anti-semitism

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.

Was 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 it 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, there are levels of stupidity and thoughtlessness, there's years of ideology, myths, jokes, insidious undercurrents, and crucially there's the institutional support or the turning of a blind eye: Foucault: state racism.

And all this reminded you of your own childhood, 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?

And then I thought to myself: just how many people have faced such a ridiculous situation? Black people, the Red Man, the colonised, the poor, 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...

~~~

Of course, such gloomy thoughts are soon dissipated; you sit on a bench in a leafy park, reading, and eating a crusty roll (Gorgonzola and lettuce, if you must know), walk, stride for stride, with a beautiful girl until she suddenly turns down another street, visit three or four old bookshops searching out Jesus's Son...

"I dine, I play a game of backgammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends. And when, after three or four hours amusement, I would return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strained, and ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them any farther."