One indicator of increased public awareness of the theme "Kindertransport" is the fact that this event gradually is making its way into literature. Aside from the few fictional accounts (Cynthia Ozick, The Messiah of Stockholm, 1987, and W. G. Sebald, Austerlitz, 2001) there are numerous autobiographical texts about the "Kindertransport." These describe—in the form of keepsakes and clothing—an important landscape of remembrance and relating that contains entire thematic complexes symbolically solidified within it. Objects make a child's experience concrete; they become links to parents and later they support remembrance; with greater distance, such items serve the function of bracketing an experience. As special "transitional objects" (Winnicott) they still have not found their place within the psychology of personal objects.
Zu erzählenden Großformen wie dem grand récit der französischen Okkupation gehen Patrick Modianos auffallend kurze Romane auf Distanz. Thema seiner rund 30 Bücher ist die Okkupationszeit unter Vichy und der Erinnerungsprozess, der,
metonymisch von Spuren ausgehend, in Opposition zu einem Tableau oder Panorama der französischen Kollaboration, Résistance, des Antisemitismus und der Verfolgung steht. Durch ihren gemeinsamen Fluchtpunkt, den Verweisungszusammenhang untereinander und die detektivischen Erzähler
entsteht eine Nähe zu seriellem Erzählen, die durch Interferenz, Iteration und Namensidentitäten befördert wird. Das hat die Kritik veranlasst, Modianos zahlreiche Romane als einen einzigen großen Roman zu lesen. Der Beitrag sondiert Modianos Skepsis gegenüber
großen Formen und untersucht, inwieweit sich sein poetologisches Interesse auf den Überschuss von Großerzählungen richtet.Patrick Modiano’s remarkably short novels keep their distance from major, more extensive forms such as the grand narrative (or grand
récit) of the French occupation. The theme of his approximately 30 books is the occupation under Vichy and the process of memory that, rather than painting a grand tableau or panorama of French collaboration, resistance, anti-Semitism, and persecution, proceeds metonymically from
traces. However, his novels suggest seriality through their common vanishing point, the interrelationship of their references, and the recurring presence of detective narrators which is promoted by interference, iteration and name identities. This has led critics to read Modiano’s many
novels as one single great novel. This article explores Modiano’s skepticism toward large narrative forms and examines the extent to which his poetic interest is focused on the surplus of grand narratives.
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