Freud's Hat
When he was a boy, Freud's father told him how a Viennese Gentile had knocked his hat off and ordered him off the pavement. "What did you do?" asked Freud. "I stepped into the gutter and picked it up" he replied.
Reading de Waal's account of anti-semitism in Paris and Vienna in the 19th century what struck me was how terribly ordinary it all was, as if humiliation was if not quite routine, then at least something that could be expected to occur at any time, just simmering under the surface of the fake civility that was mistaken for the bonds of society, ready to boil up at the drop of a hat. Of course, in any society there are levels of stupidity and thoughtlessness, there are years of ideology, myths, jokes, insidious undercurrents, but, crucially, here there's also institutional support and the turning of a blind eye: Foucault’s state racism is of a different order.
And all this reminded you of your own childhood experiences, of the sneaking suspicion that lurking behind the corner was someone ready to shout at you or chase you (of course, the fact that you had been chased by a gang of kids, a pack of wolves, didn't help). Later, you read that Europe hadn't been able to overcome its intense 'race consciousness'- and you still think that there's some truth to that, despite all the progress made. Which is why you baulk at the word 'Englishness'.
What did you do? Not, what did you do to deserve that, the victim's question But: what did you do, how did you cope?
It's worth asking oneself: just how many people have faced such a ridiculous situation? Black people, the Red Man, the colonized, the poor, and women. Is the history of the world nothing but a stepping into the gutter? Of course, at times it makes sense to run (which is what I did!). And yet there's something pragmatic but also profound and deeply human about Freud's father's response. As if to say, this crooked timber of humanity will always be with us; one must sometimes stoop, bend, and retrieve what was yours.
It is said that the next world will be exactly the same as this one except that a few objects will be slightly displaced. Like a hat, that will then firmly rest on the head of its owner, only to be removed when one enters one's own home.
~~~
You open The Hare with Amber Eyes at random and come across these lines, faintly marked with a lead pencil:
'Its accomplishment requires a suppleness of the hand,..a preserving dexterity, a sacrifice of time'
The deeper the experience of a moment the greater the accumulation of experience...the lived duree is not a question of length but of depth or density.
---John Berger.
What is held in common now? Not an image, but a few scattered words, the oft-repeated stories or laughter...the distinct tone of voice, old-time phrases and gestures; more universally: the loving gaze with a tilted head, the silence between us, that covers what we know to be true. The days, the hours under the sun. How these intimate acts of memory tell of our humanity! The clouds float onwards, the contrast of dark grey and brilliant pure white almost unreal, dream-like; they roll on past brilliant green tree tops, over empty, sleepy suburban streets, creating sudden shadows in mid-morning kitchens as kettles come to the boil unattended and the news from this strange planet speaks of how order is crumbling all around you. The rag and bone shop of the heart remembers. And forgets. The accumulation of small things, the misplacing of them. That, too, is only human. Some things can be given away for free, others have a price. Much has been lost. You point to a clock. Little r extends her finger, mimics surprise, and repeats the word. Clock. But she won't tell the time.
~~~
I think it's De Waal's ability to stay tight to the main spring of his emotions; the story could have meandered anywhere and ended up being a book about everything and nothing. Instead there is this recurrent idea that things and our proper relation to them are vitally important; that the deep continuities in our individual lives and the continuation of shared meanings between people depend on, ultimately, very small things, names, places, superfluities, even.
The book starts with, and pretty well ends up with, these lines:
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.
At the heart of it is a story of survival, of things lovingly passed on down the generations. But no, it's not just about that; it's also the dark shadow, the unarticulated sense that there's no telling who or what will survive unscathed; and that's perhaps not unrelated to a primal fear, a feeling of anxiety because nothing, and no-one, escapes being marked by time or what from the ‘outside’ looks like the sheer, utter randomness, the terrifying absurdity of it all. Ultimately, you can't do anything to protect yourself. “Man is at loss” (Qur'an: al-Asr). Neither innocence or beauty or cunning will, it seems, ever be enough in this world. Plan all you want, but there's no insurance in life. That sounds terribly fatalistic but is on balance, I think, true. What look like deep continuities can be disrupted in a moment: the centre doesn't hold. Or, more prosaically, the old image of the self that you cling on to for reassurance fades and falters so that you look in the mirror and think: I have become a question to myself.