Текст книги "Сонеты Шекспира — это сакрариум Красоте юноши"

Автор книги: Александр Комаров

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Сократ, как учитель Платона пояснил ему, что философ подобен узнику, досрочно освобождённому от «оков пещеры», который приходит к пониманию того, что тени на стене не являются непосредственным основным источником видимых образов на стене в пещере. Философ стремится осознанно понять и воспринять беспрестанно изменяющиеся высшие уровни реальности. Но, другие обитатели пещеры, по-прежнему не желают покидать свою тюрьму, поскольку не знают и не хотят знать более лучшей жизни, чем в этой пещере.

Закованные в пещере не могут видеть ничего из того, что происходит позади за их спиной; будучи прикованными они в состоянии видеть только тени, отбрасываемые на стену пещеры перед ними. Источники звуков, разговоров людей и отголоски событий за их спиной эхом отражаются от стен; но закованные слепо продолжают верить, что эти звуки исходят от движущихся теней на стене (514 с). Сократ предположил, что тени, на самом деле являются второстепенной подменой реальности для «прикованных в пещере» потому, что они никогда не получили возможность увидеть что-либо иное; они не осознают, что то, что они видят на стене пещеры, – это тени предметов и изменяющихся событий перед огнём, будучи тенями, лишь только отражения от реальных вещей и постоянно меняющихся событий за пределами этой аллегорической пещеры, но у «прикованных» не появляется возможность увидеть Истинную Реальность и понять её до конца (514b—515a).

Аллегорический образ «this our pinching cave», «этой нашей ущемляющей пещеры» пьесы Шекспира «Цимбелин, король Британии», есть резон сопоставить с образом аллегорией образа пещеры, в которой родился Хидр из 18 суры Корана в психоанализе Юнгом взятом мной из его очерков «Архетипы в Коллективном Подсознательном» (The Collected Works of C.G. Jung: «The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious», 1969). На примере рассмотрения 18-й суры Корана, где были описаны мотивации главных действующих лиц. Эти фигуры были подвергнуты психоанализу Карлом Юнгом, включая эпизод встречи Мусы и Хидра, который проводился на языке – «аллегорического символизма».

Позиция Юнга в отношении рассматриваемых эпизодов суры это то, что вся сцена – это символическая драма столкновения «Эго», это Муса, то есть фигура Моисея (figure of Moses) и Хидр (figure of Khidr), который олицетворяет Высшее «Я». В качестве символов выступают: Муса, это Моисей (figure of Moses) – это Эго (всё рациональное, опирающееся на установленные, условные рамки, как ограниченная фигура); и Хидр – это Высшее «Я» (всё парадоксальное и целостное, являющееся трансцендентной фигурой). Тогда как, основная задача высшего «Я» (figure of Khidr) поэтапно сломать старую структуру Эго, фигуры Моисея (figure of Moses), но при этом не разрушить личность, а переродить её, следуя предложенному Юнгом процессу трансформации или перерождению личности, так называемому – «процессу индивидуации» (process individuation).

Подробный процесс трансформации личности изложен в исследованиях аспектов, иллюстрирующих процесс трансформации подсознательного Карла Густава Юнга из работы «Архетипы в Коллективном Подсознательном» (The Collected Works of C.G. Jung: The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious», 1969). Поэтому, акцентирую внимание читателя на исследовании темы «purpose of the image of Khidr for Islamic mysticism to Koran, 18th Sura», «предназначение образа Хидра в 18-й суре Корана для исламского мистицизма», выделенной в ходе психоанализа Карлом Юнгом 18-й суры Корана, как наглядного примера символики, ярко выраженной иллюзорности чувственного мира человека и процесса трансформации личности. По Платону, пещера олицетворяет собой чувственный мир иллюзий, в котором проживают всю свою жизнь большая часть людей. Тем не менее, есть резон переместить фокус внимания на 18-ю суру Корана, где получила развитие философская притча об Хидре, где исламский мистицизм заимствует динамику развития философской мысли стоиков, смело используя, в качестве «аллюзии» античный образ – «платоновской пещеры».

Карл Густав Юнг пришёл к выводу, что «пещера», которая фигурирует в сюжете 18-й суры Корана, рассматривалась, как символ бессознательного, отражая чувственный мир человеческих заблуждений и иллюзий. Тогда как, выход из «платоновской пещеры» – это всего лишь начало процесса психической трансформации, таким образом инициируется начало процесса трансформации личности, Юнг назвал его – «процессом индивидуации» (process individuation), классифицировав его в качестве – архетипа.

В своей работе «Архетипы в Коллективном Подсознательном» Карл Юнг провёл психоанализ взяв за шаблон, сюжет истории из 18-й суры Корана, таким образом развил тему основных архетипов коллективного подсознательного в исламском мистицизме. Моей основной задачей в этой монографии было провести параллели между философскими идеями стоиков в контексте сонетов Шекспира и идеями, рассматриваемыми Юнгом.

Ниже предложенный фрагмент текста на английском, был взяты из архивной копии полного собрания сочинений основоположника современного психоанализа Карла Густава Юнга «Архетипы в Коллективном Подсознательном» («The Collected Works of C.G. Jung: «The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious», 1969), все приведённые ниже материалы на английском, полностью соответствуют оригиналу. В результате репрезентативного отбора из вышеупомянутого труда Юнга, мной прилагаются ниже фрагменты тезисов, чтобы развернуть стандартный набор символов м архетипов, иллюстрирующих процесс поэтапной трансформации личности. Вполне возможно, что Шекспир, будучи психологом, использовал в сонетах «философскую составляющую», опирающуюся на воззрения стоиков. При этом интуитивно предвосхищал архетип трансформации личности, описанный Юнгом.

Известно, что сонеты Уильяма Шекспира изначально не являлись религиозными стихами, поэтому автор сонетов никоим образом не мог использовать христианскую «метанойю» в качестве инструмента для убеждения «молодого человека», чтобы юный друг, адресат сонетов – «стал лучше». Хочу напомнить читателю, что предложенный авторский материал является вспомогательным для ознакомительных целей и сопоставлении с философскими воззрениями стоиков, а также теургии Платона. Резервное копирование данного материала категорически воспрещено. Тем не менее, возможно лишь после получения письменного разрешения правообладателей.

(Примечание от автора монографии: некоторые термины Юнга из оригинала, которые были выделены автором курсивом, мной были заключены в кавычки; также внестроничные примечания с ссылками на другие источники, были помещены и заключены мной в скобки строки их нумерации).

– Confer!

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© Swami Runinanda

© Свами Ранинанда

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Original text by Jung, Carl Gustav: «The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious». The Collected Works of C.G. Jung

(Jung, C., Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 9, Part 1. First published in England in 1959 by Routledge & Kegan Paul LTD. Second Edition 1968; pp. 121—122, 135, 142—147). («Essays on a Science of Mythology: The Myth of the Divine Child and the Mysteries of Eleusis» by C. G. Jung and Karl Kerenyi. Published: Oct 21, 1969. Copyright: 1963).

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218. Christ himself is the perfect symbol of the hidden immortal within the mortal man. (Cf.! «A Psychological Approach to the Dogma of the Trinity», pars. 226).

Ordinarily this problem is symbolized by a dual motif such as the Dioscuri, one of whom is mortal and the other immortal. An Indian parallel is the parable of the two friends:

«Behold, upon the selfsame tree.

Two birds, fast-bound companions, sit.

This one enjoys the ripened fruit,

The other looks, but does not eat.

On such a tree my spirit crouched.

Deluded by its powerlessness.

Till seeing with joy how great its Lord,

It found from sorrow swift release».

Shvetashvatara Upanishad 4, 6ff. (Trans, based on Hume, The Thirteen Principal Upanishads, pp. 403ff.).

(Note from the author of monograph: when examining paragraph 218 as a thesis, there is a reason to explain the above lines, which are taken from the Rig Veda and Mundaka Upanishads, where Jiva and Paramatma are allegorically compared to two birds «inseparable companions» sitting on the same tree. Jiva is busy eating the fruits (Karma) on the tree, while Paramatma is only watching his companion, acting as a witness to her activities. The sacred English text of two «slokas» from the Mundaka Upanishads has been separated by me, since «sloka» is a four-line mantra originally written at Sanskrit).

219. Another notable parallel is the Islamic legend of the meeting of Moses and Khidr (Koran, 18th Sura), to which I shall return later on. Naturally the transformation of personality in this enlarging sense does not occur only in the form of such highly significant experiences. There is no lack of more trivial instances, a list of which could easily be compiled from the clinical history of neurotic patients. Indeed, any case where the recognition of a greater personality seems to burst an iron ring round the heart must be included in this category. (I have discussed one such case of a widening of the personality in my inaugural dissertation, «On the Psychology and Pathology of So-called Occult Phenomena»).

223. Possession caused by the anima or animus presents a different picture. Above all, this transformation of personality gives prominence to those traits which are characteristic of the opposite sex; in man the feminine traits, and in woman the masculine. In the state of possession both figures lose their charm and their values; they retain them only when they are turned away from the world, in the introverted state, when they serve as bridges to the unconscious. Turned towards the world, the anima is fickle, capricious, moody, uncontrolled and emotional, sometimes gifted with daemonic intuitions, ruthless, malicious, untruthful, bitchy, double-faced, and mystical. (Cf.! The apt description of the anima in «Aldrovandus, Dendrologiae lihri duo» (1668, p. 211): «She appeared both very soft and very hard at the same time, and while for some two thousand years she had made a show of inconstant looks like a Proteus, she bedevilled the love of Lucius Agatho Priscus, then a citizen of Bologna, with anxious cares and sorrows, which assuredly were conjured up from chaos, or from what Plato calls Agathonian confusion». There is a similar description in Fierz-David, The Dream of Poliphilo, pp. 18-66). The animus is obstinate, harping on principles, laying down the law, dogmatic, world-reforming, theoretic, word-mongering, argumentative, and domineering. (Cf.! Emma Jung, «On the Nature of the Animus»). Both alike have bad taste: the anima surrounds herself with inferior people, and the animus lets himself be taken in by second-rate thinking.

240. I have chosen as an example a figure which plays a great role in Islamic mysticism, namely Khidr, «the Verdant One». He appears in the Eighteenth Sura of the Koran, entitled «The Cave». (The Dawood trans. of the Koran is quoted, sometimes with modifications. The 18th Sura is at pp. 89-98. – Editors).

This entire Sura is taken up with a rebirth mystery. The cave is the place of rebirth, that secret cavity in which one is shut up in order to be incubated and renewed. The Koran says of it: «You might have seen the rising sun decline to the right of their cavern, and as it set, go past them on the left, while they (the Seven Sleepers) stayed in the middle». The «middle» is the Centre where the jewel reposes, where the incubation or the sacrificial rite or the transformation takes place. The most beautiful development of this symbolism is to be found on Mithraic altarpieces (Cumont, Textes et monuments figures relatifs aux mysteres de Mithra, II) and in alchemical pictures of the transformative substance (Cf.! especially the crowning vision in the dream of Zosimos: «He carried an object which was white round about and which shone in dazzling splendour; and the name of it was 'the position of the sun in the midst of the sky'», In my «Some Observations on the Visions of Zosimos» (Swiss edn.; p. 147, n.), which is always shown between sun and moon. Representations of the crucifixion frequently follow the same type, and a similar symbolical arrangement is also found in the transformation or healing ceremonies of the Navahos. (Matthews, The Mountain Chant, and Stevenson, Ceremonial of Hasjelti Dailps). Just such a place of the Centre or of transformation is the cave in which those seven had gone to sleep, little thinking that they would experience there a prolongation of life verging on immortality. When they awoke, they had slept 309 years.

241. The legend has the following meaning: Anyone who gets into that cave, that is to say into the cave which everyone has in himself, or into the darkness that lies behind consciousness, will find himself involved in an—at first—unconscious process of transformation. By penetrating into the unconscious he makes a connection with his unconscious contents. This may result in a momentous change of personality in the positive or negative sense. The transformation is often interpreted as a prolongation of the natural span of life or as an earnest of immortality. The former is the case with many alchemists, notably Paracelsus (in his treatise De vita longa). (An account of the secret doctrine hinted at in this treatise may be found in my «Paracelsus as a Spiritual Phenomenon» (Swiss edn., pp. 85-88), and the latter is exemplified in the Eleusinian mysteries.

242. Those seven sleepers indicate by their sacred number (The different versions of the legend speak sometimes of seven and sometimes of eight disciples. According to the account given in the Koran, the eighth is a dog. The 18th Sura mentions still other versions: «Some will say: 'The sleepers were three: their dog was the fourth'. Others, guessing at the unknown, will say: 'They were five; their dog was the sixth'. And yet others: 'Seven; their dog was the eighth'». It is evident, therefore, that the dog is to be taken into account. This would seem to be an instance of that characteristic wavering between seven and eight (or three and four, as the case may be), which I have pointed out in Psychology and Alchemy, pars. 20off). There the wavering between seven and eight is connected with the appearance of Mephistopheles, who, as we know, materialized out of the black poodle. In the case of three and four, the fourth is the devil or the female principle, and on a higher level the Mater Dei. (Cf.! «Psychology and Religion», pars. i24ff). We may be dealing with the same kind of ambiguity as in the numbering of the Egyptian nonad (paut = «company of gods». Cf.! Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians, I, p. 88). The Khidr legend relates to the persecution of the Christians under Decius (c. ad. 250). The scene is Ephesus, where St. John lay «sleeping», but not dead. The seven sleepers woke up again during the reign of Theodosius II (408-450); thus they had slept not quite 200 years), that they are gods (The seven are the planetary gods of the ancients. Cf.! Bousset, Hauptprobleme der Gnosis, pp, 25-66), who are transformed during sleep and thereby enjoy eternal youth. This helps us to understand at the outset that we are dealing with a mystery legend. The fate of the numinous figures recorded in it grips the hearer, because the story gives expression to parallel processes in his own unconscious which in that way are integrated with consciousness again. The repristination of the original state is tantamount to attaining once more the freshness of youth.

243. The story of the sleepers is followed by some moral observations which appear to have no connection with it. But this apparent irrelevance is deceptive. In reality, these edifying comments are just what are needed by those who cannot be reborn themselves and have to be content with moral conduct, that is to «Did I not tell you», he replied, «that you would not bear with me»?

«Pardon my forgetfulness», said Moses. «Do not be angry with me on this account».

They journeyed on until they fell in with a certain youth. Moses' companion slew him, and Moses said: «You have killed an innocent man who has done no harm. Surely you have committed a wicked crime».

«Did I not tell you», he replied, «that you would not bear with me»?

Moses said: «If ever I question you again, abandon me; for then I should deserve it». They travelled on until they came to a certain city. They asked the people for some food, but the people declined to receive them as their guests. There they found a wall on the point of falling down.

The other raised it up, and Moses said: «Had you wished, you could have demanded payment for your labours». «Now the time has arrived when we must part», said the other, «But first I will explain to you those acts of mine which you could not bear with in patience».

«Know that the ship belonged to some poor fishermen. I damaged it because in their rear was a king who was taking every ship by force. As for the youth, his parents both are true believers, and we feared lest he should plague them with his wickedness and unbelief».

It was our wish that their Lord should grant them another in his place, a son more righteous and more filial.

«As for the wall, it belonged to two orphan boys in the city whose father was an honest man. Beneath it their treasure is buried. Your Lord decreed in His mercy that they should dig out their treasure when they grew to manhood. What I did was not done by caprice. That is the meaning of the things you could not bear with in patience».

244. This story is an amplification and elucidation of the legend of the seven sleepers and the problem of rebirth. Moses is the man who seeks, the man on the «quest». On this pilgrimage he is accompanied by his «shadow», the «servant» or «lower» man («pneumatikos» and «sarkikos» in two individuals).

Joshua is the son of Nun, which is a name for «fish» (Vollers, «Chidher», Archiv fur Rehgionswissenschaft, XII, p. 241). All quotations from the commentaries are extracted from this article), suggesting that Joshua had his origin in the depths of the waters, in the darkness of the shadow-world. The critical place is reached «where the two seas meet», which is interpreted as the isthmus of Suez, where the Western and the Eastern seas come close together. In other words, it is that «place of the middle» which we have already met in the symbolic preamble, but whose significance was not recognized at first by the man and his shadow. They had «forgotten their fish», the humble source of nourishment. The fish refers to Nun, the father of the shadow, of the carnal man, who comes from the dark world of the Creator. For the fish came alive again and leapt out of the basket in order to find its way back to its homeland, the sea. In other words, the animal ancestor and creator of life separates himself from the conscious man, an event which amounts to loss of the instinctive psyche. This process is a symptom of dissociation well known in the psychopathology of the neuroses; it is always connected with one-sidedness of the conscious attitude. In view of the fact, however, that neurotic phenomena are nothing but exaggerations of normal processes, it is not to be wondered at that very similar phenomena can also be found within the scope of the normal. It is a question of that well-known «loss of soul» among primitives, as described above in the section on diminution of the personality; in scientific language, an «abaissement du niveau mental».

245. Moses and his servant soon notice what has happened. Moses had sat down, «worn out» and hungry. Evidently he had a feeling of insufficiency, for which a physiological explanation is given. Fatigue is one of the most regular symptoms of loss of energy or libido. The entire process represents something very typical, namely the failute to recognize a moment of crucial importance, a motif which we encounter in a great variety of mythical forms. Moses realizes that he has unconsciously found the source of life and then lost it again, which we might well regard as a remarkable intuition. The fish they had intended to eat is a content of the unconscious, by which the connection with the origin is re-established. He is the reborn one, who has awakened to new life. This came to pass, as the commentaries say, through the contact with the water of life: by slipping back into the sea, the fish once more becomes a content of the unconscious, and its offspring are distinguished by having only one eye and half a head.(Ibid., p. 253).

246. The alchemists, too, speak of a strange fish in the sea, the «round fish lacking bones and skin» (Cf.! Aton, pars. 195ff), which symbolizes the «round element», the germ of the «animate stone», of the filius philosophorum. The water of life has its parallel in the aqua permanens of alchemy. This water is extolled as «vivifying», besides which it has the property of dissolving all solids and coagulating all liquids. The Koran commentaries state that, on the spot where the fish disappeared, the sea was turned to solid ground, whereon the tracks of the fish could still be seen. (Vollers, p. 244). On the island thus formed Khidr was sitting, in the place of the middle. A mystical interpretation says that he was sitting «on a throne consisting of light, between the upper and the lower sea» (Ibid., p. 260), again in the middle position. The appearance of Khidr seems to be mysteriously connected with the disappearance of the fish. It looks almost as if he himself had been the fish. This conjecture is supported by the fact that the commentaries relegate the source of life to the «place of darkness». (Ibid., p. 258). The depths of the sea are dark (mare tenebrositatis). The darkness has its parallel in the alchemical «nigredo», which occurs after the «coniunctio», when the female takes the male into herself. (Cf.! the myth in the «Visio Arislei», especially the version in the Rosarium philosophorum (Art. aurif., II, p. 246), likewise the drowning of the sun in the Mercurial Fountain and the green lion who devours the sun (Art. aurif., II, pp. 315-366). Cf.! «Psychology of the Transference», pp. 256-166). From the «nigredo» issues the Stone, the symbol of the immortal self; moreover, its first appearance is likened to «fish eyes». (The white stone appears on the edge of the vessel, «like Oriental gems, like fish's eyes». Cf.! Joannes Isaacus Hollandus, «Opera mineralia» (1600), p. 370. Also, Lagneus, «Harmonica chemica». Theatrum chemicum, IV (1613), p. 870). The eyes appear at the end of the nigredo and with the beginning of the albedo. Another simile of the same sort is the scintillae that appear in the dark substance. This idea is traced back to Zacharias 4: 10 (DV): «And they shall rejoice and see the tin plummet in the hand of Zorobabel. These are the seven eyes of the Lord that run to and from through the whole earth». (Cf.! Eirenaeus Orandus, in the introduction to Nicholas Flamel's Exposition of the Hieroglyphicall Figures, 1624, fol. A5).

They are the seven eyes of God on the corner-stone of the new temple (Zach. 3: 9). The number seven suggests the seven stars, the planetary gods, who were depicted by the alchemists in a cave under the earth (Mylius, Philosophia reformata, 1622, p. 167). They are the «sleepers enchained in Hades» (Berthelot, Collection des anciens alchimistes grecs, IV, XX, 8). This is an allusion to the legend of the seven sleepers).

247. Khidr may well be a symbol of the self. His qualities signalize him as such: he is said to have been born in a cave, i.e., in darkness. He is the «Long-lived One», who continually renews himself, like Elijah. Like Osiris, he is dismembered at the end of time, by Antichrist, but is able to restore himself to life. He is analogous to the Second Adam, with whom the reanimated fish is identified (Vollers, p. 254). This may possibly be due to Christian influence: one thinks of the fish meals of the early Christians and of fish symbolism in general. Vollers himself stresses the analogy between Christ and Khidr. Concerning the fish symbolism, see Aion); he is a counsellor, a Paraclete, «Brother Khidr». Anyway, Moses accepts him as a higher consciousness and looks up to him for instruction. Then follow those incomprehensible deeds which show how ego-consciousness reacts to the superior guidance of the self through the twists and turns of fate. To the initiate who is capable of transformation it is a comforting tale; to the obedient believer, an exhortation not to murmur against Allah's incomprehensible omnipotence. Khidr symbolizes not only the higher wisdom but also a way of acting which is in accord with this wisdom and transcends reason.

248. Anyone hearing such a mystery tale will recognize himself in the questing Moses and the forgetful Joshua, and the tale shows him how the immortality-bringing rebirth comes about. Characteristically, it is neither Moses nor Joshua who is transformed, but the forgotten fish. Where the fish disappears, there is the birthplace of Khidr. The immortal being issues from something humble and forgotten, indeed, from a wholly improbable source. This is the familiar motif of the hero's birth and need not be documented here. (Further examples in «Symbols of Transformation», Part II). I could give many more from alchemy, but shall content myself with the old verse:

«This is the stone, poor and of little price.

Spurned by the fool, but honoured by the wise».

(Ros. phil, in Art. aunf., II, p. 210). (The «lapis exilis» may be a connecting-link with the «lapsit exillis», the grail of Wolfram von Eschenbach). Anyone who knows the Bible will think of Isaiah 53: 266, where the «servant of God» is described, and of the gospel stories of the Nativity. The nourishing character of the transformative substance or deity is borne out by numerous cult-legends: Christ is the bread, Osiris the wheat, Mondamin the maize, (Mondamin the maize comes from Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha, in including this literary legend Jung indicates his readiness to set an individual myth alongside examples from antiquity. – Editors); etc. These symbols coincide with a psychic fact which obviously, from the point of view of consciousness, has the significance merely of something to be assimilated, but whose real nature is overlooked. The fish symbol shows immediately what this is: it is the «nourishing» influence of unconscious contents, which maintain the vitality of consciousness by a continual influx of energy; for consciousness does not produce its energy by itself. What is capable of transformation is just this root of consciousness, which—inconspicuous and almost invisible (i.e., unconscious) though it is—provides consciousness with all its energy. Since the unconscious gives us the feeling that it is something alien, a non-ego, it is quite natural that it should be symbolized by an alien figure. Thus, on the one hand, it is the most insignificant of things, while on the other, so far as it potentially contains that «round» wholeness which consciousness lacks, it is the most significant of all. This «round» thing is the great treasure that lies hidden in the cave of the unconscious, and its personification is this personal being who represents the higher unity of conscious and unconscious. It is a figure comparable to Hiranyagarbha, Purusha, Atman, and the mystic Buddha. For this reason I have elected to call it the «self», by which I understand a psychic totality and at the same time a Centre, neither of which coincides with the ego but includes it, just as a larger circle encloses a smaller one.

249. The intuition of immortality which makes itself felt during the transformation is connected with the peculiar nature of the unconscious. It is, in a sense, non-spatial and non-temporal. The empirical proof of this is the occurrence of so-called telepathic phenomena, which are still denied by hypersceptical critics, although in reality they are much more common than is generally supposed. (Rhine, New Frontiers of the Mind. Cf.! also «Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle». – Editors). The feeling of immortality, it seems to me, has its origin in a peculiar feeling of extension in space and time, and I am inclined to regard the deification rites in the mysteries as a projection of this same psychic phenomenon.

250. The character of the self as a personality comes out very plainly in the Khidr legend. This feature is most strikingly ex-pressed in the non-Koranic stories about Khidr, of which Vollers gives some telling examples. During my trip through Kenya, the headman of our safari was a Somali who had been brought up in the Sufi faith. To him Khidr was in every way a living person, and he assured me that I might at any time meet Khidr, because I was, as he put it, a «Mtuyakitabu» (He spoke in Kiswahili, the lingua franca of East Africa. It contains many words borrowed from Arabic, as shown by the above example: kitab = book), a 'man of the Book', meaning the Koran. He had gathered from our talks that I knew the Koran better than he did himself (which was, by the way, not saying a great deal). For this reason he regarded me as «islamu». He told me I might meet Khidr in the street in the shape of a man, or he might appear to me during the night as a pure white light, or—he smilingly picked a blade of grass—the Verdant One might even look like that. He said he himself had once been comforted and helped by Khidr, when he could not find a job after the war and was suffering want. One night, while he slept, he dreamt he saw a bright white light near the door and he knew it was Khidr. Quickly leaping to his feet (in the dream), he reverentially saluted him with the words «Salem aleikum», 'peace be with you', and then he knew that his wish would be fulfilled. He added that a few days later he was offered the post as headman of a safari by a firm of outfitters in Nairobi.

251. This shows that, even in our own day, Khidr still lives on in the religion of the people, as friend, adviser, comforter, and teacher of revealed wisdom. The position assigned to him by dogma was, according to my Somali, that of «maleika kxvanza-yamungu», «First Angel of God»—a sort of «Angel of the Face», an angelos in the true sense of the word, a messenger.