Place De La Research Articles

Promenades d'Anglais sur la place Louis XV ou les aperçus critiques d'un mode d'embellissement «à la française»

British visitors to the place Louis XV or critical appraisals of French town planning. The recently-inaugurated place Louis XV (now place de la Concorde), designed by Jacques-Ange Gabriel, at the heart of the promenade from the Tuileries to the Champs-Elysées, rarely failed to impress the numerous British travellers to Paris between 1763 and 1815. More than sixty authors from diverse social backgrounds, keen to mix in high society or take exercise, or drawn by the symbolic aura of this historic space, lingered here and wrote their impressions in their travel accounts. While most of them hardly paid attention to the central equestrian statue of Louis XV, Bouchardon's masterpiece, finished by Pigalle and destroyed in 1792, they were all struck by the open vista provided by this huge oval crossroads which they were reluctant to call a "square". The British travellers, observing the spectacular perspective and views of the town, the way it was integrated into its natural environment and turned its back on the closed public square, realised that the place Louis XV was part of a new conception of the town.

The Law of the Terror

The Law of the Terror Carla Hesse (bio) Qu’enfin le règne des lois puisse s’établir sur un sol purgé de toutes les émanations cadavéreuses de la tyrannie. [May the reign of law establish itself at last in a land purged of all the cadaverous emanations of tyranny.] Deputy Phillipeaux (1793) 1 I. Introduction Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Code Pénal (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1791). Archives Nationales, Paris, France. No document more vividly testifies to the political crisis that French revolutionaries faced following the death of the King than the copy of the Penal Code of 1791 that was officially registered by the clerk of the Paris Revolutionary Tribunal in March of 1793 (figure 1). Printed after its promulgation on October 6, 1791, the Code bore a title vignette comprised of a series of five royal cameos depicting the fleur de lys and the profile of Louis XVI. Beneath, the opening invocation read: Law. Penal Code. Given in Paris, 6 October 1791. [Louis, by the grace of God, and by the constitutional laws of the State, King of the French says. To all present and to come, let it be known:] The National Assembly has decreed, and We wish and order that which follows . . . [End Page 702] In the act of registration the anonymous law clerk of 1793 took his pen and with a series of axial strokes carefully crossed out the royal images in the cameos. He then struck out the lines that read: “Louis by the grace of God, and by the constitutional laws of the state, King of France says. To all present and to come, let it be known.” The use of axial strokes in this act of iconoclasm was perhaps not indifferent: if the King was no longer to be the center of sovereignty, the notion of a centered sovereign could be symbolically depicted as the point of intersection established by his radial lines. Indeed, this was the very image of democratic sovereignty that the abbé Sieyès had proposed in his pamphlet Qu’est-ce que le tiers-état in 1789: a sphere with an infinite number of radial lines emanating from the center, each end point representing a citizen, equidistant from the sovereign center of the law. 2 Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 2. Frontispiece to the Compte rendu aux sans-culottes de la république française, par la très-haute, très-puissante et très expéditive dame Guillotine, dame du Carrousel, de la place de le Révolution, de la Grève, et autres lieux . . . par le citoyen Tisset, coopérateur du succès de la république française (Paris: Denné, Petit et Tourbon, an II [1793/94]). Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, France. This law clerk’s re-centering of sovereignty under the sign of negation nonetheless left the question of the identity of the sovereign hanging. Indeed, his corrected text left the locution “We wish and order . . .” without grammatical referent. Between the fall of the monarchy on August 10, 1792 and the promulgation of the Constitution of the Year III (1795), revolutionary penal law functioned without a fixed referent of the sovereign, under the sign of negation inscribed by the humble pen of a clerk. And even more interesting, no new Penal Code was promulgated until after the declaration of the Napoleonic empire in 1804. This “headless” corpus of criminal law was allegorized (unconsciously, I think) in the peculiar frontispiece to a pro-revolutionary book detailing the good work of the guillotine in the Year II (figure 2). 3 Under the symbol of justice, it depicts a strange scene of execution in which there are seven decapitated bodies, but only six heads lying beside them. The engraving puts a central ambiguity of the law of the Terror into play: Are we confronted with a missing head, or rather, an extra body? Is this engraving the depiction of a lack of the sovereign head or of an excess of bodily fragments? [End Page 704] How did revolutionary law redefine treason and conspiracy after the fall of the monarchy? In what terms could harm to the polity...

Memory and the Cult of Revolution in the 1871 Paris Commune

Memory and the Cult of Revolution in the 1871 Paris Commune Martin P. Johnson At the beginning of the civil war between the Paris Commune and the National Assembly in early April 1871, a crowd of women gathered on the Place de la Concorde for a march on the government at Versailles. "There were between seven and eight hundred women," one of the participants , Beatrix Excoffon, later recalled. "Some talked about explaining to Versailles what Paris wanted; others talked about how things were a hundred years ago, when the women of Paris had once before gone to Versailles to carry off the baker and the baker's wife and the baker's little boy, as they said then."1 This demonstration, the largest by women during the Commune, was founded upon a collective memory of the October Days of 1789, when revolutionary women and National Guards forced the royal family to return to Paris. It was only one of many instances in which the collective memory of the revolutionary tradition was expressed during the Commune; indeed, 1870-1871 witnessed a near obsession with the Great Revolution. Yet while men and women elaborated and acted upon the memory of the revolutionary past, the congruences and divergences in the ways they interpreted that tradition have not been sufficiently explored. This neglect mirrors a larger omission, for gender remains virtually invisible in the substantial body of scholarship created by ethnologists , historians, and sociologists in the last 10 years concerning collective memory, traditions, and commemorations.2 Where women do appear in such studies they are generally symbolic figures, such as the republican icon of "Marianne" in nineteenth-century France.3 Representations and images of women reveal much about the cultures that formed them, but the question of precisely how collective memory shapes historical action by both women and men requires greater attention. French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs initiated the modern study of collective memory with his insight that "social frameworks" shape memory and in turn memory shapes social behavior.4 There has been, however, profound disagreement about whether gender should be included in this analysis. Sylvie Vandecastle-Schweitzer and Daniele Voldman have argued that memory is not related to one's sex but to the "events of the individual's life," and warn against constructing a "feminine historical object" after having demolished a "masculinized historical object."5 While James Fentress and Chris Wickham do not deny the possibility of a "women's memory," they argue that the main barrier to identifying it is © 1997 Journal of Women's History, Vol. 9 No. ι (Spring) 40 Journal of Women's History Spring "hegemony." In other words, the language, commemorative occasions, and narrative process are so deeply dominated by male voices and actors as to render the discovery of an independent women's historical consciousness nearly impossible.6 Catherine R. Stimpson has evoked the same concept of hegemony, finding that "the powerful erase other groups" in their quest to forge the collective memory in their own likeness .7 Yet folklorists and ethnologists, who have generally preceded historians in exploring these issues, have often found clear differences in the ways men and women recount the past, implying that gender is a significant category of difference in regard to collective memory and traditions.8 Historians must do more to take up the point Natalie Zemon Davis and Randolf Starn make. "Whenever memory is invoked we should be asking ourselves: by whom, where, in which context, against what?"9 The Commune is an ideal vehicle for exploring the intersection of collective memory and gender difference because its origins and key features were shaped by the memory of the French revolutionary tradition and women were remarkably active in the movement.10 The very term "Commune" was derived from the Great Revolution; Communards read newspapers named after and imitating the popular press of the Revolution, and a Committee of Public Safety was instituted following the model of 1793. Against this background, women in 1871 fought on barricades, spoke in clubs, and worked to reshape society through producer cooperatives and other institutions in ways unprecedented even in 1793 and 1848.11 For these reasons the content and meaning of the historical memory has long...

La France pour tous?—The French Presidential Elections of 23 April and 7 May 1995

JACQUES CHIRAC WAS ELECTED FIFTH PRESIDENT OF THE FRENCH Fifth Republic on 7 May 1995. After 21 years, a politician claiming the Gaullist mantle is once again the occupant of the Elysée Palace. The spontaneous demonstration of countless thousands of Chirac supporters in the Place de la Concorde on the evening of the 7 May was sweet revenge for a candidate who had previously failed on two occasions to secure election, in 1981 and 1988 against the Socialist François Mitterrand. Like the former President, Chirac was elected on his third attempt. Like Mitterrand, President Chirac possesses the necessary presidential attributes of perseverance in adversity, a willingness to learn from past mistakes, and the support of a powerful political party.

La charpenterie navale romaine: Matériaux, méthodes, moyens. By Michel Rival.

Discusses how the nature and procurement of timber affected Roman ship carpentry and construction, and demonstrates that Roman shipwrights could exploit fully the morphological and physical attributes of the woods available to them. The author bases his arguments in part on the identification of wood samples taken from the hull remains of 19 Greco-Roman ships dating from the 4th century BCE through the 7th century CE, and on his detailed study of timber usage and carpentry on three well-preserved Roman wrecks. Chapter 1 discusses the wood species identified from the 19 wrecks; chapter 2 discusses the traditional means of acquiring useful timber. The remaining chapters are devoted to an examination of the hull remains of the shipwrecks at la Madrague de Giens, la Place de la Bourse in Marseilles, and Wreck I at Port-Vendres. A brief conclusion is followed by a bibliography, an index of ancient authors, and a glossary.

Table of the Martyred Compiègne Community, Guillotined July 17, 1794, at the Place de la Nation

Table of the Martyred Compiègne Community, Guillotined July 17, 1794, at the Place de la Nation

Incidence des traumatismes liés à la course à pied. Résultats d'une enquête auprès de 1153 coureurs

Nous avons étudié l'incidence des microtraumatismes dus à la course à pied au travers d'une enquête rétrospective menée auprès de 2200 participants d'une course de 20 km. Le taux de réponse a été de 52%. L'âge moyen des compétiteurs était de 34 ± 9 ans (6,5% de femmes). L'ancienneté de la pratique de la course à pied est très variable (en moyenne 5,5 ans) et le kilométrage hebdomadaire parcouru à l'entraînement est de 36 ± 20,5 km. Quatre-vingt-onze pour cent des participants s'entraînent régulièrement sur route, 64,5% pratiquent les étirements, 73% s' échauffent et 68,5% surveillent leur hydratation. Un tiers des athlètes avait présenté un traumatisme (tendineux: 193 cas; ostéo-articulaire: 158 cas; ou musculaire: 143 cas) dans l'année précédent la compétition. Le risque traumatique est plus élevé pour les athlètes s'entraînant sur piste. Si on prend uniquement en compte les microtraumatismes diagnostiqués par un médecin, le risque augmente avec le kilométrage parcouru à l'entraînement, l'introduction de séances intenses, l'entraînement sur piste, l'usure excessive des chaussures et les troubles morphologiques. Par ailleurs, les auteurs discutent de la place des étirements et du rôle de l'appartenance à un club qui, dans les limites méthodologiques de l'enquête n'apparaissent pas comme des facteurs de prévention. Using a questionnaire we investigate the incidence of running injuries among 2200 participants of a 20 km race (Average age 34 ±9 years). The response rate was 52%. All items were treated by logicial EPI INFO 2. Values given are mean values followed by standart deviation. Significance levels were calculated using χ 2 for qualitative variables and ANOVA test for qualitative vs quantitative variables. 34% has sustained jogging injuries during the year before the race. Fifty-eight runners sustained two injuries and nine runners, three injuries during the year. A high variability for length of jogging carriers was noticed (5,5 years in average). The runners trained weekly 36 ± 20,5 km but seven subjects did not train before the race and seven trained 140 km. 64.5% had regular practice of stretching, 73% of warm-up and 68.5% of hydratation. The most common injuries were tendinitis (N = 193, 66% diagnosed by a physician) joints lesions (knee and ankle, N = 158, 58% diagnosed) and muscle injuries (N = 143, 47% diagnosed). Occurence of jogging injuries diagnosed by a physician was correlated with higher weekly mileage (41 km versus 34 km), interval training, running track, wear of running shoes (2062 km versus 1700 km) and alignent abnormalities. There was no correlation with age, sexe and weight. Regular pratice of stretching and training in a club do not appear as prevention factors. This survey concerns volunteers subjects as previous studies of Jacobs (1986) , Koplan (1982) , Marti (1988) and Walter (1989) . So it doesn't include the runners injured at the day of the race. The response rate was the same as the study of Koplan but lower than the results published by Marti. The number of injuries is lower than those revealed by Lysholm (1987) in a prospective survey. The knee is the article the most injured according to Bovens (1989) and Marti. As previous studies ( Jacobs (1986) and Walter (1989) the rate of injuries is higher in the group with regular pratice of stretching. But we can not specify if the runners used stretching before or after injuries and the stretching method they used. Weekly mileage is well correlated with the rate of injuries. 36 km in our study, 26 km for Marti, 30 km for Macera (1992) . To our knowledge aligment abnormalities, running track, and wear of running shoes have not yet been studied. We demonstrate clearly that these three factors are highly correlated with the occurence of overuse syndromes.

La conservation de la pierre monumentale en France

This is the second title of the collection Conservation du Patrimoine coedited by CNRS-Editions and the Research and Technology task force of the Ministere de la Culture. This text deals with the conservation of stone monuments in France and presents an update of research on deterioration of stone and its mechanisms as well as methods and products available for a better and longer-lasting protection of the cultural heritage. It offers a multidisciplinary approach with more than 20 authors involved including restorers, conservators, and architects. The work is divided into four parts: 1) a review of stone as a material with petrography and geology basic notions; 2) an update on stone deterioration and its mechanisms; 3) a review on methods, products, and techniques used for cleaning, consolidation, and protection of stone; and finally, 4) the main section presenting concrete examples of restoration. Depicts restorations carried out in the 19th century by Viollet-le-Duc and his successors and evaluates the progress that has taken place since then. These examples illustrate cleaning, consolidation, and restoration processes from the most traditional to the more recent ones and their specific applications, the impact of the environment of the monuments, and the architectural views of those in charge of the cultural heritage. The cases of buildings such as the Château de Gaillon, the Place de la Concorde and the Arc de Triomphe in Paris are presented as well as some religious buildings such as Saint-Trophime in Arles, the cathedrals Notre-Dame la Grande in Poitiers, Notre-Dame in Paris, Bourges, Reims, Saint-Denis, the Cloister of Elne, the Abbey of Moissac, but also statuary kept in museums as well as many other monuments.

Isolation and properties of a toxic glycoprotein inhibiting protein synthesis from the mushroom: Boletus satanas Lenz. O. Kretz, 1E. Creppy2 and G. Dirheimer1 ( 1Institut de Biologie Moléculaire et Cellulaire du CNRS, 15, rue René Descartes, 67084 Strasbourg, France; and 2Laboratoire de Toxicologie, UFR Sciences Pharmaceutiques, Université de Bordeaux II, 3 Place de la Victoire, 33076 Bordeaux, France)

Isolation and properties of a toxic glycoprotein inhibiting protein synthesis from the mushroom: Boletus satanas Lenz. O. Kretz, 1E. Creppy2 and G. Dirheimer1 ( 1Institut de Biologie Moléculaire et Cellulaire du CNRS, 15, rue René Descartes, 67084 Strasbourg, France; and 2Laboratoire de Toxicologie, UFR Sciences Pharmaceutiques, Université de Bordeaux II, 3 Place de la Victoire, 33076 Bordeaux, France)

Narrative Subject, Historic Subject: Shoah and La Place de l'Etoile

A broken writes Reverdy, a real fact, but think and of my broken arm is not at all some other person thinks and knows of his broken arm, or of mine. As for those who have never had a broken arm, realized that they do not an arm is, any more than did before broke mine (Reverdy 1956: 32). There it is, a truism, of course: can tell my doctor where hurt; can even describe my pain with some degree of accuracy, but cannot make him feel it. My broken arm reminds me of my ineluctable singularity, my essential alienation. Furthermore, as long as abide by this essential singularity, escape my own thought, which can only operate from universals; also escape the grasp of others, of culture, of language, and of history. It is a question therefore of thought and knowledge, of I think and know as well as what another thinks and knows. More precisely, it is a question of separates my thought and my knowledge from my experience on the one hand, and, on the other, from the thought, knowledge, and experience of someone else. In other words, we are dealing with the universalization of my subjectivity through its communication. This in turn can only be achieved in and through lan-

Effects of noradrenaline on single calcium channels in vascular smooth muscle cells: G. Loirand, P. Pacaud, A. Baron, C. Mironneau, J. Mironneau. Laboratoire de Physiologie Cellulaire et Pharmacologie Moléculaire, INSERM JF 88-13, Universitéde Bordeaux II, 3 place de la Victoire, 33076 Bordeaux

Effects of noradrenaline on single calcium channels in vascular smooth muscle cells: G. Loirand, P. Pacaud, A. Baron, C. Mironneau, J. Mironneau. Laboratoire de Physiologie Cellulaire et Pharmacologie Moléculaire, INSERM JF 88-13, Universitéde Bordeaux II, 3 place de la Victoire, 33076 Bordeaux

Use-dependent binding of the calcium channel antagonist (-)-[3H]-D888 in vascular smooth muscle: L. Rakotoarisoa, C. Mironneau, J. Mironneau. Laboratoire de Physiologie Cellulaire et Pharmacologie Moléculaire, INSERM JF 88-13, Universitéde Bordeaux II, 3 place de la Victoire, 33076 Bordeaux

Use-dependent binding of the calcium channel antagonist (-)-[3H]-D888 in vascular smooth muscle: L. Rakotoarisoa, C. Mironneau, J. Mironneau. Laboratoire de Physiologie Cellulaire et Pharmacologie Moléculaire, INSERM JF 88-13, Universitéde Bordeaux II, 3 place de la Victoire, 33076 Bordeaux

The Cultural Logic of the Late Capitalist Museum

May 1, 1983: I remember the drizzle and cold of that spring morning, as the feminist section of the May Day parade formed up at R6publique. Once we started moving out, carrying our banners for the march towards the Place de la Bastille, we began our chant. "Qui paie ses dettes s'enrichit," it went, "qui paie ses dettes s'enrichit," in a reminder to Mitterand's newly appointed Minister of Women's Affairs that the Socialists' campaign promises were still deeply in arrears. Looking back at that cry now, from a perspective firmly situated at the end of the '80s, sometimes referred to as "the roaring '80s," the idea that paying your debts makes you rich seems pathetically naive. What make you rich, we have been taught by a decade of casino capitalism, is precisely the opposite. What makes you rich, fabulously rich, beyond your wildest dreams, is leveraging. July 17, 1990: Coolly insulated from the heat wave outside, Suzanne Page and I are walking through her exhibition of works from the Panza Collection, an installation that, except for three or four small galleries, entirely fills the Mus&e d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. At first I am extremely happy to encounter these objects many of them old friends I have not seen since their early days of exhibition in the 1960s as they triumphantly fill vast suites of galleries, having muscled everything else off the walls to create that experience of articulated spatial presence specific to Minimalism. The importance of this space as a vehicle for the works is something Suzanne Page is conscious of as she describes the desperate effort of remodeling vast tracts of the museum to give it the burnished neutrality necessary to function as background to these Flavins and Andres and Morrises. Indeed, it is her focus on the space as a kind of reified and abstracted entity that I finally find most arresting. This climaxes at the point when she

Fouille de la place Antonin Poncet à Lyon

The place Antonin Poncet is right at the heart of Lyon, near the place Bellecour. The archeological research done on this area has now for the most part been completed by additional laboratory analyses (using dendrochronology and sedimentology), by research in the archives and by the study of ceramics and glassware unearthed during the dig. The multidisciplinary nature of the work has enabled better under standing of modem urban developments in one sector and the évolution ofthe micro-community as a whole. There were three major developments : an embankment bulit in the mid sixteenth century, the establishment of the Hospital de la Charité on the rue de la Charité at the beginning of the seventeenth century, andfinally the creation of the place de la Charité in the mid seventeeth century. The study of particulary interesting samples ofceramic and glassware discovered during the excavations for modem constructions in wells and septic tanks has also shed light on the tableware used in seventeenth century Lyon.

Europace AI and Expert Systems Programme

This paper briefly describes the EuroPACE organisation as well as its education programme in the fields of AI and expert systems, and it invites comments and suggestions from the AI community. The article includes a list of the AI/ES courses which have been delivered so far or are planned for the near future. Additional information can be obtained from: EuroPACE 7, Place de la Defense, 92090 PARIS LA, DEFENSE-CEDEX 26 Telephone: +33 147 76 33 35 Telefax: +33 146 76 42 72

Remembering Swann: Memory and Representation in Proust

Regardless of their method and focus of analysis, readings of Proust's Recherche for the past forty years can be said to agree on at least one ground rule with regard to reading the novel itself. The primary rhetorical figures of Proust's narrative have been identified alternately as metaphor and metonymy, while the examination of the syntactic patterns relating those figures into a diachronic narrative has served to indicate a single logical conflict between the two.' But with respect to the story told by that narrative, one contextualized figure alone is conceded to govern its formation. The optics of Proust criticism suffer neither double nor divided vision in perceiving the central textual position, in Serge Doubrovsky's words, of place de la madeleine. As figure, the thing indicated by madeleine may be explained persuasively to stand for any number of things or their simulacra, fetishized objects or fantasmes, as Doubrovsky's analysis speculates at length.2 Yet the singular function ascribed to the Madeleine within the narrative structure is routinely accepted at face value, and in this one respect the different currents of Proust criticism, given oppositely but with equal extravagance to psychoanalytic rhapsody and taxonomic rigor,3 can be said to constitute a coherent tradition-a tradition, precisely, of reading the novel traditionally rather than critically. That is to say, whatever interpretative purpose to which it is put, the Madeleine is assumed, throughout the history of the novel's reception, to mean what the narrator explicitly says it means throughout the history of the novel's narration-the bearer

‘Le caprice du prince’ — The problem of the Bastille Opéra

July 1982 saw the launching of a project to build a vast new popular opera house at the Place de la Bastille in eastern Paris. It is one of the Grand Projets, a 15.3 billion francs (about 15 million pounds) urban renewal scheme which includes expanding and renovating the Louvre, two new museums (the Musée d'Orsay and Musée de la Villette), an international communication centre at La Défense, relocating the French Ministry of Finance, an Arab Institute, and at least eleven urban regional projects (see Fig. 1). The defeat of the Socialists at the March 1986 election, to be replaced by a period of cohabitation, has jeopardized the future of the Grands Projets. This article is not a comprehensive appraisal of the Bastille Opéra scheme but has two limited aims. Firstly to discuss how the last government intended to create the new Opéra as the supreme symbol of the Socialist era. This involves an examination of the project's reception by the press and by those responsible for implementing the scheme. Secondly, to suggest that the former government's declared wish to democratize opera may not have been the most important concern and to ask whether opera can ever really become a ‘popular’ art form. The conclusion is that far from being revolutionary, Mitterrand's objectives are not so dissimilar to those of his predecessors. The latest in a series of grand architectural gestures, the Opéra was initiated primarily to commemorate a period of government and, more specifically, an individual ruler.

Un four de potier au Ve siècle avant J.-C. à Béziers, place de la Madeleine

The supervision of the diggings prior to the construction of a car park on "place de la Madeleine" in Béziers in 1986, allowed the excavation of a very interesting pottery-kiln of the 5th century B.C. situated near the area excavated in 1985. This is a basic discovery for the protohistory research : it is the most ancient pottery-kiln of a Greek type found on the western coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Moreover, its exceptional preservation state is quite unique and made possible to study its construction techniques and its working. Its homogeneous filling up allows to date it in the 5th century B.C. and gives evidence of a local production of grey-monochrome pottery which will henceforth be termed "biterroise", as well as of a production of turned kitchen pottery. So, the pottery-kiln of Béziers raises again, though on a more concrete basis, the problem of locally produced turned table and kitchen pottery that copies similar products of Greek workmanship. Furthermore, this discovery throws a new light on the issue of contacts between the Greeks and the natives.

Béziers et les côtes languedociennes dans l'Ora Maritima d'Avienus (vv. 586-594)

Recent excavations in Béziers (Place de la Madeleine) made it possible to resituate complete or partial desertion of the town to the period between 300 and 150/100 B.C. Therefore, a new reading of the passage quoting Besara in the Ora Maritima by Rufus Fiestus Avienus should be done. The source of lines 586-594 refers to a text depicting the town at a time which cannot be earlier than 300/150 B.C. but which could possibly be slightly later (1st century B.C. or even 1st century A. D. In the Ora Maritima, the description of the coast of Languedoc is very consistent and homogenous. Therefore, it could come from a single source, likely to go back to the time of the Roman conquest. According to this new piece of information, the coast would not have been described during a sea trip as it has always been believed; but here, in this particular case, the coast seems to be rather described after a land journey depicting the features of the landscape as it could have been seem from the Heraclan Way — Domitian Way between the 2nd and the 1st century B.C.

Re-Membering Modiano, or Something Happened

Raphael Schlemilovitch, the protagonist of La Place de l'Etoile, has an uncouth name for a Frenchman.' It does not belong to the suave group of Coudreuse, Jacquet, Lebon, Mouraille, Vincent, Gerbault (VT, 23), bears no resemblance to such very French double as SergentDelval or Hattier-Morel (VT, 59), and is oil to the water of Drieu la Rochelle, Peugeot, and Debigorre (cf. PE, VT). It belongs with Bloch, Hirschfeld, and Schlossblau (cf. BC, 160). It harmonizes with Paul Sonachitz6, Stioppa de Djagoriew, Victor Chmara, Moncef el Okbi. It is one of those names that evokes, among other things, the small cosmopolitan societies of overseas free ports and settlements (VT, 36): Osvaldo Valenti, Scouffi, Citroein, or Patrick Modiano. Raphael Shlemilovitch has a problem. But the problem does not lie only in his name, since names can be changed and often are. Raphael himself becomes Jean-Frangois des Essarts, Jean Cassis de CoudrayMacouard, and Raphael de Chateau-Chinon. Similarly, Emile Herzog became Andre Maurois, Georg Bluene (ML, UJ) Georges Bellune, Jean Dekker (QP) Ambrose Guise, and Marc Newman Gerard Valvert (DBG, 192: If one changes his last name, he might as well change his first name). In LF, the protagonist's father, Aldo, calls himself Guy Jaspaard deJonghe, and uncle Alex says he is Frangois Aubert. Guy Roland in RBO was probably Pedro McEvoy, aka Jimmy Pedro Stern (itself an assumed name, perhaps, since Stern is said to be a Greek citizen born in Salonica in 1912 and since a fire destroyed the Salonica archives during World War I). Sometimes the change is relatively minor: Roland de Bejardy (UJ, 117) and Grout de l'Ain (DBG, 193) may have simply added the particule. Sometimes it proves wiser to adopt a foreign appellation: Odette Blache, who has had trouble with the police, resurfaces as Sonia O'Dauy6 (DBG, 72: The O'Dauy6 ... were nobles of Irish origin who settled in Poland in the 18th century), and Richard Mouliade, an ex-con, plays the role of