16 dec

Finished reading ‘The Hare with amber eyes today’. This morning really. Last night it was cold early and we went to bed before ten. Read a little then, but always fall asleep when there is the presence of a pillow.

This caused me to wake before 3AM. But then started reading about the amazing story of the Ephrussi family. Most people will have read this story by now – if you haven’t, buy a copy and start right now – so it would not surprise anyone to meet Marcel Proust and Arthur Schnitzler in what is basically a family history.

But, just because of Proust and Schnitzler, what a history it is. Julie had started to read the book before, but realized fast that this book needed an illustrated version, which was published a few years ago, but we never bought.

In fact we just went to the Ebook version of this book. Not only illustrations when you want them, but little movies and songs at times when it is appropriate.

What a story. Edmund de Waal is a gifted potter, but more than that, a gifted narrator. In this book he takes the reader through some of the most humbling experiences of mankind. One could call it dealing with jews, or with richness, or with success, or with envy – recalling one of Julie’s entries. But it is uncomfortable, entertaining, challenging and spot on at the same time.

There are some scenes that will haunt me, there are some scenes that will delight me, and then there are some episodes in the book of which I think Edmund de Waal has really touched on some things very essential about storytelling.

At the preface of his book he reflects on the reasons why one gives something to someone else. I quote: “I am giving you this because I love you. Or because it was given to me. Because I bought it somewhere special. Because you will care for it. Because it will complicate your life. Because it will make someone else envious. There is no easy story in legacy. What is remembered and what is forgotten?

At the end he asks himself what kind of story he has written. ‘I no longer know if this book is about my family, or about memory, or myself, or is it still a book about small Japanese things.’ It is all of those things. But more than that it is a challenge for the way that mankind has to look at history.

Of course one knows about the jewish fate and the horrors of Holocaust. But the disdain that this family (these families) were treated after the war was the most shocking episode to me.

It took the tenderest soul, someone who is so delicate that he knows how to deal with a cold, glibbery, delicate kind of material as clay – De Waal is a rather famous potter – to make this story into the invigorating and inspirational one that he turned it into.

What a treat it was, to read this story. And what a treat to read it in the ebook versions. There are so many references to paintings (Manet, Renoir) and music and photo’s and all these Netsuke little sculptures that the whole book is about, that it was an absolute delight to have the actual pictures at your fingertip[s. The only problem was that I couldn’t really play the video or music parts when I was reading last night. The reason was that I didn’t want to interrupt the famous third Nasal symphony of Julie Rezac that was being performed with proud gusto and to wide acclaim. So I listened to these episodes when the symphony had ended, at last, this morning. It was well wort waiting for, I found out.

Brilliant book, The hare with the amber eyes. Wished I was in the situation to have never read it and be able to absorb it again for the first time. Writing about it helps.