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<\/a><\/p>\nBy Robert Moyer<\/p>\n
THE HARE WITH AMBER EYES: A Family\u2019s Century of Art and Loss. By Edmund De Waal, Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 351 pages. $26.<\/p>\n
In the London hallway of potter\u00a0and author Edmund De Waal, a brass vitrine on a mahogany base holds 264 netsuke, <\/em>small, carved objects that once served as toggles at the ends of strings that held bags or boxes on a kimono sash.\u00a0 In mid-century France, these humble objects \u2014 a hare with amber eyes, a beggar, two wrestlers \u2014 became objets d\u2019art, <\/em>as japonisme <\/em>swept through Paris.\u00a0 They entered the extensive collection of Charles Ephrussi, a scion of\u00a0 the dynastic financial family from Russia, whose empire reached from Odessa to the Hotel Ephrussi on rue de Monceau to the Palais Ephrussi on Vienna\u2019s Ringstrasse, large dwellings that housed treasures of art, old masters, Monets,\u00a0 Renoirs \u2014\u00a0 and Jews with coats of arms.\u00a0 Charles\u2019 netsuke <\/em>sat among all that art.\u00a0<\/p>\n Proust used Charles as a model for Swann in his novels; the Viennese Ephrussis were held up for diminution in countless anti-Semitic novels.\u00a0 Charles sent the netsuke <\/em>to his cousin Viktor in Vienna as a wedding present; there, they were relegated to his young wife Emmy\u2019s (De Waal\u2019s great-grandmother) dressing room, far from the gold plates, the sterling silver and the grand art of the Hotel Ephrussi.<\/p>\n Now, they are the only remnant of the Ephrussi family empire.\u00a0This book tells their story, one teeming with complexity, so varied that even De Waal, as he nears the end of his search, gets confused:\u00a0 \u201cI no longer know if this book is about my family, or memory, or myself, or is still a book about small Japanese things.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0Delightfully, it is all those things, and more.\u00a0 In De Waal\u2019s hands and words, the netsuke<\/em> are \u201csmall, tough explosions of exactitude,\u201d\u00a0artifacts that touch off sparks of immediacy in the history of his family, of an era.\u00a0 We follow the vitrine up the stairs into Charles’s apartment, where his friends, perhaps Proust, perhaps Renoir, take out the small objects and comment upon their sensuality, their eroticism.\u00a0 Later, in Emmy\u2019s dressing room far from the French haute monde, <\/em>they lose their japonisme, <\/em>as the maid Anna opens the vitrine and lets the children play with them while their mother dresses.\u00a0 Sometimes Emmy will \u201c\u2026start a story for her children about the elderly driver, the flower-seller and the student.\u201d<\/p>\n So the author, too, tells his stories, looking out the same window as Emmy, looking into documents, handling the netsuke<\/em>.\u00a0 He draws upon his background as a potter:\u00a0 \u201cTouch tells you what you need to know: it tells you about yourself.\u201d\u00a0 As he traces the path of the netsuke,<\/em> armed with only a few family letters and documents, he reveals so much more.\u00a0 Reading the anti-Semitic descriptions of his family both in Paris and Vienna, he is nauseated, \u201c\u2026as if a vitrine is opened and each of them is taken out and held up for abuse.\u201d After WWI the family loses enough to make them count what was once countless, to worry for the first time about possessions. Up until the arrival of the Third Reich on the Ringstrasse in 1938, De Wall says, \u201cThe real keeps slipping out of my hands.\u201d\u00a0 He does not understand \u201cwhat it means to be part of an assimilated, acculturated Jewish family.\u201d\u00a0 The Ephrussi family \u201care so perfectly assimilated they have disappeared into Vienna.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Until the Nazis arrive at the door, and within hours take the house, the art, and shortly, the bank.\u00a0 The author\u2019s grandmother helps her mother and father escape with nothing.\u00a0 Everything of value is gone.\u00a0 And the netsuke?<\/em> After the war, Anna, the maid, gives De Waal\u2019s grandmother the 264 netsuke.\u00a0 <\/em>\u201cThey (the Nazis) didn\u2019t notice the little figures. So I just took them.\u00a0 And I put them in my mattress and I slept on them.\u201d\u00a0 De Waal characterizes Anna\u2019s act as the greatest care they have ever had — Japanese objects owned by a Jewish family hidden in an Austrian mattress.\u00a0 Each object\u00a0 saved is \u201ca resistance against the news, a story recalled\u2026.\u201d\u00a0 Anna disappears,\u00a0 and the netsuke <\/em>go with De Waal\u2019s great-uncle Iggy to Japan, where they become objets d\u2019art <\/em>once again, and the beginning of the author\u2019s relationship with them and his uncle.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0As he visits through the years, the narrative becomes a travelogue of sorts, as De Waal explores his families\u2019 history of living as Russians in Vienna, as Austrians in Japan, as Dutch in England.\u00a0 An account of the Holocaust, a rumination on loss and possession, a memoir, a treatise on art, De Waal melds the book\u2019s many strands into something greater than their sum \u2014 a tremendous story.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u201cObjects have always been carried, sold, bartered, stolen, retrieved and lost,\u201d says De Waal near his conclusion. \u201cIt is how you tell their stories that matters.\u201d\u00a0 De Waal tells the story of the netsuke <\/em>well, and in a way that matters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Here’s our latest review, by Robert Moyer of Winston-Salem, whose interests are as wide-ranging as his talents. By Robert Moyer THE HARE WITH AMBER EYES: A Family\u2019s Century of Art and Loss. By Edmund De Waal, Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 351 pages. $26. In the London hallway of potter\u00a0and author Edmund De Waal, a brass […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-contemporary-nonfiction","category-memoir"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=73"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73\/revisions\/77"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=73"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=73"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=73"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}