The Age of Magic by Ben Okri Read Free Book Online

kind of idolatry.’
    ‘Maybe, maybe not. But you show me a civilising quality and I will show you how the will holds it up like the Doric columns of a Greek temple.’
    ‘Okay, what about love?’ offered Riley.
    ‘Love? Love is sustained by the will when, as is inevitable, it passes the early magic stages.’
    Riley looked around, and grinned.
    ‘You may smile, but there is a lull in the progression of all natural things. But will can take over till the rhythm of progression reasserts itself.’
    Riley looked puzzled.
    ‘Thus a poem begins well and dries out; a novel starts with a blaze and dwindles into inconsequence; love begins in bliss and soon hits the banks of disenchantment. But only will sees a way. Only will keeps things on track till affection blooms again.’
    ‘You can’t will love!’ cried Husk, indignantly.
    ‘No, but with will a less glamorous, but more steady love – the love on which all lasting marriages are based – takes over.’
    ‘Still, you can’t will it,’ said Husk, in a Galileo sotto voce .

14
    Throughout the exchanges Lao had been silent and kept his eyes on Jim. He wore his ironic smile. While Jim was speaking Lao found his mind wandering back to the conversation in the coach but he refused to come to any conclusions. He would just listen.
    Jim helped himself to wine and drank half the glass. There were murmurs round the table about the time their food was taking. Jim took a deep breath, tousled what was left of his hair, and returned to the charge.
    ‘I should elaborate a bit more. The novel never gets written without will. It remains a beautiful idea to be bandied about at dinner parties. A film never gets made with mantras and meditation. Hard graft, the march of a thousand miles, and the willingness to sacrifice almost everything is what gets a film to the big screen. The will is the most direct translation of the life-force into deed. When you hear it said by a great artist that my life is in those works or I wrote it with my blood , you know that an exchange, a kind of Faustian pact, has been effected. Life-force for life work. The will is life-force.’
    Lao smiled. His intuition had been right. Jim looked at him expectantly, but Lao stayed silent, and Jim continued.
    ‘When the true life’s work is done a man is fit for nothing but tending his garden and awaiting the flower of his death.’
    ‘We’re getting morbid tonight,’ said Propr.
    ‘Not really,’ replied Jim, ‘I’m just trying to show why the failures of those who have made great efforts move us so much.’
    ‘Yes, they tried, made great efforts, but death defeated them,’ said Sam. ‘There is heroism in that too.’
    Mistletoe had been following the general tenor of the conversation with her left ear, as it were, while she was drawing Jim. Without a pause, quietly, she said:
    ‘The gods would rather we use our life than squander it.’
    Everyone stared at her, unsure whether she was speaking to them, but Jim took it as a sign of concurrence and was encouraged to go on.
    ‘As I was saying, those who perish in the struggle to turn their dreams into reality are more admirable than those who live and die without giving a sign that they were ever alive. One of the greatest legacies we can leave future generations is the knowledge that we fought the beautiful fight, played the game, bore arms. And if we are defeated by the bastards, crushed by mediocrity and the cliques that rule the world, then our defeat will spur on future generations. Behind most great men and women are defeated ancestors.’
    Jim stared thoughtfully ahead, a lost look on his face. For a moment he seemed to have lost his point. He sipped some wine and began to speak again, as if thinking aloud.
    ‘It’s the will that pulls us up. Dante composed The Divine Comedy with a magnificent will that transcended calumny and exile. A baby wakens into life with a cry, its first breath is an act of will.’
    ‘Not an act of will,’ interrupted