Customer Reviews

Seed and the Sower

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Many years ago, I saw the movie version of this novel. It was titled "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence." I liked the movie, but it really felt kind of incomplete, but the story was moving enough that when I ran across the book, I decided to read it. It is difficult with words to convey how very moving this story was. If you are already familiar with Mr Van der Post through other works, you'll understand. His view of the world is so positive, even in the face of great sorrow and suffering, he maintained such dignity and hope. I will never forget this book. I read a great great deal, but have never run across another book as profoundly moving as this one.

This novel excels due to its ability to explain and justify the Japanese psyche during WWII. To use Sir Laurens van der Post's perfect words: 'The thing you mustn't forget about Hara,' he had said, 'is that he is not an individual or for that matter even really a man.' He had gone on to say that Hara was the living myth, the expression in human form, the personification of the intense, inner vision which, far down in their unconscious, keeps the Japanese people together and shapes and compels their thinking and behaviour. We should not forget two thousand and seven hundred full cycles of his sun-goddess' rule burnt into him. He was sure no one could be more faithful and responsive to all the imperceptible murmurings of Japan's archaic and submerged racial soul than he. Hara was humble enough to accept implicitly the promptings of his national spirit. He was a simple, uneducated country lad with a primitive integrity unassailed by higher education, and really believed all the myths and legends of the past so deeply that he would not hesitate to kill for them..... 'But just look in his eyes, there is nothing ignoble or insincere there: only an ancient light, refuelled, quickened and burning brightly. There is something about the fellow I rather like and respect.' That piece moved me the first time I read this most engaging book, and over the years I find myself drawn to that passage. What a wonderful explanation of the madness that overcame an entire nation! Despite his long, long sentences, do yourself a favour and read this wonderful story of betrayal and hope.

Rooted in the soil of South africa and flowering under a japanese sun this book is like a collection of separate stories brought together in a unified theme of cultural misunderstanding. The childlike Hara, an archetypical japanese camp beast, his noble officer immovable as a rock, Celliers the unbreakable stiff upper lipped british officer and between them all, trying to make some kind of sense, the liberal figure of Lawerence. The stories of youth in South Africa and the growing appreciation of the tall athletic son for his grotesque brother who has hands that are the soul of Africa, who finds life where others see only death, a man who knows what Isac Denisen calls the Song of Africa. Magical stuff!

I have read most of van der Post's works and I always return to this one. This man is a genius at evoking a feeling or thought through his beautiful use of the language. He's a heck of a story teller, too. This particular book will haunt you long after you put it down. I have had my copy for over 30 years and every decade or so pick it up again for the random re-read. It's one of those books that can stay with you for a lifetime and touches you in whatever place you happen to be in your life. It really does hold timeless, universal truths for anyone willing to invest the time.

More than in any other of Van Der Post's works, The Seed and the Sower dwells on the deeper psychological phenomena of mankind. Where, through abstract thought, two vastly opposing arguments may live side by side, and both bear a resemblance of "truth" in the course of logic reasoning. Only the holder of these "truths" at some point in life, in this case through guilt, may reach an understanding within himself of the damage he/she inflicts on others. Only in the darkest of war, facing death, does Celliers come to terms with the cruelty he had inflicted on his hunchbacked brother, at high school many years before. And he is eager to offer his life for that purpose, saving the lives of his fellow prisoners. It is the same double sidedness that shows up within Captain Yonai, who secretly demonstrates his ultimate respect for the man he has condemned to death. And it is Lawrence himself, the final Judas of the story, who's logical reasoning on his guilt in the face of his acquired power, abandons the thought to save the life of Sergeant Hara, betraying the man who before had saved his own life. It is in this light that Van Der Post finally draws a philosophical conclusion. Where he first paints the survival of species in a herd of antelopes, he lets us understand the paradox of man, killing his fellow, in order to defend the life of his sort to come.

I very much enjoyed this book and I think I understand better the example of Jesus' life and teachings.