SILK
Alessandro Baricco

Heraclitus: “No man ever steps in the same river twice; for it is not the same river, and he is not the same man.”

Paige, Joan, Libby, Maddy, Sheri, Mary Lib, Margie, and Saran met on 30 April at 644 Peterson for a very lively and revealing discussion of Alessandro Baricco’s Silk.

Baricco is Italy's most famous contemporary writer. He studied philosophy, earned a diploma in piano at university, and has written several prize-winning books. Critics have commented that it is no surprise Baricco was trained as a musicologist, given the lyrical nature of much of his writing.

We all described Silk as sparse, poetic, sensual, and enigmatic. It tells a complete story of the life of Hervé Joncour while providing very few details. Barrico’s spare language, the use of repeated verse, realization of the formless self, and the motifs of silk, light, silence, and parables on the theme of love, are all combined masterfully. Silk leaves the reader with a lasting impression of lightness. Like our lives, Silk is an experience more than a story. Baricco links a feature of Japanese literature, namely that which is not spoken, with the image of the ever-present return of what is the same, a "repetition of the past.” We were all bewitched but also haunted by Baricco’s spare language, which challenged our need to fill in details and our search for concrete answers. We agreed that the resulting mystery, veils, and the unsaid were often far more important than many of the details Baricco provided.

We noted several repeating themes; each seductive while providing continuity: Joncour’s predilection to witness his own life; the prominence of water and of life falling like rain before his eyes; Hervé’s repeated route to Japan that included Lake Baikal, which intriguingly assumed a different local name at each visit; the idea of life as an inexplicable spectacle of light; Zen themes of emptiness, non-duality, quiet, stillness, acceptance of ones’ life situation; and the repeated use of grammar and gaps in time and space that led us, the readers, to interpret Hervé’s life differently.

We differed in our interpretations of the multiple mysteries in the book.  Did the young woman without Oriental eyes exist? Maddy and Libby were convinced that she did not, that she was Hervé’s dream reflecting his longing for Hélène, whom he could not love in person. Others of us considered her very real, the source of Hervé’s yearning for something he would never experience. Who wrote the letter(s) to Hervé? Many of us thought that the few details Baricco provided suggested that it was the woman from Japan who wrote the letter; others were convinced it was Hélène. As Paige said, the veil of silk was again thrown over our eyes. What was Hervé’s relationship with Hélène? Was it as easy as it seemed? “To love each other was an easy fate.” Or was it unfulfilled, leading Joncour to live the rest of his life filled with remorse? What was the significance of the small blue flowers, given by Madame Blanche to her suitors but ultimately left on Hélène’s grave? And who was Baldabiou, whose actions and conversations were eclectic?

Several of us felt compelled to write about Silk in an attempt to understand it better. Paige drew a compelling analogy between silk fiber and the book: Silk, the woven thread, so fine that holding it between the fingers is like nothingness. A veil of silk thin, translucent like the wisp of a cloud concealing the fullness of light.  Silk, the book, sensuous in color and movement like the blue wings of birds erasing the sky as they fly. Silk, the book, a veil through which our sight is made misty and unsure of what it sees. The author with his sparse words and ambiguous sentences keeps us behind a veil unable to see clearly. He weaves a fine, tight fabric of a novel as delicate and strong as its subject.  For Libby, Hervé was a man who had never really lived his own life, and didn’t know how to do so. He was, as the author said, “one of those men who like to be observers at their own lives, any ambition to actually participate in them being considered inappropriate.” Late in the book, Hervé “did a thing he had never done before”, he actually made a decision for himself and decided to go back to Japan during war when it was not safe. This experience changed him in that he was awakened to life, his life, was almost killed, almost did not return alive to Hélène.  Libby wondered if all of Hervé’s journeys had actually happened or if they were all a dream of a life that he couldn’t actually live properly. He was, for Libby, filled with remorse throughout.

Joan found, in several of her favorite sentences and excerpts, poetic form. A few examples are:
He was one of those men who
like to witness their own life
considering any ambition
to live it, inappropriate.

Helene was a tall woman
she moved slowly, had long black hair,
she had a beautiful voice.
"you mustn't be afraid of anything" He said

Hara Kei sat cross-legged on the floor.
The only visible sign of his power
was a woman lying beside him
unmoving, her head resting in his lap.

Maddy wrote of the Zen themes throughout the book, as did Paige.  Barrico’s spare language, the distinctive gap-filled grammar, and the realization of the formless self all fuse together the practice of Zen -the awakening to the Self that has no form, and to some extent, the religion of Shintoism. Both are ways of apprehending the world as an undifferentiated continuum, and such a practice can be described as “a tendency to find the fullness of being in the immediate flow of an aesthetic moment.” An ideal example is Joncour’s approach to the house of Hara Kei: “on the paper walls shadows appeared without a sound. It did not seem like life: If there were a name for all that, it was: theater.” Hervé may have experienced an ineffable moment, a moment full of formlessness and emptiness in his trips to his local lake.

Is this a fairy tale made of recurrent phrases and motifs? Was Joncour caught in a labyrinth of imagination and longing?  We left a lengthy and spirited discussion unsure.