George Saunders (2017). Lincoln in the
Bardo, Bloomsbury
‘These
and all things started as nothing, latent within a vast energy broth, but we
then named them and loved them, and, in this way brought them forth. And now
must lose them.’
roger bevins in Lincoln in the
Bardo
This
is the Man Booker winning experimental debut novel from George Saunders. The
story opens in the United States of mid nineteenth century, with President
Lincoln’s son Willie fighting for his life, while the country is gripped in civil
war. Willie dies and is buried in a Georgetown cemetery in a marble crypt. His
mother descends into grief and madness. The President is bent on returning to
his son as he visits the crypt and talks to him lovingly. This agonizing love,
guilt and longing reaches his son across the veil of death.
The
Bardo- which in Tibetan language means ‘that place between life and death’- is
populated with a bevy of rich characters, all in a state of oblivion. People of
all sorts have carved out a space for themselves in this netherworld, the high
and the low, god fearing and nihilists, with their friendships and subterfuge.
Into this world, little Willie descends, expecting his father to come and visit
him again. The entry of the little boy creates a new sensation among the
inhabitants of the lively Bardo and they unite to help Willie ‘pass over’. For
this plot to succeed, they must have an unlikely ally- the President himself.
How Willie is transported on through the unlikely alliance of his father and
the Bardo, forms the rest of the story.
The
central theme that runs through the story is that of love and loss, the deep
human ache to retrace lost tracks and reclaim our pasts. Saunders shows us a
way of moving on after a devastating loss, not by forgetting, but by letting
go, accepting, freeing ourselves from the burden of care for the loved one. He
attacks the very idea of loving by living, by showing, by acting- our love for those
who are dead should be a different kind of love. It cannot find meaning in the
repetitive acts of expression through words and deeds, for this creates a tomb
of the past, a never-ending mourning. A graceful way of loving the dead is to
not act or talk but to think, to ache and hold. It is not a love that hinges on
sharing, sympathy and reciprocity. It is a silent one-sided love, not prone to
the tempest of action, time or space. That is how love for someone who is
absent looks like.
The
deep contrast to Lincoln’s throbbing aching love is the cohort in the Bardo,
ebullient, devoid of all memory and sense of being. They are literally a ghost
of their previous Saunders uses the oldest trick in the book to make the
imaginary world real- by turning metaphors into their heads. They are
accustomed to a charade, a clinging on to the most mundane that defined them
when they were alive. Willie’s arrival infuses a human-like feeling in them for
the first time- passion, purpose and fellow feeling. Eventually helping Willie to freedom helps the
Bardo to free itself.
This
unusually poignant novel works because of its audacity- the narrative style, the
imagination at one level, and the philosophy that is conveyed through polyphony
that testifies to love, loss and what it takes to heal and be free.
