UNDER A TREE

Under a banyan tree
I sat down to be free
Do these branches hold the truth
Or just bats to eat the fruits

Under another great tree

I gazed up at its splendid leaves
Will I feel tolerance here
Or when night falls will I feel fear

Written by: RJX

Aldous Huxley

Aldous Huxley (Leonard) (1894-1963), was an English novelist, essayist, short story writer, and poet. He is noted for the satirical novels of his early period. They are chiefly concerned with ideas; plots are unimportant and characters are seldom more than spokesmen for the author’s views. “Point Counter Point” (1928) expresses disgust with the emphasis on intellectualism at the expense of instinct and emotion. “Brave New World” (1932) pictures a technological world of the future in which laboratory produced human beings find satisfaction in mechanized pleasures and a drug.

After the 1930’s, Huxley turned toward philosophy and mysticism. The novels of his later period, such as “Time Must Have a Stop” (1944) and Island (1962), show a decline in Huxley’s literary ability. In “The Doors of Perception” (1954) he writes of his experiences while taking hallucinogenic drugs as mescaline and LSD.

He was born in Surrey, a grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley and a brother of Sir Julian Huxley. After attending Eton College, he graduated from Oxford University in 1915. An eye ailment that caused near-blindness turned him from science studies to literature. In “The Art of Seeing” (1942) he described an eye-training program that greatly improved his sight. He wrote dramatic, art, and musical criticism for the London magazine “Athenaeum” (1919-20), and was dramatic critic of the literary periodical “Westminster Gazette” (1920-21). During and after his residence in Italy (1923-30), he visited India and Central America, settling in California in 1937.