A Single Rose
Review of the novella by Muriel Barbery, translated from French by Alison Anderson
I loved The Elegance of the Hedgehog and Gourmet Rhapsody. The language and the wisdom packed into this novella are extraordinary. There is very little story, but who needs story when what is told is told so well and translated so well? (The original is in French.)
I found myself pausing to underline on every other page.
Here are a few samples:
“In return for this indifference to misfortune, they harvest these gardens where the gods come for tea.” p. 21
“If a person is not prepared to suffer… they are not prepared to live.” p. 21
“…the years were passing, and the icy water of her nightmares, a black water in which she was slowly drowning, gradually came to dominate her days.” p. 25
“… he had a slight limp, and it was to this condition that she attributed the way he glided through the world like a fish in a river, creating fluidity from something broken.” p. 30
“the world had gone to hide in this patch of sand and circle.” p. 38
“… in this world we walk on the roof of hell gazing at flowers.” p. 39
“the line that separates water from earth, the line between water and sky: floating lines, sketching a virgin territory with neither wind nor heat, neither ice nor bird-son, an enclave where matter dissolved into the void.” p. 49
“… she felt she could lose herself in this vanished way of life.” p. 52
“What is it that you like about Japan?… The poetry and the clear-sighted drunkards.” p. 59
“Sayoko brought her a transparent umbrella. Rose opened it and liked the way she could see the world through the raindrops….for a moment she dreamed of living inside a full, enclosed raindrop, with no elsewhere and no history, no prospects and no desire.” p. 6
“These gardens are melancholy transformed into joy, pain transmuted into pleasure. What you see here is hell turned to beauty.” p. 67
“That ea this morning had almost no taste, and yet it tasted of everything… That’s a good dfinition of Japan.” pp. 68–69
“that year, one evening in June, Maud went to the river with her pockets full of stones and drowned in magnificent silence, after admiring the trees in the mirror of calm water.” p.73
“The world is like a cherry tree one has not looked at for three days…” p. 131
