Rediscovering Pearl Buck

Having finished this weekend another novel by Pearl Buck, Peony, I've come to appreciate the author's observations about human nature. Her honesty stands out. Here her narrator comments about David, a young man who struggles with his feelings for the women he loves, including his mother and the family's bondmaid:

"He longed to be free of them all, and yet he knew that no man is ever free of the women who have made him what he is. He sighed and tossed and wished for the day when he could return to the shops and the men there who had nothing to do with his heart and his soul."

Here Ezra, David's father, reflects on the melancholy surrounding his Chinese Rabbi:

"He had chosen sorrow, the endless sorrow of a man haunted by God. He had even transmuted such sorrow into strange dark joy. He was most happy when he suffered most deeply, like the moth that flutters near the flame of the candle."

Finally, my favorite. On David's wedding day, the mothers of the bride and groom meet for the first time:

". . .each found the other strange and hard to talk with, and yet each was determined to do her best. . . [Madame Kung] granted that Madame Ezra tried very much to be pleasant to her, and although the day was tedious for these two ladies, somehow it passed." Emphasis mine. How many times have I been in situations where somehow the day passed?

Pearl Buck's voice is refreshing. Though her Chinese settings are exotic, the emotions of her characters are not. She's as relevant today as she was decades ago.

Pearl Buck to Barack Obama

In Pearl Buck's novel Pavilion of Women published in 1948, protagonist Madame Wu recalls a conversation she once had with her beloved and wise father-in-law about the nature of intelligence. Old Gentleman says to her,

"This matter of intelligence--it is so great a gift, so heavy a burden. Intelligence, more than poverty and riches, divides human beings and makes them friends or enemies. The stupid person fears and hates the intelligent person. Whatever the goodness of the intelligent man, he must also know that it will not win him love from one whose mind is less than his." (Emphasis mine)

Barack Obama, take note. You will not win the love of those obstructionist Republican congressmen who seek to bring you down. It's time to speak to the rest of us as the fellow intelligent humans that we are and govern from your head and not from your heart.