Yellow idols and flights of fancy.

  Mainz Germany 1918, in a prisoner of war camp, two English officers discussed the importance of imagination. Both were writers, Alex the brother of Evelyn Waugh, and John Milton Hayes, who penned these lines.

There's a one-eyed yellow idol to the north of Khatmandu,
There's a little marble cross below the town;
There's a broken-hearted woman tends the grave of Mad Carew,
And the Yellow God forever gazes down.

Can’t you picture this scene?  How these words set imagination loose and now our flights of fancy can continue for ten more stanzas. This is light entertainment, but is our ability to imagine, frivolous? The writer, J. Milton Hayes saw his ability to spark imagination in his reader as essential and Alex Waugh agreed. Why else would he have so carefully recorded his fellow prisoner’s words?

“The Green Eye of the Little Yellow God …isn't poetry and it does not pretend to be,"said Hayes. "But it does what it sets out to do. It appeals to the imagination from the start: those colours, green and yellow, create an atmosphere. Then India, everyone has his own idea of India. Don't tell the public too much. Strike chords. All you've got to say is 'India' and a man sees something. Then play on his susceptibilities.

“His name was Mad Carew. You've got the whole man there. The public will fill in the picture for you. And then the mystery. Leave enough unsaid to make paterfamilias pat himself on the back. 'I've spotted it; he can't fool me. I'm up to that dodge. I know where he went.' No need to explain. Then that final ending where you began. It carries people back. You've got a compact whole. 'A broken-hearted woman tends the grave of Mad Carew' They'll weave a whole story round that woman's life. Every man's a novelist at heart. We all tell ourselves stories. That's what you've got to play on.”

Is it important to develop the ability to imagine? Corporations think so. John Cleese is highly sought after as a speaker who can engender creative thinking. New ideas in any field are dependent on creativity and imagination. But think of this. Can empathy occur without it? Do we not have to use our imagination, in order to walk in another person’s shoes?

Hayes made no claim to be a great writer. He was an actor who wrote his own material for the popular stage. However, his understanding of what it means to spark the reader’s imagination proved invaluable to his fellow prisoner. How else could Alex Waugh create empathy for personal situations many readers may not wish to confront? Situations that may in fact repel them?

Homosexuality in the early years of the Twentieth Century, was just such a topic, but thanks to the Waugh brothers, and other like-minded writers, readers’ imaginations ignited empathy for those oppressed for their sexuality. Such writers’ ability to have their readers walk in another’s shoes, lead to society modifying its viewpoint. We should never downplay the importance of this. Developing imagination is a vital building block in creating an empathetic and compassionate society. Frivolous? Not at all.