This is both a moving talk and a superb interview, which shed light on the extraordinary rich yet painful history of this family. I thank Edmund de Waal for writing this wonderful book about the recuperation of memories and finally realizing that he is a writer! His great feat was the recuperation of lost lives, lost memories. Thank you!
Favorite sentences from the book: p.284 ‘You did choose to leave a little early. I mean you resigned before you could be dismissed - and you left the country. What do you want by coming back? Have you come back to take something from us? Have you come back as an accuser? Have you come back to show us up? Could your war have been worse than our war? The return of émigrés was felt to be harassment of those who had stayed. p.288 For one hold breath you can piece together a life, a broken setting for a diasporic family. It was a family that could not put itself back together. P 346-347 Why should everything be made clear and brought into light? Why keep things, archive your intimacies? Why not let 30 years of shared conversation go spiraling in ash up into the air of Tunbridge Wells? Just because you have it doesn’t mean you have to pass it on (legacy). Losing things can sometimes gain you a space in which to live. P 348 I think of all those careful burnings by others, the systematic erasing of stories, the separations between people and their possessions, and then of people from their families and families from their neighborhoods. And then from their country. (Haaretz) If others can be so careful over things that are so important, then I must be careful over these objects and their stories. I must get it right, go back and check it again, walk it again. --Can’t make the wrong right, but can at least tell an accurate account of the story.
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This is both a moving talk and a superb interview, which shed light on the extraordinary rich yet painful history of this family. I thank Edmund de Waal for writing this wonderful book about the recuperation of memories and finally realizing that he is a writer! His great feat was the recuperation of lost lives, lost memories. Thank you!
unglaublich interessant, die Stund mit Edmund de Waal über sein Buch mit der Familiengeschichte
Favorite sentences from the book: p.284
‘You did choose to leave a little early. I mean you resigned before you could be dismissed - and you left the country. What do you want by coming back? Have you come back to take something from us? Have you come back as an accuser? Have you come back to show us up? Could your war have been worse than our war?
The return of émigrés was felt to be harassment of those who had stayed.
p.288
For one hold breath you can piece together a life, a broken setting for a diasporic family. It was a family that could not put itself back together.
P 346-347
Why should everything be made clear and brought into light? Why keep things, archive your intimacies? Why not let 30 years of shared conversation go spiraling in ash up into the air of Tunbridge Wells? Just because you have it doesn’t mean you have to pass it on (legacy). Losing things can sometimes gain you a space in which to live.
P 348
I think of all those careful burnings by others, the systematic erasing of stories, the separations between people and their possessions, and then of people from their families and families from their neighborhoods. And then from their country. (Haaretz)
If others can be so careful over things that are so important, then I must be careful over these objects and their stories. I must get it right, go back and check it again, walk it again.
--Can’t make the wrong right, but can at least tell an accurate account of the story.
+Jill Weiner Brava, Jill.
+John McCauley ~ Thank you John!