Reviewed By T. U. Dawood

Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist was one of those life-changing books that contain poignant words of wisdom. In it he espoused that when one is on one’s true path, the entire universe conspires to expedite the process and make one’s dreams come true.

Inspirations, Coelho’s latest work, sheds light on the author’s own life path, particularly the journey that made him the bestselling writer and philosopher that he is today. In the book he has arranged his selections from classic literature into four sections — water, earth, air and fire — which reflect the four elements identified by the Ancients.

The Ancients believed that all things — visible and invisible — were composed of these four substances, not just in their material form but symbolically as well.

The author reminds us that ‘those four elements form an idea of the whole, of the universe … an anthology like this one can never be complete until, reader, is it read by you. And your insight completes the circle and makes it turn again.’

Coelho’s choices are not only interesting in themselves, but also in the way he has juxtaposed seemingly dissimilar works. In the first section ‘Water’ he has selected writers as diverse as Hans Christian Anderson and Machiavelli. They are followed by extracts from Tales from the Thousand and One Nights, Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass and Sun-Tzu’s The Art of War.

Coelho admires Shahrazad’s survival instincts and likens her imagination and inventiveness to the hidden treasures in deep waters. Machiavelli’s work is akin to Sun-Tzu’s, in that both texts teach strategy but the former selection is more transparent while the latter is puzzling and full of unknown, deeper meanings.

He connects the two works with Carroll’s sequel to Alice in Wonderland because of the astute way it highlights that ‘how we perceive reality can be altered, sometimes in its own way, and without us.’

The next section ‘Earth’ revolves around the way Coelho sees this element: ‘disquieting and essential’. There is darkness in his earth and his choices range from Oscar Wilde’s gloomy De Profundis to D. H. Lawrence. They are followed by Bram Stroker’s Dracula which delves deep into the torments of the human soul.

This latter classic dates from the time when vampires were tortured and dangerous antagonists, rather than diamond-dusted studs like in the currently popular Twilight Saga. Earthly delights are the theme at the core of Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

The section titled ‘Air’ is, according to Coelho, ‘fearsome and uncontrollable’. In it he has selected from texts by Nelson Mandela and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. No Easy Way to Freedom reads like a work of creation; its words are meant to direct the course of the future by sowing the seeds of new, urgent thought.

The selections included in ‘Air’ revel in their strangeness, with free rein given to the monstrous Jekyll in The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

‘Fire’ is the stormiest section. In the author’s words, ‘Fire, like blood, is hot, it brings light, and it is the sign of spirit and love, but a high kind of love.’ The selections included in it range from Rumi to Mary Shelley.

A flaming desire burns in Sacher-Masoch’s Venus in Furs, while a fierce hatred between creator and his created drives the storyline of Shelley’s Frankenstein.

The selections than temper down considerably with a hymn from the Dead Sea Scrolls and excerpt from the Bhagavad Gita speaking of the way a man can become a god. According to the author, ‘divine fire can be like a hidden reality, and it is up to us to conquer and reveal it’.

The book ends as it begins by returning to the theme of connectedness with Rumi’s words of wisdom. Coelho has arranged this collection as a gift and a token of something much larger.

Whether it is inspirations for his own life or for his writing, there is great depth in the selections he has chosen to include and in the manner in which he has presented them to readers.

Inspirations
(anthology)
By Paulo Coelho
Penguin Classics, UK
ISBN 978-0-141-19400-4
240pp.

Originally published in Dawn