Indian Literary Criticism-Vol
Indian Literary Criticism-Vol
Indian Literary Criticism-Vol
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CONTENTS
RABINDRANATH TAGORE-------------------------------------5
What Is Art? (1917)
SRI AUROBINDO-------------------------------------------------15
The Sources of Poetry (1897)
The Essence of Poetry (1919)16
KRISHNA RAYAN-------------------------------------------------30
What Is Literariness? (1991)36
SURESH JOSHI----------------------------------------------------34
On Interpretation
From Chintayami Manasa
Translated from Gujarati by UPENDRA NANAVATI42
BHALCHANDRA NEMADE-------------------------------------39
The Marathi Novel 1950-1975 (1981)
Translated from Marathi by G.N. DEVY49
-------------------------------------------------------------
RABINDRANATH TAGORE
Tagore (1861-1941) belongs to World Literature and Indian Literature, as much as he belongs
to Bangla literature. Being the only Indian recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature (1913), a
charismatic nationalist, and a member of the distinguished Tagore family, he is one of the few
internationally known Indians. Along with Bankimchandra Chatterjee, Tagore ushered Bangla literature
into the twentieth century by contributing copiously to all forms of writing: poetry, novel, story, drama,
essay and criticism. In addition to being a first-rate writer, he was also a painter, a composer, and an
educationist.
Tagore's uncommon popularity among the reading public is reflected in the fact that to this
day he is the most frequently translated Indian writer. As with his contemporary Indian romantics,
Tagore's standing as a writer has been questioned by every succeeding generation, the question having
never been settled permanently.
All that he wrote was in Bangla, except the translations of his own works he made into English,
and some of his critical essays. The Essays were in fact his lectures delivered at Oxford and in the U.S.A.
during his tours. The essay selected for inclusion here is one such lecture, which is reproduced from the
collection.
Personality: Lectures Delivered in America (1917).
Tagore's educational philosophy and his literary philosophy had an integral link, namely, his
theory of personality. He believed that art is created out of a surplus of emotions. A close reading of the
essay reveals that Tagore had his own brand of phenomenology, very well thought out and lucidly
presented.
What Is Art?
We are face to face with this great world and our relations to it are manifold. One of these is
the necessity to have to live, to till the soil, to gather food, to clothe ourselves, to get materials from
nature. We are always making things that will satisfy our needs. Thus we are always in touch with this
great world through hunger and thirst and all our physical needs.
Then we have our mind; and mind seeks its own food. Mind has its necessity also. It must find
out reason in things. It is faced with a multiplicity of facts, and is bewildered when it cannot find one
unifying principle which simplifies heterogeneity of things. Man's constitution is such that he must not
only find facts, but also some laws which will lighten the burden of mere number and quantity.
There is yet another man in me, not the physical, but the personal man; which has its likes and
dislikes, and wants to find something to fulfil its needs of love.
This personal man is found in the region where we are free from all necessity, - above the
needs, both of body and mind, - above the expedient of the useful. It is the highest in man, - this
personal man. And it has personal relations of its own with the great world, and comes to it for
something to satisfy personality.
The world of science is not a world of reality, it is an abstract world of force. We can use it by
the help of our personality. It is like a swarm of mechanics who though producing things for ourselves as
personal beings, are mere shadows to us.
But there is another world which is real to us. We see it, feel it; we deal with it with all our
emotions. Its mystery is endless because we cannot analyse it or measure it. We can but say, 'Here you
are.'
This is the world from which Science turns away, and in which Art takes its place. And if we can
answer the question as to what art is, we shall know what this world is with which art has such intimate
relationship.
It is not an important question as it stands. For Art, like life itself, has grown by its own
impulse, and man has taken his pleasure in it without definitely knowing what it is. And we could safely
leave it there, in the subsoil of consciousness, where things that are of life are nourished in the dark.
But we live in an age when our world is turned inside out and when whatever lies at the
bottom is dragged to the surface. Our very process of living, which is an unconscious process, we must
bring under the scrutiny of our knowledge, - even though to know is to kill our object of research and to
make it a museum specimen.
The question has been asked, 'What is Art?' and answers have been given by various persons.
Such discussions introduce elements of conscious purpose into the region where both our faculties of
creation and enjoyment have been spontaneous and half-conscious. They aim at supplying us with very
definite standards by which to guide our judgement of art productions. Therefore we have heard judges
in the modern times giving verdict, according to some special rules of their own making, for the
dethronement of immortals whose supremacy has been unchallenged for centuries.
This meteorological disturbance in the atmosphere of art criticism, whose origin is in the West,
has crossed over to our own shores in Bengal, bringing mist and clouds in its wake, where there was a
clear sky. We have begun to ask ourselves whether creations of art should not be judged either
according to their fitness to be universally understood, or their philosophical interpretation of life, or
their usefulness for solving the problems of the day, or their giving expression to something which is
peculiar to the genius of the people to which the artist belongs. Therefore when men are seriously
engaged in fixing the standard of value in art by something which is not intended in it, - or, in other
words, when the excellence of the river is going to be judged by the point of view of a canal, we cannot
leave the question to its fate, but must take our part in the deliberations.
Should we begin with a definition? But definition of a thing which has a life growth is really
limiting one's own vision in order to be able to see clearly. And clearness is not necessarily the only, or
the most important aspect of a truth. A bull's-eye lantern view is a clear view, but not a complete view.
If we are to know a wheel in motion, we need not mind if all its spokes cannot be counted. When not
merely the accuracy of shape, but velocity of motion, is important, we have to be content with a
somewhat imperfect definition of the wheel. Living things have far-reaching relationships with their
surroundings, some of which are invisible and go deep down into the soil. In our zeal for definition we
may lop off branches and roots of a tree to turn it into a log, which is easier to roll about from classroom
to classroom, and therefore suitable for a textbook. But because it allows a nakedly clear view of itself, it
cannot be said that a log gives a truer view of a tree as a whole.
Therefore I shall not define Arts, but question myself about the reason of its existence, and try
to find out whether it owes its origin to some social purpose, or to the need of catering for our aesthetic
enjoyment, or whether it has come out of some impulse of expression, which is the impulse of our being
itself.
A fight has been going on for a long time round the saying, 'Art for Art's sake', which seems to
have fallen into disrepute among a section of Western critics. It is a sign of the recurrence of the ascetic
ideal of the puritanic age, when enjoyment as an end in itself was held to be sinful. But all puritanism is
a reaction. It does not represent truth in its normal aspect. When enjoyment loses its direct touch with
life, growing fastidious and fantastic in its world of elaborate conventions, then comes the call for
renunciation which rejects happiness itself as a snare. I am not going into the history of your modern
art, which I am not at all competent to discuss; yet I can assert, as a general truth, that when a man tries
to thwart himself in his desire for delight, converting it merely into his desire to know, or to do good,
then the cause must be that his power of feeling delight has lost its natural bloom and healthiness. The
rhetoricians in old India had no hesitation in saying, that enjoyment is the soul of literature, - the
enjoyment which is disinterested. But the word 'enjoyment' has to be used with caution. When
analysed, its spectrum shows an endless series of rays of different colours and intensity throughout its
different worlds of stars. The art world contains elements which are distinctly its own and which emit
lights that have their special range and property. It is our duty to distinguish them and arrive at their
origin and growth.
The most important distinction between the animal and man is this, that the animal is very
nearly bound within the limits of its necessities, the greater part of its activities being necessary for its
self-preservation and the preservation of race. Like a retail shopkeeper, it has no large profit from its
trade of life; the bulk of its earnings must be spent in paying back the interest to its bank. Most of its
resources are employed in the mere endeavour to live. But man, in life's commerce, is a big merchant.
He earns a great deal more than he is absolutely compelled to spend. Therefore there is a vast excess of
wealth in man's life, which gives him the freedom to be useless and irresponsible to a great measure.
There are large outlying tracts, surrounding his necessities, where he has objects that are ends in
themselves.
The animals must have knowledge, so that their knowledge can be employed for useful
purposes of their life. But there they stop. They must know their surroundings in order to be able to take
their shelter and seek their food, some properties of things in order to build their dwellings, some signs
of the different seasons to be able to get ready to adapt themselves to the changes. Man also must
know because he must live. But man has a surplus where he can proudly assert that knowledge is for the
sake of knowledge. There he has the pure enjoyment of his knowledge, because there knowledge is
freedom. Upon this fund of surplus his science and philosophy thrive.
There again, there is a certain amount of altruism in the animal. It is the altruism of
parenthood, the altruism of the herd and the hive. This altruism is absolutely necessary for race
preservation. But in man there is a great deal more than this. Though he also has to be good, because
goodness is necessary for his race, yet he goes far beyond that. His goodness is not a small pittance,
barely sufficient for a hand-to-mouth moral existence. He can amply afford to say that goodness is for
the sake of goodness. And upon this wealth of goodness, - where honesty is not valued for being the
best policy, but because it can afford to go against all policies, - man's ethics are founded.
The idea of 'Art for Art's sake' also has its origin in this region of the superfluous. Let us,
therefore, try to ascertain what activity it is, whose exuberance leads to the production of Art.
For man, as well as for animals, it is necessary to give expression to feelings of pleasure and
displeasure, fear, anger and love. In animals, these emotional expressions have gone little beyond their
bounds of usefulness. But in man, though they still have roots in their original purposes, they have
spread their branches far and wide in the infinite sky high above their soil. Man has a fund of emotional
energy which is not all occupied with his self-preservation. This surplus seeks its outlet in the creation of
Art, for man's civilisation is built upon his surplus.
A warrior is not merely content with fighting, which is needful, but, by the aid of music and
decorations, he must give expression to the heightened consciousness of the warrior in him, which is
not only unnecessary, but in some cases suicidal. The man who has a strong religious feeling not only
worships his deity with all care, but his religious personality craves, for its expression, the splendour of
the temple, the rich ceremonials of worship.
When a feeling is aroused in our hearts which is far in excess of the amount that can be
completely absorbed by the object which has produced it, it comes back to us and makes us conscious of
ourselves by its return waves. When we are in poverty, all our attention is fixed outside us, - upon the
objects which we must acquire for our need. But when our wealth greatly surpasses our needs, its light
is reflected back upon us, and we have the exultation of feeling that we are rich persons. This is the
reason why, of all creatures, only man knows himself, because his impulse of knowledge comes back to
him in excess. He feels his personality more intensely than other creatures, because his power of feeling
is more than can be exhausted by his objects. This efflux of the consciousness of his personality requires
an outlet of expression. Therefore, in Art, man reveals himself and not his objects. His objects have their
place in books of information and science, where he has completely to conceal himself.
I know I shall not be allowed to pass unchallenged when I use the word 'personality', which has
such an amplitude of meaning. These loose words can he made to fit ideas which have not only different
dimensions, but shapes also. They are like raincoats, hanging in the hall, which can be taken away by
absent minded individuals who have no claim on them.
Man, as a knower, is not fully himself, - his mere information does not reveal him. But, as a
person, he is the organic man, who has the inherent power to select things from his surroundings in
order to make them his own. He has his forces of attraction and repulsion by which he not merely piles
up things outside him,
him, but creates himself. The principal creative forces, which transmute things into our living
structure, are emotional forces. A man, where he is religious, is a person, but not where he is a mere
theologian. His feeling for the divine is creative. But his mere knowledge of the divine cannot be formed
into his own essence because of this lack of the emotional fire.
Let us here consider what are the contents of this personality and how it is related to the outer
world. This world appears to us as an individual, and not merely as a bundle of invisible forces. For this,
as everybody knows, it is greatly indebted to our senses and our mind. This apparent world is man's
world. It has taken its special features of shape, colour and movement from the peculiar range and
qualities of our perception. It is what our sense limits have specially acquired and built for us and walled
up. Not only the physical and chemical forces, but man's perceptual forces, are its potent factors, -
because it is man's world, and not an abstract world of physics or metaphysics.
This world, which takes its form in the mould of man's perception, still remains only as the
partial world of his senses and mind. It is like a guest and not like a kinsman. It becomes completely our
own when it comes within the range of our emotions. With our love and hatred, pleasure and pain, fear
and wonder, continually working upon it, this world becomes a part of our personality. It grows with our
growth, it changes with our changes. We are great or small, according to the magnitude and littleness of
this assimilation, according to the quality of its sum total. If this world were taken away, our personality
would lose all its content.
Our emotions are the gastric juices which transform this world of appearance into the more
intimate world of sentiments. On the other hand, this outer world has its own juices, having their
various qualities which excite our emotional activities. This is called in our Sanskrit rhetoric rasa, which
signifies outer juices having their response in the inner juices of our emotions. And a poem, according to
it, is a sentence or sentences containing juices, which stimulate the juices of emotion. It brings to us
ideas, vitalized by feelings, ready to be made into the life-stuff of our nature.
Bare information on facts is not literature, because it gives us merely the facts which are
independent of ourselves. Repetition of the facts that the sun is round, water is liquid, fire is hot, would
be intolerable. But a description of the beauty of the sunrise has its eternal interest for us, - because
there, it is not the fact of the sunrise, but its relation to ourselves, which is the object of perennial
interest.
It is said in the Upanishads, that 'Wealth is dear to us, not because we desire the fact of the
wealth itself, but because we desire ourselves.' This means that we feel ourselves in our wealth, - and
therefore we love it. The things which arouse our emotions arouse our own self-feeling. It is like our
touch upon the harp-string: if it is too feeble, then we are merely aware of the touch, but if it is strong,
then our touch comes back to us in tunes and our consciousness is intensified.
There is the world of science, from which the elements of personality have been carefully
removed. We must not touch it with our feelings. But there is also the vast world, which is personal to
us. We must not merely know it, and then put it aside, but we must feel it, - because, by feeling it, we
feel ourselves.
But how can we express our personality, which we only know by feeling? A scientist can make
known what he has learned by analysis and experiment. But what an artist has to say, he cannot express
by merely informing and explaining. The plainest language is needed when I have to say what I know
about a rose, but to say what I feel about a rose is different. There it has nothing to do with facts, or
with laws, - it deals with taste, which can be realized only by tasting. Therefore the Sanskrit rhetoricians
say, in poetry we have to use words which have got their proper taste, - which do not merely talk, but
conjure up pictures and sing. For pictures and songs are not merely facts, - they are personal facts. They
are not only themselves, but ourselves also. They defy analysis and they have immediate access to our
hearts.
It has to be conceded, that man cannot help revealing his personality, also, in the world of use.
But there self-expression is not his primary object. In everyday life, when we are mostly moved by our
habits, we are economical in our expression; for then our soul-consciousness is at its low level, - it has
just volume enough to glide on in accustomed grooves. But when our heart is fully awakened in love, or
in other great emotions, our personality is in its flood-tide. Then it feels the longing to express itself for
the very sake of expression. Then comes Art, and we forget the claims of necessity, the thrift of
usefulness, - the spires of our temples try to kiss the stars and the notes of our music to fathom the
depth of the ineffable.
Man's energies, running on two parallel lines, - that of utility and self-expression - tend to
meet and mingle. By constant human associations sentiments gather around our things of use and invite
the help of art to reveal themselves, - as we see the warrior's pride and love revealed in the ornamental
sword-blade, and the comradeship of festive gatherings in the wine goblet.
The lawyer's office, as a rule, is not a thing of beauty, and the reason is obvious. But in a city,
where men are proud of their citizenship, public buildings must in their structure express this love for
the city. When the British capital was removed from Calcutta to Delhi, there was discussion about tne
style of architecture which should be followed in the new buildings. Some advocated the Indian style of
the Moghal period, - the style which was the joint production of the Moghal and
the Indian genius. The fact that they lost sight of was that all true art has its origin in sentiment.
Moghal Delhi and Moghal Agra show their human personality in their buildings. Moghal emperors were
men, they were not administrators. They lived and died in India, they loved and fought. The memorials
of their reigns do not persist in the ruins of offices and factories, but in immortal works of art, - not only
in great buildings, but in pictures and music and workmanship in stone and metal, in cotton and wool
fabrics. But the British government in India is not personal. It is official and therefore an abstraction. It
has nothing to express in the true language of art. For law, efficiency and exploitation cannot sing
themselves into epic stones. Lord Lytton, who unfortunately was gifted with more imagination than was
necessary for an Indian Viceroy, tried to copy one of the state functions of the Moghals, - the Durbar
ceremony. But state ceremonials are works of art. They naturally spring from the reciprocity of personal
relationship between the people and their monarch. When they are copies, they show all the signs of
the spurious.
How utility and sentiment take different lines in their expression can be seen in the dress of a
man compared with that of a woman. A man's dress, as a rule, shuns all that is unnecessary and merely
decorative. But a woman has naturally selected the decorative, not only in her dress, but in her
manners. She has to be picturesque and musical to make manifest what she truly is, - because, in her
position in the world, woman is more concrete and personal than man. She is not to be judged merely
by her usefulness, but by her delightfulness. Therefore she takes infinite care in expressing, not her
profession, but her personality.
The principal object of art, also, being the expression of personality, and not that which is
abstract and analytical, it necessarily uses the language of picture and music. This has led to a confusion
in our thought that the object of art is the production of beauty; whereas beauty in art has been the
mere instrument and not its complete and ultimate significance.
As a consequence of this, we have often heard it argued whether manner, rather than matter,
is the essential element in art. Such arguments become endless, like pouring water into a vessel whose
bottom has been taken away-These discussions owe their origin to the idea that beauty is the object of
art, and, because mere matter cannot have the property of beauty, it becomes a question whether
manner is not the principal factor in art.
But the truth is, analytical treatment will not help us in discovering what is the vital point in
art. For the true principle of art is the principle of unity. When we want to know the food value of
certain of our diets, we find it in their component parts; but its taste-value is in its unity, which cannot
be analysed. Matter taken by itself, is an abstraction which can be dealt with by science; while manner,
which is merely manner, is an abstraction which comes under the laws of rhetoric. But when they are
indissolubly one, then they find their harmonies in our personality, which is an organic complex of
matter and manner, thoughts and things, motives and actions.
Therefore we find all abstract ideas are out of place in true art, where, in order to gain
admission, they must come under the disguise of personification. This is the reason why poetry tries to
select words that have vital qualities, - words that are not for mere information, but have become
naturalized in our hearts and have not been worn out of their shapes by too constant use in the market.
For instance, the English word 'consciousness' has not yet outgrown the cocoon stage of its scholastic
inertia, therefore it is seldom used in poetry; whereas its Indian synonym 'chetana' is a vital word and is
of constant poetical use. On the other hand the English word 'feeling' is fluid with life, but its Bengali
synonym 'anubhuti' is refused in poetry, because it merely has a meaning and no flavour. And likewise
there are some truths, coming from science and philosophy, which have acquired life's colour and taste,
and some which have not. Until they have done this, they are, for art, like uncooked vegetables, unfit to
be served at a feast. History, so long as it copies science and deals with abstractions, remains outside
the domain of literature. But, as a narrative of facts, it takes its place by the side of the epic poem. For
narration of historical facts imparts to the time to which they belong a taste of personality. Those
periods become human to us, we feel their living heart-beats.
The world and the personal man are face to face, like friends who question one another and
exchange their inner secrets. The world asks the inner man, - 'Friend, have you seen me? Do you love
me? - not as one who provides you with foods and fruits, not as one whose laws you have found out,
but as one who is personal, individual?'
The artist's answer is, 'Yes, I have seen you, I have loved and known you, - not that I have any
need of you, not that I have taken you and used your laws for my own purpose of power. I know the
forces that act and drive and lead to power, but it is not that. I see you, where you are, what I am.'
But how do you know that the artist has known, has seen, has come face to face with this
personality?
When I first meet anyone who is not yet my friend, I observe all the numberless unessential
things which attract the attention at first sight: and in the wilderness of that diversity of facts the friend
who is to be my friend is lost.
When our steamer reached the coast of Japan, one of our passengers, a Japanese, was coming
back home from Rangoon; we on the other hand were reaching the shore for the first time in our life.
There was a great difference in our outlook. We noted every little peculiarity, and innumerable small
things occupied our attention. But the Japanese passenger dived at once into the personality, the soul of
the land, where his own soul found satisfaction. He saw fewer things, we saw more things; but what he
saw was the soul of Japan. It could not be gauged by any quantity or number, but by something invisible
and deep. It could not be said, that because we saw those innumerable things, we saw Japan better, but
rather the reverse.
If you ask me to draw some particular tree, and I am no artist, I try to copy every detail, lest I
should otherwise lose the peculiarity of the tree, forgetting that the peculiarity is not the personality.
But when the true artist comes, he overlooks all details and gets into the essential characterization.
Our rational man also seeks to simplify things into their inner principle; to get rid of the details;
to get to the heart of things, where things are One. But the difference is this: the scientist seeks an
impersonal principle of unification which can be applied to all things. For instance he destroys the
human body which is personal in order to find out psychology, which is impersonal and general.
But the artist finds out the unique, the individual, which yet is in the heart of the universal.
When he looks on a tree, he looks on that tree as unique, not as the botanist who generalises and
classifies. It is the function of the artist to particularize that one tree. How does he do it? Not through
the peculiarity which is the discord of the unique, but through the personality which is harmony.
Therefore he has to find out the inner concordance of that one thing with its outer surroundings of all
things.
The greatness and beauty of Oriental art, especially in Japan and China, consists in this, that
there the artists have seen this soul of things and they believe in it. The West may believe in the soul of
Man, but she does not really believe that the universe has a soul. Yet this is the belief of the East, and
the whole mental contribution of the East to mankind is filled with this idea. So, we, in the East, need
not go into details and emphasise them; for the most important thing is this universal soul, for which the
Eastern sages have sat in meditation, and Eastern artists have joined them in artistic realisation.
Because we have faith in this universal soul, we in the East know that Truth, Power, Beauty, lie
in Simplicity, - where it is transparent, where things do not obstruct the inner vision. Therefore, all our
sages have tried to make their lives simple and pure, because thus they have the realisation of a positive
Truth, which, though invisible, is more real than the gross and the numerous.
When we say that art only deals with those truths that are personal, we do not exclude
philosophical ideas which are apparently abstract. They are quite common in our Indian literature,
because they have been woven with the fibres of our personal nature. I give here an instance which will
make my point clear. The following is a translation of an Indian poem written by a woman poet of
mediaeval India, - its subject is Life.
I salute the Life which is like a sprouting seed,
With its one arm upraised in the air, and the other down in the soil;
The Life which is one in its outer form and its inner sap;
The Life that ever appears, yet ever eludes.
The Life that comes I salute, and the Life that goes;
I salute the Life that is revealed and that is hidden;
I salute the Life in suspense, standing still like a mountain,
And the Life of the surging sea of fire;
The Life that is tender like a lotus, and hard like a thunderbolt.
I salute the Life which is of the mind, with its one side in the dark and the other in the light.
I salute the Life in the house and the Life abroad in the unknown,
The Life full of joy and the Life weary with its pains,
The Life eternally moving, rocking the world into stillness, The Life deep and silent, breaking
out into roaring waves.
This idea of life is not a mere logical deduction; it is as real to the poetess as the air to the bird
who feels it at every beat of its wings. Woman has realised the mystery of life in her child more
intimately than man has done. This woman's nature in the poet has felt the deep stir of life in all the
world. She has known it to be infinite,- not through any reasoning process, but through the illumination
of her feeling. Therefore the same idea, which is a mere abstraction to one whose sense of the reality is
limited, becomes luminously real to another whose sensibility has a wider range. We have often heard
the Indian mind described by Western critics as metaphysical, because it is ready to soar in the infinite.
But it has to be noted that the infinite is not a mere matter of philosophical speculation to India; it is as
real to her as the sunlight. She must see it, make use of it in her life. Therefore it has come out so
profusely in her symbolism of worship, in her literature. The poet of the Upanishad has said that the
slightest movement of life would be impossible if the sky were not filled with infinite joy. This universal
presence was as much of a reality to him as the earth under his feet, nay, even more. The realisation of
this has broken out in a song of an Indian poet who was born in the fifteenth century:
In India, the greater part of our literature is religious, because God with us is not a distant
God; He belongs to our homes, as well as to our temples. We feel His nearness to us in all the human
relationship of love and affection, and in our festivities He is the chief guest whom we honour. In
seasons of flowers and fruits, in the coming of the rain, in the fullness of the autumn, we see the hem of
His mantle and hear His footsteps. We worship Him in all the true objects of our worship and love Him
wherever our love is true. In the woman who is good we feel Him, in the man who is true we know Him,
in our children He is born again and again, the Eternal Child. Therefore religious songs are our love
songs, and our domestic occurrences, such as the birth of a son, or the coming of the daughter from her
husband's house to her parents and her departure again, are woven in our literature as a drama whose
counterpart is in the divine.
It is thus that the domain of literature has extended into the region which seems hidden in the
depth of mystery and made it human and speaking. It is growing, not only into history, science and
philosophy, but, with our expanding sympathy, into our social consciousness. The classical literature of
the ancient time was only peopled by saints and kings and heroes. It threw no light upon men who loved
and suffered in obscurity. But as the illumination of man's personality throws its light upon a wider
space, penetrating into hidden corners, the world of art also crosses its frontiers and extends its
boundaries into unexplored regions. Thus art is signalling man's conquest of the world by its symbols of
beauty, springing up in spots which were barren of all voice and colours. It is supplying man with his
banners, under which he marches to fight against the inane and the inert proving his claims far and wide
in God's creation. Even the spirit of the desert has owned its kinship with him, and the lonely pyramids
are there as memorials of the meeting of Nature's silence with the silence of the human spirit. The
darkness of the caves has yielded its stillness to man's soul, and in exchange has secretly been crowned
with the wreath of art. Bells are ringing in temples, in villages and populous towns to proclaim that the
infinite is not a mere emptiness to man. This encroachment of man's personality has no limit, and even
the markets and the factories of the present age, even the schools where children of man are
imprisoned and jails where are the criminals, will be mellowed with the touch of art, and lose their
distinction of rigid discordance with life. For the one effort of man's personality is to transform
everything with which he has any true concern into the human. And art is like the spread of vegetation,
to show how far man has reclaimed the desert of his own.
We have said before that where there is an element of the superfluous in our heart's
relationship with the world, Art has its birth. In other words, where our personality feels its wealth it
breaks out in display. What we devour for ourselves is totally spent. What overflows our need becomes
articulate. The stage of pure utility is like the state of heat which is dark. When it surpasses itself, it
becomes white heat and then it is expressive.
Take, for instance, our delight in eating. It is soon exhausted, it gives no indication of the
infinite. Therefore, though in its extensiveness it is more universal than any other passion, it is rejected
by art. It is like an immigrant coming to these Atlantic shores, who can show no cash balance in his
favour.
In our life we have one side which is finite, where we exhaust ourselves at every step, and we
have another side, where our aspiration, enjoyment and sacrifice are infinite. This infinite side of man
must have its revealments in some symbols which have the elements of immortality. There it naturally
seeks perfection. Therefore it refuses all that is flimsy and feeble and incongruous. It builds for its
dwelling a paradise, where only those materials are used that have transcended the earth's mortality.
For men are the children of light. Whenever they fully realise themselves, they feel their
immortality. And, as they feel it, they extend their realm of the immortal into every region of human life.
This building of man's true world,- the living world of truth and beauty,- is the function of Art.
Man is true, where he feels his infinity, where he is divine, and the divine is the creator in him.
Therefore with the attainment of his truth he creates. For he can truly live in his own creation and make
out of God's world his own world. This is indeed his own heaven, the heaven of ideas shaped into
perfect forms, with which he surrounds himself; where his children are born, where they learn how to
live and die, how to love and to fight, where they know that the real is not that which is merely seen and
wealth is not that which is stored. If man could only listen to the voice that rises from the heart of his
own creation, he would hear the same message that came from the Indian sage of the ancient time:
Hearken to me, ye children of the Immortal, dwellers of the heavenly worlds, I have known the
Supreme Person who comes as light from the dark beyond.'
Yes, it is that Supreme Person, who has made himself known to man and made this universe so
deeply personal to him. Therefore, in India, our places of pilgrimage are there, where in the confluence
of the river and the sea, in the eternal snow of the mountain peak, in the lonely seashore, some aspect
of the infinite is revealed which has its great voice for our heart, and there man has left in his images
and temples, in his carvings of stone, these words,- 'Hearken to me, I have known the Supreme Person.'
In the mere substance and law of this world we do not meet the person, but where the sky is blue, and
the grass is green, where the flower has its beauty and fruit its taste, where there is not only
perpetuation of race, but joy of living and love of fellow-creatures, sympathy and self-sacrifice, there is
revealed to us the Person who is infinite. There, not merely are facts pelted down our heads, but we feel
the bonds of the personal relationship binding our hearts with this world through all time. And this is
Reality, which is truth made our own,- truth that has its eternal relation with the Supreme Person. This
world, whose soul seems to be aching for expression in its endless rhythm of lines and colours, music
and movements, hints and whispers, and all the suggestion of the inexpressible, finds its harmony in the
ceaseless longing of the human heart to make the Person manifest in its own creations.
The desire for the manifestation of this Person makes us lavish with all our resources. When
we accumulate wealth, we have to account for every penny; we reason accurately and we act with care.
But when we set about to express our wealthiness, we seem to lose sight of all lines of limit. In fact,
none of us has wealth enough fully to express what we mean by wealthiness. When we try to save our
life from an enemy's attack, we are cautious in our movements. But when we feel impelled to express
our personal bravery, we willingly take risks and go to the length of losing our lives. We are careful of
expenditure in our everyday life, but on festive occasions, when we express our joy, we are thriftless
even to the extent of going beyond our means. For when we are intensely conscious of our own
personality, we are apt to ignore the tyranny of facts. We are temperate in our dealings with the man
with whom our relation is the relationship of prudence. But we feel we have not got enough for those
whom we love. The poet says of the beloved:
'It seems to me that I have gazed at your beauty from the beginning of my existence, that I
have kept you in my arms for countless ages, yet it has not been enough for me.'
He says, 'Stones would melt in tenderness, if touched by the breeze of your mantle.'
He feels that his 'eyes long to fly like birds to see his beloved.'
Judged from the standpoint of reason these are exaggerations, but from that of the heart,
freed from limits of facts, they are true.
Is it not the same in God's creation? There, forces and matters are alike mere facts - they have
their strict accounts kept and they can be accurately weighed and measured. Only beauty is not a mere
fact; it cannot be accounted for, it cannot be surveyed and mapped. It is an expression. Facts are like
wine-cups that carry it, they are hidden by it, it overflows them. It is infinite in its suggestion, it is
extravagant in its words. It is personal, therefore, beyond science. It sings as does the poet, 'It seems to
me that I have gazed at you from the beginning of my existence, that I have kept you in my arms for
countless ages, yet it has not been enough for me.'
So we find that our world of expression does not accurately coincide with the world of facts,
because personality surpasses facts on every side. It is conscious of its infinity and creates from its
abundance; and because, in art, things are challenged from the standpoint of the immortal Person,
those which are important in our customary life of facts become unreal when placed on the pedestal of
art. A newspaper account of some domestic incident in the life of a commercial magnate may create
agitation in Society, yet would lose all its significance if placed by the side of great works of art. We can
well imagine how it would hide its face in shame, if by some cruel accident it found itself in the
neighbourhood of Keats's 'Ode on a Grecian Urn.'
Yet the very same incident, if treated deeply, divested of its conventional superficiality, might
have a better claim in art than the negotiation for raising a big loan for China, or the defeat of British
diplomacy in Turkey. A mere household event of a husband's jealousy of his wife, as depicted in one of
Shakespeare's tragedies, has greater value in the realm of art than the code of caste regulations in
Manu's scripture or the law prohibiting inhabitants of one part of the world from receiving human
treatment in another. For when facts are looked upon as mere facts, having their chain of consequences
in the world of facts, they are rejected by art.
When, however, such laws and regulations as I have mentioned are viewed in their application
to some human individual, in all their injustice, insult and pain, then they are seen in their complete
truth and they become subjects for art. The disposition of a great battle may be a great fact, but it is
useless for the purpose of art. But what that battle has caused to a single individual soldier, separated
from his loved ones and maimed for life, has a vital value for art which deals with reality.
Man's social world is like some nebulous system of stars, consisting largely of a mist of
abstractions, with such names as society, state, nation, commerce, politics and war. In their dense
amorphousness man is hidden and truth is blurred. The one vague idea of war covers from our sight a
multitude of miseries, and obscures our sense of reality. The idea of the nation is responsible for crimes
that would be appalling, if the mist could be removed for a moment. The idea of society has created
forms of slavery without number, which we tolerate simply because it has deadened our consciousness
of the reality of the personal man. In the name of religion deeds have been done that would exhaust all
the resources of hell itself for punishment, because with its creeds and dogmas it has applied an
extensive plaster of anaesthetic over a large surface of feeling humanity. Everywhere in man's world the
Supreme Person is suffering from the killing of the human reality by the imposition of the abstract. In
our schools the idea of the class hides the reality of the school children; they become students and not
individuals. Therefore it does not hurt us to see children's lives crushed, in their classes, like flowers
pressed between book leaves. In government, the bureaucracy deals with generalizations and not with
men. And therefore it costs it nothing to indulge in wholesale cruelties. Once we accept as truth such a
scientific maxim as 'Survival of the Fittest' it immediately transforms the whole world of human
personality into a monotonous desert of abstraction, where things become dreadfully simple because
robbed of their mystery of life.
In these large tracts of nebulousness, Art is creating its stars, - stars that are definite in their
forms but infinite in their personality. Art is calling us the "children of the immortal," and proclaiming
our right to dwell in the heavenly worlds.
What is it in man that asserts its immortality in spite of the obvious fact of death? It is not his
physical body or his mental organization. It is that deeper unity, that ultimate mystery in him, which,
from the centre of his world, radiates towards its circumference; which is in his body, yet transcends his
body; which is in his mind, yet grows beyond his mind; which, through the things belonging to him,
expresses something that is not in them; which, while occupying his present, overflows its banks of the
past and the future. It is the personality of man, conscious of its inexhaustible abundance; it has the
paradox in it that it is more than itself; it is more than as it is seen, as it is known, as it is used. And this
consciousness of the infinite, in the personal man, ever strives to make its expressions immortal and to
make the whole world its own. In Art the person in us is sending its answers to the Supreme Person,
who reveals Himself to us in a world of endless beauty across the lightless world of facts.
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SRI AUROBINDO
Poet, philosopher, mystic, political activist and nationalist, Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950) is quite
an enigmatic and misunderstood figure of the modern Indian renaissance. He was educated from his
early childhood in England, and when he returned to India at the age of twenty-one, he had to learn his
mother tongue, Bengali, from a tutor employed for the purpose. In no time, however, Aurobindo had
acquired mastery over Bengali, Sanskrit, Gujarati as he had done with respect to English, French and
Italian earlier. The knowledge of so many languages, and his untiring zeal for reading, gave Sri Aurobindo
familiarity with a vast body of world literature, such as perhaps only Goethe had before him. As such, he
developed an extremely receptive attitude to literary forms and experiments, and acquired a catholicity
of literary taste. This literary background, his anti-British political programme, and the visionary
mysticism combined to produce Sri Aurobindo's curious critical masterpiece, Future Poetry. It is curious,
for half of it is a synoptic history of English poetry, and the other half is a manifesto of mystical poetry.
But the literary wisdom and critical insight pervading the volume have rarely been matched by any other
critic or critical work in modern India.
Future Poetry is, after all, a serious book of literary criticism, though it has not had the
reception it deserved. It is a book of criticism by a poet involved in writing a highly experimental kind of
poetry. Besides, the ideas in it are not derived either from the West or from ancient India. They are Sri
Aurobindo's own creation. The ideas present in Sri Aurobindo's criticism represent, generally speaking,
the romantic mood in Indian literature of the early twentieth century. Two of his essays are included
here. 'The Sources of Poetry' was written by him when he was barely twenty-five, when he had not yet
turned a mystic. 'The Essence of Poetry' is a chapter, a crucial one, from Future Poetry. Both of these
were originally written in English, which also seems to have become the major language of twentieth
century Indian literary criticism.
The swiftness of the muse has been embodied in the image of Pegasus, the heavenly horse of
Greek legend; it was from the rapid beat of his hoofs on the rock that Hippocrene flowed. The waters of
Poetry flow in a current or a torrent; where there is a pause or a denial, it is a sign of obstruction in the
stream or of imperfection in the mind which the waters have chosen for their bed and continent. In
India we have the same idea; Saraswati is for us the goddess of poetry, and her name means the stream
or 'she who has flowing motion'. But even Saraswati is only an intermediary. Ganga is the real mother of
inspiration, she who flows impetuously down from the head of Mahadev, God high-seated, over the
Himalaya of the mind to the homes and cities of men. All poetry is an inspiration, a thing breathed into
the thinking organ from above; it is recorded in the mind, but is born in the higher principle of direct
knowledge or ideal vision which surpasses mind. It is in reality a revelation. The prophetic or revealing
power sees the substance; the inspiration perceives the right expression. Neither is manufactured; nor is
poetry really a poiesis or composition, nor even a creation, but rather the revelation of something that
eternally exists. The ancients knew this truth and used the same word for poet and prophet, creator and
seer, sophos, vates, kavi.
But there are differences in the manifestation. The greatest motion of poetry comes when the
mind is still and the ideal principle works above and outside the brain, above even the hundred-petalled
lotus of the ideal mind, in its proper empire, for then it is Veda that is revealed, the perfect substance
and expression of eternal truth. The higher ideation transcends genius just as genius transcends ordinary
intellect and perception. But that great faculty is still beyond the normal level of our evolution. Usually
we see the action of the revelation and inspiration reproduced by a secondary, diluted and uncertain
process in the mind. But even this secondary and inferior action is so great that it can give us
Shakespeare, Homer and Valmiki. There is also a tertiary and yet more common action of the
inspiration. For of our three mental instruments of knowledge, - the heart or emotionally realising mind,
the observing and reasoning intellect with its aids, fancy and memory, and the intuitive intellect, - it is
into the last and highest that the ideal principle transmits its inspirations when the greatest poetry
writes itself out through the medium of the poet. But if the intuitive intellect is not strong enough to act
habitually, it is better for the poetry to descend into the heart and return to the intellect suffused and
coloured with passion and emotion than to be formed directly in the observing intellect.
Poetry written from the reasoning intellect is apt to be full of ingenious conceits, logic,
argumentation, rhetorical turns, ornamental fancies, echoes learned and imitative rather than uplifted
and transformed. This is what is sometimes called classical poetry, the vigorous and excellent but
unemotional and unuplifted poetry of Pope and Dryden. It has its inspiration, its truth and value; it is
admirable in its way, but it is only great when it is lifted out of itself into intuitive writing or else invaded
by the heart. For everything that needs fire rather than Light, driving-force rather than clearness,
enthusiasm rather than correctness, the heart is obviously the more potent instrument. Now, poetry to
be great must have either enthusiasm or ecstasy.
Yet the poetry that rises up from the heart is usually a turbid stream; our own restless ideas
and imaginations mix with the pure inrush from above, and turbulent uprush from below, our excited
emotions seek an exaggerated expression, our aesthetic habits and predilections busy themselves to
demand a satisfaction greatly beyond their due. Such poetry may be inspired, but it is not always
suitable or inevitable. There is often a double inspiration, the higher or ecstatic and the lower or
emotional, and the lower disturbs and drags down the higher. This is the birth of romantic or excessively
exuberant poetry, too rich in expression, too abundant and redundant in substance. The best poetry
coming straight from the right centres may be bare and strong, unadorned and lofty, or it may be rich
and splendid; it may be at will romantic or classical; but it will always be felt to be the right thing for its
purpose; it is always nobly or rapturously inevitable.
But even in the higher centres of the intuitive intellect there may be defects in the inspiration.
There is a kind of false fluency which misses the true language of poetry from dullness of perception.
Under the impression that it is true and inspired writing it flows with an imperturbable flatness, saying
the thing that should be said but not in the way that it should be said, without force and felicity. This is
the tamasic or clouded stimulus, active, but full of unenlightenment and self-ignorance. The thing seen
is right and good; accompanied with the inspired expression it would make very noble poetry. Instead, it
becomes prose rendered unnatural and difficult to tolerate by being cut up into lengths. Wordsworth is
the most characteristic and interesting victim of tamasic stimulus. Other great poets fall a prey to it, but
that superb and imperturbable self-satisfaction under the infliction is his alone. There is another species
of tamasic stimulus which transmits an inspired and faultless expression, but the substance is neither
interesting to man nor pleasing to the gods. A good deal of Milton comes under this category. In both
cases what has happened is that either the inspiration or the revelation has been active, but its
companion activity has refused to associate itself in the work.
It is when the mind works at the form and substance of poetry without either the revelation or
the inspiration from above that respectable or minor poetry is produced. Judgement, memory and
imagination may work, command of language may be there, but without that secondary action of a
higher than intellectual force, it is labour wasted, work that earns respect but not immortality. Doggerel
and bastard poetry take their rise not even in the observing intellect but from the sensational mind or
the passive memory guided only by the mere physical pleasure of sound and emotion. It is bold, blatant,
external, imitative, vulgar; its range of intellectuality and imaginativeness cannot go beyond the vital
impulse and the vital delight. But even in the sensational mind there is the possibility of a remote action
from the ideal self; for even to the animals who think sensationally only, God has given revelations and
inspirations which we call instincts. Under such circumstances even bastard poetry may have a kind of
worth, a kind of inevitability. The poet in the sensational man may be entirely satisfied and delighted,
and even in the more developed human being the sensational element may find a poetical satisfaction
not of the highest. The best ballad poetry and Macaulay's lays are instances in point. Scott is a sort of
link between sensational and intellectual poetry. While there are men mainly sensational, secondarily
intellectual and not at all ideal, he will always be admired.
Another kind of false inspiration is the rajasic or fiery stimulus. It is not flat and unprofitable
like the tamasic, but hasty, impatient and vain. It is eager to avoid labour by catching at the second best
expression or the incomplete vision of the idea, insufficiently jealous to secure the best form, the most
satisfying substance. Rajasic poets, even when they feel the defect in what they have written, hesitate
to sacrifice it because they also feel and are attached either to what in it is valuable or to the memory of
their delight when it was first written. If they get a better expression or a fuller sight, they often prefer
to reiterate rather than strike out inferior stuff with which they are in love. Sometimes, drifting or
struggling helplessly along that shallow and vehement current, they vary one idea or harp on the same
imagination without any final success in expressing it inevitably. Examples of the rajasic stimulus are
commonest in Shelley and Spenser, but few English poets are free from it. This is the rajasic fault in
expression. But the fiery stimulus also perverts or hampers the substance. An absence of self-restraint,
an unwillingness to restrict and limit the ideas and imagination is a sure sign of a rajasic ideality. There is
an attempt to exhaust all the possibilities of the subject, to expand and multiply thoughts and
imaginative visions beyond the bounds of the right and permissible. Or else the true idea is rejected or
fatally anticipated by another which is or seems to be more catching and boldly effective. Keats is the
principal exemplar of the first tendency, the Elizabethans of the second. The earlier work of Shakespeare
abounds with classical instances. As distinguished from the Greek, English is pronouncedly rajasic
literature and, though there is much in it that is more splendid than almost anything done by the
Greeks, - more splendid, not better - a great deal even of its admired portions are rather rich or
meretricious than great and true.
The perfect inspiration in the intuitive intellect is the sattwic or luminous inspiration, which is
disinterested, self-contained, yet at will noble, rich or vigorous, having its eye only on the right thing to
be said and the right way to say it. It does not allow its perfection to be interfered with by emotion or
eagerness but this does not shut it out from ecstasy and exaltation. On the contrary, its delight of self-
enjoyment is a purer and more exquisite enthusiasm than that which attends any other inspiration. It
commands and uses emotion without enslaving itself to it. There is indeed a sattwic stimulus which is
attached to its own luminosity, limpidity and steadiness, and avoids richess, force or emotion of
poignant character even when these are needed and appropriate. The poetry of Matthew Arnold is
often, though not always, of this character. But this is a limited inspiration. Sattwic as well as rajasic
poetry may be written from the uninspired intellect, but the sensational mind never gives birth to
sattwic poetry.
One thing has to be added. A poet need not be a reflective critic; he need not have the
reasoning and analysing intellect and dissect his own poetry. But two things he must have in some
measure to be perfect, the intuitive judgement which shows him at a glance whether he has got-the
best or the second-best idea, the perfect or the imperfect expression and rhythm, and the intuitive
reason which shows him without analysis why or wherein it is best or second-best, perfect or imperfect.
These four faculties, revelation or prophecy, inspiration, intuitive judgement and intuitive reason, are
the perfect equipment of genius doing the works of interpretative and creative knowledge.
--------------------
In order to get a firm clue which we can follow fruitfully in retrospect and prospect we have
proposed to ourselves, it will not be amiss to enquire what is the highest power we demand from
poetry; or - let us put it more largely and get nearer the roots of the matter, - what may be the nature of
poetry, its essential law, and how out of that arises the possibility of its use as the mantra of the Real.
Not that we need spend a vain effort in labouring to define anything so profound, elusive and
indefinable as the breath of poetic creation; to take the myriad-stringed harp of Saraswati to pieces for
the purpose of scientific analysis must always be a narrow and rather barren amusement. But we do
stand in need of some guiding intuitions, some helpful descriptions which will serve to enlighten our
search; and to fix in that way, not by definition, but by description, the essential things in poetry is
neither an impossible, nor an unprofitable endeavour.
We meet here two common enough errors, to one of which the ordinary uninstructed mind is
most liable, to the other the too instructed critic or the too intellectually conscientious artist or
craftsman. To the ordinary mind, judging poetry without really entering it, it looks as if it were nothing
more than an aesthetic pleasure of the imagination, the intellect and the ear, a sort of elevated pastime.
If that were all, we need not have wasted time in seeking for its spirit, its inner aim, its deeper law.
Anything pretty, pleasant and melodious with a beautiful idea in it would serve our turn; a song of
Anacreon or a plaint of Mimnermus would be as good as the Oedipus, Agamemnon or Odyssey, for from
this point of view they might well strike us as equally and even, one might contend, more perfect in their
light, but exquisite unity and brevity. Pleasure, certainly, we expect from poetry as from all art; but the
external sensible and even the inner imaginative pleasure are only first elements; refined in order to
meet the highest requirements of the intelligence, the imagination and the ear, they have to be still
farther heightened and in their nature raised beyond even their own noblest levels.
For neither the intelligence, the imagination nor the ear are the true recipients of the poetic
delight, even as they are not its true creators; they are only its channels and instruments; the true
creator, the true hearer is the soul. The more rapidly and transparently the rest do their work of
transmission, the less they make of their separate claim to satisfaction, the more directly the word
reaches and sinks deep into the soul, the greater the poetry. Therefore poetry has not really done its
work, at least its highest work, until it has raised the pleasure of the instrument and transmuted it into
the deeper delight of the soul. A divine Ananda, a delight interpretative, creative, revealing, formative -
one might almost say, an inverse reflection of the joy which the universal Soul has felt in its great
release of energy when it ranges out into the rhythmic forms of the universe the spiritual truth, the
large interpretative idea, the life, the power, the emotion of things packed into its original creative
vision - such spiritual joy is that which the soul of the poet feels and which, when he can conquer the
human difficulties of his task, he succeeds in pouring also into all those who are prepared to receive it.
And this delight is not merely a godlike pastime; it is a great formative and illuminative power.
The critic - of a certain type - or the intellectually conscientious artist will, on the other hand,
often talk as if poetry were mainly a matter of a faultlessly correct or at the most an exquisite technique.
Certainly, in all art good technique is the first step towards perfection; but there are so many other
steps; there is a whole world beyond before you can get near to what you seek; so much so that even a
deficient correctness of execution will not prevent an intense and gifted soul from creating great poetry
which keeps its hold on the centuries. Moreover, technique, however indispensable, occupies a smaller
field perhaps in poetry than in any other art, - first, because its instrument, the rhythmic word, is full of
subtle and immaterial elements; then because, the most complex, flexible, variously suggestive of all the
instruments of the artistic creator, it has more infinite possibilities in many directions than any other.
The rhythmic word has a subtly sensible element, its sound value, a quite immaterial element, its
significance or thought value, and both of these again, its sound and its sense, have separately and
together a soul value, a direct spiritual power, which is infinitely the most important thing about them.
And though this comes to birth with a small element subject to the laws of technique, yet almost
immediately, almost at the beginning of its flight, its power soars up beyond the province of any laws of
mechanical construction.
Rather it determines itself its own form. The poet least of all artists needs to create with his
eye fixed anxiously on the technique of his art. He has to possess it, no doubt; but in the heat of creation
the intellectual sense of it becomes a subordinate action or even a mere undertone in his mind, and in
his best moments he is permitted, in a way, to forget it altogether. For then the perfection of his sound-
movement and style comes entirely as the spontaneous form of his soul: that utters itself in an inspired
rhythm and an innate, a revealed word, even as the universal Soul created the harmonies of the
universe out of the power of the word secret and eternal within him, leaving the mechanical work to be
done in a surge of hidden spiritual excitement by the subconscient part of his Nature. It is this highest
speech which is the supreme poetic utterance, the immortal element in his poetry, and a little of it is
enough to save the rest of his work from oblivion. Svalpam apyasya dharmasya!
This power makes the rhythmic word of the poet the highest form of speech available to man
for the expression whether of his self-vision or of his world-vision. It is noticeable that even the highest
experience, the pure spiritual which enters into the things that can never be wholly expressed, still,
when it does try to express them and not merely to explain them intellectually, tends instinctively to
use, often the rhythmic forms, almost always the manner of speech characteristic of poetry. But poetry
attempts to extend this manner of vision and utterance to all experience, even the most objective, and
therefore it has a natural urge towards the expression of something in the object beyond its mere
appearances, even when these seem outwardly to be all that it is enjoying.
We may usefully cast a glance, not at the last inexpressible secret, but at the first elements of
this heightening and intensity peculiar to poetic utterance. Ordinary speech uses language mostly for a
limited practical utility of communication; it uses it for life and for the expression of ideas and feelings
necessary or useful to life. In doing so, we treat words as conventional signs for ideas with nothing but a
perfunctory attention to their natural force, much as we use any kind of common machine or simple
implement; we treat them as if, though useful for life, they were themselves without life. When we wish
to put a more vital power into them, we have to lend it to them out of ourselves, by marked intonations
of the voice, by the emotional force or vital energy we throw into the sound so as to infuse into the
conventional word-sign something which is not inherent in itself. But if we go back earlier in the history
of language and still more if we look into its origins, we shall, I think, find that it was not always so with
human speech. Words had not only a real and vivid life of their own, but the speaker was more
conscious of it than we can possibly be with our mechanised and sophisticated intellects. This arose
from the primitive nature of language which, probably, in its first movement was not intended, - or shall
we say, did not intend, - so much to stand for distinct ideas of the intelligence as for feelings, sensations,
broad indefinite mental impressions with minute shades of quality in them which we do not now care to
pursue. The intellectual sense in its precision must have been a secondary element which grew more
dominant as language evolved.
The reason why sound came to express fixed ideas, lies not in any natural and inherent
equivalence between the sound and its intellectual sense, for there is none, - intellectually any sound
might express any sense, if men were agreed on a conventional equivalence between them; it started
from an indefinable quality or property in the sound to raise certain vibrations in the life-soul of the
human creature, in his sensational, his emotional, his crude mental being. An example may indicate
more clearly what I mean. The word 'wolf', the origin of which is no longer present to our minds,
denotes to our intelligence a certain living object and that is all, the rest we have to do for ourselves: the
Sanskrit word vrka, 'tearer', came in the end to do the same thing, but originally it expressed the
sensational relation between the wolf and man which most affected the man's life, and it did so by a
certain quality in the sound which readily associated it with the sensation of tearing. This must have
given early language a powerful life, a concrete vigour, in one direction a natural poetic force which it
has lost, however greatly it has gained in precision, clarity, utility.
Now, poetry goes back in a way and recovers, though in another fashion, as much as it can of
this original element. It does this partly by a stress on the image replacing the old sensational
concreteness, partly by a greater attention to the suggestive force of the sound, its life, its power, the
mental impression it carries. It associates this with the definitive thought value contributed by the
intelligence and increases both by each other. In that way it succeeds at the same time in carrying up
the power of speech to the direct expression of a higher reach of experience than the intellectual or
vital. For it brings out not only the definitive intellectual value of the word, not only its power of
emotion and sensation, its vital suggestion, but through and beyond these its soul-suggestion, its spirit.
So poetry arrives at the indication of infinite meanings beyond the finite intellectual meaning the word
carries. It expresses not only the life-soul of man as did the primitive word, not only the ideas of his
intelligence for which speech now usually serves, but the experience, the vision, the ideas, as we may
say, of the higher and wider soul in him. Making them real to our life-soul as well as present to our
intellect, it opens to us by the word the doors of the Spirit.
Prose style carries speech to a much higher power than its ordinary use, but it differs from
poetry in not making this yet greater attempt. For it takes its stand firmly on the intellectual value of the
word. It uses rhythms which ordinary speech neglects, and aims at a general fluid harmony of
movement. It seeks to associate words agreeably and luminously so as at once to please and to clarify
the intelligence. It strives after a more accurate, subtle, flexible and satisfying expression than the rough
methods of ordinary speech care to compass. A higher adequacy of speech is its first object. Beyond this
adequacy it may aim at a greater forcefulness and effectiveness by various devices of speech which are
so many rhetorical means for heightening its force of intellectual appeal. Passing beyond
this first limit, this just or strong, but always restraining measure, it may admit a more emphatic
rhythm, more directly and powerfully stimulate the emotion, appeal to a more vivid aesthetic sense. It
may even make such a free or rich use of images as to suggest an outward approximation to the manner
of poetry; but it employs them decoratively, as ornaments, alamkara, or for their effective value in
giving a stronger intellectual vision of the thing or the thought it describes or defines; it does not use the
image for that profounder and more living vision for which the poet is always seeking. And always it has
its eye on its chief hearer and judge, the intelligence, and calls in other powers only as important aids to
capture his suffrage. Reason and taste, two powers of the intelligence, are rightly the supreme gods of
the prose stylist, while to the poet they are only minor deities.
If it goes beyond these limits, approaches in its measures a more striking rhythmic balance,
uses images for sheer vision, opens itself to mightier breath of speech, prose style passes beyond its
province and approaches or even enters the confines of poetry. It becomes poetical prose or even
poetry itself using the apparent forms of prose as a disguise or a loose apparel. A high or a fine
adequacy, effectivity, intellectual illuminativeness and a carefully tempered aesthetic satisfaction are
the natural and normal powers of its speech. But the privilege of the poet is to go beyond and discover
that more intense illumination of speech, that inspired word and supreme inevitable utterance, in which
there meets the unity of a divine rhythmic movement with a depth of sense and a power of infinite
suggestion welling up directly from the fountain-heads of the spirit within us. He may not always or
often find it, but to seek for it is the law of his utterance, and when he can not only find it, but cast into
it some deeply revealed truth of the spirit itself, he utters the mantra.
But always, whether in the search or the finding, the whole style and rhythm of poetry are the
expression and movement which come from us out of a certain spiritual excitement caused by a vision in
the soul of which it is eager to deliver itself. The vision may be of anything in Nature or God or man or
the life of creatures or the life of things; it may be a vision of force and action, or of sensible beauty, or
of truth of thought, or of emotion and pleasure and pain, of this life or the life beyond. It is sufficient
that it is the soul which sees and the eye, sense, heart and thought-mind become the passive
instruments of the soul. Then we get the real, the high poetry. But if it is too much an excitement of the
intellect, the imagination, the emotions, the vital activities seeking rhythmical and forceful expression
which acts, without enough of the greater spiritual excitement embracing them, if all these are not
sufficiently sunk into the soul, steeped in it, fused in it and the expression does not come out purified
and uplifted by a sort of spiritual transmutation, then we fall to lower levels of poetry, and get work of a
much more doubtful immortality. And when the appeal is altogether to the lower things in us, the mere
mind, we arrive outside the true domain of poetry; we approach the confines of prose or get prose itself
masking in the apparent forms of poetry, and the work is distinguished from prose style only or mainly
by its mechanical elements, a good verse form and perhaps a more compact, catching or energetic
expression than the prose writer will ordinarily permit to the easier and looser balance of his speech.
That is to say, it will not have at all or not sufficiently the true essence of poetry.
For in all things that speech can express there are two elements, the outward or instrumental
and the real or spiritual. In thought, for instance, there is the intellectual idea, that which the
intelligence makes precise and definite to us, and the soul-idea, that which exceeds the intellectual and
brings us into nearness or identity with the whole reality of the thing expressed. Equally in emotion, it is
not the mere emotion itself the poet seeks, but the soul of the emotion, that in it for the delight of
which the soul in us and the world desires or accepts emotional experience. So too with the poetical
sense of objects, the poet's attempt to embody in his speech truth of life or truth of Nature. It is this
greater truth and its delight and beauty and therefore a joy for ever, because it brings us the delight of
the soul in the discovery of its own deeper realities. This greater element the more timid and temperate
speech of prose can sometimes shadow out to us, but the heightened and fearless style of poetry makes
it close and living and the higher cadences of poetry carry in on their wings what the style by itself could
not bring. This is the source of that intensity which is the stamp of poetical speech and of the poetical
movement. It comes from the stress of the soul-vision behind the word; it is the spiritual excitement of a
rhythmic voyage of self-discovery among the magic islands of form and name in these inner and outer
worlds.
Mardhekar (1909-1951) is acknowledged as the most significant Marathi poet of the twentieth
century, and as one of the pioneers of Indian modernism. He wrote some experimental fiction, in the
stream of consciousness mode; but his reputation rests mainly on his contribution to the fields of
aesthetics and literary criticism.
He wrote criticism in Marathi as well as in English. His major critical works were collected
under the title 'Arts and Man' and published posthumously. The essay reproduced here is from that
collection. Mardhekar's criticism shows a keen interest in philosophy, logic and linguistics. In formulating
his ideas, he followed the leading Western thinkers of his generation, mainly Croce, Collingwood and I.A.
Richards. But, in spite of this influence, Mardhekar's theory of 'rhythm, contrast, balance' is his own. The
Mardhekar Law of Beauty has haunted Marathi criticism for half a century; and almost all theoretical
discussion in Marathi about literary beauty focuses on Mardhekar's views. If Marathi is one of the very
few Indian languages in which the branch of philosophy known as Aesthetics has made any
development, it is thanks to Mardhekar's pioneering of that branch. The essay by R.B.Patankar included
in the second part of the present anthology, 'Aesthetics: Some Important Problems', offers a searching
critique of Mardhekar's theory.
Though Western literary influence, and the English type of education had influenced the Indian
critical climate in the early part of this century, it was not until Mardhekar did it that an unhesitating
acceptance of the Western lead in literary criticism was accepted. Mardhekar is thus India's first
'modernising' critic. Hence his writing is important historically too.
No one who ponders over the various problems of the aesthetic science and tries to seek light
upon them from the writings of art critics and aesthetic philosophers will fail to be struck by the amount
of confusion that has been imported into aesthetic theory by the fact that poetry has been treated as
being on a par with the other fine arts. Such a conception, and the consequent temptation to treat the
Ars Poetica as a representative art in the analysis, discussion and illustration of aesthetic problems, arise
from causes which are not difficult to discern.
Poetry deals in words as carriers of emotional meanings. The intimate apprehension of
emotional meanings is a biological necessity. Without the prompt apprehension of such meanings and
the quick and proper reaction to them, the sentient being will not be able to maintain itself in the
constant struggle for existence, nor succeed in perpetuating its species. The attraction of poetry, which
helps the above process, is, therefore, quite natural, and its interest for human beings both widespread
and perennial. Art critics and aesthetic philosophers, sharing this interest and moved by this attraction
like the vast majority of human beings, with leanings primarily humanistic, tend almost invariably to
resort to poetry while illustrating their analyses of aesthetic problems. Secondly, all discussion, and
therefore, aesthetic discussion, must be carried on in words. Those, therefore, who have a special
facility in handling and manipulating linguistic symbols, by the volume of their voice, their repetitions
and the charm of their verbal expression, come finally to saturate men's minds with theirs opinions, and
induce a sort of mental hypnosis in which these opinions are accepted without challenge.
The chief traffickers in this kind of soporific aesthetics are the poets. Either by explicit
aesthetic formulation or by recording their own reactions before a work of non-literary art, both of
which could not but be in terms of poetic (that is to say, non-aesthetic-emotional) experiences, they
have brought the assurance of an apparently authentic certainty to what was before merely a tempting
surmise, namely, the assumption that poetry is a fine art on the same level as painting, music, sculpture,
dancing, etc.
This all too human prejudice in favour of poetry, and the natural inclination to regard poetry as
a typical fine art instead of recognising that there is a hierarchy of order among the fine arts, have
received their most powerful philosophical sanction from the intuitional aesthetics of Benedetto Croce.
It is a significant indication of the 'pattern of criticism', to use a happy phrase of Mr. Eliot, which the
Crocean aesthetics has set, that Croce's article on Aesthetics in the latest edition of the Encyclopaedia
Britannica begins with the examination of a poem, a piece from Virgil, and that the first sentence of the
second paragraph reads as follows:
'What has been said of "poetry" applies to all other "arts" commonly enumerated; painting,
sculpture, architecture, music'
As a reaction against the 'compartmental' and unrelated criticism of his predecessors, the
setting up of the abstract Crocean conception of Art, as against the various individual fine arts and
transcending them, might have been both necessary and opportune; but unless the exact content of this
conception is determined by a rigorous logical analysis, its value as what Dr. Richards would call 'a
speculative instrument' for the investigation of aesthetic problems is of the most dubious kind. Once
transfer it from the purpose for which it is relevant to other issues, and you will immediately land
yourself in a complete aesthetic mess. It will then seem to you to follow with an absurdly evident
necessity that, for the purposes of aesthetic theory and the elucidation of aesthetic problems in all their
manifold aspects, one art is as good as another; that poetry is no worse than painting and music no
better than either. What is, however, denied here is not that there is nothing common to the various
fine arts, but that an abstraction - made for a certain purpose and with certain metaphysical or
otherwise subjective predilections - can be rightfully held valid for the whole field of aesthetic science
and be elevated to the position of a supreme principle from which any inference is legitimate without
much further ado. L'estetica dell' una parola, as we might describe the Crocean aesthetics without
irreverence, even as Gentile has described the Crocean philosophy, la filosofia delle quattroparole, has, I
humbly submit, sinned in this latter way.
The tendency to think of human life as of the highest value and the emotions which directly
administer to its prolongation by ensuring its smooth and even flow as of paramount significance,
reinforced by poetic utterances and justified by a philosophy, making of poetry the Ars Artis, has led to
some unfortunate results in aesthetic theory. Since everyone understands, or thinks he understands,
poetry, more or less, because its counters are his counters, and because the poet's experience differs
from his experiences only in being more integral, less attenuated, and not essentially, and since there is
a prima facie similarity between poetry and the other fine arts as both are in a strictly limited sense
useless, the temptation is as obvious as it is compelling, to interpret all artistic creation and every
aesthetic process in terms of those involved in literary production. The familiar facility with which such
an interpretation can be given and the spurious, effortless and cheap joy which it is supposed to impart,
soon turns what was once a temptation into a settled habit of mind.
Now in so far as poetry is a fine art (and it is not denied that it is a fine art, the contention
merely being that it is not of the same order as the other fine arts), that is in so far as it yields an
enjoyment that is aesthetic as opposed to the poetic or non-aesthetic-emotional (which means involving
emotions that are in the last analysis either immediately or remotely instrumental), its products and
processes must necessarily partake of the character of works of art and aesthetic processes. There is,
therefore, nothing inherently absurd or illegitimate in the interpretation of the latter in terms of the
former. Before, however, an interpretation of this type is essayed, it is absolutely essential that the
literary processes and their products should be subjected to a stringent analysis and the nature of their
terms adequately ascertained.
The next step is to equate these terms to exactly corresponding terms in similar aesthetic
products and processes. Error may creep in either in the first or in the second step. Either the
preliminary analysis is defective, or else there is a slight shifting in the placing of the terms of the one
process against those of the other so that they do not really correspond. More often both these causes
have combined to produce much false speculation and wrong aesthetic interpretation. Poetry thus
conceived in ambiguous terms and poetical interpretation thus illegitimately extended have become a
curse to aesthetic theory and a standing obstacle to the proper and full enjoyment of the other fine arts.
In order to detect where the ambiguity of the current analysis of the literary process and its
products resides, and to realise the nature of the shift that has taken place in equating their terms to
those of the aesthetic process, we cannot do better than examine the character of the middle term in
those processes, that is of the 'medium' of poetry. For in poetry, as in every other fine art, a clear
understanding of the nature of its medium is the beginning of appreciation. It is the prerequisite of any
aesthetic which aspires to be scientific. To grasp the precise nature of the medium of any fine art is to
furnish oneself with a speculative instrument of the utmost value, which can at once reveal what is
relevant, and differentiate between what is not, like grain and chaff, when one undertakes criticism of
that art.
Most of the errors, conflicts and confusion which are visible in the various aesthetic theories
will be found ultimately to spring from a failure to define the concept of medium of art. Once you boggle
over this concept, and fail to perceive the medium of any particular art, you will commit all the current
fallacies. You will appreciate one thing in the comfortable delusion that you are appreciating something
else. You will indulge in perorational aesthetics and believe that you have written a magnificent piece of
acute art criticism. Fine phrases, although they cannot butter parsnips, are yet able to cover an
incredible amount of faulty analysis, counterfeit enjoyment and mistaken enthusiasm.
Perhaps in the foregoing paragraph, while accusing others of a certain fault, I might appear to
some to remain self-condemned for one very like it. Still more likely it is that I might appear to be
making much ado about nothing. For no great philosopher is required to enlighten us on the question,
what is the medium of poetry. The answer is perfectly simple: Words; though not, fortunately, 'Words,
Words, Words!'
But the matter is not so simple and it is advisable to cite a philosopher. As seasoned a scientific
thinker and as acutely clear-headed a psychologist as Prof Spearman has the following sentence on page
88 of his book, The Creative Mind:
'And as the former (painter) employs for this purpose (representation of the physical world
outside him) the medium of pigments, so the latter (the literary artist) uses words and phrases.'
Immediately on the same we happen to read in the next paragraph:
'The beauty sought by the painter is, in the main, that of his medium'
the obvious implication being that the aims of the painter and the literary artist are different. No more
comment is needed than the mere juxtaposition of these two statements. Such a juxtaposition at once
reveals how great a source of misunderstanding a half-hearted, perfunctory and superficial analysis can
become even in the hands of one who is nothing if not severely analytical. If Prof Spearman had gone
sufficiently deep into the analysis of the medium of painting as well as that of the literary art, he would
have come nearer to the truth in aesthetic theory and realised that the artistic aim of all the arts,
painting and poetry included, is the same, namely, the revelation of the beauty of their several
mediums. The differences between the various arts are the differences of their mediums. It is not that
while painters seek the beauty of their medium, poets seek the beauty of something else.
That is a fairly recent book. But take one still more recent. Commenting on Prof Abercrombie's
critical position that 'The inspiration is the poem; something self-contained and self-sufficient, a
complete and entire whole', Prof Dewey in a footnote of his book, Art as Experience, asks significantly,
presumably believing the question to be disarming, 'if it is already self-sufficient and self-contained, why
does it seek and find words as a medium of expression?' Now here again, if the nature of the medium,
that is, of words, had been duly taken into account, it would have become apparent that the question
posed is as meaningless as a similar question about paper, pen and ink would be. It is, however,
needless to multiply illustrations of this point.
Let us then examine the nature of the medium of poetry, that is, of words, as briefly as
possible. A word has primarily two aspects: (a) Sensational and (b) Intentional. In the first instance, it is a
phenomenon of sound, a complex of auditory sensations, a group of vowels and consonants. In
language, however, these sounds are not significant in themselves but only as they serve as symbols for
something else. They are in short subsidiary to the second aspect, the Intentional. The intentional aspect
is the sole justification of the existence of that particular combination of vowels and consonants.
Language arises out of the necessity of communication and immensely facilitates it. It is fashioned by
man for the more efficient carriage of human intercourse, and answers to the incessant demand of ever
increasing thought contents for easier handling.
The evolution of meaning is a process of constructive thought, which thought is essentially a
function of a limited consciousness. It is the product of the interaction of the circumscribed
consciousness with that within which it finds itself so circumscribed, and meaning has relevance and
value for such a consciousness only. But the more frequent these interactions grow, the more various,
the more complex they become, the less certain becomes the grasp of the circumscribed consciousness
upon the meanings that emerge out of them, the more awkward, the more precarious its handling of
them. A limited consciousness in its primary, least developed stages might perhaps be able to
manipulate meanings themselves bodily but it has very soon to face the necessity of finding some
convenient shorthand, abbreviated method of storing them for social currency. It is only when incipient
thought gathers weight and volume and craves for definition that it crystallises itself into words.
The sensation or sound aspect of a word is symbolical of the intentional, and is only used as a
manageable vehicle for it. The combination of the two aspects in a word is at once a boon to, and a bane
of every limited consciousness. In a world where partial or divided consciousness, as of the human
being, did not exist there would be no meanings at all. To a consciousness that is universal, everything
would be its own meaning, every thing its own symbol. The division and combination of symbol and
significance would be both impossible and unnecessary then. As we shall see presently, the necessity
and nature of this division and this combination has not been sufficiently constantly nor sufficiently
clearly kept in mind when equating the aesthetic to the literary process.
Now the intentional aspect of words or language can itself be further analysed into two
aspects. Meaning, as a fact of mental life, has the two facets: (a) Cognitive and (b) Affective. It is, of
course, a commonplace of psychology that there is no clear-cut division between the two, and it is only
when someone fails to find some more original argument that he thinks it worth while reminding others
of it. Yet the distinction between an experience that is predominantly intellectual and one that is
predominantly emotional is not difficult to perceive. There are mtellectual ideas, theoretical meaning
and emotions, or emotional meaning. We need remark here this easily observable though not sharply
marked difference.
Next we have to recognise two subdivisions of the affective aspects or two categories of
emotions. The first category we may call that of pure or absolute emotions, and group the second under
the heading of contingent emotions. Pure or absolute emotions are the immediate accompaniments of
the perception of the quality of any sensation, or of a pattern, a Gestalt, an organisation of relations.
They are the necessary concomitants of any experience that is sensuous or formal, and do not derive
from any 'experience of this world', as that expression is understood when we say that old men are
more experienced than the young. I have used the word emotions, but strictly speaking the word should
be in the singular. We may call this emotion 'aesthetic' and so distinguish it from the other group of
contingent emotions which are 'poetic'. They are contingent because they depend upon a specific
human world order. They are contingent upon the existence and persistence of a particular demand of
the environment.
It is, as I stated above, only in so far as they facilitate human reactions to the existing
environment and ensure survival, that they are of any value. If the environment changes so that certain
reactions are found to be no longer necessary, then the emotions which had formerly served these
reactions tend to disappear, gradually suffering and ultimately vanishing altogether. Those emotions, for
example, which accompanied the relations of the two sexes in the old days of chivalry have lost their
raison d 'etre'in our times. For in a world where there is municipal peace, and physical culture is no
longer the exclusive prerogative of only a section of mankind, the sentiment of chivalry is superfluous,
except in so far as it is demanded by the requirements of social etiquette or a sense of decorum - that is
to say, by the intrinsic grace of the conduct in which it displays itself, or except in so far as it is helpful to
sublimate the sexual impulse. That emotion of love which governs the relations between parents and
children would tend to disappear in a state organised on the Soviet model, in which a Government
department looks after old parents and little babies, because in such a state that emotion would lose its
sole relevance. That the prospect of such a disappearance is instantly resented and seldom fails to rouse
profound indignation is only a reflection of the way in which the self-protective mechanism in man
works, and confirms the view of the contingent nature of this kind of emotions. And nothing can
indicate more clearly how men are willing to deceive themselves into faulty intellectual positions in the
interests of poetry than all the flowers of language and rhetoric, all the glowing paeans of praise and
admiration bestowed upon the nobility of filial piety and dutifulness, in terms of which their resentment
and their indignation usually manifest themselves.
We may call the contingent emotions 'interested' also, since they are indulged in simply
because they are biologically significant and useful, whereas the aesthetic emotion is 'disinterested', and
subserves no biological plan. Again the contingent emotions are merely 'instrumental': they promote
ends that are outside the situations which realise the said emotions. In contrast, the aesthetic emotion
is an end in itself; the end is fulfilled in the very moment in which the emotion is realised. It is thus
significant on its own account.
To summarise the result of the foregoing discussion schematically:
Words
--As Sound
--As Meaning --Intellectual
--Emotional --Aesthetic
--Poetic
With the aid of the above analysis, I wish to maintain the proposition that words, as implying
both sound and meaning, are not the medium of poetry. Words can be said to be the medium of poetry
only if we understand by words 'emotional meanings of the poetic type'. A less ambiguous way of
stating the position would be to say that emotional meanings are the medium of poetry. It is these
meanings that the poet works with and that he manipulates, and neither sound nor intellectual ideas as
ideas. To speak roundly of words being the medium of poetry is to smuggle in sound and ideas as mere
cognitive facts, and that works havoc - as will be seen in the next paragraph - in aesthetic theory. Poets
who are second-rate are so, either because they employ the medium of one art while fashioning a work
of another art, and thus, aspiring to become musicians when they ought to think of remaining poets, fall
between two stools; or else because intellectual ideas have not in them been turned into fuel for an
emotional blaze. The latter of these points I shall not labour at all, since very few would be disposed to
dispute it.
'Meditate often on these truths, that some time or other they may become your feelings'. And
Sir Walter Raleigh, in his Wordsworth monograph, has spoken of the true mystic poet making thought
the food of his emotions rather than emotions the food of his thoughts.
But despite the patent turns in the fortunes of Tennyson and Swinburne on the one hand, and
of Browning on the other, the proposition that sound is irrelevant in poetry will be contested. Now I
wish to state categorically that sound as sound has absolutely no place in poetry at all. That is the
province of music. This proposition must be firmly grasped and never lost hold of. Sounds have only
symbolic value in poetry, as carriers of emotional meanings, and not intrinsic value as in music.
Only in so far as it develops, adds to, or emphasizes the meaning for which it conventionally
stands is the sound of a word either of significant or relevant in poetry. The besetting sin of second-rate
poets and third-rate literary criticism is to consider this quite irrelevant element as in some sense a
legitimate factor in poetic effects, to praise verse that is at least musical. Justifying Shelley to his
students, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch said: 'As students of poetry and its technique again, we shall have
something to say; but not so as to convey that he was vox et praeterea nihil: which is, for all their
polemics, the impression which Arnold and Swinburne agree in conveying with their combined dispraise
and praise.' The whole essay is indeed illuminating and shows how fatally mischievous (because
essentially accidental, conventional and obviously irrelevant) the element of sound can become in
literary appreciation and critical judgment.
The fact is that there is no inherent necessity that a particular combination of sounds must
express a particular meaning. The same meaning is expressed by different combinations of sounds in
different languages, and sometimes even in the same language (as witness some of the synonyms, if not
all). Conversely, the same combination of sounds may express different meanings in different languages
or even in the same language.
The sound of the word 'murmur' is relevant in
'-murmur of flies on summer eves,'
because of its associations in an English mind; that is, because of purely accidental
circumstances. There is nothing in the mere vowels and consonants which make up that word that
necessitates either the meaning or the associations. The same combination of vowels and consonants
will convey an altogether different meaning to a Maratha man. The sound sensations of the word 'wail'
will in a similar way mean different experiences in English and in the Indian language Marathi. The same
view of the function of sounds in language can be illustrated by the following pairs: French 'Paris' and
Italian 'pari'; Italian 'para' and Marathi sound equivalent to the same; French pronunciation of 'bien' and
a similar utterance in Marathi. Readers can easily supply more examples of this as well as of the other
proposition that the same sounds may express different meanings in the same language, from any book
on Phonetics.
This division between sound and meaning and the relevance of the latter alone in poetry is the
core of the precept about the agreement of sound and sense in poetry. The misunderstanding of the
nature of the medium of poetry is the cause of the ephemeral character of the commonly boosted
'sound poetry' of our day; for whenever an artist, and therefore a poet, allows himself to be seduced by
an irrelevant or secondarily relevant aspect of that with which he works into playing false to his
medium, he inevitably condemns himself to speedy oblivion. To go a step further, not only are sounds
irrelevant in poetry and outside its scope, but even the recognition of a sound effect, if sufficiently
subtle, is dependent upon and conditioned by the prior realisation of the pattern of its emotional
meanings. The protocols to the sixth poem in Dr Richards's book, Practical Criticism, and the analyses
they embody and the prosodic conclusions to be derived from them would be sufficient to convince the
reader of the truth of the above assertion. Particularly illuminating in this respect are the comments on
the delicate rhyming of the first two lines:
'Margaret! are you grieving
For golden grove unleafing?'
Unless then the beauty of sounds is transmuted into the beauty of emotional meaning by the
mechanism of associations or otherwise, poetry can take no cognisance of it. The quality of sound qua
sound has no place in poetry. Many a rhymester could dribble out more melodious verse than that of
even Shakespeare or Dante! And epic poets are greater than writers of lyrics not because they are more
musical but because they achieve larger, more complex and withal more coherent organised wholes of
emotional meanings. It is indeed a curious irony that in music, where sounds and sound patterns alone
are significant, men will hunt after emotional meanings, while in poetry, which offers them emotional
meanings, they will not rest until they have squeezed what little drop of music they can out of it.
The foregoing analysis is not original except for the thoroughness, emphasis and categorical
way with which it discards the calm of pure sound in poetry. The most important thing is the next step:
to demonstrate, and correct if we can, in the light of the above analysis, the shift that has taken place in
relating the aesthetic process to the literary. We might write the aesthetic process schematically thus:
ARTIST: MEDIUM: BEAUTY:
Now we proceed to substitute the specific determinants of particular arts. First, let us take
painting:
ARTIST: MEDIUM: BEAUTY:
PAINTER : VISUAL ASPECT OF WORLD : BEAUTY:
(colour, line, mass, etc.)
Then poetry:
POET: EMOTIONAL MEANINGS: BEAUTY:
The beauty of the medium is revealed by organising it, by using it in accordance with formal
principles. Now to remember our Spearman. One is led to treat painting and poetry as having different
ends only when one has no clear conception of the medium of either. If you say pigments are the
medium of poetry, then you pave the way to unending ambiguity and confusion; for once you start
including irrelevant factors in the middle term, why and on what principle would you stop at one point
rather than at another? You attempt to write your painting process thus:
PAINTER: PIGMENTS: BEAUTY:
and then proceed to write your literary process. Your first two terms are:
POET: WORDS:
and you put MEANING as your third term, forgetting that this is already included in the second
term in a way in which BEAUTY is not included in PIGMENTS. Another way of saying the same thing is
this: taking the literary process first, you roughly analyse it in this way:
POET: WORDS: MEANING:
Then the corresponding aesthetic process is supposed to be somewhat like this:
PAINTING: PIGMENTS: MEANING:
The fallacy here lies, as can be easily seen, in the middle term. Pigments in the second process
really correspond to the second and third terms put together in the first process. If you break up a term
into two in the first process, you are logically bound to do likewise in the second. You must formulate
your two processes thus:
POET: WORDS: MEANING: BEAUTY:
PAINTER: PIGMENTS: COLOURS: BEAUTY:
The common mistake is to seek the meaning of colours in pictures as you seek the meaning of
words in poetry. But as words are meant for meanings, so pigments are meant for colours and not
colours for meanings. Colours are not fashioned by men to signify something. No meanings, no words:
but not No meanings, no colours in any intelligible sense of the terms. The word 'green' means green
colour. If there had been no sensation of green that you wanted to communicate, there would never
have come into being that particular combination of sounds to signify that fact. But greenness, the
colour green, does not mean, in its own primary right, anything: it is just that colour. We come to
associate certain ideas with greenness undoubtedly, but these are accretions: the green colour would
still be green even if we forgot or eliminated all these associative factors. But if we forgot all the
meaning of the word 'green', that combination of vowels and consonants would not exist in our
vocabulary.
So, whereas meaning is subsidiary, associative phenomena merely in the case of colours,
sound is subsidiary, associative phenomena merely in the case of meanings (of words). The real
correspondence is not this:
MEANING: WORD: MEANING: COLOUR
but rather this:
MEANING: WORD: COLOUR: PIGMENT
You can ask what is the meaning of colour, only if you ask what is the meaning of meaning
also:
PAINTER: PIGMENTS: COLOURS: MEANING:
POET: WORDS: MEANINGS: MEANING
(of meaning)
This is perfectly legitimate, but then the question becomes not of meaning in the popular
sense, but one of philosophical analysis, and in that case one has to refer to any book on the psychology
of sensations and to Ogden and Richards's book, The Meaning of Meaning.
To summarise:
Words --Meanings
--Carriers of Meanings
Pigments --Colours
--Carriers--of Colours
Or, thus:
MEANING + CARRIERS OF MEANING - WORD
COLOUR + CARRIERS OF COLOUR - PIGMENT
To grasp that the sensation aspect - that is, the sound aspect of words - is purely symbolical, is
a vehicle for meaning even as oil or water paint is a vehicle for colour; that sound in the one case and oil
or water paint in the other are in plain fact merely instrumental, and although indispensable without
doubt as instruments, are not on tnat account essentially relevant to the nature of the creative process
involved, is at once to detect the shift and understand its vitiating character. What has been discussed
here in relation to painting applies to all the other fine arts in terms of their several mediums.
And if you can guard yourself against this shift, then there is no harm in treating creative
process deduced from poetry as typical of all arts. Thus you will save yourself from falling into the pitfall
of the representational versus abstract art controversy. Nor will you then misconceive the aesthetic
process, because you have initially yielded to the emotional potency of poetry and tried to construe the
former in terms of that underlying the latter.
Such an unambiguous treatment of poetry together with an analysis of the mediums of the
various fine arts will bring a systematic unity in aesthetic theory, and yield principles which will hold
valid for the entire field of artistic creation without exception. Upon the foundations of such an analysis
alone can you erect securely the science of aesthetics and rid critical judgments of their bewildering and
conflicting diversity. The supposed gap between the appreciation of literature and of the other fine arts
will be bridged not by a sleight of the philosopher's hand, but by discovering the identity of the
underlying formal processes. But this can happen, and poetry cease to be a curse to aesthetics, only
when we realise the doubly emotional character of poetry, that is, only when we learn to distinguish
between emotions which are the medium of poetry and that specific sui generis aesthetic emotion to
which poetry (or those mediumal emotions as organised) like all other arts gives rise; which aesthetic
emotion is evoked by beauty, that is, by the perception of formal organisations, simply in virtue of their
character of being formal organisations, instead of mere chaotic conglomerations.
KRISHNA RAYAN
Krishna Rayan (b. 1918) is perhaps the only contemporary Indian critic to develop a 'theory' of
literature by putting to use ancient Sanskrit poetics. While other interpreters of Sanskrit poetics and
Indologists are engaged in presenting ancient theories in modern versions, Krishna Rayan has been
exploring the possibility of 'modernising' Sanskrit poetics, in particular the dhvani theory. His
explorations are presented through a series of critical works: Suggestion and Statement in Poetry
(London, 1972), Text and Sub-text (London and New Delhi, 1987), The Burning Bush (Delhi, 1988) and
Sahitya, A Theory (Delhi, 1991). In all these works the main contention of Krishna Rayan is that literature
is distinguished from other forms of linguistic discourses by virtue of the complexity of literary language,
and that complexity arises from the ability of literature to be 'suggestive'. It is here that he turns to the
Alamkara school of Sanskrit poetics and to Anandavardhana's stylistics. Krishna Rayan is keen that his
observations should have an applied value. Therefore, much of what he has written comes in the form
of practical criticism, and shows a clear influence of the New Critics.
Krishna Rayan taught English at the National Defence Academy at Khadakwasla, and was a
professor at various universities in Zambia, Nigeria and India.
The extract reproduced here forms a chapter in Sahitya, A Theory (Sterling, Delhi, 1991),
pp. 7-16.
What is Literariness?
* * *
When I looked to you for rest I received nothing but shame;
But dress me for battle now, let armour cover each limb.
Let new obstructions chafe and challenge me;
I shall take all blows and hurts unflinchingly;
My heart shall drum redress for your injuries;
I shall give all my strength, win back your conch and make it BOOM.
The substantive difference between the two passages - as I hope to establish by the end of the
essay - is not that one is in prose and the other in verse but that the second one is literature while the
first is not. But what, in the meantime, is the difference between a literary text and a non-literary one?
The differentia of literary discourses as opposed to ordinary or standard discourse has been
variously identified in terms of such oppositions as: fiction / truth; emotive/referential;
aesthetic/utilitarian; deviation/norm; foregrounded/automatized. But literariness is best described (as it
indeed has been, across the ancient/modern and East/West divides) as defined by the dominance of
unstated, implied meaning. At one end of the scale is the affirmation cited in the opening verse of the
Dhvanyaloka, the 9th century Sanskrit classic of literary theory: kavyasyatma dhvanih {dhvani- i.e.,
suggested meaning; suggestion - is the essence of poetry or, more widely, of literature) - an affirmation
refined elsewhere in the same treatise by describing dominance of suggested meaning as the defining
characteristic of the best or truest poetry. At the other end of the scale are affirmations in recent or
contemporary theories in the West. Paul de Man chief among the founding fathers of Anglo-American
Post-Structuralism, declares that he 'would not hesitate to equate the rhetorical, figural potentiality of
language with literature itself' (DeMan 1979: 10) and cites a similar equation offered by Monroe
Beardsley, a leading theoretician of the New Criticism, according to whom what distinguishes the
language of literature is its being 'distinctly above the norm in ratio of implicit (or, I would say rhetorical)
to explicit meaning'. (Bradby et al eds. 1973; 37)*
(* De Man, however, also thinks that 'the rhetorical' or 'the literary' results when it is
impossible to decide whether the literal or the figurative meaning of a passage should prevail.)
Propositional discourse of this kind is of little literary value, but the other form of statement in
Agyeya's novel, i.e., linear narration, is legitimated by its function as a base supporting suggestion. This
function is easily noticed in Tagore's well-known early poem 'Agaman' which had an overt level of
statement describing the arrival of andher gharer raja - the King of the Dark House:
Fling wide the doors and let him in to the lowly conch's room;
In deepest dark the King of Night has come with wind and storm,
Thunder crashing across the skies,
Lightning setting the clouds ablaze
Drag your tattered blankets, let the yard be spread with them:
The King of Grief and Night has come to our land with wind and storm.
(Tagore tr., Radice 1987:72)
The event thus explicitly narrated is the suggestor of another, an unstated, event: namely, the
dark, turbulent descent of the Universal Self and the terror and trauma of its violent invasion of the
individual consciousness. This other event is the unnamed tenor and the dominant meaning in the
poem.
The most important form of literary signification relates to the way the text 'means'.
Ultimately the text is what the reader produces; primarily, however, it is so much language. It consists of
linguistic units organized on progressively higher and more complex levels; the phonological, the lexical,
the syntactic; then the discourse level, and beyond it, what may be called the text level. On the text level
are verbal structures co-extensive with the whole work, such as style and metre, (and at a further
remove from the primary linguistic units) imagery, narrative, character, and landscape. These textwide
units are signifiers, formed of course on a much higher level of linguistic organization than the "acoustic
image" which Saussure had described as the signifier, but their function is essentially the same. They
are, moreover, structures which are intrinsic and internal in the text and are formal elements
constitutive of its identity.
These signifiers have a common signified consisting in the reader's response to the text. The
response to a literary text is, almost by definition, a predominantly affective one. Thus the reader's
emotional experience is in fact the meaning of the text. Because the bond between the textwide
signifiers and the reader's emotion is necessarily a loose, fluid, variable association (as will be explained
in the next chapter), the process of signification here is a process of suggestion in a much truer sense
than in other areas of literary signification. The reader's emotional response arises from the signifying
structures in the text in precisely the same way as suggested meaning arises from statement. The verbal
structures are the suggestors (vyanjakas); the reader's emotion (rasa) is the suggested [vyangya).
The question 'What is literariness?' can be refined as 'How does a literary text work?' The
answer is: by the emergence of emotion-meaning from its verbal structures. This operation of
suggestion is, therefore, more basic to a theory of literature than its other operation whereby meaning
emerges from figuratively pregnant language. The two operations, however, are essentially the same,
although it is important that they be kept distinct.
The verbal structures in a literary work pertain to its nature as fiction and are intrinsic to it,
whereas its reference to reality, whether outer (i.e., society) or inner (i.e., the self), is extrinsic. This
reference includes the beliefs stated, the information provided, and the social reality claimed to be
reflected. The reader's interest in the work's authorial, historical, social, religious and moral dimensions
is valid only to the extent that it is unavoidable in devoting the fullest attention to the intrinsic elements
which evoke his response.
The authorial dimension includes the author's intention, his personal history, his beliefs, his
historical context, his social milieu, and more comprehensively, his 'imagination'. S.K.De points out that
Sanskrit literary theories, or most of them, contented themselves with analysis of textual features and
devices and failed to relate them to the poet's imagination (kavi-vyapara) and personality (kavi-
svabhava). But what De regards as the chief failing of Sanskrit poetics is in fact its chief strength. Sanskrit
theory focussed - as literary theories should and indeed today do - on the observable formal elements in
the work, analysing them in relation to the reader's response; and it marginalized the creative
imagination and the author's life, psychology, philosophy etc., as factors external to the experiencing of
a work.
U.R. Anantha Murthy's novel Samskara (Kannada) is a case that shows how peripheral are the
historical, social and religious dimensions of a literary work. The novel has, as pointed out by
A.K.Ramanujan (Anantha Murthy, 1978: 115), certain anomalies and inaccuracies in the portrayal of
Hindu mores; the central problem about the death-rite is no insoluble problem; the central figure,
Praneshacharya, who is claimed to be a paragon of Hindu dharma, has in fact skipped an important
purusartha, i.e., kama; and the picture of Brahminism is, according to some, a caricature. These
discrepancies, however, are secondary and hardly matter; it is the intrinsic elements - imagery,
narrative, characterization and language - that engage the reader's response, and the novel is able to
win his emotional assent because of them.
It is such suggestive action by the internal structures that constitutes the literariness per se of
the text. The critic's chief project then is to identify as far as possible the normal affective response to
the work, examine each of the objective elements in it, analyse their interaction among themselves, and
evaluate their effectiveness as suggestors of the reader's emotion which constitutes the meaning of the
work.
Given this definition of his function, what will a critic do with Tagore's poem 'Sankha' which we
started with? He will be interested in the thematic concern of the poem - i.e., the philosophy of
niskama-karma - only to the extent that such interest is inescapable in consciously formulating his
emotional response to the work. He will be aware that the response is a composite one, made up of a
sense of serenity (santa), desired if not actually experienced, to start with, followed by a contrasting
sense of heroic enterprise (vira). Building up these affective states are the formal elements. They are in
two groups - the first (the quiet room, the offering of flowers, the prospect of a healed heart and a
cleansed spirit) evoking serenity, or the hope of it; and the second (the armour, the drum, the conch)
stirring the heroic emotion. There are other elements too that the critic will notice: the role of the
narrator; the drama of entering the prayer room, only to quit it and don armour; and the rhythm, if he
has access to the original. He will also notice how the poem is structured around the ambiguity of the
conch symbol (i.e., the conch is sounded in a place of worship but also on the battlefield) whose
overarching presence bridges the gap between the two moods and in a way reconciles them.
The critic will also be aware that these agents of suggestion whose operations define the
literariness of the text are missing in the extract from 'The Religion of Man' which is concerned
exclusively to expound its theme (i.e., the concept of disinterested action) and does so necessarily
through a discourse that is propositional, aiming at communication and eliciting a response which is
cognitive rather than affective. The extract is therefore not a literary text.
--Krishna Rayan, from Sahitya, A Theory
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Agyeya, 1967. To Each His Stranger, tr. Agyeya and Gordon C. Roadarmel. Delhi: Hind Pocket
Books.
Anantha Murthy, U.R. 1978. Samskara, tr. A.K. Ramanujan. Delhi, Oxford University Press.
Bradley, Frank et al, eds. 1973. Literary Theory and Structure: Essays in Honour of William
K.Wimsatt. New Haven: Yale University Press.
De Man, Paul. 1979. Allegories of Reading. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Tagore, Rabindranath. 1987. Selected Poems, tr. William Radice, Harmondsworth: Penguin
Books.
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SURESH JOSHI
What B.S. Mardhekar has been to Marathi, Suresh Joshi (1921-1986) has been to Gujarati. He
is acknowledged as the leader of the avant garde writers in Gujarati during the post-Independence
period. He brought Modernism to Gujarati literature. Though his impact was felt in almost all areas of
Gujarati writing, his contribution to short fiction, literary prose and literary criticism has been the most
remarkable.
Suresh Joshi gave to Gujarati literature an acute self-awareness. The main emphasis in his
critical writings was on the processes of aesthetic transformation in literary transactions. He propagated
a theory of fiction known in Gujarati as Ghatanavilop, which insisted on minimising the plot element and
enriching the suggestive potential of language.
Joshi came into prominence in the post-Gandhian era of Gujarati literature with the
publication of his short-story collection, Grihapravesha (1959). Apart from his own creative writings, he
did much translation and literary periodical work that has enriched Gujarati literature. The present essay
is taken from his collection of critical essays Chintayami Manasa (1983), for which he was given the
Sahitya Akademi award. Incidentally, he refused to accept the award, saying that the book contained
nothing more than some stray essays. On reading the essays, one tends to completely disagree with
Joshi's self-assessment.
The essay quoted here has been translated into English specially for this volume by Upendra
Nanavati.
On Interpretation
The first question which arises is: whether or not the term 'interpretation' is accurate. Literary
terms often acquire currency, yet their indications take time to stabilize. Neither unanimity nor
sufficient data exist about the term 'interpretation'. If Susan Sontag opposes it, Seymour Hersh favours
it. In our terminology artha is not meaning, but rasa. Thus interpretation means an analysis of the
aesthetic process and the obstacles in its realisation. What exactly do we do in the name of
interpretation? Does the perception of meaning precede interpretation? How important is it to analyse
language in order to understand a poet's linguistic activity?
Some critics maintain that interpretation is a hypothesis about the common structural
principles based on the relationship between the components of a literary work. In other words, the
analysis of the organising principles, the way various components are inter-related in a literary work, is
the process of interpretation. In brief, interpretation is analysis of the structure of a literary work. Such
an analysis can postulate the thematic as well as the semantic premises about a literary text. For some
interpretation becomes an act of pointing at the suggested meaning of a literary text. For such an
exercise the basic components of a literary text like images, characters, episodes etc. need to be
arranged and explained in such a way that their mutual relationship becomes evident. 'The writer has
this or that to say through this or that text', is but an aspect of interpretation. The complexity of
interpretation cannot be summarised in such a single statement. The order of relationships of
components in a literary text and the conceptualisation of the same order need to be differentiated. The
explication of the attributes of a literary text does not amount to interpretation. A loose definition
would be: 'Whatever a critic does to a literary text is interpretation'. But, is interpretation a description
of the attributes and relationships among the components of a literary text? Or is it something more?
What is the difference between description and interpretation? If there is any logical method in
interpretation, what could it be? Do the style, images, symbols etc., effect aesthetic function or do they
not? These problems too need to be considered.
A critic has said: 'We discover the text, but we don't dig it'. Often we stop short at the stated
meaning of a text. Many a time the stated meaning itself may be aesthetically pleasing. Yet it has to be
accepted that an exploration in the direction of implied meaning becomes necessary for aesthetic
enjoyment of a literary text. For that 'digging' is necessary. Some hold that this digging itself is
interpretation.
The day-to-day life cannot be lived merely with the help of stated meanings. There too one
tends to use implied meanings. Since the frame of reference for language is the entire universe, there
are infinite possibilities for the use of language. Words tend to combine and yield numerous shades of
meaning. Often it so happens that the syntactic relationships in a verse are clear to us but the verse as a
unit is not. Meanings and grammatical structures may be clear, yet ambiguity persists. We speak of the
relationships between words or lines; however this 'between' actually refers to the space within the
consciousness of the author or the reader. This space cannot be grasped instantaneously. Aesthetics is
the discipline formulated to explain it. It charts various possible relationships like one object in place of
another (Metaphor), one object grafted on the other (simile) etc. These intangible chains of separation
and transfer do not quickly yield to logic or psychology. It is commonly believed that there is a direct link
between what one wishes to say and its linguistic expression. Yet our linguistic communication shows
that it is not such a direct relationship. We commonly come across persons who use polysemic words
and double entendre. It is a curious phenomenon. Despite the prevalence of dictionaries and technical
grammars of living languages one's perception of meaning remains opaque and uncertain. George
Steiner has elaborately discussed this issue in his recently published book 'On Difficulty'.
It is necessary to concede to Beardsley that the issue of interpretation or aesthetic experience
is connected with understanding. It remains to be seen what exactly is implied when one says that a
certain verse is obscure. Clarity of meaning is not expected of poetry. In fact clarity becomes
inappropriate at a certain level of literary texts. Moreover it even tends to be an interference. Without
getting into the interpretation of meaning, tone, environs, sentiments etc., one just has to allow them to
invade one's consciousness.
Thus the perception of meaning, as Beardsley maintains, precedes its interpretation. When a
Gujarati poet like Botadkar employs uncommon words, we can manage by referring to a dictionary. But
in statements like 'This theorem is difficult' or 'this concept of Kant is difficult', the difficulty is not that of
understanding the lexical meanings. In order to understand the conceptual framework, it is necessary to
grasp the logical basis. In the case of poetry, if a poet employs archaism, dialect, slang, code language, or
loan words, the difficulty can be overcome by obtaining information about such diction.
Here, we are not concerned with this difficulty alone. A poet is an alchemist offering new
formulations by soldering words. He miraculously revives obsolete words using various phases of the
extended history of semantic transformations and expansions. He also employs the language considered
substandard or unacceptable by elitist norms. It may just be impossible for him to use language
creatively in poetry, if he remains restricted by contemporary social norms. The flora and fauna
unknown to the present urban society also make inroads into the universe of his poetic discourse.
Moreover, as Coleridge says, words are like 'hooked atoms'. They merge into and combine with each
other in a variety of ways. Exploring the past registers, a poet revives the usable ones, and offers fresh
combinations. Breaking away the decadent moulds of language, he illuminates the semantic core. He
relies on etymology too. Steiner compares this dynamism of words with that of molecules passing
through a 'cloud chamber' effecting profound modifications and enrichment of meaning. Through
synonymy, polysemy, etc. words acquire new contours. This process cannot be understood with the
help of dictionaries and grammar. One has to take into account the evolution of a word to feel its life in
poetry. Words are not auditory alone, they also have visual and tactile properties. One has to pay
attention to all that a poet does to lift language above the level of common usage.
Aristotle maintained that 'metaphor is the instrument of the poet'. Howsoever abstract or
subtle the matter may be, a poet gives it a concrete form, investing it with uniqueness. He revives the
rich context of myths and connects one world with another. He extends the dimensions of reality, and
therefore the context of poetry is always dynamic. Poetry employs material which supports, reflects and
makes the implicit meaning unique. A poet keeps striving to recapture poetry that was, but has fallen to
the level of statements. That is why a poet writes in his own language after internalising the tradition of
poetry in it. If this does not happen it is impossible to create the climate congenial to the development
of the essence of poetry. From heaven-hell or the fourteen lokas, to whispered secrets or the lore, a
poet uses everything.
Therefore, without sufficient training, one cannot enjoy poetry. The twentieth century has
added a lot to the raw material of poetry. The poetry of Holub, the Czech poet, has multiple references
to science and technology. The field of poetry has become increasingly intellectual. We have moved
away from the age of simple, emotive poetry. Poetry of the higher kind is charted across the total
cultural canvas. Besides, poetry fuses together the raw materials of the unique contemporary sensibility,
all its unusualness, opacity, and also incongruities. These enhance poetry which enriches all its contexts
in its own fashion. Therefore, as Walter Benjamin says, 'Cruces and talismanic deeps in poetry cannot be
elucidated now or at all times'. Besides, it is necessary to bridge the gap between certain texts and
cultural contexts.
The obscurity resulting from the use of certain words or word combinations is not a great
hindrance; but a more subtle difficulty arises. Our aesthetic pleasure is hindered either due to the
variance in tastes, or due to some poetic flaw resulting from the inconsistency between the material of
poetry and its poetic transformation. If the central context or theme of a poem is elusive or
uninteresting it goes against our sensibility; or the references which we find aesthetically or ethically
improper could be conceptually mixed up. Therefore comprehensive interpretation is called for. Only
then can one truly ascertain the hindrances, and also the fact that we have not been susceptible to any
prejudices. Yet another impropriety is possible; there may be some incongruity between the level of
language and the quality of emotion, or between the poet's performative means and the native pulse. It
cannot be said that such an incongruity is invariably undesirable. It will be in order, provided there is an
aesthetic justification for it. What may be passable or appropriate in other genres of literature, may not
often be so in poetry.
There may be a rational perception of the meaning of a text in us, leading to pleasure or
displeasure; yet the autonomous existence of the text may not have been grasped and therefore the
response to it could be blurred. Even when we have the necessary information about a text, we may still
not be able to establish any rapport with it. This does not happen merely because of our likes or dislikes.
We feel that our consciousness and that of the poet do not share common environs, and hence the text
is not received as an aesthetic entity and we find it difficult to surrender to it. It may be agonising for us
to mould our sensibility in correspondence with the form of sensibility reflected in the poetic text. This
can obstruct the aesthetic pleasures.
It is said that our own culture is more interested in experience than in cognition. Excessive
emotions may not hold their balance with rationality; the insistence on form or discipline may slacken;
and the tendency to make combinations and parities may increase. Any discipline or method in writing
may be seen as undesirable. There is no patience for arriving at an informed response in place of an
instant and limited response. Because of these tendencies we have developed insensitivity towards
several elements of contemporary art and literature. That is why our prejudices are intensified and our
taste becomes increasingly shallow. This too has come as a reaction to what has happened in the past.
Since the industrial revolution, Man's aesthetic sensitivity has gradually become blunt. In consumerist
societies consumer goods and their trading became important; Bureaucracy reduced Man to a mere
pawn. As a result the relationship between the craftsman and the creator snapped. The intensity of
alienation has aggravated. Since the possibility of rebelling did not exist, the artist created the illusion of
being exiled into himself. He preferred to escape an insensitive society, which resulted in his cultivating
the tendency for semantic privacy. Around the same time, mass-media became a menace, and media
propaganda destroyed the possibility of individual response. Newspapers, thrillers, pornography,
comics, etc., pushed poetry into the background. The uniqueness of individual experience lost its value.
Language lost its capacity to influence, and became cheap. Therefore poets began to seek that rare and
untarnished word; and manifestos were brought out. Desperate attempts were made to revolutionise
the cliche-ridden language. There are two strands in this reaction: there is an unconscious revolt against
highbrow literature and its dominance; the tradition is sought to be disrupted by resorting to the
marginal. The second strand supports the contention of Mallarme who wishes to establish the primitive,
incantative and magical element in place of the linear, realistic and this-worldly narrative. To use
Heidegger's language this experience approximates 'the hidden presence of being in beings'. Our
selfhood, lost through amnesia, has to be retrieved from the layers of the unconscious and the
subconscious. The challenge for the poet is to make decadent and disused language intensely expressive
of the contemporary human destiny. The German poet Paul Celan stated that it was impossible to write
poetry after the genocide of Auschwitz, since to write poetry one had to use the same German language
used by the killers. The reason is that in poetry it is not the poet who speaks, it is the language that
speaks and manifests itself. Authentic poetry is that in which language manifests itself without any
artifice; obviously, such poetry is rare.
A poet wishes to enliven language by the truth and intensity of his feeling. This gives his poetry
freshness and novelty, which are not ephemeral. These qualities engender a profound insight which is
both penetrating and nurturing. But the language with which a poet deals is the language of ordinary
affairs; it is the language in which metaphors and similes have become cliches. How can poetry employ
such language for its own ends? Many have gone to the extent of believing that a true poet could never
put such soiled language to use. Since words are already devalued, how can a poet make them resound
again? Therefore, he should create new coinages and idioms. Ezra Pound's pronouncement to poets was
'Make it new'. Dadaism, Surrealism, Futuro-cubism, etc., too, were engaged in similar efforts. Attempts
were also made to distance language from meaning. Therefore, Beardsley's contention that no
interpretation can be objectively unanimous is valid. He says: 'Interpretation is not verdictive'. If a
reader wishes to traverse the unknown realm created by a poet, he has to know the semiotic code to
experience the poet's realisation. Whatever is expressed through the semiotic code should be expressed
in such a way that its mystery is not lost. In fact, language conceals rather than reveals. Therefore only
the initiated have access to poetry. It is not meant for everybody. If it is accessible to everybody, it will
lose its unparalleled lustre.
Many possible relationships exist between past and present, manifest and unmanifest. To
locate, discover and invest them with aesthetic quality and appeal
Many possible relationships exist between past and present, manifest and ""manifest. To
locate, discover and invest them with aesthetic quality and appeal is an important aspect of poetic
creativity. Therefore, the issue of how to interpret metaphors and similes, is an important one. It is not
merely a question of locating or discovering relationships; it also relates to new relationships. How can
these relationships be validated? These stylistic features become 'creative', not by semantic extensions,
but by novel presentation of the universe. The novelty of stylistic features articulates new facets of the
subject matter when the style itself succeeds. Yet no fresh point of view of the universe can claim having
effected its transformation. The stylistic features are indicative of the direction of poetry, and they bring
sophistication to our understanding of the universe; and in that sense, to an extent, the universe is
renewed for us. The stylistic features yield fresh initiative to one's understanding of poetry and its
historicity. Therefore analysis of stylistic features has a distinct place in the interpretation of poetry.
Borges has said that 'Oppression is the mother of metaphor'. Where there is dictatorship,
there are bound to be restrictions on creative artists. Yet it cannot arrest their commitment to the truth
and the authenticity of expression. It then becomes imperative to create what needs to be expressed,
but in such a way that only the connoisseurs can grasp it, and the insensitive rulers cannot. In this
situation what the artist manifests has to be really unmanifest. In these circumstances, instead of being
indicative of the poetic meaning, the stylistic features effect its concealment. Thus, indirection becomes
a function of signification, and, interpretation turns into an exercise in decoding. In India, literature
created during the Emergency reflects this phenomenon. People's capacity for satire acquires
poignancy, and the local or temporal attains the status of 'permanently poignant'. It is not true that such
a need is felt only in a specific political context. It becomes necessary to adopt the strategies of
concealment when the moral climate is unfavourable in order to protect the poetic emotion from
puritanical objections, or else, because the poet himself prefers the privacy of emotions. For the poet, it
is not an attempt at keeping his mistress concealed. Love becomes more aesthetic when it is secret.
Love does not go hand in hand with publicisation. Refined taste is averse to publicisation. Often, lovers
do not like to express their true sentiments to each other. Such ambiguity creates intensity and surprise
in love. A poet uses ambiguity in poetry so that a reader is tempted towards 'digging' it. We see poets
employing strategies like creating deliberate hindrances in the meaning of poetry, so that grasping of it
is deferred by avoiding easily identifiable patterns, by using complexity and obscurity, and by concealing
the inner unity of poetry through apparently incongruous elements of diction and style. But, if there is
no basis for the dialogue between a poet and his reader, how is interpretation possible?
Those who consider poetry magical and capable of epiphany think of the whole business of
interpretation as a needless hair-splitting and hence redundant. Isn't it enough to allow the totality of
poetry to sink into our consciousness, or to be sensitive to it? Nothing can be a substitute for poetry
itself.
Those who advocate interpretation of the meaning of poetry, end up giving prose renderings.
It may serve scholars to do so, but it does not necessarily enhance aesthetic enjoyment. Not criticism
but immersion in a variety of poetry ultimately opens the world of aesthetics. People who comment on
poetry, invariably get into the exercise of explicating what a poet has 'said', but they can be indifferent
to what a poet has 'done'. Culture gains its value through poetry. Because poetry happens to represent
the climax of the evolution of human consciousness, some regard it as a vehicle and a propagator of
existing cultural values. Owing to this tendency among the intellectual leaders even the literates believe
that the enjoyment of poetry is meant only for the initiated and turn away from it.
For those who hold the above view, the poetry of T.S. Eliot, which is meant for the learned, is
the dried-up bed of the river Saraswati. This kind of poetry does not have that touch of magic. It is
emphasised that poetry is creation and not imitation. Interpretations may cause the loss of spontaneity
of a response and give rise to anti-art intellectualism. The desired immediacy in aesthetic experience is
generally displaced in the name of interpretation. The tendency to reduce the totality of poetry to
intellectual abstraction gradually constricts our capacity to experience. By and large, mediocrity
dominates the business of interpretation. Instead of humble empathy with art, it shows an arrogant
dissatisfaction. Actually, by way of interpretation a critic does not have to do anything but describe what
is there in a poem, as it is.
These assertions too are extremes. Rarely does a poem get absorbed in the consciousness in a
single reading or hearing. Nevertheless, interpretation must not render the aesthetic experience
secondary.
--Suresh Joshi, from Chintayami Manasa
translated by Upendra Nanavati
-----------------------------------------------------------------
BHALCHANDRA NEMADE
Bhalchandra Nemade shot into fame as an avant-garde novelist when he was in his early
twenties, soon after the publication of his first novel, Kosala (1963). Three more novels and two volumes
of poems, Melody and Dekhni, have followed it during the last three decades. In spite of his meagre
literary output, Nemade has exerted an influence on Marathi fiction, prose style and literary culture to
an extent surpassed in the past only by B.S.Mardhekar (in poetry). In the initial phase of his literary
career he was active in the Marathi 'little magazine' movement. Since then he has published a large
number of critical essays, a collection of which has been published under the title Tikaswayamvar (1991)
in Marathi; and another volume of essays on style, Sahityachi Bhasha was published in 1987. Nemade's
critical position is popularly known as 'Nativism'. Nativism insists that literature be treated as a sub-
system of the native culture, and that literature should represent the social reality. It also proposes
realism and 'a writerly morality' as criteria of critical judgement. These views have, understandably,
produced opposition as well as sympathy. Nemade has been a controversial critic. He is included here
for the reason that he is one of the very few Indian critics of the present generation with a programme
for literature, and an organic view of the literary and cultural past. The essay was first delivered as a
conference paper in 1980 at Shivaji University, Kolhapur causing an unprecedented literary controversy,
and was subsequently published in Anushthubh. It appeared in English translation in Setu Vol.11, No.l,
1985. The translation is by G.N.Devy. It has appeared in an abridged version in P.K.Rajan's Indian Novel
(1989). The essay is an elaborate statement of the concerns of Nativism. It is also a model of Nativistic
historiography.
In analysing the shaping forces and trends responsible for the unprecedented growth of the
novel in Marathi during the post-Independence years, particularly since 1960, certain principles have
been followed in the present essay:
1. In order to trace the origin of the prevalent trends, it is necessary to examine the cultural
background of the nineteenth century which gave birth to the novel in Marathi as a literary form.
2. Since as a literary form the novel occupies a large verbal space and offers wide scope to
each of its constituents, it is difficult to categorize novels or novelists representing various trends in their
pure form. But criticism must have a clarity of thought. As a way out, it is necessary to bear in mind that
criticism is a non-autonomous means.
3. While discussing the trends, conclusions about the individual works have been derived by
applying the criteria of style and substance.
4. The present generation must have an unfailing nativistic awareness that the novel in
Marathi is a creation of Marathi writers, who, in turn, are the product of the Marathi society. Further,
the Formalistic, unintelligent practice of picking up all and sundry works of art from languages all over
the world for a comparative assessment of works in Marathi-a tendency rife in our criticism - has to be
avoided. It is dangerous for criticism to enter the comparative field without making an in-depth study of
both the cultures compared. Culture is not a hot-house, but a soil-bound process; literature is not a
theoretical construct but a living phenomenon.
The novel form has not received any serious critical attention except through some stray
articles. Especially the problems related to the recent Marathi novel have rarely been discussed. Owing
to the absence of definite critical canons an overwhelming confusion abounds in our novel-criticism. In
the present essay, therefore, concepts have been explained wherever possible. The term riti is used for
design-consciousness, and a formalistic, entertaining, affected and non-realistic aestheticism. 'Style' is
used to mean the techniques employed creatively to shape the substance into a form through the
medium (= language). Style is neither language, nor merely the treatment given to language. The term
'morality' is used in the sense of a personal value-scale. It does not have implications of a social,
unvarying, impersonal morality. The term kriti is employed to indicate action, and pratikriti to indicate
illusion or image.
Assuming that the forces that have shaped the novel in contemporary society can be identified
in their pure form at their source, if we follow the historical reconstruction method and travel
backwards in time, relating the cognate qualities of various trends, we can locate three basic trends.
These trends are present in every period, in forms that continue to develop, change and interact.
Perhaps the three trends are deep-rooted in our literary culture. This method naturally gives us an
awareness of our tradition, and helps us in putting together its missing links. Though the three trends
can be traced right back to the thirteenth century,(1) in what follows the discussion is confined to the
novel form only.
If we view the thirty thousand years' history of Hindu life and family, we will notice that there
has been few changes in them and there are no elements of fantasy in them... The event that brings
about a radical transformation in an individual's life is marriage. Our present marriage system is simply
shameful... If one were to write stories about this marriage system, or about several other things (in our
culture), no fascinating virtues or vices of the Hindu character can be revealed; and it is precisely this
that creates problems when one sets out to write a novel. It is not possible to entertain by writing things
experienced. So, if one had to write for entertainment, one would naturally be controlled by fantasy.(7)
This preface reveals the secret of all Marathi novelists of the Muktamala trend right up to the
present times. That 'there is no element of fantasy' in Hindu life, that the Hindu marriage system, which
Risbud thinks is 'the greatest event bringing about a radical transformation' (though his actual concern is
sex), is 'shameful' should have moved the writer to some action. On the contrary, he avoids action and
turns to the fantastic, and laments the 'impossibility' of writing fiction. Avoiding kriti, action, turning to
the fantastic, considering fascinating virtues and vices as the essentials of a novel, making entertainment
the main purpose, and finally surrendering to fantasy have been the characteristics inherited to the last
detail by the works of writers from Halbe and Risbud to the present day (Phadke, Khandekar,
Madkholkar, Rege, Khanolkar, Khot). All of them have avoided kriti and embraced the non-real. Their
novels have accepted the principle that writing about the contemporary reality will be non-entertaining,
that sensuality alone can be entertaining, and that some perversions, vices must form the subject of
fiction. Realism could not grow strong in Marathi due to this trend.
Should not the novelist play his role, not only in the context of the import of the novel, but
also as a sensitive member of the society? Padmanji and Halbe were contemporaries. How is it that the
former felt concerned about the agonies of tender widowed girls, whereas the latter remained
unperturbed by them? Padmanji advocated re-marriage of widows through various scholarly books he
wrote; and, moreover, through his novel he performed a verbal action too. Halbe, however, sidetracked
the kriti by manipulating a meeting between Muktamala, the heroine, and Dhanshankar, her lost
hushand who was taken to be dead, just a day before her head-shaving ritual. This is the patent way that
riti-oriented novels employ to avoid action. Besides being escapist, this type forces the writer to be
amoral as a human being, forcing him to the path from the real to the non-real. It is important to have a
verbal action in a novel, whether it is progressive or orthodox. In order to avoid action, the writers of the
Muktamala trend have to take recourse to the fantastic, formalistic, and entertaining claptrap. And our
'Art for Art's sake' formalistic and aestheticist critics have all along been justifying such 'art' by
superficial and punditic criteria such as 'autonomy of art', 'self-sufficiency of art values', etc. This trend,
of coure, loses the awareness of reality. Reason, which is an important aspect of prose and which
appeals to the intellect, remains totally disused in it, in turn, causing several undesirable consequences.
The novel has to accept an eccentric individualism and imagine perverse, non-existent sexual situations.
Form becomes more important than import. The novel ceases to be productive and becomes merely an
end-product. It forgets the specific time and space and enters a mystified world of fantasy. Among the
reasons for the flourishing of this trend in Marathi can be counted its capacity to entertain, to win easy
acclaim, financial gains and popularity, the unhealthy literary culture and false theories of criticism. The
realistic novel did not deveop in Marathi before Independence as the Muktamala trend was going strong
at that time. However, realism which values verbal action, appears to have gained momentum after
1960. The fact that no trends other than pratikriti, riti and Kriti (illusionistic, entertaining and activist,
respectively) could even emerge in Marathi is closely related to the basic life instinct of Marathi society.
In the English novel there were several types of realistic trends, and works belonging to many of those
had been translated into Marathi during the 19th century (The Pilgrim's Progress-Yatrik Kraman, 1841;
Robinson Crusoe, 1875; Gulliver's Travels- Galivar yacha Vritant,1880-90 etc.). There were some other
realistic trends available in Marathi itself as also in good classical Sanskrit literature. But it was not
possible for these trends to strike root in the Marathi novel. Once in a while we see something like an
allegory (Aastik by Sane Guruji, 1933), or else like the picaresque (Niranjan By Godse Bhatji, 1882?); but
these trends did not survive as our writers could not afford to take their subject matter entirely from
reality. Besides the tendency to import whatever was respectable in England dominated our writers
from H.N.Apte who imitated Scott to B.S.Mardhekar who followed the footsteps of Joyce. And since
more of the writers have little awareness of the native tradition, the Marathi novel remained just
entertaining and riti-oriented till Independence. K.B.Marathe had described these formalistic novels as
'the pest of Marathi fiction' (1872); and later V.K.Rajawade observed that the novels of the
Manjughosha- Muktamala type were consumed by 'elite rich, lazy and useless persons' (1902),
supporting his observation with examples(8).
2. Language
The British Government decided to spread new ideas in Hindu society by adopting the
filtration method proposed in Macaulay's minute (1835), the method of spreading new knowledge
among the classes at the top first. Earlier on, the missionaries had started spreading the new knowledge
among all classes of the society. But this process was halted after 1857. As a result, it was only the urban
Brahmin class that benefited from the new knowledge before independence, and even after until the
Congress Government opened schools and colleges in small towns and villages. The English-educated
Brahmins did contribute to the development of Marathi literature and language during the nineteenth
century;(9) but this developed literary language reflected only one segment of the social life. At that
time, some of the anti-Brahmin castes like Prabhu and Shenavi had initially prevented the Marathi
language from becoming totally Brahminical. However, as the number of Government recognized
autunomous educational institutions increased, following Wood's Dispatch in 1854, the Brahmins
acquired a monopoly over education. Many British officers had registered their deep resentment against
this monopoly. But since the Government's policy was to neglect education, the field remained
predominantly Brahminical even after Independence. The Marathi literary language was enriched during
the nineteenth century primarily by the Education Department. In this Department, the Brahmins
outnumbered the others. The Marathi used by these Brahmin producers of school- texts was drawn on a
haphazard mixture of English and Sanskrit, and was just functional and artificial. The other Marathi
register, epitomized in Chiplunkar's manner of writing which combined Johnson's style with Sanskrit
mannerism, came to stay through newspapers and periodicals. As Marathi journalism has remained a
Brahminical movement even to this day, journalistic Marathi has remained artificial and continues to
draw on the English-Sanskrit combination.
The language of Marathi prose literature is largely underdeveloped. No previous generation
laid bare this truth. The effects of this inferior quality of Marathi on the novel in it have been profound.
It is on record that a responsible Marathi gentleman had told Monier Williams in 1858 that "there is not
a single person here who can write good Marathi".(10)
Justice M.G.Ranade had said about the educated Brahmins that 'they practically lose touch
with their people".(11) Jotiba Phule has clearly described, giving instances, the 'holier than thou'
attitude the Brahmins in positions of authority displayed towards others. V.R.Shinde has stated
succinctly that 'authentic Marathi existed from Jnaneshwar to Tukaram. It somehow survived till the
period of Lokhitwadi and Jotiba Phule. But Chiplunkar and Agarkar throttled it. Tilak and Haribhau Apte
tried to resuscitate it, but theirs turned out to be the last attempt'.(12)
Even after Independence, the school texts continued to force down the throats of students
passages from the works of someone like S.M.Paranjpe, who did not ever write good Marathi, as
samples of stylistic excellence. If the children brought up in such a literary culture start believing that
they cannot write such 'great' Marathi and stop writing altogether, or else start writing such artificial
Marathi only, the language can have no hope of any development. Owing to these Anglo-Brahmin
samskaras the Marathi language has come to be empty of expression. It has remained merely a register
capable of expressing only predictable sentiments. Even today that development of Marathi seems
difficult because of its twin enslavement to Sanskritized prose and to Anglicized vocabulary which is
treated as a status symbol and has polluted the taste even of womenfolk.(13) The children of the urban
service-minded elite class are forced to go English medium schools at a tender age. They become
intellectually invalid and incapable of shaping language creatively and independently. This class cannot
help the Marathi language. We should note that the universities, particularly the universities of Pune
and Bombay, have done nothing to develop the Marathi language. Some activity has begun at the
Governmental level; but that is not going to benefit the present generation.
Since perception of reality is dependent on language, it can be concluded that no authentic
creative literature is possible through artificial Marathi. Artificial language distorts the dimensions of
substance and form. Severely restricted themes alone can be presented through such language. It also
encourages the riti trend excessively. A society which does not admit in its literature the language
varieties of very large communities, castes, tribes and regions, automatically prevents the world-views,
aesthetic ideas and values of those communities from entering literary activity. This results in a minority
monopoly of literary taste.
As a matter of fact, from the times of Jnaneshwar and Mahimbhatta Marathi has the tradition
of overthrowing the minority monopoly. Few of the pre-Independence writers realised this fact. But now
the riti-oriented novel is on the decline; and with it also the 'whirlpool' style of H.N.Apte, the artifical
claptrap of Phadke, the decorative manner of Khandekar and the ornamentation in Madkholkar have
started showing signs of becoming stuff in the lumber room of history. This is the most significant
achievement of the Marathi novel since 1960. Writers from all sub-cultures, sub-groups and regions
have exploded the Anglo-Brahmin tradition and reduced the gap between the spoken word and the
written word. The enriched Marathi language of post-1960 seems to have emerged from an integration
of various caste and tribe language varieties. In respect of language, the works of Vyankatesh Madgulkar
and other gramin (rural) writers, the 'little magazine' and the dalit (oppressed) literature movements
have proved to be revolutionary. Ever since the Marathi Sahitya Parishad liberalised the minority rules
of written Marathi, the written language and the spoken language have come closer. Today an
atmosphere prevails in Marathi which enables any person belonging to any sub-group or any sub-culture
to write with confidence. That the discernible effects of this nativistic style have started showing is
evident from the fact that since 1960 at least one good novel was written every year: Dhag, 1960;
Rathachakra, Swami, 1962; Manus, Chakra, 1963; Vaitagwadi, Indhan, Tarfula, 1964; Vasunaka, 1965;
Kalokhache Aang, 1966; Barrister Aniruddha Dhopeshwarkar,1967; Shidori, Devacha Shabda,1968;
Aagresar, such and so much prospering was not there before 1960 in the Marathi novel.
Style, which emerges from the synthesis of meaning, medium and techniques reflects the
inborn imagination of the writer. The style of the Marathi novel before Independence was almost
entirely born out of a blind imitation of English style.
Initially techniques like first person narration, third person narration, epistolary narration and
flashback were imported; and as if this were not enough, Mardhekar brought in the stream of
consciousness (Ratricha Divas, 1942; Tambadi Mati 1943; Pani, 1948) to conclude the pre-Independence
period. No writer or critic seemed to have an awareness that in Marathi too there was a strong, though
fragmented, tradition of prose style. This state of affairs continued even after 1950. Prof.S.R.Kulkarni
discerned a continuous tradition of punditic prose.(14) Kusumavati Deshpande was not aware of this
tradition but had an inkling of it.(15) Usually a victim-culture revives its past when it encounters an alien
culture. But the Marathi critics started considering every writer belonging to the past to be a great
writer. They did not leave out even the writers like Moropant. Such claims showed no sense of
discrimination. R.S.Jog spent pages together to comment on the prose writings of S.M.Paranjape and
N.C.Kelkar instead of writing on the great works of the Mahanubhava prose or the Bakhar prose.(16)
The reason for this critical bankruptcy is the undue emphasis that University courses give to
English criticism. Sir Richard Temple hit on the truth when he remarked in 1882 that:
the effect of this (English) education, direct or indirect, undoubtedly was in the first
instance...to suppress the natural originality of the educated.(17)
This has happened invariably to all English-educated individuals. The style of the Marathi novel
has not moved beyond literary fashions. That in Marathi we have not even begun to think seriously
about style is in itself an evidence of what is being taught in the five universities in the state.
In depicting reality, an authentic touch of social life has an extraordinary importance. That
touch was lacking in Marathi; and both in creative literature and in criticism imitating English models
had become respectable. It was no surprise then if the literary style in Marathi became bookish.
Chakradhar had a first-hand knowledge of the living practice of dumping the flat, light, odd-shaped corn-
winnower on top of a fully loaded cart carrying household goods from one place to another. That is why
when he forces his disciple Nagadevacharya to eat another bowl of sweets on a full belly, he jokingly
states that 'a corn-winnower is no burden to a loaded cart.' Marathi style was deprived of these
language references to social life during the British rule.
The statements such as: 'Kadambari (the novel) is a native word but an alien concept'
(P.V.Bapat, N.V.Godbole),(18) or 'Though Marathi literature has a history of eight hundred years, the
novel in Marathi has a history barely of seventy years' (N.S. Phadke),(19) may be true; but the sense in
which they are used in criticism is misguiding. The novel is not an entirely English form; its origin too is
not English. If one were to search its origin, one would have to move from country to country and to
refer to various writers and works like the Decameron, Bendelloe, the Panchatantra, and so on. Max
Muller has established through research how the Panchatantra fables were transformed while migrating
from India to Iran and then, through Baghdad and Constantinople, to all of Europe. Similarly Rawlinson
has shed light on how Suvarnadevata in the original Hindu story later became Cinderella, and how
literary forms all over the world carry the cultural imprint of the specific space and time to which they
belong.(20) While relating formal principles to literary forms, it is necessary to bear in mind that literary
forms as much belong to space and time as they transcend them. It may be, then, possible to realize
that though the novel as a form of literature came to India through our contact with English, it is not
entirely new in India as a form of writing.
It must be accepted that during the pre-Independence period no one had the imagination to
relate us to this tradition. Besides to believe that the Aristotelian concepts of form, later developed by
various tiny states of Europe, are worth imitating in preference to the aesthetic concepts concentrated
in our multi-racial, multi-cultural, multi-communal and vast society is simply foolish. In none of our
ancient literatures do we find such narrow concepts as unity and organicity. Any of our works like
Ajanta, Ellora, the Mahabharata, Ramayana, Kathasaritsagara, and even a second rate work like
Meghaduta can illustrate the point. While formulating a concept of the novel, it is necessary to consider
its nature as a form of writing. In fact, LiIacharitra,'Smrutisthala, the Bakhars (historical chronicles), the
biographies composed by Mahipati are all forms of writing very close to the novel. But nearly three
generations of writers were wasted because of the unenlightened idea that the novel is only what our
novelists did by imitating the English models. Since we lost the subtle concept of form, everyone
including the novelists themselves indulged in a superficial classification such as Khandekar's 'Art for
Life's sake' and Phadke's 'Art for Art's sake'. Actually, there is little qualitative difference on the formal
level between Khandekar's idealism, humanity, freedom, purity, sublime love, sacrifice, love, yagna, and
such other nice 'Sanskrit' ideas on the one hand, and on the other hand, Phadke's colourful saris, scents,
perfumes, puff and powder, tennis, kisses, courtship, etc. Both of them are essentially formalistic,
entertaining type of novelists. At the most one could say that as a stylist Phadke was a post-graduate if
Khandekar was an undergraduate. In this conspiracy of writers and critics, the others who presented the
form with a sense of style were dismissed as unreadable (S.V.Ketkar), or as children's writers (Sane
Guruji), or else as humorists (C.V.Joshi); and the field of the novel was kept reserved for the monopoly
of a couple of literary capitalists. N.S.Phadke states:
Just as it can be said that the first generation of novelists was that of Haribhau Apte, the
second of Phadke and Khandekar, and the third of Bhave, it is difficult to say that the subsequent
generation of novelists is of any particular novelist... In the initial stages of the novel, Haribhau Apte
reigned supreme; later Phadke and Khandekar reigned...but no present day novelist has done a similar
incomparable work so that we could say that he rules over the literary situation.(21)
It needs no saying how ridiculous and childish the idea of 'ruling over' the literary situation is.
In fact, it is really quite revolutionary that so many novelists have come to the forefront in recent times.
If one were to think on the lines of Phadke's argument it would be logical to say that the 'fourth
generation of novelists in Marathi is that of Kakodkar and Baba Kadam'!
It should be possible to differentiate the peculiarities of the novel from among the four distinct
literary genres - short story, story, short novel and novel - on the basis of formal criteria. For us it has
become necessary to understand the nature of the undesirable process of invasion of the novel by the
short story form since 1950 which has prospered on the basis of its twisted subject matter in
combination with its commercial potentiality.
The short story and long story are close to each other; the short novel and novel are similarly
related. The present day Marathi criticism is inclined towards wiping out the clear formal distinction that
exists between the two types, since the criticism is based primarily on the short story. The short story is
a form of literature with restricted length and verbal space, which offers through a single-channel theme
a limited, and therefore intense, perception of time and space. In the long story the limits of length and
verbal space relax, though the theme remains single channel. Both short story and long story have their
limits of maximum length.
The short novel is, in comparison to the above two forms, spatially extended and also
thematically plural. Owing to its multichannel theme it offers larger dimensions of time and space. In the
novel, proportionately, several layers of theme combine; and it has a very vast range of expression and
verbal space. As opposed to the short story and long story, the short novel and novel have their limits of
minimum length. Owing to the complexity of themes they handle, they occupy expansive length of time
and large areas of space, and at once transcend them to suggest a reality beyond space and time. This
time-transcending suggestiveness of the novel removes all restrictions on the range of space it occupies.
In short, in each of these four forms the relation between the theme and the verbal space
proves to be the differential quality. And it is essential to have a clear comparative perspective in order
to understand the formal inter-relationships among these four forms. Here are some examples:
Short story - Long story: Manus navache Bet - Tuti (G.A. Kulkarni)
Long story - novel: Avalokita - Savitri (P.S.Rege)
Short novel - Novel: Savitri - Andharwata (P.S.Rege - Subhash Bhende)
Short story - Short novel: Mandeshi Manase - Bangarwadi (Vyankatesh Madgulkar)
Long story - Novel: Garambicha Bapu - Rathachakra (S.N.Pendse)
Thus the novel can be said to be a form of literature which has a large verbal space, a multi-
layered and complex theme, and which, therefore, offers scope for a complex structure, characters and
situations that incline more towards completeness than towards incompleteness. Owning to such
characteristics it becomes possible for the novel to present a significant action in its fulness. It can
contain and present a large-as-life social meaning, the life of a sub-culture or sub-group in detail, an
entire cross section of a particular period or society, and can handle a social problem with all its
entanglements. Its themes are self-sufficient and characters consistent and capable of existing on their
own.
Several of the Marathi writers treated as novelists are in fact short story writers. On the other
hand, some of those treated as short story writers are in reality novelists. This classification will save our
criticism from being misguided, and help us to describe the true nature of the novel. The novel in
Marathi does not present an authentic picture of reality because it has been working under the
constraints of the short story such as poverty of themes, distortion of reality for the sake of
concentrated effects, perverted, twisted and, therefore, shocking endings, and the mindless use of
techniques, symbols, 'images' and language in general.
Realism means acceptance of the objective existence of the universe independent of the
individual's existence; and the primary condition of realism in literature is the acceptance of the
individual-society relationship from this perspective. The details that a novelist selects while structuring
his meaning percolate to him from the various aspects of the individual-society relationship. Since the
medium of expression for literature, which is language, belongs to a specific place and a specific time,
and since it is available to an individual only as a social system, it controls the individual's cognition. The
writer, therefore, has to abide by the sign-structure of meanings that society has determined. It will not
be possible to depict reality in an uncontrolled way, and keeping only the individual in focus.
From the various undesirable trends referred to so far, it should be clear to us why realism has
not been growing healthily in the Marathi novel. The most definite misconception our writers have is in
respect of the individual-society relationship. There, they side-track the native culture, and take
recourse to erroneous, imported generalizations. This leads them to move farther from the native
tradition and to create an artifact of formalistic detail which is shorn of references to the outside
context. This practice gives rise to false aesthetic tenets such as 'what is rare and tempting alone is
beautiful'. Our writers were exposed to foreign values like individualism, etc., through the lone 'window
on the world' to which they had access. Such values were bound to look quite attractive since they were
seen outside their mundane social contexts. Our writers avoided seeing how awesome a sense of social
responsibility lies hidden under the iceberg of individualism. They avoided seeing the entire spectacle
since the whole of it was not attractive. This and such other values lured the novel too, since the
readership shared the romantic fascination for these values, and since they came in handy for getting a
cheap and quick popularity for the commercially-minded novelists. Even today, the 'stalwarts' among
Marathi novelists cannot avoid the temptation of these Western values.
Colonized for a prolonged period of time, Hindu society has spent a longer period under
enslavement than any other society in the world. When the culture values of the conquered society
clash with the cultural values of the dominating society the former has to accept helplessly the values of
the latter. This cultural invasion deprives one of the confidence to stand on his native ground with
satisfaction as a human being. This is certainly the most dangerous consequence of cultural colonization.
When Hindu society accepted Western values, all social systems- except the economic system-were
reorganized on the pattern of the Western value systems. Since the British had come to India for
economic exploitation, they left the economic system untouched in its old, medieval form, whereas they
vowed to mould every other Indian system. This time-lag between the economic system and other value
systems creates in the novel a strange kind of social unreality.
The realism in our literature such as of Tukaram and the others was reared on metaphysics. It
crumbled down in the face of the new materialism. This materialism had not struck deep roots in our
society from 1818 to 1950. As an instance, one eould mention the fad of individualistic sexuality in the
Marathi novel. When the English ideas of individualism entered our society of gentlemen who faithfully
carried out the traditional duty of procreation to which their dharma had appointed them, the naked
English values of freedom in the man-woman relationship found here a limitless blossoming. The very
idea of love itself became a value. In countless acrobatic ways love began being expressed in fiction. In
the Marathi novel romantic love was let loose from Muktamala to V.S.Khandekar, N.S.Phadke, G.T.
Madkholkar, Gangadhar Gadgil, P.B.Bhave, P.S.Rege, C.T.Khanolkar, Yogini Jogalekar, and so on. We
need not be surprised to see a writer like P.Y.Deshpande, who possessed some inborn imagination,
getting engulfed in this wave. For, most of us hunger after sexual licentiousness; and what else can the
mind of these lusty ones contain? However, it becomes necessary to create in the novel an economic
background that will support the idea of romantic love, even if it does not exist in reality. This distorts
reality to a large extent. Further, the themes are contrived as per the requirements of the form, and the
necessary details follow automatically. It becomes necessary then to place the novel in an atmosphere
that is congenial to love affairs to some extent: industrial cities, elite classes and colleges, love
machinery like a bungalow, a good job, a car, etc. This follows the emergence of the urban writers who
are familiar with only such an atmosphere. Their monopoly language becomes the received literary
language. Then minority aesthetics is imposed on the larger society in a topsy-turvy manner. We can see
in the Marathi novel a car accident leading to a love affair of delicate brows (Jadugar, 1927), the
daughter of a prostitute playing the violin on the terrace of her house to lure Prabhakar, the hero, to her
love {Bandhanachya Palikade, 1927), a political movement invariably giving rise to a love affair
(Krounchavadh, 1942), and the love description written in Bombay but set in the natural surroundings of
Ratnagiri district stooping to the level of a Hindi movie. It is a fact that love in our society is but an idea;
and its meaning in literature is sexuality. We do not have in our society the necessary platforms for the
man-woman relationship on which the Western society balances the idea of love. It is not possible to
have them here while the economic system remains undeveloped. The compound word expression
'love-marriage' has been conclusively accepted in Marathi, though it does not exist in the original
English, simply because the Marathi mind thinks of love as 'sexuality before marriage'.
By taking instances from various fields, it can be studied how the novel has tried to reduce the
actual imbalance that exists in social life. For instance, G.T.Madkholkar employed socialism to ridicule
Gandhism. The writer had in fact no concern for socialism. In the same manner several techniques (e.g.
symbolism) and themes borrowed by our novelists from the West become, in fact, irrelevant to our
social context. One can as much write a novel opposing our moral values (Bhau Padhye) as one can from
the standpoint of native moral values (Shyamchi Aai, 1933). But the latter trend is to be rarely seen in
the history of our novel before 1960. Unfortunately, Shyamchi Aai could not become Pather Panchali
because its nativistic character was beyond the comprehension of P.K.Atre. And it is impossible that,
considering what our literary culture is, it would create a Satyajit Ray.
In addition to the three trends discussed above, which continue to be intact, some new trends
seem to have emerged on their borders since 1950, either through an interaction between the three
trends or as their direct off-shoots. The realistic and kriti-oriented Yamunaparyatan trend seems to be
the most developed one at present. This may be taken as an indication of the end of the pathetic
condition of realism in Marathi. Not only has the trend, interested in social problems and action,
become more realistic, but even some new trends are emerging from it which deal with specific
geographical regions, sub-community or sub-culture (seen as a segment of the larger society, the dalits,
women, etc.), and with a new morality (opposed to the conventional entertaining tendency of writers
and interested in realistic themes). The Mochangad trend too seems to have moved from history to
mythology, biography and crime. In the Muktamala trend, sexuality has become more prominent, and
the style more developed; but beyond that it shows no progress on the level of the subject matter. One
can now think of the novel in terms of a spectrum ranging from the unrealistic and the fantastic to the
realistic novel. Such a spectrum did not exist before 1950. This could be considered a good sign of the
qualitative and quantitative growth of the Marathi novel.
This spectrum will not be understood unless treated as a classification of hundreds of novels
belonging to one period from the perspective of tradition. Again, it is important to look at the
methodology of this spectrum only as a means of description. It is limited by the novels written during
the present period. However, in the analysis of novels discussed hereafter other criteria have been
applied; and those novels have been assessed independently. It is quite possible to employ another set
of criteria to classify, grade and assess the novelists.
In a classification of this nature, a writer has to be assigned a place according to his overall
trend. There could be a difference of opinion about the classification of certain novels depending on the
individual critic's taste. Some novelists may fall in all the categories in the spectrum (e.g. G.N.Dandekar).
It will also be seen that if one work of a given novelist falls under one category, another under another
one, yet another falls under an altogether different category. This reflects on the commercial, careeristic
mentality of Marathi writers. Rarely has a Marathi writer shown a life-long commitment to a particular
literary philosophy or technique in order to make at least an inch of progress in that line. In this mixed
crowd of good and bad coins, criticism cannot be expected to evolve and use precise canons. It is quite
easy to detect in a single Marathi novel each and every literary technique perfected by writers all over
the world through their life-long commitment. Used as readymade formulas, these techniques-
symbolism, romanticism, realism, Freudian thought, existentialism, surrealism-are seen simultaneously
co-existing as if fiction were a fun-fair of techniques. It could be said that very few Marathi writers show
the awareness that writing is a consistent cultural activity.
This is the last branch in the development of the Marathi novel so far. The new novel, which
originates in Yamunaparyatan, has an intimate relation with reality. It considers kriti to be an indivisible
aspect of creation, and presents a new value scale about man in life. As such it distinguishes itself from
the other trends because of its new morality.(22) It believes in selecting its subject matter from the
contemporary life and ethos, and providing a thematic dimension to its style. Hence all constituent
elements of this novel are supported by the theme; its content, characters, events, techniques,
language, plot, narrative, style-all come to acquire an inherent thematic significance. Naturally,
therefore, this trend in the Marathi novel has gained the highest significance in Marathi.
The novelists who could be included in the trend are: Udhhav Shelke (Dhag, 1960); Manohar
Talhar (Manus, 1963); Bhau Padhye (Dombaryacha Khel, 1960, Karanta, 1961, Vaitagwadi, 1964,
Vasunaka, 1965, Barrister Aniruddha Dhopeshwarkar, 1967, Agresar, 1968, Homesick Brigade, 1974,
Rada, 1975, Vanava, 1978); Manohar Shahane(Devacha Rag, 1968); A.V.Joshi (Kalokhache Ang, 1966);
Prabhakar Pendharkar (Are Sansar, 1971); Kiran Nagarkar (Sat Sakkam Trechalis, 1974); Anant Kadam
(Kide, 1971, Strot, 1977, Pakharu,1979); Dinanath Manohar (Robot, 1976): all these are seen presenting
the new morality through their fiction. At the same time Kamal Desai (Ratrandin Amha...,1964) and
several other story writers have stepped outside the constricted structure of the story and moved in the
direction of the novel. These story writers too accept the new morality. Since the topic deserves
independent discussion, it has not been taken into consideration here.
Besides these, some others inclined towards the riti-type sexuality-Jayawant Dalvi (Swagat,
Athang), T.V.Sardeshmukh (Bakhar Eka Rajachi, Uchhad), H.M.Marathe (Nishparna Vrikshavar, Kaleshar
Pani), Vasant Kanetkar (Ghar) - maintain a doubtful relation with this trend.
When this type of novel was born around 1960 it was born alien, since the established
pratikriti trend and riti trend in vogue at that time were opposed to it in their scales of values. The novel
with the new morality burst out like an explosion at a time when the innocent reader was misguided by
a shameless mud-slinging that went on under the name of literary criticism; that criticism was a product
of a literary culture crowded with journalistic publicity, flattering lectures, hooliganism in Sahitya
Sammelans, rackets in literary taste, the formalist-aestheticist theories without rules by third rate
reviewers, immoral literary activities as shown in Kaleidoscope, cheap popularity gained by erotic and
pratikriti trend novels and such other things.(23) The new novel, which came up like an explosion, posed
a radical challenge to the established Marathi literary taste; and it remains the only trend which has
developed by its own merit alone. Perhaps for the first time after the thirteenth century we see a
picture of an entire generation conscious of its ethical stand. This type of novel has been presenting the
new morality without compromises, and has established its equation with a handful of knowledgeable
readers; this is achieved within a literary culture which attaches importance to all other factors except
the writer and the reader. It is this novel that made punditic Marathi criticism look into its canons for
the first time during the last twenty years. The new novel expects a radical and total change in Marathi
literary culture. Today we have clear indications that the change will be felt strongly when the new
readers of the next generation start writing.
The new novel's confrontation with vitiated literary taste is evident in its subject matter as
well as in its emergence itself. For instance Anant Kadam's Strot has numerous references to literature;
Bhau Padhye's Barrister Aniruddha Dhopeshwarkar discusses sex; Dinanath Manohar presents views
about the writer's responsibility in his Robot. The theme and subject of the new novel can accommodate
even a highly philosophic or radical ideology in its scope. Because of such extensive realistic grounding in
the new novel, the web of riti-oriented novelistic conventions in Marathi crumbled. No novel before the
new novel had such a conscious awareness of literature. The new novelists were the first to have the
awareness of being responsible citizens of a sovereign nation in a new, post-Independence period. This
position ruled out irresponsible, and eccentrically individualistic themes. The fundamental kriti-principle,
which has survived from the time of Baba Padmanji till today, has broadened through the individual
morality of the new novel. The linguistic kriti interested in the individual, more than that in the social,
indicates the development of the kriti-trend.
The moral values found in the new morality vary from writer to writer. They do not adhere to a
doctrine. This individual morality reflects impulses hidden deep inside the social psyche, because the
novels of this trend articulate the fundamental impulses of the material life of the community. An
exploration of these impulses without any compromise becomes possible only in a kriti-trend novel.
They automatically percolate into the novel from its powerful subject-matter, the material culture of the
society. Rickshaw pullers/drivers (Manus), workers (Dombaryacha Khel, Karanta), clerks (Vaitagwadi),
loafers, unemployed children (Vasunaka), soldiers (Robot), rustic women (Dhag, Manus), Hindus-
Muslims-Christians (Bhau Padhye, Dinanath Manohar, Uddhav Shelke), and such other sub-groups have
upheld for innumerable years principles like tolerance, judiciousness, liberalism, personal and moral
discrimination. These principles form the foundation of our culture. It is precisely these principles that
the earlier novel did not know, because the subject matter of the earlier novel was not received from
these sub-groups. Hence the limitations of the subject matter also became the limitations of the novel.
Since this novel has a limitless fascination for reality, at times the distinction between the real
and the factual gets wiped out and a subject matter full of tedious particulars overwhelms the
structuring process. Examples of such failures are: Pakharu, Homesick Brigade and Virus (Subhash
Savarkar). But these victims of experimentation are bound to exist in Marathi which lacks a strong
tradition of realistic depiction.
As much as this novel values the native tradition, so much it also values foreign contacts. This
has enlarged the earlier Anglophile narrow literary culture. The literature of America and Europe has
come closer to the new novelists in Marathi. Similarly the new contribution to Marathi by writers from a
variety of castes and religions has enlarged the circumference of a secular society present in the novel,
which was not present in the earlier novel. The number of concepts of literary worth also has increased.
At present new concepts of literary excellence are being established and becoming acceptable.
Therefore the conventionally imagined distance between life and literature is getting reduced. Literary
taste has undergone a change which will not accept in a serious novel artificial characters, superficial
subject matter and concocted episodes. All these achievements have been made by the new novel
without help from the critics, or even in spite of them.
The protagonists of the new novels have often been described by Marathi criticism as
'Existentialist', 'Anti-hero', etc. There is, of course, no possibility whatsoever of these trends emerging
and surviving in the Hindu social structure. Actually, these protagonists belong to the anti-colonial,
nativistic tradition of Gandhi to Lohia in politics, and of Padmanji to Sane Guruji in literature. They do
not have the counterfeit colonial currency of love, courtship, humanism, idealism, sublimity, etc. They
do not have the bookish courage in sex which is necessary for 'hero'-ism. For the Hindu reality has no
place for these things. The new novel which performed verbal kriti about the problems in the society-
individual relationship did not rely too heavily on the characters; it rather focussed on the social
envelope round the character and on the interdependence between the society and the individual. The
statement that 'the other-interestedness of the protagonists of these novels is a new phenomenon' is
valid only so far as the novel is concerned. Several Marathi poets from the thirteenth century down had
experienced this other-interestedness. The Hindu cultural characteristic of taking interest in society was
present in the earlier 'other-interestedness', as it is present now. The protagonists of the new novel
prefer order to anarchy.
The structure of these fictional works is extensive, and their ending open. The principle of
unity that they follow is not that of an apparent unity but of an essential, inner unity. They do not
employ unrealistic, wooden characters. Since the language used is the ordinary, day-to-day spoken
language, no falsified depiction of reality or sentimentality is possible. The emotionally high-pitched
language of the riti trend punditic novels, and their formalistic, artificial events do not occur in the new
novel. The narrative style in the new novel gives emphasis to irony; the narrators themselves also
maintain an ironic point of view to their characters. Owing to this, the established Marathi convention of
being pleased with one's own characters is almost finished. The convenient bias of the established
Marathi novel too has been removed by the new novel. The journey of the Marathi novel from tribe to
sub-community and from sub-community to society, which moves through Padmanji, Apte, and Sane
Guruji, now seems to have turned, with the new novel, to humanity at large. Looking at the capabilities
of Marathi society we can be happy about this journey. However, it must be accepted that the Marathi
novel has still not been able to think of the entire human existence.
The best expression to the new trend is given by Bhau Padhye by writing earnestly and without
compromise on a vast range of modern subjects in his novels from Dombaryacha Khel (1960) and
Karanta (1961)- using the subject of the labour movement-to Vanava (1979)-showing the sex life of an
ultra modern couple in a forest.(24) Padhye created a new field of literary taste through open structures
and by selecting a variety of realistic themes. His Bombay dialect too is born out of his new realism, it is
entirely free of poetical elements. It develops the narrative by employing a colloquial idiom expressed in
sentences such as, "I felt my tummy was tight as a tyre" (Vaitagwadi); "The gossip continued emni em"
(Marathi variation on a Bombay Gujarati expression meaning 'endlessly'), "The thread of his screw has
worn out for the lass" (Vasunaka). The realism of content begins in it right from the selection of names:
Dhopeshwarkar, Azad Chacha, Priyanvada -Malvika - Sharmishtha - Ivy - Clara, Dafya - Mamu - Ghoshya
Koreta -Fari Bamford - Roshan - Nilima, etc. Padhye is basically a serious writer with socialistic morality
(the starving tribals against modern couples busy in pornographic mischiefs - Vanava; emancipation of
women - Agresar, Hindu casteism - Vaitagwadi; the marriage system, parentless children - Barrister
Aniruddha Dhopeshwarkar, intense moral discrimination, respect for fallen women - Vasunaka). In
comparison to any other Marathi novelist, Padhye shows a greater involvement with Bombay in his
novels, loves it as if Bombay were his motherland; he has a profound love for all sections of the Bombay
society, and he endows the topography of Bombay with a life. This humanitarian involvement is not
found in any other novelist in Marathi after Sane Guruji. No character of Padhye uses the flashback
technique, nor enters the area of day-dreaming. It is because of this that his prose style has a strong,
coarse texture like that of jute-cloth. This makes it possible for his novel to contain varieties ranging
from the loafers and the jobless of 'the loafers' toll post' ('Vasunaka') to the ultra-modern men and
women, the ethics of life from the Valapa estuary to Malabar Hill:
"If you want to booze, do. Don't. That's your look out"; "At sunrise we would put on woollen
trousers and gather in a company at Vasunaka to fool around. Had no other business. Neither had
cricket, nor were we born brahmins to join the R.S.S. and do 'right turn, left turn'."
Barrister Dhopeshwarkar looks down upon his wife who forces him to move to a flat in a
modern locality from his old house surrounded by trees. As a result of this powerful moral sense
Padhye's Rada - a novel on the Shiv Sena - was suppressed so that its complete version would not reach
the readers. Padhye puts forward a moral view even through the novels which have sex as their subject.
In this new novel, which has developed realism, the blunted tradition of the standard language
was destroyed and a variety of dialects entered literature with confidence. A notable novel with this
particular achievement is Manohar Talhar's Manus (1963). It develops through the Hindi spoken by two
rickshaw driver friends in Amaravati, one a Hindu, the other a Muslim. It was just impossible that a
theme like the one selected by Talhar could find a place in the novel written before 1960. The tolerant,
liberal ordinary life depicted in this novel envelops in an emotional warmth women, men, upper-classes,
lower-classes, policemen, hoteliers, goondas, brahmins, Hindus and Muslims; and it stands out with a
native dignity. It shows in a new form the workers' life in which the concepts such as 'society' and
'individual' are inseparable.
Dhag (1960) achieves an unprecedented evocativeness through a regional register of Marathi.
Kautik, a rustic woman, trying to survive firmly and hopefully through every single happy-sad day, and
her inter-relations with the persons around her, together create a new symphony style in Dhag. Uddhav
Shelke has depicted in a classic style the multiple facets of poverty in our society, and how living in
poverty with honesty and dignity is one of those facets. Kautik, who encourages her husband to start a
tailoring business instead of staying shamelessly with his brother, reveals the handsome build of the
labour-class language when she remarks to her husband in the Mahanubhav style, "You cut grass, then
why should I be shy of making the hay-rick?" This novel with its total acceptance of reality never loses
the touch of the earth. Shelke admits sex in his novel only to the extent it actually exists in our society.
Having moved out of the short story field, and having written (in 1960) a highly brilliant novel
inaugurating the new novel trend, how he later became a commercial, riti-type, pornographic writer,
can be understood only in terms of the diabolic nature of our literary culture.
Though Are Sansar Sansar (Prabhakar Pendharkar, 1971) and Andharwata (Subhash Bhende,
1978) discuss the social life in Bombay, they avoid being pornographic. When these novels are
compared with the riti trend novels on a similar subject, it becomes clear that the kriti trend novel finds
its moral backbone inevitable. Devacha Shabda (Manohar Shahane, 1968) tells through the particulars of
daily life the psychological tensions of a woman who cannot conceive, and, in avoiding the touch of
poeticality, displays an able prose style. The period between 1960 and 1970 should be considered the
period of the arrival of a native Marathi prose style. In this direction a notable novel is V.H.Pitke's Shidori
(1969), which performs the miracle of creating a highly poetic prose style out of the dry subject matter
about a sugar factory. Its plotting remains confined to the factory campus, the plot is filled with the
particulars of the daily life there, and the novel creates a framework of a pure human perception.
Therefore a defined time and a defined space create a distinct imprint of reality and produce a subtle
poetic sensation. Shidori proves in an omnipotent manner that true poetic quality does not lie in lyrical-
ornamental language, but in identification in body, speech and spirit with everyday-ness.
It is little wonder that the formalistic-aestheticist criticism in Marathi had to shut its mouth
after so many more 'strange' novels had been written one after another.
In Dinanath Manohar's Robot the kriti-orientation becomes more intense. The fascination of
the new novel trend for reality more than for the imaginary is seen more clearly after 1970. The trend
moving in that direction appears to integrate the other branches of novel such as the problem-novel,
the sub-culture novel, and the regional novel. In Robot, a modern consciousness, entering the military
life, creates the entirely Anglicized framework of that life by analysing every particular; besides it also
does a moral assessment of the modern military culture which leads humanity to that Genghis Khan
path. Robot is an example of how the writer's kriti can achieve a fundamental social edification in a
highly imaginative way owing to its new morality. Shekhu, the soldier, who comments, "Arrey, they turn
us into machines so that their civilized world will remain secure. Destroy us as men so that they can live
as men", is only passingly referred to later as a casualty in a 'wash out' platoon on the front. Since the
narration has a steady compass of morality, these novels indicate a definite direction even when they
give such stray particulars.
A further developed form of the realistic style is seen in Anant Kadam's Kide (1971) and Strot
(1977). His style employs the first person narrative technique for a honest subjective analysis and for
presenting layers of a sensitive, self-agonising sensibility. It is lucid, and uses short colloquial sentences.
But since they have a social content, his novels assimilate the first person narrator as a constituent of
their social orientation. In Kide he employs the stream of consciousness technique to portray a day in
the life of a young, unwanted, unemployed man. He has been sacked from his job because of a
conspiracy by his corrupt colleagues against his refusal to accept a bribe. Yet his reaction is not that of a
self-indulgent bitterness. To feel frustrated out of unemployment also smacks of a Philistine selfishness;
the protagonist of Kide tries to perceive the reality and become contemplative. One should not roll in
filth but one cannot help it if others want to do so: from this stand, the confused, unemployed young
man's stream of consciousness embraces the whole of society in its sweet devotion within an hour of its
flow. This manner of avoiding bitterness in the new novel is worth studying. This novel proves by kriti
that frustration is not helplessness, disillusionment is not pessimism. When the protagonist had a job,
his parents showered affection on him, his mother fed him with delicacies. Having lost his job, and with
it the affection from the family and status outside, this protagonist sits in a broken chair in the veranda
and looks at the entire chawl, its family portraits human beings, their attitudes, the crowds in the street;
and a vast image of their all being insects ('kide') emerges before him. This value scale is retained
throughout the novel. A young man's place in the family is out of economic necessity. It is also true that
it would not be possible to earn outside without corruption. The technique of the stream of
consciousness is apt for a person caught in a dilemma of this kind. It projects the gigantic terrifying
character of urban social life. It is only the man who is in search of the self-identity that can realise this
gigantic character of the city life. Gradually he discovers his kriti in this dilemma. Without informing
anyone he disappears from his home.
In Strot too Kadam's transparent, pure style of using a self-searching narrator's simple
narration expressing an intense realism, attempts an evaluation of social values from a liberal ethical
perspective. This kriti is an instance of the obvious realistic attitude on increase through the new novel.
For instance
"... the other reason is that I belong to a certain caste. My neighbour does not mention this
openly, but this is what he always wants to suggest. I just laugh. The other day I casually said to him that
I like the Buddha's philosophy more than Krishna's. On this he got furious. Fought like an enemy. What
crime did I do in saying so? I did not want to ridicule Krishna. But what I can do if I find Buddha more
appealing? I read the Gita. Twice or thrice. I did not follow it. It did not attract me. Dhammapada I read. I
understood it. It attracted me. Gita is great. The great might have said so too. But I may not be capable
of understanding it. I might be on a lower level. But I have no fascination with it. This is not so out of
hatred. There is no hatred in my mind. But my neighbour does not understand this. It hurts
(Strot,p.13,s1977)
This middle-class young man, wanting to live merely as a human, has no expectations from the
world. He is disturbed due to his inter-caste marriage. He has no expectations beyond his poverty,
family, wife, children, and an easily manageable employment. While his children eat and drink of a
morning, he feels disturbed by the outcry of innumerable children reaching his ears. He has no
bitterness when he tells his wife that he could not borrow money for her delivery after trying in every
direction. At times he bestows a mysterious quality on reality: "The other day one of the sons woke up
shrieking, 'Mother, mother'.
'Mother, please do not die!', was what he repeated to the wife. She held him near her bosom
for a long time and soothed him. He had a terrifying dream. The three year old child could not be
convinced that it was only a dream even after much convincing." (Strot, p.16)
This protagonist has no biases. But they exist in society. And it becomes difficult for him to
face that. The new novel has presented a variety of verbal kritis of confronting the society.
Summing Up
While summing up this general survey, let us try to determine the nature of progress made by
the Marathi novel during the period in question. It is very clear that the retreat of realism dating back to
the emergence of the Marathi novel has come to an end. A new cycle of Marathi novel has begun
around 1960. Progress can be judged on the basis of a new cycle within a given tradition (Croce).(25)
Progress stops when no writer in a prevalent cycle can overtake himself. This situation existed in
Marathi around 1950. Yet, the writers caught within the old cycle continued to write. In the intervening
decade, the imminent cycle was arrested by the culture hatched and the criticism nurtured by the short
story. {Bali,1950; Bangarwadi,1955). Therefore in this decade only the pratikriti-trend novels and the
pornographic, riti-trend novels were written. Though the reviewers-professors-publishers-editors with
their punditic taste tried hard to push the old cycle forward during the decade, a new cycle of the kriti-
oriented trend with its various branches started emerging. The novelists belonging to the latter
prevented the punditic criticism. They accepted realism, selected novel subject matter, and, avoiding
the unrealistic individualism, bridged the gulf between the individual and society. They brought
techniques of finding out significance in social life and activity. They invented new aesthetic ideas. The
novelists of the past two decades (1960-80) have proved by their practice that beauty can be found in
the existing reality, that it is not necessary to turn away from the contemporary world to fantasy, to the
past, or to an imaginary unreality. The new novel has also proved that the novel calls for a greater
support of kriti and morality than that of entertainment, for the novelist as an artist must perform the
cultural function of preserving, cultivating and enlarging cultural values. Albert Camus has stated that
"The novel is born simultaneously with the spirit of rebellion and expresses, on the aesthetic plane, the
same ambition".(26) During the decade before 1960, an atmosphere was systematically created so as
not to allow any writer to take such a responsible stand. The new novel opposed it by its advocacy of
kriti. The commitment with which Baba Padmanji expressed in his novel his hopes for women's
emancipation and opposition to casteism, once again can be seen becoming strong during the post 1960
period. The creators of today's Marathi novel have come from varied social strata and possess intense
sensitivity. There is both a qualitative and numerical growth in all formal and contextual constituents of
the novel. There are visible signs that the new novel will endear itself to the whole next generation. The
Marathi novel has come to be native. This should be mentioned as the most valuable gain of the novel
during this period.
But it would be being ignorant of the Marathi tradition to surmise on this basis that the future
of the Marathi novel is bright. No critic from an undeveloped literary culture must make a statement like
that. In Marathi, once in a while a good novel takes birth and, quickly, loses itself in history. {Ranangan,
1939). Later on its creator starts making films like Sohrab Rustum. Thereafter, even the critics in their
infancy keep dropping its name as a literary fashion: this is one type of childishness. The other is that if a
writer with an inborn creative talent emerges, he has to turn to writing rubbish (Uddhav Shelke). Once
every score years someone like Justice Ranade down to Ashok Shahane has been exposing the inferior
quality of Marathi literature. One cannot be sure if even this will continue for a long time. Rajwade, the
historian, had said in 1902 that "novelists of fierce talent" are born, not made. But no one can have
control over this factor, and therefore it is not enough just to have said so. Every generation, every
literate society, needs novelists that will refine the sensibility of the society. That becomes possible in a
healthy literary culture. Therefore it has now become necessary for Marathi criticism to devote itself to
creating an atmosphere congenial to creative literature. Or else such surveys as the present one do not
reach even a good bibliography. That a good bibliography is a more useful literary activity than
irresponsible criticism can be easily proved by comparing Shankar Ganesh Date and the childish critics of
this period. The Marathi generation which is caught between such backwardness on one hand and the
creational dilemma as to whether a work of art narrates, or whether it is narrating itself, on the other
hand, does not have a very promising future. After all the meaning of culture is 'growing', though we
erroneously keep using the term sanskriti to express the concept. Our cultural responsibility is not fully
discharged in merely discussing what has grown; to sow properly, to tend it and to destroy the
pestilence of destructive tendencies are activities of greater cultural value. They are more deserving
topics for discussion. There is little possibility of the situation changing for the better unless the next
generation revolutionizes criticism and cures Marathi of its present poverty of taste.
Bhalchandra Nemade, from Setu Vol.II, No.1,1985
translated by G.N.Devy
REFERENCES
GAYATRICHAKRAVORTY SPIVAK
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is, as was A.K.Ramanujan, an expatriate Indian. She teaches at
Columbia University. She became famous with her translation of Jacques Derrida's Grammatology from
French to English. The translation was prefaced by an elaborate and provocative 'Introduction', which
has become a much quoted piece of literary criticism in recent years. Though Gayatri Chakravorty has
been one of the most influential theorists in the US, she, like Edward Said, is deeply engaged in concerns
related to her Third World identity. More recently, she has been writing/lecturing about feminism in the
context of Indian culture and literature and translating the writings of Mahasweta Devi.
Mahasweta Devi is a significant Bangla fiction writer. Her stories and novels have been
translated into many Indian languages, and also into English. She works with tribals and rural people of
India, and writes about social reality. She received the Jnanapith award for her creative writing and the
Magsaysay award for her social work. Though she has written about a variety of themes, in recent years
she has come to be recognised in the Western world as a spokesperson for the underprivileged and for
women. A shorter work on a similar theme is 'Stanadayini', which Gayatri Chakravorty has translated
under the title 'Breastgiver'. The essay included here rests on that story, and tries to establish the
subaltern perspective of woman/subject in Bangla society.
The original essay has appended the translation of 'Stanadayini' to it. It has not been possible
to include the translation here for reasons of space.
A series of volumes under the title Subaltern Studies edited by Ranajit Guha was published
during the 1980s and 1990s (Oxford University Press, Delhi). The 'subaltern studies' provided a new
historiographical perspective. Gayatri Chakravorty's essay forms part of one of the Subaltern volumes. It
is reproduced here as it is generally considered to be a fine example of the employment of recent
Western theory for discussing non-western positions.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
"A Literary Representation of the Subaltern: Mahasweta Devi's Stanadayini", in Subaltern
Studies Vol.V, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1987, pp.91-134.
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A historian confronts a text of counterinsurgency or gendering where the subaltern has been
represented. He unravels the text to assign a new subject-position to the subaltern, gendered or
otherwise.
A teacher of literature confronts a sympathetic text where the gendered subaltern has been
represented. She unravels the text to make visible the assignment of subject-positions.
These two operations are similar but not identical. By way of a teaching strategy for
Mahasweta Devi's 'Stanadayini' (Breast Giver), this essay circulates among the similarities and
differences.(2) By its end I will hope to have importuned the reader at least to entertain the following
propositions:
a. The performance of these tasks, of the historian and the teacher of literature, must critically
'interrupt' each other, bring each other to crisis, in order to serve their constituencies; especially when
each seems to claim all for its own.
b. The teacher of literature, because of her institutional subject position, can and must 're-
constellate' the text to draw out its use. She can and must wrench it out of its proper context and put it
within alien arguments.
c. If thus placed in the arguments from Western Marxist-Feminism, Western Liberal Feminism,
and French high theory of the female body, 'Stanadayini' can show us some of their limits and
limitations.
d. This might have implications for the current and continued subalternization of so-called
'third world' literatures.
The essay will also touch upon the always tendentious question of elite methodologies and
subaltern material. I suppose it needs to be said that the problem of 'what to do' about the gendered
subaltern cannot be solved in any interpretive essay, historical or literary. An essay such as this one can
perhaps give an idea of the extent and politics of the problem somewhat more soberly than invocations
of the immediacy of the need for social justice or the ineluctability of a woman's domain.
III. The Teacher and Reader(s): More Subject-Positions Mahasweta's text might show in
many ways how the narratives of nationalism have been and remain irrelevant to the life of the
subordinate. The elite culture of nationalism participated and participates with the colonizer in various
ways.(18) In Mahasweta's story we see the detritus of that participation.
In a certain sense we witness there the ruins of the ideas of parliamentary democracy and of
the nation when bequeathed to the elite of a colonized people outside the supposedly 'natural' soil of
the production of those ideas. Some of us would speculate that, used as a teaching tool (from within the
subject-position of the teacher in a certain discursive formation), stories such as this can deconstruct
those ideas even in their natural habitat. It is for us important that in 'Stanadayini' the piece of flotsam
least susceptible to those ideas is the subaltern as gendered subject, a subject-position different from
the subaltern as class-subject. In orthodox literary-critical circles the authority of the author's reading
still holds a certain glamour. By way of Foucault I have therefore taken some pains to explain why I focus
on the subaltern as gendered subject rather than as an allegorical seme for Mother India.
If 'the need to make the subaltern classes the subject of their own history (has, among other)
themes.... provided a fresh critical thrust to much recent writing on modern Indian history and society',
then a text about the (im)possibility of 'making' the subaltern gender the subject of its own story seems
to me to have a certain pertinence.(19) Toward the end of this essay I will discuss the need to put the
'im' of 'impossible' in parentheses.
Accounts of history and literary pedagogy, as they appropriate and disseminate reports and
tales, are two ways in which mind-sets are set.(20) The reading of 'Stanadayini' presented here,
assigning the subject-position to the teacher/reader, can be helpful in combating a certain tendency in
literary pedagogy that still shapes, by remote control, the elite in the most prestigious Indian
educational institutions: the so-called radical teaching of literary criticism and literature in the United
States and perhaps also in Britain.
This dominant 'radical' reader in the Anglo-US reactively homogenizes the Third World and
sees it only in the context of nationalism and ethnicity. The dominant reader in India who is resistant to
such homogenization, and who is to be distinguished from students of reading theory in elite Indian
institutions, inhabits a reading practice that is indistinguishable from the orthodox position in the Anglo-
US. This Indian reader, a faceless person within the sphere of influence of a post-colonial humanistic
education (I use this awkward terminology because sociologists, economists, doctors, scientists, etc. are
not outside of this sphere), takes this orthodox position to be the 'natural' way to read literature. The
position is undergirded by the author's account of her 'original vision'. In this particular case that
account (the reading of the story as a parable) would forbid the fulfilment of another assumption
implicit in the orthodox position, the psychologistic or characterological assumption that we 'feel' the
story as if it is gossip about nonexistent people. The general reader can straddle such contradictions
easily. The historians, anthropologists, sociologists and doctors among them can know or show that any
group's perception of the 'natural' meanings of things may be discursively constructed through an erring
common sense. When, however, it comes to their own presuppositions about the 'natural' way to read
literature, they cannot admit that this might be a construction as well, that this subject-position might
also be assigned. Given that this way of reading has been in control for at least a couple of centuries in
post-Enlightenment Europe, and has served to distinguish our indigenous elite from the uneducated, to
read thus certainly engages our affects.(21) I will not enter the abstruse arguments about the historicity
or phenomenality of affects.(22) Nor will I suggest that there is a correct way to train our affects.
Indeed, it is not only 'false consciousness' that is 'ideological'. A Foucauldian or, in this case,
deconstructive, position would oblige us to admit that 'truths' are constructions as well, and that we
cannot avoid producing them.
Without venturing up to the perilous necessity of asking the question of true readings or true
feelings, then, I will propose an alternative. Let us jealously guard the orthodoxy's right to be 'moved' by
literature 'naturally', and tremble before the author's authority. But let us also consider 'literature' as a
use of language where the transactional quality of reading is socially guaranteed. A literary text exists
between writer and reader. This makes literature peculiarly susceptible to didactic
use. When literature is used didactically it is generally seen as a site for the deployment of
themes, even the theme of the undoing of thematicity, of unreadability, of undecidability.(23) This is not
a particularly 'elite' approach, although it may be called 'unnatural'. On the one hand Marxist literary
criticism as well as a remark like Chinua Achebe's 'all art is propaganda, though not all propaganda is art'
can be taken as cases of such a 'thematic' approach.(24) On the other hand some 'elite' approaches
(deconstructive, structuralist, semiotic, structuralist-psychoanalytic, phenomenological, discourse-
theoretical; though not necessarily feminist, reader-responsist, intertextual, or linguistic) can also be
accommodated here.
(Any reader nervous about the fact that Mahasweta Devi has probably not read much of the
material critically illuminated by her text should stop here.)
Finally it becomes part of Jashoda's last sentient judgement: If you suckle you're a mother, all
lies. Nepal and Gopal (her own sons) don't look at me, and the Master's boys don't spare a peek to ask
how I'm doing. The sores on her breast kept mocking her with a hundred mouths, a hundred eyes'.
(p.271).
By contrast, her final judgement, the universalization of foster-motherhood, is a mistake: 'The
doctor who sees her every day, the person who will cover her face with a sheet, will put her on a cart,
will lower her at the burning ghat, the untouchable who will put her in the furnace, are all her milk sons'
(p.276). Such a judgement can only be 'right' within the pieties of Mahasweta's own nationalist reading.
The Marxian fable of a transition from the domestic to the 'domestic' mode of social
reproduction has no more than a strained plausibility here. In order to construct it, one must entertain a
grounding assumption, that the originary state of 'necessary labour' is where the lactating mother
produces a use value. For whose use? If you consider her in a subject-position, it is a situation of
exchange, with the child, for immediate and future psycho-social affect. Even if we read the story as a
proto-nationalist parable about Mother India, it is the failure of this exchange that is the substance of
the story. It is this failure, the absence of the child as such, that is marked by the enigmatic answer-
question-parataxis towards the conclusion: 'Yet someone was supposed to be there at the end. Who
was it? It was who? Who was it? Jashoda died at 11 p.m.' (p.276).
By dismantling (professional) motherhood and suckling into their minute particulars,
'Stanadayini' allows us to differentiate ourselves from the axiomatics of a certain 'Marxist-feminism'
which is obliged to ignore the subaltern woman as subject.
If Lise Vogel, from whom I drew my representative generalization, signals a certain orthodoxy,
Ann Ferguson, in 'On Conceiving Motherhood', shows us a way out of it via the question of affect:
Although different societies have had different modes of sex/affective production at different
times, a cross-cultural constant is involved in different modes of bourgeois patriarchal sex/affective
production. This is that women as mothers are placed in a structural bind by mother-centered infant and
small child care, a bind that ensures that mothers will give more than they get in the sex/affective
parenting triangle in which even lesbian and single parents are subjected.(38)
'Mothers will give more than they get.' If this broad generalization is broadened so that the
distinction between domestic ('natural' mother) and 'domestic' (waged wet-nurse) disappears, this can
certainly serve as a constant for us and can be a good tool for our students.(39) Yet it should also be
acknowledged that such a broadening might make us misrepresent important details. A text such as
'Stanadayini', even if taught as nothing but sociological evidence, can show how imprecise it is to write:
'In stratified class and caste societies, different economic classes and racial/ethnic groups may hold
different sex/gender ideals, although when this happens the lower classes are usually categorized as
inferior male and female types by nature'.(40) (I am referring, of course, to the class-subalternity of the
Brahmin and the grotesque functioning of caste marked within subalternity. Jashoda is a complicit victim
of all these factors.) It is possible that it is not only 'the relationship between the three domination
systems (class, racial/ ethnic, and sex/gender)' that is 'dialectical' but that in the theatres of
decolonization the relationship between indigenous and imperialist systems of domination are also
'dialectical', even when they are variously related to the Big Three Systems cited above. Indeed, the
relationship might not be 'dialectical' at all but discontinuous, 'interruptive'.
It is often the case that revisionist socialist-feminism trivializes basic issues in the Marxist
system.(41) Ferguson writes, for example: 'My theory, unlike one tendency within classic Marxist theory,
does not privilege the economic realm (the production of things to meet human material needs and the
manner in which the social surplus gets appropriated) as the material base for all human domination
relations.... The production of things and the production of people.... interpenetrate.'(42)
This is an excellent advance on generalizations such as Vogel's. But it is an oversimplification of
Marx's view of the economic sphere. That sphere is the site of the production of value, not things. As I
have mentioned earlier, it is the body's susceptibility to the production of value which makes it
vulnerable to idealization and therefore to insertion into the economic. This is the ground of the labour
theory of value. It is here that the story of the emergence of value from Jashoda's labour-power
infiltrates Marxism and questions its gender-specific presuppositions. The production of people through
sexual reproduction and affective socialization, on the other hand, presupposes mothers embodied not
as female humans but only as mothers and belongs properly speaking to the sphere of politics and
ideology (domination).(43) Of course it interpenetrates the economic sphere (exploitation), the sphere
of the production of value, of the sustained alienation of the body to which the very nature of labour-
power makes the body susceptible. In spite of the greatest sympathy for the mother, Ferguson's
ignoring of the mother's body obliges her to ignore the woman as subject of the production of value.
'Stanadayini's lesson may be simply this: when the economic as such (here shown in terms of the
woman's body) enters in, mothers are divided, women can exploit, not merely dominate. Ideology
sustains and interpenetrates this operation of exploitation.
Anna Davin's meticulous 'Imperialism and Motherhood' shows us the development of
sex/affective control within the context of class-struggle.('Imperialism' and 'War' here are political
signifiers used for ideological mobilization.(44) In Davin's account, the great narrative of the
development of capitalism is untroubled by discontinuities and interruptions. She describes the
construction of the British National Subject on the bodies of British mothers.(45) Public opinion is under
active construction so that the working of the privates may be adjudicated. Mutatis mutandis, echoes of
these arguments from eugenics and educated mothercraft can be heard among the Indian indigenous
elite today. The space where Jashoda, burdened by her ideological production, nourishes her cancer, is
not accessible to that narrative.
In Davin's essay the central reference point is class. The oikos is fully a metaphor for the polis.
Foster-mothers are Virgin Mothers. Christianity, the official religion, gives a little help to the ideology of
the secular state.
The lack of fit between this neat narrative and the bewildering cacophony of 'Stanadayini'
permits us to ask: why globalize? Why should a sociological study that makes astute generalizations
about sex/affective production in the United States feel obliged to produce a 'cross-cultural constant?'
Why should a study that exposes gender-mobilization in Britain purport to speak on the relationship
between imperialism and motherhood? Why, on the contrary, does 'Stanadayini' invoke the singularity
of the gendered subaltern? What is at stake here? How are these stakes different from those of
imperialism as such? The story will make us come back to these questions.
NOTES