I
have come back home on Monday, as per my hopes rather than expectations and
realised that coming back to my normal form is going to take same time. I
always liked to take it slow to study, reflect, organise few things. This is
what I have been doing with some pleasure. Have I reorganised my filing
cabinet? No, not yet, but my fridge is in perfect condition now. I even got
some fresh food into it. I am learning to be an older person not in the best of
forms but I hope it will change for the better again.
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| The netsuke which is the subject of the book |
As I
mentioned in my previous post, The Hare with Amber Eyes made a big impression
on me. Still does and it has inspired me to start writing something longer than
my posts. A book? Maybe, but what is important to me is that I started writing
and I know what I want to write about. Writing for myself, even if I may
publish some of it on a blog hoping for a feedback.
I
got inspired by the inscription in the book that suddenly took all my literary
interests:
Even when one is no longer attached
to things, it’s still something to have been attached to them; because it was
always for reasons which other people didn’t
grasp…Well, now that I am a
little too weary to live with other people, these old feelings, so personal
and individual, that I had in the past, seem to me – it’s the mania of all
collectors – very precious. I open my
heart to myself like a sort of vitrine, and examine one by one all those love
affairs of which the world can know nothing. And of this collection to
which I ‘m now more attached than to my others, I say to myself, rather like
Mazarin said of his books, but in fact without the least distress, that it will
be very tiresome to have to leave it all.
Charles
Swann
Marcel
Proust , Cities of the Plain
I
have been reading In the Research of Lost Time for many years and even if I
have not finished it yet, the last time I stopped reading it was few years ago and
I was in the middle of the part seven. Even if I have not formally completed
the book I have read most of it and some parts more than once. I think I will always
continue reading it. It does not seem to be a book I am ever going to tick off
as read and forget about it. It will always hold fascination for me.
The
Hare with Amber Eyes is about a netsuke collection initially purchased by
Charles Ephrussi a Jewish-French art critic, historian and collector who was an
inspiration for Marcel Proust’s character of Charles Swann. The collection was
passed in the family and the book tells the story of the collection and the
times from middle of the XIXth century to the current times. The Ephrussi were
a Russian Jewish banking and oil dynasty extremely influential and rich till
the Hitler times. They lived and operated within two centres one in Paris and
one in Vienna. The family were known for their connoisseurship, intellectual interests,
and their huge collections of art.
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| Ephrussi palace at Rue Monceau, I must have passed it many times all those years ago |
Reading
the first part of the book about Charles Ephrussi’s life many memories of my
own time in Paris came back with a considerable force. Ephrussis lived in a
palace at Rue Monceau and the Monceau park is mentioned many times in the book.
This was the park I walked to quite often to stroll or sit read for a while.
Even if I did not know the word then, I was doing a lot of flaneuring in Paris. They were such good times…
 |
| That is how I remember the park |
Jews always created
strong and mainly negative feelings among many nations. I often wondered why
this particular group of people distinguishes itself in such a way that the big
part of the world could not accept or even tolerate them. The book partly
answers the question saying that this may be their superiority on many fronts that
is the cause of envy, rejection and attacks. My thoughts are not clear yet, but
I always have been on the side of Jews and ashamed of Polish anti-Semitism. I
think that I need to revise this Polish guilt complex as the whole world is anti-Semitic
at times.
This is a great book
to read while I am recovering from my hospital experience and adjusting to the new
health situation. A little bit like the old times when I was a girl who each
year suffered long lasting colds staying in bed for a couple of weeks to cure a
head cold usually followed by a bronchitis. I liked the recovery time as it was
my time and I used it mainly for reading. I also liked the attention of my
usually busy mother who spent more time with a sick daughter than the healthy
one. It payed off to be sick those days. Not so much now so I better move
through this stage quickly.
