The Great Weaver From Kashmir by Halldór Laxness Read Free Book Online

the old poets, I am filled with blissful admiration for the rhythmless caterwauling of a harmonica down in Melar, and it is an aesthetic pleasure for me to listen to the false notes played on the flutes of beggars on the squares down south in Barcelona. And I am seized with no less mystical joy when paying attention to the hens, which peck dainty, glittering grains from the rubbish on the side streets of Þingholt, than when watching the golden plover or ptarmigan on the mountains, about which the greatpoets sang glorious odes. Nothing touches me more deeply than the simple and plain, things whose power resides in being whatever they are. My most precious gift is that I have been given an aesthetic soul, the ability to worship the glory on the visage of things.”
    After several silent minutes he pulled the end of one sleeve back from his watchband and looked at his watch.
    â€œDiljá,” he continued. “I’m leaving and have come to say good-bye. I am for the moment standing at the heart of my country, but within a few hours I will have embarked upon the sea, with foreign shores before the ship’s prow. I feel as if I’m setting out into pitch-black eternity, alone, on foot, over countless seas. I have of course been abroad every second or third summer since I was a child, but this is the first time that I’ve felt as if I were leaving. Now I’m leaving. Who knows, perhaps I shall never return, Diljá. Father and friend of all that is, tend to this green plot!”
    And after a short silence:
    â€œWhat else might lie before me than to become lost? A man who has spoken to God must become lost. And I yearn to be sucked into the whirlpool of life until I have become a tiny pupil that peeks out along the streets of some huge city, a tiny songbird’s tongue so that I can sing about what I am. When I finally leave this place, I wish that these might be my parting words: ‘What I saw was beyond compare.’
    â€œHave you heard the story that most suits the calling of the poet? It is the story of Vyasa. Vyasa composed a poem that is seven times more sapient than all the Holy Scriptures. The poem is called the Bhagavad Gita. And it starts out by saying that Vyasa sang this poem, ‘. . . but concerning Vyasa nothing is known, neither whenhe lived nor where.’ God grant that I might become forgotten and lost like Vyasa, but that my verse might live; that I might be forgotten like the king Shah Jahan, who built for his deceased queen the Taj Mahal palace, the most glorious building in the world. Peace be to Vyasa, peace be to Shah Jahan and his wife. I pray for the same peace. God grant that those of other faiths exalt my verse in the temple while they kowtow in praise of the One who gave me my harp! God grant that the children in the side streets sing my verse in the evenings while they dance beneath the street lamps, Hesperus gleaming beyond the wall. Diljá, we may never see each other again.”
    His last words slipped into her heart like an arrow; she gasped quickly for breath and slowly shut her eyes. Then she moved just a touch nearer to him as if cuddling up to him were foremost on her mind. All that he did was give her a stern, investigative look.
    â€œYes, Diljá, I’m leaving,” he repeated, with unswerving emphasis on every syllable, perhaps from premeditated cruelty. And she looked at him in a way that showed her ignorance of the art of language, although the pious sorrow and the anguished affection on her face were mightier than words. And he was suddenly stymied.
    â€œDiljá,” he said suddenly, “I shall never, ever forget you.”
    His voice burned with passion for a single moment, and it was clear that he had to constrain himself into silence. He looked down at the grass. They sat a little distance apart from each other and did not touch. She also looked down at the grass and said:
    â€œI’m never going to get married