Scribd
Upload
693 views25 pages

Do You Believe in Love at First Sight?

Herve Joncour enters a room to meet with Hara Kei, a silkworm trader, about obtaining silkworm eggs. Hara Kei is sitting with a young girl resting her head in his lap. Herve explains who he is and the details of his mission to smuggle silkworm eggs from Japan. The girl watches Herve intensely without moving. Herve notices her eyes do not look Oriental. Hara Kei laughs at a comment from Herve about paying in false gold, but then says Herve will only get what he wants if he leaves the island alive, in exchange for the promised payment.

Uploaded by

Roselyn Lictawa Dela Cruz
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
693 views25 pages

Do You Believe in Love at First Sight?

Herve Joncour enters a room to meet with Hara Kei, a silkworm trader, about obtaining silkworm eggs. Hara Kei is sitting with a young girl resting her head in his lap. Herve explains who he is and the details of his mission to smuggle silkworm eggs from Japan. The girl watches Herve intensely without moving. Herve notices her eyes do not look Oriental. Hara Kei laughs at a comment from Herve about paying in false gold, but then says Herve will only get what he wants if he leaves the island alive, in exchange for the promised payment.

Uploaded by

Roselyn Lictawa Dela Cruz
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 25

Do you believe in love at

first sight?
Silk
(Excerpt)
By
By Alessandro
Alessandro Baricco
Baricco
Background Knowledge
sakoku (isolation) – literally means "closed country“; The foreign
policy of Japan during the early 17th century to the year 1854,
which entry and exit from Japan were severely restricted.

 They did this because they mistrusted the foreign traders they came
in contact with and were suspicious of Christian missionaries as well.
Background Knowledge
Commodore Matthew Perry forced Japan to open
their shores to foreign trade and diplomacy.
In 1854, he had succeeded in making the Shogun
sign the Treaty of Peace and Amity at the
Convention of Kanagawa.
Background Knowledge
After the Tokugawa shogunate dropped its policy of
isolationism in 1854, Silk became one of the nation’s
most important exports. Demand for Japanese silk surged afte
r disease ravaged European silkworm stocks and political inst
ability in China crimped Chinese silk exports.
Japanese Silk
& kimono
Silkworm

Silkworm
eggs
Alessandro
Baricco
•  Italy's most famous
contemporary writer

•  was born on January 25, 1958


in Turin, Piedmont, Italy

• In 1991 he founded a training


program for writers, The
Holden School.
Alessandro
Baricco
• His novels have been
translated into a large number
of languages, and include
Lands of Glass, Silk, Ocean
Sea, City, and Without Blood.
• Silk, which became an
immediate best seller in Italy,
has been translated into 16
languages, including Japanese.
Alessandro
Baricco
•He has won the Prix Médicis
Étranger in France and the
Selezione Campiello, Viareggio,
and Palazzo al Bosco prizes in
Italy.

•He currently lives in Rome with


his wife and two sons.
Herve Joncour- A French Adventurer. He has a
dangerous mission to smuggle silkworm eggs from
Japan. He is a passive and peaceful man. He has
enough money to support himself and his wife, he
spends a lot of time designing gardens and parks
for his lands.

Hara Kei – Silkworm trader.

The Girl -the baron's mistress or concubine who is


wearing a beautiful loose red robe.
Silk (Excerpt)
ANALYSIS
A rice-paper panel slid open, and Herve Joncour entered. Hara
Kei was sitting cross-legged, on the floor, in the farthest corner of the
room. He had on a dark tunic, and wore no jewels. The only visible
sign of his power was a woman lying beside him, unmoving, her
head resting on his lap, eyes closed, arms hidden under a loose red
robe that spread around her, like a flame, on the ash-colored mat.
Slowly he ran one hand through her hair: He seemed to be caressing
the coat of a precious, sleeping animal.
rice-paper panel
(shoji)
 Hara Kei began to speak, in his own language, in a singsong voice that melted
into a sort of irritating artificial falsetto.
 Herve Joncour listened. He kept his eyes fixed on those of Hara Kei and only for
an instant, almost without realizing it, lowered them to the face of the woman.
It was the face of a girl.  He raised them again.  Hara Kei paused, picked up
one of the cups of tea, brought it to his lips, let some moments pass and said,
“Try to tell me who you are.” He said it in French, drawing out the vowels,
in a hoarse voice but true.
Herve Joncour tried to explain who he was. He did it in his own
language, speaking slowly, without knowing precisely if Hara Kei
was able to understand.
Instinctively, he rejected prudence, reporting simply, without
inventions and without omissions, everything that was true.
He set forth small details and crucial events in the same tone, and
with barely visible gestures, imitating the hypnotic pace, melancholy
and neutral, of a catalog of objects rescued from a fire.
Herve Joncour did not pause but instinctively lowered his gaze to her,
and what he saw, without pausing, was that those eyes did not have an
Oriental shape, and that they were fixed, with a disconcerting
intensity, on him: as if from the start, from under the eyelids, they had
done nothing else.
Herve Joncour turned his gaze elsewhere, as naturally as he could,
trying to continue his story with no perceptible difference in his
voice.
“France, the ocean voyages, the scent of the
mulberry trees in Lavilledieu, the steam
trains, Helene’s voice.”
Mulberry Tree
Steam Train
Slowly, she rotated it until she had her lips at the exact
point where Herve Joncour had drunk.
Half-closing her eyes, she took a sip of tea. She removed
the cup from her lips.
She rested her head again on Hara Kei’s lap. Eyes open,
fixed on those of Herve Joncour.
Herve Joncour lowered his gaze. There was his cup
of tea, in front of him. He picked it up and began to
revolve it, and to observe it, as if he were searching
for something on the painted line of the rim.
When he found what he was looking for, he placed
his lips there and drank.
Hara Kei laughed in amusement. “Is that why you paid
in false gold?”

“I paid for what I bought.” Hara Kei became serious


again.

“When you leave here, you will have what you want.”

“When I leave this island, alive, you will receive the


gold that is due you. You have my word.”
They are talking about the silkworm eggs. In their
conversation, Herve offered Hara the golds he have just to
give him the real silk worm eggs. But according to Hara
he can only get what he want if Herve leaves their island.
But Herve insisted that he can only do that if he can get
out of that Island alive and he can give all the gold that
Hara wants.
THANK
YOU

You might also like