From reading Heidi I gained, apart from an overwhelming appreciation of butter and goat's cheese, an insight into a point of view on life that is unfailingly, glowingly positive. Heidi is an orphan girl unceremoniously thrust upon her rather disagreeable grandfather, Nunky-on-the-Heights, by her aunt. She is a bright, kind child and right away begins to befriend everybody around her, from the fir-trees, to the goats, to the poor goat-herd boy, Peter.
Through the shine of Heidi's unparalleled joy in life, it is soon obvious that the characters in the book that are not charmed by her are clearly a bad lot, clearly considered by the author to have unmelting hearts of stone.
Just as she is settling down to her new life, Heidi is marched away from her beloved Swiss Alps by the same aunt, who packs her off to Frankfurt to live with a family who require a companion to a young 'crippled' girl.
Heidi instinctively dislikes city life; the greyness, lack of trees and time spent outside soon begin to take their toll on our heroine. However, she applies her usual beautiful, persevering take on things. Soon, however, even this proves unsuccessful, as, even though she likes Klara, the girl to whom she is a companion, she finds it more and more difficult to thrive in a life spent indoors.
I will leave the synopsis here, as otherwise I will give the plot away, but I just wanted to talk a bit more about Heidi's positive outlook. The full title of the book is 'Heidi's Years of Wandering and Learning' which put me, personally, in mind of the teachings of the Buddha and more particularly, Herman Hesse's 'Siddartha' of which the plot could be summarised as 'years of wandering and learning.'
It is, of course, clear that the book was written by a very devout Christian, as made clear by the large amount of hymns reprinted and lots of prayer. But, I think that Heidi's general attitude, as seen in the context of the present day, now fits more clearly into Buddhist teachings on loving and respecting nature. This is what I kept thinking whilst I was reading, anyway, and Heidi's philosophical, benevolent attitude towards everything and everyone she meets put me in mind of
the teachings of the Buddha rather more than Jesus.
Perhaps this is due to way that the Bible came to be written (I won't start on that by the way, but am ducking my head prepared for a volley of abuse!), and how the Buddhist texts came into being, a large part (Buddhavacana) believed to be the literal, or close approximation to, words of the historical Buddha. (Source-Wikipedia).
So because of the way things have been written down, I think that in the present day, I'd bet Heidi would have been a Buddhist.
I'm not sure I ever thought I would write a statement like that!
Would love to know what you think...
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