In Arcadia

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by Ben Okri


  Is it death that secretly troubles us? The fear that the marvel of being alive will be no more? That we will no longer breathe, or see the buttercups of May? That we will love no more, no more be loved? That all the sweet things we take so much for granted will be extinguished: the pleasures of reading, the delight of travel, the ecstasies of lovemaking, all the wonderful surprises that life might bring, that all will be as the promise of summer glimpsed in winter, but not lived to be seen? This troubled her.

  When all the possibilities of life, when all the failures of a life so far, when all the despair, the fears, the worries, are set against death, how feeble all our fears, worries, and failures seem. The fear of death narrows the perspective of life, narrows it, and makes all of living shrink.

  The fear of death makes life not worth living. It makes life a sort of living death. For it gives death such power and such hegemony over every act of living. Fear of death makes death into a tyrant that commands all the laws and routes of living. It makes life surrender to death, to a future death, to a thing that has not yet occurred, and so it abolishes the entire scope and freedom of living while one is alive.

  7

  Mistletoe wasn’t thinking any more. Like Lao, she was listening to thoughts from the open universe. Thoughts that were there, in the air, responding to the intensity of questions sent out from the beseeching heart into the vital spaces.

  One moment she was on the train hurtlingly bound for Switzerland. The next she was nowhere, or was it everywhere, so deep in thought-listening was she. Lao was there in everywhere. And the crew were all there too. And all the passengers on the train. And all travellers on all journeys. And all people all over the world. And yet it felt as if she were there alone, breathing in intuitions that lit up in her as she paused between art and thoughts on the fear of death.

  What was she listening to?

  Not words, not songs, not forms, not sounds, not ideas, not philosophies, not answers, not solutions. Just energies. Energies that she let percolate or collect or crystallise or dance in her mind and pass away not even leaving behind a shadow, but maybe a fragrance of distilled eternity. And every now and again she would catch a look from Lao, and the look would be a thought that she would hear and mix in with the distilled moments.

  8

  Intuitions on the Way (1)

  Is it death that secretly troubles us? she asked again, as she listened to the higher silence beyond the speeding train. And then she heard it again. Live while you are alive.

  While alive, life ought to be the dominant principle, the master force, the motive power. How much more is possible when one chooses life over death, freedom over fear, love over hate. All the great possibilities unexplored in history and the thousand biographies of the great ones are but the beginning and the foundation of amazing new ways of living, of working and dreaming one’s way out of the corner we find ourselves in if we but choose life over death, hope over fear, a greater self-image over a smaller one.

  Then living expands and becomes a wonderful chess game. A magic playground. A mischievous game of sublime poker.

  Invisible ones watch to see how we play the game with the deceptive cards we have been dealt.

  The game lies not in the cards, but in the players.

  There is also the projection of value and power into things.

  It is not about winning. The game continues beyond time. The genius of openness.

  Mastery is the key to mystery.

  Time is a factor.

  There are more factors than are apparent.

  Life is living. The surprising ways of continuing to be alive.

  There is freedom. Freedom in the spirit of playing.

  Connect infinite intelligence.

  Life is as open or as closed as you care for it to be. As you love it enough to be. As you dare…

  Life is your thing. Your game. Your joke. Play it and love it as you will.

  All great things have a quality of humour in them. The sheer cheek.

  All great things smile at the economy of vision. Seeing so much in so little.

  The humility. The miracle.

  The humour is in the seeing. The wonderful risk.

  Ought to have reverence for the powers that reside within, waiting to be used for nothing, or for immortal marvels.

  9

  Intuitions on the Way (2)

  Mistletoe often remembers a favourite story of Lao’s. It came to her now. The story goes like this. You die, and find yourself, like Daphnis, at Heaven’s Gate. A mysterious person meets you at the entrance. You ask to be admitted. The mysterious person insists first on a conversation about the life you have lived. You complain that you had no breaks, that things didn’t work out for you, that you weren’t helped, that people brought you down, blocked your way, that your father didn’t love you, that your mother didn’t care, that economic times were bad, that you didn’t have the right qualifications, that you didn’t belong to the right circle, that you weren’t lucky, in short you pour out a veritable torrent of excuses. But for every excuse you bring forth the infinitely patient mysterious person points to little things here and there that you could have done, little mental adjustments you could have made. He gently offers you examples of where, instead of giving up, you could have been more patient. Tenderly, he shows you all the little things you could have done, within the range of your ability, your will, that would have made a difference. And as he offers these alternatives you see how perfectly they make sense, how perfectly possible the solutions were, how manageable. You see how, by being more alive to your life, and not panicky and afraid, things could have been so much more livable, indeed, quite wonderful.

  You suddenly see that you could have been perfectly happy during all the time that you were perfectly miserable. That you could have been free instead of being a prisoner. That you could have been one of the radiant ones of the earth. That living could have been fun. It could have been worthwhile. That life could have been a playground of possibilities. It could have been a laboratory of intelligence and freedom. And living could have been composed of experiments in surprise, in immortality. Experiments in the art of astonishment. Fascinating time-games. Space-games. Dimension-games.

  You suddenly see that living is the place where gods play within mortal flesh. An open-ended play in which dying is the most open-ended ending of them all, opening out into the infinity of nothingness, or into the infinity of absolute being.

  Therefore, living is the place of secular miracles. It is where amazing things can be done in consciousness and in history. Living ought to be the unfolding masterpiece of the loving spirit. And dying ought to set this masterpiece free. Set it free to enrich the world. A good life is the masterwork of the magic intelligence that dwells in us. Faced with the enormity of this thought, of the Damascene perception, failure, despair, unhappiness, seemed a small thing, a gross missing of the point of it all.

  10

  ‘Is it death that secretly troubles us?’ said Mistletoe aloud, quite suddenly, without knowing why.

  ‘I was asking myself the same question,’ said Lao.

  They were both silent for a while. Alive in time and timelessness. The train bore them towards Arcadia.

  ‘Is it death that secretly troubles you?’ asked Lao, eventually.

  ‘No,’ replied Mistletoe.

  Then, dreamily, she added:

  ‘It’s life that ought to fascinate us.’

  ‘And make us hungry for more life.’

  ‘More joy.’

  ‘More fun.’

  ‘More love.’

  ‘More laughter.’

  ‘More freedom,’ said Mistletoe, daughter of Pan.

  ‘More justice,’ said Lao, the mental outlaw.

  ‘More light,’ said both of them, in chorus, laughing gently.

  Then they fell silent again, and stared wistfully out of the window of the train. To a world looking in, they could be inscriptions.

  September 2001


  London

  We hope you enjoyed this book.

  Head of Zeus are proud to be reissuing a collection of Ben Okri’s best works alongside his brand new novel, The Age of Magic:

  Dangerous Love

  In Arcadia

  Astonishing the Gods

  A Way of Being Free

  Ben talks about the collection here.

  For an exclusive preview The Age of Magic, read on or click here.

  ~

  Ben Okri

  More books by Ben Okri

  An invitation from the publisher

  Ben Okri on the Reissues

  It is for me a conjunction no less than magical that these five books are coming out together. The four reissues were first published in the nineties and in the early years of this century. They were all published within a few years, in one house, under the aegis of Anthony Cheetham, and are being re-published now, in a cluster, in another house, under Anthony’s aegis. There is a kind of synchronous harmony to this, a kind of perfect circularity that is both satisfying and auspicious.

  As a body of work, the four books link with each another in an unusual way. Each explores, from a different angle, the themes that are central to my writing. They are about the nature of reality, storytelling, enchantment, history, art and love. In each of these books I attempt something different. Astonishing The Gods is a short novel, written in a mode of enchantment, a kind of fable about visibility and invisibility, about ideals and ideas, and about the poetry of being. It was a major departure in my writing at the time it was written and remains one of my favourites. A Way of Being Free is a favourite with many of my readers, a book of semi-poetic essays on art, politics, storytelling, and creativity. I had been writing these private and public meditations since the eighties. They have been widely referenced and still remain much quoted online.

  In 1996, The Landscapes Within, a novel written when I was in my twenties, was transfigured into Dangerous Love. This is a story about love and art, but also about the aftermath of the Nigerian Civil War – corruption, a lost generation, and a search for an artistic language with which to express the true nature of reality. It is a kind of twin to The Famished Road and many readers think it more accessible.

  And then in 2002 came In Arcadia, a novel unlike any I had written till then, exploring the anomie of our times, travel, the quest for a salve for the anxious spirit of our age. It is also about television and the shadow of power.

  Four different books radiating from an unmistakeable core. Readers who only think of me as the author of The Famished Road have a pleasant surprise coming. The four books look at poverty and the quest for happiness. They look at beauty and ugliness. They deal with the world of the real and the world of the fabulous. They look at Africa and they look at Europe.

  What unites them all is an abiding sense of the mystery of life and the magical nature of storytelling. My writings are enchantments, even when they deal with difficult realities; because for me it is not the realities that define us, but the consciousness with which we experience and face them.

  The Age of Magic is the novel leading the procession into the world. For more than twelve years these four books have dwelt tenderly in the underworld. That their reincarnation is heralded by the birth of a new novel is entirely fitting. The Age of Magic is my first novel in seven years. That these five books are published by Head of Zeus is cause for celebration, cause for contemplating, with a sense of wonder, the nature of fate, and what charming bounties it promises.

  Ben Okri

  July 2014

  Preview

  Read on for a preview of

  ‘The Age of Magic has begun.

  Unveil your eyes.’

  Eight weary film-makers, travelling from Paris to Basel, arrive at a small Swiss hotel on the shores of a luminous lake. Above them, strewn with lights that twinkle in the darkness, looms the towering Rigi mountain. Over the course of three days and two nights, the travellers will find themselves drawn in to the mystery of the mountain reflected in the lake. One by one, they will be disturbed, enlightened, and transformed, each in a different way.

  An intoxicating and dreamlike tale unfolds. Allow yourself to be transformed. Having shown a different way of seeing the world, Ben Okri now offers a different way of reading.

  A work of art that retraced the conquest of happiness would be a revolutionary one.

  Camus, Noces (1937)

  The age of magic has begun.

  Unveil your eyes.

  Pensero, Il Camino (1321)

  Book 1

  The Journey as Home

  1

  Some things only become clear much later.

  2

  They were on the train from Paris to Switzerland when the white mountains and the nursery rhythms of the wheels lulled him to sleep. He found himself talking to a Quylph.

  ‘What are you afraid of?’ it said.

  ‘Why should I be afraid of anything?’ Lao replied.

  ‘Maybe you are afraid of Malasso?’

  ‘Why should I be afraid of him?’

  ‘Everyone else is.’

  ‘I don’t know him.’

  ‘People are afraid of what they don’t know.’

  ‘Never met him. Why should I be scared of him?’

  ‘You tell me.’

  Lao became aware, out of the corner of his eyes, that everything seemed luminous. In a compartment full of businessmen, tourists, and young lovers the Quylph looked perfectly at ease. This bothered Lao.

  ‘Then it must be life you are afraid of,’ the Quylph said after a while.

  There are some conversations so strange that they are only remembered much later, but not noticed at the time.

  The Quylph, in a unique space, occupied the seat across from Lao. He felt lucky to see it.

  With a hint of amusement, it said:

  ‘Do you know what the luckiest thing is?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It is to be at home everywhere.’

  Outside the window the mountains changed from white to green.

  ‘You may see me again later,’ smiled the Quylph. ‘But don’t look out for me.’

  ‘Wait! I want to ask you a question.’

  ‘You had your chance,’ the Quylph said with an expression at once malicious and droll. ‘Be more awake next time.’

  3

  Lao slept in a shining orb. He woke up at his table, with a book on his lap, and the world was different. The jagged mountains raced past the large window. Mistletoe was asleep with a smile on her face. At that moment Jim, the director of the documentary they were making, appeared in front of him.

  ‘We need to film you interviewing your fellow passengers.’

  Lao stared blankly at Jim’s benign jowled face. He was still trying to decipher the inscription that was the Quylph and his hearing was slow.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Jim said.

  ‘Fine! Great! When do you want me?’

  ‘Whenever you’re ready.’

  ‘I’m ready now.’

  It turned out that Jim wasn’t. He had figured Lao would give him trouble for about thirty minutes, which would have given Sam, the cameraman, enough time to finish his shots at the other end of the train. Jim had expected Lao to be difficult, and was a little annoyed that he wasn’t. On the whole, Lao thought, we don’t like people changing on us. It means we have to change too, and we dislike making the effort. We prefer them predictable. Jim stood there not knowing what to do. Lao sat back down, and Mistletoe woke up.

  ‘Come get me when you are ready,’ Lao said.

  ‘I’m ready,’ said Mistletoe.

  ‘Okay,’ said Jim, leaving reluctantly.

  ‘Not you,’ Lao said, squeezing Mistletoe’s hand.

  4

  They were making a television documentary about a journey to Arcadia, in Greece. In those days seven people were needed to film such a journey. They had started in London and had filmed in Paris and were now bound for the Goetheanum in B
asel, Switzerland. Along the way they were filming travellers, asking what their idea of Arcadia was, what their ideal of happiness might be. They were making a journey to a place, but in truth they were making a journey to an idea.

  There were eight of them: seven involved in the filming, and Mistletoe, Lao’s companion. The journey which began as a documentary became one in which, against their wills, they were being changed.

  5

  While he was waiting, Lao began thinking of the persona he would adopt. He conceived of life as a game in which one gets to play many roles and have many personas. He thought it best not to be too hung up on consistency. Only the dead are consistent.

  The imp of impersonation came over him. He thought about how the camera makes one fall in love with an image of oneself, and perpetuates a false reality. What if by sheer repetition we become the person we most often pretend to be? Does that mean there is no authentic self? Are we made of habits, compressed by time, like layered rocks?

  These questions turned in his mind as he prepared to meet the travellers he was to interview. His mind was unclear.

  6

  Husk, who was in charge of all logistics of filming, came over to fetch Lao. She was thin and efficient and neurotically beautiful in her floral dress. She had already scanned the passengers for suitable candidates. The four people she chose were white, middle-class, American, and were travelling together.

 

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