Five More

[poliphilo]

"Through the Fire": a Himalayan love triangle.

"The Finances of the Gods": a Hindu holy man tells a child a story.

"The Amir's homily": an anecdote about the ruler of Afghanistan

"Jews in Shushan": a sad story about a Jewish community in Northern India.

"The Limitations of Pambe Serang": life below decks on a tramp steamer.

All these stories are very slight- which doesn't mean trivial. I particularly like "Jews in Shushan". Five stories- five different cultures- with Kipling always the expert witness, full of inside information and authoratative opinion. Only the delight he takes in it all reminds us that this immensely experienced man of the world has yet to see 25.
 
"There are three great doors in the world, where, if you stand long enough, you shall meet any one you wish. The head of the Suez Canal is one, but there Death comes also; Charing Cross Station is the second- for inland work; and the Nyanza docks is the third. At each of these places are men and women looking eternally for those who will surely come."

Comments

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

I forget, until someone talks about him, how much I love Kipling. There are certain authors who put words together so VERY well. Michael Ondaatje is one of them, by virtue of the fact that he is a poet first. Kipling is another.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

People who write prose and verse equally well are very rare.

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

I think poets have a different concept of language and the way it is used, and that can't help but colour the prose they write. There is a wonderful quote from The English Patient...
"We die containing the richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of wisdom, characters we have climbed into as if trees, fears we have hidden in as if caves. I wish for all this to be marked on my body when I am dead. I believe in such cartography - to be marked by nature, not just to label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women on buildings. We are communal histories, communal books. We are not owned or monogamous in our taste or experience. All I desired was to walk upon such an earth that had no maps.
I carried Katharine Clifton into the desert, where there is the communal book of moonlight. We were among the rumour of wells. In the palace of winds."

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

That's good. I haven't read the book. I guess the movie is only a pale shadow of it.