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He is Null Achtzehn. He is not called anything except that, Zero Eighteen, the last three figures of his entry number; as if everyone was aware that only a man is worthy of a name, and that Null Achtzehn is no longer a man.

--Primo Levi.

~~~

The Hare with Amber Eyes is surprisingly absorbing. I don't know what it is about it, though, that makes it so. I think it's De Waal's ability to stay tight to the main spring of his emotions; it could have meandered off anywhere and ended up being a book about everything and nothing. Instead there is, for me, 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 that; it's that there's no telling who or what will survive unscathed; and the answer, of course, is nothing, and no-one. the sheer utter randomness, the terrifying absurdity of it all. You can't do anything to protect yourself. Neither innocence or beauty or cunning will do in this world. Plan all you want, there's no insurance in life. It all sounds terribly fatalistic but true. Just the other day old MM was telling me about how a mutual friend had died ten years ago. I'd always thought it was an accident but he said he drove himself over the cliff. What can you say? Shrug your shoulders. That's what it's come down to.

And this line from Simone Weil (roughly): the uprooted, on pain of suffering, always try to uproot other people. You often hear people talk about the lack of a sense of place, the idea of being an 'exile', as if it was jazzy, and as if the opposite was a limited, parochial, fenced-in existence at best; at worst a recipe for bigotry, conservatism, and fanaticism. Blood and soil or the desire to escape earth.