Kim

[poliphilo]

1. Who is Kim? Good question. Kim has a whole portfolio of identities-everything from Sahib to low-caste Hindu. Which is the real one? Stupid question.

The character with the strongest and most settled identity- Teshoo Lama- is the one who values it least.

Playing the Great Game is also a way of breaking free of the Wheel. A spy has no caste, no fixed persona, no bonds. Hurree Chunder Moockerjee is a very fearful man because it suits him. He is and he isn't. He has arranged for his timidity to serve him.

Persona is a courtesy we offer to the world so it will know how to deal with us. We're fools if we allow ourselves to be taken in by what we say we are.

Kim is almost free of the Wheel. The only thing that brings him back to it is love- love of particular persons, love of the Wheel itself.

2. Kim is a very short book that expands in the memory. It contains the whole of British India- or seems to. Kipling is a writer who sees no need to go on and on about a thing once it is said; let the reader do the fleshing out.

Comments

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

'Persona is a courtesy we offer to the world so it will know how to deal with us. We're fools if we allow ourselves to be taken in by what we say we are.'

And this you tell to me? :o)

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

As I recall, Kim spent some little time pondering that question of "Who is Kim?" I liked Teshoo Lama's name for him: "Little Friend of All The World."

I come back to that book at least once a year. The 50s film is lacking in everything except a delicious Mahbub Ali played by Errol Flynn, who rears back, arms akimbo, and laughs suspiciously like Robin Hood.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

Having just re-read "Something of Myself," I'm back to "Kim" again, a book that Kipling described as "picaresque."

Interesting how one's vantage point changes with age. When I read it first, I read it through Kim's eyes. Then for years I read it through the eyes of all the older characters who went Sherlocking about -- Strickland Sabib, Lurgan Sahib, Hurree Babu, Mahbub Ali.

Now I am reading it through the eyes of Teshoo Lama and the Curator of the Wonder House. (I imagine I'll read through the eyes of the old woman on pilgrimage when I get to her.)

Have you seen the wonderful illustrations that Kipling's father did for the book? They weren't in my earlier cheaper edition, but they're in this edition semi de luxe. If you haven't seen them, you might want to check out Wikipedia, which seems to have corralled the lot of them.