The German Occupation of Paris lies at the core of French novelist Patrick Modiano’s œuvre. Yet, Modiano, born in 1945, does not have first-hand experience of the event. His representation of this period of French history is foremost a (re)construction. It is also obsessive, as illustrated by the compulsive peregrinations of his narrators through the streets of Paris. Taking at its starting point the ambivalent ‘places of memory’ that pepper Modiano’s novels, this article
proposes to examine more closely the symbolism of one recurrent street name: the rue Lauriston, headquarters of the most infamous branch of the ‘French Gestapo’. Rather drab and unpretentious, this street does not stand out in any way from Parisian topography. Yet, the simple uttering of its name makes present a troubled past, both at a collective and personal level. Not only does the textual inscription of the rue Lauriston motif reveal much regarding the author’s relationship to the period
of the Occupation, it is also indicative of his ethical preoccupations with the misdeeds of the past and need to resist cultural amnesia. Underpinned by Paul Ricœur’s and Roland Barthes’s reflections on memory and photography respectively, and illustrating the discussion with examples taken from Modiano’s first novel La Place de l’e´toile, the article argues that Modiano’s rue Lauriston represents a form of partial disclosure/un-concealment typical of this author’s ‘reticence poetics’ (poe´- tique de la re´ticence).

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