As a kid, when I saw mynahs in the courtyard, I would think : “Japanese fighters” because of the yellow spot under their wings. I was fascinated by World War 2 fighters ( still am, actually), would avidly watch “Black Sheep Squadron”, the series about the gung-ho fighter pilots in the Pacific War, preciously kept a model of an F4 Corsair someone had given me to get cozy with me because of one of my sisters ( later on, when he became too insistent, she sent me to talk tough at him, which I did, but I kept the Corsair). I was entranced by the grainy footage of World War 2 dogfights, the great loops, the strings of bullets spewing from the planes towards a black dot between the clouds. When Lucifer raised the revolt against God, I’d like to think that his and St Michael’s host had enough good taste to fight it out in this manner, in thick leather jackets, aboard Spitfires, Messerschmidts, Mustangs, Hurricanes and Zeros.

In 1987, when I saw extracts of Spielberg’s up-and-coming film “Empire of the Sun”, I think I never wanted more to see a film in my life: that little boy who was climbing in the cockpit of the wreck of a fighter, and shooting imaginary bullets at a toy glider, that was me. I felt almost exposed : how come someone from America had made a film which stuck so closely to my childhood fantasies ?

Then I saw it, with what would nowadays pass for primitive technology, a pirate VHS copy with blurred outlines, and no French dubbing, which meant I only understood about half of what was being said, despite the rewinds. More than the copy, it was my own immaturity at sixteen which prevented me from understanding all of it. But what I did grasp, sank down in my mind like a Spanish galleon full of gold doublons. The doctor shaking Jim by the shoulders, as he shouts rapturously “P 51 Mustang ! Cadillac of the Skies ! Mustangs” and telling him: “Try not to think so much ! Try not to THINK so much !” He was talking to me, who thought too much, to the point where life was passing by me.

That moment where Jim’s mother recognises him, but he himself has grown thinner, harder and his eyes are no longer those of a child: was that what growing up meant ? I asked myself. Did one have to suffer so much to become a man ? In that case, would I ever be one, or would I remain the boy who cycled around in the empty house, at the beginning of the film ?

Empire of the Sun was not considered a Great Film, so by snobbery I never talked about it, and later on I would rather mention Lawrence of Arabia or the Godfather as my favourites. In any case, how was I to explain that it was my favourite film because, as a little boy, I had liked fighter planes , or because it came to me at the exact point in my adolescence when I needed it most? Later on, I realised that one can have a formal admiration for some films, and a more intimate relationship with others. I never forgot that movie, it was “mine”.

And still is, I can say, after watching it again for the first time after twenty years. Maybe it never left me – a few months ago I wrote a bildungsroman in which, at one point, a boy wanders in a maze-like world, like Jim running about in the refugee camp. But JG Ballard’s vision ( the novelist on whose work the film is based) is far darker than my innocent fantasies. “Empire of the Sun” is a nightmare version of “Kim”, Rudyard Kipling’s masterpiece.

It is a Kim in which, instead of India at peace, we have China at war. Instead of the gruff but friendly bazaar woman who gives Kim a succulent rice and curry dish at the beginning of the story, we have an angry, exhausted Chinese woman cook in a prisoner camp, who says to her colleague “Don’t you want to go home ? I want to. They [ the prisoners] have something to eat. We have nothing to eat at my place”. And when Jim (Christian Bale) comes to ask for a second potato, having lost the first, she throws boiling water at his face in a fit of rage. Instead of an adorable Lama and a charmingly devious Mahbub Ali as father figures, we have the far more sordid, ambiguous figure of Bailey ( John Malkovitch), who sends Jim crawling into the marsh at the north of the camp, officially to set up a pheasant trap, but in fact because he wants to see whether the marsh has land mines.

In both “Kim” and “Empire of the Sun”, the idealism and adventurousness of little boys is used by adults for their own means: Kim by the English, Jim by Bailey, the Japanese boy by his country’s Air Force, which trains him to become a kamikaze. Kim becomes a secret agent in the Great Game, but Kipling , who was the British Empire’s official bard, presents the whole affair as a funny and wholesome romp in the mountains, the kind of adventure the Famous Five run into. In Kim, the slightly sinister figure of Lurgan Sahib is counterweighted by the boundless love and idealism of the Lama. But the Orient of “Empire of the Sun” is a far too devastated place to be able to produce such a benevolent figure. With its best effort, it can only produce, as a distorted reflection of Kim’s lama, the Chinese beggar at the beginning of the film, whom Jim looks at from his car: the kind, learned monk has been reduced to the filthy beggar which the Anglican Army chaplain thought him to be. And the lama’s glorious Temple of the Tirthankars in Benares, in which he would rest from his various travels around India has shrunk to the forlorn pagoda which overlooks the refugee camp, a sad reminder that the characters are in Suzhou, probably China’s most beautiful city. Kim’s happy travels along the Great Trunk Road of Northern India where his eager eye notes the gaily attired travellers, and he revels in the smell of cooking food at the end of the day are mirrored, in a horrible manner, by Jim’s deathly walk , along with the other refugees, at the end of the movie along the roads of a ghostly China. Instead of the talkative, generous Hill Queen who wants more grandsons, Kim has as traveling companion a silent, dying woman.

While everything that was good and beautiful in Kim gets shriveled to a deathly mask, the only figure who grows to ominous proportions is that of Lurgan Sahib, Kim’s mentor in the dark arts of spying. Kipling did not fully develop that character, because that was opening doors to stranger rooms than this overall happy novel needed. Bailey on the other hand has full control over Jim – he can even take him to be sold to some old Chinese gangster, and when that does not work, Jim will still run away behind him, asking : “Why don’t they want to buy me ?” and then offer the furniture of his house, just to be kept by his master. But even Bailey’s empire is sordidly small : instead of the Tibetan death masks and “sick” gems of Lurgan's shop, he only has a bar of soap and a Time Life magazine. And he gets a vicious beating for that soap. He too, is in an Orient gone hellishly bad.

Amazingly, the only character who does not change much in the two stories, is Kim/Jim. Kim is an arguably far more adept little boy than the scared, spoiled little Jim, but both retain the same vivacity, and the same doubts about their identity as they grow up. Sometimes Kim would squat in a corner and keep asking himself: “I am Kim, I am Kim, but who is Kim?” Jim has never seen England, and tells his father he wants to become a pilot in the Japanese Air Force. Bored by the sadness of the English camp, he dreams of joining the livelier American camp. Both are Little Friends of all the World, good at kowtowing in front of a brutal Japanese sergeant, and at avoiding the traps set by a Pashtun horse trader in the course of a conversation. Boys will be boys…

Kim’s last pages feel like the sad, reluctant ending of a beautiful game, but the novel has to end at that point for the character and story have stretched themselves to the limit. There is only so much goodness and magic even the Orient can give. Mahbub Ali rides away to yet other schemes and gunfights. The lama is convinced he has found his river, and leads Kim by the hand to a stream, while the evening creeps in over the enchanted scene. We do not want to know what happened next – what would the Orient be, if it revealed all its secrets ?

Jim’s return to his parents is poignant, and I have the feeling that it does not take place in the “real life” of the story, but after his death, in an afterworld. While in Kim, we feel sad that the enchantment is drawing to an end, in “Empire” we cannot yet understand that the horror is over, like the survivors of an air bombing who still hear the explosions and keep looking at the clouds, certain that the bombers will return. In my memory, I always thought that the scene where a ship plows through floating coffins, to the sound of a sad choral was the ending scene of the movie, where the family leaves Shanghai. Later on I even associated it with the sadness of leaving China ( what is it about that country that makes it so attaching ? ) . In fact, it is the opening scene. I think it should have been the ending one.

I love both Jim and Kim. Like them, I do not know who I am…and I am bored by people who tell me: “You are a Hindu, remember your culture, your traditions”. I am also a Friend of the World.

Maybe all people are drunks, I suspect. Drunk on alcohol, prayer, horseracing, work, order or anything else. Some are more evolved drunks, who can discipline themselves and funnel their energy into high achievements. Most are middling drunks, who get their kick in church or in the pub. The lowest kinds are just pigs.

Maybe when God, if he exists, looks down at men, he actually sees a group of drunks tittering in various directions, bumping into each other, or alone with their individual source of intoxication. Some of those who get their kick from prayer are able to gaze into his face, for a few seconds, and hurry down the slopes of the mountain, to tell of what of they saw. But down in the valley, others are swilling down their own drinks- money, status, collecting stamps, science, and they listen to him the way drunks in a tavern listen to one of them shouting his personal mad story. Some get thrilled by what they heard, and start drinking his God-drink, to get the kick that he experienced. Others remain faithful to their own liquor, because they don’t want to mix drinks.

Jalal ud Rumi said:

All day I think about it, then at night I say it.
Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing?
I have no idea.
My soul is from elsewhere, I'm sure of that,
and I intend to end up there.


This drunkenness began in some other tavern.
When I get back around to that place,
I'll be completely sober. Meanwhile,
I'm like a bird from another continent, sitting in this aviary.
The day is coming when I fly off,
but who is it now in my ear who hears my voice?
Who says words with my mouth?


Who looks out with my eyes? What is the soul?
I cannot stop asking.
If I could taste one sip of an answer,
I could break out of this prison for drunks.
I didn't come here of my own accord, and I can't leave that way.
Whoever brought me here will have to take me home.

This poetry. I never know what I'm going to say.
I don't plan it.
When I'm outside the saying of it,
I get very quiet and rarely speak at all.

We have a huge barrel of wine, but no cups.
That's fine with us. Every morning
we glow and in the evening we glow again.


They say there's no future for us. They're right.
Which is fine with us.

I am surprised by the profound irrationality of people. As a child, I was brought in a world of order, where , when I asked questions, there were parents and teachers to give me reasonable answers. Good parents take care to make a child feel there is a structure to the world, because he needs it for his mental sanity as he grows up. We do not only make children believe in Santa Klaus, we make them believe the world itself is some kind of Santa Klaus, something rational and benevolent. Later we realise that Santa Klaus does not exist, but most of us shield our minds to the fact that the world itself is not Santa. Or, maybe, we dig our heads into our drunkenness to forget the disorder of the world, like children who go on arrangeing their stamp collection on the dinner table, while their parents are throwing dishes at each other, because it would be too painful to feel the reality.

I remember, as a child, watching the film “Shoa” and asking my parents why Hitler killed the Jews, and I could feel that they were struggling with an answer. This, I thought, was because they were not well informed. I thought that there was some reason, certainly not a justifiable one, but one which made sense to the person, and which one could understand ( in the sense of “coldly following the logic”, not that of empathising). Now as a grown up, I can understand the logic, or rather , the feeling, for like most people I have in me what some call “the reptilian mind” , a lower level of mind which contains a cold-blooded hatred. It is like the cellar in a horror film, in which lives a monster, while the actors are living a normal life in the ground floor. Not only did Hitler let loose that monster, but something strange happened, more horrifying than the existence of that creature. It actually blended itself with the rationality of civilisation. It took a methodical, bureaucratic character, companies sent letters to the concerned ministry, detailing the efficiency of their toxic gases, of their incinerators. Local policemen in occupied countries saw to it that Jews and others were rounded up, and boarded their trains to the concentration camps in disciplined fashion. Society itself became monstrous. It was not an exceptional occurrence. I have heard that in Rwanda, the killing squads worked from 9 to 5 o’clock, with a hour lunch at noon. Maybe there is a latent monstrosity even in the running of modern society. If one thinks of small –town capitalism in a place like Pakistan, for example, with its slave labour in the brickyards, its sweatshop carpet factories.

The reader will feel I am writing something profoundly banal. I am opposing romanticism ( the emphasis on man’s irrationality, his capacity to be a prophet, or a devil) to Kant’s belief in man’s capacity for reason. Hitler was a degraded descendant of German Romanticism, and Marx, despite all the deathly seriousness of later Marxist thought, had a romantic vision of a society based on fraternity, artistic self-realisation.

The Ancien Régime society corseted all of man’s rational and irrational impulses into the rigid founding myths of feudalism: the belief in the “Chain of Beings”, with God at the top, then the angels, then human society, headed by a monarchical family whose legitimacy lay enshrined in tradition, and down to the animal and plant kingdoms. The arrival of the French revolution freed both man’s reason and unreason. New spiritual beliefs, new blueprints of social organisation blossomed in the 19th century.

What is striking in modern society is the way many people blend, in their lifestyles, a rigidly rational behaviour at work with extreme irrationality in terms of their personal beliefs and lifestyle. One’s neighbour will, when buying a car, examine all available models, discuss their fuel efficiency, the reliability of their engines, their cost-quality ratio with friends. The same person will have a belief in the literal veracity of the Bible, for example, even down to the six days of creation and Noah’s ark. Of course, the Ancient Régime had its horsedealers, bankers and architects who were both shrewd and devout people. But their irrational beliefs were in concordance with the ruling myths of society. Today’s society offers no overarching myths, but in its very, slightly condescendent tolerance of all forms of belief, there is the tacit hope that somehow people will get to know better, in the long run. There is a latent dominance of the scientific point of view when explaining the universe.

Beyond the contradictions in the every day behaviour of religious fanatics, what is interesting to observe is how, while, in a way, the rationalist point of view has triumphed, in that it is the ruling paradigm when it comes organising society, to conducting scientific research, to the extraction of profit, yet when it comes to humanity’s intimate contact with the world, there irrationality rules. Even the most fanatical terrorist group will organise its cells with rigid discipline, conduct its financial transactions and plan its next attack with severe attention to detail. On the other hand, even the most severe-looking scientist will, upon closer examination, come out as a profoundly passionate man- if not, he would not have devoted his life to be a (most of the time) badly paid researcher. The most surprising group in this regard is the communists, who are , most of the time, very rationalist in their view of the world, being atheistic and admirative of science. Yet their understanding of human nature is surprisingly naïve, full of a sentimental belief in the goodness of the Worker, in the possibility of a society fuelled by altruism and fraternity.

In the 19th century, there was a belief that scientific progress was not only a method, but a philosophy of life itself, and that the world would one become a paradise of moderate, practical people. I guess nowadays, not only do a great many people feel a certain dread when they learn of the latest “achievements” of science in genetics or artificial intelligence, but there is a realisation that society will never be a conclave of wise,rational persons, but more like Rumi’s tavern, where drunks will forever make wild boasts of their achievements, quote bad poetry at the waitress, and quarrel about their favourite football teams.

Some ideas given to me by a friend, who is reading a French translation of “Extremely loud and incredibly close” by Jonathan Safran Foer:

“I am almost through it, and I am thinking about the odd fact that the US is the world’s first covert, unofficial, empire. We may call it a “soft” empire, or a quasi-empire. I think the author is aware of it, because , having read three quarters of it, I notice that he describes the suffering of those who lost someone on September 11 2001, but also mentions the bombings of Dresden and Hiroshima, by American bombers.

Empires are light and shadow. The Roman Empire was great, to the point that some people in Eastern Germany and in Ireland bemoan the fact that it did not reach their parts. Yet every day was not party day under its yoke, ask Jesus Christ for details when you go up. The construction of an Empire comes at an immense human cost. Qin Shi Huang Di, the First Chinese Emperor standardised the Chinese script, thus giving it an advantage over, say, India, which persists to this day. Yet when he ordered that the bits and pieces of fortification which existed against Central Asian invaders be fused into one Great Wall, this gave rise to a immense tragedy, as millions of peasants lost their lives in building the wall stone by stone. On a lesser scale, Bismarck said that the German Empire would be forged by “iron and blood”. The great colonial empires of the 19th century spread themselves with great suffering for both the conquered and the Irish, Indian and other soldiery who were the “conquerors” ( these were Empires good at using the just colonised to invade the yet-to-colonise).

The imperialist, obviously, has an edge over those he conquers. Once the terrible job of conquest is done, many of his new subjects find benefit in his rule, for he opens new trade routes, brings in a rich culture and an efficient administrative system. What would India have been, if not for the British ? A hodge-podge of Nepals, probably.

The American quasi Empire is a new model. Its Navy , linked together by a network of bases across the Earth, is incomparable. Even at the peak of its power, the Soviet Union could not build anything which could match with such an awesome fleet. When China fired missiles at Taiwan in 1999, trying to frighten its people out of voting for a party which Beijing considered to be pro-independence, the apparition of two US Navy task forces ( the modest name given to the group consisting of a US aircraft carrier, escorted by gunships and submarines) in Taiwanese waters silenced its guns.

The US fulfills one of the essential functions of Empire in that its existence ensures relative stability in the world. Were a giant moth to swallow it at this very moment, North Korea would immediately send its famished troops in human waves to feed themselves in the McDonalds of Seoul. China would first lurch over Taiwan then would look askance at Japan, which would by that time have blown off a few atomic bombs in the Pacific to steel its nerves. Libya would discover a new hunger for Chad. Syria would gobble up Lebanon, if Israel had not already blown the whole Middle East to nuclear ashes, just to feel safe. Russia’s voice when talking to the rest of Europe, especially the tiny Balts, would acquire a steely edge. India would feel its arms itching for a good once-over with Pakistan. Sudan would make a short meal out of its Darfur rebels and unearth some old grudges against Ethiopia and Uganda, America’s blue-eyed boys in that part of Africa. The Muslims in Bosnia, the Albanians in Kossovo would join the Pithecantropus in science museums.

The Pax Americana exists. It is not benevolent. Empires are like Lovecraft’s cold monsters, beyond good and evil. The war in Iraq, if one can make sense of that tenebrous affair, probably has as its aim the establishment of a pro-American regime that will guarantee a stable supply of oil from the Middle East, given that Saudi Arabia is not a reliable source in the long term ( the terrorists of September 11 were Saudis, and in the course of their investigations after the attacks, the Americans have probably discovered enough deep cracks in that strange kingdom to give them cause to pitch their war tents elsewhere).

America also fulfils the criterion of cosmopolitanism which marked older Empires. We may jeer at the shallowness of much of American culture, but the Babylonians probably did the same at the Medes, the old inhabitants of Constantinople at the Seljuk Turks, the Chinese at the Manchurians, the Greeks at the Romans. When American tourists ask the watchman at the Acropolis how much it costs, and wonder whether it will fit in between the swimming pool and the tennis court, they are probably walking in the footsteps of their Roman and Turkish predecessors.

What matters is a generosity of spirit, a willingness to take off the leather armour and learn the ways of the harem, that perfumed place where ( what were you thinking ?) many pleasant hours are spent in chess and witty conversation. Such breadth of mind, America has in ample store. It is as cosmopolitan a place as any Empire ever was. In Bill Clinton, if we are to believe Toni Morrison ( whom I have not read, unfortunately), it has had its first black President. Will then, his wife be the first Black woman president ? A question to be asked ( but not to Barack Obama).

Yet America shies from being a full-blown empire. Probably because that would be difficult. The world is a big place, after all. I am skating on thin ice here, but I feel that many ancient Empires had a certain instability in them, in that their very existence caused outlying states to rally against them, to provoke border squirmishes to which, by pride, they would answer, thus causing endless bloodshed at the edges. Not that it was a bad thing in itself , because it kept the troops busy instead of loafing around dangerously in the capital’s caserns. Yet, overall, there is great advantage, in modern times, in not proclaiming oneself an Empire. One avoids unnecessary provocation. The world economic system is subtle enough that one may manipulate it under the cover of a level-playing field.

A real world Empire would be unattainable. Even America’s allies are difficult to keep in check. France leaps to the mind in this respect. It has spoiled the mind of other European nations, to the point that China has a field day playing off Airbus against Boeing, American steel, cars and trains against European ones…but France is not the only culprit. Think of Saudi Arabia, whose citizens finance lunatic madrassahs in Pakistan, to the point where that country has become a battlefield between fanatical sunnism and shiism.

And think of India. I really wonder why America has rushed so fast to become India’s ally in the past few years. China and India will one day become the big powers of Asia. There’s a “one day” in that sentence. Does it make sense to commit oneself to one side so early in the game ? Wouldn’t it have been wiser to keep oneself at a safe, stern distance from these two hulks ?

In the course of this century, I believe that many of America’s troubles, once the wave of Wahabism which is sweeping through the Islamic world will have subsided ( and it shall subside, for moderate Muslims around the world are already fed up with the misery it is heaping on them, they who have to face not only its bombs, as other passengers in buses have to, but the retaliation from the crowd afterwards) shall come from India, that big, young country ( it does not have an ageing population , like China). The Indian character is restless, excitable, emotional. It likes guns and uniforms the way a child does. India is one of the rare countries in the world which holds a full-blown military parade on its national day. The other country which comes to mind in this respect, interestingly, is France.

Al Qaida was born from the mujjahedin training camps on the 80’s in Pakistan which were managed by a dynamic CIA operative called Osama Bin Laden. America shall yet again sow the seeds of woe by arming an enthusiastic India against China. The latter, for all its sins against Taiwan and its occasional hisses against Japan, is a pragmatic nation by nature. Even in the midst of the Cultural Revolution, it was wise enough to edge closer to the United States when the Russian bear growled at its door in 1972. America, in the end, is charmingly weak at judging character. It is an idealistic nation, which cannot stand having a Nixon at its head, when other nations would crave to have such a statesman. It prefers the homespun nonsense of a Reagan or a Bush junior to the boring, standoffish likes of a Gore or a Kelly. It wants style at the top. But style is something that belongs to the boudoir, the smart neighbourhoods, the silver screen. The corridors of power are the domain of the likes of Mitterand, John Major, Margaret Thatcher, Bismarck, Richelieu, Frederick the Great and other insufferable bores. Even Napoleon was a workalholic and a cuckold. The devil may wear Prada, but nobody bothers what Atlas has to cover his loins”.

Interesting stuff, isn’t it ?

Some more thoughts about Maria Ozawa: what disturbs me about her being a porn star is her gracefulness. While in Yugoslavia, Nicolas Bouvier was asked to write an article in a women’s magazine. He was given a lead: here in Yugoslavia, women can vote while in France, they can’t ( this was in the early fifties) . What do you think of that ? Amazingly he wrote that he had no fixed opinion on the matter and that after the short time time he had spent in Yugoslavia, he wished that the women there would militate less and spend more energy à essayer de plaire . This is difficult to translate. I could say: “(…) spend more energy at being charming” . But that sounds so trite. “(…) spend more energy at pleasing” sounds very servile. Plaire is not the same “to please”, it is more noble in the French scheme of things, more essential to life. Maybe we should go back to Shakespeare’s times. I think it’s at the end of Twelfth Night that the Fool comes upon the scene and apologizes for any blunders in the play, and assures the audience, groundlings included, “that we always strive to please”. Here, at a time when French and English were closer relatives, when Shakespeare wore a gold earing in one of his portraits ( personally, by the way, I believe that he wrote his own plays. I can’t understand the idea that someone can’t have been a genius because he had a modest, retiring life and was a sharp moneylender at the end of his life. Bach was a short tempered musician with twenty kids, Einstein was a bad husband of the normal kind and a civil servant in the Swiss administration. The idea that geniuses have to have odd lifestyles is a modern attempt to paint over the shallow hedonism of the likes of Elvis Presley with the gold varnish of genius) we find a better approximation of the idea of what “to please” meant in more refined times. It was an art de vivre , going much beyond the idea of pleasing one’s masters, though of course there were plenty of people who limited it to that.

The reader, if I have one, will think I have digressed far beyond the burning issue, which is, for her millions of adoring, heavily breathing fans, our great Maria Ozawa, but I am actually tacking close to the coast, as close as I can ever be in this world to her sweet self. Nicolas Bouvier, faced with what, to us readers 50 years later, seems the quaint topic of women’s right to vote, invokes the help of La Fontaine, who wrote somewhere in his charming (!) poems of “La grâce, plus belle encore que la beauté” ( Gracefulness, more beautiful even than beauty) . In those times, he assures us, the editor in chief of the women’s magazine only laughed at his opinions, which she found flattering but a trifle too frivolous to be published, and told him to write a fairy tale instead, which he did, after a tedious day walking around in Belgrade. Yet our man had touched on a vital subject.

Gracefulness. Porn stars are not supposed to have that quality. They, the descendants of the whores of the ancient brothels, should have a knowing smile, heavy, languid eyelids, massive, well oiled, breasts and buttocks. Their sexuality may be that of the horny farm girls they sometimes were, a few years before, if that simple, humorous randiness has survived the years in the brothel, or it could be the raunchy desire of the frustrated housewife ( One of the Roman satirists, I think it is Juvenal, wrote of the wife of one of the Emperors, one of the Virtuous Five, and he alleged that she, driven desperate by his sober lifestyle, spent all her nights in a cheap brothel, to be ridden upon by soldiers and merchants, only reluctantly leaving her smelly couch at the crack of dawn to return to her palace. Our tabloids sin by their hysterical industriousness, smashing their preys to pulp in Parisian tunnels. They lack the flights of fancy of their ancestors) , or it could be , as it probably is most of the time, a quick affair of undressing and a few moans, for in the end, the performance of a tired soldier or a drunk merchant comes to a paltry few thrusts and the crux of the matter is in putting on a maternal, understanding face as the client pours his heart out on the pillow afterwards, telling tales of bad deals, unfair pay, shrewish wives and grasping cousins.

All this everyday sexuality is the bread and butter of the whore. But the sacred groves of gracefulness… which make the heart leap as it remembers the first stirrings of love, at fourteen. That holy vessel of humanity, the secret jars in which the beloved keeps the waters of childhood – when the Lord speaks to Job of His power, He asks him: Do you know where I keep the great jars of the rain ? And the Muslims say that on the great night where the Prophet rode to Heaven on the mare Borak, the water in the jars becomes sweet ; isn’t the epitome of gracefulness the image of a woman carrying a jar back from the river, either on the side of her waist, or on her head ? Gracefulness finds its source in childhood because at its very heart lies a subtle gaucheness, a slight awkwardness of the wrist, of the hip, a tilt of the head, a hesitation, a shy withdrawal. Woman’s gracefulness is not the same as that of the snake or the leopard. Theirs is surer, more lethal. It may approach it, to the delight of the erotomaniac, but if it becomes completely like theirs, then it is deadly, to the further delight of said erotomaniac, because if he goes to the end of his cravings, then he wishes death (1) .

Baudelaire spoke of “les verts paradis des amours enfantines” in Moesta et Errabunda :

Mais le vert paradis des amours enfantines,
Les courses, les chansons, les baisers, les bouquets,
Les violons vibrant derrière les collines,
Avec les brocs de vin, le soir, dans les bosquets,
— Mais le vert paradis des amours enfantines,

L'innocent paradis, plein de plaisirs furtifs,
Est-il déjà plus loin que l'Inde et que la Chine?
Peut-on le rappeler avec des cris plaintifs,
Et l'animer encor d'une voix argentine,
L'innocent paradis plein de plaisirs furtifs?

At 13, a girl does not ( normally) have big breasts or buttocks. She only has her gracefulness, her vivacity- O the crystalline loves of that time ! “L’innocent paradis, plein de plaisirs furtifs”. Blessed the woman who can keep something of that in her adult years.

How odd that our Maria should spoil the water of her jars with the oil of the whore, the oil in the hair of her trader client, the oil in the voice of the Madame – nowadays a porn film executive in pin stripe suits. Ah well, that’s the way the world goes.

(1) Snakes and leopards do not laugh, and if they did, they would not cover their mouths with their hands ( with their tails, probably, in the case of snakes). Real, through-and-through eroticism is a grave matter, something undertakers should do as a side business.

Why was I not informed about Nicolas Bouvier before ? How come I’d never heard of this man, and after a full thirty six years on this planet stumble like a fool on his collected works, which I pick up with a blasé face, only to discover a Maestro travel writer, like Luke Skywalker finding out that the dirty little creature who’se stealing his food rations is Yoda the Master. I fully share the feelings of Mr Sammy Potts in this remarkable article ( this boy is only twelve years old ? Such talent !) about his discovering Bruce Lee:

http://www.theonion.com/content/opinion/why_was_i_not_informed_about

Yet I had heard of Paul Theroux, I’ve read “The Songlines” by Bruce Chatwin, “Slowly down the Ganges” by Eric Newby, “Among the Believers” by VS Naipaul ( well I’ve read most of it and I find it interesting. Why do my Muslim friends dislike it so much ? It’s nowhere as harsh as “An Area of Darkness”). It’s true that I hadn’t paid much attention to the French tradition of travel writing, because the British school is so much more famous. I think it’s Eric Newby who said: “The French endure much hardship in the name of commerce, religion and empire. Only the British travel to get as far away as possible from their land”.

Anyway Nicolas Bouvier is ( was, actually- alas) not French, but Swiss, from that respectable Huguenot bourgeoisie which Jean Cohen skewered in “Belle du Seigneur”. He grew up in a highly cultivated, but rather stuffy family ( How fortunate for us. Would he, at the age of eight have traced the course of the Yukon on the butter of his toast, as he did, if his parents had been anarcho-syndicalists living in a cellar in Barcelona ? Even the Lord needed a Judas to be there to accomplish his destiny. Did Judas have a choice ? Borges has made some dizzying hypotheses on this topic. But I digress) and at the tender age of twenty and three, did set on the road in a Fiat Topolino. Beforehand, he had dismantled it into its six thousand ( eight thousand according to another of his essays. But after one hundred nobody can count, unless you’ve got pointed ears and are the resident bore in an adventurous spacecraft) spare parts, and reassembled it, like a giant Mecano. Here, already , my envy starts for I am afflicted with two left hands, as the French say. But my envy has ample reason to puff and puff as I keep reading his adventures, until it bursts and I bend both knees, acknowledging him to be a true Master.

Let’s , for the sake of economy, bypass the ample matter of his mental and physical courage ( the fevers, the meager lifestyle, the terrible loneliness of his seven months in Sri Lanka. Along his travels, he writes articles for local magazines, thereby getting just enough money to survive for the next few weeks. The prospect of real starvation in Japan makes an art photographer out of him). Other people could have endured as much, but not become great writers. Not him. The characters he describes while on the road have an immediacy, a powerful presence such that you have the impression they are right next to your armchair. His style is limpid and precise, the images tumble on after the other as if, on a return from Bali, a playful uncle had lifted a suitcase and opening it wide, had let its cloth and trinkets tumble down in front of marvelling nieces and nephews, while the smell from there fills the room.

Of course, it’s not just cute exoticism. Whether in Yugoslavia, Iran, Korea or Japan, Nicolas Bouvier describes plenty of sharp misery. I particularly remember his poignant lines about the Japanese fondness for photographs ( sorry for the very imprecise translation, from memory): “It was an avidity to capture the few joyful moments in life.Wherever I would enter a house, I would be given first of all photo albums and looking at them, I learned more about the country than by going to a hundred art photography exhibitions. Gazing at the endless pictures of big eyed children under their school caps, I came upon a frugal, introverted and pathetic Japan which tourist brochures do not speak of”. Same could apply for China. I guess that like karaoke, photographs are a means of effusion for the stoic people of East Asia.

Nicolas Bouvier deeply empathises with the people he comes across in his travels. Wherever he meets awful setbacks, the smallest of which would have sent Naipaul musing about “sense of loss” and “sense of decay”, his immense patience and superb sense of humour lifts him to a joyous sympathy, like the ideal drinking companion to have at the bar after a bad day. I love the first page of his travel notes on Tabriz ( sorry for the very imprecise translation, made from memory):

“Travelling is full of surprises. After having breezed through Anatolia in three days, one arrives in Tabriz, in Northern Iran. There, while one is spending one’s first evening in a bar with an apatrid doctor, the night falls, and with it, the snow, which covers the roads further East. One ends up spending seven months there. Yet Tabriz was controlled to the military, and getting a residence permit is not easy. The apatrid doctor sent us to an officer whom he had cured from a tumour. The man had been trained in the Prussian military tradition and his interrogation was sharp, severe, impeccable. Yet , a few days later, his demeanour had changed. With a loving gaze, he told us that we had been granted the permits, and, blushing to the roots of his hair, he mumbled: “I have just spent two hours in the mosque, praying that we could become close, very close friends”. His wishes were not granted for a few days later he was transferred. The best laid plans of mice and men… “Had you noticed their swarthy yet rosy cheekbones ?” said Thierry [ Nicolas’ travelling companion] Yes, but my mind had been stunned by something else – what a Lord in Heaven [ Quel Bon Dieu – untranslatable], to whom one could ask everything”

The dark spot of his travels – from Switzerland to Yugoslavia, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Japan – is his seven months in Sri Lanka where, tortured by fever and loneliness, he scrapes past madness. I don’t know what to make of his alleged conversations with the ghost of a Jesuit who helps him with his articles in English for a Sri Lankan literary magazine. Is it an elaborate joke ? He describes the meetings in the same precise manner as when he writes of the great battle between an anthill and a termite nest in the courtyard of his inn. What about his seeing a goblin arise with a thunderous sound from the ground between his feet, to serve himself with a pickle jar, which the shopkeeper puts in her books in the credit accounts just like for any other customer ? And the swirling ectoplasm which arises in the shop of a watch repairer, only to be chased by a sleepy exorcist armed with a banana leaf?

Whatever it was, it was time for him to escape by way of a cruise ship, in which he was a lowly dishwasher, to Japan, which he loved to the point where he returned there twice, the second time with his wife ( A beautiful woman. Such a man deserved that. They can’t all end up with real estate tycoons).

In his later life, he was an iconographer, and has written several interesting articles on images, which I have yet to finish reading. In one of the few I’ve already read, he tells of the two pictures he keeps pinned on the wall in front of him. One is of a man with a donkey head, to remind himself of his “stupidity” ( this man is an erudite, but one of those about whom it is said: the pedant carries his learning like a man walking with a ladder through a crowd. The wise man carries his like a bunch of balloons). The other is a Japanese print of ghastly beauty, showing the face of a dead woman on whose lips a lizard rears its head. The woman’s face is contorted, yet a “malefic beauty” as he says, emanates from her fine, snowy features and the lizard’s supple, electric presence tells of the persistence of life.

He loved donkeys because he considered their endurance and quiet ability to be the marks of the good traveller. Nicolas Bouvier died in 1998 and in belated hommage to him, I reproduce here a poem which he liked, and to which I also am very much attached, Francis Jammes’ Prière pour aller au Paradis avec les Anes:

Lorsqu ' il faudra aller vers Vous, ô mon Dieu, faites
que ce soit par un jour où la campagne en fête
poudroiera. Je désire, ainsi que je fis ici-bas,
choisir un chemin pour aller,
comme il me plaira,
au Paradis, où sont en plein jour les étoiles.
Je prendrai mon bâton et sur la grande route
j'irai, et je dirai aux ânes, mes amis :
Je suis Francis Jammes et je vais au paradis,
car il n'y a pas d'enfer au pays du Bon Dieu.
Je leur dirai : Venez, doux amis du ciel bleu,
pauvres bêtes chéries qui,
d'un brusque mouvement d'oreille,
chassez les mouches plates, les coups
et les abeilles...
Que je Vous apparaisse au milieu de ces bêtes
Que j'aime tant parce qu'elles baissent la tête
doucement, et s'arrêtent en joignant leurs petits
pieds
d'une façon bien douce et qui vous fait pitié.
J'arriverai suivi de leurs milliers d'oreilles,
suivis de ceux qui portèrent au flanc
des corbeilles,
de ceux traînant des voitures de saltimbanques
ou des voitures de plumeaux et de fer-blanc,
de ceux qui ont au dos des bidons bossués,
des ânesses pleines comme des outres, aux pas
cassés,
de ceux à qui l'on met de petits pantalons
à cause des plaies bleues et suintantes que font
les mouches entêtées qui s'y groupent en rond.
Mon Dieu faites qu'avec ces ânes je Vous vienne.
Faites que, dans la paix, des anges nous
conduisent
vers des ruisseaux touffus où tremblent
des cerises
lisses comme la chair qui rit des jeunes filles,
et faites que, penché dans ce séjour des âmes,
sur Vos divines eaux je sois pareil aux ânes
qui mireront leur humble et douce pauvreté

à la limpidité de l'amour éternel

If liberal democracy is the form of government best suited to our nature, why are our fantasies so feodal ? The very name “fantasy literature” evokes the image of Conan the barbarian. When we go to Paris, we visit Versailles, not the buildings of La Défense, which are supposed to be great works of modern architecture. It is always the same whenever one goes on a tourist trip: visits to temples and palaces.Of course it is because they are beautiful. But why can’t modern societies, which are immensely richer and more clever than the ones they’ve replaced, construct buildings which would fire our imagination to the same extent ? The words “palace” or “mosque” evoke worlds which we find evocative. The aspirations of those who had them built were grand : to evoke power and splendour, or to commune with God. In our age, the people hold power, and their aspirations are more humble: better schools, better hospitals. The 18th century philosophers who dreamed of an Age of Reason would be surprised, though , if they could see how much remains of the old society. In many democracies, the Head of State is still a monarch, and I suspect that things are even worse in presidential regimes, in that a crushing mantle falls on the shoulders of the elected one. A French president is not just supposed to be an able statesman. He has to possess an almost gloomy grandeur. No one expected De Gaulle or Mitterand to smile or hug babies. American presidents do that, but I think that it is part of that fluffy, just-call-me-Andy exterior of American society. America as a whole seems to me ( I’ve never been there) a profoundly serious, hardworking society. American presidents can play the saxophone as much as they want, but there is a kind of expectation of superhuman faculties made on them. Not only are they supposed to be superior strategists and economists, but they have to radiate a certain “enhanced” normality, a sort of heroism at rest. I suspect that Americans go to war from time to time only to produce future presidents.

The other great , or not so great maybe, survivor of the old society is religion. It is doing surprisingly well. The one we hear most about these days is Islam. A Muslim friend of mine has explained to me that much of the present troubles of Islam with the modern world comes from the fact that Islam has a more complete tool box than other religions: not only does it have a spiritual dimension, but a legal corpus, the Sharia. In Christianity, Pope and Emperor fought for temporal power, but neither Jesus nor Paul bothered much about inheritance law and the penal code . Hinduism’s laws of Manu are so laughably unfair ( for the same offence , the penalty varies according to the caste) as to make them an embarassment. This means that however much Evangelical Christians and the Hindutva crowd may dream of their respective Golden Ages, the picture they have of that time is blurred. For Evangelicals, the blessed age was that of the first Christians, but the latter were not a ruling group, but a persecuted minority. I guess that is why the Evangelicals love going to the most hostile country possible – Afghanistan ! Iraq ! - to spread the Holy Word. The Hindutva fantasy is a bizzare mixture of antiquity and science fiction in which ancient Indians threw atomic missiles at each other ( if the ancient Indians were so advanced, they must also have been the most ecologically correct civilisation the world has ever known, because no trace remains of their advanced industry).

With Islam, on the other hand, Golden Age reconstructionists get a pretty awesome toolbox. Not only is there the Sharia, which gives them a legal code, but there is the military glamour of the times of the Four Rightly Guided Caliphs, whose armies defeated vastly superior foes, and conquered immense territories, at a miraculous speed. However great this tool box may be, however, it still misses a vital element ( which cannot be found, actually, on this earth): an example of a perfect Islamic state which would be a viable model for today’s society. The society of 6th century Arabia is so remotely unlike ours that even when the Talibans tried to make an extremely poor and traditional country like Afghanistan look like the Arabia of those days, the attempt still took on a ludicrous turn. They ended up depriving the common people of the little technology that was available, while they themselves maintained a website and operated sophisticated weapons.

Why is it that, while living in the modern world, so many of our dreams take on such an archaic turn ? Many of the archetypes we have of role models have a medieval touch. For men, the main types are: the Hero, the King, the Wise Man/Wizard, the Father, the Clown/Madman/ Wise Fool. These are the figures of Mythology. When we progress to Tales, we can have, in addition to the figures of Mythology, lesser types such as the Evil Sorcerer and the Traitor. From then on, we go to modern literature, where even lesser figures start emerging, which do not even deserve capital letters: the tradesman, the peasant, the small town doctor, the lover, the picaresque adventurer and so on. For women, the declension is a bit more complicated. We have in Mythology: the Hero’s Beloved, the Queen, the Wise Woman/Witch, the Mother. Then to tales, where we also have the Evil Sorceress, the Evil Stepmother, the Princess. Then on to literature with its Emmas and Tesses: this is where the declension is a bit complicated, because the figure of a woman as a main character in a story is a rather modern invention. In the case of male archetypes, the greatest, most exalted of all figures is the Hero. In the case of female archetypes, there used to be a bit of a lack of a corresponding figure. The Hero’s Beloved is a passive character. Strangely, the only female character in Mythology who can approximately match the Hero in terms of power, is the Wise Woman. Circe did give Ulysses a fright, before falling in love with him. When we climb down to Tales, women get a bit of a push up, and Cinderella and Snow White appear as heroines of their own stories. Then on to literature, where, over the centuries, the balance starts getting even. The great exception to all of this is Spiritual-Erotic Poetry, which belongs more to religion, anyway, and in which both Laila and Qais, both Krishna and Radha are exalted to the highest planes.

Thus we see that the more we go in the literary past, the larger the figures get, until by the time we reach Mythology, we are puny tourists at the feet of great Colossuses. The Hero is still exalted , but he has been going through a bit of strange times lately. With the tectonic plates between the continents of Man and Woman going through some rumbles in the past few centuries, as the two lands crash more and more into each other, our Hero’s statue is trembling on its pedestal. But that is another story. My point is that man is a dreamer, and that the more ancient of his dreams tend to take fantastic shapes in his mind, like the ruins of great cities he sees far away trembling in the desert light. Modern literary figures seem like flies compared to the likes of Hector. But that could be an effect of time. Shakespeare’s characters, as they acquire the patina of centuries, are starting to grow in our imagination - Romeo and Juliet, Falstaff, Hamlet….Will they , in the 25th century, acquire the stature of Ulysses ? Does the quasi-godlike stature of the latter give him an edge over the more human characters of literature ? Or, on the contrary, will that very humanity make literary characters more endearing to the people of the future ?

We see the world through myths. What has been mythified, exists. Paris, London, New York are overladen with myths, and therefore they “glow”, they radiate existence, and people are drawn to them like moths(1).

The act of writing mythifies existence. But will today’s writing , with its subtler characters, be able , in the future, to displace in our mental map, the more elemental figures of the past ? Ah well, I wish I was a Wise Man/ Sorcerer to be able to know that ! A related question is: in the future, will people know either about Ulysses or about Romeo ? Television and cinema’s characters, for all the virtues of these media, tend to have a more coarse-grained texture than those of literature. Especially with today’s cinema, which loves the likes of Leonidas and Legolas. But still, Michael in “The Godfather” is as Shakesperian a character as the bard himself ever invented. There is hope for literature, and for a humanisation of our deep brain.


(1) A people who are not written upon, cease to “exist”. In a famous black novel ( which I have not read), “Nobody knows my name”, one of the black characters exclaims “They do not see me!”. As a black in early 20th century America, he is a “problem” figure, and his only way of surviving would be to lie low. But nowadays, with the powerful influence of American black culture, he is very much “seen” ( especially on MTV). When Salman Rushdie wrote “Midnight’s Children”, an American critic said: “The literary map of India is about to be redrawn..” . We all carry such maps, which give coherence to the world and we need myths and stereotypes so as to draw them. Later, after having explored of one part of the map, we can say: “Oh but it is much more complicated than what I thought..” but still, that first sketchy coastal outline was needed, as a landing point.

Myths are stereotypes, racial and cultural, but stereotypes which have “bloomed”: clichés which are enlarged into a wider corpus. There is a vast body of idées reçues about the French. There are, on the other hand, only very little things which the Nyamwezi, in Mozambique, evoke to us. If we have to imagine their lives,we can only borrow some images from our mental archives, at the rubric “tribal people”, and therefore visualise them as living in little round huts, the men going hunting, and the women planting grains. The French, therefore, are a “mythified” people, while the Nyamwezi only “possess” some stereotypes.