LITERATURE- LIGHT AND DELIGHT. 86. ESSENTIAL READING

LITERATURE-LIGHT AND DELIGHT

86. ESSENTIAL READING

Democracy- resting on mass literacy...and ignorance!

Experience, conversation with learned people, listening to lectures and serious reading- these are the main avenues of learning for us. Of these, only reading can be organised at our will, at our own pace.

It is difficult to say how exactly we acquire a taste for reading, and when. May be a teacher inspired us, may be a fellow student or colleague, or some elder in the family. A quality magazine like the Readers' Digest would give so much information on good sources. In the 60s we were lucky to have a magazine like 'Imprint', solely dedicated to literature. Newspapers used to carry weekly reviews of books.Now with all the noise about spread of education and literacy, we do not have so many opportunities.

What appears in the newspapers in the name of book reviews or 'literary supplements' (if they come at all) are all slanted- just in accordance with the editorial prejudices. 

Most of us confine our general reading to fiction. Unless our profession or job requires it, most of us do not read serious literature; most of us do not read anything unconnected with our academic or professional background. Very few people read poetry after leaving school or college. 

Just think how strange the situation is. We are all voters. We hear of democracy, constitution, secularism, inflation, etc. Yet how few among us do really know or understand these ideas! Our democracy rests on such shoulders! Each writer has his own angle, each reader his own idea!

There are however genuine issues. Even in fiction, we have such wide choice, daily growing variety and volume! The only guide to determine good reading is to ask ourselves periodically: 'yes, I have been reading this literature for  3 or 5 years.I have spent so much time and money.What have I gained?'

What makes good literature?

This will make us realise the difference between the classics and the fleeting 'bestsellers' of the day! The classics mould our mind and heart; the modern novels, with rare exceptions, just help us while away our time. William Faulkner, while accepting the Nobel Prize in 1949 said:

Photo by Carl Van Vechten-

Library of Congress Collection

Public Domain.

 I feel this award was not made to me as a man but to my work- a life's work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before.

.....the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing.... He must......leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed- love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so he labours under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope, and worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.

I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal.....because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart,by reminding him of the courage and honour and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man , it can me one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

I think Faulkner has given here a key to understanding and evaluating good literature. The Classics dealt with the human spirit, the human heart, the human condition. Modern literature treats of events.

One problem faced by Indian readers is that our educational system has alienated us from our own classics- the sources of our culture, and we have been nurtured on a food of foreign ideas, values, institutions, models, methods and mores! Here too, we have everything from Christianity, Marxism, Nihilism, Scientism- anything one can imagine, clamouring for our attention through all the media. How to choose? Others have faced the problem and found a way out.

Turn to Indian Basics!

Chaturvedi Badrinath wrote about Western encounter with Indian civilisation:

in the form of Western Christianity,Liberalism, Modern Science and Marxism.....each one of them had perceived the foundations of Indian civilisation wrongly. That led me to dharma upon which those foundations were laid, and dharma led me to the Mahabharata...studying the Mahabharata's inquiry into those universal questions of human existence that every human being asks....

And Badrinath raises a very important question, seldom raised in India, and may we say, not answered so far?

Is dharma a self determining reality that gives direction to a person's life and is it to be discovered in a process of self-discovery as to what one is meant to be? And since self-discovery cannot ever be a finished product,is dharma a state of becoming..?

As to the various ideas and dogmas demanding our attention or allegiance, I found Badrinath has given one of the most brilliant and succinct  critical accounts:

......when systematised into an ism, the various explanations of the human condition had fiercely rejected each other. The rationalism of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment rejected faith and tradition, and therefore, all religions, not just Christianity. Romanticism rejected the Enlightenment. Utilitarianism and psycho-analysis rejected Romanticism. Existentialism rejected them all.. Marxism, a child of the Enlightenment, rejected Romanticism, liberal individualism, nationalism, and much of Existentialism as well......relativism has tried to show that objectivism, especially in science, is an intellectual myth. Materialism rejected spiritualism as emotional froth.....And Man has been set against Nature.

We can understand the plight of the average Indian reader who has to wade through this jungle of intellectual discord and confusion- without first-hand knowledge of anything! It is here that Badrinath's study of the Mahabharata helps us like a compass, firmly based on our intellectual traditions:

The direction  the Mahabharata takes is a continuation of the one that the Upanishad-s had taken....The Mahabharata is even more steadfast on that path.The Vedic idea of rta, the cosmic order out there, is replaced with the idea of dharma as the foundation of life. The Mahabharata's inquiry is entirely conversational, as it had been in the Upanishad-s. The main difference ...is that whereas , in the Upanishad-s, the conversation begins, and ends, mostly with an abstract problem of knowledge, seeking to know the nature of reality, in the Mahabharata, it begins,  and ends  with concrete human living in all its complexities.

All extracts taken from : Chaturvedi Badrinath: "The Mahabharata" An inquiry in the human condition. Orient Longman, Hyderabad, 2007.  This is the most absorbing and excellent writing on the Mahabharata I have seen.I urge all friends to please buy and read this. This book is a life-long companion.

"Concrete human living in all its complexities" - this alone can  be the fit subject of good literature. It is because the Classics deal with this in all its aspects, often uninhibited in its analysis and treatment, that they command an enduring value, overriding all national, linguistic and other barriers human intelligence has devised to divide humanity.

I have found that almost all modern novels, and many Indian movies are a variation on the themes found in the Mahabharata! People may not have noticed that Thalapathi, one of the most celebrated Tamil movies of recent times, was but the story of Karna restated in modern idiom! It was said in olden times that what is in the Mahabharata can be found elsewhere; what is not in it cannot be found anywhere!

 

LITERATURE-LIGHT AND DELIGHT. 82. ENJOYING READING

LITERATURE- LIGHT AND  DELIGHT

82. ENJOYING READING

We live in times when there is a theory about everything. There is lot of literature on how to read, what to read, and why, and so on. Like in most things, no one theory is right. There are as many ways as there are readers.

Reading for pleasure or ?

One factor is basic: whether we read for pleasure, or for some more serious purpose, such as  formal study. In our school days, over half a century ago, the two rather coincided: the syllabus was small, the teachers were good- most knew the poems by heart and their teaching was like mono acting. They obviously enjoyed what they were doing. When the teacher taught us the Friar's speech in Romeo and Juliet, beginning " I will be brief, for my short date of breath", we felt the teacher might break down any moment-such was the intensity of his feeling. Who could then say we were just learning for passing an exam? 

In teaching Tamil poems, the teachers would first 'sing' it- ie recite it in an appropriate tune, then recite it without the tune but with the rhyme and other features unbroken, then read it with the compound words duly split to make the meaning clear. By the time he finished it, most of us would have learned it by heart! There were teachers who could not finish a poem in the whole period- the teacher for the next 'period' would adjust . Unfortunately, we had such rules as four periods in the morning session, each period dealing with one subject, etc. We would be happy that the maths period was over, or the science class, but would feel distressed when an interesting topic in history or literature had to be interrupted because the period was 'over'. Some days the teachers would be inspired and one word or suggestion would lead them on and on- they and we would forget everything. Not that every teacher was like this, but why judge anything by the bad specimen?

So we 'learned' how to read, we were not taught.

For the prose, we were made to read the  paras by turns. The teacher would correct us. Most boys could not do it . But we tried and learned. But this was such a small part of the whole- hardly two periods a week- about 90 minutes! 

Serious reading on our own started in college. There were nice essays by mostly renowned writers and we would read, analyse and discuss- but with an eye on the exam.

But in the last half century, things have become businesslike. Syllabuses are heavy, there is too much to read, too little time or leisure to absorb, study of language and literature has become a mere formality- it is all gone through as a chore. Where is the idea of pleasure at all?

Should Shakespeare be read?

Shakespeare we know was primarily drama- but we could only read it as poetry- everything was poetry for us! But we did not simply read; there was lot of visualisation. I think this has done us good in the long run.

Had we seen the play enacted, our image would have been affected by the actor's appearance and mannerisms. I don't see how any actor, however great, could portray a Hamlet or Macbeth or Lady Macbeth. Was Hamlet feigning madness or had he really gone mad? We see there are so many interpretations- we can imagine or visualise all , depending on our mood and deepening understanding over the years. I for one feel that 'reading' Shakespeare is more rewarding than witnessing a play enacted. 

Reading here does not mean just going through the words- it is creating a mental image: in fact, the image forms of itself- we  only have not to interfere!

The amount and depth of scholarship on the subject is simply incredible. Every edition has something in it- alas, we have such limited time and capacity to understand and appreciate!

The "Complete Works"  of Shakespeare by the Royal Shakespeare Company (2008) has a great instruction on how to 'read' Shakespeare. In his preface, Michael Boyd, Artistic Director of the Company writes:

There is an extent to which you shouldn't 'read' the book at all, but rather speak the parts out loud. You need to imagine the use of space, time, pitch,and rhythm as well as the (sometimes) unspoken voice of the audience, that are all essential to the realization of  what the scripts imply. They were not written as literature and should not be 'read' as such.

It is true they were not written as literature- ie for merely reading. But they are great literature-the greatest in the English language!.

Mahabharata!

The mind jumps to our own books- like the Mahabharata. It was never 'read' ie studied in the olden days, our own younger days.  A learned man recited it aloud,in an assembly, big or small, in the appropriate metre and tune, and explained the meaning. It would bring in a lot of other things- comparison with other characters from other books, similar thoughts and quotations, songs, etc. It was a complete mono-acting performance, often to the accompaniment of musical instruments.It contained all the features that Boyd has indicated! It was an experience to sit through a session like this.

The Mahabharata  is a unique book-it is an unfinished book. Each one of us has to write 'finis' in our own way- some of the questions raised will have to be answered by each one of us in our own way! No character is either black or white, wholly! We know some characters are born evil- they could not change. Duryodhana for instance says he knows what is right- he cannot do it; he knows what is wrong- but he can't avoid doing it; there is an inner compulsion which he has to obey! What do you do with such a character? Was he a mere tool in the hands of fate  or the gods- as the Greeks would have it? We pity his helplessness, as much as we hate his cruelties and misdeeds. Yudhishthira is the very image of dharma- righteousness- but some of the things he does are plain hideous- like staking  the common wife after he lost himself in the game of dice! Though he is the embodiment of dharma, he does not win our wholehearted affection. We feel he did not apply his mind to practical situations, and interpreted dharma in his own way! (After all, this is what every one else does too, !) Bhishma is a venerable figure- but he sides with the wrong party knowing that they are wrong! He does not act when Draupadi is sought to be disrobed in the assembly! How can you fully like him? Bhima is mighty- but mighty in his cruelty too. But he alone among the five brothers has a really tender heart for Draupadi- he cares for her feelings and protects her personally. You see such tenderness in such unexpected corners! You are really moved! Aswathama is such a despicable figure- killing the five Pandava princes when they are asleep- an act despised even by the born evil doer-his master Duryodhana; yet Draupadi does not want him killed- she has such a motherly heart that in spite of her own suffering , she does not want the mother of Aswathama to undergo the same suffering- the loss of her son!  She is thus a mother to other mothers too! And we have Kunti, who prays to the Lord: 'Lord, whenever we had suffering, you came to protect us. Give me more suffering if that will get us your company!' How many of us can pray like that! Above all, we have the lingering doubt: could not Krishna have prevented the holocaust, if he really intended it? Was it that in this instance, evil would not end , except with the end of the evil doers? Who can answer? Such is the complex beauty of Mahabharata. Only a traditional  pravachanam could do justice. A dramatic portrayal , or Cinema or TV shows would be like a caricature.It would show people as black or white- not as they are portrayed in the Itihasa. However individual episodes have always been depicted in dance and drama, as also in the movies. 

We can surely agree with Michael Boyd that such things are not meant to be 'read'! We feel so happy, and also humble when we get such nice tips! There is such a universal touch in the appreciation of literature! Why should physical or linguistic geography be allowed to interfere with the reign of the mind?

LITERATURE-LIGHT AND DELIGHT. POETRY-DRAMA-TRAGEDY

LITERATURE-LIGHT AND DELIGHT

 POETRY - DRAMA-TRAGEDY

Classical poetry was lofty- in its subjects, ideas and language. It dealt with the lives and activities of gods (Devas), kings and heroes and their interaction.(Pindar's Odes deal with the achievements of the Olympic heroes!) It treated subjects like fate, meaning of the world and life, besides. Its language was appropriately unique. It left a lasting impression on the reader, far beyond the mere words or events described. Much of it was thus epic or heroic poetry.

Interestingly, we find the philosopher Plato condemning the poets in his 'Republic'. He would have them banished! He had three arguments against poets:

• they pervert morality. They write about subjects and in such manner that it promotes undesirable passions and leads to unethical thoughts and conduct.
• they are not philosophical ie they do not provide true knowledge.They address the lower faculties which do not lead to truth.
• they are not pragmatic.Poetry is inferior to the practical arts. They are imitators and imitators of imitators! They do not deal with reality but with appearances. In depending upon inspiration, they renounce reason or knowledge. Therefore poetry has no educational value!

We are really baffled by such a view, coming from Plato! Well, we are not the first. Even his student Aristotle did not agree.He developed a detailed theory of "Poetics" which has provided the classic justification  and grounds of appreciation of good poetry, followed even today. This is akin to our own theory of Rasa ie the nine rasas, though not as comprehensive.

But Plato's view contains a grain of general truth. Sometimes poetry gets so unrealistic as to demand "the willing suspension of disbelief" for its appreciation! You cannot appreciate it unless you give up your reason! And poets with command over language can and often do easily excite the baser instincts, or incite people to undesirable action or thinking. If we read  the current crop of what goes on in the name of poetry, we will have to side with Plato! But the great poets of all ages have been men of some vision, and their work has helped humanity in its search for aesthetic satisfaction, if not always in its quest for enlightenment. The greatest of the poets of all countries have been truly universal in spirit. "I am a citizen of the world; and I am a citizen of Weimar", declared the German poet Goethe. 'Every place is my place, every one my kinsman', proclaimed our Sangam poet. "Srunvantu Vishve Amrutasya putra:"- Listen ye all in the world, the children of Immortality- this is the Vedic declaration! Can thought get any loftier?

Along with poetry, Drama occupied a prominent place in ancient cultures. It was meant to be acted, but at times it was also written for reading! And old dramas were written in verse! It has also been popular throughout history, and every major literary figure has attempted to write great drama. Shakespeare achieved universal fame and everlasting name by his dramas which combine philosophy, poetry, history, dealing with all types of human natures and situations. Shakespeare invented more than 300 characters, and has thousands of quotable lines! Only our Mahabharata can rival and excel him in depth and range! But see the irony: the whole world falls for Shakespeare (deservedly,though), while Mahabharata is neglected even by educated Indians!

But there have been other great dramas in English, and it is a genre which is thriving.Milton's Samson Agonistes, Byron's Manfred, Shelley's  Prometheus Unbound and Thomas Hardy's Dynasts are all famous dramas, written for reading! And all of them are great poets too, Hardy being a novelist besides!

The list of English Playwrights will rival that of the eminent poets. Only, we in India are not exposed to drama in either its literary or theatre versions. To recall just a few names at random: Ben Jonson  and Marlowe (contemporaries of Shakespeare and hence overshadowed - like Rahul Dravid and Ganguly vis a vis a Tendulkar?), Ibsen, Chekov, Bernard Shaw, Samuel Beckett, John Galsworthy, J.B.Priestley,A.J.Cronin, Noel Coward. There are many famous contemporary English playwrights, not at all known in India, except to a very few. Such is our preoccupation with cinema and cricket! And the American playwrights writing in English: Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Eugene O'Neill, Thornton Wilder, Edward Albee,Sam Shepard, Neil Simon,David Mamet, August Wilson,Tony Kushner!

Like everything else, the West traces its roots in drama to the Greeks. The Greeks had a special category of drama called "Tragedy". It was performed in honour of god Dionysus, and conformed to strict morality and religiosity. Its origins are lost in antiquity, going back to archaic traditions but got a definite form in the hands of the three famous figures Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, in the 6th century BCE. It was however Aristotle who gave us the grammar of tragedy, based on ancient sources. It is amazing how faithful the ancients were to their own sources, even while attempting to innovate!

These tragedies dealt with the action of great legendary heroes and involved the interplay of gods and men. It involved some great action, ending in disaster for the hero, with great suffering and defeat along the way, as the gods did not like men to excel them! The feelings of pity and terror were invoked ( two of the rasas dealt with in Indian poetics). But the audience was supposed to feel relieved, exalted or elevated- even purified (morally) as a result of watching the tragedy performed! "Catharsis" was the word used. In this sense the audience was supposed to enjoy or derive pleasure from watching a tragedy!

The essence of Greek tragedy is that the hero finds himself bound by circumstances, faces frustration in all attempts to improve his lot or overcome his difficulty. He is in fact used by the gods to settle their own scores among themselves! The more the hero tries his wit, the more damned he becomes! He is just a toy in the hands of the gods. As Shakespeare said in King Lear:

As flies to wanton boys are we to th' gods,

They kill us for their sport. 

This is a deeply enduring theme in serious literature. The best modern exemplar of this line of thinking is Thomas Hardy whose novels, especially Tess of the D'urbervilles, The Mayor of Casterbridge, and Jude the Obscure, become at times unbearably tragic. I do not think most of us will have the heart to read through these novels at a stretch.

That good people suffer is a theme in literature, also seen as  a fact of life. This is one of the basic questions asked by the sceptic of religious people: why should good people suffer, if there is a merciful God? We silence the question with the theory of karma, though it does not relieve the present suffering! No popular religion can survive if it does not face and answer this question in a practical way.

Our two Itihasas deal with just this problem. We see the suffering of Rama and Sita, Harishchandra, the Pandavas and Draupadi. At one stage, the hero triumphs- unlike in the Greek tragedy.Harishchandra's ordeal is because a Rishi wants to test him, as Shakuntala's travails are due to some curse, as also Nala's.But they all triumph in the end, and we proudly proclaim that dharma triumphs in the end. But do the Ramayana and Mahabharata actually have a happy ending? Most of us do not read the Ramayana beyond the Pattabhisheka: we do not even want to hear that Sita was banished. It is hard to even contemplate this could happen to Sita! So who triumphs in the end- dharma or the gossip mongers? As for the Pandavas, even with Krishna by their side, there was no end to their suffering. At the very end of the war, their children are wantonly killed by a Brahmin! Krishna saved Kunti's children, but not Pandavas'. This is a mystery. So, we display one more word in explanation:maya- it is all inscrutable.

I have always wondered at the close similarity between our itihasas and Greek tragedy. And it continues to trouble me. We like to think of happy endings, but it is because we close the books half way through!