The Enchantress of Florence

So I just finished reading The Enchantress of Florence, the latest work by renowned author Salman Rushdie. I wasn't quite sure what to expect of this novel. I had previously read a few of Rushdie's novels: Shalimar the Clown, to which I became immediately enthralled; Fury, a good novel, but definitely a little strange; and The Satanic Verses, which I found highly overrated and way too long. I started reading The Ground Beneath Her Feet, but couldn't get into it.

I figured The Enchantress of Florence could go either way, based on my prior attempts with Rushdie. Still, I found the synopsis interesting and of course no harm done if I liked it or if I didn't - it's only a book, after all.

The novel concerns a young European traveller - 'Mogor dell'Amore' - who arrives at the court of the Emperor Akbar claiming to be the son of a lost Mughal princess: Qara Koz, a woman so beautiful she is believed to have powers of enchantment. The story covers the history of Qara Koz and how she came to arrive in Florence, following captivity by an Uzbeg warlord and then a Persian Shah. The narrator alternates between the Mughal city of Sikri and the city of Florence. The book jacket asks the question: "But is the Mogor's story true? And if so, then what happened to the lost princess? And if he's a liar, must he die?"

An intriguing story!! Would I be as captivated with the story as Emperor Akbar? And the verdict: I LOVED IT! You know you're going to love a book when the opening line strikes you: "In the day's last light the glowing lake below the palace-city looked like a sea of molten gold."

There were a few things that I found so remarkable about this book:

1) Unlike so many books today that lament how miserable everyone's life is (no really, it's true!), this book had a captivating tale that was almost like a children's story. You had kingdoms and enchantments and battles and ghosts, plus some sex and profanity. Not since Philip Pullman's Dark Materials Trilogy or Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings have I thought a story has held me in its attention so well.

2) The way in which Salman Rushdie continues to question religion. That he does so in his controversial novel The Satanic Verses is fairly obvious (though I did not find it nearly as offensive as I thought it was going to be). In The Enchantress he uses Emperor Akbar as a scapegoat in which to convey philosophical musings on whether or not humans really need God.

Consider the following quotes as examples:

p.83 “He wanted, for example, to investigate why one should hold fast to a religion not because it was true but because it was the faith of one’s fathers. Was faith not faith but simple family habit? Maybe there was no true religion but only this eternal handing down. And error could be handed down as easily as virtue. Was faith no more than an error of our ancestors? Maybe there was no true religion. Yes, he had allowed himself to think this. He wanted to be able to tell someone of his suspicion that men had made their gods and not the other way around. He wanted to be able to say, it is man at the centre of things, not God. It is man at the heart and the bottom and the top, man at the front and the back and the side, man the angel and the devil, the miracle and the sin, man and always man, and let us henceforth have no other temples but those dedicated to mankind.”

p. 83 “If man had created god then man could uncreate him too. Or was it possible for a creation to escape the power of the creator? Could a god, once created, become impossible to destroy? Did such fictions require an autonomy of the will that made them immortal?”

p. 310 “If there had never been a God…it might have been easier to work out what goodness was. This business of worship, of the abnegation of self in the fact of the Almighty, was a distraction, a false trail. Wherever goodness lay, it did not lie in ritual, unthinking obeisance before a deity but rather, perhaps, in the slow, clumsy, error-strewn working out of an individual or collective path.”

However, in perhaps a contradictory statement, the Emperor reasons:

“The past was a light that if properly directed could illumine the present more brightly than any contemporary lamp…Understanding was another such flame. Knowledge was never simply born in the human mind; it was always reborn. The relaying of wisdom from one age to the next, this cycle of rebirths: this was wisdom. All else was barbarity.”

This may seem contradictory in lieu of the Emperor's comment regarding why one must follow the faith passed down by one's forefathers. Is it not the case that in religious families, parents feel the best knowledge they can pass on to their children is that of a religious nature: how to please God. I know this is certainly true in the families of many people I know. Who is to say what can be deemed as "knowledge" from the past, and what can be deemed as "a distraction, a false trail"? I don't have the answer to these questions, and merely pose them for interests' sake.

3) The power of women. Subtitled: the power women have over men/how easily men are swayed/the weakness of men. Rushdie describes many times over how the book's main woman, Qara Koz, is so beautiful that she can put a spell over people - usually men. However, we see that both men and women do her bidding. And not that she is evil in the use of her powers, but rather she uses her sorcery for harmony and contentment.

In one interesting passage, Rushdie alludes to the fact that men behave in such a way that they believe they are invincible. Granted, he is talking about soldiers. However, one could suggest that at some point in any person's life, the invicibility factor wears off and one is left with the cold reality that they will die. And in that moment, where do we turn?

p.214-215 “There is a weakness that comes over men at the battle’s end, when they become aware of the fragility of life, they clutch it to their bosoms like a crystal bowl they almost dropped, and the treasure of life scares away their courage. At such a time all men are cowards, and can think of nothing but women’s embraces, nothing but the healing words only women can whisper, nothing but the joy of losing themselves in the fatal labyrinths of love. In the grip of this weakness a man will do things which unravel his best-laid plans, he can make promises which change his future.”

p.215 “The need for a woman to cure the loneliness of murder…To wipe away the guilt of victory of the vainglory of defeat. To still the tremble in the bones. To dry the hot tears of relief and shame. To hold you while you feel the ebbing tide of your hatred and its replacement by a form of higher embarrassment. To sprinkle you with lavender to hide the scent of blood on the fingertips and the gore stinking in the beard. The need for a woman to tell you that you are hers and to turn your mind away from death. To quell your curiosity about how it might be to stand at the Judgement Seat, to take away your envy of those who have gone before you to see the Almighty plain, and to soothe the doubts twisting in your stomach, about the existence of the afterlife and even of God himself, because the slain are so utterly dead, and no higher purpose seems to exist at all.”

On another point, and not that I am advocating using sexual favours as a means to achieve, well, anything (!), but Rushdie's book certainly uses this form of coercion on several occaisions. I would merely like to take this opportunity to illustrate that so often there is only one thing on the minds of men, and they will do many things to get it.

Of course this is certainly not the only way in which women are strong. I highly enjoyed this quote:

p.51 “Women think less about men in general than the generality of men can imagine. Women think about their own men less often than their men like to believe. All women need all men less than all men need them. That is why it is so important to keep a good woman down. If you do not keep her down she will surely get away.”

Well, I'm not so sure if I liked the part about keeping a good woman down...though I suppose it is true: A good woman should try and get away if you don't give her a reason to stay!

Then there is the loyalty shown between women is much higher than the loyalty between men and women:

p.204 “Women have always moaned about men…because while they expect men to be fickle, treacherous and weak, they judge their own sex by higher standards, they expect more from their own sex – loyalty, understanding, trustworthiness, love..."

And what I really enjoyed about Rushdie's painting of Qara Koz was, to be honest, the way she resembled a man in her actions. Her swiftness in choosing a new lover/transferring her loyalty. Her surprise at finding herself in love and actually having feelings for a man. And despite this, her strength and conviction that she would rise above anything and continue on, with or without a man by her side:

p.259 “But if she lost him, she would grieve wildly, she would be inconsolable, and then she would do what she had to do. She would find her way. Whatever happened today, she would make her journey to the palace soon enough. She was meant for palaces and kings.”

That last quote reminds me of myself in a way (although the circumstances were different than those of Qara Koz in this instance). I had a recent break-up and yes, I was sad. I wouldn't say I was inconsolable or wild with grief, but I certainly cried and felt like shit. However I gathered my resolve and moved on, because I'm better than some boy - I was meant for palaces and kings :)

4) Magic/Religion vs. Magic.

I don't really believe in magic. I know there are things that may not be able to be explained. But I'm not sure if I could ever agree to label them as "magic". So it's always fun to read a book where there are spells or enchantments or ghosts. It almost makes us yearn for that ability to cure everything with a simple potion. Alas, such is not the way of real life. And I guess that's why we have books - to enter a different world for a while and live vicariously through the characters who have the powers to change their circumstances without necessarily working through them the way we regular humans do.

But in a way, wouldn't magic just be a kind of religion? Some things today that people call "miracles" might be called "magic" to another person. I thought that this quote was funny in that way:

p.318 “It was important not to offend against the laws of magic. If a woman left you it was because you did not cast the right spell over her, or else because someone else cast a stronger enchantment than yours, or else because your marriage was cursed in such a way that it cut the ties of love between husband and wife. Why did So-and-so rather than Such-and-such enjoy success in his businesses? Because he visited the right enchanter. There was a thing in the emperor that rebelled against all this flummery, for was it not a kind of infantilization of the self to give up one’s power of agency and believe that such power resided outside oneself rather than within? This was also his objection to God, that his existence deprived human beings of the right to form ethical structures by themselves. But magic was all around and would not be denied, and it would be a rash ruler who pooh-poohed it. Religion could be rethought, re-examined, remade, perhaps even discarded; magic was impervious to such assaults.”

Because really, a lot of people attribute their success in work, marriage, and life to their faith in God. I do agree that people shouldn't so blindly grant their successes (or failures) in some outside power. And I also agree with the suggestions of what can be done to religion. But I don't think that "magic" deserves the kind of adoration or responsibility that is most commonly reserved for religion. We are the ones accountable for our successes and failures. Still, our world is not necessarily devoid of all magic. The magic that is in our world is the magic we create in our relationships with people; the stories we tell; the music we make. The world can be a magical place, of our own making!!

Of course, Rushdie is telling a story in a different time, so this must be taken into account as well. But really it was said best this way:

p.75 “…witchcraft requires no potions, familiar spirits or magic wands. Language upon a silvered tongue affords enchantment enough.”

Which, of course, brings me full circle as to why I fully enjoyed this book: it was truly enchanting. I was held by the story; involved in the lives of the characters; excited at what was to come next - all tell-tale signs of a great novel!

I would definitely recommend this book to anyone. And I really hope that this post hasn't given away too much of the novel. Although I can say for a certainty that it hasn't! I don't think any of the quotes I used served to indicate the turns that are taken in the story...I merely used them to point out some of the interesting themes I thought were explored in the book. But I am sorry if I ended up ruining it for anyone...The essay-writer in me really came out tonight I guess ;)

But please, read the book if you get the chance because: “…the world is still mysterious…and the strangest story may turn out to be true.” (p.104)

Peace.