정체성 탐색의 공간으로서의 도시 - 파트릭 모디아노의 『어두운 상점들의 거리』, 폴 오스터의 『유리의 도시』의 경우

Abstract

Modiano and Auster show our world as it is, "chaos and non-solution". This study has attempted to read each of Rue des boutiques obscures and City of Glass not only in thematic relationship to each other but also in terms of the codes: city, language, identity. Modino's works invoke the complexity of the articulation between present and past, and the consideration that city is not an accessory but a central factor in the way individuals find their lost memory. "I", emblematic narrator of Rue de boutiques obscures knows that History (the Occupation, Holocaust) continues to influence him to the point of obscuring the present. Modiano's novel can be seen as postmodern fables, stories that spring from our common heritage and tell us truths about the past that enable us to move forward into the future. Auster's City of Glass offers an exemplary space for questioning and reflection: relationship between language and identity. Quinn, central questor is involved in a Stillman's case, whose aim is to find the non-alien tongue, the first language of Adam. He now wanders through the city, trying to find the right names for all the broken things he finds there and thus making whole again the fragmented Tower of Babel of the late-twentieth-century cosmos. Modiano and Auster show us the impossibility of reconstructing the lost World. Their fail detective seems to say, "Il me semble que je serais toujours bien là où je ne suis pas - Baudelaire".