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February 17, 2008
The most important book you’ll ever read?
The writer’s mind is a furious being. To read with a writer’s eye is a permanent affliction of observing the world through a prism of images, stories and detail rather then cold, hard objectivism. These writers are lesser Socrates pandering through the world barefoot and threadbare, funneling philosophy, history, politics, tragedy through the eye of their own selves, colouring the world in a shade only they can decode. There are very few books that inflame even the most flammable with a Dean Moriarty impersonation of joy: ‘Oh boy! Oh boy! Oh boy!’
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame has the misfortune of being pinned to a specific age group, binned in a particular section, much in reverse of how some of Roald Dahl’s more lascivious creations find their way in hands still too young to hold them; such is the precarious nature of the children’s section in Pakistani book stores. Not only is Kenneth Grahame’s magnum opus a necessary compliment to a readers collection, it is almost obligatory for seedling writers. The Victorian scribe’s literary prowess is much talked about, including how he has effaced many an oak-scented page with lines that make one go mad with visual merriment. Yet too little has been said of his ability to stir the creative juices within readers, and contribute to what is perhaps the most important function of art: that to create.
As a sort of exercise to demonstrate the above point, two favorite passages from the book have been reproduced below (in italics) and a responding attempted worth (purely my own work) created beneath. An exercise that one should practice with favourite books and poems, for the sake of both critical appraisal and to stir the imagination.
The country lay bare and entirely leafless around him, and he thought that he had never seen so far and so intimately into the insides of things as on that winter day when Nature was deep in her annual slumber and seemed to have kicked the clothes off… He was glad that he liked the country undecorated, hard, and stripped of its finery. He had got down to the bare bones of it, and they were fine and strong and simple.
‘Summer now seemed fat and lazy to him, overdressed and unnecessary, like a sweating, pudgy man in rich, purple velvet, hurrying off to an evening at the opera. He was pleased with the earth now, this earth now, the soul of nature shorn if it’s very last; he enjoyed the brutal nakedness of his surroundings, calling his attention to its bruises, its history, its past and its beauty. Winter held his country naked, and he could never be more in love.’
Free! The word and the thought alone were worth 50 blankets. He was warm from end to end as he thought of the jolly world outside, waiting eagerly for him to make his triumphal entrance, ready to serve him and play up to him, anxious to help him and to keep him company, as it always had been in days of old before misfortune fell upon him. He shook himself and combed the dry leaves out of his hair with his fingers; and, toilet complete, marched forth into the comfortable morning sun, cold but confident, hungry but hopeful, all nervous terrors of yesterday dispelled by rest and sleep and frank and heartening sunshine.
It must be said in the strongest terms just how influential and striking Kenneth Grahame’s most potent work has been through the ages. Moving in the same literary circles as Kipling, Wilde, Stevenson, Henley and others, Grahame allowed his soul to absorb the aura of brilliance radiated by these erudite fellows.
‘Unmoved by the lessons that these sorts of mishaps give one, yet instantly warmed by the bright sunshine, the weariness seeped out of him like a punctured water pouch, and in its place grew the jolly disposition that is anointed with a creature of his kind. Forget cold, misery and a hard floor! The world was calling out his name to come forth and pour out tales of his triumph, to pat him on the back like a welcoming friend and laugh with him at the jokes he told. He quashed the biting hunger and the numbed toes and tossed his head high to the laughing skies, the terror of last night forgotten, the tragedy of the previous week forgiven, only a long, wide road awaiting him now.’
It must be said in the strongest terms just how influential and striking Kenneth Grahame’s most potent work has been through the ages. Moving in the same literary circles as Kipling, Wilde, Stevenson, Henley and others, Grahame allowed his soul to absorb the aura of brilliance radiated by these erudite fellows. His quests into writing were few and far between, and did not come from the necessity of poverty or the necessity to be acknowledged — which was the norm for most writers of his time. Facing an unhappy marriage and a mostly unhappy life, The Wind in the Willows came into existence from 1904 to 1907, as a series of stories to entertain his only child, Alastair, at bedtime. Grahame was known to write sections of the book back home in letters when he was away. His was a creation that stemmed from love.
The version that is currently circulating amongst the general populace is the second version of Wind in the Willows which was produced in 1908. It is a multi-layered and deeply enriched version of the original, one whose genius is fully acknowledged by readers well above four feet tall. With literary references that span a long list, one can spot influences such Blake, Sir Thomas Browne, Browning, Samuel Butler, Byron, Lewis Carroll, Defoe, DeQuincey, Dickens, Austin Dobson, George Eliot, Emerson, Fielding, Herrick, Ellen C. Howarth, Thomas Hughes, L’Estrange, Milton, Moore, Ruskin, Scott, Shakespeare, Shelley, Surtees, Swift, Swinburne, Tennyson, Thackeray, Thoreau, Tupper, Whitman, Wordsworth and many more.
Grahame, considered to be one of the greatest of all anthropomorphic writers, is said to have influenced writers such as George Orwell in his poignant political commentary, Animal Farm, which dissected the greater political personalities of its time in the form of a deeper, contextual novella. Though one can piece together similar conclusions in The Wind in the Willows by drawing on multi-faceted perspectives in each read (the political symbolism of the wild woods, religious sentiment in the form of the forest demi-god, the socio-political commentary in the form of the warring stoats and weasels, the bipolarity of Toad’s flighty nature), the undeniable conclusion that is almost always reach is that, above all, Grahame was a great lover of childhood and children. Seeing that these were probably the only good things in his marred life, his work — literary sentiment aside — was a labour of love for the children who loved the most.
So for the sake of a bedtime story, or literary muscle, this will perhaps be the most important book you’ll ever need.
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