All great stories are about longing,” a friend recently said to me. I immediately thought of The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame, the classic book about the adventures of four animal friends: Mole, Rat, Badger, and Toad. Grahame’s tale is beautifully wrought, not only in richness of language, but in calling forth what it describes, longing, which pervades and indeed begins the story. As Mole is busy with spring-cleaning his little underground home, he feels an imperious call: “Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing.” He quickly makes his way to the upper world where he rejoices in the air and the sun. The Longing for the Other Mole’s wanderings take him at last to a riverbank. He is captivated; the gurgles and gleams hold him spell-bound, murmuring rumors of a larger world. The extent of the alteration he has already undergone is apparent in his daydreaming about setting up residence there, adopting an existence so different from what he has known. Indeed, he does precisely that, though not on his own: he will have a guide into this new life, the Water Rat. But Mole’s transformation is not complete; his longings have not yet been satisfied: “…with his ear to the reed-stems he caught, at intervals, something of what the wind went whispering so constantly among them.” Longing in The Wind in the Willows Justin D. Lyons
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTM4ODY=