My copy of L’élégance du hérisson by Muriel Barbery came last night.  I am so excited. It is going to be very hard going for me, especially at first, to read it in French, but that fact, along with how much I love the book, is what is going to make the process fun. (Part of me finds that really weird.)

Maybe that’s why I keep banging my head against philosophy. Same combo. It’s really hard to get my head around some of the ideas that must seem so very logical to those who perpetrated them on history, but I just can’t get there without really, really hard work.  Someone I have been emailing with recently said that this is, in part, because I don’t share the same cultural assumptions as those writers/thinkers. I suppose that’s what makes it hard work, because to understand, one must first unearth one’s own assumptions, and, if not uproot them, at least pot them so that they can be moved about one’s intellectual garden. A must, if another (or self) is to be understood.

For me learning another language is like that. First it’s very much a chore, since I might be good at many things, but learning language is not one of them. Second, one of the things that makes reading so much fun are the connotative links that enrich words like “hedgehog.”  The thing is that the links for “hedgehog” are different than the ones for “hérisson” despite their denotative similarity. So (re) learning to read in French is like taking on a new kind of philosophy — let’s call it narrative philosophy, unless you come up with something more fitting.

Unfortunately, I can’t get started just yet. I have this ENORMOUS crunch at work that won’t let up for another 10 days or so. Hérisson will have to wait until then. Speaking of work – I’m late. Gotta go.