The Harmony of the Spheres

The Harmony of the Spheres

I’m sure everybody has heard of the saying that goes like “we should live in peace and harmony with each other”. To be able to do this, one should first be in harmony with himself/herself. So then, how is this harmony achieved, or more importantly, lost in the first place?  According to science, our brain is made up of 2 hemispheres, the left and the right. The left hemisphere (or left brain as it is popularly referred to as) is primarily responsible for one’s logical and rational reasoning. The right brain on the other hand is responsible for one’s creative and innovative thinking. However, can an imbalance of these 2 sides cause a loss in one’s sense of harmony? This issue of balance is what Salman Rushdie tries to portray in his short story, ‘The Harmony of the Spheres’.  

This story is about a genius by the name of Eliot Crane. He was a writer who had a great amount of knowledge and discovered many secrets. His friend, Khan, also the narrator of the story describes, “From Eliot I learned the secrets of the Great Pyramid, the mysteries of the Golden Section and the intricacies of the Spiral. He told me Mesmer’s theory of Animal Magnetism and the four Trances of Japanese spiritualism…” (p. 137). However, it is also said that Eliot was suffering from an unstable state of mind. “In the time of the Jublilee the writer Eliot Crane, who had been suffering from what he called ‘brainstorms’ of paranoid schizophrenia…” (p. 125). He was so paranoid that he thought his only best friend was his enemy and that his wife was spying on him by planting microphones in the fridge and butter. This story reminds me of John Nash, who was also a genius and suffered from the mental illness schizophrenia. Why then do we lose our minds and what is the line between sanity and insanity? Is it merely an imbalance between creativity and control? This question of balance and many others such as: fantasy and reality, fiction and truth, disturbance and harmony are amongst the binary opposites that Rushdie tries to discover in his stories.

At one point, Khan asks Eliot “Why do we lose our minds?” Eliot’s reply was “A simple biochemical imbalance” (p. 134). This could be one of the reasons that many geniuses have lost their mind or ‘balance of harmony’. In other words, they could not maintain a balance between their creativity and rationality. They get lost in their immense knowledge and research that they get consumed by it and go crazy as a result. This could be seen from the statement Eliot makes to Khan where he says “Works fine as long as I keep off the occult stuff” (p. 130). Khan also goes on to say at a later point in the story that “Eliot was not the hyper-rationalist he claimed to be. His immersion in the dark arts was more than merely scholarly” (p. 136).

Towards the end of the story, Eliot commits suicide by shooting himself with a shotgun. He could not deal with his inner demons and as a result committed suicide. His wife, Lucy asks Khan to go through Eliot’s books and papers. Going through Eliot’s work, Khan comes across rants against the universe, hate-filled fantasies about his friends including Khan and even pornographic fantasies about Khan’s wife. However, the twist to the story occurs when Khan finds out from his wife that those ‘fantasies’ were actually reality. Here Rushdie creates an ironic situation, although tragic at the same time. Khan, who was grateful to Eliot for introducing him to Mala (Khan’s wife) and thought he had acquired harmony with Mala was now heartbroken. He describes the situation as “So, here it came: the collapse of harmony, the demolition of the spheres of my heart” (p. 146).