Meaning of Abracadabra in “Midnight’s Children” by Salman Rushdie

Not too long ago, I went to a lecture by Salman Rushdie at the University of North Carolina – Asheville. He was so inspiring that I ended up purchasing a copy of Midnight’s Children (click here to read my thoughts on his lecture). Since I was reading Infinite Jest at the time, it took a little while to get around to it, but I finally did so and finished reading it the other day.

Anyway, the book is amazing and rich in imagery and symbolism. I filled several pages of reference notes in my journal as I worked through the novel. So then the question became: What do I write about? I didn’t want to just write a summary, so I decided to focus on the word “abracadabra,” which is also the name of the last chapter in the book, and share my thoughts on how this word ties in to the overall story.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the etymology of the word, it is Aramaic in origin and roughly translates to something like “I create as I speak.” So the mystical power of this word is that magicians and occultists can use it to conjure or create with the use of a word, similar to the power of the Judeo-Christian god who created all existence from a word (see Genesis).

So here is the passage that I feel is key to understanding what Rushdie is doing on a grand scale with the book.

… yes, and Aadam heard it too, with his flapping ears he heard the rhythm of the magic, I saw his eyes light up as I accepted, and then we were in a third-class railway carriage heading south south south, and in the quinquesyllabic monotony of the wheels I heard the secret word: abracadabra abracadabra abracadabra sang on the wheels as they bore us back-to-Bom.

Yes, I had left the colony of the magicians behind me for ever, I was heading abracadabra abracadabra into the heart of nostalgia which would keep me alive long enough to write these pages…

(p. 519)

At this moment, the protagonist of the story, Saleem Sinai, realizes the mystical power of the written word, that words are magical symbols that can create connections between the past and the present and the future, and that through the use of words, he is creating a mythology that is eternal. These connections, or correspondences, are the building blocks of the myth, because mythology uses symbols to explain things on a grand or cosmic scale. And what I find most fascinating is that what we have here can be described as a meta-abracadabra, since we have Rushdie using the magical power of words to create a story that is a mythology of modern India, but within the story is another story about Saleem using words to write his own myth establishing the correspondences between his life and independent India.

Since I wove in the concept of correspondences, I want to add another quote from the book that elaborates on correspondences.

As a people, we are obsessed with correspondences. Similarities between this and that, between apparently unconnected things, make us clap our hands delightedly when we find them out. It is a sort of national longing for form—or perhaps simply an expression of our deep belief that forms lie hidden within reality; that meaning reveals itself only in flashes.

(pp. 343 – 344)

I firmly believe in the concept of correspondence. All things are connected, and sometimes those connections are obvious, and sometimes they are hidden, as in symbolism. But connections exist all around us, and the power of the written word can help us realize those hidden connections. Abracadabra!

Although this book is rich with symbolism, it is very readable, a terrific story, and has some of the most beautiful use of synesthesia I have ever encountered. I highly recommend reading it. As always, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below. Thanks for stopping by, and keep reading engaging stuff.

“Correspondences” by Charles Baudelaire

From Wikipedia

It was at least 15 years ago that I first read this poem and back then it did not have the impact that it did when I read it today. This proves that as you mature and grow as a reader, literature takes on different meanings. Since the poem is a sonnet and therefore short, I will include the translation by Richard Wilbur so that we are all on the same page.

Nature is a temple whose living colonnades
Breathe forth a mystic speech in fitful sighs;
Man wanders among the symbols in those glades
Where all things watch him with familiar eyes.

Like dwindling echoes gathered far away
Into a deep and thronging unison
Huge as the night or as the light of day,
All scents and sounds and colors meet as one.

Perfumes there are as sweet as the oboe’s sound,
Green as the prairies, fresh as a child’s caress,
—And there are others, rich, corrupt, profound

And an infinite pervasiveness,
Like myrrh, or musk, or amber, that excite
The ecstasies of sense, the soul’s delight.

This poem establishes correspondences between objects in Nature and the symbols and archetypes that populate our psyches. Take a look at the first stanza. The “living colonnades” are trees. The imagery evokes a Druid ceremony taking place within a sacred grove. The sound of the wind through the trees helps shift the person’s consciousness so as to be able to perceive the mystical forms around. All types of symbolism are beautifully evoked in this passage. No matter what a tree symbolizes for you individually—strength, spiritual growth, kabbalistic sefiroth—they are all summoned by the words here.

In the second stanza, the senses begin to shift. The echoes and the unison of sound make me think of the collective unconscious. All is connected and there is a shared sense of existence. We are all part of the Divine consciousness.

I really love the third stanza. Here Baudelaire uses synesthesia to describe his mystical experience. I have always found this to be an apt way to describe the ineffable. Scents are likened to sound, color, and touch. I think it works perfectly here.

In the final stanza, Baudelaire expresses a sense of ecstasy as his soul enters a state of bliss as a result of becoming in tune with the infinite, or the Divine. I suspect he realized that, in addition to the correspondence between nature and the realm of symbols, that there is also a correspondence between his soul and the Divine spirit.

I confess that the more I read Baudelaire, the more I appreciate his genius. I think this poem is fantastic and I wish I could read it in French. C’est la vie. I’ll just have to read the translated version again.