Literarische Essenzen

Nr. 13

Life of Pi
(Yann Martel, 2001)

Part I: Toronto and Pondicherry

Fiction is the selective transforming of reality, the twisting of it to bring out its essence.

I emailed the notes of my failed novel… I mailed them to a fictitious address in Siberia, with a return address, equally fictitious.

The voice that answered had an Indian lilt to its Canadian accent, light but unmistakable, like a trace of incense in the air.

I wish I could convey the perfection of a seal slipping into water or a spider monkey swinging from point to point or a lion merely turning its head. But language founders in such seas. Better to picture it in your head if you want to feel it.

In zoos, as in nature, the best times to visit are sunrise and sunset.

Animals in the wild lead lives of compulsion and necessity within an unforgiving social hierarchy in an environment where the supply of fear is high and the supply of food is low and where territory must constantly be defended and parasites forever endured. What is the meaning of freedom in such a context? Animals in the wild are, in practice, free neither in space nor in time, nor in their personal relations.

I know zoos are no longer in people's good graces. Religion faces the same problem. Certain illusions about freedom plague them both.

Repetition is important in the training not only of animals but also of humans.

Mr. Kumar was a regular visitor who read the labels and descriptive notices in their entirety and approved of every animal he saw. Each to him was a triumph of logic and mechanics, and nature as a whole was an exceptionally fine illustration of science.
When he visited the zoo, it was to take the pulse of the universe, and his stethoscopic mind always confirmed to him that everything was in order, that everything was order. He left the zoo scientifically refreshed.

Atheists are my brothers and sisters of a different faith, and every word they speak speaks of faith. Like me, they go as far as the legs of reason will carry them – and then they leap.

To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.

…assaults on animals, with walking sticks, umbrellas, hairpins, knitting needles, scissors and whatnot, often with an aim to taking an eye out or to injuring sexual parts.

Life will defend itself no matter how small it is. Every animal is ferocious and dangerous. It may not kill you, but it will certainly injure you.

It is not so much a question of constructing an imitation of conditions in the wild as of getting to the essence of these conditions.

All living things contain a measure of madness that moves them in strange, sometimes inexplicable ways. This madness can be saving; it is part and parcel of the ability to adapt. Whatever the reason for wanting to escape, sane or insane, animals to not escape to somewhere but from something.

Much hostile and aggressive behavior among animals is the expression of social insecurity.

Socially inferior animals make the most strenuous, resourceful efforts to get to know their keepers.

The individual soul touches upon the world soul like a well reaches for the water table. That which sustains the universe beyond thought and language, and that which is at the core of us and struggles for expression, is the same thing. The finite within the infinite, the infinite within the finite.

Christianity is a religion in a rush. Look at the world created in seven days. Even on a symbolic level that's creation in a frenzy. If Hinduism flows placidly like the Ganges, then Christianity bustles like Toronto at rush hour. In a moment you are lost or saved. Christianity stretches back through the ages, but in essence it exists only at one time: right now.

Then I raced down the hill on the left and raced up the hill on the right – to offer thanks to Lord Krishna for having put Jesus of Nazareth, whose humanity I found so compelling, in my way.

And right there before me, in the midst of his workplace, he prayed. It was incongruous, but it was I who felt out of place.

I can well imagine an atheist's last words: “White, white! L-L-Love! My God.” – and the deathbed leap of faith. Whereas the agnostic, if he stays true to his reasonable self, if he stays beholden to dry, yeastless factuality, might try to explain the warm light bathing him by saying “Possibly a f-f-failing oxygenation of the b-b-brain”, and, to the very end, lack imagination and miss the better story.

It isn't a circus with dead people jumping out of tombs all the time, that's what! We Muslims stick to the essential miracle of existence. Birds flying, rain falling, crops growing – these are miracles enough for us.

There are always those who take it upon themselves to defend God… these people fail to realize that it is on the inside that God must be defended, not on the outside. The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of each heart.

Progress is unstoppable. It is a drumbeat to which we must all march. Technology helps and good ideas spread – these are the two laws of nature. If you don't let technology help you, if you resist good ideas, you condemn yourself to dinosaurhood!

…neither big enough a business to be above the law nor small enough to survive on its margins.

Part II: The Pacific Ocean

Nature can put on a thrilling show. The stage is vast, the lighting is dramatic, the extras are innumerable, and the budget for special effects is absolutely unlimited.

To be drunk on alcohol is disgraceful, but to be drunk on water is noble and ecstatic. I basked in bliss and plenitude for several minutes.

Oncoming death is terrible enough, but worse still is oncoming death with time to spare, time in which all the happiness that was yours and all the happiness that might have been yours becomes clear to you.

If there's one thing more dangerous than a healthy animal, it's an injured animal.

I learnt that the horizon, as seen from a height of five feet on a calm day, was two and a half miles away.

To look out with idle hope is tantamount to dreaming one's life away.

I discovered that the sea is a city. Just below me, all around, unsuspected by me, were highways, boulevards, streets and roundabouts bustling with submarine traffic.

I did not count the days or the weeks or the months. Time is an illusion that only makes us pant. I survived because I forgot even the very notion of time.

I had in my life looked at a number of beautiful starry nights, where with just two colours and the simplest of styles nature draws the grandest of pictures, and I felt the feelings of wonder and smallness that we all feel, and I got a clear sense of direction from the spectacle, most definitely, but I mean that in a spiritual sense, not a geographic one.

Time became distance for me in the way it is for all mortals – I traveled down the road of life.

Faith in God is an opening up, a letting go, a deep trust, a free act of love – but sometimes it was so hard to love. Despair was a heavy blackness that let no light in or out. It was a hell beyond expression.

It was frightening, the extent to which a full belly made for a good mood. The one would follow the other measure for measure. It was such a terribly fickle existence. I was at the mercy of turtle meat for smiles.

When it is light, the openness of the sea is blinding and frightening. When it is dark, the darkness is claustrophobic.

You get your happiness where you can. You reach a pint where you're at the bottom of hell, yet you have your arms crossed and a smile on your face, and you feel you're the luckiest person on earth. Why? Because at your feet you have a tiny dead fish.

Do you see these invisible spirals on the margins of the page? I thought I would run out of paper. It was the pens that ran out.

I opened my eyes. In the near distance I saw trees. I continued to disbelieve my eyes. But it was a thrill to be deluded in such a high-quality way.

It is important in life to conclude things properly. Only then can you let go. Otherwise you are left with words you should have said but never did, and your heart is heavy with remorse.

“…we just don't believe there was a tiger living in your lifeboat.” “Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. God is hard to believe, ask any believer. What is your problem with hard to believe?”

“We find it very unlikely.” “So is winning the lottery, yet someone always wins.”

The world isn't just the way it is. It is how we understand it, no? And in understanding something, we bring something to it, no? Doesn't that make life a story?

I found hunger improved the taste of everything.

“So tell me, which is the better story?” “The story with the animals.” “Thank you. And so it goes with God.”