LITERATURE-LIGHT AND DELIGHT. 54.MODERN LITERATURE

LITERATURE-LIGHT AND DELIGHT

54. MODERN LITERATURE

English has remained for us our only or main window to the world. English literature constitutes our main intellectual fare, apart from other specialised subjects which too we learn only through English. All European languages and Russian have excellent literature but we are able to read and appreciate them only through English translations. Who could have read Tolstoy without the translation by the Maudes? 

Indian politicians have ranted against English- a trend started by Gandhi, and they still do, but such people have either been unable to understand historical trends, or been plain hypocrites. We have heard voices in favour of German, French, Russian etc from time to time. Every language has its own beauty, and we can go on learning any number if we have the time, talent and the inclination. A friend of mine knew 14 Indian languages- all of them he could speak, and 8 he could read and write! But such talents are exceptional; most of us are more humbly placed and we have to be selective. It is here that English scores.

Scholars have discerned some characteristics of different periods and labelled the  literature accordingly. We thus have Elizabethan, Romantic, Victorian, etc literature. 

Queen Victoria, who lent her name to an era of peace and prosperity. Most of us have seen this picture in our school books.

 Victorian Age, roughly coinciding with the reign of Queen Victoria (1833-1901) saw the expansion of the British empire, developments in science and technology, big changes in the society, etc. The literature of the period reflects all these trends, which may be summed up in just two words- progress and glory.

Royal mail being loaded in train.
By James Pollard. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

The post-Victorian era started with the death of Queen Victoria in 1901, but it cast its shadow earlier. Britain got involved in the Boer War in South Africa, and entered it enthusiastically at the height of her imperial glory, hoping for quick victory, but they were in for shock: it took 4,50,000 British troops more than 2.5 years  (1899-1902) to subdue about 50,000 Boers, with heavy casualties. 

The age had progressed in Science and Industry- symbolised by the invention of automobile and aeroplane, cinema and wireless, electric power especially for driving machinery. But all this found its best or most effective application in the most destructive war in history- the Great War of 1914-18. It resulted in  casualties of over 37 million, of which the biggest  share was of  youth in the most productive stage of their lives!Unfortunately, this sinister association between science,technology and industry, and the military potential continued even more significantly , culminating in the Second World War , the deadliest war in all human history, with casualties reportedly ranging from 60 to 85 million deaths.

 But leading literary figures of the age- poets and novelists did reflect on the horrors of war. The works of T.S.Eliot, Wilfred Owen, Sassoon, D.H.Lawrence are noteworthy. Some poets did indeed start with an attitude of jingoistic patriotism, but soon got disillusioned. The destructive hands of war embrace the victor and the vanquished equally tight.The following economic misery imposes such burdens the victor and the vanquished are equalised in misery.

I just want to draw attention to  poems of Thomas Hardy.

Thomas Hardy by WWOuless
Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

 In Drummer Hodge,(1899) and some others
he sang of the private  tragedy of the Boer War. And in "The Convergence of the Twain" (1912) he sang about the sinking of the Titanic.In this he said:

And as the smart ship grew
In stature, grace, and hue
In shadowy silent distance grew the iceberg too.

This is a terribly beautiful insight! Do things in nature attract their own natural opposite? Do science and technology, meant to benefit society, invariably attract their negative poles? Indian Wisdom recognised this long ago: when the Devas and Asuras churned the ocean to obtain nectar which would confer immortality, they first got the terrible poison! They had to find a god to swallow the poison, before they could taste the nectar!

HMS Titanic  on  10 April 1912 on her maiden voyage from Southampton. She sank on April,15, after colliding with an iceberg.
By FGO Stuart Public Domain via Wikimedia commons.

On the social side, voices were raised about the so called restrictive religious and moral attitudes of the Victorian age, their ambivalence, narrowness and underlying hypocrisy. Thomas Hardy gave dramatic expression in his novels, but he was so savagely criticised that he gave up writing novels and turned to poetry! However the trend could not be stopped, and soon broke all bounds.

The War was perceived by the thoughtful as a sign of decadence of Western civilisation, its failure.It was a tremendous blow to the collective consciousness, Ideas of Progress gave way to pessimism, and soon economic depression gripped the West in the late 20s and 30s.

Overall, it led  first  to questioning and then rejecting and reversing the Victorian mores. This resulted in literature increasingly advocating radical ideas on religion, gender, sexual morality. All the old certainties were questioned, and dumped. The old society had a broad agreement or assumption of good old 'Christian values', but in the post-Victorian era, society, and its literature became increasingly secular ie irreligious or ungodly.

One aspect of this trend was that we could not actually speak of 'society' as such! It was not clear what values, if any, society shared as a whole! In fact values did not matter, so long as the form held! Every society stands fractured and fragmented on many issues: religious faith, political views, gender, class, race, colour! It is no longer possible to write for 'society' as such! One has to write for a target audience! And from a limited standpoint. Just today (15 January2015) we get the news that Oxford University Press has asked its  text-book writers not to make references to pigs, pork, sausages and other pork-related items, in order not to offend Jews and Muslims! It seems nothing is sacred anymore for Christians ( if there are still Christians left in the West ), so one can offend them merrily! And as for Hindus, who cares? They are themselves without spine, and the pseudo secularists with generous assistance from Western academics like Wendy Doniger and Jeffrey Kripal can write all they can against them!