Rats, it's already March and I haven't even started Kim yet. I guess I was naive to think I'd be able to make time amidst school and work. *sighs* maybe this weekend...
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Rats, it's already March and I haven't even started Kim yet. I guess I was naive to think I'd be able to make time amidst school and work. *sighs* maybe this weekend...
Hi there :wave:
I've just finished reading Kim, and I really enjoyed it :) It sucked me into another world, and I can imagine I have gotten a good image of India at the end of the 19th century. I can't be sure of course, as I never had this in history class - but I guess with Kipling having lived over there and this being such a well known book... It won't be too inaccurate ;)
Seeing the world from Kim's eyes is wonderful. And how his perception changes while being with the English or the natives, the difference between being a Sahib or ... well, whatever caste he chooses to be really :p Sweet to read about his ways of "disguise" and how he can crawl into another persons skin.
I do have a little question though - it's about just one sentence in the book :goof: I tend to get stuck on details ;)First time I read this, I was sure Kipling means a person isn't able to learn that well anymore after reaching the age of 22/23. But that isn't really agreeable with the notion of "first rush of minds developed by sun and surroundings", that doesn't indicate age at all :confused: So then I thought maybe it meant the time of day ... but who in their right mind would study all day (during the sunlight) and NOT be too tired when it is after 10 o'clock in the evening. :( Don't think that's the clue either...Quote:
Originally Posted by chapter 7
Any ideas?
Well I finally finished yesterday and I want to close out my thoughts. This was the third time now that I have read Kim and each time it has grown in my estimation as a work of art. This is a fascinating work, an incredible picturesk view of India and her people and her voices, a bildungsroman, and the wonderful love between an old spiritual man and a boy. I wish I had been able to post comments of my thoughts as I read along instead of just inundate here at the end. Unfortunately I was not able to with my schedule. I've already talked about tension between the material world and the spirtual world for Kim, so I won't reiterate that theme. It is also interesting to note how there are at least five religions that surrond Kim, the Protestantism of the English, the Catholicism of Kim's Irish roots, the Islam of Mahbub Ali, the various Hindus that come in and out, and of course the Tibetan Buddhism of the Lama. Except for the Buddhism, all the other relgions are portrayed as caught in the material world, lacking of any real spiritual dimension.
There five other elements of the novel I wish to highlight: the picturesk culture of India that kipling presents, the tensions within and development of Kim's identity, the search for enlightment, the love between Kim and the Lama, and finally the berauty of Kipling's prose. Since I have available an electronic text from which i can cut and paste, I will be generous in examples, and so this may take several posts given the length.
Perhaps there is no other culture on the earth that is as vast and diverse as that of India. Included here of course is what today is Pakastan, Bengali, Tibet, and the India proper. In such a small, just over three hundred pages, Kipling spans an incredible scope, encompassing all, or appearing to. Here is Kim at the school of learning how to play the Great Game (espionage) and all the various elements of local culture:
[from cahpter 9]Quote:
They were a most mad ten days, but Kim enjoyed himself too much to reflect on their craziness. In the morning they played the Jewel Game - sometimes with veritable stones, sometimes with piles of swords and daggers, sometimes with photo-graphs of natives. Through the afternoons he and the Hindu boy would mount guard in the shop, sitting dumb behind a carpet-bale or a screen and watching Mr Lurgan's many and very curious visitors. There were small Rajahs, escorts coughing in the veranda, who came to buy curiosities - such as phonographs and mechanical toys. There were ladies in search of necklaces, and men, it seemed to Kim - but his mind may have been vitiated by early training - in search of the ladies; natives from independent and feudatory Courts whose ostensible business was the repair of broken necklaces - rivers of light poured out upon the table - but whose true end seemed to be to raise money for angry Maharanees or young Rajahs. There were Babus to whom Lurgan Sahib talked with austerity and authority, but at the end of each interview he gave them money in coined silver and currency notes. There were occasional gatherings of long-coated theatrical natives who discussed metaphysics in English and Bengali, to Mr Lurgan's great edification. He was always interested in religions. At the end of the day, Kim and the Hindu boy - whose name varied at Lurgan's pleasure - were expected to give a detailed account of all that they had seen and heard - their view of each man's character, as shown in his face, talk, and manner, and their notions of his real errand. After dinner, Lurgan Sahib's fancy turned more to what might be called dressing-up, in which game he took a most informing interest. He could paint faces to a marvel; with a brush-dab here and a line there changing them past recognition. The shop was full of all manner of dresses and turbans, and Kim was apparelled variously as a young Mohammedan of good family, an oilman, and once which was a joyous evening - as the son of an Oudh landholder in the fullest of full dress. Lurgan Sahib had a hawk's eye to detect the least flaw in the make-up; and lying on a worn teak-wood couch, would explain by the half-hour together how such and such a caste talked, or walked, or coughed, or spat, or sneezed, and, since 'hows' matter little in this world, the 'why' of everything. The Hindu child played this game clumsily. That little mind, keen as an icicle where tally of jewels was concerned, could not temper itself to enter another's soul; but a demon in Kim woke up and sang with joy as he put on the changing dresses, and changed speech and gesture therewith.
And along with the various elements of the culture, which seems to come up scene upon scene, are the various voices. Each character, major and minor seems to resonate with his individual voice. One can just hear the indian accents. Here is the voice of Hurree Babu, an hindu man working with Kim as a spy.
[from chapter 10]Quote:
About third cockcrow, Kim woke after a sleep of thousands of years. Huneefa, in her corner, snored heavily, but Mahbub was gone.
'I hope you were not frightened,' said an oily voice at his elbow. 'I superintended entire operation, which was most interesting from ethnological point of view. It was high-class dawut.'
'Huh!' said Kim, recognizing Hurree Babu, who smiled ingratiatingly.
'And also I had honour to bring down from Lurgan your present costume. I am not in the habit offeecially of carrying such gauds to subordinates, but' - he giggled - 'your case is noted as exceptional on the books. I hope Mr Lurgan will note my action.'
Kim yawned and stretched himself. It was good to turn and twist within loose clothes once again.
'What is this?' He looked curiously at the heavy duffle-stuff loaded with the scents of the far North.
'Oho! That is inconspicuous dress of chela attached to service of lamaistic lama. Complete in every particular,' said Hurree Babu, rolling into the balcony to clean his teeth at a goglet. 'I am of opeenion it is not your old gentleman's precise releegion, but rather sub-variant of same. I have contributed rejected notes To Whom It May Concern: Asiatic Quarterly Review on these subjects. Now it is curious that the old gentleman himself is totally devoid of releegiosity. He is not a dam' particular.'
'Do you know him?'
Hurree Babu held up his hand to show he was engaged in the prescribed rites that accompany tooth-cleaning and such things among decently bred Bengalis. Then he recited in English an Arya-Somaj prayer of a theistical nature, and stuffed his mouth with pan and betel.
'Oah yes. I have met him several times at Benares, and also at Buddh Gaya, to interrogate him on releegious points and devil-worship. He is pure agnostic - same as me.'
Notice Babu's voice: "'I superintended entire operation, which was most interesting from ethnological point of view. It was high-class dawut.'" I can hear the voice of Indians, the frequent multi syllabic words that pile up, "superintended," "ethnological." "Complete in every particular." And further down the chapter Babu explains excitedly the goings on behind the scenes:
"Thatt," "unoffeecial," "I am a fearful man - most fearful," "Veree good." Haha, Kipling is great at capturing the local color.Quote:
'Huneefa she makes them for two rupees twelve annas with - oh, all sorts of exorcisms. They are quite common, except they are partially black enamel, and there is a paper inside each one full of names of local saints and such things. Thatt is Huneefa's look-out, you see? Huneefa makes them onlee for us, but in case she does not, when we get them we put in, before issue, one small piece of turquoise. Mr Lurgan he gives them. There is no other source of supply; but it was me invented all this. It is strictly unoffeecial of course, but convenient for subordinates. Colonel Creighton he does not know. He is European. The turquoise is wrapped in the paper . . . Yes, that is road to railway station . . . Now suppose you go with the lama, or with me, I hope, some day, or with Mahbub. Suppose we get into a dam'-tight place. I am a fearful man - most fearful - but I tell you I have been in dam'-tight places more than hairs on my head. You say: "I am Son of the Charm." Verree good.'
And then we have the development of Kim's identity. What a marvelous bildungsroman this is. A fascinating comaprsion could be made of Kim and his development with that of Pip in Dickens' Great Expectations, Steven Daedelus in Joyce's Portrait of the Artist, and Paul Morell in Lawrence's Sons and Lovers, all outstanding Bildungsromans. Kim's development does not lead to the knowledge of the inherent sadness to life as Pip learns, or to a conscious rejection of one's culture as Daedulus does, or a violent unconscious contortion to the adult world's passions as Paul Morell experiences. Kim learns that his true identity is in all of India herself, the absorbtion of every element of the physical and spiritual nature of his environment. Here is Kim, graduated from school and has starts his trip to go to his beloved Lama, who has paid for his education.
[from chapter 11]Quote:
Followed a sudden natural reaction.
'Now am I alone all alone,' he thought. 'In all India is no one so alone as I! If I die today, who shall bring the news -and to whom? If I live and God is good, there will be a price upon my head, for I am a Son of the Charm - I, Kim.'
A very few white people, but many Asiatics, can throw themselves into a mazement as it were by repeating their own names over and over again to themselves, letting the mind go free upon speculation as to what is called personal identity. When one grows older, the power, usually, departs, but while it lasts it may descend upon a man at any moment.
'Who is Kim - Kim - Kim?'
He squatted in a corner of the clanging waiting-room, rapt from all other thoughts; hands folded in lap, and pupils contracted to pin- points. In a minute - in another half-second - he felt he would arrive at the solution of the tremendous puzzle; but here, as always happens, his mind dropped away from those heights with a rush of a wounded bird, and passing his hand before his eyes, he shook his head.
A long-haired Hindu bairagi [holy man], who had just bought a ticket, halted before him at that moment and stared intently.
'I also have lost it,' he said sadly. 'It is one of the Gates to the Way, but for me it has been shut many years.'
'What is the talk?' said Kim, abashed.
'Thou wast wondering there in thy spirit what manner of thing thy soul might be. The seizure came of a sudden. I know. Who should know but I? Whither goest thou?'
'Toward Kashi [Benares].'
'There are no Gods there. I have proved them. I go to Prayag [Allahabad] for the fifth time - seeking the Road to Enlightenment. Of what faith art thou?'
'I too am a Seeker,' said Kim, using one of the lama's pet words. 'Though'- he forgot his Northern dress for the moment - 'though Allah alone knoweth what I seek.'
The old fellow slipped the bairagi's crutch under his armpit and sat down on a patch of ruddy leopard's skin as Kim rose at the call for the Benares train.
'Go in hope, little brother,' he said. 'It is a long road to the feet of the One; but thither do we all travel.'
Kim did not feel so lonely after this, and ere he had sat out twenty miles in the crowded compartment, was cheering his neighbours with a string of most wonderful yarns about his own and his master's magical gifts.
and then when Kim and the lama are on their journey
The journey, the languages, the disguises and costumes Kim wears all are separate to his identity but in total become his identity. Who is Kim? Kim is all of India. At the end, when Kim and the Lama have been through an exhauting physical and spirtual journey, after Kim has slept for days in and out of dreams, he wakes:Quote:
Each long, perfect day rose behind Kim for a barrier to cut him off from his race and his mother-tongue. He slipped back to thinking and dreaming in the vernacular, and mechanically followed the lama's ceremonial observances at eating, drinking, and the like. The old man's mind turned more and more to his monastery as his eyes turned to the steadfast snows. His River troubled him nothing. Now and again, indeed, he would gaze long and long at a tuft or a twig, expecting, he said, the earth to cleave and deliver its blessing; but he was content to be with his disciple, at ease in the temperate wind that comes down from the Doon. This was not Ceylon, nor Buddh Gaya, nor Bombay, nor some grass-tangled ruins that he seemed to have stumbled upon two years ago. He spoke of those places as a scholar removed from vanity, as a Seeker walking in humility, as an old man, wise and temperate, illumining knowledge with brilliant insight. Bit by bit, disconnectedly, each tale called up by some wayside thing, he spoke of all his wanderings up and down Hind; till Kim, who had loved him without reason, now loved him for fifty good reasons. So they enjoyed themselves in high felicity, abstaining, as the Rule demands, from evil words, covetous desires; not over- eating, not lying on high beds, nor wearing rich clothes. Their stomachs told them the time, and the people brought them their food, as the saying is. They were lords of the villages of Aminabad, Sahaigunge, Akrola of the Ford, and little Phulesa, where Kim gave the soulless woman a blessing.
There is no cynacism in Kim's acquiring of his identity. Perhaps if he had been limited to a single cultural identity he may have rejected it as Joyce has Daedulus, but his all absorbing nature leads him to embrace it all. "Things that rode meaningless on the eyeball an instant before slid into proper proportion." The roads, the houses, the men and women, the fields, the cattle they were all to be "believed in," "real and true." He is those fields and people and cattle. He acknowledges not cynical rejection but positve awareness, "I am Kim."Quote:
At first his legs bent like bad pipe-stems, and the flood and rush of the sunlit air dazzled him. He squatted by the white wall, the mind rummaging among the incidents of the long dooli journey, the lama's weaknesses, and, now that the stimulus of talk was removed, his own self-pity, of which, like the sick, he had great store. The unnerved brain edged away from all the outside, as a raw horse, once rowelled, sidles from the spur. It was enough, amply enough, that the spoil of the kilta was away - off his hands - out of his possession. He tried to think of the lama - to wonder why he had tumbled into a brook - but the bigness of the world, seen between the forecourt gates, swept linked thought aside. Then he looked upon the trees and the broad fields, with the thatched huts hidden among crops - looked with strange eyes unable to take up the size and proportion and use of things - stared for a still half-hour. All that while he felt, though he could not put it into words, that his soul was out of gear with its surroundings - a cog-wheel unconnected with any machinery, just like the idle cog-wheel of a cheap Beheea sugar-crusher laid by in a corner. The breezes fanned over him, the parrots shrieked at him, the noises of the populated house behind - squabbles, orders, and reproofs - hit on dead ears.
'I am Kim. I am Kim. And what is Kim?' His soul repeated it again and again.
He did not want to cry - had never felt less like crying in his life but of a sudden easy, stupid tears trickled down his nose, and with an almost audible click he felt the wheels of his being lock up anew on the world without. Things that rode meaningless on the eyeball an instant before slid into proper proportion. Roads were meant to be walked upon, houses to belived in, cattle to be driven, fields to be tilled, and men and women to be talked to. They were all real and true - solidly planted upon the feet - perfectly comprehensible - clay of his clay, neither more nor less. He shook himself like a dog with a flea in his ear, and rambled out of the gate. Said the Sahiba, to whom watchful eyes reported this move: 'Let him go. I have done my share. Mother Earth must do the rest. When the Holy One comes back from meditation, tell him.'
Another wonderful element of this novel is the seach for enlightment, outwardly dramatised as the lama's search for his river. The search for enlightenment goes from education to acquiring merit (doing good) to understanding the mystical elements of the Wheel of Life, to finding spirtual release. Here we have Kim, having completed his formal education returns to the Teshoo Lama and quickly heals a local's sick infant with some make shift medicine he learned:
[from chapter 11]Quote:
He [the Jat] moved away, crooning and mumbling. The lama turned to Kim, and all the loving old soul of him looked out through his narrow eyes.
'To heal the sick is to acquire merit; but first one gets knowledge. That was wisely done, O Friend of all the World.'
'I was made wise by thee, Holy One,' said Kim, forgetting the little play just ended; forgetting St Xavier's; forgetting his white blood; forgetting even the Great Game as he stooped, Mohammedan-fashion, to touch his master's feet in the dust of the Jain temple. 'My teaching I owe to thee. I have eaten thy bread three years. My time is finished. I am loosed from the schools. I come to thee.'
'Herein is my reward. Enter! Enter! And is all well?' They passed to the inner court, where the afternoon sun sloped golden across. 'Stand that I may see. So!' He peered critically. 'It is no longer a child, but a man, ripened in wisdom, walking as a physician. I did well - I did well when I gave thee up to the armed men on that black night. Dost thou remember our first day under Zam-Zammah?'
'Ay,' said Kim. 'Dost thou remember when I leapt off the carriage the first day I went to -'
'The Gates of Learning? Truly. And the day that we ate the cakes together at the back of the river by Nucklao. Aha! Many times hast thou begged for me, but that day I begged for thee.'
'Good reason,' quoth Kim. 'I was then a scholar in the Gates of Learning, and attired as a Sahib. Do not forget, Holy One,' he went on playfully. 'I am still a Sahib - by thy favour.'
'True. And a Sahib in most high esteem. Come to my cell, chela.'
And then he takes Kim into the heart of his temple and shows him his mystical drawings that conceptualize the metaphysical world:
And so they take to the road, and the Lama teaches Kim.Quote:
He [the Lama] drew from under the table a sheet of strangely scented yellow Chinese paper, the brushes, and slab of Indian ink. In cleanest, severest outline he had traced the Great Wheel with its six spokes, whose centre is the conjoined Hog, Snake, and Dove (Ignorance, Anger, and Lust), and whose compartments are all the Heavens and Hells, and all the chances of human life. Men say that the Bodhisat Himself first drew it with grains of rice upon dust, to teach His disciples the cause of things. Many ages have crystallized it into a most wonderful convention crowded with hundreds of little figures whose every line carries a meaning. Few can translate the picture- parable; there are not twenty in all the world who can draw it surely without a copy: of those who can both draw and expound are but three.
'I have a little learned to draw,' said Kim. 'But this is a marvel beyond marvels.'
'I have written it for many years,' said the lama. 'Time was when I could write it all between one lamp-lighting and the next. I will teach thee the art - after due preparation; and I will show thee the meaning of the Wheel.'
'We take the Road, then?'
'The Road and our Search. I was but waiting for thee. It was made plain to me in a hundred dreams - notably one that came upon the night of the day that the Gates of Learning first shut that without thee I should never find my River. Again and again, as thou knowest, I put this from me, fearing an illusion. Therefore I would not take thee with me that day at Lucknow, when we ate the cakes. I would not take thee till the. time was ripe and auspicious. From the Hills to the Sea, from the Sea to the Hills have I gone, but it was vain. Then I remembered the Tataka.'
He told Kim the story of the elephant with the leg-iron, as he had told it so often to the Jam priests.
'Further testimony is not needed,' he ended serenely. 'Thou wast sent for an aid. That aid removed, my Search came to naught. Therefore we will go out again together, and our Search sure.'
'Whither go we?'
'What matters, Friend of all the World? The Search, I say, is sure. If need be, the River will break from the ground before us. I acquired merit when I sent thee to the Gates of Learning, and gave thee the jewel that is Wisdom. Thou didst return, I saw even now, a follower of Sakyamuni, the Physician, whose altars are many in Bhotiyal. It is sufficient. We are together, and all things are as they were - Friend of all the World -Friend of the Stars - my chela!'
And when the Russian spy strikes the Lama in an attempt to rob him of his holy drawings, the Lama feels the evil in the world and goes through a spiritual crises and pushes the journey toward away from the mountains.Quote:
When the shadows shortened and the lama leaned more heavily upon Kim, there was always the Wheel of Life to draw forth, to hold flat under wiped stones, and with a long straw to expound cycle by cycle. Here sat the Gods on high - and they were dreams of dreams. Here was our Heaven and the world of the demi-Gods - horsemen fighting among the hills. Here were the agonies done upon the beasts, souls ascending or descending the ladder and therefore not to be interfered with. Here were the Hells, hot and cold, and the abodes of tormented ghosts. Let the chela study the troubles that come from over-eating - bloated stomach and burning bowels. Obediently, then, with bowed head and brown finger alert to follow the pointer, did the chela study; but when they came to the Human World, busy and profitless, that is just above the Hells, his mind was distracted; for by the roadside trundled the very Wheel itself, eating, drinking, trading, marrying, and quarrelling - all warmly alive. Often the lama made the living pictures the matter of his text, bidding Kim - too ready - note how the flesh takes a thousand shapes, desirable or detestable as men reckon, but in truth of no account either way; and how the stupid spirit, bond-slave to the Hog, the Dove, and the Serpent - lusting after betel-nut, a new yoke of oxen, women, or the favour of kings - is bound to follow the body through all the Heavens and all the Hells, and strictly round again. Sometimes a woman or a poor man, watching the ritual - it was nothing less - when the great yellow chart was unfolded, would throw a few flowers or a handful of cowries upon its edge. It sufficed these humble ones that they had met a Holy One who might be moved to remember them in his prayers.
[from chapter 14]Quote:
'With our long pencases as I could have shown . . . I say, we fought under the poplars, both Abbots and all the monks, and one laid open my forehead to the bone. See!' He tilted back his cap and showed a puckered silvery scar. 'Just and perfect is the Wheel! Yesterday the scar itched, and after fifty years I recalled how it was dealt and the face of him who dealt it; dwelling a little in illusion. Followed that which thou didst see - strife and stupidity. Just is the Wheel! The idolater's blow fell upon the scar. Then I was shaken in my soul: my soul was darkened, and the boat of my soul rocked upon the waters of illusion. Not till I came to Shamlegh could I meditate upon the Cause of Things, or trace the running grass-roots of Evil. I strove all the long night.'
'But', Holy One, thou art innocent of all evil. May I be thy sacrifice!'
Kim was genuinely distressed at the old man's sorrow, and Mahbub Ali's phrase slipped out unawares.
'In the dawn,' the lama went on more gravely, ready rosary clicking between the slow sentences, 'came enlightenment. It is here ... I am an old man . . . hill-bred, hill-fed, never to sit down among my Hills. Three years I travelled through Hind, but - can earth be stronger than Mother Earth? My stupid body yearned to the Hills and the snows of the Hills, from below there. I said, and it is true, my Search is sure. So, at the Kulu woman's house I turned hillward, over-persuaded by myself. There is no blame to the hakim. He - following Desire - foretold that the Hills would make me strong. They strengthened me to do evil, to forget my Search. I delighted in life and the lust of life. I desired strong slopes to climb. I cast about to find them. I measured the strength of my body, which is evil, against the high Hills, I made a mock of thee when thy breath came short under Jamnotri. I jested when thou wouldst not face the snow of the pass.'
'But what harm? I was afraid. It was just. I am not a hillman; and I loved thee for thy new strength.'
'More than once I remember' - he rested his cheek dolefully on his hand - 'I sought thy praise and the hakim's for the mere strength of my legs. Thus evil followed evil till the cup was full. Just is the Wheel! All Hind for three years did me all honour. From the Fountain of Wisdom in the Wonder House to' - he smiled -'a little child playing by a big gun - the world prepared my road. And why?'
'Because we loved thee. It is only the fever of the blow. I myself am still sick and shaken.'
'No! It was because I was upon the Way - tuned as are si-nen [cymbals] to the purpose of the Law. I departed from that ordinance. The tune was broken: followed the punishment. In my own Hills, on the edge of my own country, in the very place of my evil desire, comes the buffet - here!' (He touched his brow.) 'As a novice is beaten when he misplaces the cups, so am I beaten, who was Abbot of Such-zen. No word, look you, but a blow, chela.'
'But the Sahibs did not know thee, Holy One?'
'We were well matched. Ignorance and Lust met Ignorance and Lust upon the road, and they begat Anger. The blow was a sign to me, who am no better than a strayed yak, that my place is not here. Who can read the Cause of an act is halfway to Freedom! "Back to the path," says the Blow. "The Hills are not for thee. Thou canst not choose Freedom and go in bondage to the delight of life."'
And finally the Lama finds his river and reaches spirtual release, but Kipling doesn't even dramatise. Kim has been asleep for days and the Lama wonders and finds the holy river and returns to Kim to tell of his experience. (Actually the lama returns instead of total release from life because he fears Kim will die.) It's in recounting narrative mode rather than direct anrrative. It has all happened while Kim has been asleep and the Lama recounts.
The lama held his peace. Except for the click of the rosary and a faint clop-clop of Mahbub's retreating feet, the soft, smoky silence of evening in India wrapped them close.
'Hear me! I bring news.'
'But let us -'
Out shot the long yellow hand compelling silence. Kim tucked his feet under his robe-edge obediently.
[from chapter 15]Quote:
'Hear me! I bring news! The Search is finished. Comes now the Reward ... Thus. When we were among the Hills, I lived on thy strength till the young branch bowed and nigh broke. When we came out of the Hills, I was troubled for thee and for other matters which I held in my heart. The boat of my soul lacked direction; I could not see into the Cause of Things. So I gave thee over to the virtuous woman altogether. I took no food. I drank no water. Still I saw not the Way. They pressed food upon me and cried at my shut door. So I removed myself to a hollow under a tree. I took no food. I took no water. I sat in meditation two days and two nights, abstracting my mind; inbreathing and outbreathing in the required manner . . . Upon the second night - so great was my reward - the wise Soul loosed itself from the silly Body and went free. This I have never before attained, though I have stood on the threshold of it. Consider, for it is a marvel!'
'A marvel indeed. Two days and two nights without food! Where was the Sahiba?' said Kim under his breath.
'Yea, my Soul went free, and, wheeling like an eagle, saw indeed that there was no Teshoo Lama nor any other soul. As a drop draws to water, so my Soul drew near to the Great Soul which is beyond all things. At that point, exalted in contemplation, I saw all Hind, from Ceylon in the sea to the Hills, and my own Painted Rocks at Such-zen; I saw every camp and village, to the least, where we have ever rested. I saw them at one time and in one place; for they were within the Soul. By this I knew the Soul had passed beyond the illusion of Time and Space and of Things. By this I knew that I was free. I saw thee lying in thy cot, and I saw thee falling downhill under the idolater - at one time, in one place, in my Soul, which, as I say, had touched the Great Soul. Also I saw the stupid body of Teshoo Lama lying down, and the hakim from Dacca kneeled beside, shouting in its ear. Then my Soul was all alone, and I saw nothing, for I was all things, having reached the Great Soul. And I meditated a thousand thousand years, passionless, well aware of the Causes of all Things. Then a voice cried: "What shall come to the boy if thou art dead?" and I was shaken back and forth in myself with pity for thee; and I said: "I will return to my chela, lest he miss the Way." Upon this my Soul, which is the Soul of Teshoo Lama, withdrew itself from the Great Soul with strivings and yearnings and retchings and agonies not to be told. As the egg from the fish, as the fish from the water, as the water from the cloud, as the cloud from the thick air, so put forth, so leaped out, so drew away, so fumed up the Soul of Teshoo Lama from the Great Soul. Then a voice cried: "The River! Take heed to the River!" and I looked down upon all the world, which was as I had seen it before - one in time, one in place - and I saw plainly the River of the Arrow at my feet. At that hour my Soul was hampered by some evil or other whereof I was not wholly cleansed, and it lay upon my arms and coiled round my waist; but I put it aside, and I cast forth as an eagle in my flight for the very place of the River. I pushed aside world upon world for thy sake. I saw the River below me - the River of the Arrow - and, descending, the waters of it closed over me; and behold I was again in the body of Teshoo Lama, but free from sin, and the hakim from Decca bore up my head in the waters of the River. It is here! It is behind the mango- tope here - even here!'
What is evident through the journey is the love between the Lama and Kim and this forms the core of the novel. I think several of the quotes I've already provided show this love. I think this one just makes my heart melt. The two are struggling through the journey and the Lama is in his spirtual crises and is feeling his mortality and believes his death is imminent. He tells Kim to go to the Kulu woman, an old woman who has taken care of them in the past.
and then Kim tells him that he has made arrangements with the Kulu woman and the Lama responds:Quote:
It was never more than a couple of miles a day now, and Kim's shoulders bore all the weight of it - the burden of an old man, the burden of the heavy food-bag with the locked books, the load of the writings on his heart, and the details of the daily routine. He begged in the dawn, set blankets for the lama's meditation, held the weary head on his lap through the noonday heats, fanning away the flies till his wrists ached, begged again in the evenings, and rubbed the lama's feet, who rewarded him with promise of Freedom - today, tomorrow, or, at furthest, the next day.
'Never was such a chela. I doubt at times whether Ananda more faithfully nursed Our Lord. And thou art a Sahib? When I was a man - a long time ago - I forgot that. Now I look upon thee often, and every time I remember that thou art a Sahib. It is strange.'
'Thou hast said there is neither black nor white. Why plague me with this talk, Holy One? Let me rub the other foot. It vexes me. I am not a Sahib. I am thy chela, and my head is heavy on my shoulders.'
'Patience a little! We reach Freedom together. Then thou and I, upon the far bank of the River, will look back upon our lives as in the Hills we saw our days' marches laid out behind us. Perhaps I was once a Sahib.'
[from chapter 15]Quote:
'I am content. She is a woman with a heart of gold, as thou sayest, but a talker - something of a talker.'
'She will not weary thee. I have looked to that also. Holy One, my heart is very heavy for my many carelessnesses towards thee.' An hysterical catch rose in his throat. 'I have walked thee too far: I have not picked good food always for thee; I have not considered the heat; I have talked to people on the road and left thee alone ... I have - I have ... Hai mai! But I love thee ... and it is all too late ... I was a child . . . Oh, why was I not a man? . . .' Overborne by strain, fatigue, and the weight beyond his years, Kim broke down and sobbed at the lama's feet.
'What a to-do is here!' said the old man gently. 'Thou hast never stepped a hair's breadth from the Way of Obedience. Neglect me? Child, I have lived on thy strength as an old tree lives on the lime of a new wall. Day by day, since Shamlegh down, I have stolen strength from thee. Therefore, not through any sin of thine, art thou weakened. It is the Body - the silly, stupid Body - that speaks now. Not the assured Soul. Be comforted! Know at least the devils that thou fightest. They are earth-born - children of illusion. We will go to the woman from Kulu. She shall acquire merit in housing us, and specially in tending me. Thou shalt run free till strength returns. I had forgotten the stupid Body. If there be any blame, I bear it. But we are too close to the Gates of Deliverance to weigh blame. I could praise thee, but what need? In a little - in a very little - we shall sit beyond all needs.'
And so he petted and comforted Kim with wise saws and grave texts on that little-understood beast, our Body, who, being but a delusion, insists on posing as the Soul, to the darkening of the Way, and the immense multiplication of unnecessary devils.
"But I love thee." And a little further down Kim states the relationship between the two as interdependent:
Kim leads the Lama through the physical world and the Lama leads Kim through the spirtual.Quote:
With a laugh across his tears, Kim kissed the lama's feet, and set about the tea-making.
'Thou leanest on me in the body, Holy One, but I lean on thee for some other things. Dost know it?'
'I have guessed maybe,' and the lama's eyes twinkled. 'We must change that.'
And finally I think from the quotes one can see Kipling brilliant prose. I find it amazing that this novel with such a huge scope is only three hundred pages. Kipling's prose is succinct, lively, captures so much with so little, and runs sentences with a succesion of additive nouns. Here are a couple of wonderful passages to close this out:
[from chapter 13]Quote:
'Who goes to the hills goes to his mother.'
They had crossed the Siwaliks and the half-tropical Doon, left Mussoorie behind them, and headed north along the narrow hill-roads. Day after day they struck deeper into the huddled mountains, and day after day Kim watched the lama return to a man's strength. Among the terraces of the Doon he had leaned on the boy's shoulder, ready to profit by wayside halts. Under the great ramp to Mussoorie he drew himself together as an old hunter faces a well-remembered bank, and where he should have sunk exhausted swung his long draperies about him, drew a deep double-lungful of the diamond air, and walked as only a hillman can. Kim, plains-bred and plains-fed, sweated and panted astonished. 'This is my country,' said the lama. 'Beside Such-zen, this is flatter than a rice-field'; and with steady, driving strokes from the loins he strode upwards. But it was on the steep downhill marches, three thousand feet in three hours, that he went utterly away from Kim, whose back ached with holding back, and whose big toe was nigh cut off by his grass sandal-string. Through the speckled shadow of the great deodar-forests; through oak feathered and plumed with ferns; birch, ilex, rhododendron, and pine, out on to the bare hillsides' slippery sunburnt grass, and back into the woodlands' coolth again, till oak gave way to bamboo and palm of the valley, the lama swung untiring.
Glancing back in the twilight at the huge ridges behind him and the faint, thin line of the road whereby they had come, he would lay out, with a hillman's generous breadth of vision, fresh marches for the morrow; or, halting in the neck of some uplifted pass that gave on Spiti and Kulu, would stretch out his hands yearningly towards the high snows of the horizon. In the dawns they flared windy-red above stark blue, as Kedar- nath and Badrinath - kings of that wilderness - took the first sunlight. All day long they lay like molten silver under the sun, and at evening put on their jewels again. At first they breathed temperately upon the travellers, winds good to meet when one crawled over some gigantic hog's-back; but in a few days, at a height of nine or ten thousand feet, those breezes bit; and Kim kindly allowed a village of hillmen to acquire merit by giving him a rough blanket-coat. The lama was mildly surprised that anyone should object to the knife-edged breezes which had cut the years off his shoulders.
and further in chapter 13.
This is a novel of shear magnificence, subtley crafted, precisely structured, character of incredible richness, prose of wonderous beauty. I admit some of the Indian terms were lost on me, and the espionage element of the novel is a little confusing, but the Indian terms add to the vastness of the novel's scope and the espionage is relatively minor as a controlling element to the novel's structure. Although I know it's not for possibly ideological dissatisfaction with Kipling by contemporary critics, or perhaps because of its affirmative values in a cynical age, this novel should be part of the cannon of English literature. I highly recommend it.Quote:
They crossed a snowy pass in cold moonlight, when the lama, mildly chaffing Kim, went through up to his knees, like a Bactrian camel - the snow-bred, shag-haired sort that came into the Kashmir Serai. They dipped across beds of light snow and snow-powdered shale, where they took refuge from a gale in a camp of Tibetans hurrying down tiny sheep, each laden with a bag of borax. They came out upon grassy shoulders still snow-speckled, and through forest, to grass anew. For all their marchings, Kedarnath and Badrinath were not impressed; and it was only after days of travel that Kim, uplifted upon some insignificant ten-thousand-foot hummock, could see that a shoulder-knot or horn of the two great lords had - ever so slightly changed outline.
At last they entered a world within a world - a valley of leagues where the high hills were fashioned of a mere rubble and refuse from off the knees of the mountains. Here one day's march carried them no farther, it seemed, than a dreamer's clogged pace bears him in a nightmare. They skirted a shoulder painfully for hours, and, behold, it was but an outlying boss in an outlying buttress of the main pile! A rounded meadow revealed itself, when they had reached it, for a vast tableland running far into the valley. Three days later, it was a dim fold in the earth to southward.
'Surely the Gods live here!' said Kim, beaten down by the silence and the appalling sweep and dispersal of the cloud-shadows after rain. 'This is no place for men!'
'Long and long ago,' said the lama, as to himself, 'it was asked of the Lord whether the world were everlasting. o this the Excellent One returned no answer ... When I was in Ceylon, a wise Seeker confirmed that from the gospel which is written in Pali. Certainly, since we know the way to Freedom, the question were unprofitable, but - look, and know illusion, chela! These- are the true Hills! They are like my hills by Suchzen. Never were such hills!'
Above them, still enormously above them, earth towered away towards the snow-line, where from east to west across hundreds of miles, ruled as with a ruler, the last of the bold birches stopped. Above that, in scarps and blocks upheaved, the rocks strove to fight their heads above the white smother. Above these again, changeless since the world's beginning, but changing to every mood of sun and cloud, lay out the eternal snow. They could see blots and blurs on its face where storm and wandering wullie-wa got up to dance. Below them, as they stood, the forest slid away in a sheet of blue-green for mile upon mile; below the forest was a village in its sprinkle of terraced fields and steep grazing-grounds. Below the village they knew, though a thunderstorm worried and growled there for the moment, a pitch of twelve or fifteen hundred feet gave to the moist valley where the streams gather that are the mothers of young Sutluj.
for any age group.