Murakami & T.S. Eliot

I recently finished reading Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami.  This is the second book of his I have read; the first was Norwegian Wood. A colleague was reading it on the train one day, and I asked him what the book was about. He said that it was hard to explain, and loaned me his copy. I read it quickly, since I was more eager to have something to talk about with my colleague than I was to enter a fictional world. I don't remember many details of Norwegian Wood, only that it gave us permission to talk about something other than work, and our relationship transcended that of colleagues. We became friends. 

That was two years ago. My friend is more so a colleague these days. Murakami is a completely different author to me now.  Now, he is the creator of a great abyss that I have been unable to escape, even after turning the last page. The pages were filled with obtuse flashes of erudite sentences, and it seemed Murakami spared no moment to flex his well-read muscles. Names of poets, classical composers, western and more contemporary philosophers, and authors wiz in and out as frequently as those of his main characters. For the pedestrian reader, the revelation on page 316 that Crow and Kafka are one and the same may have come as a shock, but Murakami showed his hand on page 32 when the main character introduces himself as "Kafka" under the section titled "The boy Named Crow." 

I wondered what other crumbs Murakami left. I grew desperate to find them, hoping that each would serve as a foothold in the vast abyss. For me, the largest of them all appears on page 181. I have always liked T.S. Eliot....

The Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot

Mistah Kurtz—he dead.
A penny for the Old Guy

I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! Our dried voices, when

We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless As wind in dry grass
or rats' feet over broken glass In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour, Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other kingdom Remember us - if at all - not as lost Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams In death's dream kingdom These do not appear:
There, the eyes are

Sunlight on a broken column There, is a tree swinging And voices are
In the wind's singing

More distant and more solemn Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer -

Not that final meeting In the twilight kingdom

III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death's other kingdom Waking alone
At the hour when we are Trembling with tenderness

Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of this tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom The hope only
Of empty men.

V

Here we go round the prickly pear Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act

Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception And the creation Between the emotion And the response

Falls the Shadow Life is very long

Between the desire And the spasm Between the potency And the existence Between the essence And the descent Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but with a whimper.

Crow and Kafka. Murakami and Eliot. Each reflecting on one another, all the while embracing the uniqueness of their private thoughts. In five simple sections, I'm no longer the reader submerged in the sea of Murakami's story, rushing to orient myself in the hopes of finding the surface before I run out of air. It's here.