Companions of the Day and Night

by Wilson Harris

pp. 12 83.

83 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

Born in Guyana in 1921 and based in England since 1959, Wilson Harris is one of the most original novelists and critics of the twentieth century. His writings, which include poems, numerous essays and twenty-four novels, provide a passionate and unique defense of the notion of cross-culturalism as well as a visionary exploration of the interdependence between history, landscape and humanity. In 2010 he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his services to literature.

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

In tarot the Fool is the symbol of true innocence, a perfect state of joy and freedom, the sure feeling to be one with the spirit of life, at any time.
Companions of the Day and Night is a series of the Fool’s visions and impressions… Poetically allegoric musings of a madman on the nature of being… Gospel of the Fool…

Idiot Nameless arrived in Mexico City just under a fortnight before Easter. A dream he had long entertained and when it happened it seemed both concrete and infinite like a shadow pitted against the sun in shapes of gravity prior to the shape of birth itself…
He was astonished at his emotion of descent into a past that seemed his own future.

In the city he meets an arcane fire-eater who is presumably the symbolic avatar of the cosmic creator…

The page of his face stepped back into itself as it wolfed fire, re-wrote itself, revised itself as it disgorged fire. Each written page was a new self-portrait he drew that I assembled in my own heart as companions of the day and night. 
I had stepped, according to the jumbled faces I now read, into a nine-day cycle painted on the ground, painted on the pavement of the city. I had been baptised into circular Fool, Clown by a maker of suns…

The fire-eater shows him an unfinished figurine of the Virgin – “A marvel. Flesh-within-flesh, ghost-within-ghost.” – and the Fool starts looking for an artist’s model…

Monument of a subconscious conception of wholeness – vulnerable parts, alarming roles played by respectable idols – with which the Fool lived as if it were his daily bread of fire that left him hollow and susceptible to nameless others.

We live in the same real world but in every mind it is reflected differently. 

[Holly · Rating 4 out of 5]

For a slim book, there is a lot of language. Beautifully written albeit a slightly odd story. Idiot nameless has quite a ring to it, don't you think?

[Manuel Abreu · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am Idiot Nameless, that is literally me.