Grimus is Salman Rushdie’s first novel. The title is an anagramm of „Simurg“, and the text is full of what one character calls „the ornithology of myth“ (Ch. 1).
Grimus as a character is the secretive figure who seems to rule Calf (Qaf) Island, where most of the book takes place. Grimus claims to have founded the island and brought all its inhabitants there. He is aware that his name is an anagram of Simurg, and contrasts the Bird of Paradise with the eagle, the namesake of his double/antagonist Flapping Eagle.
In structure as well as on the surface, Grimus alludes to the classic Simurgh tale, the verse narrative „The Conference of the Birds“ (Arabic: منطق الطیر, Manṭiq-uṭ-Ṭayr, or مقامات الطیور Maqāmāt-uṭ-Ṭuyūr; 1177) by the Sufi poet Farid ud-Din Attar, also known as Attar of Nishapur. 30 birds want to choose their king. The hoopoe, the wisest among them, proposes Simurgh as king. On the way to him, they have to cross seven valleys, which correspond to the seven obstacles to true realisation in Sufism, and then find a lake as Simurgh’s abode, in which they are reflected. The teaching: God is not to be found in one place, but is reflected in his creation.
Consciously re-enacting this tale, Grimus chose the name for homself (or so he thinks):
„When I became Grimus, I chose my name from a respect for the philosophy contained in the myth of the Simurg, the myth of the great bird which contains all other birds and in turn is contained by them. The similarity with the Phoenix myth is self-apparent. Through death, the annihilator of self, the Phoenix passes its selfhood on to its successor. That is what I hope to do with you, Flapping Eagle. Named for the king of earthly birds.“
Chapter 55
Much earlier in the narrative, however, it is made clear that anagrams are the favourite pastime of a group of hyperintelligent beings, the Gorfs, who like to anagrammatically „alter their very environment and indeed their own physical makeup“ (Ch. 18), simply by changing the letters of a word or name. Grimus and Flapping Eagle are both part of their larger scheme; Grimus‘ mythology is dismantled.
Grimus’s double/antagonist Flapping Eagle is an albino. This corresponds to the other classic Simurg tale, Firdausi’s Book of Kings, in which the Simurg raises Zal, the albino child of King Saam. Later, he saves the life of Rudabeh, Zal’s wife, by performing an episiotomy or caesarean section and touching her with a healing feather, so that she can give birth to her son, the warrior Rustam.
Flapping Eagle’s sister, who raised him before mysteriously disappearing, returns later in the book as Grimus‘ servant. Her name, „Bird-Dog“, hints at the Senmurv, the hybrid creature from which the image of the Simurg eventually evolved, even though the connection is never explicitly made in the text. Bird-Dog „took [the name] for herself, as a brave’s name, at the age of sixteen“. She was inspired by a secret trip abroad, where she heard „a singing machine… It sang about a creature called a bird-dog, clever, fiendish. I thought: that is the brave’s name for me,“
There is indeed an Everly Brothers song called Bird Dog about a boy who acts sweet (he’s a bird) to achieve his egotistical ends (he’s a dog):
Grimus, by the way, has a Ring Structure. But this is another story for another post.
(c) Stephan Küpper