Muriel Barbery (Casablanca, 1969) has just published Una hora de fervor (Seix Barral) in Spanish, a beautiful novel set in Japan, full of sensitivity and poetry, which loses nothing compared to the original in French thanks to the excellent translation. Its protagonist is an art dealer from Kyoto. The author, who achieved international recognition with The Elegance of the Hedgehog, recovers characters from her previous book, Una rosa sola, and goes back in time. French critics have lavished praise on her for the delicacy with which she addresses melancholy, the passage of time, friendship and even death. According to Le Figaro, “her voice is a song, a prayer that rises.”
It seems that Japan marked him a lot.
It’s the biggest culture shock of my entire life. I lived in Kyoto in 2008 and 2009. Since then I have returned as much as I could. It was such a shock that it took me ten years to start writing about it, to digest the extraordinary cultural confrontation.
Has the Japanese language influenced your way of writing?
Nothing at all. I speak terrible Japanese. Although Japan is an object of fascination for me, I am truly a French writer. My medium is the French language, which I love. However, Japanese aesthetics of course play an immense role in my current writing.
In the book there is a constant presence of sake, of drunkenness. Because?
First of all, I am French and you already know that the French are not economical when it comes to wine. France and Japan are two cultures in which there is a lot of drinking and it is done expertly, not only for drunkenness but for taste, refinement. I think it’s a very strong Franco-Japanese trend, wine and sake. By the way, the Japanese buy a lot of wine. Furthermore, the characters belong to a medium, that of art, in which there is traditionally a lot of drinking.
The female characters are a bit enigmatic. Is that also a Japanese influence?
Probably because, as a French person, I think I can tell you that I haven’t understood much about Japan. I have Japanese friends, but they remain a mystery to me. So that mystery also subsists in the novel. That’s why you noticed it so much.
At the end there is a reference to the Fukushima nuclear accident and a geological reflection on the Japanese character. Could you explain it?
I deeply believe that climate and geography have a considerable influence on culture, and it is not surprising that the Japanese talk a lot about provisionality and the ephemeral nature of things because they live in a territory permanently threatened by natural elements. That builds character. Anything can happen very quickly and brutally. I was in Japan when the Sendai and Fukushima disaster occurred. I was very surprised by the reaction of my Japanese friends who saw the first images on television, very explicit. But they couldn’t believe them because they were convinced that the entire anti-seismic device would work, as it always had. And later, when they realized the magnitude of the tragedy, they showed incredible resilience that shows a long adaptation to catastrophes.
I propose a game. I will read you phrases from your book that interested me and you will comment on them. OK?
Forward.
Of the protagonist, Haru, he writes that “during his entire life he would fail in love, but in friendship he would be a master.” But then he writes that friendship is part of love. Why did you make this reflection?
The character of Haru comes from a previous novel, A Single Rose, which is the story of his daughter. Haru was never able to build a true relationship with a woman, but at the same time he was a man extremely gifted in friendship. To me it seems like a great success because friendship is a very strong form of love. There is a tendency to devalue it in relation to romantic love, but friendship is one of the most important things in our lives.
“A man who thinks he knows himself is dangerous,” says the elder Jiro.
I really like this phrase. You know, in general I don’t have answers to the questions my characters ask. The role of the novelist is to face the mystery of his characters. I wonder, as a novelist, if the most important thing in my creative work is to be oneself or to leave oneself and become the other. I think it is a fundamental question. Is the ultimate goal to be yourself or to understand the other? I don’t know. It will still take a novel to explore this question.
Haru’s governess, a wise woman, affirms that “distance preserves the bond, reality breaks it.”
It is very wise, in fact, because everyone knows that every relationship that begins must be confronted with reality over time. That is, by the way, very Japanese. Discussing with my Japanese friends, I have seen that the issue of intimacy was not at all the same as for a Westerner. That would make for a long dissertation.
About Paris, Haru – or you – is stern. He writes that “Haru began to hate Paris, its arrogant buildings, its symmetrical gardens and its environments full of gilding and wrought iron.” He also claims that he did not like his architecture because “it seemed to him that it smelled of power and pride.”
Ha ha ha. Most of the time what my characters say only commits them. But in this case I must tell you that I quite agree with him. I deeply love French culture, but I have never felt good in Paris. When I arrived in Kyoto or Amsterdam, where I lived, I felt really good in those cities because what I don’t like about Paris is the feeling of power. It is a city made to highlight power and potency. I prefer the wooden houses of Kyoto and the sobriety of the architecture of Amsterdam, in human size. In Holland they manage to mix nature, pragmatism and art.
Another sentence from his novel says the following: “The explanation is a Western disease.
Ha ha. Every time I asked my Japanese friends why, they were surprised, “Why why?” Yes, I think the Japanese way of thinking is not the search for causality but the search for harmony, which is very different.
And that brings us to the last sentence: “What is the quintessential Japanese question like. I don’t know any town that leaves aside the whys so elegantly.”
Yes, it’s exactly the same. Japan seemed to me to be a country of rituals, of environment, of atmosphere, of harmony, while we are Cartesians, always in search of a rational explanation.
