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| Garance Le Guillermic plays Paloma Josse in the movie |
By Muriel Barbery
I wonder if I am not turning into a contemplative esthete. With major Zen tendencies....
Let me explain. This is a somewhat special "movement of the world," because it's not about a movement of the body. But this morning, while having breakfast, I saw a movement. The movement. Perfection of movement. Yesterday (it was Monday), Madame Grémont, the clearing lady, brought Maman a bouquet of roses....
I was having breakfast and looking at the bouquet on the kitchen counter. I don't believe I was thinking about anything. And that could be why I noticed the movement; maybe if I'd been preoccupied with something else, if the kitchen hadn't been quiet, if I hadn't been alone in there, I wouldn't have been attentive enough. But I was alone, and calm, and empty. So I was able to take it in.
There was a little sound, a sort of quivering in the air that went, "shhhh" very very very quietly: a tiny rosebud on a little broken stem that dropped onto the counter. The moment it touched the surface it went "puff," a "puff" of the ultrasonic variety, for the ears of mice alone, or for human ears when everything is very very very silent. I stopped there with my spoon in the air, totally transfixed. It was magnificent. But what was it that was so magnificent? I couldn't get over it: it was just a little rosebud at the end of a broken stem, dropping onto the counter. And so?
I understood when I went over and looked at the motionless rosebud where it had fallen. It's something to do with time, not space. Sure, a rosebud that has just gracefully dropped from the flower is always lovely to look at. It's so artistic: you could paint them over and over! But that doesn't explain the movement. The movement...and we think such things are spatial.
In the split second while I saw the stem and the bud drop to the counter I intuited the essence of Beauty. Yes, here I am, a little twelve-and-a-half-year-old brat, and I have been incredibly lucky because this morning all the conditions were ripe: an empty mind, a calm house, lovely roses, a rosebud dropping...Beauty consists of its own passing, just as we reach for it. It's the ephemeral configuration of things in the moment, when you can see both their beauty and their death.
Oh my gosh, I thought, does this mean that this 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. [pp. 271-273, from Paloma Josse's "Journal of the Movement of the World No. 7" ]
Let us stop a while
By Morris Dean
I am speechless in contemplation of this passage. I invite you to join me.
_______________
Copyright © 2013 by Morris Dean
I reviewed The Elegance of the Hedgehog on March 3.
| Please comment |
I found it very moving. It did touch something; may be it was the truthfulness that none of us like to think about.
ReplyDelete"Maybe that's what being alive is all about: so we can track down those moments that are dying." Now that is profound - and as good a theory as any.
ReplyDeleteThank both of you dear readers for confirming that my own estimate of the passage—that it was spiritually provocative—seems to have been accurate.
ReplyDeleteI like the history of my introduction to the book The Elegance of the Hedgehog also. Here it is:
My wife and I just happened on the movie (The Hedgehog) that was made from the book, and I noticed a reference in the credits to a book but didn't think anything further of it...until a friend on Facebook, someone I've never met and likely never will meet, commented on my "ad" for my review of the movie and recommended the book as really good.
Even though I didn't know this person and couldn't estimate the reliability of her book recommendations, I saw that it was easy enough to read some of the book to see for myself. In fact, it was available in digital sound recording download from the National Library Service resource that I use. What could be easier?
I quickly perceived that the book was a gem, and when I came upon the first (of several) passages that I might like to share with the blog's readers, I inquired as to whether my local library had a copy. It did. (I prefer to transcribe passages from print rather than from a sound recording, as you can easily appreciate.)
Story not over yet: And then, my Facebook friend suggested another book. I'm currently about 1/4 into Mary Doria Russell's 1996 sci-fi novel, The Sparrow. And I thought I didn't like sci-fi novels (or movies). This one is different, I guess, or I was simply wrong in making that blanket judgment about science fiction.
The Sparrow even has some "Thor's Day"-worthy passages, for get this: it involves a Jesuit mission to send a space ship to a civilization four lightyears away (near Alpha Centauri). A Jesuit mission. That is, there are some very interesting passages about religion, the politics of the Jesuit order of Roman Catholicism, and God belief—the priest who goes on the mission is agnostic.