You are currently browsing the category archive for the 'Analysis' category.
I have always had a conflict about writing about my body. It has been a very personal space. Certainly, for someone who thinks and feels about everything under the sun, my body has been a ground for a lot of thought. I have been through a lot of physical pain and torture because of which I tend to detach myself from my bodily needs and look at it objectively. I am beginning to think about how I interact with my body. Also, being a woman, I am not very comfortable with discussing my body in a world of men, most of whom do not have very good intentions for a woman who can openly talk about her physicality.
I was attempting to translate a poem called “Female Author” by Sylvia Plath. When I encountered the word “pink-breasted”, I almost wanted to give up. Then I spent a moment thinking about the consequences of translating this word. Personally, I am more comfortable than most women, with my body. I have been laid bare in laboratories, testing centers, and an operation theater and I learned to understand the perceptions about the female body.
I have also come to understand that the female body is often used as a means of intimidating women into fear and submission. A lot of women are embarrassed of their proportions and spend all their time in trying to change the way they look. I don’t! In fact, I am the big woman who takes the second helping of a chocolate cake because I don’t care! I have one life and I care less about who is watching than about my own desires. Women are embarrassed about the parts of their own body and attempt to tell other women to cover them up without so much as understanding why they are afraid.
I am as comfortable with my breasts as my eyes or nose and I cannot be insecure about them forever. I would certainly like to protect my body from the invasive glances of perverts but I cannot live in constant fear of them and make my own body an inconvenience. While we studied Foucault, we studied about “internalization” and the “gaze”. Women tend to internalize the feeling of being gazed at by men and years of telling them to be ashamed of their own body has made them insecure and inhibited.
I have often seen men on the road who spit at me because they don’t approve of the way I look or dress. Then I begin to analyze the kind of person this ’spitter’ is. What is his life like? Perhaps he has no life. He must be a loser who has achieved very less in life. He is probably someone who has a complex about his own status. He is most probably not so well-dressed or well-groomed himself. Then, why do women react? Have our self-respect hit rock bottom that we have to react/respond to the man on the street who has no name or address? He is probably a street-cleaner who is there not because of a lack of choice but because he treated people with disrespect all his life. Perhaps, he is a college student who fails all his subjects because he has not begun to understand what learning is. Why should I react to a person who does not have the status to judge me, let alone value me?
I watched a documentary called “SheWrite” at college, and I loved it. It was about a few Tamil women poets who have started exploring the realm of the female body in their stories and poems. A whole lot of controversy has hit them and there are men opposing them everywhere. I have come to believe that a man can never look at the woman’s body the way a woman looks at herself. Then how can they judge what she has to say about herself? Isn’t it too intimate for him to comment about? What does he know?
This poem evokes so much beauty and a tiny chuckle from me because I can identify with it. I nod in understanding. This poem has been written by a woman and translated by a man. It evoked a whole lot of controversy from several Tamil lyricists (yes, the ones who write sleazy verse for movie songs) who wanted to take this to the level of Witch Burnings.
Breasts
by Kutti Revathi
Breasts are bubbles, rising
In wet marshlands
I wondrously watched — and guarded —
Their gradual swell and blooming
At the edges of my youth’s season
Saying nothing to anyone else,
They sing along
With me alone, always:
Of Love,
Rapture,
Heartbreak
To the nurseries of my turning seasons,
They never once failed or forgot
To bring arousal
During penance, they swell, as if straining
To break free; and in the fierce tug of lust,
They soar, recalling the ecstasy of music
From the crush of embrace, they distil
The essence of love; and in the shock
Of childbirth, milk from coursing blood
Like two teardrops from an unfulfilled love
That cannot ever be wiped away,
They well up, as if in grief, and spill over.
(Translated by N.Kalyan Raman)
Click for more poems by Kutti Revathi
I happened to read the article called “Landscapes of the Body” (The Hindu, Sunday, Dec 07, 2003) by C.S. Lakshmi a.k.a Ambai, one of the earliest forward-thinking Tamil writers. She has analyzed the politics of the female body while being cynical and caustic about the fact that men cannot understand the way women feel about their own bodies. I would not blame men. They have also been brought up to believe that the woman’s body is an object of arousal and requires to be covered at other times. Some men cannot appreciate the little moments of loss of self-restraint in a woman, when she is twirling her skirt in joy or lets herself go in laughter. Their first reaction is the need to control her. Many men imagine that a woman who is open about her sexuality is either trying to “titillate” or “seduce” or she needs to be controlled/fixed. I would not blame them because this attitude is not uncommon in older women in the family who have “internalized” the male idea of what is right or wrong for a woman. I have also noticed that men tend to be extremely private about their bodies. They do not want to explicitly express the sensitivities in their bodies because they are afraid of being taken into control. They observe their own physical needs as a weakness.
The body is something we live with day in and day out. While it seems perfectly sane to discuss “breast cancer” or “breastfeeding” without rousing a controversy, a woman is not allowed to talk about her breasts in other contexts. For a writer, it is completely natural to want to express every experience and how is one supposed to categorize these needs and inhibit oneself?
I also think the psychology behind such suppression and repression is the truth that rarefying the body makes it more mysterious and exploration-worthy. Perhaps this is why men try hard to preserve the secrecy about the female body to keep their own libidos working. It is only natural to lose interest in something that becomes commonplace. I cannot help but wonder why pornography and Savita Bhabhi are so welcome but a woman talking about her own body is not. The male psyche is still in denial, of course, but they have got their logic mixed up. It won’t be long before women realize the logical flaws and loopholes in the patriarchal belief systems and discard them.
I was looking at the January 2008 newsletter of “The School – KFI” and there was an article named “A Study of the Cholas – A Quick Report” by Akhila Seshadri (Teacher of History) on their visit to temples built by the Cholas, a dynasty of kings who ruled in Tamilnadu until the 13th century.
Darasuram, Gangaikondacholapuram, Brihadeeswarar were the three Chola monuments we visited. The man in whose times the temples were built – the so called creator of the huge temples, the architect of a marvellous kingdom, Rajaraja is now represented by a black stone in an unmarked and unnamed field in a village called, Udayalur. This stunned the students who had seen the Thanjavur temple. I think they became immensely thoughtful after this. “Is this it?” was one question on many lips.
This reminded me of the poem, Ozymandias by Shelley although this was the first time I could relate to it directly. My grandmother hails from Tanjore and I have lived in Trichy for over 13 years. I have visited the magnificent Brihadeeswara temple and awed over its splendor and this news was a little saddening.
Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
My father once told us about a man who had a paan shop at the bus stand in Trichy. He claimed to be the descendant of the Cholas. The Government had seized all of their property and they had been reduced to the state of menial workers to eke out a living.
In this context, I was also reminded of the Julius Caesar that Shakespeare wrought. He proclaims that he is as constant as the Northern Star only to be stabbed to death immediately afterward.
Cæser: I could be well mov’d if I were as you;
If I could pray to move, prayers would move me;
But I am constant as the northern star, (68)
Of whose true-fix’d and resting quality
There is no fellow in the firmament.
The skies are painted with unnumber’d sparks,
They are all fire and every one doth shine, (72)
But there’s but one in all doth hold his place:
So, in the world; ’tis furnish’d well with men,
And men are flesh and blood, and apprehensive;
Yet in the number I do know but one (76)
That unassailable holds on his rank,
Unshak’d of motion: and that I am he…
Julius Cæsar by William Shakespeare (Act III. Scene I.)
Yes, this is it!
In the evening, I was with the pioneers. Music makers. And there were children as yet uncaring for the world’s approval. I was with uninhibited animals and big eyes. And there was music – noise and otherwise.
Then I played a game. I created a sense of purpose and argued for it. I was amused and animated. I made them believe that I had a point of view. Points of view are dangerous things. I mostly stay away from them. Yesterday, I was with some non-violent people and I decided to have fun.
I argued for two hours till my eyes ran away from their sockets due to the pressure from my hyperactive brain. But I smiled every time someone countered me. Hahaha! I was an evil con artist. I was a parasitic psychic vampire. I contradicted myself freely and dilly-dallied in pointlessness. I was sophistic and painful. Their retina reddened with rage. (Lol!)
My argument was said to be “Vulgar, discordant, unmusical and unartistic” and I had an enormous feeling of warmth crawl down my insides.
It was sad that they did not know I can be post-modernist when I want to be. I can also be biased, irrational and hedonistic.
It seems I subscribe to a number of borrowed philosophies and there is nothing original in me and I only speak language in a convincingly logical fashion. Unfortunately, they did not know that I do not stand for anything and therefore I am not afraid of anything collapsing. Despite the children around we were stupid.
Theism can collapse. I will not. Love, music, laughter, pain and memory can collapse. I will not. Because I am not.
You are afraid of defeat only when you fight for something. When all you want to do is have fun with concepts, everything is irrelevant. When all your props are gone, the very act of fighting for something becomes funny. You take sides with something not because you want to protect your sanity and retain your conviction but because you can take sides. You can take sides with anything and not get attached. It is fun to irritate the more serious ones.
He asked “Why should you argue so much about something that is irrelevant?”
Because “Irrelevance is the only relevant thing.”
Seriously! What gives!
I was wondering what a few of my friends would name their dogs if they had one:
Rajesh, the mad scientist+genius+cute overload type
His doggy would be a lhasa apso neatly combed and appropriately tagged with genus, species, binomial nomenclature apart from all the necessary cuteness paraphrenalia such as clips and bows and ribbons.
The doggy would be christened K9 Quadruped Mujjax.
Shashi, the poet+non-conformist+existentialist+mad scientist+experimental type
His dog would be a Shih-Tzu (he will deny this in the comments section)
It would wear red heart-shaped glasses and see the world through green filters. It will have a purple tail ribbon, the purpose of which will remain a poignant existential mystery. The doggy would be an INFP. It will love chewing on books by Kafka and Sartre.
The dog’s name would be Lolita Prufrockovna.
Mathi, the litterateur+spelling bee enthusiast+Ajax coder+poet+obscurantist
His dog would be an invisible Xoloitzcuintli living in his bookshelf, reading Nabakov, Murakami and Finnegan’s Wake. The dog would be endearingly never addressed as Pristine Canine though that is what its birth certificate would say. It would be called Prick instead and probably get cooked.
Jai, the biker+adventurer+mad nomad+sentimentalist type
His dog would be a German Shepherd no doubt. It will eat the best protein nuggets in all of India and attend all dog shows. It will be the type of dog whose owners keep assuring you that it wont bite while it sniffs dangerously close to a certain succulent portion of your calf, baring its recently brushed fangs. The dog would have a shiny coat dusted with Grade-A Bulstrode’s Anti-Flea Potion.
This member of his family would be named Trevor or some such functional thing.
More people who want dog names please contact me in the comments section. 
Karruku is a poignant subaltern novel that speaks of the childhood experiences of the author. The significance of the novel comes from its social message. The author’s childhood is interspersed with events that repeatedly bring to the fore the harrowing experiences of a Dalit child.
The dictionary defines the word “militant” as being “aggressively active (as in a cause)”. In “Karruku” the militant aspect is lower than the autobiographical element. The novel comes across as a sincere attempt to tell a story that is matter-of-factly indignant about ill-treatment in the name of class, caste and religion. The story is that of poverty, pain and neglect more than that of anger or aggression. It is a story that creates awareness more than anger.
Constantly reproved for being a member of a lower caste, the Dalit children go through severe abuse and torment. The novel is not just the story of the author alone. It seeks to expose the plight of thousands of Dalit children. The author also finds that several of her own people have internalized the inferiority that is imposed on them by the upper classes. She wants her novel to be a “two-edged sword”. While on the one hand it challenges the oppressors who have enslaved and disempowered the Dalits, on the other hand it reiterates the need for a new society with ideals such as justice, equality and love.
The novel is not merely a militant kickback. It seeks to establish a better society for the Dalits apart from questioning the oppressors. It does not retaliate violently to injustice. On the contrary, it seeks to emphasize on the importance of education, moral values and unity. During severe oppression, her people hardly questioned authority or fought against it. They rather sought to dodge the law temporarily and escape punishment than work towards long-term solutions.
It is important to note that the author is a peace-loving nun who is disturbed by violence. Although she does not agree with the way the convents are run, she herself is religious and service-minded. She believes that a lack of unity among the Dalits will make it easier for the upper castes to subjugate them.
“A hundred times a second there are scuffles among them. Shameless fellows. Of course the upper-caste men will laugh at them. In stead of uniting together in a village of many castes, if they keep challenging each other to fights, what will happen to all these men in the end?” (Page 41)
She repeatedly talks about the importance of education for the Dalit child. She quotes her Annan’s words,
“Because we are born into the Paraya jati, we are never given any honour or dignity or respect. We are stripped of all that. But if we study and make progress, we can throw away these indignities. (Page 15)
She also stresses on the need for the Dalits to demand better wages for heavy physical labor.
The book talks about the cultural, social and familial life of Dalits. It does not confine itself to the oppression aspects or the militant stance. It elaborately describes the daily life, language, naming conventions, religion, culture, festivals, food habits, entertainment, games and kinship in the paraya community. The cultural significance of drumming is highlighted in the way they celebrated the “Pusai”. One must remember that the “parayas” are known for their exceptional talents at drumming on the “parai”.
“During the Pusai there was only one man who sang out loudly, while quite a few others accompanied him by beating out the rhythm on all sorts of objects.” (Page 56)
In this fashion, the book talks about Bama’s Dalit experience in different areas of her life. There are places where she is proud and happy the way she is but is angered by the treatment given to her.
“Are Dalits not human beings? Do they not have common sense? Do they not have such attributes as a sense of honour and self-respect? Are they without any wisdom, beauty, dignity? What do we lack?” (Page 24)
At the end of the book is an “Afterword” written by Bama, seven years after she wrote the book. She says, “It has been a great joy to see Dalits aiming to live with self-respect, proclaiming aloud, “Dalit endru sollada; talai nimirndu nillada”. You are a Dalit; lift up your head and stand tall”. This is probably what the author aimed for when she wrote her experiences down.
Thus, Karruku is not merely a militant voice seeking to liberate the Dalits from oppression. The language used in the book is that of the Dalits. This in itself is a form of overthrowing of established conventions for writing, as dictated by the upper castes. It also does the function of memoir that has great cultural value for its contents. The book gives an identity to the Dalits by proudly recollecting the cultural significance of being a Dalit in the remnants of memories. The very fact that the author is a Dalit who seeks to decentralize the established structures is proof that half their victory is won. The book therefore becomes the harbinger of an awakening and a reiteration of the Dalit’s freedom to question, rebel and reinterpret.
As Lakshmi Holmstrom puts it, “…Bama’s work is among those that are exploring a changing Dalit identity.”
Bama is not merely trying to politically influence the power structures but wants to communicate with the readers at a deeper level. As readers we are expected to travel into her reality and empathize with the condition of the Dalits.
“Karruku” is indeed the “two-edged sword” but only mightier.
The essay “On Some Aspects of the Historiography of Colonial India” by Ranajit Guha analyses and compares neo-colonialist historiography and neo-nationalist historiography from the elitist perspective. The essay also touches upon the subaltern groups’ contribution to Indian Nationalism, which has been overlooked by the elite historiographers.
There are sixteen points discussed in the essay with reference to bourgeoisie nationalist, colonialist, elite and subaltern tendencies in the writing of Indian history. The essay speaks of both pre-colonial and post-colonial India with reference to Nationalism.
The author begins by establishing the differences between the history written by British elite groups and Indian elite groups. The British adopt a method of neo-colonialism or the use of economic, political and other pressures to control or influence a former dependency such as India. This method is adopted chiefly by British writers but not without Indian imitators. On the other hand, the neo-nationalists attribute the entire credit of achieving Indian Independence to native (Indian) elite groups. There are liberal British historiographers who support this idea along with the Indian historiographers.
The one commonality however, is their prejudice to the elite class making them predominant heroes who brought about the nationalist consciousness in an otherwise subdued India.
In the neo-nationalist sense the Indian elite groups are made up of Indian elite personalities, institutions, activities and ideas. It seems correct, for, the Indian neo-nationalist history credits the whole of the struggle for Independence as an act performed by a group of elitist lawyers such as Gandhi, Nehru, Ram Mohan Roy, Tilak, Gokhale, Patel, Rajagopalachari and others.
In the neo-colonialist sense the elite groups are made up of British colonial rulers, administrators, policies, institutions and cultures. The neo-colonialist definition of Indian Nationalist portrays it as a function of stimulus and response. A good example would be the text book depiction of the 1857 War of Independence as “Sepoy Mutiny”. This portrayal attempts to classify the 1857 rebellion of the Indian soldiers as a mere reaction to a provocation of their religious sentiments (The Enfield Cartridges). It also portrays the native elite as a group of people who were in a learning process, trying to assimilate a huge governing structure and understand its principles. This too is not due to any great idealism but only because the native elites seemed to want to gain power, wealth and positions of pride. The Zamindars and princes (bourgeois) are always represented as the subordinate natives who would commit treason for their own ends. They were also depicted as being divided, inefficient, dull and easily surmountable.
As opposed to the neo-colonialist depiction, the native elitist historiographers depict the elite nationalists as idealists who led the people from subjugation to freedom. There are several versions in this sort of historiography depending on varying degrees of emphasis on individuals and institutions. The chief aspects highlighted about the indigenous elite nationalists are:
1. Their goodness and its phenomenal expression in the form of Indian Nationalism.
2. Their antagonistic stance against the colonial regime.
3. Their role as promoters of the cause of the indigenous people.
4. Their altruistic and self-abnegating characters.
Guha puts it across very satirically and sardonically by placing an opposition next to each of these tall claims.
“They have completely tried to evade the accusations of being collaborationists, exploiters and oppressors who scrambled for power and privilege, making them appear like spiritual men…” he says.
There are certain advantages in elite historiography. It helps:
- In understanding the colonial state structure.
- In knowing the various state organs and their operation during certain historical circumstance.
- In knowing the ‘nature of alignment of the classes’.
- In the identification of elite ideology as dominant during certain periods.
- In understanding the contradictions between Indian and British elite groups, their oppositions and coalitions.
- In classifying the roles of certain important people and organizations of the Indian and British elite groups.
The ideological characteristics of such historiography, is made evident by these interpretations.
The people or the subaltern groups and their contributions have been looked at as mere response to an elite inspiration and influence. The British elite represents the subaltern nationalist upsurges as a ‘law-and-order’ problem and the Indian elite represents it as the response to the charisma of a certain leader. They use the term “vertical mobilization of factions” to describe these leaders moving the whole nation towards a common goal. This sort of falsehood and misrepresentation gets exposed where history has to explain phenomena such as the Rowlatt Movement and the Quit India Movement where the people acted against the colonialists without any elite control or guidance.
Such inadequate history whose efficiency is doubly crippled by beliefs such as the ones upholding the colonialist superstructure and ‘class outlook’ can never give the native nationalists as much importance as they deserve. The subaltern groups mobilized themselves. Guha calls them an “autonomous domain”. Though colonialism intruded into elite nationalism several times and rendered it ineffective, the subaltern nationalism continued to operate vigorously by a) adjusting and adapting to changing conditions and b) developing new ideas in form and content.
Subaltern politics considered mobilization as a horizontal activity that touches upon social groups of equal status at any point in time. The elitist groups practiced vertical mobilization that touched upon several levels of colonial hierarchy. Such elitist mobilization depended on the movements of the British parliamentary institutions and such. For example, Patel who unified the Princely States after independence did it with great difficulty by using vertical mobilization. Horizontal mobilization involved kinship, territorial and class associations at the level of consciousness of the people involved. This was simpler and pragmatic. It was spontaneous and violent unlike the controlled, legalistic, and cautious mobilization methods of the elites.
Peasant uprisings and such subaltern revolts had a constant element of antagonism to elite domination. This ideology was in varied degrees. Sometimes it helped by increasing the concreteness, focus and tension in subaltern politics. At other times, by its communal interests, it resulted in bigotry and confusion. Two things that drove the subaltern class in a certain path was their understanding of exploitation and of productive labour. This was a distinct factor that set it apart from elite politics.
Despite the living contradictions that stopped the subaltern politics from actualization in history, clear demarcations ideology, operation and spontaneity can be made between subaltern politics and elite politics. The failure of the bourgeoisie in speaking for the nation is evident. Their hegemony created a dichotomy which cannot be ignored by an interpreted of history. Ignoring the vast differences in ideologies between the subaltern and the elite could mislead the history reader.
These two factions are not watertight compartments sealed off from one another. They still overlap due to bourgeoisie attempts to integrate them. These efforts succeeded when backed by anti-imperialist motives. They failed miserably causing nasty strife among the sects when the anti-imperialist motives were not firm and when compromises were made with the colonialists. A good example would be the partition of India and Pakistan.
Due to the inability of the working class to rise above the local limitations, and the lack of good leadership, history has interpreted their national struggles as fragmented local rebellions for economic, political and petty reasons. The inadequacy of the bourgeoisie and the working class has resulted in a historic failure.
The end result could have been either ‘a democratic revolution under the bourgeoisie hegemony’ or ‘a ‘new-democracy’ under the subaltern hegemony’. Unfortunately, it was neither.
Ranajit Guha concludes with a need to resolutely fight against elitist historiography by ” I) rejection of spurious and unhistorical monism and II) recognition of the co-existence and interaction of the elite and subaltern domains of politics”. The purpose of the writers of subaltern studies, he says, is to create a convergence of elitist views and ideas opposing it. Criticism and discussions that ensue would help in learning a great deal more about how to preserve the integrity of historiography.
Glossary:
Historiography: The writing of history, the study of history-writing.
Historicism: The theory that social and cultural phenomena are determined by history.
Subaltern: A marginalized group rendered voiceless by oppression.
Elitism: Advocacy of or reliance on leadership or dominance by a select group.
Bourgeois: Upholding the interests of the capitalist class.
Neo-colonialism: The use of economic, political and other pressures to control or influence other countries esp. former dependencies (a country or province controlled by another.)
Neo-nationalism: An ideology supporting the creation of a nation-state.
Idealism: The practice of forming or following after ideals.
Ideological: The system of ideas at the basis of an economic or political theory, the manner of thinking characteristic of a class or individual.
Vertical: Involving at the levels of hierarchy of an organization.
Mobilization: Organize for service or action.
Hegemony: A leadership by one state or confederacy.
Dichotomy: Division into two (sharply defined)
Localism: Limitations arising from attachment to a local custom or ideology.
Monism: The doctrine that only one ultimate principle or being exists.
| You Are Surrealism |
 Dreamy and idealistic, you’ve created a world that is all your own.It’s very likely that you’ve either dabbled in drugs or are naturally trippy. You are always trying to push beyond the boundaries of your culture and society. You believe that art, love, and freedom can change the world. |
“The soul of music slumbers in the shell
Till waked and kindled by the master’s spell
And feeling hearts – touch them but rightly- pour
A thousand melodies unfelt before.”
Rabindranath Tagore’s “Gitanjali” or “Song Offerings” written and translated into English by the poet himself, earned him world-wide acclaim. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1913. This essay analyzes how his poems from “Gitanjali” are reminiscent of a great Indian tradition called the Bhakti tradition.
In the 7th century A.D., the Bhakti cult propagated worship accompanied by music and dance. The Bhakti poets believed in surrender to the Godhead and in praising the name of the Lord in order to attain ‘Mukthi’ or salvation. The Bhakti yoga had two aspects to it – The Nirguna Bhakti and the Saguna Bhakti.
In Nirguna Bhakti, God or the Supreme power was a formless energy or force that had to be deeply felt and realized. These poets spoke of everyday activities as a service to God. They believed in love, surrender and in a universal religion.
The Saguna Bhakti tradition believed in a God who had a human form and personality endowed with supernatural qualities. These poets worshipped Vishnu or Siva as a God with a concrete form, abode and identity. They sang of pilgrim centres or temples where their God resided and stressed on total surrender of body, mind and soul to this Supreme Personality of Godhead.
“Gitanjali”, written in 1912 is a string of devotional poems. Love is a major theme that connects all the verses in “Gitanjali” The God in “Gitanjali” has no name or abode and cannot be identified with any specific Indian God. He has His own form and personality. He is referred to as “You”, “Thou” or “Thee” At times He is shown as a loving father who cares for His children and at times as a Lover who is waiting for reciprocation from His own creation.
The title “Gitanjali” or “Song Offerings” is in itself reminiscent of the Bhakti tradition. Bhakti poets such as Chaitanya, Mirabai and Aandal believed in worshipping God through music and dance highlighting performative nature of art in cultures with an oral tradition such as the ancient Tamil culture.
Music becomes an expression of infinite fountains of creativity that springs forth from the enlightened soul. Such music allows the devotee to string choice phrases together and sing the glory of God.
“This little flute of a reed thou hast carried over hills and dales, and hast breathed through it melodies eternally new” [Gitanjali, I]
Man becomes a mere instrument of carrying God’s Love to the earth. The very music that the Bhakti poet renders is a gift from God, a divine expression that cannot be realized without the Grace of God.
“When thou commandest me to sing it seems that my heart would break with pride”
[Gitanjali, II]
The poet is “Drunk with the joy of singing” since he knows that he comes before God only as a singer. “All that is harsh and dissonant”, in the poet’s “life melts into one sweet harmony”. The poet aspires to touch the unreachable feet of God with the “edge of the far-spreading wing of…song”. The whole of life is seen as music made by God. “The light of thy music illumines the world. The life breath of thy music runs from sky to sky” says the poet.
In a similar tone Aandal says,
“Worldlings, listen to what we will do,
How observe these sacred days.
We will sing at the feet of that Supreme One.”
[Tiruppaavai I,2]
The Bhakti poets had processions inviting one and all to sing the praise of the Lord. Amid clanging cymbals and drums, they sung the glory of God in Bhajans, simple and straightforward with cries of ecstasy which did not follow the strict rules of ‘raag’ or ‘taal’.
“My song has put off her adornments…they would come between thee and me; their jingling would drown thy whispers…My poet’s vanity dies in shame before thy sight.”
[Gitanjali, VII]
Kabir condemns external telling of rosary beads and chanting of Rama’s name. A true devotee does not make shows of his piety.
“Ram! Ram! they yell
till there’s a callus on their tongue
They don’t drink clean water
but yearn to dig a well.”
[Ramaini, 33]
Tagore says,
“The child who is decked with prince’s robes and has jewelled chains round his neck loses all pleasure in his play.”
[Gitanjali, VIII]
Tagore’s God loves simple expressions of devotion than extravagant displays of religious fervour.
“Here is thy footstool…where live the poorest and lowliest and lost…” [Gitanjali, X]
In Bhakthi poetry, the poet often demeans himself, while praising God.
Mahadevi Akka says,
“My body is dirt,
my spirit is space:
which
shall I grab, O lord?”
[Speaking of Siva, 12]
Aandal says,
“What a worm-eaten wood apple I am
Ague-stricken and sucked dry by his love!”
[Nachiyar Tirumozhi, VIII]
Tagore’s devotion, however, goes one step further and believes that God’s love is incomplete without reciprocation from man. Man becomes the receiver of God’s love in its entirety.
A similar vein is to be found in Mahadevi Akka
” Dear girl go tell Him
bring Him back to His senses…
My lord white as jasmine
is angry
that we are two.”
[Speaking of Siva, 321]
Influenced by Buddhism and its little expressions of local folk religions such as the religion of the Bauls, Tagore derives several of his images from Baul folk songs. The Bauls were mendicants. Their simple songs, set to a beautiful tune, sung with a one-stringed violin seemed to Tagore the greatest expression of Love for God. God, for the Bauls, was ‘Love’ in its supreme form. The Bauls considered the transient human body as a temple of God.
Poems by Mahadevi Akka and Aandal capture the anguish in separation from God. Such pain the devotee goes through in pining for the Lord has been a major theme in Bhakti poetry.
“I cannot understand…
…my torture by south wind and moon
..I love him who straddled the world
And he leaves me in the lurch”
[Nachiyar Tirumozhi, V]
“Four parts of the day
I grieve for you.
Four parts of night
I’m mad for you.
I lie lost
sick for you, night and day,
O lord white as jasmine.”
[Speaking of Siva, 79]
A devotee runs to the ends of the earth in search of God. At last, he rests to take a breath, weary with futility. At that moment of silence, God’s Love springs upon him and takes him unawares. He realizes that God resides inside his very own soul.
“The traveller has to knock at every alien door to come to his own, and one has to wander through all the outer worlds to reach the innermost shrine at the end”
[Gitanjali, XII]
Mahadevi Akka says
“Not one, not two, not three or four,
but through eighty-four hundred thousand vaginas
have I come
through unlikely worlds..”
The ultimate realization that God is within oneself is also found in other Bhakti works. In one of Kabir’s poems he says,
“Kabir says, clarity comes
when the musician lives
in your heart”
“Like
treasure hidden in the ground
taste in the fruit
gold in the rock
oil in the seed
the Absolute is hidden away
in the heart”
[Speaking of Siva, 2]
Tagore has captured this feeling in a couplet.
“The question and the cry `Oh, where?’ melt into tears of a thousand streams and deluge the world with the flood of the assurance `I am!’” [Gitanjali, XII]
Separation from the loved one, waiting, searching, mourning and lamenting over the absence of the Supreme Lover are all common sentiments in the Bhakti tradition. The search is painful and the destination, elusive.
“When I awaken and hurry in search of my goal…cruelly thou hidest thyself before me”
[Gitanjali, XIV]
“only there is agony of wishing in my heart…I live in the hope of meeting with him; but this meeting is not yet…” [Gitanjali, XIII]
Tagore expresses his ideas on the Vaishnava religion. He says it is similar to that of the Bauls while romanticizing the notion of God.
“God’s love finding its finality in man’s love… A
According to it, the lover, the man, is the complement of the Lover, God, in the internal love drama of existence”
[Tagore “An Indian Folk Religion”]
“O Mother, don’t grieve. This my disease
No one can understand.
He whose hue is like the sea’s
Can cure it with a touch.”
[Nachiyar Tirumozhi, XII]
In his play, “Natir Puja”, Tagore speaks of the simple and rebellious devotion of a dancer girl who dares defy the orders of King Ajatasatru to light lamps in a temple, the entry to which is forbidden to people of her clan. The punishment for her rebellion is death. The persecution that Mirabai, Mahadevi Akka and Aandal faced for their devotion is known to all. It must also be noted that Mahadevi Akka stripped herself naked and walked about covered only in her tresses. Her explanation for such a rebellion is like this:
“…can you peel
the Nothing, the Nakedness
that covers and veils?
To the shameless girl
wearing the White Jasmine Lord’s
light of the morning,
you fool,
where’s the need for cover and jewel?”
[Speaking of Siva, 124]
“Those who came to call me in vain have gone back in anger. I am only waiting for love to give myself up at last into his hands” [Gitanjali, XVII]
The sonority, the theme of surrender, love for the Lord, praise for the Lord, anguish in separation from the Lord and the final realization of God within oneself, are all features of Bhakti poetry.
“Like the colour in gold,
you were in me…
the paradox of your being
in me
without showing a limb”
[Speaking of Siva, 50]
Gitanjali is a masterpiece of devotion…
“In the pulsing life of dance,
To thee I raise
In wordless praise
My eager body’s rhythmed cry –
This new birth’s eloquence
In music and in gesture shines
My worship, Lord”
[Tagore, “Natir Puja”]
technorati tags: Rabindranath, Tagore, Bhakti, Poetry, Religion, Hinduism, India, Worship, Gitanjali
Note: This is an extract from a 2500 word essay I wrote on Yeatsian Phantasmagoria. I have chiefly picked out the parts where I have given an explanation to the gyre, with an illustration and the places where I have described the nature of Yeats’ symbols. Quotations have been acknowledged.
Phantasmagoria is defined as a shifting series of real or imaginary figures as seen in a dream. The word phantasmagoria is derived from the word ‘phantasm’ meaning a thing seen in the imagination. A phantasm is an illusion. According to the Oxford Advanced Learners’ Dictionary ‘phantasmagoria’ refers to “a changing scene of real or imagined figures for example, as seen in a dream or created as an effect in a film”
Yeats believed that “all art is dream”. At the front of his 1914 volume of poetry named “Responsibilities” Yeats has a quotation which is suspected to be his own and in which he says “In dreams begin responsibilities.” In Yeats’s poetry the phantasmagoria is present in the form of recurring symbols through which the poet wishes to convey the same ideas over and over again, while establishing an oneness in response and interpretation among the readers. Yeats believed that the poet’s responsibility was to unite the world’s consciousness by evoking the same set of symbols from the unconscious universal memory.
From various studies Yeats gathered “a supply of imagery that he drew on for the rest of his life. Stocked with multiple, antithetical, and secret meanings for trees, birds, roses, stars and wells, Yeats delighted in constructing puzzles which had not only clear overt “meanings” but which could as well be rightly interpreted in an almost unlimited number of ways.” Yeats had learnt to think naturally in symbols and to manipulate these symbols to convey “swift transitions and intricate connections of thought.”
As a symbolist poet, Yeats’s poems had a series of recurring images which contained a ‘system’ of symbols. The relationship between the image or symbol and the meaning is arbitrary. The connection between the symbol and its meaning existed only in the mind of the poet. Therefore meaning does not arise out of the context in the poem.
Though Yeats had these symbols with inherent meanings that he alone comprehended he did not wish to explain their meanings until much later. In a letter to Florence Farr he says “….but I shall not trouble to make the meaning clear- a clear vivid story of a strange sort is enough. The meaning may be different with everyone.”
Yeats believed that a poet must have a system of beliefs or abstract thoughts. If not, the poems become “fragmentary and multiple”. All experiences are a bundle of fragments. According to Yeats the poet had the responsibility to “put together” these fragments whereby he could formulate a meaningful framework within which “as the years go by one poem lights up another.”
Yeats considered history as a recurring cycle of events. He developed elaborate theories with this thought. With the help of Irish tales and with facts and legends from Irish history he sought to express his personal views on history and life. His views also echo his belief in the supernatural. Yeats published his theories in A Vision (1925).
Yeats had his confidence in a Universal Humanity which is represented by the stored images in the unconscious. These images are what the world needs and the poet can supply. The poet can bring about an oneness in all the readers by evoking memories and responses from the unconscious. This, the poet does by using various provocative images. The lifelong concentration of thought in a few images thus created an effect of unified, instantaneous vision.
Yeats held that the borders of human minds are constantly shifting so that many minds can flow into one another and create or reveal a single mind and a single energy. The borders of our minds also merge into forming one single memory. This universal mind and universal memory can be evoked through symbols. He drew from this universal memory for his ideas.
“From dream to dream and rhyme to rhyme I have ranged
In rambling talk with an image of air:
Vague memories, nothing but memories”
- Yeats “Broken Dreams”
Through the various philosophies and his interactions with the spiritual realm, Yeats developed an eclectic belief system. He first explained this system in his book, “A Vision II” (1926). He had developed this system with what he explained to be contacts from the spiritual and supernatural world. The spiritual realm also supplied him with innumerable symbols.
In a letter written to Ethel Mannin three months before his death he says, “To me all things are made of a conflict of two states of consciousness, beings or persons which die each other’s life, live each other’s death. This is true of life and death itself.” This was his belief as borne by the system of the gyres. ‘There’ is situated in the exact centre of the gyres. It is the most ideal and impossible state.
The complex system, which he developed, understood and used in his poems, justifies all historical events, human personalities and conflicts in the world with the help of ‘the gyre’. The converging gyres represented the primary and antithetical states of the entire universe. Yeats wished to arrive at a place called “there”, a centre where all minds are one; all memories are one and all of time came together. He fought for a Unity of Being, Unity of Image and a Unity of Culture.
“There all the barrel-hoops are knit,
There all the serpent-tails are bit,
There all the gyres converge in one,
There all the planets drop in the Sun.”
- Yeats “There”
Yeats wished to explain significant historical events with the help of the gyre and visions. In his introduction to “The Words upon the Window-pane” he says “ I can see a sort of nightmare vision the ‘primary qualities’ torn from the side of Locke, Johnson’s ponderous body bent above the letter to Lord Chesterfield, some obscure person somewhere inventing the spinning-jenny, upon his face the look of benevolence kept by painters and engravers…” This highlights the fact that he had a system of thought to apply to every event and behaviour and justify them as primary or antithetical trying to construct “a pattern of reality”.
Yeats’s effort was to unify life and art into a single colossal whole. His poetry was a “complex, organic interconnected whole, which, real microcosm, could contain in image all the universe…” In a letter written to Edmund Dulac in 1937 he mentioned that his book “A Vision”, to him, “means a last act of defense against the chaos of the world”
Yeats’s works would keep assuming new meanings and dimensions as new generations would interpret his complex system of symbols in newer ways. His belief system had however accommodated for accepting the chaos of the world as natural. His was the “poetry of dream” in the sense of a phantasmagorical connection of disparate events and ideas with the help of carefully manipulated symbols. In that he had a dream to unify the entire system, all eras, cultures, nations and people into a coherent cosmos. One is reminded of his lines from the poem “He wishes for Cloths of Heaven”
“I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”
Acknowledgements:
Primary Text:
1. Yeats, W.B. Selected Poems.
Folio Society, London. 1998.
Secondary Texts:
1. Stock, A.G. W.B. Yeats: His Poetry and Thought.
Cambridge University Press, London. 1961.
2. Unterecker, John. A Reader’s Guide to William Butler Yeats.
Thames and Hudson, UK. 1959.
3. Stallworthy, John. Vision and Revision in Yeats’s Last Poems.
Oxford University Press, London. 1969.
4. Bullough, Geoffrey. The Trend of Modern Poetry.
Oliver and Boyd, London. 1949.
5. Ellman, Richard. The Identity of Yeats.
Faber and Faber, UK. 1963.
6. Donaghue, Denis. Yeats.
Fontana/Collins, London. 1971.
7. Alavarez, A. The Shaping Spirit: Studies in Modern English and American Poets.
Chatto & Windus, London. 1972.
8. Hollander, John. Vision and Resonance: Two Senses of Poetic Form.
Oxford University Press, New York. 1975.
9. The World Book Encyclopedia. Volume 18 Article: Symbolism
Volume 21 Article: Yeats, W.B. World Book Inc., U.S.A. 1992.
technorati tags: W.B.Yeats, Poetry, Symbolism, Dream, Vision, Phantasmagoria, Literature, Imagination
Adrienne Rich in her essay, “When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision” discusses several concepts that are required to be understood by women writers for them to cross over the conditioning of a patriarchal sense of literary aesthetics and history. The essay, which was originally a lecture delivered by Rich at a women’s writer convention, understands and emphasizes the need for re-visioning of old texts, renaming of the various aspects of women which have been distorted by a male point of view and developing a new form of writing that is free of the haunting male gaze, of convention and propriety and of the ‘male’ language and its implications. She says that the act of re-visioning would help women to analyze and to act on “how we live, how we have been living, how we have been led to imagine ourselves, how our language has trapped as well as liberated us, how the very act of naming has been till now a male prerogative, how we can begin to see and name – and therefore live – afresh.”
The essay begins with her observations about the then existing literary traditions. The entire profession of writing was considered a ‘male’ activity and every writer’s convention was filled with male writers, professors and students. She goes on to say how feminist criticism has challenged the “astigmatic’ male view as far as women’s writing and language was concerned. She also observes how major parts of feminist writings such as black writing and lesbian writing have challenged the white feminists for having overlooked their presence. She views the emerging feminist consciousness as a whole and as parts in black or lesbian feminist movements as important for feminist writing to save itself from “misogynist” male readers, writers and critics.
“Re-vision – the act of looking back” she says is not a mere exercise in cultural history but is essential for the survival of women as a gender. Re-visioning seeks to break free from a tradition of viewing things from a male perspective, thereby forming a female point of view and adhering to it. Re-visioning is an attempt to view old texts with new eyes as there is a need for a dynamic politic vision and a demand for a fresh vision on what has been portrayed of women in history and literature.
Speaking of Virginia Woolf, Rich observes though Woolf tries to sound “cool”, “detached” and “casual”, there are places where it is evident that Woolf’s way of writing is constantly governed by the fear of being read by men. The calm and cool Woolf is devoid of the passion and anger that lurks within her, for she is haunted by the male world and its criticism.
Rich considers these exercises in re-visioning a must for women, for women often lose touch with their own inner selves, for fear of upholding patriarchal values. She wonders as to why women have hardly written poetry representing men as sex symbols or as a dangerous mystery, the manner in which men usually write about women. She figures that this is because women see men in a different light altogether. While the man names every activity of a woman as meaning something, judging her as incapable of doing certain things, surprised or irked when she attempts to do those things, the woman cannot name the activities of men except in a language system which in itself, is patriarchal.
A woman writer tries to say things that are different from the things that men have said. However, she uses the man’s language for it. This language cannot entirely compensate for her feelings. Adrienne Rich has chosen the title “When We Dead Awaken” from a play by Ibsen. The play talks of a woman who realizes what use men, as artists and thinkers, have made of her. The struggle that leads her to this awakening and the consequences of the awakening comprise the play. Rich believes that astounding social changes are possible when this “awakening” happens.
Rich chooses to illustrate the need for a new way of writing, making an example out of her own self. She explains her struggles as a girl to write something that would be approved of by male readers. She says that while a man hardly writes for a woman, the woman essentially writes for a man. Thereby, she wishes to stick to the norms of emotional restraint. In the fifties, Adrienne Rich was a leading a family life. She slowly found herself becoming depressed, negative and lost. She had lost the girlish joys in her. What she wrote seemed too literary with her remembering to put down her own experiences as someone else’s, as a ‘she’ and not as ‘I’. She remembered to use a strategy of objectivity and detachment or to use a male persona in her works. As time went by, she began to feel the urge to be herself and react in her own way to the situations in politics, society or economics. The male way of looking, analyzing and writing had killed what could have been her personal work of love.
At this point, Rich began to write “Snapshots of a Daughter-in-law” which she wrote in pieces and put together later. This poem too she says refers to the persona as ‘she’ and not ‘I’. Rich felt the constraint of the family honour and her children before she could let herself go with her imagination and with whatever she wanted to write. She could not write about pain, victimization or her own body because she was expected to be leading a normal life with a happy family, with absolutely no cause for depression.
Rich talks of a dream where she saw herself beginning to read a poem at a convention and slowly the words of a blues song emerge out of her lips. She realizes that the writings of women were indeed like a blues song. They were a cry of pain, of victimization or were lyrics of seduction. She feels that this feeling of anger and victimization was necessary for every woman to pass through because they were real. They helped the woman write better, be in touch with her own inner self better and to counter the oppressive male writers with her own soulful writings.
Rich feels that an alternate model of re-visioning history and old texts, accompanied by renaming with a fresh eye, would chalk out new territories for women to explore in their writings. While male writers are engrossed in conforming to their own constructions and patterns, to analyze political problems, socio-economic disturbances or acts of violence from a rational male perspective, women could clearly understand them from gendered humanitarian grounds.
Though Rich identifies herself as being a “special woman” who had been given privileges to read and to express, she feels that the model of re-visioning and renaming would only be justified if it brought out the women who were still trapped within the patriarchal confines of the society, morality and language.
Note: This is an answer I wrote in an examination paper. Please forgive any misquotations or errors.
technorati tags: Adrienne, Rich, Feminism, Revisioning, Women, Writing, Patriarchy, Literature, History
