“My own books I packed up in cases and sat on them, or dined
on them. Books in a colony play a different part in your existence from what
they do in Europe; there is a whole side
of your life which there they alone take charge of; and on this account, according
to their quality, you feel more grateful to them, or more indignant with them,
than you will ever do in civilized countries.
“The fictitious characters in the books run beside your horse
on the farm, and walk about in the maizefields. On their own, like intelligent
soldiers, they find at once the quarters that suit them. On the morning after I
had been reading “Crome Yellow” at night,-and I had never heard of the author’s
name, but had picked up the book in a Nairobi bookshop, and was as pleased as if
I had discovered a new green island in the sea,- as I was riding through a
valley of the Game Reserve, a little duiker jumped up, and at once turned
himself into a stag for Sir Hercules with his wife and his pack of thirty black
and fawn-coloured pugs. All Walter Scott’s characters were at home in the
country and might be met anywhere; so were Odysseus and his men, and strangley
enough many figures from Racine. Peter Schlemihl had walked over the hills in
seven-league boots, Clown Agheb the honey-bee lived in my garden by the river.”
-Isak Denisen, from Out of Africa
I was able to piece together most of the books she mentions,
but I’m drawing a complete blank on Clown Agheb the honey-bee. No clue what
great work of literature that one is supposed to call up. Any ideas?
