It is not easy to be a writer. It certainly isn’t in France where a herd of (talented?) Lyricists have been trying for centuries to make their debut in the arduous Parisian literary milieu. In every new author that peeps out, aspects or influences in common with the greats of the past are almost always sought, leaving a bad taste in his mouth when discrepancies are glimpsed with talents of the caliber of Proust, Dostoevskij, Sartre, Balzac, who stand out as great examples of content and style.
Nobel
Patrick Modiano does so too – obviously as a non-beginner given the Nobel Prize for Literature he received in 2014 – in the short play “Our debut in life”, competing with Chekhov’s Seagull in an attempt to make the characters of his story dialogue with those of famous work of the Russian writer.
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From the beginning we notice the interference of Chekhovian characters (Nina, Treplëv, director Savelsberg, Arkadina) who take part in the tangled story in which the memories of the past impose their rhythm: a rhythm that seems to become languid music, a melody that it guides failures and feelings of guilt that resurface through the fine use of memory. These are the debuts in the life of Jean and Dominique – he as a writer her as an actress – that clash with the judging voices of Caveux and Elvire, Jean’s mother: the first blames Jean for pursuing a vocation, that of the writer, for which he doesn’t seem to have any talent (“Literature requires a lot of effort … Do you know what I think? If you were Proust, we would have known it for a while …”); the second is envious of Dominique, and is afraid that the girl who looks like Nina del Gabbiano in all respects will lead her son on steep roads.
The two are also on the pavement and solicit the boy with various requests for money. It is Caveux who insists: “Your mother is in great difficulty … Remember … I had always advised you to find a job, in order to pay her rent … and I had also suggested that you take out life insurance that she could benefit from …” .
In the play, real moments are confused with those dreamed of, evanescent memories of a past that returns like a boomerang. These are themes that constitute a leitmotiv in Modiano’s works, in which the thread of the discourse is lost and the reader’s imagination is left to know how to extricate himself in these complicated meanders in which a dense network of mise en abyme makes us dialogue with the ghosts of our conscience.