"The Elegance of the Hedgehog" by Muriel Barbery

reviewed by Richard Seltzer, seltzer@samizdat.com

This book shocked and delighted me.  I stayed up all night and read it in a single gulp -- I couldn't go do anything else until I finished it.

You could say that this is the story of a woman's first love at the age of 54.  You could also say that this is a series of epiphanies, in the James Joyce sense (as Wikipedia puts it "his protagonists came to sudden recognitions that changed their view of themselves or their social condition and often sparking a reversal or change of heart.")  Or you could say that it is a series of essays on the essence of art and beauty and the meaning of life.

The perspective alternates between an intelligent self-educated 54-year-old concierge and a brilliant 12-year-old girl from a wealthy family who lives in the same building.  The concierge, Madame Michel or Renee, pretends to be stupid, ignorant, and ordinary, and has so pretended her entire life.  The young girl, Paloma, also disguises her brilliance, feels out of harmony with the world she lives in, and is toying with the idea of killing herself and burning the building down.

The third main character, Kakuro Ozu, is a wealthy retired Japanese gentleman.  He moves into the building when Monsieur Arthens (the food critic on the sixth floor who is the central character in Barbery's other novel "Gourmet Rhapsody") dies. Kakuro buys the critic's apartment and transforms it, and then transforms the lives of both Renee and Paloma.  Despite their very different backgrounds, the three main characters act and think and speak in ways that resonate with one another.

Somewhat like a Virginia Woolf book, the story isn't so much what happens as what is perceived.  The three main characters all change/develop radically from their interaction with one another, but the other residents of the building see nothing.

pp. 144-145
We never look beyond our assumptions and, what's worse, we have given up trying to meet others; we just meet ourselves.  We don't recognize each other because other people have become our permanent mirrors.  if we actually realized this, if we were to become aware of the fact that we are only ever looking at ourselves in the other person, that we are alone in the wilderness, we would go crazy... As for me, I implore fate to give me the chance to see beyond myself and truly met someone.

p. 303
"The didn't recognize me," I say.

I came to a halt in the middle of the sidewalk, complete flabbergasted.

"They didn't recognize me," I repeat.

He stops in turn, my hand still on his arm.

"It is because they have never seen you," he says.  "I would recognize you anywhere."

p. 143
Madame Michel [Renee] has the elegance of the hedgehog: on the outside, she's covered in quills, a real fortress, but my gut feeling is that on the inside, she has the same simple refinement as the hedgehog: a deceptively indolent little creature, fiercely solitary -- and terribly elegant.

Renee has a talent for discovering elegance and beauty in the everyday and ordinary. For instance, when she first visits Kakuro's apartment, even the toilet paper dazzles her.
 

pp. 219-220
"The toilet paper, too, is a candidate for sainthood.  I find this sign of wealth far more convincing than any Mazerati or Jaguar.  What toilet paper does for people's derrieres contributes more to the abyss between the classes than a good many external signs.  The paper at Monsieur Ozu's abode -- thick, soft, gentle and delicately perfumed -- is there to lavish respect upon a part of the body that, more than any other, is partial to respect."

When she flushes the toilet, Mozart's "Requiem" booms forth -- literally.

I found myself underlining and returning to savor one passage after another:

pp. 164-165
If you think about it at all seriously, esthetics are really nothing more than an initiation to the Way of Consonance, a sort of Way of the Samurai applied to the intuition of authentic forms.  We all have a knowledge of harmony, anchored deep within.  it is this knowledge that enables us, at every instant, to apprehend quality in our lives and, on the rare occasions when everything is in perfect harmony, to appreciate it with the apposite intensity.  And I am not referring to the sort of beauty that is the exclusive preserve of Art.  Those who feel inspired, as I do, by the greatness of small things will pursue them too the very heart of the inessential where, cloaked in everyday attire this greatness will emerge from within a certain ordering of ordinary things and from the certainty that all is as it should be, the conviction that it is fine this way.

p. 272
... 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.

p. 250
... every painting by a Dutch master is an incarnation of Beauty, a dazzling apparition that we can only contemplate through the singular, but that opens a window onto eternity and the timelessness of a sublime form.

p. 204
... this still life incarnates the quintessence of art, the certainty of timelessness.  In the scene before our eyes -- silent, without life or motion -- a time exempt of projects is incarnated, perfection purloined from duration and its weary greed -- pleasure without desire, beauty without will.

For art is emotion without desire.

p. 163
Perhaps the Japanese have learned that you can only savor a pleasure when you know it is ephemeral and unique: armed with this knowledge, they are yet able to weave their lives.

pp. 100-101
True novelty is that which does not grow old, despite the passage of time.

The camellia against the moss of the temple, the violet hues of the Kyoto mountains, a blue porcelain cup -- this sudden flowering of pure beauty at the heart of ephemeral passion: is this not something we all aspire to?  And something that, in our Western civilization, we do not know how to attain?

The contemplation of eternity within the very moment of life.

p. 156
... grammar is an end in itself and not simply a means: it provides access to the structure and beauty of language...

p. 160
... pity the poor in spirit who know neither the enchantment nor the beauty of language.

pp. 128-129

We have to live with the certainly that we'll get old and that it won't look nice or be good or feel happy.  And tell ourselves that it's now that matters: to build something, now, at any price, using all our strength.  Always remember that there's a retirement home waiting somewhere and so we have to surpass ourselves every day, make every day undying.  Climb our own personal Everest and do it in such a way that every step is a little bit of eternity.

That's what the future is for: to build the present, with real plans, made by living people.

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