BARBERY, MURIEL – The Elegance of the Hedgehog

The Elegance of the Hedgehog

(L'élégance du hérisson)

by Muriel Barbery,

translated from the French

by Alison Anderson

QUOTES FOR DISCUSSION

(Reneé) To understand Marx and understand why he is mistaken, one must read The German Ideology. It is the anthropological cornerstone on which all his exhortations for a new world would be built, and on which a sovereign certainty is established: mankind, doomed to its own ruin through desire, would do better to confine itself to its own needs. In a world where the hubris of desire has been vanquished, a new social organization can emerge, cleansed of struggle, oppression and deleterious hierarchies.

Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 17

(Paloma) “Life has meaning and we grown-ups know what it is” is the universal lie that everyone is supposed to believe. Once you become an adult and you realize that’s not true, it’s too late. The mystery remains intact, but all your available energy has long ago been wasted on stupid things. All that’s left is to anesthetize yourself by trying to hide the fact that you can’t find any meaning n your life, and then, the better to convince yourself. You deceive your own children.

All our family acquaintances have followed the same path; their youth spent trying to make the most of their intelligence, squeezing their studies like a lemon to make sure they’d secure a spot among the elite, then the rest of their lives wondering with a flabbergasted look on their faces why all that hopefulness has led to such a vain existence. People aim for the stars, and they end up like goldfish in a bowl. I wonder if it wouldn’t be simpler to just teach children right from the start that life is absurd. That might deprive you of a few good moments in your childhood but it would save you a considerable amount of time as an adult – not mention the fact that you’d be spared at least one traumatic experience, i.e. the goldfish bowl.

Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 22

(Paloma) As for my mother.. Well, my mother isn’t exactly a genius but she is educated.

Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 23

(Paloma) … even if you compare me to an adult, I am much smarter than the vast majority. That’s the way it is. I’m not particularly proud of this because it’s not my doing.

Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 24

(Paloma) That’s why I’ve made up my mind at the end of the school year, on the day I turn thirteen, June sixteenth, I will commit suicide.

Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 24

(Paloma) The main thing isn’t about dying or how old you are when you die, it’s what you are doing the moment you die.

Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 26

(Paloma) With no more apartment and no more daughter, maybe they’ll give some thought to all those dead Africans, don’t you suppose?

Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 27

(Reneé) … Manuel has been polishing the toilets with a Q-tip, and though they may be gilded with gold leaf, they are just as filthy and reeking as any toilets on the planet, because if there is one thing the rich do share with the poor, however unwillingly, it is their nauseating intestines that always manage to find a place to free themselves of that which makes them stink.

Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 31

(Manuela) “Politics,” she says. “A toy for little rich kids that they won’t let anyone else play with.”

Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 33

(Reneé) Can one be so gifted and yet so impervious to the presence of things? It seems one can. Some people are incapable of perceiving in the object of their contemplation the very thing that give it is intrinsic life and breath, and they spend their entire lives conversing about mankind as if they were robots, and about things as though they have no soul and must be reduced to what can be said about them – all at the whim of their own subjective inspiration.

Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 34

(Reneé) You know you have reached the very bottom of the social food chain when you detect in a rich person’s voice that he is merely addressing himself and that, although the words he is uttering may be, technically, destined to you, he does not even begin to imagine that you might be capable of understanding them.

Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 36

(Reneé) Most people, when they move, well they just move depending on whatever’s around them.

Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 39

(Reneé) Yet it became obvious in the haka: he was moving and making the same gestures as the other players (slapping the palms of his hands on his thighs, rhythmically drumming his feet on the ground, touching his elbows, and all the while looking the adversary in the eyes like a mad warrior) but while the other’s gestures went toward their adversaries and the entire stadium who were watching this player’s gestures stayed inside him, stayed focused upon him, and that gave him an unbelievable presence and intensity. And so the haka, which is a warrior chant, gained all its strength from him. What makes the strength of a soldier isn’t the energy he uses trying to intimidate the other guy by sending him a whole lot of signals, it’s the strength he’s able to concentrate within himself, by staying centered.

Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 40

(Reneé) Renée. That meant me. For the first time, someone was talking to me, saying my name. Where my parents habitually merely gestured or grunted, here was a woman with clear eyes and a smiling mouth standing before me, and she was finding her way to my heart, saying my name, entering with me into a closeness I had not previously known existed. I looked around me and saw a world that was suddenly filled with colors. In one painful flash I became aware of the rain falling outside, the windows streaked with water, the smell of damp clothing, the confinement of the hallway, the narrow passageway vibrating with the press of pupils…

Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 43

(Reneé) My stooped back, thick waist, short legs, widespread feet, abundant hair, and lumpy features – well, features lacking any shapeliness or grace – might have been overlooked for the sake of the youthful charm granted to even the most unprepossessing amongst us – but no, as the age of twenty I already qualified as an old biddy.

Thus, when the intentions of my future husband became clear and it was no longer possible for me to ignore them, I opened my heart to him, speaking frankly for the first time to someone other than my own self, and I confessed to him how astonished I was that he might conceive of wanting to marry me.

I was sincere. I had for many years accustomed myself to the prospect of a solitary life. To be poor, ugly and , moreover, intelligent, condemns one, in our society, to a dark and disillusioned life, a condition one ought to accept at an early age.

Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 47

(Reneé) I want a woman who’s loyal, a good wife, a good mother and a good housekeeper. I want a calm and steady companion who’ll stay by my side and support me. In exchange, you can expect me to be a serious worker, a calm man at home and a tender husband at the right moment. I’m not a bad sort, and I’ll do my best.”

And he did.

Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 48

(Paloma) It would seem that children believe for a fairly long time that anything that moves has a soul and is endowed with intention. My mother is no longer a child but she apparently has not managed to conceive that Constitutional and Parliament possess no more understanding than the vacuum cleaner.

Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 51

(Paloma) What charms me about the whole business is that he stubbornly insists on remaining a dog, whereas his mistress would like to make a gentleman of him. When he goes out into the courtyard, he runs to the very end of his leash and stares covetously at the puddles of muddy water idling before him.

Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 65

(Paloma) Because in town it is the dogs who have their masters on a leash, though no one seems to have caught on to the fact. If you have voluntarily saddled yourself with a dog that you’ll have to walk twice a day, come rain wind or snow, that is as good as having put a leash around your own neck.

Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 67

(Reneé) I have read history, philosophy, economics, sociology, psychology, pedagogy, psychoanalysis and of course – above all – literature. While all these have always interested me, literature has been my whole life. My cat Leo was baptized thus because of Tolstoy. My previous cat was called Dongo because of Stendhal’s Fabrice del. The first one was called Karenina because of Anna but I called her Karé for short, for fear of being found out.

Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 71

(Reneé) When illness enters a home, not only does it take hold of a body, it also weaves a dark web between hearts, a web where hope is trapped. Like a spider’s thread drawn ever tighter around our projects, making it impossible to breathe, with each passing day the illness was overwhelming our life.

Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 73

(Reneé) The death of a concierge leaves a slight indentation on everyday life, belongs to a biological certainty that has nothing tragic about it and, for the apartment owners who encountered him every day in the stairs or at the door to our loge, Lucien was a non-entity who was merely returning to a nothingness from which he had never fully emerged, a creature who because had lived only half a life, with neither luxury nor artifice, must at the moment of his death have felt no more than a half shudder of revolt. The fact that we might be going through hell like any other human being, or that our hearts might be filling with rage as Lucien’s suffering ravaged our lives, or that we might be slowly going to pieces inside, in the torment of rear and horror that death inspired in everyone, did not cross the mind of anyone on these premises.Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 74

(Paloma) You can say whatever you want to Maman while she’s looking after her plants, she’ll completely ignore it. For example: “I’m going to buy some drugs today and maybe go for an overdoes,” will get you the following answer: “The kentia’s going yellow at the tips of the leaves, too much water, not good at all.”Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 78

(Reneé) For the first time in twenty years I feel a vague flutter of sympathy for Chabrot. He is, after all, a human being too, I say to myself, and in the end, we are all alike.Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 81

(Reneé) I am torn. I realize that, as usual, my presence has only been acknowledged for the purpose of giving me a task to do. But then again, I concede, that is why I am here.Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 82

(Reneé) Manuela’s casual disregard for synchronizing verb tenses, the way she uses a conditional interrogative without the proper word order, the way she can make free with her syntax because she is only a poor Portuguese woman forced in to the language of exile…Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 88

(Reneé) He was a lovely child once, with wide eyes filled with wonder, who would trot along behind his father as if his life depended on it. But when he started using drugs the change was spectacular; he ceased to move.
Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 88

(Paloma) What do you drink

What do you read

At breakfast

And I know who

You areMuriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 92

(Reneé) ….a film by Ozu, the Munekata Sisters.Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 99

(Reneé) Here is the key to the film.
SETSUKO
True novelty is that which does not grow old, despite the passage of time.Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 100

(Reneé) But above all it is about something that is unattainable to Western sensibilities, and that only Japanese culture can elucidate.Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 100

(Reneé) 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 the 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 movement of life.Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 101

(Paloma) When I think there are people who don’t have television! How do they manage? I could spend hours watching.Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 102

(Reneé) Someone is playing a classical piece on the piano. Ah, sweet, impromptu moment, lifting the veil of melancholy… In a split second of eternity, everything is changed, transfigured. A few bars of music, rising from a n unfamiliar piece, a touch of perfection in the flow of human dealings…Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 106

(Reneé) In fact, when the struggle to dominate our primate aggressiveness takes up arms as powerful as books and words, the undertaking is an easy one, and that is how I became an educated person, finding in written symbols the strength to resist my own nature.Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 107

(Reneé) I slammed the door in his face, and at the same time very nearly amputated my cat’s tail as he was slipping out the door
… And as I had to allow Leo re-entry into his quarters, I immediately opened the door again after I had slammed it.
“Excuse me,” I said, “a draft.”Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 107

(Paloma) Live, or die: mere consequences of what you have built. What matters is building well. 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 16^th comes around, I want to be building.Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 114

(Paloma) …said Maman when they both thought I was out of earshot (But I hear everything, especially things I’m not supposed to hear).Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 124

(Paloma) The minute she gets angry, it’s really weird, she has to throw something.Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 126

(Paloma) She’s a nasty old woman and before that she was a nasty young woman.Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 126

(Paloma) We mustn’t forget that our bodies decline, friends die, everyone forgets about us, and the end is solitude. Nor must we forget that these old people were young once, that a lifespan is pathetically short, that one day you’re twenty and the next day you’re eighty. …But just by observing the adults around me I understood very early on that life goes by in no time at all, yet they’re always in such a hurry, so stressed out by deadlines, so eager for now that they needn’t thin about tomorrow. But if you dread tomorrow, it’s because you don’t know how to build the present, and when you don’t know to build the present, you tell yourself you can deal with it tomorrow, and it’s almost cause anyway because tomorrow always ends up becoming today, don’t you see?Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 128

(Reneé) I failed to understand properly because Madame Rosen always talks as if she has a cockroach in her mouth…

Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 133

(Paloma) … this is the first time I have met someone who seeks out people and who seems beyond. … 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.Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 144

(Renée) If you have but one friend, make sure you choose her well.Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 181

(Paloma) That I “hide” is not true anyway; I go off to be alone in a place where no one can find me. I just want to be able to write my Profound Thoughts and my Journal of the Movement of the World in peace and, before that, I just wanted to be able to think quietly in my head without being disturbed by the inanities my sister says or listens to on the radio or her stereo, or without Maman coming to bother me, whispering, “Mamie’s here, sweetheart, come give her a kiss,” which is one of the least enticing injunctions I know
Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 204

(Paloma) I may know that the world is an ugly place, I still don’t want to see it.
Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 210

(Paloma) As everybody knows, diplomacy always fails when there is an imbalance of power. No one’s ever seen the stronger party accept the other party’s diplomatic proposals.
Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 217

(Reneé) “I should have warned you. This is a Japanese thing … my daughter’s idea to import it. When you flush, it sets off the music, it’s … more pleasant, you see?”
Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 243

(Reneé) Very well,” I reply, mindful not to soften my own tone the way adults do when they speak to children – something which, in the end, is as much an indication of scorn as rich people wearing poor people’s rags.
Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 243

(Reneé) Manuela raises an eyebrow, which means, in Portuguese at least, “What is she doing here?”
Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 245

(Reneé) I have always been fascinated by the abnegation with which we human beings are capable to devoting a great deal of energy to the quest for nothing and to the rehashing of useless and absurd ideas.

Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 247

(Reneé) What is the purpose of intelligence if it is not to serve others?
Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 252

(Reneé) The only thing that matters is your intention: are you elevating thought and contributing to the common good, or rather joining the ranks in a field of study whose only purpose is its own perpetuation, and only function the self-reproduction of sterile elite – for this turns the university into a sect.
Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 252

(Reneé) She observes me, checking to see if I am familiar with this word. I assume a neutral expression – one of my favorites, for the wide latitude of interpretation.
Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 259

(Kakuro Ozu) “I have come to ask your opinion,” says Kakuro, after four madeleines. “I am in the midst of an argument with a friend over the issue of European supremacy in the matters of culture.”
Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 243

(Reneé) To the chapter of my turpitudes I must now add the abduction of a dress that does not belong to me, in place of one stolen from a dead woman, by me. The evil is rooted, more over, in the infinitesimal nature of my hesitation. If my vacillation had been the fruit of a sense of compunction linked to the concept of ownership, I might yet be able to implore Saint Peter’s forgiveness; but I fear it is due to nothing more than the time needed to ensure the feasibility of my misdeed.
Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 269

(Reneé) “Thanks again, really, it must have taken you a lot of time.”
“Fiddle-dee-dee. I made two of everything and Fernando has you to thank.”
Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 270

(Reneé) I derived two certainties: the strong live and the weak die, and their pleasure and suffering are proportionate to their position in the hierarchy. Lisette had been beautiful and poor, I was intelligent and indigent, but like her I was doomed to a similar punishment if I ever sought to make good use of my mind in defiance of my class. I finally, as I could not case to be who I was, either, it had to keep silent about who I was, and never mix with that other world.
Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 288

(Reneé) “Madame Michel, “ she replies, “you know, you are giving me hope again.”

“Hope?” I say, snuffling pathetically.

“Yes, “ she say, “it seems it might be possible to change one’s fate after all.”
Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 289

(Paloma) Listening to Madame Michel, I asked myself something: which is more traumatizing? A sister who dies because she’s been abandoned, or the lasting effects of the event – the fear that you will die if you don’t stay where you belong? Madam Michel could have gotten over her sister’s death, but can you get over the staging of your own punishment?

Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 290

(Paloma) This is what I felt: listening to Madame Michel and seeing her cry, but above all seeing how it made her feel better to be able to tell her story to me, I understood something. I understood that I was suffering because I couldn’t make anyone else around me feel better.
Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 290

(Reneé) Is it possible that we are all sharing the same frenetic agitation, even tough we have not sprung from the same earth or the same blood and do not share the same ambition?
Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 300

(Paloma) For the first time in my life I understood the meaning of the word never. And it’s really awful. You say the word a hundred times a day but you don’t really know what you’re saying until you’re faced with a real “never again.” Ultimately you always have the illusion that you’re in control of what’s happening; nothing seems definitive.

Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, pg. 324

Vocabulary – The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery

abnegation, pg. 107

Self-denial. to refuse or deny oneself (some rights, conveniences, etc.); reject; renounce. to relinquish; give up.

banal, pg. 166

lacking originality, freshness, or novelty : trite. So lacking in originality as to be obvious and boring.

bijou, pg. 127

a small and delicately worked piece. a small dainty usually ornamental piece of delicate workmanship : jewel. 2. : something delicate, elegant, or highly prized.

clandestine, pg. 174
conducted with or marked by hidden aims or methods. "cloak-and-dagger activities behind enemy lines. marked by, held in, or conducted with secrecy. characterized by, done in, or executed with secrecy or concealment, esp. for purposes of subversion or deception; private or surreptitious

compunction, pg. 269
anxiety arising from awareness of guilt; distress of mind over an anticipated action or result; a feeling of uneasiness or anxiety of the conscience caused by regret for doing wrong or causing pain; contrition; remorse

Concierge, pg. 35
A staff member of a hotel or apartment complex who assists guests or residents, as by handling the storage of luggage, taking and delivering messages. An employee who lives on the premises of an apartment building or a hotel and serves guests with duties similar to those of a butler.

ephemeral, pg. 101
anything short-lived, as an insect that lives only for a day in its winged form. Lasting for a markedly brief time:

esthete, pg. 271
one who professes great sensitivity to the beauty of art and nature. aesthete · cognoscente, connoisseur - an expert

ethereal, pg. 151
characterized by lightness and insubstantiality; as impalpable or intangible as air; relating to the regions beyond the earth b : celestial, heavenly c : unworldly, spiritual. 2. a : lacking material substance : immaterial, like the ether, or upper regions of space; very light; airy; delicate:

extirpation, pg. 216
To pull up by the roots. 2. To destroy totally; exterminate. The surgical removal of an organ

gloutof, pg. 262

As for a “Gloutof,” I did some research and have concluded that in going from French to English, something was “lost in translation.” I believe the cake that Renee raved about is actually called a “Kugelhopf” and its origins can be traced to Alsace where so many yummy baked goods have been created (it even has its own special turban-shaped pan).

http://forkontheroadblog.com/2010/05/14/gloutof-all-the-worlds-wondering-about-this-cake/

idem pg. 111
the same, Something that has been mentioned previously; a reference that has previously been made

inanities, pg. 204
the quality or state of being inane: as a : lack of substance : emptiness b : vapid, pointless, or fatuous character : shallowness; stupidity : estupidez feminine. 2. Nonsense

Incunabulum, pg. 36
work of art or of industry of an early period. An artifact of an early period.Book printed before 1501. A book, single sheet or image that was printed before the year 1500 in Europe. These are usually very rare and fragile items

laconicism, pg. 260 the practice of using few words to say much. brevity of speech or expression;

Lavaliere, pg. 35
jeweled pendant worn on a chain around the neck. A delicately constructed necklace of usually several linked components forming a trellis-like pattern, set with smaller assorted gemstones. An ornament hanging from a chain, worn around the neck. also la·val·lière′.

loge, pg. 80
A small compartment, especially a box in a theater. 2. The front rows of the mezzanine in a theater. a small partitioned area b : a separate forward section of a theater mezzanine or balcony

pedagogical, pg. 133
befitting a teacher or education. The art or profession of teaching. 2. Preparatory training or instruction. from Old French

proletarian, pg. 179
A member of the working class (not necessarily employed); "workers of the world--unite!" The class of industrial wage earners who, possessing neither capital nor production means, must earn their living by selling labor. The poorest class of working people.

spectral , pg. 103
relating to a spectrum, ghostly; phantom. the word spectrum then took on the obvious analogous meaning in reference to other sorts of waves, such as sound wave, or other sorts of decomposition

stoicism, pg. 142
an indifference to pleasure or pain. Greek philosphers: a systematic philosophy, dating from around 300 b.c., that held the principles of logical thought to reflect a cosmic reason instantiated in nature.

turpitudes, pg. 269

wickedness, vice, vileness, wrongdoing.

voracious, pg. 262

Wanting or devouring great quantities of food; Having a very eager approach to an activity; excessively eager : insatiable