.

Zarah Leander (1907–81): Swedish singer and actress whose greatest success was in Germany during the 1930s and 1940s.

Skorzeny: Otto Skorzeny (1908–75), served as SS-Standartenführer in the German Waffen-SS during the Second World War.

the phosphorus of Hamburg: the allied bombs dropped on Hamburg during the Second World War contained phosphorus

‘Einheitsfrontlied’: ‘The United Front Song’, (by Bertolt Brecht and Hanns Eisler), one of the best-known songs of the German workers’ movement.

the anthem of the Thälmann-Kolonne: the anti-fascist song, ‘Die Thälmann-Kolonne’, also known as ‘Spaniens Himmel’ (‘Spanish skies’), was a communist anthem.

Julius Streicher (1885–1946): a prominent Nazi, the founder and publisher of the newspaper Der Stürmer. In 1946 he was convicted of crimes against humanity and executed.

the traitorous Prince Laval: Pierre Laval (1883–1945), prime minister of France during the Third Republic, later a member of the Vichy government. After the liberation he was convicted of high treason and executed.

‘I will not be home tonight … black and white’: alluding to the suicide note left by Gérard de Nerval for his aunt. ‘Ne m’attends pas ce soir car la nuit sera noire et blanche.’

Say, what have you done … with your youth?: the last line of the poem ‘Le Ciel est, par-dessus le toit’ by Paul Verlaine.

the roundup on 16 July 1942: The Vel’ d’Hiv Roundup was a Nazi ordered mass arrest of Parisian Jews by the French police.

Émilienne d’Alençon (1869–1946): French dancer and actress. She was famously a courtesan, and the lover of, among others, Leopold II of Belgium.

‘When I hear the word culture, I reach for my truncheon’: alluding to the line ‘when I hear the word culture, I reach for my gun’ often attributed to Hermann Göring. In fact, the line originally appears in Hanns Johst’s play Schlageter: ‘Whenever I hear the word Culture… I release the safety catch of my Browning!’

‘Du bist der Lenz nachdem ich verlangte’: ‘You are the spring for which I longed’ — Sieglinda’s aria from Richard Wagner’s opera Die Walküre.

Radio Londres: a BBC broadcast in French to occupied France during the Second World War.

Moi, j’aime le music-hall … danseuses légères: ‘Moi j’aime le music hall’ by Charles Trenet.