The year is 1938 and the place is Shibuya, back then mostly a residential area in the center of Tokyo. Four amateur musicians (one is Japanese and the other three Chinese) are rehearsing in what seems to be an almost abandoned theater. There’s a table with biscuits and cups for tea. Some of the furniture of previous performances, perhaps a play where one of the scenes had been in a bedroom, is scattered across the stage, among them an old wooden armoire, lucid, massive and unperturbed, standing aloof like an august statue that silently observes all. Next to it there is a boy sitting comfortably on the floor, holding a book in his hands, totally absorbed in his reading.
The chairs, probably once part of the same scenery, are arranged in a semi-circle so that the musicians can see each other clearly. They look serious and concentrated as they begin with the first notes of Schubert’s Rosamunde Quartet. As the second violin, the viola and cello open with a wave-like accompaniment of delicate softness, crystalline sighs that move forward, the first violin plays the initial melodic motive with unsurpassed presence. There is a sense of dignity in their playing as they begin their intimate dialogue, interwinding lines that seem like threads knitted gently in within a frame of infinite bliss.
After a short break of tea and biscuits, the boy goes back to his reading, and the rehearsal continues. Now they are working on the second movement, marked simply Andante, where the first violin introduces the theme that will abide throughout engaging in an intricate conversation with his partners, at times playful and others reflective. Suddenly, the sound of hard steps interrupts the music. The intruder appears on the stage like a bad actor that not only has missed his cue but has stumbled noisily in the wrong play. Dressed in military clothes, he is standing in front of the musicians who have stopped playing.
Intimidated by the imposing figure, the boy hides in the armoire and silently closes the door. It is completely dark inside, and he nervously looks through the keyhole and is witness to what is happening. It takes him a moment to ascertain the situation. The man dressed as a soldier is shouting and reprimanding his father. He takes his violin and in a fit of anger slams it on the floor.
In a troubled world that seems to have lost its mind during the war, Akira Mizubayashi artfully erects an allegoric tale of dignity and compassion where music is the remedy and love the cure. With refinement and delicacy, his narrative, elegant and lyrical, approaches poetry at times, showing the hidden beauty in the simplicity of well-constructed prose. The story centers in Rei, the eleven year old boy inside the armoire and his miraculous journey over seven decades of a life whose only purpose is to repair and restore what was once broken.
The author elaborates on themes close to him: the fear of nationalism, the importance of human dignity, they joy of sharing, the immensity of freedom, the distinctiveness and singularity of language, the rich cornucopia that each culture represents and the boundless and profound love of music.
Âme brisée is a parable of immense beauty and ferocious courage, centered in a violin whose soul has been broken by the infuriated pride of a world in the verge of destruction. The violin represents the human soul, and the music that emanates from it the unsurpassed pinnacle of human creation, epitomized in the works of Bach, Schubert and Berg.
Akira Mizubayashi was born in Sakata, in the Tohoku region of Japan in 1951. When he was 18 he began to study French, and in his own words “at that moment everything changed for me”. In 1973 he travelled to France and studied at the Université Paul Valéry of Montpellier. He later lived in Paris, where he continued his studies at the École Normale Supérieure, receiving his doctorate with a thesis on Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The immersion in a different culture became a turning point in his life. He is now considered a scholar of French literature, focused primarily in the 18th Century. He lives in Tokyo where he teaches at Sophia University and writes almost exclusively in French. All his books have been published by Gallimard.
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