“In our world, that’s the way you live your grown-up life: you must constantly rebuild your identity as an adult, the way it’s been put together is wobbly, ephemeral, and fragile, it cloaks despair and, when you’re alone in front of the mirror, it tells you the lies you need to believe.”
-The Elegance of the Hedgehog
I would really hate to open a blog post with two quotes, so I shall instead open with a quote and a paraphrase: if you have but one friend, make sure you choose them well. In this instance, my best friend is remarkably intelligent and insightful, unafraid of tough conversations be they about mortality or boundaries, and is invariably successful at recommending books designed to flay open the heart and spirit and subsequently enjoy a long airborne journey across my apartment. My latest impactful read was one of their recommendations: Muriel Barbery’s The Elegance of the Hedgehog, and it was indeed both thrown and beloved.
What Barbery manages to do through two circling viewpoints trapped together in all the appearance of mediocrity warranted by suspicious natural intelligence is create a book of philosophy fixated at once on the above and the importance of understanding and appreciating mortality. This is accomplished through observation (a less simple task than one may think), beautiful poetic prose, examinations of all kinds of philosophy, and fantastic literary allusion (Let us drink a cup of tea beside our cat, Leo). Struggles of existential dread aside, and let us be fair these things are hardly ever set aside, we are drawn into all the inspiring and despaired secrets of the select few who, whether through natural talent or a dedication to preserving the ephemeral romance of life, see the world a little differently and so experience life a little more deeply. In doing so, we are encouraged to think of the little moments in our own life, understanding the ephemeral (get used to this word) nature of existence, and appreciate then the moments and connections we obtain for ourselves.
“Oh my gosh, I thought, does this mean that is how we must live our lives? Constantly poised between beauty and death, between movement and its disappearance? Maybe that’s what being alive is all about: so we can track down those moments that are dying.”
The story itself follows the lives, observations, profound thoughts, and motions of the hotel’s deeper-than-others-know concierge, Renée, and twelve-year old intelligent and suicidal Paloma, one of the hotel’s residents. Focusing on the latter for a moment, in conjunction with a return to a discussion of existential dread, warrants what began as my favorite part of the book. Paloma, disenchanted with the reality of becoming an adult and the immense fantasy required in maintaining that kind of existence (see the opening quote again, it’s hers), is determined to kill herself on her thirteenth birthday. In the buildup to that event, she is recording both her own profound thoughts about existence and the universe, and gleaning wisdom from the “Movements of the World,” be they inspirational or otherwise. Hers is a struggle familiar to those who either had to grow up fast or were really left no choice in the matter whether through experience or innate intelligence. What’s more, I think she perfectly embodies the worries surrounding growing up, “acting one’s age,” and losing those moments of peace and play found in youth.
“Tea and mangas instead of coffee and newspapers: something elegant and enchanting instead of adult power struggles and their sad aggressiveness.”
From Paloma we also gain my favorite insight from the book, my main takeaway (though there are dozens.) Both she and Renée experience a deep cultural fascination with Japan (one of the many reasons I love this book, frequent references to one of my favorite books of all time appearing), and in doing so Paloma challenges another’s description of the board game go as a “Japanese equivalent of chess.” No, Paloma knows, it’s not. Because, of course:
“In chess, you have to kill to win. In go you have to build to live… Live or die: mere consequences of what you have built. So here we are, I’ve assigned myself a new obligation. I’m going to stop undoing, deconstructing. I’m going to start building. Even with Colombe I’ll try to do something positive. What matters is what you are doing when you die, and when June 16th comes around, I want to be building.”
These comparisons and appreciations of the distinctions between eastern and western philosophies and lifestyles also decorate Renée’s perspective, which grew on me and resulted in the two times this book was thrown. From Renée, we find observations of the kind collected through a life of observing others while hiding oneself (a useful and effective, if potentially limiting way to live.) There are not typically bold declarations found within her sections, but a progressive growth of life and depth that you find yourself lost in and swept along by like a leaf beginning in a stream and discovering one day that you are adrift at sea. It’s fantastically subtle, layered writing, whether it be in the little ways Renée conceals her wisdom and intelligence and her own anxieties of being found out or the way she opens herself and lets the visceral realities of life unfold.
“And then, a summer rain,” indeed.
When we reach the shift and climax of Renée’s perspective, we are already lost in it. There are few words to really do her justice, the entirety of her story, her love for the people in it, her observations on the world going by and all the tragedy found there. Nor do I think it fair to reveal her entirely to those who haven’t read the book, and I will resist doing so. I will give her the last quote, though, so applicable now more than ever as life gets busier, as we continue stepping forward, as we live through a constantly shifting, anxious age. Her wisdom helps us here:
“The camellia against the moss of the temple, the violet hues of the Kyoto mountains, a blue porcelain cup- this sudden flowering of beauty at the heart of ephemeral passion, is that not something we all aspire to? And something that, in our Western civilization, we do not know how to obtain? The contemplation of eternity within the very movement of life.”
And to risk ending with two quotes, we again revert to paraphrase. To my best of friends who recommended this read to me, thank you for helping me understand that aristocracy of the heart is a contagious emotion, and making of me someone who could be a friend.