Bharatha's Natyashastra

UNIT-1 BHARATAS NATYASHASTRA
Structure 1.0 1.1 Objectives Introduction
1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 1.9 1.10 1.11 1.12
Bharata, the Author of the Natyashastra Commentators on the Natyashastra Aim of the Natyashastra Date of Composition of the Natyashastra Division of the Natyashastra Limitation of the Natyashastra
Subject matter of the first chapter of the Natyashastra: The Origin of Drama Let Us Sum Up Review questions Bibliography
1.1
Poetics is one of the fields of knowledge in which Indian scholarship has made significant contributions, the other being the Indian religion, philosophy, art and literature. Unlike them, 1
www.cteindia.weebly.com
en t
What were the circumstances which led to the creation of the Nayashastra; and for whom was it created? Into how many parts is this Nayashastra divided. Are there so many parts that it cannot be fully grasped? What are various arts, necessary for the presentation of drama.
Introduction
re
The present unit aims at giving the necessary details to the students so as to enable them to have the answers to the following questions:
fo
1.0
Objectives
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
1.1.1
Aesthetics in Indian and Western Context
however, Indian poetics has not been properly appreciated by scholars. It has not received the acclaim accorded to the other fields of ancient Indian knowledge. There is indeed a need to counter and correct the de-intellectualized mind by arguing for and developing applicational model from Indian Sanskrit literary theories to a wide variety of English texts. Despite favourable gesture of the U.G.C. to promote Sanskrit literary theories within the existing thinking of Indian academy, problems still persist in the mind of the Educated Indian who out rightly rejects the Indian literary theories. The scholars of English, in the East and in the West as well, teach the translated western classics Homer (Iliad), Virgil (Aeneid) Plato (Republic), Aristotle ( Theory of Poetry and Fine Arts), Longinus (On the Sublime), Horace ( Ars Poetica or Art of Poetry), Quintilian (Institutio Oratoria or The Education of an Orator), Dante (Divine Comedy and De VulgarioEloqioe or Of the Vulgar Tongue or Of Writing in Vernacular ) with a kind of elevated feeling. Not only the Western classics, we teach even the translated works of the Western modern writers Ferdinand de Saussure ( The Course in General Linguistics) Roman Jakobson (articles on matters of grammar and phonology in Slavonic languages), Jacques Lacan, psychoanalyst, Jacques Derrida, Mikhail Bakhtin, Rolland Barthes, Michael Foucault and many others with the same feelings of elevation. But when we turn to teach our own Sanskrit literary theories, it is a matter of lamentation, we dismiss the same venture as revivalism.
The word aesthetics originally meant pertaining to things perceptible by senses, things material, as opposed to things thinkable or immaterial. In western context, particularly from Hegelian point of view, aesthetics means the philosophy of fine arts which seems to mean a theory of beautiful in general, whether in art or in nature. There beauty has been studied by different thinkers at different times and accordingly there are different theories. The earliest theories are hedonistic, rigoristic and moralistic or pedagogic which represent a study of the 2
en t
Sanskrit theories are the result of tap or devotion of ancient Indian Acaryas from Acarya Bharat to Panditraj Jagannath and deal with each part of the literary text systematically. These theories have viability and validity in modern situation too. They are not suited to Indian context only but are universally valid. Unhesitatingly, it can be said that these theories can profitably be applied to Western texts. But while applying them we should be very cautious. We should not apply them blindly as it has been observed in the efforts made so far. In general, these theories have been applied as patents. Such exercises can hardly succeed, for they are based on false premises. If the applicational models are developed from Sanskrit theories and are applied in right perspective, they can help develop a genuine Indian literary criticism. These models shall offer preferable alternatives of Western models. They will focus on the significant area of intersection between the Indian and Western thinking i.e. their views on the analysis and appreciation of literary expression. They will stimulate an inspiration to examine English texts in the light of classical concepts.
1.1.1 Aesthetics in Indian and Western Context
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
problem from the point of view of the end of art. The theories of imitation, illusion, and idealized representation represent a study from the point of view of the artist. The theories of confused cognition, inference and mysticism represent a study of the problem from the point of view of the spectator. All these theories have been propounded on the basis of the architecture, sculpture, painting, music and drama. In the context of India, aesthetics means science and philosophy of fine art. It is science of fine art because the problem of art is originally a problem of technique of art. The works, wherein the philosophy of art is discussed, are primarily concerned with technique; and the philosophy is closely related to it. It is philosophy of fine art is because the experience that a work of art arouses in an aesthete is accounted for in terms of different schools of philosophic thought in India and also because the authorities on three arts, poetry, music and architecture, hold that art presents the Absolute as conceived by them. Thus there are three schools of philosophy of art: i)Rasa-Brahma-vada (school dealing with the experience of absolute in literature) ii).Nad-Brahma-vada(school dealing with the experience of absolute in music. iii) Vastu-Brahma-vada(school dealing with the experience of absolute in architecture) . And fine art is the art which presents the absolute in sensuous garb and aesthetical relation, as distinct from the utilitarian, with a work of which gives rise or leads to experience of the absolute. Like western theories, we have Indian theories also which have been propounded primarily and mainly in relation to the product of the dramatic art. Bharata gives all other arts subordinate position to the dramatic art because there is no such lore, experience, spiritual discipline, science, art, craft and object as is not employed on some occasion or the other in dramatic presentation. Bharata encounters all issues related to dramaturgy in his treatise, Natyashastra.
Bharata Muni, is acknowledged to be a legendary author of the Natyashastra, the first Sanskrit work on dramaturgy. The treatise says that Bharata was the one who popularized the Natyaveda, created by Brahm, on the earth. He is also said to have collected all the material of earlier acharyas (ancient teachers) like Tumburu, Narada and Nandi and gave the Nayashastra a complete coherence by making additions, alterations and adaptations according to the requirements of time and space. It is clear from the text that later it was the sons and the followers of Bharata who transmitted the art of the theater to the world. Abhinava Gupta uses the name Adi-Bharata for Bharata as the sons and the followers of Bharata were called Bharatas, the actors.
en t
1.3
There was quite a large number of commentaries on the Nayashastra of Bharata. But all of them are unfortunately lost, excepting the Abhinava Bharata of Abhinavagupta. In 3
re
Commentators on the Natyashastra
fo
1.2
Bharata, the Author of the Natyashastra
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
1.4
Aim of the Natyashastra
The Nayashastra known as Natyaveda or the fifth Veda, is a classical manual on the theory and practice of Indian aesthetics theatre, music, dance, poetics, gestures and many other allied arts given by Bharat Muni. The Nayashastra primarily aims at giving the necessary directions to actors so as to enable them creditably to acquit themselves in acting out their parts; and to the dramatists to enable them to write flawless dramas. It also aims at helping the aesthete, who is eager to enjoy the beautiful and afraid of the study of the Vedas and Puranas, which show the ways of realization of the main objectives of human life.
1.5
As far as the date of this work is concerned, there is no unanimity about its specific date. However there are two views based on religious belief and linguistic analysis and references to decide the date of this work. According to the religious view, it is believed that it was 4
en t
Date of composition of the Natyashastra
re
fo
rT
There are post-Abhinava acaryas also who have dealt with rasa in their celebrated works. Among them the most important is Mammat whose treatise Kavyaprakasha has attracted a host of learned annotators. The next post-Abhinava acarya is Bhanudatta who broadly supporting Bharat claims our attention by his unambiguous enunciation of rasa (aesthetic sentiment) in his Rasa-tarangini. Another post-Abhinava acarya is Vishwanath, widely known for his famous definition of poetry: vakyam rasatmakam kavyam, defines rasa ((aesthetic sentiment) in his Sahityadarapana. The last distinguished name in the history of rasa deliberation is Panditaraja Jagannath of the 17th century C.E. whose celebrated treatise Rasagangadhar exercises the minds of readers today by its complicated erudite style.
ra
di
tio
na
lE
fact, our only source of information about them and their authors is the Abhinava- Bharata itself. The information available about them is in the pages from 120 to 129 of Abhinavagupta :An Historical and Philosophical Study. Besides Abhinavagupta, there are only three commentators. The earliest commentator of the Natyashastra is Lolata who gives the theory of the aropevada (attribution). Lolata has been said to subscribe to uttara- mimansa of Vedantic philosophy which considers the world as mitthya (unreal). Shankuka happens to be the second commentator of Bharata. Some scholars consider him to be the supporter of prachya-nyaya (old system of logic)due to his employment of citraturaganyaya (picturehorse-logic) while others hold that he was a supporter of bauddha-nyaya ( bauddha- logic)in asmuch as the citra-nyaya (picture-logic). Be that as it may this much is certain that he subscribed to the concept of nyaya (logic). The third commentator of Bharat is Acharya Bhattanayayaka who gave the theory of bhuktivada (theory of taste) based on sadharanikarana (generalization). The next renowned exegete of Bharata is Abhinavagupta of roughly later half of the 10th and first half of the 11th C.E. His concept of rasa has a profoundly philosophical basis. His concept of atmaprakasha (self-consciousness) is the expansion of Shaiva philosophy in which Paramashiva is equated with atma (soul) equipped with prakasha (light).
du
ca
tio n
created by Brahma, in compliance with the request of the gods headed by Indra to produce something that would give delight to the eyes and please the ears. It is also believed that Brahma took the element of song from the Samaveda, the tandava (vigorous dance) from Shiva, the lashya (grace)from Parvati and compiled the Nayashastra. As regards the view based on linguistic analysis and references, there is again no unanimity about its specific date. The scholarly opinion varies placing it anywhere from 2nd century B.C.E. to 2nd century C.E. The amalgam of three distinct styles of writing found in the Nayashastra: (1) Anuvansha or Anubandha verses in the arya, Upajati and Anushttuubh meters; (2) Sutra bhashya (prose); (3) Karikas indicates an early date for its composition but does not help us to determine it specifically. Since there are references and quotations in certain important works of Kalidasa, Anandavardhana, Mammata, Bana, Damodaragupta, it seems that the Natyashastra is a work anterior to the fifth century C.E. The terminology used in the Natyashastra for acting, costume, music, dance gestures and musical instruments also supports this date of this work. The Natyashastra knows musical instruments of the harps variety only and has a musical theory based upon them alone, hence we may conclude that it was formulated before the arrival of the zither which appears in sculpture around 3rd century B.C.E. But, as it denotes music by the word gandharva or the science of gandharvas who had no relation to music in the Vedic Samhitas and the Brahmanas, it must belong to a period well after the Brahmanas. The relationship of the gandharvas with music begins with the epics and the Puranas. Valmiki, in his earliest written portions of the Ramayana, has used so many technical terms of music (such as sruti, sthana, murchchhana, jati, sanmmurchana, angahara, atodya etc.). As poetry does not create technical terms but takes them from shastras, it is safe to presume that the Nayashastra was compiled well after the Brahmanas but around the same time as the earlier version of Valmikis Ramayana ( 5th to 4th century B.C.E.).
1.6
Division of the Nayashastra
en t
The available text, which is based on the manuscript of the Abhinavabharati, a commentary of Abhinavagupta (11th century C.E.), is divided into thirty-six chapters having the following major contents: Origins of Natyaveda (science of dramatic performance), and the concept of anukarana (imitation)of life for dramatic presentation. Three kinds of theatre buildings and their ritual consecration by the sponsor, a rich person or a king.
Purvaranga (preliminary performance) in nineteen parts to please the gods and the audience, definition of eight rasas (aesthetic sentiments) shrigara (erotic love), vira (heroism), karuna (pathos), hasya (laughter), bibhatsa (disgust, bhayanaka (fear), raudra (wrath), and adbhuta (wonder), sthayi bhavas (basic sentiments), vibhavas (causes and 5
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
determinants of the rise of an emotion) and anubhavas (gestures) and sanchari bhavas (transitory emotions) as crucial elements of the emotional experience in theatre. Four kinds of abhinayas (acting/expression) angika abhinaya (bodily expression) to depict emotions/feelings of a character being played by the actor, vacika abhinaya (linguistic expression) to express emotions/feelings, tone, diction, pitch of a particular character, aharya abhinaya (costumes of the characters and stage decoration) to enhance expression, sattvika abhinaya (voluntary changes expressed by the presence of tears, mark of horripilation, change of facial color, trembling of lips, enhancing of nostrils) to express the deepest emotions of a character. It is the highest kind of acting; two kinds of dharmis (theatrical representations)lokadharmi (artistic representation of the ordinary world or the real life) and natyadharmi (artistic representation of the imaginary worlds like svarga (heavens), patala (underworld); four kinds of vrittis (modes of productions)bharati (dominance of spoken contents) kaishiki (dominance of dance and music) sattvati (dominance of elevated and heroic feelings) and arabhati (dominance of violent and conflictual actions, and the four pravrittisavanti, dakshinatya, panchali and magadhi (the tastes of audiences in various parts of India); four kinds of atodyas (musical instruments used on the stage); ganam or dhruvas (songs sung in the course of dramatic action at five junctures praveshiki (song sung before the entry of a character), naishkramiki (song sung to sooth emotions of the audience after a very moving or shocking scene), akshepiki (song sung to create an intervention) and antara (song sung in between episodes to entertain the audience); and finally ranga (theatre house) (chapter 2).
1.7
Bharata wrote his work with a view to giving necessary instructions to dramatists and actors. Larger portion of the work is devoted to the four types of acting (Abhinaya). For the present we shall restrict ourselves to expounding his view from the point of view of the dramatist. We shall, therefore, attempt to state : (i) What is it that the dramatist presents in the drama?, (ii) What are its constituents and how are they related?, (iii) What is the method of dramatising an imaginary or historical plot?, (iv) What are the subjective conditions, necessary in the spectator, for getting aesthetic experience from dramatic presentation?
en t
Limitation of Natyashastra
re
Svaras (musical notes) gramas (musical scales) and atodyavidhi (ways of playing musical instruments like the strings, flutes, drums and cymbals).
fo
Nayakas (heroes) and nayikas (heroines).
rT
Itivritta (structure of the dramatic plot), the stages of action, the nature of episodes and the interconnected emotional states of the hero .
ra
Dasarupakas (the ten types of plays extending from one act play to ten act plays.)
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
1.8
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.
Subject matter of the first chapter of the Natyashastra

Salutations Sages questions Bharatas answers The Natyaveda and Bharatas hundred sons
Creation and names of Apsaras Svati and Narada engagement to help Brahma
The Banner festival of Indra and the first production of a play The pleased gods reward Bharaats party Vighnas attack the actors Indra comes to their protection The origin of the first playhouse
Different gods asked to protect different parts of the playhouse as well as the actors
As has already been told the first chapter deals with the origin of drama or Natyaveda (science of dramatic performance). This chapter has answers to the questions raised by the pupils of Bharata. The pupils asked Bharata questions after they had witnessed the first drama staged by him. The first question was: what were the circumstances, which led to the creation of the fifth Veda; and for whom was it created? The reason why they put this question may be stated as follows:
en t
The pupils had witnessed the drama and they had analysed the effect that it had on them. They had realised that it brings about identification with the focus of the dramatic situation, to the effect that the audience realise through experience (because of identification) that the four recognised objects or goals of humanity, (1) Dharma (2) Artha (3) Kama and (4) Moksa, ought to be pursued. Thus, they had known that it instructs and, therefore, admitted that the work, dealing with the ways and means of presenting it, was rightly called the Veda. Hence the question arose in their minds Why has the Natya Veda been created ?. For, its 7
re
fo
1.9
The Origin of Drama
rT
Offering puja to the gods of the stage.
ra
The characteristic of a drama
di
Brahma pacifies the Vighnas
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
Three styles
purpose to instruct people as regards the desirability of pursuing the well recognised goals of human life was already served by the existing four Vedas. Creation, of the fifth Veda, therefore, seemed to them unnecessary. Therefore, they asked the question: Why was the fifth Veda created ?. But if there be some, who cannot be instructed through the Veda, who are they ?. Hence the subsidiary question : For whom was it created ?. The other questions raised by the pupils of Bharata were: Into how many parts is this Natya Veda divided? Are there so many parts that it cannot be fully grasped ?
What are the various arts, necessary for the presentation of drama? Of how many parts is drama made? Is it an organic whole or merely a jumble?
How are the different parts of drama to be presented ?
Such a diversion was necessary for humanity. For, humanity, being under the influence of Rajas, was deviating from the right path, pointed out by the Vedas, and was ignoring the rites due to gods. They, therefore, felt the necessity of bringing humanity to the right path. This could not be achieved through Vedic instruction; because the Shudras were excluded from the circle of Vedic study. The gods, therefore, wanted an instrument of instruction such as could be utilised for instructing all, irrespective of caste. They thought that it would be different in form from that of categorical imperative. They also thought that it would not be a mere command, which is unpleasant to hear and equally unpleasant to carry out. Rather it would delightfully instruct, would cover the undesirable tone of command under pleasant sights and
en t
The circumstances, which led to the creation of Dramaturgy, were the products of time. During Treta Yuga, when Vaivasvata Manvantara was running, the gods, headed by Indra, approached Brahma with a request to him to create a play-thing, which may be pleasing to both the eye and the ear and lead people automatically to follow the path of duty, without the need of any external compulsion, such as the order of a king. The reason why there arose the necessity for such a play-thing was that Treta Yuga is domineered over by Rajas, the quality of action, prompted by selfish desires and emotions and, therefore, the common experience is a mixture of pleasure and pain, during this Yuga. The need for a play-thing arises only among those, whose experience is a mixture of pleasure and pain, the latter being proportionately more than the former. For, plaything is for diversion. And one desires to divert the mind only from what is painful.
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
These and allied questions Bharata attempts in his Natyashaastra or Natyaveda. The answers to first three questions are given in the very first chapter. The answer to the first question may be stated as follows:
na
lE
du
What are the various means of knowledge, necessary for knowing the different parts of drama ? And if drama is an organic whole and not a mere jumble, Is there any special means of knowing the inter-connection of parts ? And if so What is it ?
ca
tio n
sounds; it would administer the, bitter pill of instruction under the sweet coating of sugar; it would mix the bitter medicine of instruction with sweet milk so as to make it palatable. These were the circumstances, which led to the creation of the fifth Veda by Brahma at the request of gods. It was created for those, who did not readily follow the path, pointed out by the Vedas, or the Shudras, who were debarred from reading and hearing the Vedas. The reply to the second question : Into how many parts is the Natya Veda divided ? is that primarily there are four parts, dealing with the following topics : (1) Art of effective speech or recitation (2) Art of music, (3) Art of acting and (4) Rasas. And reply to the third question, How are the various parts connected ? is that drama, with the science or theory of which, the Natya Veda is concerned, primarily presents Rasa, and the three arts are the means of its effective presentation. Thus, it is an organic whole.The reply to the fourth question is that it is apprehended directly through eyes and ears. And the reply to the last question covers the whole work.
1.
2.
en t
Another question, that is answered here, is What is the end of dramatic art ?And the reply is that the end of dramatic art is instruction, not directly, but indirectly, through presentation of what is pleasing to eyes and ears. It does not directly command, but it makes the audience experience the goodness of virtuous path, through identification with the focus of the dramatic situation. It administers the medicine of instruction, but it either coats it with sugar or mixes it up with the milk of pleasant sight and sound so that bitterness of medicine is not experienced. Bharata maintains that the aspect of sensuous pleasure is undeniable in the experience from dramatic presentation. But it constitutes only the starting point. Thus he gives right place to both (i) Hedonistic and (ii) Pedagogic theories of art in his aesthetics. He holds that drama is simply a play or play-thing, which is meant for diverting the mind from what worries or troubles it. The most essential subjective condition for aesthetic experience, according to him, is that the mind of the spectator should not be occupied with excessive personal pleasure 9
4. 5.
re
fo
rT
The first question, that is answered here, is What are the aesthetic senses ? And Bharata declares that aesthetic senses are only two (i) eye and (ii) ear. He excludes touch, taste and smell from aesthetic senses, operating in getting aesthetic experience from dramatic presentation. For, the former are the only senses, which can operate in relation to an object that is common to many. What is the object of touch or taste of one cannot be the object of the same senses of other persons. But whole audience can have in common what is addressed to eyes or ears.
ra
di
tio
na
lE
If we look at the traditional account of the origin of the Natyashastra from modern point of view, we find that it contains relevant answers to some pertinent questions that arise in modern minds as they approach the problem of aesthetics.
du
ca
tio n
or pain. 6. He recognises the importance of women on the stage. For, the correct expression of emotion, for instance, blush at the sight of the object of love, is not possible unless the emotion, from which such a physical change proceeds, be actually present in the heart. But there are certainfeelings, which are peculiar to fair sex only. Hence for their accurate and life-like presentation women are necessary for stage.
1.10 Let Us Sum Up

The broad division of the subject-matter is into (i) what drama presents i.e. Rasa and (ii) the means of its presentation. The latter is technically called abhinaya (acting). It brings what is intended to be presented, as if it were, face to face with the spectator. It leads to as certain a knowledge which is divided into four types : (i) Angika i.e. acting, consisting in the movement of the parts of body. iii) Vachika i.e. acting, consisting in the appropriate movement of speech-organs, involved in effective recitation. (iii) Sattvika i.e. acting, consisting in the action of mind, involved in the various emotive states, which find expression in involuntary physical changes, such as change of colour, tremor, horripilation etc. (iv) Aharya i.e. all the means of presentation other than those belonging to the psycho-physical constituents of the actors themselves. It includes (i) all that is used for giving appropriate look of the characters of a drama to individual actors, such as paints, dress, ornaments etc. : (ii) all that is necessary for presenting scene of action : (iii) all the mechanical contrivances to present such means of transport arid communication as Vimana (Aeroplane) etc. It also deals with construction of the stage and method of its management. There is considerable space given to sections on dance and music, both instrumental and vocal. Necessary qualifications of actors and the stage-manager are also given at some length. It discusses ten types of drama, extending from one act plays to ten act plays. It deals with the method of dramatisation and types of hero, heroine and adversary. It also states the recognised types of aesthetic experience, different persisting and transitory emotions and psycho-physical movements and situations, necessary to arouse them.
1. 2. 3.
4.
en t
1.11 Review questions

Write a note on the origin of drama as given in the first chapter of the Natyashastra. How does Bharata satisfy his pupils when the latter ask questions to the former regarding the origin of drama?
If we look at the traditional account of the origin of the Natyashastra from modern point of view, we find that it contains relevant answers to some pertinent questions that arise in modern minds as they approach the problem of aesthetics. Discuss. Write a note on the broad division of the subject matter of the Natyashastra.
re
fo
rT
ra
di
10
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
1.12 Bibliography
1. 2. 3. Ghosh, M. Natyashastra. Kolkata: Manisha Granthalaya, 1967. Gupt, Bharat. Dramatic Concepts Greek and Indian : A Study of the Poetics and the Nayashastra. Delhi: D. K. Printworld, 1994. Kavi, Ramakrishna. (Ed.) Bharata Muni, Nayashastram with Abhinavabharati. Gaekwads Oriental Series. Baroda: Oriental Institute, vol. (1956), vol. II (1934), vol IV (1964). Panchal, Govardhan. The Theatres of Bharata and Some Aspects of Sanskrit Playproduction. Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1986. Pandey, K. C. Comparative Aesthetics, Vol.I: Indian Aesthetics . Varanasi: Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series,1995.
4. 5. 6.
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
11
____________
lE
Tripathi, R S. A Critical Approach to Classical Indian Poetics. Delhi: Chaukhambha Orientalia, 1984.
du
ca
tio n
UNIT-2 RASADHYAYAS OF NATYASHASTRA

Structure 2.0 2.1 2.2 Objectives Introduction
2.2.1 2.2.2 2.2.3 2.2.4 2.2.5 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7
Sthayi bhavas (basic mental states) Vibhavas Anubhavas ( voluntary gestures) Sattvikas (Involuntary gestures) Vyabhicharibhavas (transient emotions)
Illustration of the constituents of rasas Bhava or abhasas (semblance of rasa) Rasa as an objective entity Rasanubhuti (rasa realization) 2.7.1 2.7.2 2.7.3 2.7.4 2.7.5
Kavya prayojana ( purpose of poetry).
Rasadasha (relishable state)
2.8 2.9 2.10
2.0
en t
2.7.6
2.7.7
Let Us Sum Up Review Questions Bibliography
Objectives
The present unit aims at explaining giving the necessary details to the students so as to 12
re
Nature of rasa Four kinds of ( jnana) knowledge
Sadharanikarana (Generalization) Factors of rasavighna (obstructions to rasa experience)
fo
States of the Mind
rT
ra
di
tio
na
Number of Rasas
lE
du
ca
tio n
Constituents of rasa
enable them to have the answers to the following questions: how do the sentiments in dramatic art attain their special qualities; what are the constituents of rasa; What are bhavas (sentiments) and abhinayas (histrionic representation);and how rasanubhuti ( rasa realization) takes place.
2.1
Introduction
2.2
Constituents of rasa
Bharata holds that each one of us is fitted with a built-in structure of sthayi bhavas (basic sentiments) which are the modified forms of basic drives or instincts as a result of centuries of evolutionary process of humanization and social living. These sthayi bhavas (basic mental states), which are chiefly eight in numberrati (erotic love), shoka (grief), krodha (wrath), utsaha (energy), bhaya (fear), hasya (humour), jugupsa (disgust)are heightened to rasadasha (a relishable state) by the poet so that we have one rasa (aesthetic sentiment) corresponding to each of them. The corresponding rasas (aesthetic sentiments)of the sthayi bhavas ( basic sentiments) are shrangar (erotic), karuna (pathetic), raudra (anger), vira (heroic), bhayanaka (fear),hasya (laughter), bibhatsa (disgust), adbhuta (wonder) The poet succeeds in doing this by resorting to the devices of concretization.
en t
Bharata has put it in his Natya-shastra : vibhavanubhavavyabhicharisamyogata rasanishapattih (the savouring of the emotion is possible through the combination or integration of these elements: vibhava (causes and determinants of the rise of an emotion) anubhava 13
re
2.2.2 Vibhavas
fo
rT
2.2.1 Sthayi bhavas (basic mental states)
ra
di
tio
Like the first chapter which is an answer to the questions raised by the pupils of Bharata, the Rasadhyayas (sixth and seventh chapters) also deal with the inquiries made by them. These inquiries are about bhavas (the sentiments), sthayi bhavas (basic sentiments) and abhinaya (the histrionic representation), rasa (aesthetic pleasure) etc..
na
lE
The main topics, dealt with in the Natya-shastra, are four only, acting, dance, music and rasa (aesthetic sentiment) where rasa is the central subject, the first three being the means of presentation of rasa . In the Natyashastra , rasa (aesthetic sentiment) has been elevated to a full-fledged theory called rasa siddhanta. The greatest merit of this theory consists in the fact that it has erected its magnificent edifice on the solid foundation of the commonalty of bhava (human feelings and emotions) classified into two, sthayi bhava (basic mental states) and vyabhicari bhava (transitory emotion).
du
ca
tio n
ii) they make known the nature of emotion in the hero
en t
sveda or perspiration stambha or stupefection kumpa or tremor ashru or tears romancha or horripilation pralaya or swoon vaivanya or pallor svarabhanga or change of voice 14
re
Like anubhavas there are sattvikas which are nothing more than anubhavas. But while anubhavas are voluntary, sattvikas are involuntary as they can take place only when the concerned emotion is actually present in the heart. They are unmistakable reflections of inner emotive state. They are eight in number:
fo
rT
2.2.4 Sattvikas (Involuntary gestures)
ra
iii) they make the spectator experience an identical emotion .
di
tio
i) they communicate the basic emotion to the characters, present on the stage
na
Anubhavas (gestures expressive of what is going on in the heart or the mind of main characters) are the physical changes due to the rise of an emotion. In actual life they are known as effect of emotion.. These changes are voluntary as they can be produced by an effort of the will. They are called anubhavas because
lE
du
2.2.3 Anubhavas ( voluntary gestures)
ca
(gestures expressive of what is going on in the heart or the mind of main characters, like casting a terrified glance, heaving a sigh or involuntarily shedding a tear) and vyabhicharibhavas (transitory emotions which go along with and consequently reinforce prevailing mood or emotional disposition). The vibhavas (causes and determinants of the rise of an emotion)are of two kinds: alamban and uddipan (features or circumstances that accentuate the feelings of alamban ( hero or heroine). The alamban (supporting causes, usually the hero or the heroine or such objects) are again of two typesvishaylamban (person or object of the rise of an emotion or the person or object for whom the emotion is awakened) and ashramban (person in whom the emotion is awakened).Through the conjunction of these elements the poet activates, with some kind of empathetic induction, the propensity of sthayi bhavas (basic sentiments) in the reader and the movement it is consummated, the sahridaya (sensitive reader) experiences an afflatus or transport which is designed as rasa (aesthetic sentiment).
tio n
2.2.5 Vyabhicharibhavas (transient emotions)

Bharata has used bhavas or bhavanas in a technical sense from the point of view of the spectator. They are called mental states which pervade the mind of the spectator as a perfume does with the cloth. They are of two types: vyabhicharibhavas (transient emotions) and sthayibhavas (basic mental states).Vyabhicharibhavas are transient emotions. They are like waves, which rise from the ocean of the basic mental state and subside into the same. Though they are mental states, they appear as it were embodied. These supporting feelings are short lived and they can enter into alliance with a number of sthayi bhavas. There are thirty three vyabhicharibhavas: nirveda or discouragement indicated by tears, sighs, pensiveness, etc
glani or internal weakness by weak voice, lusterless eyes, sleeplessness, gait shanka or apprehension by unsteady looks, hesitating movements
mada or intoxication by laughing, singing, sneezing, hiccough srama or exhaustion by heavy breaths, twisting of limbs
smrti or remembrance by knitting of eyebrows , nodding of head dhrti or composure by general indifference to grief or passion etc.
en t
re
vridness of a or bashfulness by dullness of eyes, scratching of nails chapalata or inconstancy by harsh words. rebuke, vapulation harsha or joy by brightness of looks, horripilation avega or agitation by distress in limbs, tightening of clothes jadata or stupor by loss of movement and energy, blank gazes garva or pride by irresponsiveness, haughty manners. Sarcastic smiles vishada or dismay by deep breathing, loss of energy autsukya or eagerness by sighs, drowsiness, thinking nirada or sleep by obvious gestures 15
fo
rT
moha or distraction by reeling sensations and staggering looks
ra
chinta or anxiety by deep breathing, meditation, sighing, agony
di
dianya depression by dullness, absentmindedness, negligence of cleanliness
tio
alasya or sloth by moroseness, sleeplessness, disinterest in work
na
lE
asuya or jealousy by decrying others merits
du
ca
tio n
apasamara or catalepsy by throbbing , tremor , perspiration supta or dreaming by obvious ensuants vibodha or wakefulness by yawning amarsha or anger by evident gestures avahittaha, or dissimulation by break in speech, feigned patience ugrata or vehemence by acrimony, scolding, threatening mati or rationality by coolness of behaviour, ascertaining meaning vyadhi or sickness by evident symptoms unmada or insanity by evident behaviour marana or death by evident symptoms trasa or terror by evident symptoms vitarka or reasoning by evident symptoms
2.3
Number of Rasas
shoka or grief to karuna or the pathetic krodhaor wrath to raudra or the furious utsaha or energy to vira the heroic
re
fo
rT
rati or love giving rise to shringar or the erotic
ra
Since it is the sthayi which attains to rasahood, the number of rasas corresponds to the number of the sthayis. Below is furnished a table, demonstrating the sthayis and their corresponding rasas. Bharata considers eight rasas to which three more rasas have been added by Udabhta and Abhinavagupta as given below:
di
tio
na
Bharata Udabhata & Abhinavagupta later acaryas 16
en t
bhaya fear to bhayanaka or the terrible hasa or humour to hasya or the comic jugupsa or disgust to bibhatsa or loathsome
vishamaya or wonder to adbhuta or the marvellous sama or to shanta or the mental tranquility
bhagavadarati or to bhakti or love towards God apatyarati or to vatsalya love towards children
lE
du
ca
tio n
2.4
Illustration Of The Constituents Of Rasas
In technical language all the constituents of rasa are known as rasa prapanca (paraphernalia of rasa). These constituents are illustrated in the following lines of the poem, The Eve of St. Agnes: Thus whispering, his warm, unnerved arm Sank in her pillow. Shaded was her dream
Impossible to melt as iced stream; The lustrous salvers in the moonlight gleam Broad golden fringe upon the carpet lies: It seemd he never could redeem his ladys eyes; So mused a while, entoild in woofed fantasies. In terms of rasa formulation,
i)Visayalambana or the object of the emotion: Madeline ii)Asralambana or the subject or person in whom the emotion resides: Porphyro
Uddipan vibhavas or stimulating factors or determinants : azure-lidded
en t
Anubhavas or the visible effects, indicative of the rise of emotion: sinking of Porphyros unnerved arms in Madelines pillow and his gaze on her slumbering charms
Vyabhicharis or transitory emotions: can be recognized as despair, weakness, anxiety, apprehension, agitation, eagerness, reasoning, dreaming etc arising in the lovers heart. Sattavikas or dispositional reactions or physical changes: perspiration, tremor can be visualized
2.5
When the sanchari/s is/are delineated principally rather than temporarily, the sthayi is merely awakened failing to reach the magnitude of rasa due to not being nourished by vibhavas etc., we have bhavas. For example, the love or rati towards gods or preceptor. 17
re
Bhava Or Abhasas (Semblance Of Rasa)
fo
sleep, the shining salvers, the falling of the silver light, of the moon on her bed through the window, the broad golden fringes, adorning the carpet
rT
ra
di
tio
Alambana vibhava: Madeline and Porphyro
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
By the dusk curtains: twas a midnight charm
Abhasas are associated with rasa and bhava and so are they called rasabhasa and bhavabhasa. When the concerned emotions are delineated in respect of persons who are normally not regarded as appropriate objects of those emotion, we have rasabhasas. Examplewhen nayika is in love with many persons simultaneously. Different rasas and sthayis have their own abhasas allied to concerned vibhavas. It can also be said that when an emotion or feeling is delineated in persons who are not usually considered repository of that emotion, we have rasabhasas. Emotion like bashfulness depicted in a prostitute is an example of rasabhasas.
2.7
Rasanubhuti (rasa realization) 2.7.1 Kavya Prayojana ( Purpose Of Poetry)
Since the very beginning, the Indian acaryas (scholars) have examined and enunciated this experience of the absolute in terms of kavya prayojana (the purpose of poetry). To them, kavya prayojana is to impart this experience. Bharat in his answer to the question, what is the end of dramatic art includes this experience. He holds that dramatic presentation primarily aims at giving rise to aesthetic experience in the aesthete and later this experience is followed by moral improvement. He further says that dramatic presentation imparts pleasure to all who are unhappy, tired, bereaved and ascetic. This account shows that poetry helps in promoting all the good ends of life, both mundane and supramundane and imparts anand (immediate pleasure) to sahrdaya. Indian tradition of critical appreciation has crystallized ultimately in the acceptance of anand as the function and purpose of poetry.
en t
Abhinavagupa divides anand into three classes: vishayanand, kavyanand and 18

re
fo
rT
Eliots objective correlative appears to be a direct modern version of the rasa formula of Bharata. The entire poetic mechanism, as stressed in the rasa-sutra, is oriented towards enabling the emotional content to be realized and recaptured by the sahradaya or a gifted reader. This is also the purpose of Eliot in formulating the concept of objective correlative. In his essay on Hamlet, Eliot formulates a canon of the portrayal of an emotion in poetry. He states: The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an objective correlative, in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events , which shall be the formula of that particular emotion, such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked. An example from the play, Macbeth can be seen here. In order to convey the full sense of Lady Macbeths mental malady in the last Act of Macbeth, Shakespeare merely makes her do over again what she had done before. This unconscious repetition of her past actions is the objective correlative, the objective equivalent of her present agony in the heart. Her dark luster eyes and the burning taper in her hand aid the effect of this objectification. In other words the agony expressed as such is made so objective here that it can be as well seen by the eyes as felt by the heart.
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
2.6
Rasa formula and Eliots Objective Correlative
2.7.2 States of the Mind
There are five aspects srasti (creation), stithi (preservation), samhar (transformation), tirobhava (diffusion) and anugraha (grace) involved in the composition of a poem. Here srasti is aesthetic intuition that charges the poet; stithi denotes objects of inspiration which captivate the mind of the poet; samhar is indication of expression which is the depth of the poet; tirobhava is resulting stimulation which diffuses illusion and finally anugraha is the manifestation of the universal rhythm. All these aspects are not found in every poem. Kavya which has these aspects offers truth, meaning and knowledge; kavya lacking them is not a poem but merely a verse. The ability of recognizing the universal rhythm takes place in a particular state of mind of a poet. There are five states of the mind and the mind changes over from one state to another at a fast speed. Sometimes it is kshipt (sensitive and agitative), sometimes moodh (insensitive and dull), sometimes vikshipt (interruptive and disturbed), sometimes ekagra (concentrative and pointed) and sometimes niruddha (meditative i.e. a state of total stillness). Of the five, niruddha is the highest. It can further be divided into two sub-states : samprajnata (conscious) and asamprajnata (trans-conscious). The second state is concerned, it is the final state of yogis. In this state a yogi becomes thoughtless. As far as the first state is concerned, it is the state of the poet as he is able to concentrate his mind on gross as well as the subtle elements of nature(earth, water, light etc.) He can know the real nature and character of various objects and materials of nature and achieve his purpose for himself and society. In Indian aesthetics he has been considered as kranta darsinaha (capable
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
It is because of this rasa or anand, kavya is different from jagat(world) . It is again because of this rasa or anand Acarya Mammat holds Kavis creation to be greater than that of God. Unlike Kavya, jagat lacks this rasa or anand. There is only either pleasure or pain in jagat. This kavi has extraordinary or say superhuman power. In this regard he is said to be greater than a yogi even in relation to their respective states and approaches to this world. To know this one needs to know the process of the composition of the kavya.
na
19
lE
du
ca
paramanand. Of these, first is related to the satisfaction of the material appetites and stands at the lowermost rung of the ladder. The third is related to the attainment of Communion with the Brahma (the Absolute Being) and occupies the topmost status. The second kavyanand or rasanand or brahmanandsahodara falls intermediate between the two. It is for common people. Now the word powersabhida, laksna and vyanjana and the word itself becomes Brahma. It creates a state of bliss in the reader/ spectator and helps in having an impersonalized and ineffable judgment. This experience is both a means of achieving perfect mental balance and ultimate salvation. Bhattanayaka, Abhinavagupta and Vishwanath consider this anand in close connection with rasa. Abhinavagupta declares rasa as akin to the experience of divinity. Vishwanath agrees with Abhinavagupta, by calling kavyarasa as brahmasvadasahodara.( In Indian aesthetics this rasa or anand has been understood as kavyanand or rasanand or brahmanandsahodara which can be translated as art experience. Anand is closely associated with rasa which is the soul of Kavypurusha. It crumbles down discrimination.
tio n
of looking both into the past and the future. Bhattanayaka, Abhinavaguptas teacher considers him as a rishi who had darshana ( inner view of Invisible Truths).
2.7.3 Rasadasha (Relishable State)

How is rasa produced? According to the ancient theorists each of us is fitted with a built-in structure of sthayi bhavas or basic mental states which are the modified forms of basic drives or instincts as a result of centuries of evolutionary process of humanization and social living. These sthayibhavas (permanent emotions), which are chiefly eight in number, are heightened to a relishable state called rasadasha by the poet so that we have one rasa or emotion corresponding to each of them. It is the sthayi bhava which is the basis of rasa. Vibhava, anubhava and vyabhicharibhava awaken this innate emotion bringing it into a relishable flavour called rasa. This flavour or state remains subjective unless it is delineated by the poet in kavya where he objectifies his experience. S K De, defining this state, holds: It is practically admitted on all hands, on semi-psychological considerations of poetry, that the rasa is a state of relish in the reader, of the principal sentiment in the composition, a subjective condition of his mind, which is brought about when the principal or permanent mood (sthayibhava) is brought into a relishable condition through the three elements vibhava, anubhava and vyabhicharibhava exhibited in the drama. The poet succeeds in doing this by resorting to the devices of concretization as has already been discussed.
In this process the spectator changes from laukik (worldly)into alaukik (super-human) and hence now the spectator gets anand even in weeping. Here it is noteworthy that the spectator transcends the world but does not enter into a divine a world. Here citta has two states: dipti (state of luminosity) and pighalana (state of liquefaction)18. The former state arouses the rasas of bhayanaka, vira, hasya etc while the latter arouses the rasas of karuna, shringara etc.Citta is like sealing wax which melts in the company of heat. Like sealing wax, citta also melts and converts into a liquid form. Rasa melts itself and liquefies rajas and tamas and now readers chitta experiences 20
en t
Now the question arises whether the rasa is produced or illuminated by the vibhavas etc. The answer is in negative. They are neither rasa producers nor illuminator. They are just the awakeners of the sthayi and help in the relishability of rasa. Rasa generated and manifested through them. It is alaukika. Now the second question arises whether rasa depends on sabda and artha (word and meaning). The answer is in negative as rasa is not sabdartha based. It is based on four kinds of expression: aharya (expression through costume), satvika (expression through voluntary emotional changes), angika ( expression through body), vachika (verbal expression).
re
fo
rT
ra
2.7.4 Nature of Rasa
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
rasa. It is because rajas and tamas that the citta have different experiences of life. In fact, rajas and tamas limit ones realization but the moment these gunas are melted, the limitations of citta are removed and we have rasa. The liquefaction of chitta takes place due to the mixture of rajas and tamas which get subdued for the time being, affording scope for the sattva to inundate the inner consciousness.
2.7.5 Four Kinds Of ( Jnana) Knowledge

There are four kinds of ( jnana) knowledge familiar in worldly experience.20 The first is samyaka jnana(exact knowledge) in which there is absolute certainty as to the object of knowledge. The second is mitthya jnana (false knowledge) in the actual object of knowledge is repudiated. The third is samshaya jnana (doubtful knowledge) in which there is no definite apprehension of the object of knowledge. The fourth is sadrashya jnana (resemblant knowledge) in which resemblance of the object of knowledge is recognized in another object. In kavya, these four kinds of knowledge familiar in worldly experience fail to explain the nature of rasaubhuti or anand. In order to explain the nature of rasaubhuti or anand, Shankuka has pressed into service the analogy of the chitraturanganyaya (logic of the picturehorse).21 It is extraordinary, forming a distinct species in itself. Looking at the picture of a horse, one does not assume that it is a real horse; one does not fail to understand that it is a horse; one does not, further, harbour any doubt whether it is a horse; and likewise, one does not think that it resembles a horse. All that suggests that the despite the perception of the picture horse not confronting to any of the four types of knowledge, it strikes as real or living creates delight in us. Accordingly, the samajika comes to regard the nata as the real hero and associates the rasa with him on the line of picture-horse logic. That is the secret of his dramatic enjoyment.
2.7.6 Sadharanikarana (Generalization)

When the vibhavas, the anubhavas, the vyabhicharis and the sthayi, all abandon their local, individual, or temporal association or limitations and acquire a sort of generality, rather than universality, we have sadharanikarana or generalization. This suggests that the hero and the heroine cease to be particular individuals, confined within particular intervals of time and space and appears before us as ordinary lover and beloved. Accordingly their rati or love becomes the love of ordinary man and woman. It is after this generalization has taken place in the mind of the sahrdaya that the rasa is tasted. The process, connected with the three word functionsabidha, bhavana or bhavakatva and bhog or bhojkatva is internal and imperceptible, without letting the sahrdaya realize or perceive the stages of transition from the first to the second and from the second to the third. Accordingly rasanubhuti is a cumulative psychic experience, impregnated with anand. Now we are away from the world where we are either subjective, objective or neutral. Now we transcend these statessubjective, objective, neutraland have ekakibhava(single 21
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
Rasa is associated with atma while riti, alamkara, vakroktidharanikarana takes place and aucitya are associated with body. Rasanubhuti takes place in a generalized sense, rather than universalized way. . At the time of rasanubhuti, sadharanikarana takes place. Now there is a progression from laukika (worldly) to alaukika (super-human). Let it be stated here that rasanubhuti is alaukika expeience. It is different from the experience of a yogi. During this progression sabda itself becomes Brahma. But it is not Brahmanand, rather it is kavyanand because this state of anand is temporary unlike that of Brahmanand. All the sthayibhavas are not pleasurable, soka, bhaya, and jugupsa etc are unpleasant emotions in practical life, then how their depiction in poetry be regarded as pleasant. Vishwanath holds that the depiction of these emotions may produce grief due to lokasamsrayat that is 22
en t
re
Now let us know who experiences rasa. It is sahrdaya who shares the sad lucidity of soul which Arnold speaks of. Unless the reader has an adequate degree of intellectual and emotional equipment, he may not be able to establish that rapport with the poet which is essential for the realization of rasa. Thus he must be samanadharma i.e. of the nature of the poet himself. There may be a difference of degree, but not of kind, in sensitivity and capacity for imaginative contemplation. Explaining to sahradaya, Abhinavagupta remarks that those , who by constant reading of practice of reading poetry have acquired in their cleansed mirrorlike minds, the capacity to identify themselves with the poet and are thus attuned to the poets heart, are sahradaya. But it is again impossible for a reader to attune to the heart of the poet if he is not to savasana i.e. one who has vasana (desires) which are of two typesidantini (desires related to the past lives and praptakalik (desires of the present life). Abhinavagupta holds that sthayibhavas reside inherently in the human chitta (psyche) in the shape of vasanas (desires) and transmit from generation to generation of mankind. He adds that they are evoked under the impact of art or poetry in such a manner as to be animatedly felt and experienced. A child has the desires related to the past lives but the desires of this life have not developed in him fully so far. Hence he cannot experience rasa.
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
emotion). Now vibhava, anubhava, vyabhicari and the sthayi, all abandon their local, individual or temporal associations or limitations and acquire a sort of generality, rather universality. Accordingly, the sthayi becomes the respected emotion of ordinary men and women. It is after this generalization has taken in the mind of the sahradaya that rasa is tasted, giving rise to psychic repose. According to Battanayaka this process is connected with the three word- functionabhidha (primary meaning), bhavana or bhavakatva and bhoga or bhojakatva . Bhavana or bhavakatva , which liquefies rajas and tamas, adds uniqueness to abhidha and generalization of vibhavas and sthayi take place and internal crisis due to selfish interests, is dissipated. Now the third function of word liquefies the psyche. All these processes, connected with three word-functions, happen internally, imperceptibly, without letting the sahrdaya realize the subtle stages of the transition from the first to the second and from the second to the third. Accordingly, rasa realization is a cumulative psychic experience, impregnated with anand. This state of the samajika is bhagnavaranacitavastha.
tio n
2.7.7 Factors Of Rasavighna (Obstructions To Rasa Experience)

In Abhinavabharati , Abhinavagupta locates seven factors:
ii) iii) iv) v) vi) vii)
his getting overpowered by feelings of pain and pleasure engrossment in personal pleasures or afflictions absence of the means of perfections absence of animated perfections
2.8
Let Us Sum Up
Bharata holds that rasa is an objective entity, tasted and enjoyed by the beholders on the stage. It is the transformation of the sthayi bhava (basic mental state) but whose sthayi bhava( basic mental state)? the heros, the poets, the actors, the spectators. The poet comes to acquire or imbibe the sthayi bhava (basic sentiment) from the story selected, which means the heros sthayi bhava (basic sentiment) becomes the poets sthayi bhava (basic mental state) during creation. The actor evokes this sthayi bhava of the hero by anusandhan (quest) for herohood in or arope (attribution) of herohood to himself or abhimana (considering himself ) as hero on the stage. Now the samajik (spectator) relishes this emotion. This means that the rasa (aesthetic sentiment) resides not in them rather in the specatator who has rasanubhuti (an aesthetic experience) impregnated with anand (pleasure) through sadharanikaran (generalization) when the vibhavas (dramatic situations), anubhavas (gestures) and vyabhicharis (transitory emotions)and sthayi bhava (basic mental state), all abandon their local, individual, or temporal association or limitations and acquire a sort of generality, rather than universality. This realization takes deep roots in the spectator, because
en t
re
fo
rT
spectators incertitude as to the rasa purposed by the poet
ra
delineation of non sentient objects or of vyabhicharis which depend upon sthayi
di
tio
na
23
lE
i)
refusal by the spectator or reader to concede the existence of the rasa
du
ca
tio n
association with material world, but they become alaukik (unworldly) as a result of kavyasamsrayat. In kavya the subjects acquire the complexion vibhavas and afford anand, leaving their original material flavour. It is further to say that situations of life and situation as delineated in poetry fundamentally differ in taste and complexion. Poetry has its own culture and its characteristics. The emotions of life undergo a type of processing in poetry, resulting in sublimity. And in asmuch as kavya is manas vyapara (a mental business), the sahradaya is is moved by poetic portrayals in a manner and depth as seldom characterizes lifes practical experiences. It is this speciality of the poetic culture that absorbs and overwhelms the sahrdayas mind or inner self for the time being. He might become forgetful, as well, of all the exterior objects or concerns of life. This is the state of rasanubhuti , this is the state of sattvodreka and also of internal luminosity.
he objectively views the actions and emotions of the adversary, who is necessarily a man of no principle, and sees how lack of adherence to moral principles inevitably leads to suffering and destruction, irrespective of the power and position of the man and, therefore, is dissuaded from the path of sin.
2.9
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
Review Questions
Rasa Siddhanta is such a doctrine of Indian Sanskrit poetics that has received an extraordinary importance. How far do you agree to this statement? Write a detailed note on Bharatas rasa siddhanata. Write a detailed note on the nature of rasa .
What are the constituents of rasa according to Bharata ? Write a detailed note. Elucidate the concept of sadharanikaran or generalization. Why is sadharanikaran or generalization necessary and what is its place in rasanubhuti or rasa-realisation. Define the concept of sahridaya in relation to rasanubhuti or rasa-realisation.
2.10 Bibliography
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
Kavi, Ramakrishna. (Ed.) Bharata Muni, Natya-shastram with Abhinavabharati. Gaekwads Oriental Series. Baroda: Oriental Institute, vol. (1956), vol. II (1934), vol IV (1964). Panchal, Govardhan. The Theatres of Bharata and Some Aspects of Sanskrit Playproduction. Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1986.
en t
Pandey, K.C.ComparativeAesthetics, Vol.I: Indian Aesthetics. Varanasi: Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series,1995. Tripathi, R S. A Critical Approach to Classical Indian Poetics. Delhi: Chaukhambha Orientalia, 1984. _____________
re
fo
rT
ra
di
Gupt, Bharat. Dramatic Concepts Greek and Indian : A Study of the Poetics and the Nayashastra. Delhi: D. K. Printworld, 1994.
24
tio
Ghosh, M. Natya-shastra. Kolkata: Manisha Granthalaya, 1967.
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
UNIT-3 ACARYA KUNTAKAS VAKROKTIJIVITAM

Structure 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Objectives Introduction
Classification of Vakrokti 3.3.1 3.3.2 3.3.3 3.3.4 3.3.5 3.3.6 Varna-vinysa-vakrat (Phonetic obliquity) Pada-prvrddha-vakrat ( Lexical obliquity)
Pada-parrddha-vakrat (Grammatical obliquity) vkya-vakrat (Sentential obliquity)
Prabandha- vakrat (compositional obliquity)
3.4 3.5 3.6
Let Us Sum up Review Questions Bibliography
3.0
Objectives
The objectives of the present unit are to enable the student to:
en t
3.1
Vakrokti (obliquity) is a concept of Sanskrit poetics for making an assessment of kvya (literature). Though all the Sanskrit cryas like Bharata, Bhmaha, Dandin, Vman, Rudrata, nandavardhana, Abhinavagupta, Bhoja, Rjaekhara and others dealt with vakrokti, it was crya Kuntaka who elevated this concept to a full-fledged theory in his treatise Vakroktijvitam written in the first half of the eleventh century for the purpose of making an assessment of kvya (literature).The word vakrokti consists of two components vakra and ukti the first of which means crooked, indirect or unique and the second means expression or speech. Thus the literal meaning of vakrokti is crooked or indirect speech. 25
re
make an assessment of a text explore a significant area intersection between the Indian and western thinking.
Introduction
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
Prakarana-vakrat (Episodic obliquity)
lE
du
ca
tio n
The Vakroktijivitam of Acarya Kuntaka
3.2
The Vakroktijivitam of Acarya Kuntaka
Propounding his theory mainly in this sense mentioned above, he went too far in making vakrokti the soul of poetry as the title of the book, Vakroktijivitam itself unfolds. He mustered courage to blaze a new trail of critical appraisal and proclaimed vakrokti to be the life of poetry. Kuntaka elevated it to the status of a full-fledged principle of poetic assessment in his treatise. He defined vakrokti as vakrokti-raiva vaidagdhyabhangibhaniti uccayate. That is to say an utterance, characterised by wit or ingenuity is vakrokti. Kuntaka, however, means more than what this definition conveys. To him uniqueness of expression, born of poets compositional skill, adorning both word and meaning is vakrokti. It is an indispensable character in the texture of poetry; it is a striking mode of speech; it is the result of a talented
en t
The most exhaustive treatment of vakokti was attempted by Acarya Kuntaka in the first half of the tenth century in his treatise the Vakroktijivitam. He devotes nearly the whole of his text which has four chapters, with the exception of the introductory portion of the First chapter, to the definition, classification and illustration of six varieties vakrokti. He has classified vakrkt into forty nine sub-varieties under six major heads, such as varna-vinysa-vakrat (phonetic obliquity) pada-prvrddha-vakrat (lexical obliquity), pada-parrddha-vakrat (grammatical obliquity), vkya-vakrat (sentential obliquity), prakarana-vakrat (episodic obliquity) and prabandha- vakrat (compositional obliquity). The second chapter takes up for detailed consideration the first three varieties of vakrokti . In the third chapter is dealt with vkya-vakrat (sentential obliquity), and in the fourth prakarana-vakrat (episodic obliquity) and prabandha- vakrat (compositional obliquity) In this way, vakrokti comes to embrace the entire gamut of the poetic art. This division, which starts with the unique use of phonemes or syllables and ends up with the handling or managing of the composition as a whole, ascertains that Kuntakas approach to poetry is very minute and scientific.
re
fo
rT
ra
di
26
tio
na
lE
du
In modern vocabulary vakrokti has been translated as obliquity. The earliest use of vakrokti is discernible in Atharvaveda and Agnipurana in which it is used in the sense of crookedness. Later the Sanskrit poets used vakrokti in their own ways. Subandhu used the word vaidagdhya in the sense of vakrokti; Amar and Bna used vakrokti in the sense of humorous remark the former in the description of the condition of his heroine who had become angry with her husband for the first time, and the latter in a bantering humorous speech made by Candrapda about the quarrel of the parrot and jealous main. The parrot, addressing Candrapda, said that she also understood all oblique statement and could make use of witty remarks. Thus in literature vakrokti was regarded as dhvani alankra or sabdlankra which has two types - lena vakrokti (obliquity of intonation) and kku vakrokti (obliquity of paronomasia). The Sanskrit cryas anlysed vakrokti in their own ways, saying that it sets off to advantage all figures of speech. They considered vakrokti to be present in all alankras and emphasized the oblique quality of language of a poet. To them, obliquity was the essential distinguishing feature of poetry. Thus now vakrokti became a unique utterance, transcending the common modes of speech and integrated with charm.
ca
tio n
poet or in other words it depends upon kavi-vypra (the poetic function of a poet ); it is a poetic expression of speech as distinguished from expression or speech, either of the ordinary work-a-day life or of the scientific laboratory, the scholastic class-room and the philosophical text-book; it is also recognised as the embellishment of the word and its meaning, the physical constituent of poetry; it facilitates the expression to give a kind of unique pleasure to the sahrdaya. Kuntaka seems to adds that there is no line of demarcation between vakrokti and poetry; they have invariably the same character assimilated with each other To conclude, every charming feature of poetry must be recognised as vakrokti; Thus vakrat separates poetry from other forms of expression, and is co-existent with the delightful nature of poetry. It consists of the peculiar turn given to any expression due to the kavivypra , which may be explained as an act of imagination on the part of the poet. In this way, vakrat is totally related to and is the result of poets genius. Mere vakrat does not make poetry. It must delight the mind of the reader who is responsive to the true beauty of poetry. The test of vakrokti is its contribution to camatkra (aesthetic enjoyment) experienced by the reader. Kuntaka designates vakrokti as vicitrabhidh, which transcends abhidh (the ordinary connotation).
3.3
Classification of Vakrokti
3.3.1 Varna-vinysa-vakrat (Phonetic obliquity)

Varna-vinysa-vakrat (Phonetic obliquity) is one of the six varieties of vakrat (obliquity), , the other five being the pada-prvrddha-vakrat (lexical obliquity), padaparrddha-vakrat (grammatical obliquity), vkya-vakrat (sentential obliquity), prakaranavakrat (episodic obliquity) and prabandha- vakrat (compositional obliquity) as given by crya Kuntaka in his treatise Vakroktijvitam written in the first half of the eleventh century for the purpose of making an assessment of kvya (literature). In this vakrat, Kuntaka has included all possible arrangement of phonemes or consonants in kvya. The first kind of arrangement is the free and irregular repetition of similar or identical varnas (phonemes or consonants) at varying intervals and this arrangement gives texture and beauty to the expression. Kuntaka further divides it into three sub-varieties repetition of one varna, repetition of two varnas and repetition of more than two varnas. The second kind of varna-vinysa-vakrat too has three sub-varieties : (i) when stops are combined with their homorganic nasals; (ii) when liquids are doubled and; (iii) when consonants become conjunct with ra etc. Kuntaka also includes the arrangement of varnas without any interval employed artistically by the writer for a high poetic charm. He calls it the third sub-variety of varna-vinysa-vakrat . The fourth sub-variety, according to Kuntaka, is the repetition of new varGas. He holds that a discontinuance of earlier repetition of varnas and choice of new ones also impart beauty to the expression. Mentioning the sub-varieties of varna-vinysavakrat , he remarks that chime also falls under it, and adds that chime should be affected 27
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
without extra effort; it should be adorned with syllables which are not harsh; it should be in consonance with feelings conveyed; and lastly it should be with propriety. All these sub-varieties of varna-vinysa-vakrat have innumerable charming effects in determining precise nature of attributes and style based on them. But they need a careful attention as they have their own limitations. Kuntaka is fully aware of these limitations. He holds that the arrangement of varnas should not violate propriety and should be in consonance with the feelings conveyed. It should be without extra effort, adorned with syllables which are not harsh. It should be very carefully chosen and should not be tarnished by unattractive varnas. The writer should beautify his work by the repetition of novel varnas. And, finally, lucidity should be maintained at any cost. Kuntaka says that writers use these sub-varieties of varna-vinysa-vakrat in order to impart beauty to the poetic expression. They are, in fact, used for various kinds of effects in various ways. Coleridges poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner demonstrates the sound-effect caused by the phonetic obliquity. In the lines : The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew/the furrow followed free; the sound /b/ is indicative of explosion and /f/ suggests a movement with quickness and friction. The sound /d/ repeated in the line day after day, day after day suggests monotony and immobility.
Pada-prvrddha-vakrat ( Lexical obliquity) is found in the basal forms of the words. According to Kuntaka, it comprises all effects based on the writers choice of the words the choice which is guided by strangeness, evocativeness, commonness or freshness of words. There are words that can impart strangeness and freshness to a writers utterance. There are other words which make kvya one of the joys in widest commonalty spread, by their very plainness and commonness. There are yet other words which make kvya richly and deeply evocative one with the soul-stress that lies in the music of the words. Finally, there are words which become luminous centres of transfigured meaning and of imaginative association quintessential words. Such words are the wealth of the vocabulary of kavya. It is a kind of divine sureness of instinct that enables a writer to select the appropriate word from one of these categories. The temperament of a writer has also some affinity with certain categories of words and this is one of the bases on which poetic styles are formed. One has only to examine the poetic vocabulary of writers in order to realise the affinity that exists between certain types of poetic temperament and clusters of poetic vocabulary. Kuntaka defines that when the words of common usage are employed so as to include an attribution of associate meaning other than the primary ones, we have pada-prvrddha-vakrat. This includes various sub-varieties : r hi-vaicitrya -vakrat (obliquity of usage), paryya-vakrat (obliquity of synonym), upacra-vakrat (obliquity of transference), viesana-vakrat (obliquity of adjective), sanvrti-vakrat (obliquity of concealment), vrtti-vakrat (obliquity of indeclinable), linga28
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
3.3.2 Pada-prvrddha-vakrat ( Lexical obliquity)
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
vaicitrya-vakrat (obliquity of gender), kriy-vaicitrya-vakrat (obliquity of verb). Rhi-vaicitrya-vakrat (obliquity of usage) is the first sub-variety of padaprvrddha-vakrat. In this regard, Kuntaka says that when a conventional denotation of words inheres connotation of even improbable meaning or includes exaggeration of an attribute in the writers attempt to express extraordinary derision or supreme exaltation of the object, we have rhi-vaicitrya -vakrat. It lies in the infinitude of usage. The writer, with his individual power, employs the common usage in such a way that it gives a new meaning which may be improbable or exaggerated. Dhvani cryas have analysed it in arthntar-sankramita vcyadhvani (partial transformation of meaning) takes. In fact, the obliquity of usage lies in the transformation of the conventional meaning. In this transformation, the connotation of improbable meaning is imposed upon the words which are obsolete, dead or of common usage. Kuntaka says that words are important not only for what they denote, that is, for the meaning which they themselves actually convey, but also for what they connote, what they suggest. Thus through this vakrat the poet can glimpse a vast unknown that waits at the limit of our familiar worlds. Paryya-vakrat (obliquity of synonym) which Kuntaka explains in the second chapter of his Vakroktijvitam, encounters the oblique use of synonyms. He holds that in kvya the use of synonyms takes place in different ways, like when it is an integral part of a literal meaning; when it nourishes the literal meaning to its climax; when it or its adjective beautifies the expression and gives a meaning different from the literal one; when the literal meaning achieves excellence by its own splendour; when it is employed to express some impossible meaning; and when it is employed in conjunction with a figure of speech. In every language we have many words conveying the similar meaning, though they have different implications and associations. Such words are called synonyms. Usage confers certain properties and association on certain words which give different shades of meaning and distinct associations. Kuntaka says that the writer should be aware of these different shades of meaning in them and should use them accurately. Each word has its own spirit and music. No writer other than the writer is more sensitive to the various dimensions of the word. It is he who unmasks the internal vibration of words and employs them in such a way so as to exalt the beauty of the poetic expression. Poets aim at depicting the objects, abstractions or feelings with sincerity and honesty. They employ synonyms or a chain of images so that the object described can become vividly clear to the reader. Upacra-vakrat (obliquity of transference) deals with the introduction of human faculty in inanimate objects with oblique use of diction. In this vakrat, a word is used in its secondary sense to refer to an object with which it is not directly associated. Kuntaka defining this vakrat says that when the stated and the implied, though apparently far removed from each other, have a common attribute, howsoever slight which may be and lends itself to hyperbolic treatment, imparting charm and delight in kvya., we have upacra-vakrat . In it the epithet is transferred from the appropriate noun to modify another which it does not really 29
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
belong to. This sub-variety treats the abstract phenomena and the inanimate objects metaphorically. Here both the objects, stated and implied, have difference in their basic natures and basic properties. If one is concrete, other is abstract; if one is animate, other is inanimate; if one is solid, other is liquid. In this way, implied is an imaginative knowledge, formulated on the basis of the stated. And there is a progression from the external to the internal and a talented poet by using this shift imparts a captivating effect in kvya. According to Kuntaka, adjectives also have a significant value in the composition of kvya. It is the oblique use of adjectives that heightens the beauty of a verb or case and gives liveliness and picturesqueness to the poetic language. Kuntaka terms this oblique use of adjectives as viesana-vakrat (obliquity of adjectives). He holds that it is the right use of adjectives due to which rasa reaches its climax. Talented poets are conscious of the fact that the adjectives explore and find out all the possibilities of language in order to communicate the poetic experience. They contribute memorableness and evocativeness to imaginative meaning in kvya. The language, indeed, becomes dead and incapable of communicating new poetic content, if the writer fails to recognize the function of the devices like vierana-vakrat. The true test of a writer is to be seen in his use of adjectives because adjectives are those words which can easily be altered in polishing a piece of literature. Sanvrti-vakrat (obliquity of concealment) operates in kvya when the subject of description is screened by the use of pronoun and so on, in order to achieve excellence of expression. The writer uses pronouns for concealment because they are of implicit nature and point out screened position of the object being described. This use of pronouns is necessitated by the poets keenness to convey infinite specialty of the object being described. crya Kuntaka is fully aware of the fact that art lies concealing art. He explains all possible kinds of this vakrat in kvya : 1. When an extraordinary beautiful object is contemplated directly, there is a loss in its beauty. So in order to check this loss and enhance the beauty, the writer employs pronouns to screen contemplation.
2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
en t
Sometimes when the words fail to explain the natural beauty of an object, which has received its excellence, the writer employs to accelerate the beauty of expression. Sometimes an extraordinary delicate object, due to its excessive qualities, starts vibrating with beauty not by description but by sheer use of pronouns. The objects which are only worth-experiencing by senses and inexplicable by words, are expressed by this device. It is not possible to describe an object perceptible by the experience of senses. In such a case , the writer uses this device. When an object, having a flaw in its nature or due to poets desire of describing it, fails
re
fo
rT
ra
di
30
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
to be equated with a great sin or evil, it is screened by pronouns. 7. Sometimes there is a doubt that an object, due to the writers desire of describing it, may be a victim of inferior expression. In such a case poet uses this vakrat in kvya to protect the beauty of expression.
Linga-vaicitrya-vakrat (obliquity of gender) is another sub-variety of padaprvrddha-vakrat. It occurs in kvya when a gender is employed in such a way as to enhance the beauty of expression. It operates at three levels. First, when words belonging to two hetrogeneous genders are brought together and used without distinction in a generalised way; second, when the feminine gender is used, ignoring an other possible gender, merely for the sake of excellence in the expression and third, when keeping in view the meaning of expression, the existence of the gender described, is avoided and a particular word is employed to enhance the beauty of kvya. Kuntaka holds that the third level of this vakrat, which has most striking role in kvya, is employed by a talented poet. It increases the potency of the meaning and acts in association with figures of speech like, simile, metaphor, personification etc.
en t
Kriy-vaicitrya-vakrat ( obliquity of verb) is pertaining to the speciality of verb, which can be realized in no less than five forms. These forms consist of vakrata which is seen when there is a cohesion of the subject with the verb; when another subject attains excellence
re
fo
rT
As far as vrtti-vakrat (obliquity of indeclinable) is concerned, it is used in relation to the compound words, secondary derivatives or suffixes which form such derivatives and participles and so on. Kuntaka says that when the indeclinables dominate and heighten the expression, we have vrtti-vakrat . Among indeclinables, compound word is a key figure and provides a base to obliquity. As such, the obliquity of compound word is a comprehensive subject and needs an elaborate description. Regarding the form of obliquity of compound words Dr Nagendra gives two answers. First answer may denote the selection of all striking words as every good the writer forms a new striking word by combining two words together. Second answer may be the beauty which lies in the structure of this new unit. Here richness of beauty mainly lies in the structure of compound word and has nothing special to do with its meaning. This analysis sets forth broad and extensive view of Kuntaka. According to him, the obliquity of compound word means a richness of beauty born out of new formation of compound word phraseology which makes the whole atmosphere comprehensible. As has already been referred to, the secondary derivatives and participles are also related to this vakrat. The secondary derivatives are formed by suffixes. As far as participles are concerned, they hardly need an explanatory note. One more aspect, that falls under this vakrat, is the use of slang. They are, nonetheless, formed like secondary derivatives. In a word, now we can say, in general, that, according to Kuntaka, the obliquity of indeclinable means a formation of new structures like compound words, secondary derivatives, participles and slangs which, with a propriety of meaning and emotion, impart beauty to the expression in kvya.
ra
di
tio
na
31
lE
du
ca
tio n
in relation to the same verb; when the adverbials go to quality it; when metaphorical superimposition heightens the beauty of the verb-form and; when the direct object, though concealed, gets charmingly communicated. The writers coin new expressions by exploiting these forms in their different combinations which construct various images in their poetry. They employ verb-forms associated with subjects and objects which come direct from the intense communication with the living world in which he had lived, moved and had his being. Study shorter poems of your choice in the light the sub-varieties if this obliquity.
Kuntaka states that when in kvya, expression attains excellence due to the striking use of a tense in a particular context and the reader feels transported, it is called kla-vaicitryavakrat (obliquity of tense). In this vakrata, the writer expresses himself in the tense other than the one ordinarily required. And a talented or gifted the writer, by contemplating the past or future action in the present, produces charm and beauty in his expression. One point is worth noting here that propriety is strictly to be observed in the employment of the tense. Hence, Kuntaka emphasized upon the capitulation of the tense under agreed condition which means a mutual relationship between the tense and the context. The historical present, as discussed in the Western poetics, is quite similar to Kuntakas kla-vaicitraya-vakrat . In both the cases, the past incidents and happenings are contemplated in the first form of the verb so as to produce charming effect. Such experiment, undoubtedly, enhances the beauty of kvya. A talented writer is very conscious of time and place. He turns to the remote in time and place. He does so for two reasons: firstly, his longing for the past provides him an escape from the corking cares and corroding anxieties of the world; secondly, it satisfies his craving for the uncommon and the strange. He finds in the past enough beauty and joy to feed the waning flame of his soul. His interest in the past satisfies the emotional sense of wonder on one hand and the intellectual sense of curiosity on the other. He, rebelling against the immediate past, finds an antiquarian interest in the remote past. This past proves fruitful in suggesting
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
In kvya, crya Kuntaka holds, the writer is also guided by the consideration of special tense, case, number, person, voice, prefix, suffix and particle. He discusses these various sources in his treatment of vakrat in the inflectional forms of substantives. This variety of vakrat includes all possibilities of varying the grammatical constructions of an expression and most of them have been included by nandavardhana in his treatment of dhvani. Defining it, Kuntaka says that when several forms of literary turns occur together in such a way as to enhance the beauty of one another, they produce artistic charm, reminiscent of myriad-faced beauty. According to Kuntaka, this charm is termed as pada-parrddha-vakrat which bears many sub-varieties like kla-vaicitraya-vakrat (obliquity of tense), kraka-vakrat (obliquity of case) snkhya-vakrat (obliquity of number) purusa-vakrat (obliquity of person), upagraha-vakrat (obliquity of voice), upasarga-vakrat (obliquity of prefix), pratyaya-vakrat (obliquity of suffix), nipta-vakrat (obliquity of particle).
32
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
3.3.3 Pada-parrddha-vakrat (Grammatical obliquity)
themes and satisfies the craving for the mysterious, as well as for the picturesque. It fascinates imagination by its romantic stories. For example in the over-charged atmosphere of the Middle Ages, the Romantic writers sought the virgin sources of romantic effect and of a strange beauty and of things likely or remote. These writers took up the past experiences as subject of their works and infused them with an alluring charm by their way of presentation. Kraka-vakrat (obliquity of case) is based on the oblique transposition of the cases.Kuntaka says that when an ordinary case is employed in kvya by the writer as a main case or vice-versa or the cases are transposed, we have kraka - vakrat. The beauty or strikingness, produced by this vakrat, depends solely on the transposition of the cases which aims at heightening the poetic expression. According to him, this transposition of case animates the subject symbolically and makes it more functional poetically. Like kraka-vakrat , snkhya-vakrat (obliquity of number) too functions on the basis of the oblique transposition of numbers . Kuntaka holds that a vakrat which, the writer employs, out of his fascination for the strikingness in his kvya, to transpose the numbers singular number is changed into plural number and vice-versa is called snkhyavakrat. This interchange of two opposite numbers imparts beauty and charm to the poetic expression and consequently the meaning gets its heightened form. Sometimes poet, in order to attain sublimity in kvya, transposes persons also. This style of expression, according to Kuntaka, is purusa-vakrat (obliquity of person). In poetic expression, it causes heightened emotions. In this regard, Kuntaka further says that the charm, beauty or strikingness is an indispensable outcome of this transposition of persons. The appropriate use of the obliquity of person is possible only in epic poetry but at the same time it is not true to negate its role completely in other forms of kvya. In fact, this sub-variety of pada-parrddha-vakrat is a psychological expression and its strikingness is discernible in all kinds of kvya. Another sub-variety of this vakrat is upagraha-vakrat (obliquity of voice). Obviously it works upon the two modes or voices of roots active and passive. Active mode expresses that the action depends upon the subject, while passive mode tells that the action depends upon some other faculty. According to Kuntaka, these voices have an important role in kvya. He holds that sometimes either of the modes or voices is employed by poet specifically in order to produce beauty in kvya.
en t
The last sub-variety of pada-parrddha-vakrat, is nipta-vakrat (obliquity of particle). Like the above mentioned two sub-varieties of pada-parrddha-vakrat, niptavakrat is also concerned with the oblique use of particle. Though a particle is an independent component or merely an exclamatory sound and has no grammatical bond with words, it plays an important role in kvya. A talented writer uses this particle to denote some strong feelings or emotions of joy, melancholy,pathos, wonder and mystery etc.in kvya. A particle, remains inactive in isolation but in conjunction with a word, it vibrates with a force and intensifies 33
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
the meaning. This is why, according to Kuntaka, the combination of particle and word which enhances the beauty of expression, is called upasarga-vakrat. Study shorter poems of your choice in the light the sub-varieties if this obliquity.
3.3.4 vkya-vakrat (Sentential obliquity)

Vkya-vakrat , as the name itself expresses, operates at the level of vkya (sentence) to deal with vastu (contents or subject-matter). Defining it, Kuntaka writes that when the vastu is described in a way conducive to beauty by virtue of the charming words, we have vkya or vastu-vakrat. Kuntaka holds that vastu, replete with beauty, serve an integral purpose in a poetic composition. The vastu of the composition may be sahaj (natural), hrya (imposed). On the basis of this division of vastu, Kuntaka has divided vkya-vakrat into two sub-varieties : sahaj-vakrat (natural obliquity) and hrya-vakrat (imposed obliquity). When the vastu, replete with innate beauty, is described without heavy embellishment in a simple style, it has sahaj-vakrat. Now the writer, by his natural power of contemplating the natural objects lively, allures the heart of the sensitive reader. In this connection, Kuntaka, putting a rider, says that the vastu, which is to be described, should be conductive to beauty by virtue of its own natural alluring charm. In other words, it should have an appeal to heart by its own natural beauty. A talented poet is competent enough in making this vastu and is characteristics more alluring. This means that the natural charm of the vastu still requires the labour of the writers function. Kuntakas sahaj-vakrat seems to have a paradox because, on one hand, he considers charm or beauty of the vastu as the creation of poets labour while, on the other, he says that the charm lies in the vastu itself. Kuntaka, avoiding this paradox, accepts both the objective and subjective substances. He establishes a harmonious relationship between the writer and the subject-matter and gives equal importance to both the subjectmatter and the writer. According to him, as has already been said, the beauty is the result of the relationship between the poets function and the vastu. Thus he pays equal importance to both, without considering them primary and secondary. The writer, as indeed any true artist, sees or conceives the very same thing not in the same way as common people. In the case of the latter, all things stand in some relations to his personal interests, which should be understood to connote also scientific interest in them as subjects of his knowledge. But for the writer, the object has no connection with his or anybodys interest, not even as an object of knowledge; he has a vision of the things in itself in its true nature. This critique of Kuntaka bears new dimensions of vkya-vakrat. Undoubtedly, the natural charm of the vastu is the result of the writers function. A literary piece is nothing but a manifestation of the writers own soul, executed by his poetic function in a most natural and simple way. Some ancient Indian cryas consider vkya-vakrat as svabhvokti alankra. The ordinary nature of things which Kuntaka calls vastu or vkya vakrat, is just an alankra (figure of speech) to Bhmaha and other cryas. Kuntaka, unlike Bhmaha, description, without striking graceful qualities, shall not be heart-appealing to a sahrdaya (sensitive reader). 34
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
Supporting his argument, he says that as a painting, drawn on a bad distinguishes alaAkra from vastu. According to Kuntaka, svabhvokti alankra is not a figure of speech, but an act of figure of speech. He argues that if the ordinary nature of things is treated as svabhvokti alankra, then anybody can describe this nature of an object. Such description would not require any poetic art or function. Consequently, this canvas, fails to attain excellence, an ordinary object, heaped with figures of speech too, cannot transcend the various shades of beauty. Hence, the natural beauty of the vastu, which is termed as vastu-vakrat, should be considered as an act of figures of speech employed in tune with the message to be conveyed. In this way, Kuntaka gives his consent for the employment of all possible alankras in kvya. But at the same time, he also says that when the subject-matter has natural beauty, it should not be heavily embellished with alankra like metaphor etc. Otherwise, it may cause a harm to the natural beauty of the subject-matter. There are instances in kvya, where, even without embellishment or figures of speech, an extraordinary beauty is observed. The obliquity of nature is a device by which the writer heightens such instances in kvya. The ordinary nature of things, as available in the world, forms the material for the play of the writers imagination. The writers eye alone can see it and his imagination alone can embody the striking and special aspect of things. In fact Natures world is brazen; the writers only deliver it golden. It is the function of a writer to reveal the hidden beauty of the object. While the writer is under the finer influence of life, he feels so intensely and vividly that his feelings spontaneously find utterances in an unadorned language. hrya vakrat (Imposed obliquity) is the second sub-variety of vkya-vakrat. When the expression attains a heightened beauty due to the use of skill, we have hrya vakrat. Here the skill means technical art acquired by the poet. This excels the beauty of individual elements such as words, meaning, attributes and embellishment. The subject-matter is not entirely an imaginative matter, rather it has its own power in it but with no attraction. The writer, by his art, imagines a divine beauty in it and its character becomes potent and prominent, manifesting a new form of beauty. Thus the subject-matter and the writers art are complementary to each other to arrive at the same end. According to Kuntaka, art is not different from arthlankra (figure of sense). It transforms the subject-matter and describes it in various ways. In other words, the writer describes the subject-matter in many ways based on the kinds of this obliquity produced by arthlankra. Kuntaka admits a thousand varieties of it and includes the whole lot of alankra in it. But he considers their use relevant so far as they produce grandeur and beauty. This is why, he holds that the writer should not employ them arbitrarily to describe the subject-matter. By introducing an element of strangeness into what one speaks or hears everyday, the alankras satisfy a basic demand of human nature that for a pleasant surprise. This obliquity is effective only when it appears in disguise, that is to say, when it is shaded by the brilliance of style of the writer. In a plain style, it makes all the show, throwing the rest of the utterance into shade. Though a writer for special reasons, may now and then renounce the use of figurative language, it remains true that this is the characteristic and habitual mode of utterance, not only of poetry, but of all emotional prose.
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
35
lE
du
ca
tio n
Study shorter poems of your choice in the light the sub-varieties if this obliquity.
3.3.5 Prakarana-vakrat (Episodic obliquity)

This vakrat deals with the oblique use of prakarana (episode). Kuntaka says that when the intended object is capable of maintaining suspense all along and is the product of the unique, boundless poetic skill underlying it, we have prakarana -vakrat (episodic obliquity). Here he means to say is that the writer, overwhelmed with the zest of creation, creates an alluring charm in the subject - matter. According to him, this very charm is nothing but prakarana -vakrat. He describes the following nine sub-varieties of this vakrata : bhvaprnasthiti vakrat (obliquity of emotional states), utapdya lvanya vakrat (obliquity of modified source story), prakarana upakrya-upakraka bhva vakrat (obliquity of episodic relationship), viismha prakarna vakrat (obliquity of particular event and episode) , angirasa nisyandanikasa vakrat (obliquity of dominant rasa), apradhna prasanga vakrat (obliquity of secondary episodes), prakarantara vakrat (obliquity of play within play), sandhi vinivea vakrat (obliquity of juncture) According to Kuntaka, bhvaprnasthiti vakrat (obliquity of emotional state) is concerned with the state of a talented poet. Now the words or expression come out with a wild gust of enthusiasm. In other words, now the writer is filled with a kind of frenzy which gives an alluring charm and strikingness. It leads to loftiness of utterance and so it is an indispensable device employed in a good composition. Kuntaka holds that a prakarana (episode or incident) is merely a desert. It is the emotions that infuse music of life in it. The talented writer creates such emotional states in the episodes of his composition. Longinus, affirming the role of such states, says that nothing makes so much for grandeur as true emotion in the right place, for it inspires the words, as it were, with a wild gust of mild enthusiasm and
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
36
tio
na
lE
du
Kuntaka describes few other kinds of vakrat also based on the subjectmatter animate and inanimate. Animate has two sub-kinds primary and secondary. The primary subject-matter includes deities, devils, super-human beings and men while the secondary subject-matter covers birds and animals or beasts. As far as the subject-matter, based on inanimate objects, is concerned, it includes the objects of Nature i.e. water, trees, flowers etc. Thus Kuntaka, maintaining the hierarchy in the selection of the subject-matter, first places deities, devils, super-human beings, and men. The animates like birds and beasts fall in the secondary subject-matter. Although all the figures have their own nature, the poet, by his art, introduces in them an element of strangeness which satisfies the basic demand of human nature. Like all the animate objects, Kuntaka employs inanimate objects, too, as the subject of kavya, considering them as stimulants in the production of rasa. In this way, the subject- matter has its two kinds nature dominated subject and rasa dominated subject . Besides them, Kuntaka also includes the means of attaining salvation dharma, (righteousness) artha (worldly possessions), kma (desire), mokca (salvation) , too, as the subjectmatter.
ca
tio n
en t
Utapdya lvanya vakrat (obliquity of modified source story) is another subvariety which is associated with the source of the kvya. The pictures of life, portrayed by the writers, are not faithful copies, accurately rendered in words. They are modified by a predominant imagination. They become striking by associated thoughts or images awakened by that imagination, or when they have the effect of reducing multitudes to unity, or succession to an instant. In this way, imagination plays an important role in transforming or changing the source material of the composition. The present sub-variety is based on the writers imagination. By it he may change the details of the source story to make the characterization more consistent; he may give a hint for future development; he may insert events of his own creation. Besides the invention of something new, he may significantly rearrange the source story. Now the writer also aims at introducing universal element in the source story. He makes the kvya not mere reproductions of facts but truths embedded with those facts that apply to all places and times. He has in his mind, the things as they were or are, things as they are said or thought to be and things as they ought to be. In other words, what is past or present, what is commonly believed and what is ideal. In this connection, Kuntakas views equate with those of Aristotle. Aristotle holds that it is not the function of the poet to relate what has happened, but what may happen, what is a possible according to the law of probability or necessity. The writer and the historian differ not by writing in verse or prose but the true difference is that the historian relates to what has happened, while the poet holds what may happen. Kuntaka says that this imaginative or inventive change beautifies the episode so much so that it, being replaced with aesthetic delight, appears to be the soul of the composition. Consequently, a sensitive reader experiences an aesthetic transport. Kalidasa made use of utapadya lavanya vakrata (obliquity of modified source story) in the play Abhijnan shakuntalam.His poetic genius, aided by his deep dramatic insight quickly saw that the story though simple and unromantic in its form. It was pre-eminently fitted to be the nucleus of such dramatic situations and incidents as would stir up the hearts of the reader and produce a magical effect upon him. And who can say that he was wrong in his selection? If the reader reads this matchless drama again and again, it never loses its charm for him. He relishes it with renewed taste, his soul remains uplifted as he proceeds. The play becomes so much enraptured with its beauties that it is held fast as by a spell and is soon lost in the greater
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
37
lE
du
ca
tio n
fills them with divine frenzy. This is why, he prefers the Iliad to the Odyssey and Demosthenes to Cicero . Like stately thoughts, stately emotions, it may be assumed , also belong to the loftiest souls. But they have to be true emotions and in the right place. Kuntaka values the emotional states for aesthetic transport which they cause. He, therefore, offers an artistic explanation for emotional appeal in the composition. It is worth-mentioning here that Kuntaka accepts these emotional states merely as emotional utterances of the characters. To him, the emotional states are the responses of characters to various circumstances in human life, which they are put in. He adds that such emotional flows are very important in kvya to cause a great charm.
soul of the dramatist. Goethes words that the soul is charmed, enraptured, feasted and fed , are literally true to this illustrious production of Kalidasa. What Kuntaka values most in prakarana vakrat is the mutual relationship in episodes which he calls prakarana upakrya-upakraka bhva vakrat (obliquity of episodic relationship). Defining it, he writes that an organic unity which strikingly underlines various incidents described in different parts of the works leading to the intended end, each bound to the other by a relationship of mutual assistance, reveals the essence of creative originality which is most detectable in the case of rare poetic geniuses who are endowed with the gift of an extraordinary creative imagination. Here he means that all incidents should be complementary to one-another in a kvya. They should assist one another mutually in achieving the intended end. The incidents do not have their existence in isolation in the composition. Rather, they exist meaningfully by the relationship of mutual assistance.
Angirasa nisyandanikasa vakrat (obliquity of dominant rasa) is the consummation of angirasa which generally takes place in epic poems or works of such scale and compass. Indian cryas interpreted kvya in terms of rasa. According to them, it is the experience of the intended dominant angirasa which is the achievement of the sahrdaya, being the ultimate result of his response to any work of eminence. It is an artistic truism that a writer has an eye, from the very outset, on the nourishment of the angirasa and all his compositional skills and cautions are directed to the concretization of that emotion. Careful readers will agree to the fact that the atmosphere created and promoted in the story, contributes substantially to the evocation of the intended emotion. Here, apart from the parts and episodes of the plot, the character of the hero, exercises a major role. Accordingly in our investigation, we shall try to
en t
re
Viismha prakarna vakrat (obliquity of particular event and episode), as the title itself unfolds, is concerned with the oblique use of event and episode. Defining it , Kuntaka says that when a meaning in the episodes of a kavya, even being repeated again and again, embellished with new kind of ornaments each time, produces a striking beauty, we have this sub-variety of prakarna vakrat. At this level Kuntaka himself had a question in his mind : Shall the repetition of expression, consisting of the same meaning, not be a blemish in itself? Kuntaka, answering this question, says that, ordinarily, this kind of repetition is a flaw but the writer of a high talent, uses this repetition as a device to renew the object each time. In fact, this is the result of a state of the impassioned writer who, charged with passions, does not count the repetition of the same meaning in the composition. Likewise, a sensitive reader, too, is carried away by an impassioned utterance. This type of exaggerated description of things or episodes take place in the epics or the works of great length and magnitude. To a great extent, these allusions have the functions of Homeric similes. Like Homeric similes, they are employed to raise out some glorious images or sentiments to heighten the main story of the composition. They amuse the reader by sublime kind of entertainment and relax the mind of the reader by frequently disengaging him from too painful an attention to the principle subject, and by leading him into their agreeable images.
fo
rT
ra
di
38
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
follow and discover how the atmosphere intended by the playwright develops and engrosses the reader / spectator or can overpower the spectator if he has been to witness the performance on the stage. In this regard Kuntaka says that when a particular episode contributes to the consummation of angirasa in such a way as has not been manifested by any other episode of either of the parts former and latter of the composition, we have this sub-variety of prakarna vakrat. The savouring of the dominant emotion is possible through the combination or integration of these elements: vibhava, anubhava and vyabichari bhava. In Kalidass play the forest maiden, Shakuntala as well as the infatuated king is alamban. By uddipan are meant such features or circumstances that accentuate the feelings of alamban, which, in effect, would mean the hero or the heroine. The sylvan surroundings or the spring season will easily serve as uddipan for the erotic emotion or rati. Anubhavas signify the various gestures expressive of what is going on in the heart or the mind of main characters, like casting a terrified glance, heaving a sigh or involuntarily shedding a tear. Then there are ancillary feelings which go along with and consequently reinforce prevailing mood or emotional disposition. These supporting feelings are called vyabhicharis or sancharis because they are short lived and they can enter into alliance with a number of sthayi bhavas. The enduring passion in Dushyantas heart is ratior longing for Shakuntala, he is , however, continually subject to such vyabhicharis as ullas, (exihilaration), chapalata (ficklemindedness), and vyakulata, (nervousness). Apradhna prasanga vakrat (secondary episode) also contributes to the meaning of kvya, if it is arranged properly. A talented writer inducts a charming small reference or event within an episode for the sake of achieving the primary aim. He arranges interesting and meaningful secondary references or episodes within the episodes of his kvya . The induction of the secondary references or episodes is not merely decorative. They are employed integrally to attain the main purpose of the composition. Kuntaka unfolds that when apradhna prasanga vakrat is arranged integrally within an episode to nurse the purpose of the composition, we have this sub-variety of prakarna vakrat. There are many incidents which are dexterously intervowen in the construction of the play, Abhijnanshakuntalam, which shows this obliquity. These are, the pursuit of Shakuntala by a bee and her consequent flurry which skilfully made the fit occasion for the King to make his appearance in Act I; the seizure of the skirts of her garment by a fawn (Act IV.); the singing in the beginning of Act V which indirectly hints at the forgetting by the King of his former wife and which makes him as though love-lorn though he could not account for the cause; the unexpected recovery of the ring, the picture of the heroine and the consequent mental state of the King (Act VI.); the soliloquy and the swoon of the King on hearing of the death of a rich merchant who died childless (Act VI.). crya Kuntaka makes a provision of episode within an episode in kavya in order to achieve a particular meaning. Explaining this vakrat, Kuntaka says that a talented writer 39
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
employs prakarantara vakrat (obliquity of play within play), for a specific purpose. For this device, a set of actors other than the characters already employed, is introduced in the composition. These actors use the audience as the source material for their enactment in the compostion. Kuntaka, emphasizing upon this device, holds it to be an important presentation as it helps in getting the intended end. Sandhi vinivea vakrat (obliquity of juncture) includes different stages or junctions which take place in kvya. A sandhi (juncture) is a combination of different phases of main action with its subsidiaries. It marks the division of the dramatic actions. It is generally held that the formation of junctures depends upon different stages of action commencement, endeavour, prospect of success, certainty of success and attainment of fruit. Indian cryas call them as mukha sandhi, prati-mukhsandhi , garbha-sandhi, avamara or vimarasandhi and nirvahan-sandhi . Kuntaka includes sandhi- vinivea (arrangement of junctures) among the sub-varieties of prakarana-vakrat. He says that the junctures should be arranged in accordance with the rasa and the matter should be modified accordingly. If the results are excellent, Kuntaka would not bother about rules. He says that the poet should not have excessive craze for observing rules even when the junctures are inopportune, provided the episode reveals a unique charm of originality. The canonists hold that the junctures should be utilized in the architectonics of the plot if that contributes to the successful management thereof. But if it constructs the flow of the plot, then alteration can be restored to at the writers discretion. That is, the junctures are not to be compiled with merely for the sake of conformity with the authority of the rules. The canonists prescribe that where two junctures have to be abandoned, garbha and vimara are to be ignored; where three junctures are to be left out, prati-mukha, garbha and vimara should be abandoned. The paramount constraints upon the writer, what Kuntaka has already emphasized upon, is that he should be always subservient to a unique charm and accordingly, the junctures are never to be contrived at the cost of the composition. The obliquity of juncture can be seen in the play, Abhijnanashakuntalam.The play begins with the benediction. At the end of the prelude, Dushyanta, hero of dhirodatta class, begins the play. The mukha-sandhi commences and ends with Act II. It brings together the hero and the heroine and love strikes root in the hearts of both. Their union in marriage is the final object, and the whole machinery is to be directed towards its achievement. The ground for the seed is prepared when the Yaikhanasha says to the KingMay you get a son and it is cast when he further tells the King about the departure of Kanva Rishi just having entrusted to his daughter, Shakuntala The The prati-mukha-sandhi commences with the interaction between the King and Madhavya, kings confidential companion when the former considers the latter unfortunate for not seeing the beatiful Shakuntala and terminates with the close of the Act III. We have the bindu (the drop) in that the stream of the main action, though obstructed by such incidents as the talk about the chase, the double call of duty requiring the Kings attendance on the queen mother and his presence at the hermitage to ward off the obstacles to the holy rites and proceeds unhindered, as is implied by the words of the King
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
40
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
3.3.6 Prabandha- vakrat (compositional obliquity)

Prabandha- vakrat (compositional obliquity) is the last variety of vakrat (obliquity). This variety is said to bear the beauty of the combined complex of the five varieties varna-vinysa-vakrat (phonetic obliquity), pada-prvrddha-vakrat ( lexical obliquity), pada-parrddha-vakrat (grammatical obliquity), vkya-vakrat (sentential obliquity), prakarana-vakrat (episodic obliquity). These sub-varieties may be stated in the following way : rasntara-vakrat (obliquity of changing the rasa),. sampana-vakrat (obliquity of winding up the story), kath-viccheda-vakrat (obliquity of intending end), anusEgika-phal-vakrat (obliquity of contingent objective), nmakarana-vakrat (obliquity of title), and tulya-kath-vakrat (obliquity of identical subject). Rasntara-vakrat (obliquity of changing the rasa) is the soul of the whole kvya. All the episodes of plot are organized in accordance with the principal angrasa (dominant emotion) and, likewise, the whole story is constructed. This may cause a monotony in the expression. Hence, the writer, in order to prevent the monotony of expression, alters the determined rasa by changing the events. This aesthetic change requires an extraordinary compositional skill. Regarding this vakrat, Kuntaka says that when a poet, ignoring the determined rasa makes a provision of another rasa so as to make his work delightful, we have this sub-variety of prabandha-vakrat. Needless to say, that rasa is the soul of composition and for the sake of its unhampered overflow, the poet arranges the whole plot. He, being inspired by the desire of novelty, sometimes makes such a remarkable change in the source story that it starts reverberating with alluring charm and delight. Such an arrangement or change has not only a natural power of persuasion and of giving pleasure but also the marvellous power of exalting the soul and swaying the hearts of men. In other words, it can be said that this sub-variety underlines how the change of rasa contributes to the consummation
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
41
lE
du
Madhavya, You have not seen the fruit of your eyes. We have the yatna (endeavour) for the principal end when the King says to Vidushaka n the Act II, Friend, some of the sages have recognized me , think therefore, under what pretext I may again visit the hermitage. The garbha-sandhi (catastasis) takes up the whole of Act IV and extends as far as the instructions passed by Gautami to Shakuntala when the king refuses to recognize her in the fifth Act. It consists of the curse of Durvasas which mars the hope of success which, however, is still present in the words of Kanva who says to Shakuntala in the fAct IV, Placed in the honorable position of the wife of a husband of a noble birth..you will not mind the separation from me. The avamara or vimarsha-sandhi(peripateia) spreads over the remainder of the Act V and the whole of the Act VI. Here the certain attainment of the desired end is thwarted by the curse of Duvasas taking effect and the Kings becoming oblivious of his marriage with Shakuntala. The way to the final catastrophe, however, is paved by the invitation of Indra. The nirvahan-sandhi (catastrophe) occupies the last Act wherein the various diverging incidents converge to one end, viz., the happy union of the King with his Queen and son.
ca
tio n
This obliquity can be seen in Shelleys Prometheus Unbound. The poet, here, avoids depicting the former part being it insipid. The subject of the poem, as indicated by the title, is the unbinding of Prometheus. After the release of Prometheus the real action starts with the heros spiritual evolution. Kath-viccheda-vakrat (obliquity of intending end) is concerned with the contingent result and contingency or suddenness of result in kvya. By considering this sub-variety, as one of the important devices of composition, Kuntaka has proved himself to be a genuine 42
Sampana-vakrat (obliquity of winding up the story) deals with the writer to the particular part of the source for the purpose of achieving the intended end in kvya. Kuntaka says that when a writer, in order to give up the insipidity of the latter part, winds up the story with a particular episode of the source story, which determines matchlessly the character of the protagonist, we have this sub-variety of prabandha-vakrat. The writer does so when different parts of the source story are not equally relishable, i. e., the former part can be more relishable than the latter or vice-versa. In such a condition, the talented writer, leaving the insipid part of the story, picks up the relishable part and expands it for his composition. In it, he aims at the delineation of the protagonists excellence. The moment he sees his protagonist, attaining excellence, he winds up the composition irrespective of the stage of the story. This winding up, produces a kind of vakrat in the composition.
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
Keatss The Eve Of St Agnes can exemplify this sub-variety. Here the biting cold, the dancing of revellers, the howling of the wind, the silence and gloom of the long corridors of the immense castle are all suggestive of suspense. This atmosphere is replete with the strokes of bhaynaka rasa. Thereafter, the adbhuta rasa is produced when Porphyro sees Madeline, so pure of a thing, so free from mortal taint and kneeling down, grows faint. The atmosphere enhances the warmth of love that exists between two lovers when they both are lost in their own exquisite world of love. Keats describes this love-laden scene in the poem when both the lovers meet in the night.
tio
na
lE
du
ca
of angrasa. Kuntaka holds that a talented poet makes a provision of other rasas in his kvya only to achieve this objective. nandavardhanas postulation of angrasa in a long poem of narrative variety is the same device. Its function also is to overwhelm the sahrdaya (the sensitive reader) after he has finished the composition. From the very nature and magnitude of the composition, it stands to reason that there should be plurality of rasas in the narrative so as to assist the overflow of the angrasa. But if the other rasas are delineated in a manner that impairs the relish of the angirasa and emotional complex, we have artistic demerit. The canonists have, accordingly, identified a relationship between different rasas some of which, are mutually agreeable and some disagreeable. Kuntaka includes only the mutually agreeable rasas in this sub-variety of vakrat. These rasas can be designated as friendly rasas . Similarly the mutually disagreeable rasas can be designated as hostile rasas. This naturally means that in a poem, it is the friendly rasas which should be accommodated so as to augment and strengthen the angrasa.
tio n
Anusngika-phal-vakrat (obliquity of contingent objective) is the result of the protagonist s actions performed and objectives obtained in kvya. Kuntaka says that a writer begins his work or story with an intention, but the protagonist obtains extra results as his contingent objectives, unknown in the source story. The achievement of such objectives enhance the excellence of both the protagonist and the work. Kuntaka defines it saying that when the protagonist, during his course of action for the proposed result, is made to obtain different results of the same worth, we have this sub-variety of prabandha-vakrat. This role of protagonist , in which he obtains different results as his objective along with that of the intended one, elevates the status of the protagonist and makes the work vibrate with a remarkable strikingness. The secret of this obliquity lies in the inquisitiveness of human nature. Man loves strangeness because it satisfies the basic demand of human nature that for a pleasant surprise. A talented writer never fails to recognize this psychological fact and, therefore, he proves his compositional skill by arranging all the episodes accordingly. Keatss poem, The Eve of St. Agnes exemplifies this obliquity. Here Madeline does not have only a dream of lover but unites also with him. Conversely, Porphyro does not only see Madeline but unites with her. Nmakarana-vakrat (obliquity of title) is the oblique use of title of a kvya. Kuntaka holds that the title of kvya is also replete with a kind of vakrat. He adds that sometimes 43
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
Keatss Endymion is also one of the best poems to demonstrate this sub-variety of prabandha-vakrata (compositional obliquity). The poem is based upon the classical episode of the love of moon-goddess, Cynthia, for a shepherd-prince. According to this classical story, Cynthia descends from heaven to kiss her beloved Endymion who is sleeping in everlasting sleep. This is bare circumstance on which Keatss imagination works. In the last part of the poem, Endymion meets an Indian maiden and falls in love with her. They journey through the air on flying horses and Endymion dreams of Cynthia who appears to him as Moon. The Indian maiden disappears, and Endymion soon finds himself once again on Mt. Latmos. He is pereplexed, and fails to understand how he can love both Cynthia, the Moon and the Indian maiden. Here all of a sudden, the poet achieves the aim as all three are identified as one and so he closes the story, leaving the rest part untouched. This contingent result makes the poem delightful.
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
beholder of beauty. He says that a talented writer, in order to attain the excellence of another event, uses this device. This attainment of excellence is the intended end. For this, the writer dissects the natural development of the source story and achieves his intended end in the middle of the source story. He expresses himself that when an event, concealing the relation of the source story, produces an unhampered flow of rasa and achieves the intended aim, there in the middle only, we have this sub-variety of prabandha-vakrat. This obliquity is not merely an aesthetic imagination; rather, it has a psychological effect also as it depends upon the contingent result and contingency or suddenness of result that acts as a stimulant with a dramatic effect.
even a symbolic mark or name of the source story produces a remarkable beauty. The title of the work attracts the reader due to its striking meaning. Hence, a great writer entitles his kvya in such a way that it vibrates with strikingness, indicating the tilt being given to it. Kuntaka says that the title does not have merely a ceremonial purpose. The purpose of a good title is to unlock and underline the soul of the work; it enables the reader to know the main idea in either of the ways symbolic or literal. In a way, it is the skill or art of the writer which Kuntaka calls nmakarana-vakrat. The title of the play is Atha Abhijnanashakuntalam. Atha is invariably used at the beginning of Sanskrit works as iti is used to mark their close. It has the additional sense of auspiciousness, having first emanated from the throat of Brahma along with the sacred syllable Aum. Next the word abhijnana in the title signifies a token of recognition ( in the play this token of recognition is ring) which is instrumental in bringing about the final recognition of Shakuntala by the King. Thus the title of the play has obliquity which Kuntaka calls namakarana-vakrata (obliquity of title).
3.4
Let Us Sum Up
Kuntaka was aware of some of the crucial problems pertaining to the language of poetry , which he called vakrokti (obliquity). He made several explanatory but penetrating contribution on many issues, having a distinct bearing on poetry and poetic expression, that still confront modern scholars. Although he does not use the terminology of modern criticism, linguistics and stylistics, his formulation on poetry are seminal, and in certain respect his approach is more comprehensive.
3.5
1. 2.
en t
Review Questions
Defining vakrokti, describe briefly its nature and kinds. Elucidate the concept of vakrokti. 44
re
fo
Compare the following poems to see this obliquity. Southeys AVision of Judgement to Byrons Vision of Judgement written on the Character of King George III, Wordsworth s poem, Peter Bell: A Tale to Shelleys Peter the Third, Boccaccios story to Keatss Isabella
rT
ra
Tulya-kath-vakrat (obliquity of identical subject) is the last sub-variety of prabandha-vakrat. According to crya Kuntaka, the whole work may be oblique, with new instructions and ways of success. He holds that even when great writers compose different literary works, based on an identical theme, each one of them, possesses infinite individual beauty. The reason is that the poets have their own approaches to and view of looking at an identical subject and because of their individuality, they give entirely a new design. Thus the manifestation of this sub-variety of prabandha-vakrat is born out of innate and natural state of the writers mind and art.
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
3. 4.
Appreciate any poem of your choice in the light of Vakrokti Siddhanta. Write a note on any two of the following: i)Varna-vinysa-vakrat (Phonetic obliquity) ii)Pada-prvrddha-vakrat (lexical obliquity), iii)Pada-parrddha-vakrat (grammatical obliquity), iv)Pkya-vakrat (sentential obliquity), v)Prakarana-vakrat (episodic obliquity) and vi)Prabandha- vakrat (compositional obliquity)
3.8
1. 2. 3. 4.
Bibliography
rT
ra
Sharma, Shrawan K. Kuntakas Vakrokti Siddhanta: Towards an Appreciation of English Poetry. Meerut: Shalabh Publishing House, 2004. De,S. K., Sanskrit Poetics, 2 Vols. Calcutta. 1960.
en t
re
fo
di
tio
Pathak, R. S. Oblique Poetry in Indian and Western Poetics. New Delhi: Bahri Publication Pvt Ltd. 1988.
____________
na
45
Tiwari, R. S. A Critical Approach to Classical Indian Literature . Delhi & Varanasi;Chaukhamba Orantalia. 1984.
lE
Kuntaka, crya. Vakroktijvitam ed. K. Krishnamoorthi, Dharwar: Dharwar University. 1977.
du
ca
tio n
UNIT-4 ARISTOTLE: THE POETICS (I)

4.2.1 4.2.2 4.3 4.4 4.5
Plato Aristotle
Theory of fine arts Views on Poetic Truth 4.5.1 4.5.2 4.5.3 4.5.4 Poetry v/s History Poet, Poetry and History Poetry is Universal
Poetry- Pleasing and Appealing
4.6
Views on Tragedy 4.6.1 4.6.2 4.6.3 4.6.4 4.6.5 4.6.6 4.6.7
Tragedy as an Imitation
Six Parts of Tragedy
4.7 4.8 4.9
4.0
en t
Objectives
The objectives of the present unit are to : 46
re
The Dramatic Unities Unity of Action Unities of Time and Place Artistic Ornament and Form of Action
fo
Katharsis or Purgation
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
Introduction to Aristotles Poetics
ca
tio n
Views on Poetry
provide a critical assessment of the treatise of Aristotles The Poetics focus on the main issues poetry and tragedy: mimesis, catharsis, plot, character, unities and function of art.
4.1
Introduction
en t
Aristotle is believed to have written nearly half a dozen critical treatises, of which only two are extantPoetics and Rhetoric, the former dealing with the art of poetry and the latter with the art of speaking. Poetics, however, deals with many more problems than Rhetoric and has therefore attracted greater attention than the latter. He leaves the reader in no doubt as to the nature and purpose of Poetics. It is not a mere enunciation of the principles of the poetic art. Its conclusions are firmly rooted in the Greek Literature, till then known, and are actually illustrated from it. His approach, therefore, is the scientific one of observation and analysis. Taking the whole body of extant Greek literature, Aristotle deduces conclusions from it that in varying degrees apply to literature as a whole. So they do not necessarily cover literature produced later and in other countries. There is considerable force in Drydens statement concerning the purpose of tragedy that, had Aristotle seen English tragedies, he might have changed his mind. This is not to deny that many of Aristotles conclusions on the nature of poetry and drama are of general application and are as true today as they were in his own day. His purpose in writing Poetics and Rhetoric was to sort out those principles from established practice that made for a good poet and a good orator.
4.2
Plato, the teacher of Aristotle, provides the basis upon which Aristotles theory of poetry flourishes. Plato, the most celebrated disciple of Socrates, holds in the Republic Ideas are the ultimate reality. Things are conceived as ideas before they take practical shape as things. For example, a tree is nothing more than a concrete embodiment of its image in idea. The idea of everything therefore is its original pattern and thing itself is copy. As copy ever falls short of the original, it is once removed from reality. Now artliterature, painting, 47
re
Views on Poetry 4.2.1 Plato
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
Aristotle (384-322, B. C.) was born at Stagira, in Macedon, where his father was physician to the king Amynats II. Sent to Athens in 367, he studied under Plato for twenty years. Then after a period of twelve years, he was appointed by Philip of Macedon tutor to the future Alexander the great in 342 and seven years later he returned to Athens where he opened a school in the Lyceum grove outside the city. His extant works are believed to have been the notes he used for his lectures. They cover logic, ethics, metaphysics, physics, zoology, politics, rhetoric and poetics. Aristotles Poetics, virtually unknown during the middle ages, came into prominence in the middle of the 16th century and contributed to the rise of neoclassicism. It has left its mark on the critical writings of Sydney, Dryden and Dr. Johnson.
ca
tio n
sculpture- reproduces but things as mere pastime, the first in words, the next in colors and the last in stone. So it merely copies a copy: it is twice removed from reality. He was perhaps, the first to see that all art is imitation or mimesis, imitating the objects of life or Nature, and that there are two kinds of art-the fine arts, like literature, painting, sculpture and music which are indulged in for mere pleasure and the useful arts like medicine, agriculture and cookery that cooperate with Nature. This naturally leads Plato to consider the function of poetry. Although it pleases, mere pleasure, he says, cannot be its object. He cannot conceive of art as divorced from morals. Everywhere therefore he suggests truth as the test of poetry: what contribution it makes to the knowledge of virtue. Only in this way it could mould character and promote the interests of the state. Pleasure, even of the highest kind, ranks low in Platos scale of value. A poet is a good artist only in so far as he is a good teacher. In a famous passage in The Republic he says, We must look for artists who are able out of the goodness of their own natures to trace the nature of beauty and perfection, that so our young men, like persons who live in a healthy place, may be perpetually influenced by good. Poetic truth must be the highest truth- ideal forms of justice, goodness, beauty and the like.
4.2.2 Aristotle
Aristotle was the most distinguished disciple of Plato who refuted the charges framed by his teacher, Plato very politely. Like Plato too, he believes that there is a natural pleasure in imitation which is an inborn instinct in man, constituting the one difference between him and the lower animals. It is this pleasure in imitation that enables the child to learn his earliest lessons in speech and conduct from those around him. They are imitated by him because there is pleasure in doing so. A poet or an artist is just a grown up child indulging in imitation for the pleasure it affords. But the poets imitations or picture of life are not unreal-twice removed from realityas Plato believed. On the contrary, they reveal truths of a permanent or universal kind. To prove this Aristotle institutes a comparison between poetry and history. It is not the function of the poet to relate what has happened, but what may happen-what is possible according to the law of probability or necessity. The poet and the historian differ not by writing in verse or in prose. The true difference is that one relates what has happened, the other what may happen. Poetry, therefore, is a more philosophical and a higher thing than history: for poetry tends to express the universal, history the particular. History records particular persons, places or things: poetry infuses a universal appeal into them by stressing what they have in common with all persons, all places or all things in the same set of circumstances. The pictures of poetry therefore are not mere reproduction of facts but truths embedded in those facts that apply to all places and times. This is the meaning Aristotle gives to imitation; thereby answering Platos severest charge against poetry. The end of the fine art, according to Aristotles doctrine, is a certain pleasurable impression produced upon the mind of the hearer or the spectator. Each kind of poetry carries with it a distinctive pleasure which is the criterion by which the work is judged. A tragic vision 48
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
4.4
Theory of Fine arts
The term fine art is not one that has been transmitted to us from the Greeks. Their phrase was the imitative arts, modes of imitation, or sometimes the liberal arts. Imitation as the common characteristic of fine arts, including poetry, was not originated by Aristotle. In literature the phrase in this application first occurs in Plato, though, not improbably, it may have been already current in popular speech as marking the antithesis between fine art and industrial production. The Platonic view that the real world is a weak or imperfect repetition of an ideal archetype led to the world of reality being regarded in a special sense, and on a still lower plane, as world of mere imitation. Aristotle, as his manner was, accepted the current phrase and interpreted it anew. The artist may imitate things as they ought to be; he may place before him an unrealized ideal. A work of art is a likeness or reproduction of an original and not a symbolic representation of it; and this holds good whether the artist draws from a model in the real world or from an unrealized ideal in the mind. The distinction may be shown by Aristotles own 49
en t
re
fo
rT
Aristotles Poetics is a treatise of about fifty pages, containing twenty-six small chapters. It gives the impression of being a summary of his lectures to his disciples, written either by them or by him. It is believed to have had a second part, which is lost. For, it is incomplete and omits some of the important questions he himself raises, which were reserved for a fuller treatment in the second part. The first four chapters and the twenty-fifth are devoted to poetry, the fifth in a general way to comedy, epic and tragedy, the following fourteen exclusively to tragedy, the next three to poetic diction, the next two to epic poetry, and the last to a comparison of epic poetry and tragedy, which in his day was considered to be the most developed form of poetry. Poetry, comedy and epic come in for consideration because a discussion of tragedy would be incomplete without some references to its parent and sister forms. Aristotles Poetics is a window to peep through the world of criticism and to study deeply, read avidly and discuss endlessly the different genres of literature especially tragedy, comedy and epic.
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
4.3
Introduction to Aristotles Poetics
tio n
has an inherent capacity of calling forth pity and fear; this quality must be impressed by the poet on the dramatic material and if it is artistically done, the peculiar pleasure arising out of the union of the pitiable and the terrible will be awakened in the mind of every one who possesses normal human sympathies and faculties. The test of artistic merit in a tragedy is the degree in which it fulfils this, its distinctive function. All the rules prescribed by Aristotle for the tragic poet flow from the same primary requirement-those which determine the proper construction of the plot, the character of the ideal hero, the best form of recognition and the like. The state of pleasurable feeling is not an accidental result, but is inherently related to the object which calls it forth. Though the pleasure of the percipient is necessary to the fulfillment of the function of any art, the subjective impression has in it an enduring and universal element.
illustrations. A sign or symbol has no essential resemblance, no natural connection with the thing signified. Thus spoken words are symbols of mental states, written words are symbols of spoken words; the connection between them is conventional. On the other hand mental impressions are not signs or symbols, but copies of external reality, likeness of the things themselves. In the act of sensuous perception objects stamp upon the mind an impress of themselves like that of a signet ring, and the picture so engraved on the memory is compared to a portrait. Thus the creations of art are, as it were, pictures which exist for the phantasy. To imitate nature, in the popular acceptance of the phrase, is not for Aristotle the function of fine art. The actual objects of aesthetic imitation are threefold: the characteristic moral qualities, the permanent disposition of the mind, which reveals a certain condition of the will; the more transient emotions, the passing moods of feeling; actions in their proper and inward sense. An act viewed merely as an external process or result, one of a series of outward phenomena, is not the true object of aesthetic imitation. Men in action are the objects imitated by the fine arts: by all and not merely by dramatic or narrative poetry where action is more obviously represented. Everything that expresses the mental life, that reveals a rational personality, will fall within this larger sense of action. Such actions are not necessarily processes extending over a period of time: they may realize themselves in a single moment; they may be summed up in a particular mood, a given situation.
4.5
Views on Poetic Truth
What is true of fine art in general is explicitly asserted by Aristotle of poetry alone, to which in a unique manner it applies. Poetry expresses most adequately the universal element in human nature and in life. As a revelation of the universal it abstracts from human life much that is accidental. It liberates us from the tyranny of physical surroundings. It can disregard material needs and animal longings. Thought disengages itself from sense and makes itself supreme over things outward. It is not the function of the poet, says Aristotle, to relate what has happened, but what may happen-what is possible according to the law of probability or necessity. The poet and the historian differ not by writing in verse or in prose. The true difference is that one relates what has happened, the other what may happen. The first distinguishing mark, then, of poetry is that it has a higher subject matter than history: it expresses the universal, not the particular, the permanent possibilities of human nature, it does not merely tell the story of the individual life. History is based upon facts and with these it is primarily concerned; poetry transforms its facts into truths.
The whole tenor and purpose of The Poetics makes it abundantly clear that poetry is not a mere reproduction of empirical fact, a picture of life with all its trivialities and accidents. The world of the possible which poetry creates is more intelligent than the world of experience. The poet presents permanent and eternal facts, free from the elements of unreason which disturb our comprehension of real events and of human conduct. In fashioning his material he 50
en t
4.5.1 Poetry v/s History
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
may transcend nature, but he may not contradict her; he must not be disobedient to her habits and principles. He may recreate the actual, but he must avoid the lawless, the fantastic, and the impossible. Poetic truth passes the bounds of reality, but it does not wantonly violate the laws which make the real world rational. Thus poetry in virtue of its higher subject-matter and of the closer and more organic union of its parts acquires an ideal unity that history never possesses; for the prose of life is never wholly eliminated from a record of actual facts.
4.5.2 Poet, Poetry and History

Aristotle first considers the nature of the poetic art. Following Plato, he calls the poet an imitator, like a painter or any other artist who imitates one of three objects-things as they were or are, things as they are said or thought to be, or things as they ought to be: in other words, what is past or present, what is commonly believed and what is ideal. Like Plato too, he believes that there is a natural pleasure in imitation which is an inborn instinct in man, constituting the one difference between him and the lower animals. It is this pleasure in imitation that enables the child to learn his earliest lessons in speech and conduct from those around him. They are imitated by him because there is pleasure in doing so. A poet or an artist is just a grown up child indulging in imitation for the pleasure it affords. But the poets imitations or picture of life are not unreal-twice removed from realityas Plato believed. On the contrary, they reveal truths of a permanent or universal kind. To prove this Aristotle institutes a comparison between poetry and history. It is not the function of the poet to relate what has happened, but what may happen-what is possible according to the law of probability or necessity. The poet and the historian differ not by writing in verse or in prose. The true difference is that one relates what has happened, the other what may happen. Poetry, therefore, is a more philosophical and a higher thing than history: for poetry tends to express the universal, history the particular. History records particular persons, places or things: poetry infuses a universal appeal into them by stressing what they have in common with all persons, all places or all things in the same set of circumstances. The pictures of poetry therefore are not mere reproduction of facts but truths embedded in those facts that apply to all places and times.
en t
Poetry is more philosophical and a higher thing than history, and higher in scale, not more serious, for the words apply even to comedy nor again more moral, which is quite alien to the context- and the reason of the higher worth of poetry is that it approaches nearer to the universal, which itself derives its value from being a manifestation of the cause or first principle of things. Poetry in striving to give universal form to its own creations reveals a higher truth than history and on that account is nearer to philosophy. But though it has a philosophical character it is not philosophy: It tends to express the universal. Philosophy seeks to discover the universal in the particular, its end is to know and to possess the truth and in that possession it reposes. The aim of poetry is to represent the universal through the particular, to give a concrete and the living embodiment of a universal truth. The universal of poetry is not 51
re
4.5.3 Poetry is Universal
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
an abstract idea, it is particularized to sense, it comes before the mind clothed in the form of the concrete, presented under the appearance of a living organism whose parts are in vital and structural relation to the whole.
4.5.4 Poetry- Pleasing and Appealing

The function of poetry as of the other fine arts is to please. Hence poetry should be pleasing both to the poet and the reader. Besides, poetry makes an immediate appeal to the emotion. Taking tragedy as the highest form of poetry, he says that it arouses the emotions of pity and fear-pity at the undeserved sufferings of the hero and fear of the worst that may befall him. These emotions are aroused with a view to their purgation or catharsis. Everybody has occasions of fear and pity in life. In tragedy where the sufferings we witness are not our own, these emotions find a fuller and free outlet, relieving the soul of their excess. It is this that pleases in a tragic tale which normally will be painful. Viewed in this light tragedy is an art that transmutes these disturbing emotions into what Milton calls calm of mind, all passion spent. So the emotional appeal of poetry is not harmful as Plato believed but health-giving and artistically satisfying.
According to Aristotle, Tragedy is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play, in the play in the form of action, not of narrative, through pity and fear effecting the proper katharsis or purgation of these emotion. By language embellishedAristotle means language into which rhythm, harmony and song enter. By the several kinds of separate parts, Aristotle means that some parts are rendered through the medium of verse alone, others again with the aid of song. By serious action Aristotle means a tale of suffering exciting pity and fear. Action comprises all human activities including deeds, thoughts and feelings. It should be complete or self contained, with a beginning, a middle and an end. A beginning is that before which the audience or the reader does not need to be told anything to understand the story. If something more is required to understand the
en t
re
Poetry, being an imitative art, can imitate two kinds of action: the noble actions of good men or the mean actions of bad men. From the former was born the epic and from the latter the satire. The graver spirits imitated noble actions and the actions of good men. The more trivial sort imitated the actions of meaner persons, at first composing satires as the former did hymns to the gods and the praises of famous men. From these in turn arose tragedy and comedy, the graver sort practicing the former and satirists the latter. For tragedy bears the same relation to the epic as comedy to the satire. It follows therefore that the epic and tragedy are superior to the satire and comedy which concern themselves with the mean actions of low men. Between themselves tragedy according to Aristotle is superior to the epic, having all the epic elements in a shorter compass, with moreover music and spectacular effects which the epic does not have and being more compact in design.
fo
rT
ra
di
52
tio
na
4.6
Views on Tragedy
lE
du
ca
tio n
story than the beginning gives, the beginning is unsatisfactory. From it follows events that would not follow otherwise and that constitute the middle. In their turn they lead to those other events that cannot but issue from them and that lead to none others after them. They form the end. If in any play the beginning can be put in the middle or at the end, or the middle at the beginning or the end, or the end at the beginning or in the middle, the action or plot is not complete or one whole (i.e. well-knit) but haphazard or loose. Completeness implies organic unity or a natural sequence of events that cannot be disturbed.
en t
In The Rhetoric Aristotle observes that if a sentence has meter it will be poetry, but this is said in a popular way. The general question whether meter is necessary for poetical expression has been raised by many modern critics and poets and has sometimes been answered in the negative as by Sidney, Shelley and Wordsworth. In few, a work of art is an image of the impressions or phantasy picture made by an independent reality upon the mind of the artist; the reality thus reflected being the facts of human life and human nature. To this we must make one addition which contains the central thought ofAristotles doctrine. Imitative art in its highest form, namely poetry, is an expression of the universal element in human life. Imitation, in the sense in which Aristotle applies the word to poetry is thus seen to be equivalent to producing or creating according to a true idea, which forms part of the definition of art in general. Imitation, so understood is a creative act. It is the expression of the concrete thing under an image which answers to its true idea. To seize the universal and to reproduce it in simple and sensuous form is not to reflect a reality already familiar through sense perception; rather it is a rivalry of nature, a completion of her unfulfilled purposes, a correction of her failures. The essence of the poetry is imitation; the melody and the verse are the seasoning of the language. They hold a place similar to that which external goods occupy in the Aristotelian definition of happiness. Without them a tragedy may fulfill its function, but would lack its perfect charm and fail in producing its full effect of pleasurable emotion. Imitative or Fine Art in its highest manifestation namely Poetry, is an expression of the universal element in human life. In other words, it is an idealized image of human life-character, emotion, action-under forms manifest to sense.
The tragic katharsis involves not only the idea of an emotional relief, but the further idea of the purifying of the emotions so relieved. In accepting this interpretation we do not ascribe to tragedy a direct moral purpose and influence. Tragedy, according to the definition, acts on the feelings, not on the will. It does not make men better, though it removes certain hindrances to virtue. The refining of passion under temporary and artificial excitement is still far distant from moral improvement. Aristotle would probably admit that indirectly the drama has a moral influence in enabling the emotional system to throw off some perilous stuff, certain elements of feeling, which, if left to themselves, might develop dangerous energy and impede 53
re
4.6.2 Katharsis or Purgation
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
4.6.1 Tragedy as an Imitation
the free play of those vital functions on which the exercise of virtue depends. The excitation of noble emotions will probably in time exert an effect upon the will. But whatever may be the indirect effect of the repeated operations of the kathrasis, we may confidently say that Aristotle in his definition of tragedy is thinking, not of any such remote result, but of the immediate end of the art, of the aesthetic function it fulfils. The tragic kathrasis requires that suffering shall be exhibited in one of its comprehensive aspects, that the deeds and fortunes of the actors shall attach themselves to large issues and the spectator himself be lifted above the special case and brought face to face with universal law and the divine plan of the world. A well constructed plot should, therefore, be single in its issue rather than double as some maintain. The change of fortune should be not from bad to good, but reversely from good to bad. It should come about as the result not of vice but of some great error or frailty in a character either such as we have described or better rather than worse. The unhappy ending is the only right ending, for it is the most tragic in its effect. A happy ending may please us more but it will not afford the true tragic pleasure- that aroused by the emotions of pity and fear. There are two ways in which these emotions may be aroused- by spectacular means or mere theatrical effects, such as physical torture, piteous lamentation, beggarly appearance and so on and by the inner structure of the plot such as a brother unknowingly killing brother and discovering the fact later, or intending good and doing evil or a little error visited by a too heavy punishment and so on. It is this latter mode that indicates a superior poet. For the plot ought to be so constructed that even without the aid of the eye, he who hears the tale told will thrill horror and melt to pity at what takes place. This is the impression we should receive from hearing the story of the Oedipus. But to produce this effect by mere spectacle is a less artistic method and dependent on extraneous aids. Those who employ spectacular means to create a sense not of the terrible but only of the monstrous are strangers to the purpose of Tragedy, for we must not demand of Tragedy any and every kind of pleasure, but only that which is proper to it. And since the pleasure which the poet should afford is that which comes from pity and fear through imitation, it is evident that this quality must be impressed upon the incidents. Let us then determine what are the circumstances which strike us as terrible or pitiful. Actions capable of this effect must happen between persons who are either friends or enemies or indifferent to one another. If an enemy kills an enemy, there is nothing to excite pity either in the act or the intention-except so far as the suffering in itself is pitiful. So again with indifferent persons. But when the tragic incident occurs between those who are near or dear to one another- if for example, a brother kills or intends to kill a brother, a son his father, a mother her son, a son his mother or any other deed of the kind is done-these are the situations to be looked for by the poet.
en t
4.6.3 Six Parts of Tragedy

Aristotle finds six constituent parts in tragedy: Plot, Character, Diction, Thought, 54
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
en t
Third in order is Thought, that is the faculty of saying what is possible and pertinent in given circumstances. In the case of oratory this is the function of the political art and of the art of rhetoric and so indeed the older poets make their characters speak the language of civic life, the poets of our time, and the language of the rhetoricians. Character is that which reveals moral purpose, showing what kind of things a man chooses or avoids. Speeches, therefore, which do not make this manifest, or in which the speaker does not choose or avoid anything whatever are not expressive of character. Thought, on the other hand, is found where something is proved to be or not to be or a general maxim is enunciated. Fourth among the elements enumerated comes is Diction. Diction is the expression of the meaning in words and its essence is the same both in verse and prose and includes the following parts- letter, syllable, connecting word, noun, verb, inflexion, case, sentence, and phrase. Of the remaining elements the Song holds the chief place among the embellishments. The Spectacle has indeed an emotional attraction of its own, but of all the parts, it is the least artistic, and connected least with the art of poetry. For the power of Tragedy, we may be sure, is felt even apart from representations and actions. Besides the production of spectacular effects depends more on the art of the stage machinist than on that of poet.
re
4.6.4 The Dramatic Unities

4.6.4.1 Unity of Action The only dramatic unity enjoined by Aristotle is Unity of Action. It is strange that this 55
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
Spectacle and Song. Two of the parts constitute the medium of imitation, one to the manner and three the objects of imitation. The plot is the imitation of the action and the arrangement of the incidents is the chief part of tragedy. For tragedy is an imitation, not of men, but of action and of life and life consists in action. For Comedy aims is at representing men as worse, Tragedy as better than in actual life. Character determines mens qualities, but it is by their actions that they are happy or the reverse. Dramatic actions, therefore, is not with a view to the representation of character: character comes in as subsidiary to the actions. Hence the incidents and the plot are the end of a tragedy and the end is the chief thing of all. To the question whether plot makes a tragedy or character, Aristotle replies that without action there cannot be a tragedy, there may be without character. The tragedies of most of our modern poets fail in the rendering of character and of poets in general this is often true. Tragedy is written not merely to imitate men but to imitate men in action. It is by their deeds performed before our very eyes that we know them rather than by what poet, as in the epic, tells of them. Hence it is these deeds or incidents woven in the plot that matter more than their character. Since, however, deeds issue from character, character is next only in importance to plot. The plot, then, is the first principle and as it were, the soul of tragedy. Character holds the second place. A similar fact is seen in painting. The most beautiful colors laid on confusedly will not give as much pleasure as the chalk outline of a portrait. Thus, Tragedy is the imitation of an action and of the agents mainly with a view to the action.
lE
du
ca
tio n
Aristotles conception of the unity of plan essential to the drama could not be much better summed up than in the following extract from J.R Lowells, The Old English Dramatists: In a play we not only expect a succession of scenes, but that each scene should lead, by a logic more or less stringent, if not to the next, at any rate to something that is to follow and that all should contribute their fraction of impulse towards the inevitable catastrophe. That is to say, the structure should be organic, with a necessary and harmonious connection and relations of parts and not merely mechanical, with an arbitrary or haphazard joining of one part to 56
Aristotle once mentions what has come to be called the unity of time. Tragedy, he says, endeavors as far as possible, to confine itself to a single revolution of the sun, or but slightly to exceed this limit, whereas the epic action has no limit of time. From this the older critics were led to believe that for a good tragic plot it was necessary to select an event or events that happened within twenty four hours or so in life, so that when represented in about one-fourth of that time on the stage they may not appear unnatural, as they would if the plottime were longer. But Aristotle nowhere insists on this as a condition of good plot. He merely states the prevailing practice but is not unaware of the fact that, in this particular matter, at first the same freedom was admitted in tragedy as in epic poetry. The unity of place which was deduced as a corollary from the so-called unity of time is not mentioned at all. So much was made of these two unities in the centuries following the Renaissance that it is important to mention here that they do not appear among the essentials of a good plot mentioned by Aristotle.
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
4.6.4.2 Unities of Time and Place
na
should still need to be repeated. So inveterate, however, is a literary tradition, once it has been established under the sanction of high authority that we still find the Three Unities spoken of in popular writings as a rule of The Poetics. It should have first unity of action or only those actions and not all in the life of the hero which are intimately connected with one another and appear together as one whole, the structural union of the parts is being such that, if any one of them is displaced or removed, the whole will be disjoined and disturbed. There may be many more actions in life of the hero - there are in every mans life - but unless they have something to do with the tragedy that befalls him, they are not relevant to the plot and will all have to be kept out. For a thing whose presence or absence makes no visible difference, is not an organic part of the whole. It follows, therefore, that the events comprising the plot will concern only one man and not more. For if they concern more than one man, there will be no necessary connection between them, as the actions of one man cannot be put down to another. Their introduction in the same story must therefore disturb its unity. When all the actions of the same man cannot be included in the plot, what sense can there be in including actions of the other man, between which and the former ones there can be no inevitable link even if there were similarity? For the same reason the episodic plots are the worst, i.e. those in which episodes or events follow one another in mere chronological order without probable or necessary sequence.
lE
du
ca
tio n
another. It is in the former sense alone that any production can be called a work of art. (The Old English Dramatists,55) The general law of unity laid down in The Poetics for an epic poem is almost the same as for the drama, but the drama forms a more compact and serried whole. Its events are in more direct relation with the development of character; its incidents are never incidents and nothing more. The sequence of the parts is more inevitable-morally more inevitable-than in a story where the external facts and events have an independent value of their own. And though the modern drama, unlike the ancient, aspires to a certain epic fullness of treatment, it cannot violate the determining conditions of dramatic form. 4.6.4.3 Artistic Ornament and Form of Action
Aristotle was the most distinguished disciple of Plato who refuted the charges framed by his teacher, Plato very politely. He holds that the function of poetry as of the other fine arts is to please. Hence poetry should be pleasing both to the poet and the reader. Besides, poetry makes an immediate appeal to the emotion. Talking about tragedy as the highest form of poetry, he says that it arouses the emotions of pity and fearpity at the undeserved sufferings of the hero and fear of the worst that may befall him. These emotions are aroused with a view to their purgation or catharsis. Viewed in this light tragedy is an art that transmutes these disturbing emotions into what Milton calls calm of mind, all passion spent. So the emotional appeal of poetry is not harmful as Plato believed but health-giving and artistically satisfying. The whole tenor and purpose of The Poetics makes it abundantly clear that poetry is not a mere reproduction of empirical fact, rather, a picture of life with all its trivialities and accidents. He further makes it clear very boldly and strongly that plot is the soul of tragedy and character holds the second place.
en t
4.8
1.
re
Review Questions
How does Aristotle defend the charge framed against Poetry by Plato? 57
fo
rT
ra
4.7
Let Us Sum Up
di
The two characteristics- artistic ornament and form of action- are easily explained. By the former are meant rhyme, harmony and song, which are employed not all together but as occasion demands. Rhythm and harmony thus may be used to develop some parts and song some others. They are all designed to enrich the language of the play to make it as effective in its purpose as possible. The form of action which tragedy assumes, distinguishes it from narrative verse, e.g. the epic. While in the latter the narrator of the story is the poet, in tragedy, the tale is told with the help of living and moving characters. The speeches and actions make the tale. In the narrative the poet is free to speak in his own person or in the likeness of someone else, but in tragedy the dramatist is nowhere seen, for all is done by his characters. It is literature intended to be acted as well as read, whereas the narrative is intended only to be read.
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
2. 3.
Aristotle says A poet or an artist is just a grown up child indulging in imitation for the pleasure it affords. Explain with reference to his theory of Poetry. Plato was a prince fell from a height of greatness as he saw in Fine Arts a mere semblance, an illusion, as opposed to the reality Aristotle saw in it the image of a higher reality. Compare and contrast the views of both with suitable examples. Aristotles Poetics is a window to peep through the world of criticism. Illuminate. Men in action are the objects imitated by the fine arts. Do you agree? The Poetics makes it abundantly clear that poetry is not a mere reproduction of empirical fact, a picture of life with all its trivialities and accidents. Do you agree?
4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.
What is the concept of purgation or catharsis in The Poetics?
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
Atkins, J.W.H. Literary Criticism in Antiquity. 2 Vols. London, 1752.
Das, B. B. & Mohanthy, J. M. Literary Criticism: A Reader. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1993. Prasad, B. Introduction to English Criticism. Macmillan India Ltd, Delhi, 1965.
7.
8.
en t
Saintsbury, George. Loco Crici. Meerut, Loyal Book Depot, n.a.
Selden, Raman. The Theory of Criticism. London and New York: Longman,1989. Wellek, Rene. A History of Modern Criticism. 5 Vols. New York, 1954. Wimsatt, W.K. & Brooks, Cleanth. Literary Criticism: A Short History. New York, 1954
______________
re
fo
rT
Butcher, S.H. Aristotles Theory of Poetry and Fine Arts. Dover Publications, Inc. 4th Edition, 1951.
ra
di
4.9
Bibliography
58
tio
What is the importance of the three unities time, place and action in a tragedy?
na
The plot, then, is the first principle and as it were, the soul of tragedy. Character holds the second place. Discuss.
lE
du
According to Aristotle, Tragedy is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete and of a certain magnitude. Discuss in reference to the theory propounded by him.
ca
Poetry is higher in subject matter than History. Explicate.
tio n
UNIT-5 ARISTOTLE: THE POETICS (II)

Plot 5.3.1 5.3.2 5.3.3 5.3.4 5.3.5 The Greater the Unity, the More Perfect the Plot Simple and Complex Plot Recognition of Persons Situation A Reasonable Length
5.4
Views on Character 5.4.1 5.4.2
Necessary or Probable Sequence Seeing is Believing
5.5
Views on Comedy 5.5.1 5.5.2
Law of Universality
5.6 5.7
Views on Epic
en t
5.8
5.9 5.10 5.11
re
Difference between Tragedy and Epic 5.7.1 5.7.2 5.7.3 Moral Goodness of the Heroic Order Use of Improbable Tragedy is Superior to Epic
Views on Style 5.8.1 Charm of Style- The Use of Metaphor
Value of His Criticism Limitations Let Us Sum Up 59

fo
Comedy-Power of Poetry
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
Tragic Hero
5.12 5.13
Review Questions Bibliography
5.0
Objectives
The objectives of the present unit are to :
provide a critical analysis of Aristotles The Poetics with special reference to tragedy, comedy and epic. throw light on plot and character as the essential parts of tragedy.
5.1
Introduction
In the first place, the spectacle of a man eminently good undergoing the change from prosperous to adverse fortune awakens neither pity nor fear. It shocks or repels us. Next and utterly devoid of tragic quality is the representation of the bad man who experiences the contrary change from distress to prosperity. Pity and fear are here alike wanting. Even the sense of justice is unsatisfied. The impression left by such a spectacle is indeed, the exact opposite of pity. Again, there is the overthrow of the utter villain a catastrophe that satisfies the moral sense, but is lacking in the higher and distinctively tragic qualities. Lastly Aristotle mentions the case which in his view answers all the requirements of art. It is that of a man who morally stands midway between the two extremes. He is not eminently good or just though he leans to the side of goodness. He is involved in misfortunes, not, however, as the result of
en t
With the exception of the definition of tragedy itself, probably no passage in the Poetics has given rise to so much criticism as the description of the ideal tragic hero in Ch. XIII. The qualities requisite to such a character are here deduced from the primary fact that the function of tragedy is to produce the katharsis of pity and fear; pity being felt for a person who, if not wholly innocent, meets with suffering beyond his deserts; fear being awakened when the sufferer is a man of like nature with ourselves. Tragic character must be exhibited through the medium of a plot which has the capacity of giving full satisfaction to these emotions. Certain types, therefore, of character and certain forms of catastrophe are at once excluded, as failing either in whole or in part to produce the tragic effect. Aristotle designates the following qualities of a tragic hero.
re
fo
rT
ra
di
60
tio
5.2
Tragic Hero
na
Aristotle lived from 384 B.C. to 322 B.C. He was the most distinguished disciple of Plato. To Indians he is also known as the tutor of Alexander the Great, who overran northwestern India in 326 B.C. He is believed to have written nearly half a dozen critical treatises, of which only two are extant-Poetics and Rhetoric, the former dealing with the art of poetry and the latter with the art of speaking. In The Poetics he propounded the theory of tragedy by revealing the fact that plot and character are the chief parts.
lE
du
ca
tio n
en t
5.3
Of the six elements into which Aristotle analyses a tragedy, plot holds the first place. The plot being the soul of tragedy, the artistic arrangement of its incidents is of the prime importance. As per the definition of Tragedy- an imitation of an action that is complete and whole and of a certain magnitude for there may a whole that is wanting in magnitude. A whole is that which has a beginning, a middle and an end. A beginning is that which does not itself follow anything by causal necessity but after which something naturally is or comes to be. An end, on the contrary, is that which itself naturally follows some other thing, either by necessity or as a rule, but has nothing following it. A middle is that which follows something as some other thing follows it. A well constructed plot, therefore, must neither begin nor end at haphazard 61
re
Since tragedy aims at exciting pity and fear, its choice of a hero is limited to one whose actions most produce this effect in the spectators. The tragic hero cannot be an eminently good man, hurled from prosperity into adversity, because his wholly undeserved suffering arouses, not pity and fear, but a feeling of shock or revolt: that such a thing should ever be! Nor can he be a bad man, raised from adversity to prosperity because by his very badness he can be an utter villain, because his fall is a matter for gratification rather than for pity and fear. There remains but one kind of character who can best satisfy this requirement: a man who is not eminently good and just, yet whose misfortune is brought about not by vice or depravity, but by some error or frailty. His misfortune excites pity because it is out of all proportion to his error of judgment, and his overall goodness excites fear for his doom. No other character answers the tragic purpose so well. We could wish that Aristotle had gone farther and said explicitly that in power, even more than in virtue, the tragic hero must possess a deeper vein of feeling or heightened powers of intellect or will; that the morally trivial, rather than the morally bad, is fatal to tragic effect. As it is, we arrive at the result that the tragic hero is a man of noble nature, like ourselves in elemental feelings and emotions, idealized indeed, but with so large a share of our common humanity as to enlist our eager interest and sympathy. He falls from a position of lofty eminence and the disaster that wrecks his lofty may be traced not to deliberate wickedness, but to some great error or frailty.
Plot
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
deliberate vice, but through some great flaw of character or fatal error in conduct. He is, moreover, illustrious in rank and fortune, the chief motive, no doubt, for this requirement being that the signal nature of the catastrophe may be more strikingly exhibited. We now come to the ideal protagonist of tragedy, as sketched in this chapter. He is composed of mixed elements, by no means supremely good but a man like ourselves. The expression, if taken alone, might seem to describe a person of mediocre virtue and average powers. But Aristotle must not be read in detached sections; and the comparison of Ch. II and Ch. XV with our passage shows us that this character, while it has its basis in reality, transcends it by a certain moral elevation. Lastly the word may denote a defect of character, distinct on the one hand from an isolated error or fault and on the other, from the vice which has its seat in a depraved will. This use, though rarer, is still Aristotelian.
but conform to these principles. The plot of a tragedy falls into two partscomplication and unraveling or Dnouement. Incidents extraneous to the action are frequently combined with a portion of the action proper, to the complication; the rest is the unraveling. By complication Aristotle means all that extends from the beginning of the action to the part which marks the turning point to good or bad fortune. The unraveling is that which extends from the beginning of the change to the end. There are four kinds of tragedy, the complex, depending entirely on reversal of the situation and recognition; the pathetic- where the motive is passion; the ethical where the motives are ethical; the fourth kind is the simple.
5.3.1 The Greater the Unity, the More Perfect the Plot
Unity of plot does not, as says Aristotle, as some persons think, consist in the unity of the hero. For infinitely various are the incidents in one mans life which cannot be reduced to unity and so too there are many actions of one man out of which we cannot make one action. By means of unity the plot becomes individual and also intelligible. The greater the unity, the more perfect will it be as a concrete and individual thing; at the same time it will gain in universality and typical quality. As, therefore, in the other imitative arts, the imitation is one when the object imitated is one, so the plot, being an imitation of action, must imitate one action and that a whole the structural union of the parts being such that, if any one of them is displaced or removed the whole will be disjoined and disturbed. For a thing whose presence or absence makes no visible difference is not an organic part of the whole. A perfect tragedy should be arranged not on simple but on the complex plan. It should, moreover, imitate actions which excite pity and fear this being the distinctive mark of tragic imitation. It follows plainly in the first place the change of fortune presented must not be the spectacle: for this moves neither pity nor fear, it merely shocks us. Nor again, that of a bad man passing from adversity to prosperity for nothing can be more alien to the spirit of Tragedy, it possesses no single tragic quality, it neither satisfies the moral sense nor calls forth pity or fear. Nor again should the downfall of the utter villain be exhibited. A plot of this kind would, doubtless, satisfy the moral sense, but it would inspire neither pity nor fear, for pity is aroused by unmerited misfortune, fear by the misfortune of a man like ourselves. Such an event, therefore, will be neither pitiful nor terrible. There remains then the character between these two extremes- that of a man who is not eminently good and just, yet whose misfortune is brought about not by vice or depravity, but by some error or frailty. He must be one who is highly renowned and prosperous- a prosperous like Oedipus, Thyestes or other illustrious men of such families.
The plot, finally, is divisible into two partscomplication and its unraveling or denouement. The former ties the events into a tangled knot, the letter unties it. The complication includes all the action from the beginning to the point where it takes a turn for good or ill; the 62
en t
5.3.2 Simple and Complex Plot
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
5.3.4 Situation
In a simple plot there are no puzzling situations that enter into a complex plot, in particular peripeteia and anagnorisis. Peripeteia is generally explained as reversal of the situation and anagnorisis as recognition or discovery. By a reversal of the situation is meant very neatly a reversal of intention, a deed done in blindness defeating its own purpose: a move to kill an enemy recoiling on ones own head, the effect to save turning into just its opposite, killing an enemy and discovering him to be a kinsman. The discovery of these false moves, taken in ignorance, in anagnorisis- a change from ignorance to knowledge. Both Peripeteia and anagnorisis please because there is the element of surprise in them. A plot that makes use of them is complex and a perfect tragedy should be arranged not on the simple but on the complex plot.
en t
re
fo
rT
Recognition as the name indicates is a change from ignorance to knowledge, producing love or hate between the persons destined by the poet for good or bad fortune. The best form of recognition is coincident with a Reversal of the Situation as in the Oedipus. There are indeed other forms. Even inanimate things of the most trivial kind may in a sense be objects of recognition. Again, we may recognize or discover whether a person has done a thing or not. But the recognition which is most intimately connected with the plot and action is as we have said the recognition of persons. This recognition, combined with Reversal, will produce either pity or fear and actions producing these effects are those which by our definition, Tragedy represents. Moreover, it is upon such situations that the issues of good or bad fortune will depend. Recognition, then, being between persons, it may happen that one person only is recognized by the other-when the latter is already known or it may be necessary that the recognition should be on both sides.
ra
di
tio
na
63
lE
du
5.3.3 Recognition of Persons
ca
denouement extends from the turning point to the end. The first is commonly called rising and the second falling action. Plots are either Simple or Complex for the actions in real life of which the plots are in an imitation, obviously show a similar distinction. An action which is one and continuous in the sense above defined is Simple, when the change of fortune takes place without Reversal of the Situation and without Recognition. A Complex action is one in which the change is accompanied by such Reversal or by Recognition, or by both. These last should arise from the internal structure of the plot so that what follows should be the necessary or probable result of the preceding action. It makes all the difference whether any given event is a case of propter hoc or post hoc. Reversal of the Situation is a change by which the action veers round to its opposite, subject always to our rule of probability or necessity. Thus in the Oedipus, the messenger comes to cheer Oedipus and free him from his alarms about his mother, but by revealing who he is, he produces the opposite effect.
tio n
5.3.5 A Reasonable Length

A beautiful object whether it be a living organism or any whole composed of parts, must not only have an orderly arrangement of parts but also be of a certain magnitude, for beauty depends on magnitude and order. Hence a very small animal organism cannot be beautiful for the view of it is confused, the object being seen in an almost imperceptible moment of time. Nor again can one of vast size be beautiful, for as the eye cannot take it all in at once, the unity and sense of the whole is lost for the spectator, as for instance if there were one a thousand miles long. As, therefore, in the case of animal bodies and organism a certain magnitude is necessary and a magnitude which may be easily embraced in one view, so in the plot a certain length is necessary and a length which can be easily embraced by the memory. The limit of length in relation to dramatic competition and sensuous presentation is no part of artistic theory. For had it been the rule for a hundred tragedies to compete together, the performance would have been regulated by the water-clock, as indeed we are told was formerly done. But the limit as fixed by the nature of drama itself is this- the greater the length, the more beautiful will the piece be by reason of its size, provided that the whole be perspicuous. And to define the matter toughly we may say that the proper magnitude is comprised within such limits that the sequence of events according to the law of probability or necessity will admit of a change from bad fortune to good or from good fortune to bad. Thus the plot should have a certain magnitude or a reasonable length, such as the mind may comprehend fully in one view or within the required time. A reasonable length or size is an essential condition of beauty. It is of the right proportion in itself and in all its parts. If it is too short, the mind will miss many things in it to comprehend it fully and if too long the mind, with its limited perspective, cannot take in all the events within the time required by the story. In Aristotles own words, it should be one of a length which can be easily embraced by the memory. But it should have length enough to unfold its sequence of events- the beginning, the middle and the end- naturally and fully.
In respect of character there are four things to be aimed at. First and most important, it must be good. Now any speech or action that manifests moral purpose of any kind will be expressive of character: the character will be good if the purpose is good. This rule is relative to each class. Even a woman may be good and also a slave; though the woman may be said to be an inferior being and the slave quite worthless. The second thing to aim at is propriety. There is a type of manly valor but valor in a woman or unscrupulous cleverness, is in appropriate. Thirdly character must be true to life: for this is a distinct from goodness and propriety as here described. The fourth point is consistency: for though the subject of the imitation who suggested the type, be inconsistent, still he must be consistently inconsistent.
en t
re
5.4
Views on Character
fo
rT
ra
di
64
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
5.4.1 Necessary or Probable Sequence

As in the structure of the plot, so too in the portraiture of character, the poet should always aim either at the necessary or the probable. Thus a person of a given character should speak or act in a given way, by the rule either of necessity or of probability; just as this event should follow that by necessary or probable sequence. It is therefore evident that the unraveling of the plot, no less than the complication, must arise out of the plot itself, it must not be brought about by the Deus ex Machina-as in the Medea or in the Retrun of the Greeks in Iliad. Again, since Tragedy is an imitation of persons who are above the common level, the example of good portrait painters should be followed. They, while reproducing the distinctive form of the original, make a likeness which is true to life and yet more beautiful. So too the poet in representing men who are irascible, should preserve the type and yet ennoble it. In this way Achilles is portrayed by Agathon and Homer. These then are the rules the poet should observe. Nor should he neglect those appeals to the senses which though not among the essentials, are the concomitants of poetry; for here too there is much room for error. But of this enough has been said in published treatises.
en t
In constructing the plot and working it out with the proper diction, the poet should place the scene, as far as possible, before his eyes. In this way, seeing everything with the utmost vividness as if he were a spectator of the action, he will discover what is in keeping with it, and be most unlikely to overlook inconsistencies. Again the poet should work out his play to the best of his power, with appropriate gestures, for those who feel emotion are most convincing through natural sympathy with the characters they represent and one who is agitated storms, one who is angry rages with the most like-life reality. Hence poetry implies either a happy gift of nature or a strain of madness. In the one case a man can take the mould of any character, in the other he is lifted out of his proper self. As for the story whether the poet takes it ready made or construct it for himself, he should first sketch its general outline. And then fill in the episodes and amplify in detail. After this the names being once given, it remains to fill in the episodes. We must see that they are relevant to the action. In the case of Orestes, for example, there is the madness which led to his capture, and his deliverance by means of the purificatory rite. In the drama, the episodes are short but it is these that give extension to Epic poetry.
5.5
Comedy is an imitation of characters of a lower type- not, however, in the full sense of the word bad, the Ludicrous being merely a subdivision of the ugly. It consists in some defect or ugliness which is not painful or destructive. To take an obvious example, the comic mask is ugly and distorted but does not imply pain. The roots of comedy lie in satirical verse as those of tragedy in epic poetry. As tragedy following its parent forms, epic poetry and hymns, represents men as worse as nobler than they are, so comedy also following its parent forms, 65
re
Views on Comedy
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
5.4.2 Seeing is Believing
lE
du
ca
tio n
5.5.1 Law of Universality
Finally comedy shares the generalizing power of poetry. It equally represents not what has happened but what may happen: what is probable in a given set of circumstances. With the characters and conditions such as it chooses, the result it says is likely to be what it states. This is borne out by its choice of a general and not an individual foible for its object. The very names it gives to its characters suggest a section of humanity rather than particular men. So they represent more or less universal rather than individual frailties, not how so -and -so behaved but how all men of the same type will behave in the same circumstances. This is all that is said of comedy in Poetics. 66
en t
Thus limiting its range of vision, comedy is able to give artistic expression to certain types of character which can hardly find a place in serious art. Aristotle draws no distinction between the universality which is proper to tragedy and comedy respectively. Each of these as a branch of the poetic art embodies the type rather than the individual and to this extent they have a common function. Indeed Aristotle selects comedy as a salient illustration of what he means by the representation of the universal. In various places he indicates the distinction between comedy proper which playfully touches the faults and foibles of humanity and personal satire or invective. The one kind of composition is a representation of the universal, the other of the particular. All great poetry and art fulfill this law of universality, but none perhaps so perfectly as the poetry and art of the Greeks. Take a single instance- the delineation of female character in Greek poetry. The heroines of Homer and of the tragedians are broadly and unmistakably human. In real life woman is less individual than man; she runs less into idiosyncrasies, she conforms rather to the general type. This, however, it maybe said, is owing to the deference she pays to the conventional rules of society; it is due to artificial causes that do not reach to the foundation of character. But an inwardly eccentric woman is also rare.
5.5.2 Comedy-Power of Poetry
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
satirical verse and the phallic songs represents men as worse than they are. While the satire however ridicules personalities, comedy ridicules general vices- the one the sinner the other the sin. By characters worse than the average Aristotle does not mean who are wicked or vicious but merely men who have some defect or ugliness which is not painful or destructive. What they do is defective or ugly, too, provoking laughter, but leads to no harm or pain either to themselves or to others. Nor are they despicable, for no one whom we hate can put us into good humor. They are merely ludicrous and no more-the ludicrous being merely a subdivision of the ugly. By excluding personal attacks that form the subject-matter of the satire and the possibility of pain to the comic character we laugh at, from the scope of comedy and including only general follies among its objects, Aristotle, disagreeing again with Plato, rules out malicious pleasure as the basis of comedy. For when the pleasure arises not from a personal but a general foible and causes no pain whatever either to the victim or to the spectator, there can be no malice in it.
tio n
5.6
Views on Epic
5.7
Difference between Tragedy and Epic
In its form the epic is different from tragedy. It imitates life by narration and not by dramatic action and speech, and it admits of much greater length than tragedy. It has no use therefore for song and spectacle which form part of action. It communicates its meaning in mere reading or recitation. In its length it is not restricted like the tragedy, where everything happening everywhere cannot be shown for the simple reason that the stage represents but one place and so can admit but one set of characters, i.e. those connected with an event at that place only. But in epic poetry, owing to the narrative form, many events simultaneously transacted can be presented and these, if relevant to the subject, add mass and dignity to the poem. The epic has here an advantage and one that conducts to grandeur of effect, to diverting the mind of the hearer and relieving the story with varying episodes. For sameness of incident soon produces satiety and makes tragedies fail on the stage. But the narration gains in effect if the poet himself speaks as little as possible and leaves all to be explained by his characters in the dramatic manner.
en t
According to Aristotle, the characters portrayed in epic and tragic poetry have their basis in moral goodness; but the goodness is of the heroic order. It is quite distinct from plain, unaspiring virtue. It has nothing in it common or mean. Whatever be the moral imperfections in the characters, they are such as impress our imagination and arouse the sense of grandeur: we are lifted above the reality of daily life.
A third difference between epic and tragedy is in the use of improbable or the marvelous. Poets are tempted to use it because it is pleasing. But there is greater scope for it in the epic, where it is perceived only by the imagination than tragedy where it is perceived by the eye. 67
re
5.7.1 Moral Goodness of the Heroic Order
5.7.2 Use of Improbable
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
The epic is earlier in origin than either tragedy or comedy. It grew out of the old hymns to the gods and songs sung in praise of famous men. In its nature it resembles tragedy closely but in its form it is different. Taking its nature first, it is also an imitation of a serious action, whole and complete, with a beginning, a middle and an end. Whoever, therefore, says Aristotle, knows what is good or bad tragedy, knows also about epic poetry. The structure of its plot follows the same pattern. It has a complication, a turning point and a denouement and it is either complex or simple that is with or without peripeteia and anagnorisis. It has the same unity of action and produces the same kind of pleasure, viz that arising from catharsis, since the epic also has tragic happenings. Its characters are also of the same: plot, character, thought and diction, the remaining two, song and spectacle, belonging to tragedy only.
tio n
Invisible to the eye in the epic, its improbability passes unnoticed, but visibly seen on the stage, it appears absurd. Hence Aristotles observation that the poet should prefer probable impossibilities to improbable possibilities, i.e. the believable false to the unbelievable true-a convincing lie to an unconvincing fact. Such use of supernatural alone is artistic and the more so in the epic than in tragedy for the reason already stated.
5.7.3 Tragedy is Superior to Epic

To the question whether the epic or the tragic mode of imitation is the higher, Aristotles answer is the tragic mode. The claims of the epic mode to superiority over the tragic are that it appeals to a more refined audience, the cultured few that it achieves its effect without theatrical aid and that its action is more varied. Aristotle concedes all these points and yet concludes that, all things considered, tragedy is the superior of the two. For it also appeals to a cultivated audience when merely read- theatrical performance being but an external accessory and no part of the literary craft- and unfolds its action within narrower limits. Even its performance in the theater, with music to boot, conduces to greater pleasure than less; while its limited length, attaining greater unity, works no less to the same end, for the concentrated effect is more pleasurable than one which is spread over a long time and so diluted. Tragedy therefore attains its end more perfectly than the epic.
5.8
Views on Style
Aristotles remarks on the language of poetry in Poetics anticipated his comments on style in Rhetoric. In both he lays down two essentials of good writing-clearness and prosperity. The object of writing being to communicate the writers meaning, it has, first, to be clear or intelligent, but as the meanings to be conveyed are different at different times, the same mode of writing may not be proper for them all. What is therefore needed, next, is the propriety or suitability of each mode of writing to the meaning it is intended to convey. For intelligibility current words are the best, for they are familiar to all, but writing being an art, it should aim at dignity and charm also. These are best attained by the use of unfamiliar words-archaic words, foreign words, dialect words, newly-coined words- that have an element of surprise and novelty in them. For the same reason the metaphysical use of words, conveying a hidden resemblance between things apparently dissimilar, is to be preferred to the plain. It partakes both of the familiar and the unfamiliar. It looks like familiar because all men in their ordinary speech make use of metaphors and unfamiliar because it often discerns resemblances of surprising nature. A perfect poetic style uses words of all kinds in a judicious combination. All the same, compound words are best suited to the lyric which strives after ornament, rare or unfamiliar words to the epic which needs to be stately in expression, and metaphorical language to the drama which keeps as close as possible to everyday speech.
en t
5.8.1 Charm of Style- The Use of Metaphor

So far Poetics and Rhetoric follow more or less the same line, but Rhetoric is further 68
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
5.9
Value of His Criticism
en t
While Platos approach to literature was that of a social reformer, Aristotles is that of a scientist. Plato wanted literature to do the works of morality; Aristotle expects it to be no more than what it is an art. So Aristotle clearly sees the distinctions between the two which Plato had failed to see. The standard of correctness, he says, is not the same in poetry and politics, any more than in poetry and any other art. While politics, which is a social science, is to be judged by the contribution it makes to social well-being, poetry (and for that matter literature) is to be judged by its proper function- pleasure. To do this it has to make an appeal to the emotions, which is catharsis and not harmful in its effect as Plato believed. By a scientific examination of the existing Greek literature Aristotle discovers the principles by which literature can most effectively discharge this function: it has unity of action, which Plato stressed too, and propriety or decorum in all its parts-characters, thought, style and performance. In this way he judges literature by its own standards- the aesthetic. In tracing the origin and development of the three art forms, he examines and in conducting his inquiry in general with constant reference to the past, he shows himself a master of the historical method. The fundamental thought ofAristotles philosophy is Becoming not Being and Becoming to him meant not an appearing and a vanishing away, but a process of development, an unfolding of what is already in the germ, an upward ascent ending in Being which is the highest object of knowledge. The concrete individual thing is not a shadowy appearance but the primary reality. The outward world and material world, the diverse manifestations of natures life, organic and inorganic, the processes of birth and decay, the manifold forms of sensuous beauty, all gained a new importance of his philosophy. Physical science, slighted by Plato was passionately studied byAristotle. Fine art was no longer twice removed from the truth of things, the expression of the universal which is not outside of and apart from the particular, but presupposed in each 69
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
remarkable for its comments on composition in prose and style in general. The style of prose, it says, is distant from that of poetry, for whereas poetry largely draws upon unfamiliar words to attain dignity and charm, prose, dealing with everyday subjects, can use only familiar or current words. However, one source of charm is common to both-the use of metaphor. By employing it judiciously prose can also introduce an element of novelty and surprise in its otherwise plain statements. In the arrangements of words into sentence, it should avoid multiplicity of clauses, parenthesis and ambiguous punctuation. Words can be arranged into two kinds of style loose or periodic. The loose style is made up of a series of sentences, held together by connective words. In the periodic style each sentence is a complete whole with a beginning, an end and a length (or magnitude) that can be comprehended at a glance. Each such sentence may form part of a bigger whole if the sense so requires it. While the loose style is formless, being just a chain of sentences that may be increased or reduced at will, the periodic style has a form that cannot be so easily tampered with. The loose style therefore is less intelligent than the periodic and also less graceful. The one just runs on, and the other follows a measured course that imparts to it the charm of poetry.
ca
tio n
particular. The work of art was not a semblance opposed to reality, but the image of a reality which is penetrated by the idea and through which the idea shows more apparent than in the actual world. Whereas Plato had laid it down that the greatest and fairest things are done by nature and the lesser by art which receives from nature all the greater and primeval creations and fashions them in detail. Aristotle saw in fine art a rational faculty which divines natures unfulfilled intensions and reveals her ideal to sense. The illustrations which fine art employs do not cheat the mind; they image forth the immanent idea which cannot find adequate expression under the forms of material existence.
5.10 Limitations
Aristotle, relating literature to life, states its philosophical value to mankind its capacity to see the permanent features of life in the ephemeral. Akin to this philosophical approach is his stress on the psychological element in literature: what kind of plot, character and style for instance, please men. Penetrating their minds and hearts as it were, he finds that peripeteia and anagnorisis please most in tragic plot, hamartia in the tragic hero and metaphor in style. Tragedy, comedy and epic are all in this way considered with reference to their effect on the minds and hearts of their spectators or readers. In all that he says of them he shows a remarkable awareness of what the Americans call audience psychology.
en t
5.11 Let Us Sum Up
re
Aristotle is not without his limitations. In the first place he assigns a higher rank to tragedy than it deserves. In doing so he forgets his own scientific approach and follows the established tradition. The epic in which success is so difficult to achieve that about a dozen great epics are all that the world can boast of, is assigned the second rank. The succeeding ages were quick to see that unity of action is more difficult of attainment in the sprawling length of an epic than in the shorter compass of a tragedy, so he who can succeed in the former should be the greater artist, there being no difference between the two in other respects. Aristotle himself bestows more praise on Homers Iliad and Odyssey for their artistry in plot, character, thought and diction on the same things in his favorite tragedian Sophocles. The omission of the lyric, a major poetical form right from the earliest times in a treatise concerning poetry, particularly after Pindar had shown what could be done with it, is also inexplicable. Aristotle is also more concerned with the form of the literary types he deals with than with their content and so lays down rules only for the former. But perhaps Poetics was not intended to be a comprehensive review of all the problems of poetry. It seems to concern itself only with those that, in the opinion of Aristotle, had not been correctly understood. Its incompleteness is another explanation. However, for the largeness of its view-scientific, historical, philosophical, psychological- and the depth of its observation, it is even in its fragmentary form, one those rare books that have powerfully moved mankind.
fo
rT
ra
di
70
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
5.12 Review Questions

1. Aristotle holds that a hero is a man who is not eminently good and just, yet whose misfortune is brought about not by vice or depravity, but by some error or frailty. Discuss. In the plot a certain length is necessary and a length which can be easily embraced by the memory. Elucidate.
2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
Write short notes on the following: i)hamartia ii)peripeteia iii)anagnorisis
5.13 Bibliography
2. 3.
en t
4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
re
Butcher, S.H. Aristotles Theory of Poetry and Fine Arts. Dover Publications, Inc. 4th Edition, 1951.
Das, B. B. & Mohanthy, J. M. Literary Criticism: A Reader. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1993. Prasad, B. Introduction to English Criticism. Macmillan India Ltd, Delhi, 1965. Saintsbury, George. Loco Crici. Meerut, Loyal Book Depot, n.a. Selden, Raman. The Theory of Criticism. London and New York: Longman,1989. Wellek, Rene. A History of Modern Criticism. 5 Vols. New York, 1954. Wimsatt, W.K. & Brooks, Cleanth. Literary Criticism: A Short History. New York, 1954 __________ 71
fo
1.
Atkins, J.W.H. Literary Criticism in Antiquity. 2 Vols. London, 1752.
rT
ra
di
tio
na
The roots of comedy lie in satirical verse as those of tragedy in epic poetry.Discuss.
lE
Aristotle compares plot with a beautiful creature or object which is neither too long nor too short. Do you agree?
du
How many kinds of plot are discussed in The Poetics by Aristotle?
ca
A perfect tragedy should be arranged not on simple but on the complex plan. Throw light on the above fact.
tio n
Unity of plot does not, as says Aristotle, consist in the unity of the hero. Do you agree with the statement?
UNIT-6 SAMUEL JOHNSON : PREFACE TO SHAKESPEARE

Structure 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 6.8 Objectives Introduction
Major works of Dr. Samuel Johnson Extracts from Preface to Shakespeare Explanation of the extracts Let Us Sum Up Review Questions Bibliography
6.2
Dr. Samuel Johnson was born on 18 Sept, 1709 and he died on 13 Dec., 1784. He was an essayist, poet, biographer, lexicographer and an eminent critic of English Literature. He had a great command over language and his essays and pamphlets display his learning. Dr. Johnsons father ws a book seller and his name was Michael Johnson. He was born in Lichfield, Staffordshiere where he attaended the Grammar School. At the age of nineteen, he entered Peneleroke College, Oxford. Poverty forced him to leave Oxford without taking a 72
en t
In the unit you are going to study Dr. Samuel Johnsons famous treatise on Williams Shakespeare. This unit will help you to understand why Dr. Johnson is considered to be a great critic and an eminent essayist. This unit will also familiarize you with the age of Dr. Samuel Johnson.
A brief account of the life of Samuel Johnson
re
fo
6.1
Introduction
rT
In this unit you are going to read why Dr. Johnson considers Shakespeare to be the greatest dramatist of England. This unit will also familiarize you with the wit and style of Dr. Johnson. You will learn how Dr. Johnson skillfully rebutes the arguments of critics who have criticized Shakespeare.Students are advised to read the whole essay if they can manage to procure the copies of the essay.
ra
di
tio
6.0
Objectives
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
A brief account of the life of Samuel Johnson
degree and he returned to Lichfield. At the age of 25 he married Elizabeth Tetty Porter, a widow twenty one years older than him. His first work was published in 1735. It was a translation from the French of Lolios, A Voyage to Abyssimia. In 1736, Johnson established a Private Academy at Edial, near Lichfield. He had only three pupils, but one of them was David Garrick who remained his friend, while becoming the most famous actor of his day. Johnson began the writing of his first major work there, the historical tragedy, Irene which was later produced by Garrick in 1749. In 1737, a penniless Dr. Johnson left for London with David Garrick. Samuel Johnson found employment with Edward Cave and he began contributing to Caves magazine aptly called The Gentlemans Magazine. for the next three decades, Johnson wrote essays, biographies, poems, pamphlets and parliamentary reports. The poem London (1738) and the Life of Savage (1745) are important works of this period. Richard Savage was Dr. Johnsons friend and he had shared in Dr. Johnsons poverty. Savage died in 1744. Between 1745 and 1755, Johnson wrote perhaps his best known work A Dictionary of the English Language. During the decade he worked on the dictionary, Dr. Johnson needed to augment his income. So he wrote semi-weekly essays under the title The Rambler and these essays were published till 1752. The dictionary was published in 1755. Just before the publication of his dictionary, Oxford University awarded him the degree of Master of Arts. He was awarded an honarary doctorate in 1765 by Trinity College, Dublin and in 1775 by Oxford University. In 1758 Johnson began another series called The Idler and it was published in a weekly news journal. In 1762, King George III granted him an annual peusion of 300. This grant came largely through the efforts of Thoman Sheridon and the Earle OF Bute. A few months later Dr. Johnson met James Boswell for the first time. Boswell later became his biographer. In 1773, eleven years after Johnson had met Boswell, the two of them set out an A journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, the title Johnson used for his account of their travels published in 1775. Boswells account of these travels were published in 1786 under the title The Journals of a Tour to the Hebrides. After the publication of the Dictionary, Johnson wrote a number of essays. His last major work was The Lives of the English Poets. He died in 1784 and was buried at Westminister Abbey.
en t
6.3
From 1737 Dr. Johnson wrote biographies, essays, poetry, pamphlets and parliamentary reports. In 1755 his most important and well-known work A Dictionary of the English Language was published. He worked on the dictionary for a decade. During his work on the dictionary, Johnson made many appeals for financial help in the form of subscriptions: patrons would get a copy of the first edition as soon an it was printed in compensation for their support during its compliation. Johnsons dictionary contained 42,773 words. In 1758 Johnson began writing short, light essays for a weekly news journal. These essays were published under the title The Idler. In 1759 Johnson published his philosophical novella 73
re
Major works of Dr. Samuel Johnson
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
Rasselas, written in one week. This helped him to pay for his mothers funeral and settle her debts. By 1762 Johnson was a celebrated figure. He formed The Chele a social group that included his friends Joshua Reynolds, Edmund Bruke, David Garrick and Oliver Goldsmith. As mentioned earlier, he published his tour of Scotland in 1775. In the 1770s, Johnson who had tended to be an opponent of the government early in life, published a series of pamphlets in favour of various government policies. Dr. Johnson was a devout conservative Anglican, a Staunch Tory and a compassionate man, supporting a number of poor friends undere his roof. He however, remained a fiercely independent and original thinker. His analysis of the plays of William Shakespeare especially The Preface to Shakespeare is considered a landmark in literary criticism. Dr. Johnsons final major work was The Lives of the English Poets a project commissioned by a number of book sellers of London. The Lives of the English Poets was a critical as well as a biographical study of some well known Eaglish writers/poets. These critical and biographical studies appeared as prefaces to selections of each poets work. Dr. Johnson died in 1784 and was buried at Westminister Abbey.
6.4
Extracts from Preface to Shakespeare
Shakespeare is above all writers, at least above all modern writers, the poet of nature; the poet that holds up to his readers a faithful mirror of manners and of life. His characters are not modified by the customs of particular places, unpractised by the rest of the world; by the peculiarities of studies or professions, which can operate but upon small numbers; or by the accidents of transient fashions or temporary opinions: they are the genuine progeny of common humanity, such as the world will always supply, and observation will always find. His persons act and speak by the influence of those general passions and principles by which all minds are agitated, and the whole system of life is continued instarmotion. In the writings of other poets a character is too often an individual; in those of Shakespeare it is commonly a species. It is from this wide extension of design that so much instruction is derived. It is this which fills the plays of Shakespeare with practical axioms and domestic wisdom. It was said of Euripides, that every verse was a precept; and it may be said of Shakespeare, that from his works may be collected a system of civil and economical prudence. 74
en t
re
fo
rT
It is proper to inquire, by what pecularities of excellence Shakespeare has gained and kept the favour of his countrymen. Nothing can please many, and please long, but just representations of general nature.
ra
di
The poet, of whose works I have undertaken the revision, may now begin to assume the dignity of an ancient, and claim the privilege of established fame and prescriptive veneration.
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
It will not easily be imagined how much Shakespeare excells in accommodating his sentiments to real life, but by comparing him with other authors. Other dramatists can only gain attention by hyperbolical or aggravated characters, by fabulous and unexampled excellence or depravity, as the writers of barbarous romances invigorated the reader by a giant and a dwarf; and he that should form his expectations of human affairs from the play, or from the tale, would be equally deceived. Shakespeare has no heroes; his scenes are occupied only by men, who act and speak as the reader thinks that he should himself have spoken or acted on the same occasion: Even where the agency is supernatural the dialogue is level with life. Other writers disguise the most natural passions and most frequent incidents; so that he who contemplates them in the book will not know them in the world: Shakespeare approximates the remote, and familiarizes the wonderful; the event which he represents will not happen, but if it were possible, its effects would probably be such as he has assigned; and it may be said, that he has not only shown human nature as it acts in real exigencies, but as it would be found in trials, tc which it cannot be exposed. This therefore is the praise of Shakespeare, that his drama is the mirror of life; that he who has mazed his imagination, in following the phantoms which other writers raise up before him, may here be cured of his delirious ecstasies, by reading human sentiments in human language, by scenes from which a hermit may estimate the transactions of the world, and a confessor predict the progress of the passions. The censure which Shakespeare has incurred by mixing comic and tragic scenes, as it extends to all his works, deserves more consideration. Let the fact be first stated, and then examined. Shakespeares plays are not in the rigorous and critical sense either tragedies or comedies, but compositions of a distinct kind; exhibiting the real state of sublunary nature, which partakes of good and evil, joy and sorrow, mingled with endless variety of proportion and innumerable modes of combination; and expressing the course of the world, in which the loss of one is the gain of another; in which, at the same time, the reveller is hasting to his wine, and the mourner burying his friend; in which the malignity of one is sometimes defeated by the frolic of another; and many mischiefs and many benefits are done and hindered without design. Out of this chaos of mingled purposes and casulaties, the ancient poets, according to the laws which custom had prescribed, selected some the crimes of men, and some their absurdities; some the momentous vicissitudes of life, and some the lighter occurrences; some the terrors of distress, and some the gaieties of prosperity. Thus rose the two modes of imitation, kown by the names of tragedy and comedy, compositions intended to promote different ends by contrary means, and considerred as so little allied, that I do not recollect among the Greeks or Romans and a single writer who attempted both. Shakespeare has united the powers of exciting laughter and sorrow not only in one mind, but in one composition. Almost all his plays are divided between serious and ludi75
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
crous characters, and, in the successive evolutions of the design, sometimes produce seriousness and sorrow, and sometimes levity and laughter. That this is a practice contrary to the rules of criticism will be readily allowed; but there is always an appeal open from criticism to nature. The end of writing is to instruct; the end of poetry is to instruct by pleasing. That the mingled drama may convey all the instruction of tragedy or comedy cannot be denied, beacuse it includes both in its alternations of exhibition and approaches nearer than either to the appearance of life, by showing how great machinations and slender designs may promote or obviate one another, and the high and the low cooperate in the general system by unavoidable concatenation.
His first defect is that to which may be imputed most of the evil in books or in men. He sacrifices virtue to convenience, and is so much more careful to please than to instruct, that he seems to write without any moral purpose. From his writings indeed a system of social duty may be selected, for he that thinks reasonably must think morally; but his precepts and axioms drop casually from him; he makes no just distsributuion of good or evil, nor is always careful to show in the virtuous a disapprobation of the wicked; he carries his persons indifferently through right and wrong, and at the close dismisses them without further care, and leaves their examples to operate by chance. This fault the barbarity of his age cannot extenuate; for it is always a writers duty to make the world better, and justice is virtue independent on time or place. The plots are often so loosely formed, that a very slight consideration may improve them, and so carelessly pursued, that he seems not always fully to comprehend his own design. He omits opportunities of instructing or delighting which the train of his story seems to force upon him, and apparently rejects those exhibitions which would be more affecting, for the sake of those which are more easy. It may be observed, that in many of his plays the latter part is evidently neglected. 76
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
Shakespeare with his excellences has likewise faults, and faults sufficient to obscure and overwhelm any other merit. I shall show them in the proportion in which they appear to me, without envious malignity or superstitious veneration.
di
tio
It is objected, that by this change of scenes the passions are interrupted in their progression and that the principal event, being not advanced by a due gradation of preparatory incidents, wants at last the power to move, which constitutes the perfection of dramatic poetry. This reasoning is so specious, that it is received as true even by those who in daily experience feel it to be false. The interchanges of mingled scenes seldom fail to produce the intended vicissitudes of passion. Fiction cannot move so much, but that the attention may be easily transferred; and though it must be allowed that pleasing melancholy be sometimes interrupted by unwelcome levity yet let it be considered likewise, that melancholy is often not pleasing, and that the disturbance of one man may be the relief of another; that differrent auditors have different habitudes; and that, upon the whole, all pleasure consists in variety.
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
When he found himself near the end of his work, and in view of his reward, he shortened the labour to snatch the profit. He therefore remits his efforts where he should most vigorously exert them, and his catastrophe is improbably produced or imperfectly represented. He had no regard to distinction of time or place, but gives to one age or nation, without scruple, the customs, institutions, and opinions of another, at the expense not only of likelihood, but of possibility. It his comic scenes he is seldom very successful when he engages his characters in reciprocations fo smartness and contests of sarcasm; their jests are commonly gross, and their pleasantry licentious; neither his gentlemen nor his ladies have much delicacy, nor are sufficiently distinguished from his clowns by any appearance of refined manners. Whether he represented the real conversation of his time is not easy to determine; the regin of Elizabeth is commonly supposed to have been a time of statelines, formality and reserve; yet perhaps the relaxaions of that severity were not very elegant. There must, however, have been always some modes of gaiety preferable to others, and a writer ought to choose the best. In tragedy his performance seems constantly to be worse, as his labour is more. The effusions of passion which exigence forces out are for the most part striking and energetic; but whenever he solicits his invention, or strains his faculties, the offspring of his throes is tumour, meannes, tediousness, and obscurity. In narration he affects a disproportionate pomp of diction, and a wearisome train of circumlocution, and tells the incident imperfectly in many words, which might have been more plainly delivered in few. Narration in dramatic poetry is naturally tedious, as it is unanimated and inactive, and obstructs the progress of the action; it should therefore a always be rapid, and enlivened by frequent interruption, Shakespeare, found it an encumbrance, and instead of lightening it by brevity, endeavoured to recommend it by dignity and splendour. His declamations or set speeches are commonly cold and weak, for his power was the power of nature; when he endeavoured, like other tragic writers, to catch opportunities of amplification, and instead of inquiring what the occasion demanded, to show how much his stores of knowledge could supply, he seldom escapes without the pity or resentment of his reader. It will be thought strange, that, in enumerating the defects of this writer, I have not yet mentioned his neglect of the unities; his violantion of those laws which have been insituted and established by the joint authority of poets and of critics. In his other works he has well enough preserved the unity of action. He has not, indeed, an intrigue regulary perplexed and regularly unravelled: he does not endeavour to hide his design only to discover it, for this is seldom the order of real events, and Shakespeare is the poet of nature: But his plan has commonly what Aristotle requries, a beginning, a middle, and an end; one event is connected with another, and the conclusion follows by easy consequence. 77
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
To the unities of time and place he has shown no regard; and perhaps a nearer view of the principles on which they stand will diminish their value, and withdraw from them the veneration which, from the time of Corneille, they have very generally received, by discovering that they given more trouble to the poet, than pleasure to the auditor. The truth is, that the spectators are always in their sense, and know, from the first act to the last, that the stage is only a stage, and that the players are only players. They came to hear a certain number of lines recited with just gesture and elegant modulation. The lines relate to some action, and an action must be in some place; but the different action that complete a story may be in places very remote from each other; and where is the absurdity of allowing that space to represent first Athens, and then Sicily, which was always known to be neither Sicily nor Athens, but a modern theatre?
The unities of time and place are not essential to a just drama, that though they may sometimes conduce to pleasure, they are always to be sacrificed to the nobler beauties of varity and instruciton. The greatest graces of a play are to copy nature and instruct life. The English nation, in the time of Shakespeare, was yet struggling to emerge from barbarity. Nations, like individuals, have their infancy. Our authors plots are generally borrowed from novels, and it is reasonable to suppose, that he chose the most popular, such as were read by many, and related by more; for his audience could not have followed him through the intricacies of the drama, had they not held the thread of the story in their hands. 78
en t
The delight of tragedy proceeds from our consciousness of fiction; if we thought murders and treasons real, they would please no more. Imitations produce pain or pleasure, not because they are mistaken for realities, but because they bring realities to mind. When the imagination is recreated by a painted landscape, the trees are not supposed capable to give us shade, or the fountains coolness; but we consider, how we should be pleased with such fountains playing beside us, and such woods waving over us. As nothing is essential to the fable, but unity of action, and as the unities of time and place arise evidently from false assumptions, and, by circumscribing the extent of the drama, lessen its variety, I cannot think it much to be lamented, that they were not known by him, or not observed;
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
By supposition, as place is introduced, time may be extended; the time required by the fable elapses for the most part between the acts; for, of so much of the action as is represented, the real and poetical duration is the same. The drama exhibits successive limitations of successive actions; and why many not the second limitation represent an action that happened years after the first, if it be so connected with it, that nothing but time can be supposed to intervene? Time is, of all modes of existence, most obsequious to the imagination; a lapse of years is as easily conceived as a passage of hours. In contemplation we easily contract the time of real actions, and therefore willingly permit it to be contracted when we only see their imitation.
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
The stories, which we now find only in remoter authors, were in his time accessible and familiar. The fable of As You Like It, which is supposed to be copied from Chauceres Gamelyn, was a little pamphlet of those times; and old Mr Cibber remembered the tale of Hamlet in plain English prose, which the critics have now to seek in Saxo Grammaticus. His English histories he took from English chronicles and English ballads; he dilated some of Plutarchs lives into plays, when they had been translated by North. His plots, whether historical or fabulous, are always crowded with incidents, by which the attention of a rude people was more easily caught than by sentiment or argumentation. Voltaire expresses his wonder, that our authors extravagances are endured by a nation, which has seen the tragedy of Cato. Let him be answered, that Addison speaks the language of poets, and Shakespeare, of men. We find in Cato innumerable beauties which enamour us of its author, but we see nothing that acquaints us with human sentiments or human actions. The composition of Sakespeare is a forest, in which oaks extend thier branches, and pines tower in the air, interspersed sometimes with weeds and brambles, and sometimes giving shelter to myrtles and to roses; filling the eye with awful pomp, and gratifying the mind with endless diversity. Shakespeare opens a mine which contains gold and diamonds in inexhaustible plenty, though clouded by incrustations, debased by impurities, and mingled with a mass of meaner minerals. He found the English stage in a state of the utmost rudeness; no essay either in tragedy or comedy had appeared, from which it could be discovered to what degree of delight either one or other might be carried. Neither character nor dialogue were yet understood. Shakespeare may be truly said to have introduced them both amongst us, and in some of his happier scenes to have carried them both to the utmost height. Boyle congratulated himself upon his high birth, because it favoured his curiosity, by facilitating his access. Shakespeare had no such advantage; he came to London a needy adventurer, and lived for a time by very mean employments. The genius of Shakespeare was not to be depressed by the weight of poverty, nor limited by the narrow conversation to which men in want are inevitably condemned; the encumbrances of his fortune were shaken from his mind, as dewdrops from a lions mane. Shakespeare, whether life or nature be his subject, shows plainly, that he has seen with his own eyes; he gives the image which he receives, not weakened or distorted by the intervention of any other mind; the ignorant feel his representations to be just, and the learned see that they are complete. The style of Shakespeare was in itself urgrammatical, perplexed and obscure; his works were transcribed for the players by those who may be supposed to have seldom understood them; they were transmitted by copyers equally unskilful, who still multiplied errors; they were perhaps sometimes multilated by the actors, for the sake of shortening the speeches; and were at last printed without correction of the press.
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
79
lE
du
ca
tio n
6.5
Explanation of the extracts
Dr. Johnsons long treatise Preface to Shakespeare managed to silence all critics of Shakespeare. Written in the typical eighteenth century style, this long essay makes us extremely familiar with Dr. Johnsons convincing style. The language is rich and this prose piece uses a number of literary devices. Dr. Johnson is of the opinion that human beings tend to venerate the past and the past always appears better. He is of the opinion that whenever one evaluates a writer one must apply the test to time to works of a writer. Length of duration and continuance of esteem is a test which was advocated by the great classical critic Longinus. Dr. Johnson reaffirms his faith in this test. A work can only be proclaimed excellent when it is compared with other works and when it continues to please a number of people in the years to come.
Shakespeare represents things in such a way that if it were to happen, it would probably be in the way he has shown. Shakespeares writings would make even a hermit aware of the ways of the world and a priest aware of the way passions dominate and control human relationships. Voltaire had objected to Shakespeares representation of the usurping king in Hamlet as a drunkard. Since Hamlets uncle had murdered Hamlets father, the uncle was a murdrer. A murderer is a despicable character, by making him a drunkard, Shakespeare makes the character of the uncle all the more odious. Dr. Johnson applauds Shakespeare for writing tragi-comedies: These plays are not in the rigorous and critical sense either tragedies or comedies, but compositions of a different kind. Dr. Johnson justifies tragi-comedies on grounds of realism. Tragedy does not convey 80
en t
re
Readers derive a lot of instruction from his plays, and readers become worldly wise. From Shakespeares words may be collected a system of Civil and Economical Prudence. Shakespeare should be compared with other authors in ordere to evaluate him correctly. Shakespeare wrote his dialogues with effortless case. He took up common occurrence and diligently worked on them. His characters were distinct personalities and when they spoke, their speech suited their personalities. Dr. Johnson asserts Shakespeare has no heroes and the men in the plays act and behave in such a way that the reader thinks that he would have acted and behaved in that way.
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
William Shakespeare has outlived his century, the term commonly fixed as the test of literary merit. Generations of readers have derived pleasure from his work. The central point of Shakespeares portrayal is humanity and this just representation of nature pleases the readers. Shakespeare is the poet of nature: he gives a faithful account of manner and of life. His characters speak and act in such a way that the readere is able to identify with them. He may have been writing during the sixteenth century, but Dr. Johnson feels that the views, passions, beahaviour of his characters is common to the whole race of mankind.
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
the whole truth of life because it does not contain elements of comedy. Tragi comedies have serious and comic elements. Defending Shakespeares tragi-comedies, Dr. Johnson says that there is always an appeal open from criticism to nature. There are two natural grounds to justify it: that the alteration of pleasure and pain please by its varietey; and that life itself is a mingled yarn of pleasure and pain. Shakespeare knew that comedy requried a happy ending and tragedy required a sad ending. Shakespeare combined seriousness and meriment so that the reader and the audience could enjoy the play and learn something from it. Even though Shakespeare was a genius he appears to have put in a lot of labour while writing his tragedies whereas his comedies appear to have been written effortlessly. Shakespeares characters, pleasures and vexations are communicable to all time and to all places; they are natural and therefore durable. A twenty first century reader can even now identify with the characters and their speech. Shakespeare is like a rock and even time cannot erode him and his works. Other poets thrive on temporal elements, Shakespeare thrives an universal elements. Many critics have written about the defects in the plays of Shakespeare. Dr. Johnson says that it is true that Shakespeare in his desire to please at times appeared to over look the fact that plays also have an instructive value right and wrong, vice and virtue are sometimes carelessly depicted. But one must excuse this defect in his plays because the age in which Shakespeare lived was not a refined one. Dr. Johnson wrotes that Shakespeares plots are often loosely formed. But one can forgive such loose construction of plots because one must remember that Shakespeare was not educated. He was unlettered bard. Shakespeare had no regard to distinction of time or place i.e. he did not adhere to the concept of the unities of time and place as propounded by Aristotle. Dr. Johnson feels that the dramatist did not bother about decorum. He notes that Shakespeare was writing during the age of queen Elizabeth which had a lot of stateliness and formality. Shakespeare at times is repititive and this appears to displease the reader. The playwright could never succeed in writing thrilling speeches. In his plays when sentiments become too over powering, he struggles with it for a while and then leave it to the leisured reader. Dr. Johnson complimenting Shakespeare says A quibble is to Shakespeare, what luminous vapours are to the traveller .... Shakespeare loved to play with words, play upon the different meanings and connotations of the word. Just as a luminous vaopur attracts a traveller, similarly is Shakespeare attracted by certain words and he would use them to the fullest extent. A quibble is the golden apple for Shakespeare. Dr. Johnson writes A quibble was to him the fatal Cleopatra for which he lost the world, and was content to lose it. In his defence of Shakespeare, Dr. Johnson leaves no stone unturned. Shakespeares historical plays are not subject to any of (the) laws of tragedies or comedies. His historical
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
81
lE
du
ca
tio n
Commenting on the age in which Shakespeare lived, Dr. Johnson says The English nation, in the time of Shakespeare was yet struggling to emerge from barbarity. The people were not much educated neither were they well read. Shakespares plays were written in a simple style and it was understood by the viewer. Dr. Johnson is of the opinion that for his plays Shakespeare borrowed from novels, tales, folklore. These stories were read by many, related by many more. Unless the audience knew the stories they could not follow the intricacies of the drama. His plots are full of incidents and this enabled the viewer to identify with the story. Shakespeares plays do not have long argumentative speeches. Shakespeare spoke the language of men. So fond of Shakespeare is Dr. Johnson that he makes every effort to condemn the critics of Shakespeare. He feels that Shakespeares compositions are like that of a forest where there are oaks and pines, flowers and weeds. There can be no two opinions about the greatness of Shakespeare. Flawed sublimity is better than flawless mediocrity. In Shakespeare there are not many imitations, but if one finds some then one must think these imitations to be 82
en t
re
fo
rT
Commenting on the nature of dramatic response, Dr. Johnson feels that the delight of tragedy comes from the consciousness of this very element of fiction or illusion. If one thought murders depicted as real, they would not please any more. When one reads or views a play, one is aware of the fact that it is play. But the enjoyment is precisely because of the fact that these plays bring realities to the minds of the viewer or reader. Dr. Johnson on the authority of Shakespeare asserts that unity of action is the most important element in a play. One can discard unity of time and plays. A play should please and instruct and this should be the aim of every playwright.
ra
di
tio
na
lE
figures are natural and distinct. In his other works, Shakespeare has followed the norm and preserved the unity of action. His plays have a beginning, a middle and an end and the event follow one another in a logical manner. Dr. Johnson feels that it is not possible to adhere to the unity of time and place. The viewer knows that he has gone to watch a play. The drama will appear credible to the viewer only if the incidents have elements of probability and possibility not for a moment does a writer and a speactator thinks the drama to be real. He is conscious of the fact that he has gone to see a play. He is aware of the fictionality of the play, therefore, he does not give it any credit for being real. Dr. Johnson has full faith in the suppositional powers of the mind. The spectator is always in his senses when he has gone to see a play. He knows that the people on the stage are mainly artists who would recite their parts and gesture as the situation demanded. The nature of dramatic illusion is such that it enables the mind to move from one scene to another, there are no limitations on the mind. The mind is quick to grasp that the first scene is in Athens and the second may be in Alexandria. The spectator is aware of the fact that in the first scene the hero may be a boy and in the second scene the hero may be a grown-up man. The spectator is able to adjust to this time frame (the growth of the hero from boy to manhood). Time is servile to imagination and a number of years can be depicted as a passage of hours.
du
ca
tio n
universal. Shakespeare had to imitate from the world around him and what he imitated was known to the audience. Writing about the age of Shakespeare, Dr. Johnson comments that when Shakespeare wrote his plays, he wrote them without any formal guidance. There were no essays on tragedy or comedy, no guidelines were there as to dialogue, stage representations etc. Whatever Shakespeare penned was the product of his own intelligence, and his observance of the world around him. Shakespeare was taught by nature and life and he had a deep critical insight which no amount of books could confer. Shakespeare did not allow his mind to be depressed because of poverty. He shook away from his mind depressing and narrow ideas in much the same way as a lio, shakes dew drops from its mane. This great playwright faced a number of obstacles in his life. These diffculties taught him to face life with fortitude. When one reads the plays of Shakespeare, one feels that his representations are just and complete. His plays are executed in avery proper manner. Shakespeare probably never thought that his plays here worthy of posterity. Present popularity and present profit were probably what he kept in mind. Dr. Johnson is of the opinion that Shakespeare made no collection of his works. Some of his plays were not published till about seven years after his death. Publishers who published his works were often negligent and unskilful in their presentation. The result was that errors occured in the publication. Dr. Johnson is of the opinion that the style of Shakespeare was in itself ungramatical, perplexed and obscure, and people who transcribed them for the players seldom understood what they were transcribing. Moreover, copiers who did the job before the actual publication often made errors in copying and sometimes the actors mutilated the speeches for the sake of shortening them. Dr. Johnson says that Shakespeare tried to present life as he saw it. The beauty of his work is discerned when one reads the play. Dr. Johnson says that it is for posterity to judge what he has said about Shakeshpeare. But only one who is skilful and learned can appreciate the greatness of Shakeshpeare.
en t
6.6
6.7
1. 2.
re
Let Us Sum Up
In this unit you were able to familiarize with The wit and style of Dr. Johnson. Critical analysis of Shakespeares plays. Skillful arguments of Johnson to defend Shakeshpeare.
Review Questions
Which work of Dr. Johnson made him famous and won for him a lot of popularity? What test should a reader apply when he/she reads the work of a writer? 83
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
3. 4. 5. 6.
Why does Dr. Johnson defend Shakeshpeares tragi comedies? What is Dr. Johnsons opinion about the unites of action, time and place? Shakespeare was uneducated, yet he wrote great master pieces. Explain how it was possible for Shakespeare to do so. What are the defects of Shakespeare as pointed out by Johnson?
6.7
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
Bibliography
James Boswell : The Life of Samuel Johnson, Everyman editon, 1992.
Christopher Hibbort : The Personal History of Samuel Johnson, Penguin, 1984. A Lan Reddick : The Making of Johnsons Dictionary, Cambridge, 1990.
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
___________
di
Samuel Johnson page : (http://andromeda.rutgena.edu/~ilynch/Johnson/) links collected by Rutgers scholar Jack Lynch.
84
tio
(http://essays.quotidiana.org/Johnson/
na
Samuel Johnson : (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/samuel_Johnson.
lE
A Guide to Samuel Johnson : (http://andromedo.rutgen.edu/~ilynch/Johnson/Gude/) an overview by fack Synch.
du
Bruce Redford ed. : The Letters of Samuel Johnson, (5 volumes) Oxford, 1994.
ca
tio n
UNIT-7 ALEXANDER POPE: AN ESSAY ON MAN

Structure 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 Objectives Introduction : Augustan Age
Introduction to An Essay on Man 7.3.1 7.3.2
7.3.3. Epistle III: Of the Nature and State of Man, with respect to Society 7.3.4 7.4 7.5 7.6 7.7 Epistle IV: Of the Nature and the State of Man, with respect to Happiness
7.0
Objectives
The objectives of the present unit are to : give an introduction to the Augustan Age and its uniqueness in its imitation of the Classical times and its lasting impact.
en t
7.1
The English Augustan poets were at the zenith of their fame when Lyrical Ballads published by Cottle appeared in 1816 which gradually changed the literary taste and critical norms. During the hey days of the Augustan age every young man was sure to read Pope,
re
introduce the author his life and his contribution to English literature and criticism giving an idea of what was unique about his poetry.
provide a critical reception to the text An Essay on Man especially the relevance of the choice of the theme highlighting the contradictory views. give an account of each Epistle, highlighting the central idea.
Introduction : Augustan Age
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
85
Major Themes
lE
du
Epistle II: Of the Nature and State of Man as an Individual
ca
Epistle I:Of the Nature and State of Man, with respect to the Universe
tio n
About the Author
Swift, Addison and Dr. Johnson as they read Virgil, Cicero and Horace. Writers of this period considered a poet as a craftsman whose native genius could best express itself only through diligence and industry. They considered reason as the guiding principle which gave to all aspects of civilized human existence their due proposition and emphasis, and was thus part of an integrated and inclusive wisdom . (Amarasinghe, 177) The poets of the Augustan period were primarily neoclassicists who cherished the classical values, with a genuine admiration for the literature of Greece and Rome especially the Latin verse of the period of Augustus thus gaining the title Augustan for their age. Theirs was not a blind imitation but they believed in the rules of composition as illustrated in the classical poetry. Pope acknowledges in one of his couplets:
Are Nature still, but Nature methodizd
The nineteenth century revaluation of Augustan poetry in comparison with the achievement of the Elizabethans regarded the Elizabethan age as the golden age of English poetry and Popes period as silver age. This general opinion of the supremacy of the Elizabethans does not mean that the Augustan period was inferior. Critics used the achievements of Dryden, Pope, and Johnson as a norm to judge even the contributions of the Romantic period. Though Dryden and Pope are grouped under the same label they stand apart in their uniqueness. Dryden in noted for his scholarship and his vast knowledge from the field of science. While Dryden studied general nature Pope concentrated on the manners and nature of mankind. The notions of Dryden were formed by comprehensive speculation, and those of Pope by minute attention. (Dyson, 5) But the style of Dryden did not have the uniformity or the cautious handling of the rules of composition but it is quite capricious and varied. But both are remembered for their complementary contributions to the literary output of the Augustan age. If the flights of Dryden therefore are higher, Pope continues longer on the wind. If of Drydens fire the blaze is brighter, of Popes the heat is more regular and constant. Dryden ofter surpasses expectation, and Pope never falls below it Dryden is read with frequent astonishment, and Pope with perpetual delight. (Dyson, 6)The close association with the Augustan tradition gave the diagnostic power to critics like Issac EIsraeli and Peacock. It is generally agreed that Drydens poetry had bounding vigour and negligent ease which appealed to those with romantic taste whereas Popes verse had discipline and a complicated richness catering to those with conservative interests. One of the pro-Augustan critics named Rogers defends Pope against those who dared to question the profundity of the power of Reason declaring that those who are fond of the 86
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
Not stopping with following the rules of composition, the poets of this period faithfully imbibed the high moral seriousness of the Romans in order to assert the importance of the social and cultural significance of poetry. Pope did lisp in numbers for numbers came to him spontaneously but much of power and the dignity of his verse came only from the classics.
lE
du
ca
Those RULES of old discoverd, not devised,
tio n
7.2
About the Author
Born in London in 1688, to a linen merchant and Edith (Turner) Pope, as their only child, in a Roman Catholic family, His childhood was spent in Binfield near Windsor Forest. The poet considered this as his golden period: Early on Pope mastered Greek, Latin and later, French, and Italian Roman Catholic linen-merchant, and Edith. Pope spent his early years at Binfield on the edge of Windsor Forest, and recalled this period as a golden age: Thy forests, Windsor, and thy green retreats, At once the monarchs and the Muses seats, / Invite my lays. Be present, sylvan maids! Unlock your springs, and open all your shades. Even as a child he was nicknamed the Little Nightingale. He published his Pastorals in 1709. He wrote his first verses at the age of 12. His breakthrough work, An Essay on Criticism (1711), appeared when he was twenty-three. It included the famous line a little learning is a dangerous thing. Popes physical defects made him an easy target for heartless mockery, but hid literary talent and critical acumen he was also considered a leading literary critic and the epitome of English Neoclassicism. From his twenties till his death in 1744, Pope had his personal ideal with the prototypes from the mighty dead. In Popes life the forces of tradition and identity, the pressure of the past and will to belong to the great tradition of poets in Western literature and the desire to distinguish himself as a poet, complement one another. (Russo 2) His desire to make the past relevant in his present using newly refined language of Augustan England. He translated many authors like Ovid, Statius, Boethius, Cicero, Horace, Malberbe and Homer which best 87
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
Alexander Pope rose to the level of a national figure and was acknowledged as the first poet of the age. He fulfilled the canons of the Renaissance criticism and Dr. Johnson in his Life of Pope asks, if Pope be not a poet where is poetry to be found? But Johnsons view typified only one set of critical value that existed in the eighteenth century. Joseph Wartons criticism who supported the cult of the sublime was for originality, enthusiasm, sublimity and intangible poetic fury rather than the satirical and didactic poetry that Pope wrote.But whatever be the views of the critics, till today Pope is remembered not only as an essayist, and critic but more importantly as the greatest of Englis satirists besides being one of the acclaimed poets of the Enlightenment.
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
obscure in poetry cannot appreciate the deep thinking of the darling man Pope, because he always expresses himself with such admirable clearness. {Amarasinghe, 190). Indeed none can ignore the influence that Dryden and Pope had on not only the poets of the Romantic age but also of the nineteenth century poets. A close study of the early verse of Walter Scott goes to prove that they are reminiscent of Pope, in diction, imagery and movement Even Wordsworth allowed his verse to be influenced by Popes heroic couplets. Some of his poems display the balanced and antithetical style of Popes heroic couplet and also faithfully imitate the didactic and moralizing interests found in Popes Essay on Man. Byron and Crabbe are considered as the last descendants of the Augustan age of English poetry.
Pope began to work on his Essay on Man along with the Moral Essays but he could complete only the first three epistles by 1731 and they got published in 1733; and in 1734 when the fourth epistle was also finished the completed version was published anonymously. Pope acknowledged his authorship only in April 1935. It was St. John: Henry St. John (pronounced sin-jin), Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751), an outstanding Tory statesman who is considered to be the source of inspiration for this poem. He had to flee England in 1715 and when pardoned, he returned in 1723. Bolingbroke was an early friend of Pope and Swift, and a member of the Scriblerus Club. He is said to have given Pope the original impetus for writing the Essay on Man, the Moral Essays, and the Imitations of Horace. A freethinker and Deist, he may have provided Pope with the philosophy of the Essay, although there has been a continual controversy as to whether the poems point of view is Christian or Deistic. Pope enjoyed the reputation of a humanist, and in his Essay on Man he is nonchalantly untheological and like many of Enlightenment figures, he had no use for religion.
en t
re
fo
rT
expressed his the pleasure he had reading the best Greek and Latin poets.Essays on Criticism (1711) testified the poets deep interest not only in poetry but remains till today as specimen of a literary fashion. When his descriptive verse Windsor Street was published in 1713 Pope won the appreciation of Dr. Johnson: the writer, starting with a common and universal experience, sees it in a new light; and his sensitive spirit, endowing it with life and fresh meaning, provided it with form, image, language, and harmony appropriate to it. (Grant, 6) Pope was gifted with an active, ambitious, and enterprising mind, ever aspiring for higher flights with wings of poesy with a desire to do what is not easily done. Popes desire to create an epic at a time when the popularity of epic poetry was on the decline was fulfilled with the publication of The Rape of the Lock, with five cantos in 1714. This mock epic was composed upon request from a friend. It narrates the story of Lord Petre and Arabella Fermor, a real life Catholic aristocrat and her suitor, with their names changed. When Lord Petre cut off a lock of Arabellas hair without her permission, it left the two families in hostility; this gave Pope a chance to make fun of their plight. Even those critics who were hostile towards Pope liked this work. Hazlitt, too appreciates the poems status and its firm intellectual structure. Both displayed his twin skills one of skillfully handling the epic conventions and the other of the satirizing the customs, manners and the affectations of the people of his society. This poetic creation is indisputably his masterpiece which has received a lot of attention and applause. His use of choicest words, punctilious observation, and indefatigable diligence are too obvious to be missed.Continuing his poetic career with zeal Pope added a few minor poems which are of great importance. His Ode on St. Cecilias Day and The Temple of Fame were added to the list before venturing into the translating Homers The Illiad (1720) which was acknowledged unanimously as brilliant success. On the contrary his Shakespeare (1725) won him nothing but severe criticism. Along the publication of Moral Essays between 1731 and 1734, An Essay on Man in four Epistles also got published.
ra
di
88
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
Later Pope has added a few Epistles to the list; his Epistle to Viscount Cobham (1734) is Of the Knowledge and Characters of Men and Epistle to a Lady (1735) examines the feminine character and exposes its variety and contradictoriness. The others are Satires and Epistles of Horace Imitated and Epistle to Arbuthnot (1735). In 1743, the year prior to his death, Pope completed The Dunciad, in Four Books, which is a satire celebrating dullness with Cibber as its hero. It ridiculed bad writers, scientists and critics. Pope spent his last years in a rented house at Twickenham, where he spent his time in a mock heroic, miniaturized version of landscape-gardening. Before his death he received the last sacrament, for he had not abandoned his Catholic religion despite his Deist leanings. On May 30, 1744, the poet breathed his last leaving all his property to Blount.None enjoyed the kind of success and the level of stardom that Pope received while alive. All through his career the poet refined his own personal rules on the choice of diction and on the perfection of rhymes. He used the heroic couplet with unparalleled brilliance and with its success he made it the dominant poetic form. His continuing influence is evident in the number of translations of his poetry in various languages.
7.3
Introduction to An Essay on Man
en t
Alexander Pope had ambitious plan of creating a very long and exhaustive philosophical poem. His plan was to compose in verse on all aspects of human life in about four different books. The first one was to hold the views as seen in the Essay on Man and the second book would have included epistles on human reason, arts, sciences, talent and the use of learning, science, wit together with a satire against the misapplications of them; in the third book he proposed to include Science of Politics; and in the fourth book, the poet wished to elaborate on matters concerning private ethics or practical morality. But when the verses from the second book of the Essay on Man were used in the fourth book of The Dunciad. It is an attempt to put forth a system of ethics, to justify the ways of God to Man and a warning that man is not the center of all things, though in his pride he believes so. It is certainly not a religious poem but it has references to God and His great domain. There is an obvious acknowledgement (as is the case in the Christian faith) that man is fallen and that he has to work out his own salvation.
re
Know then thyself, presume not God to scan The proper study of Mankind is Man. Placed on this isthmus of a middle state, A Being darkly wise, and rudely great: With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side, With too much weakness for the Stoics pride, He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest; 89
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
In doubt to deem himself a God, or Beast; In doubt his mind and body to prefer; Born but to die, and reasning but to err; . Great Lord of all things, yet a prey to all, Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurld; The glory, jest and riddle of the world. (Epistle II, St. 1,16-18) (Epistle II, St. 1, 1-10)
This I might have done in prose; but I chose verse, and even rhyme, for two reasons. The one will appear obvious; that principles, maxims, or precepts so written, both strike the reader more strongly at first, and are more easily retained by him afterwards: The other may seem odd, but is true I found I could express them more shortly this way than in prose itself; and nothing is more certain, than that much of the force as well as grace of arguments or instructions, depends on their conciseness. I was unable to treat this part of my subject in detail, without becoming dry and tedious; or more poetically, without sacrificing perspicuity to ornament, without wandering from the precision, breaking the chain of reasoning: If any man unite all these without diminution of any of them freely confess he will compass a thing above my capacity. What is now Published is only to be considered as a general Map of Man, marking out no more than the greater parts, their extent, their limits, and their connection, and leaving 90
en t
re
fo
The science of human nature is, like all other sciences, reduced to a few clear points: There are not many certain truths in this world. It is therefore in the anatomy of the mind as in that of the body; more good will accrue to mankind by attending to the large, open, and perceptible parts, than by studying too much such finer nerves and vessels, the conformations and uses of which will for ever escape our observation. The disputes are all upon these last, and, I will venture to say, they have less sharpened the wits than the hearts of men against each other, and have diminished the practice, more than advanced the theory, of morality. If I could flatter myself that this Essay has any merit, it is in steering betwixt the extremes of doctrines seemingly opposite, in passing over terms utterly unintelligible, and in forming a temperate yet not inconsistent, and a short yet not imperfect system of Ethics.
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
Pope had his intentions clearly spelt out in his The Design of the poem prefixed to the collection of the four Epistles published in 1723. He states that he proposed to write some verses on Human Life and Manners in order to come home to mens business and bosoms. So he considers man, his nature and his state in the abstract. The poet desires to study the condition and purpose of the creation of Man first for without it he would not be able to point out the moral duty or enforce any moral precept.In an attempt to understand human nature he studies the Anatomy of the Mind and he states:
du
ca
tio n
en t
Thus with a single image Pope drives home a wide range of meanings; he hints at the diversity in creation, at once fascinating and frightening all a result of a careful planning by the Creator. He also hints at the English taste of the eighteenth century, particularly the land owners who considered the garden as source of aesthetic and intellectual pleasure. And with words like promiscuous and forbidden fruit he hints at the moral disorder of the age. At one stroke the master craftsman conveys a meanings with several overtone. An Essay on Man has received contradictory critical reviews. While Dyson felt that the poem was far less 91
re
The Essay should be treated not just as a dissertation but as a poem as well. Brevity is the cautious apology that Pope gives for using poetic methods. Even at the outset Pope paints an apt imagery to strike the perfect note to just unity in diversity: A mighty maze! But not without a plan; A Wild, where weeds and flowrs promiscuous shoot, Or Garden, tempting with forbidden fruit.
fo
rT
Pope did not have the temperament or the knowledge for a philosophical poem because he did not have speculative mind. It was widely known that Pope intellectually owed much to the doctrines of Leibniz who developed a theory of a scale of beings gradually descending from perfection to non entity, and complete in every intermediate rank and degree He regarded the whole of space and time as an unbroken chain of mutually related existences and occurrences. Pope has used this theory in a limited sense only to refer to the extant species of organized beings. Many even believed that he echoed the views of Bolingbroke as the influence is visible in many places. The ideas expressed in this work were first found in the Moralist by Anthony Ashley Cowper, Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1731) The question of influence is yet unsettled, but it is generally believed that Pope was strongly influenced by the letters prepared by Bolingbroke which had the exegesis of Shaftesburys philosophy. The main tenet of this natural theology was that there was one God, an embodiment of wisdom and mercy who governs the world providentially for the best. Shaftesbury advocated the principle of Harmony and Balance in creation and he believed that God is benevolent. Though the intellectual content of the poem is quite thin, Pope has managed to exploit to the fullest the tenuous philosophy using his mastery over poetic technique.
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
the particular to be more fully delineated in the charts which are to follow. Consequently, these Epistles in their progress (if I have health and leisure to make any progress) will be less dry, and more susceptible of poetical ornament. I am here only opening the fountains, and clearing the passage. To deduce the rivers, to follow them in their course, and to observe their effects, may be a task more agreeable.Thus Pope beautifully sums up the reason for the choice of the content, the choice of the poetic medium which he found more suitable for conveying his arguments and instructions without becoming dry and tedious and without sacrificing perspicuity to ornament and without wandering fro the precision and breaking the chain of reasoning.. He concludes calling his An Essay on Man as a general Map of Man.
the Universe
en t
Vast chain of Being, which from God began, Natures aethereal, human, angel, man, Beast, bird, fish, insect! From Natures chain whatever link you stride, Tenth or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike. (Epistle I, St.VIII, 5-14)
In the first few lines, Pope deliberates on the fruitlessness of life and feels that man has no choice: man comes to it, looks out and then dies. What he sees as he looks out on the scene of man is a mighty maze! But Pope does not think this complexity of existence is without a plan. Man might sort through the maze because he has a marvelous mental faculty, 92
re
In the opening Epistle I of An Essay on Man, Pope expatiates on the scene of Man which appears a mighty maze an absurd existence without a plan. In his exploration of this wild forest of Life of Man he catches the manners of men. His close look only reveals the imperfect world where Man is caught in endless conflicts. Man is only a part of whole and therefore can see only a part and not the whole. All the same Pope feels that man cannot be dubbed as imperfect , but he is a Being best suited to the position in creation in the general Order of things. It is only in his Pride lies the error. The poet tries to understand the ways of the Creator as well. He feels that Almighty acts only by general laws. But all subsists in elemental strife. In spite of the apparent confusion there is a hidden Purpose even in the creation of a small insect and therefore all accept Providence to be good or wise in both what He gives or denies. A scrutinizing glance at a bee shows how it miraculously extracts the healing dews even from poisonous herbs. The theory of Leibniz finds its echo in the first epistle in the lines:
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
7.3.1 Epistle I:Of the Nature and State of Man, with respect to
ca
successful because here Pope has chosen to discuss a subject which he did not know much about. The Essay on Man, though to-day better known, is far less successful. The truth is that Pope neither knew enough nor felt enough about its subject. (Dyson, Introduction xiii). He felt that only parts of it is alive and the language quite vibrant. On the other hand Warton opined that Pope has not wandered into any useless digressions, has employed no fictions, no tale or story; and has relied chiefly on the poetry of his style for the purpose of interesting his reader. His style is concise and figurative, forcible and elegant. He has many metaphors stand most in need of such ornaments. (Axford, 241) Notable figures as Voltaire, JeanJaques Rousseau, and Immanuel Kant rhapsodized about the literary aesthetics and philosophical insights of the poem. Even the recent critics have attempted to rehabilitate the status of this poem in the canon by shifting the attention from theological controversies to the language and ideas in terms of the genre of philosophical poetry.
tio n
that of reason; man can determine the nature of the world in which he lives; he can see that all things have bearings, ties and strong connections and nice dependencies. He, who thro vast immensity can pierce, See worlds on worlds compose one universe, Observe how system into system runs, What other planets circle other suns, ... Lookd thro? or can a part contain the whole? Is the great chain that draws all to agree, And, drawn, supports - upheld by God or thee? (Epistle I, St.I, 7-10)
Taller or stronger than the weeds they shade. ...
tio
As of thy mother Earth, why oaks are made
na
93
In his next stanza, Pope makes reference to presumptuous man and wonders why anyone is disturbed because he cannot immediately figure out all of the mysteries with which he is presented. There are many things which are beyond our comprehension. It cannot be expected that one part of existence (man) should understand all the other parts, he then continues:
lE
And all that rises, rise in due degree; Then, in the sale of reasning life, tis plain
...
en t
re
When the dull ox, why now he breaks the clod, Is now a victim, and now Egypts god, (Epistle I, St.II, 29-30)
Well the fact is, man cannot expect to understand everything in this world as to why oaks are stronger than weeds or ox is sometimes a victim and sometimes worshipped as a God. ...Then say not Mans imperfect, Heavn in fault, Say rather Mans as perfect as he ought: His knowledge measurd to his state and place, His time a moment, and a point his space. (Epistle I, St.II, 35-38)
fo
There must be, somewhere, such a rank as Man.
rT
ra
di
du
(Epistle I, St.II, 5-6)
ca
(Epistle I, St.I, 16-18)
(Epistle I, St.II, 12-14 )
tio n
In the third third stanza, Pope praises Nature by saying Heavn from all creatures hides the book of fate, and continues to express his admiration of different aspects of Nature which like the lamb which continues to remain jubilant and energetic despite the fact that it was to be slaughtered that very day. As far as God is considered he sees everything with an equal eye. The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day, Had he thy reason, would he skip and play?
And licks the hand just raisd to shed his blood. ... Who sees with equal eye, as God of all, A hero perish, or a sparrow fall, Atoms or systems into ruin hurld, And now a bubble burst, and now a world.
(Epistle I, St.III, 5-8)
Man never is, but always to be blest:
Rest and expatiates in a life to come.
rT
The soul uneasy and confind from home, (Epistle I, St.III, 19-22)
en t
Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutord mind Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind; His soul proud Science never taught to stray Far as the solar walk or milky way; Yet simple Nature to his hope has givn, Behind the cloud-toppd hill, a humbler heavn; Some safer world in depth of woods embracd, Some happier island in the watry waste, 94
re
Next, Pope deals with native people of the uncivilized territories of the world, and how they do not get hung up on such large questions as are expressed in Popes essay. The simple is just content to be without making any demands from anyone.
fo
ra
di
Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
tio
The religiosity in Pope is revealed when he refers to the great teacher Death and Popes most famous lines are when he relies on Hope to sustain him through thick and thin.
na
lE
du
(Epistle I, St.III, 11-14 )
ca
tio n
Pleasd to the last he crops the flowry food,
Where slaves once more their native land behold, No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold! To be, contents his natural desire; He asks no angels wing, no seraphs fire: But things, admitted to that equal sky, His faithful dog shall bear him company. (Epistle I, St.III, 23 -36)
Pope has very succinctly pointed out that even though man is part of a larger setting, a part of nature and depends on nature for his very substance, and yet, treats her roughly.
... Ask for what end the heavnly bodies shine,
For me kind Nature wakes her genial powr,
Suckles each herb and spreads out evry flowr;
tio
na
95
Earth for whose use, Pride answers, Tis for mine!
lE
(Epistle I, St.V, 1-4) (Epistle I, St.V, 35-42)
Pope asserts that man is ruled from within, by his reason and by his passion. Better for us, perhaps, it might appear, Were there are harmony, all virtue here;
That never passion discomposd the mind.
en t
Passion may be equated to instinct; and instinct is the sole guide of animals. Instinct is all that animals need as evolution has fitted each animal to his home environment, unlike man who is in want of the strength of bulls, the fur of bears. It is only man who is not pleased with Gods blessings. Here with degrees of swiftness, there of force: All in exact proportion to the state;
re
But all subsists by elemental strife; And passions are the elements of life. The genral Order since the whole began Is kept in Nature, and is kept in Man.
fo
That never air or ocean felt the wind;
rT
ra
di
du
Yet cry, if Mans unhappy, Gods unjust;
(Epistle I, St.IV, 5-6)
ca
Destroy all creatures for thy sport or gust,
tio n
Nothing to add, and nothing to abate. Each beast, each insect, happy in its own: Is Heavn unkind to Man, and Man alone? Shall he alone, whom rational we call, Be pleasd with nothing, if not blessd with all? (Epistle I, St.VI, 10-16)
The spiders tough how exquisitely fine! Feels at each thread, and lives along the line: In the nice bee, what sense so subtly true From poisnous herbs extracts the healing dew?
(Epistle I, St.VII, 11-14)
Or in the natal, or the moral hour.
All chance, direction, which thou canst not see All discord, harmony not understood, All partial evil, universal good:
en t
And, spite of pride, in erring reasons spite, One truth is clear, whatever is, is right. (Epistle I, St.X, 7-14)
Thus in the whole of this visible world, a universal order and gradation in the sensual and mental faculties is observed. And in this Order all the creatures appear subordinate to man. And when probed into the inner life of man, there is yet another gradation and there the order begins from the sense, and moves on to instinct, thought, reflection and reason; Reason emerges supreme. The first epistle of Alexander Popes Essay on Man can be considered an articulation of the Enlightenment because it encompasses three major concerns of the people during the Enlightenment. Pope addresses mans ability to reason and think for himself, he questions the 96
re
fo
rT
All Nature is but Art, unknown to thee;
ra
di
Safe in the hand of one disposing Powr,
tio
In the last line of Popes first epistle, he bangs home the importance of the ruling mind of nature, that while some parts might seem to us to be absurd, it is part of the general frame that all of nature, including ourselves, are but parts of one stupendous whole. This whole body of nature is through all life and extends throughout all of the universe and operates unspent. Pope concludes his first epistle:
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
Again, Pope emphasizes how nature has perfected itself and many of its creations and there is a variety.
church and the nature of Christianity, and he also speculates about mans place in the world, as a part of the great chain of life. Popes Essay on Man was written during the Enlightenment, and reflects the attitudes and inquisitions of the people who lived during this time. Pope addresses mans ability to reason, reason being the central focus of the Enlightenment. He also questions the church, and examines the structure of the Universe, both topics of which were concerns to people during the Enlightenment. The first epistle of Essay on Man can serve as an articulation of the Enlightenment because it not only expresses the views that were of concern to Pope, but also to the people of his time.
7.3.2 Epistle II: Of the Nature and State of Man as an Individual
en t
It is in the nature of man to first serve himself; but, on account of reason, he does so keeping the future in mind. Two Principles in human nature reign; Self-love, to urge, and Reason, to restrain; ... 97
re
Epistle II opens on a tumultuous note trying to capture the inexplicable contradictions in mans life. Man is darkly wise and rudely great born to die yet reasoning only to err. the passive voiceplacd in this isthmus created half to ris ehe certainly puts the emphasis on man; the active placing and creating are suggested nevertheless, and and they strike curious overtones when the issue of final ends emerges. For what seems at first sight only a commonplaceBorn but to die and reasning but to errlooks rather different when its ambiguous syntax is echoed a few lines later in created half to rise, and half to fall. (O,Neill 45) He is caught in a chaos of thought and passion. Each man seems to be overwhelmed by a master Passion which flows in body and soul. When Mankind is viewed as a whole it becomes clear that weakness or imperfection are common to both king or a commoner alike. But the beauty of Creation is that heaven seems to have formed each on other to depend whether it be a master or a servant or friend and in this endless cycle of existence man hope for a better state which travels through. Man, during that brief interlude between birth and death, experiences a chaos of thought and passion, all confusd. He finds on earth the Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all. Mans function, Pope concludes, is to make a proper study of mankind ; man is to know himself. What man will come to know is that he is ruled by passion; passion is the ruler and reason its counsellor. Alas what wonder! Mans superior part Uncheckd may rise and climb from art to art; But when his own great work is but begun, What Reason weaves, by Passion is undone.
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
(Epistle II, St.II, 1-2)
du
ca
At this crucial stage in his argument Pope tries to explain that life is both created and destroyed by its own anarchic energies.
tio n
Self-love still stronger, as its objects nigh; Reasons at distance, and in prospect lie: (Epistle II, St.II, 18-19)
A person is driven by passion, driven by his desire for pleasure; temptation is strong and passion is thicker than arguments. However, a person soon learns through bitter experience that one cannot let his or her passions run wild and that one has to maintain a restraint over ones emotions. Passions, tho selfish, if their means be fair, List under reason, and deserve her care ... On lifes vast ocean diversely we sail, Reason the card, but passion is the gale; ... Love, Hope, and Joy, fair Pleasures smiling train, Hate, Fear, and Grief, the family of Pain,
What can she more than tell us we are fools?
A sharp accuser but a helpless friend!
fo
Teach us to mourn our nature, not to mend. (Epistle II, St.III, 61-63)
Reason ,the Eternal Art, educing good from ill, is not a guide but a guard. Passion is the mightier powr. Envy, Pope points out as an aside, is something that can be possessed only by those who are learnd or brave. Ambition: can destroy or save, and makes a patriot as it makes a knave. According to Pope, it soon becomes clear one should not necessarily consider that envy and ambition are in themselves wrong. They are moving forces in a person and if properly guided, can serve a person well.
en t
As, in some well-wrought picture, light and shade And oft so mix, the diffrence is too nice, Where ends the virtue, or begins the vice. ... 98
re
rT
ra
Popes theme is again repeated: the two driving forces of man are his reason and his passion. However, passion is the king and reason but a weak queen.
di
Make and maintain the balance of the mind:
tio
These mixd with art, and to due bounds confind,
na
(Epistle II, St.III, 5-28) (Epistle II, St.III, 117-119)
lE
du
ca
tio n
Virtuous and vicious evry man must be, Few in the extreme, but all in the degree; . (Epistle II, St.III, 140-141)
The fool is happy that he knows no more; The rich is happy in the plenty given, The poor contents him with the care of Heaven, See the blind beggar dance, the cripple sing The sot a hero, lunatic a king; The starving chemist in his golden views
Supremely blessd, the poet in his Muse. .
na
99
Some livelier plaything give his youth delight, A little louder, but as empty quite:
en t
re
Scarfs, garters, gold, amuse his riper stage, And beads and prayer-books are the toys of age: Pleased with this bauble still, as that before, Till tired he sleeps, and lifes poor play is oer. . (Epistle II, St.III, 184-191)
The message in this Epistle II is that Man has to study himself and not pry into the affairs of God for His ways are inscrutable. Pope studies the powers and frailties of man. The two dominating principles are Self-love and Reason both of which seem necessary in mans life. Self love is likened to the tendency of heavenly bodies to keep moving and reason to the force of gravitation that is necessary to hold them in their orbits. The other important point in Epistle II is that Man has to imitate the creative act of Good in ordering the chaos.
fo
rT
Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw:
ra
Behold the child, by natures kindly law,
di
In explicit language Pope has pointed out that the child does not demand or expect much :he is happy with the simplest things in life and responds very innocently to any stimulation..
tio
lE
(Epistle II, St.III, 173-179)
du
ca
tio n
Each person is driven by self-love, but on the same occasion each on the other to depend, a master, or a servant, or a friend, bids each on other for assistance call. Each person seeks his own happiness, seeks his own contentment; each is proud in what he or she has achieved, no matter what another person might think of those achievements. None of us should be critical of another persons choice in life, as no one knows for certain what is right and what is wrong.
7.3.3 Epistle III: Of the Nature and State of Man, with respect to Society
The idea of an inextricable bond continues in Epistle III where he calls it a chain of Love Combining all below and all above. The whole Universe is a system of society. And man is the only intellectual being in the terrestrial system. Yet he cannot live in isolation nothing is made for itself, nor yet wholly for another; Popes opinion is that man is made for the animals just as the animals for man. It is in mutual wants there is mutual happiness. The Order runs creature linkd to creature, man to man. And the chain continues even if only link dissolves, each seeks a fresh embrace, another love succeeds, another race. Know, Natures children all divide her care; The fur that warms a monarch, warmd a bear.
Man cares for all: to birds he gives his woods, To beasts his pastures, and to fish his floods;
All forms that perish other forms supply, (By turns we catch the vital breath, and die)
en t
They rise, they break, and to that sea return Nothing is foreign; parts relate to whole: . (Epistle III, St.I, 17-21)
Then, Pope picks up once again his theme of the ruling principles, reason and passion. Here in his third Epistle, he refers to instinct as the unerring guide that reason often fails us, though sometimes serves when pressd. But honest instinct comes a volunteer, Sure never to oershoot, but just to hit, While still to wide or short is human wit; Sure by quick nature happiness to gain, 100
re
Like bubbles on the sea a matter borne,
fo
rT
Pope returns, in his third Epistle, to his ever present theme, all is natural in nature and man is a part of nature. He first observes how plastic nature is, how everything is dependant on one and the other, is attracted to one and the other, down even to single atoms. Everything its neighbour to embrace. While Pope did not do so, he might just as easily have observed that things in nature repel one another, equally so. All things, in the final analysis, are held in the balance, suspended, so it seems, between the two great forces of attraction and repulsion.
ra
di
tio
na
(Epistle III, St.I, 58-59)
lE
du
(Epistle III, St.I, 43-44)
ca
tio n
Which heavier reason labour at in vain. .
(Epistle III, St .II, 10-14 )
Thus beast and bird their common charge attend, The mothers nurse it, and the sires defend: The young dismissd to wander earth or air, There stops the instinct, and there ends the care; The link dissolves, each seeks a fresh embrace, Another love succeeds, another race.
That longer care contracts more lasting bands: Reflection, reason, still the ties improve,. Still spread the interest, and preserved the kind. . (Epistle III, St III, 17-38) Pope then, continuing with his third Epistle, returns to his principle and the power of nature. Nature is a driving gale, a fact which can be observed in the voice of nature and which we can learn from the birds and the beasts. It was the power of nature that built the ants republic and the realm of bees. Pope observes anarchy without confusion. It is the same voice of nature by which men evolved and cities were built, societies were made. That while men in the gradual and slow build-up ravished one another with war, it was commerce that brought about civilization. Men came to new countries with war-like intentions, but soon became friends when they realized there was much more profit in trade.
en t
re
Such is the worlds great harmony, that springs From order, union, full consent of things: Where small and great, where weak and mighty made To serve, not suffer, strengthen, not invade; More powrful each as needful to the rest, And in proportion as it blesses, blest; 101
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
A longer care mans helpless kind demands;
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
Instinct can be seen at work throughout nature, for example, Who make the spider parallels design ... without rule or line? Not just the spider does things by instinct, man does. The obvious example is his artistic work, but mans instincts serve him on a much broader range. Many of our daily chores are .done mechanically without any thought as it were. Pope then deals with family units in the animal kingdom versus human beings. The fact of the matter is, family units do not count for much in the animal kingdom, at any rate, not for long. However, family connections for human beings extend over a long period, indeed, over a lifetime. These family feelings are important for the development and cohesion of the family.
Draw to one point, and to one centre bring Beast, man, or angel, servant, lord, or king. . (Epistle III, St.VI, 81-88)
Pope makes a side observation that while government is necessary, its form is of less importance, what is important, is a good administration: For forms of government let fools contest; Whateer is best administerd is best: . (Epistle III, St.VI, 89-90 )
Like birds, beasts
Learn from the birds what food the thickets yield;
state.
Pope concludes on a note it is love that binds the Universe. The love of vine and elm is a fine example and the Newtons principle of attractive force holding the planets in their orbits is yet another example demonstrating the diffusive love of God. Thus the third Epistle holds the key to the central theme of much of the ethical writing in Popes time.
en t
Then Pope discusses how reason enables man to carry out all his actions in Nature. He is of the view that reason is instructed by instinct in the invention of Art. At this juncture he takes an opportunity to discuss how cities were build and societies were made, the forms of societies, origin of political societies, origin of monarchy, how by Nature crownd, each Patriarch sate, King, priest, and parent of his growing
re
fo
Thy arts of building from the bee receive; .
rT
ra
di
The poet then points out that Reason or Instinct operate only for the good of each individual and they also operate for the functioning of a society . But throughout Pope adopts the view that instinct is the direct power of God acting in animals, and therefore superior in its accuracy to reason. The effects of animal instinct may be employed as evidence either of a contriving mind, or of a providential care, in the Creator. They are here adduced in neither point of view, but to show the equable distribution of the means by which the great end of the universe is attained; the means being reason in man, instinct in animals. (Butt, 528) Pope asks men to receive instruction from creatures
tio
102
na
lE
(Epistle III, St.IV, 27-28 )
du
The other exceptional factors are that while man is the only animal whose faculties enable him to apprehend the approach of death, yet he continues to perform his duties.
ca
tio n
Pope then concludes in his third Epistle, emphasizing that regard for oneself and his family has to be different than regard for the whole of society, that nature linkd the genral frame and bade self-love and social be the same.
7.3.4 Epistle IV: Of the Nature and the State of Man, with respect to Happiness
Happiness seems to be the end of all human beings and is attainable by all. Pope removes the false notions of happiness because the learned blindly dispute where happiness can be found. Pope hints that happiness does not dwell in extremes but in right thinking and in good intentions. Happiness is common to all and the Universal cause acts not by partial, but by general laws.: There is inequality in the external reality; some are placed higher than others in wealth, wisdom and in power. But power and wealth do not bring about happiness in the lives of people. But on the contrary,
Lie in three words, Health, Peace, and Competence.
The balance of human happiness is kept equal by Hope and Fear. Pope brings out the importance of goodness or virtue. A virtuous man is never unhappy. A good man may be weak but he is content. To whom can Riches give Repute, or Trust,Content, or Pleasure, but the Good and Just? (IV- 185-186)But none can expect God to alter His general rules for the sake a few particulars. Evil does not come from God. Evil must be understood in the right perspective. Cyclones do not stop nor volcanoes cease to erupt just because a good man is passing by. The external goods are not the proper rewards and is often destructive of Virtue. Virtue does get prize which is the souls calm sun-shine, and the heart-felt joy To the view that virtue suffers but the vice is materially rewarded, Pope responds befittingly. What then? Is the reward of Virtue bread? (IV 150) And the Virtue only constitutes a happiness, whose object is universal and whose prospect eternal and only in conformity to the Order of Providence. Happiness is totally above earthly considerations and can not be destroyed by the things of the earth. In this world where happiness is transitory, it is not worth worrying about fame but even a single moment that we can spend with reason thinking well of ourselves in more worthy than all the loud praises we receive. Pope has given a lot of attention to the concluding portions of his poems. It was his favourite method to close with an intense quiet reflective passage, uniting himself or more often the Muse to the theme or person of his poem. (Tillotson, 59) Pope gives a befitting conclusion to the splendid speed of the fourth and the last Epistles:
en t
Thus Self Knowledge is the Ultimate and thus Pope echoes the Biblical advice to mankind: Know Thyself. Here, Pope is least religious but is unmystical, unquestioning, 103
re
That Virtue only makes our Bliss below; And all our Knowledge is, OURSELVES TO KNOW.
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
Reasons whole pleasure, all the joys of Sense,
tio n
urbane like Swift in his Sermons; the anxiety that Pope and his family suffered in the first years of George Is reign had lasting impact on the poet. Pope was attacked by Racine for his deistical leanings. He was a humanist to be embroiled in systematic theology. Pope is cautiously optimistic in conveying that like a poet, God judiciously balances all the opposing extremes and thus creates harmony that will embrace the Whole. This thought leaves this piece an affirmative poem of faith. In is apparently chaotic universe there a divinely ordered plan. F.R. Leavis in his Revaluation says: An understanding of basic moral values is not a claim one need be concerned to make for a poet, but that Popes relation to basic moral values of the civilization he belonged to was no mere matter of formal slute and outward deference has been sufficiently shown above, in the discussion of the close of Epistle IV. When Pope contemplates the bases and essential conditions of Augustan culture his imagination fires to a creative glow that produces what is poetry even by Romantic standards His contemplation is religious in its seriousness.
7.4 Major Themes
Pope expresses his views on nature. Nature is presented as i) a quasi-deity, unchanging, infallible and divinely bright; ii) a Life, force and beauty and so a source of power, iii) the source of art for it provides the rules and remains a fountain of energy; iv) an yardstick for judgement your judgement frame/By her just standard;and v) finally, nature is art and art nature. Pope elaborate disquisition on Nature is present in many places in this work. J.M. Cameron rightly points out that Pope aims at Nature must simultaneously be God, the world, the soul of the world, the rules for the production of art, the standards of the critic, a reservoir of cosmic energy, the inspiration of the poet. (Neill, 60) The central idea is the one that runs through the poem which is that this Universe has an Order (in spite of its apparent chaos) and it is coherent, well knit and the natural laws are designed by the Creator. The metaphysical doctrine of The Great Chain of Being brings to focus the unity in the natural world with its own hierarchy beginning with the insects, plants and ending with the angels. Pope wants us to believe that this Perfect design is not understood by man who has his limitations because of his own pride and intellectual deficiencies. Only when 104
en t
re
fo
rT
The major themes include the belief in the existence of God, the Master Planner, the Supreme Architect, the general behaviour of human beings, the way the universe functions and the role of humans in it and the capacity of government which is primarily responsible for promoting the happiness of the citizens. The ideas are ethical, philosophical and even political. Whether Pope fully agreed or not, it is quite clear that he has introduced an assortment of traditional views and the philosophical positions popular during his time. So the work turns out to be mosaic of ideas from Aristotle, Horace, Boileau and others who inspired Pope. Thus the ideas are borrowed from both the medieval and renaissance thinker which Pope has altered to suit his poetic purpose.
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
man becomes humble realizing his own insignificance in this great canvass of Creation that man can lead a virtuous and happy life.
7.5
Let Us Sum Up
en t
It is important to acknowledge the exceptional contribution of Pope to the English language and poetry. He displayed a mastery of using words with absolute precision which brings out the meaning in a concise manner adding a richness to language. Pope might have presented An Essay on Man in prose, if prose had been, among other things, as concise as verse. (Tillotson ,102). He is concise with ease. Popes mastery of the English language and Latinate phrases are commendable. But the rather not too very encouraging remarks which An Essay on Man has received does not escape the readers attention. Many find the reasonings in the Essay confusing, contradictory and even childish. One feels that there is an element of truth in what Johnson has said Never was penury of knowledge and vulgarity of sentiment so happily disguised. (ONeill, 44) Brower finds a tension between philosophy and sensibility. Leaving aside the critical views, it should be remembered that Pope has attempted the impossible; of trying to capture the whole of Universal Order within the canvas of just four Epistles. And here one observes the tension between the poets desire to believe in an ideal, universal and transcendent Order which all men should serve and the more alluring, vital actual world with its myriad contradictions around him. Pope is too quick to condemn man with his Presumptuous man!, Vile worm Thou fool but he is unable to ignore the gift of God -reasoning power in man which guides the Passions and gives edge and power;. Pope observes the other curious contradictions such ad the benevolence of nature which ultimately feeds on destruction and the value of an Eternal Art that amuses itself by creating Illusionary baubles to keep us happily bemused. We do see that the poet responds to this extremes in an assertive way; All Nature is but Art, unknown to thee.Laugh where we must, be candid where we can; But vindicate the ways of God to Man; With the introduction of the but here Pope has made the reader understand that the more we ponder, varied is significance of that but. It is important to note that Pope has not inserted any useless digressions, instead using a concise and highly figurative language he has artfully inserted metaphors. Byron calls Pope the moral poet of all civilization. He observes the faultlessness of his verse and the excellence or even the perfection in the variety one finds in his poetry which encompass the pastoral, passion, mock heroic, translations, satire and ethics.
7.6
1. 2. 3.
4.
re
Review Questions
Why was the Age of Pope came to be known as the Augustan Age? What are the unique characteristics of Popes poetry? Bring out the central idea of the poem An Essay on Man? How diverse were the views of the critics with regard to this poem? 105
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
7.7
1 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.
Bibliography
Amarasinghe, Upali. Dryden and Pope in the early nineteenth century. London: Cambridge University Press, 1962 Butt, John, ed. The Poems of Alexander Pope. London: Methuen Co. Ltd., 1963. Dyson, H.V.O. Pope: Poetry and Prose. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957. Grant, Douglas. Poem: Selected Poems. London: Oxford University Press, 1965. ONeill, Judith. Critics on Pope. Great Britain: George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1968.
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
106
tio
___________
na
H.W. Boynton. Ed. The Complete Poetical Works of Alexander Pope, Students Cambridge Edition, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1903
lE
Trott, Antony, & Martin Axford. Eds. Alexander Pope. Great Britain: Macmillan Co. Ltd., 1966.
du
Tillotson, George. On the Poetry of Pope. Oxford: Clarendon Prss, 1959.
ca
Russo, John Paul. Alexander Pope: Tradition and Identity. U.S.A: Harvard University Press, 1972.
tio n
UNIT-8 COLERIDGE : BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA

Structure 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 Objectives Introduction
About the Age Introduction to the Text 8.4.1 8.4.2 8.4.3 Detailed Description Critics on Biographia Literaties Glossary
8.6 8.7
8.0
Objectives
The unit familiarizes students with
the contents of Biographia Literaria the concept of Imagination and Fancy
en t
8.1
Biographia Literaria is a combined work of autobiography, philosophy and literary criticism. The work is long and seemingly loosely structured, and although there are autobiographical elements, it is not a straightforward or linear autobiography. It presents Coleridges theories of the creative imagination, but its debt to other writers, notably the German idealist philosophers, is often so heavy that the line between legitimate borrowing and plagiarism becomes blurred. This borrowing tendency, evident also in some of his poetry, together with Coleridges notorious inability to finish projectsand his proposal of impractical 107
re
the concept of Primary and Secondary Imagination the various aspects of poem, poet and poetic diction critics on Biographia Literaria
Introduction
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
8.5
Let Us Sum Up
lE
du
ca
tio n
About the Author
onesmade him a problematic figure. The purpose of writing Biographia Literaria was to examine the long continued debate concerning the true nature of poetic diction and to discuss with utmost impartiality the real poetic character of the poet. Even while at school, his master taught him to prefer simplicity and austerity in poetry to gaudiness and decoration and the students were taught to use simple words in place of high sounding expressions. He also learnt that in truly great poets there was a reason assignable not only for every word but for the position of every word. A considerable part of Biographia Literaria is an attack on Wordsworths theory of poetic diction. The work of Coleridge falls under three heads: poetry, criticism and philosophy. It remains to attempt a brief estimate of each. As a philosopher, he argued that even in registering sense perceptions the mind was performing acts of creative imagination, rather than being a passive arena in which ideas interact mechanistically.
8.2
About the Author
Coleridge was born in Devon in 1772. At the age of ten he was sent to Christs Hospital, a boarding school in London where he was befriended by fellow student Charles Lamb. Later, he was awarded a scholarship to Jesus College, Cambridge University, showing promise as a gifted writer and brilliant conversationalist. In 1794, before completing his degree, Coleridge went on a walking tour to Oxford where he met poet Robert Southey and shared the revolutionary concepts of liberty and equality for all individuals, and was inspired by the initial events of the French Revolution. In 1796 he met the poet William Wordsworth, with whom he had corresponded casually for several years. Their rapport was instantaneous, and the next year Coleridge moved to Nether Stowey in the Lake District, the site of their literary collaboration. Following the publication of Lyrical Ballads, with a few Other Poems, completed with Wordsworth, Coleridge traveled to Germany where he developed an interest in the German philosophers Immanuel Kant, Friedrich von Schelling, and brothers Friedrich and August Wilhelm von Schlegel; he later introduced German aesthetic theories in England through his critical writing. He was addicted to opium and alcohol. Coleridge also gave a series of lectures on poetry and Shakespeare, which are now considered the basis of his reputation as a critic. In the last years of his life Coleridge wrote the Biographia Literaria,
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
Coleridge is considered one of the most significant poets and critics in the English language. As a major figure in the English Romantic movement, he is best known for three poems, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan, and Christabel as well as one volume of criticism, Biographia Literaria; or, Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions. While The Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan, and Christabel were poorly received during Coleridges lifetime, they are now praised as classic examples of imaginative poetry, illuminated by Coleridges poetic theories, of which he said in the Biographia Literaria, My endeavors should be directed to persons and characters spiritual and supernatural, or at least romantic.
di
108
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
considered his greatest critical writing, in which he developed aesthetic theories intended as the introduction to a great philosophical opus. Coleridge died in 1834 of complications stemming from his dependence on opium.
8.3
About the Age
en t
Instead of embracing politics as writers of some other eras might have the Romantics turned to Nature for self-fulfillment. They were turning away from the values and ideas of the previous era, embracing new ways of expressing their imagination and feelings. Instead of a concentration on head, the intellectual focus of reason, they preferred to rely on the self, in the radical idea of individual freedom. Instead of striving for perfection, the Romantics preferred the glory of the imperfect.
8.4
The Biographia Literaria was one of Coleridges main critical studies. In this work, he discussed the elements of writing and what writing should be to be considered genius. Although the work is not written from Coleridges poetic mind, it is still written with the qualities and rhythm of the poetic. Not only does he discuss literature itself he discusses the many variables that influence and inspire writers. Through this discussion, he makes many value judgments, leaving his audience with a clear understanding of his stance on certain issues. Some of the issues he tackles include politics, religion, social values, and human identity. His 109
re
Introduction of the Text
fo
rT
There was a second generation of Romantics (made up of poets Lord Byron, Percy Shelley and John Keats)who died young and were outlived by the first generation of Romantics. Mary Shelley , famous for Frankenstein (1818) was also a member of this second generation of Romantics. The Romantic period ended with the coronation of Queen Victoria in 1837, as it was the beginning of the Victorian Period.The Romantic writers,were influenced by the Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution. William Hazllit, who published a book called The Spirit of the Age, says that the Wordsworth school of poetry had its origin in the French Revolution... It was a time of promise, a renewal of the world and of letters.
ra
di
tio
na
lE
Other first generation Romantic writers include: Charles Lamb, Jane Austen, and Sir Walter Scott.
du
ca
Many scholars say that the Romantic period began with the publication of Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge in 1798. The volume contained some of the best-known works from these two poets including Coleridges The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Wordsworths Lines Written a Few Miles from Tintern Abbey.Other Literary scholars place the start for the Romantic period much earlier (around 1785), since Robert Burnss Poems (1786), William Blakes Songs of Innocence (1789), Mary Wollstonecrafts A Vindication of the Rights of Women, and other works which already demonstrate that a change has taken place in political thought and literary expression.
tio n
treatment of these issues tends to be conservative in its foundation, yet also blatant and original. He does not cater to a certain audience; rather he expresses his own thoughts from a personal viewpoint. Arthur Symons said it best: Biographia Literaria is the greatest book of criticism in English, and one of the most annoying in any language. Many have agreed that Coleridges brilliance comes shrouded in an obscure, infuriating intricacy. Wordsworth is the hero of the Biographia Literaria , but in addition to him there is another important, although less visible, protagonist, and this is Schelling. His influence on Coleridge was a good deal more important than that of other German philosophers and men of letters he came into more or less direct contact with, and this had a decisive impact on the format and meaning of the Biographia Literaria . Coleridge wrote the Biographia to defend Wordsworths poetry, or in part he did. Paul A. Cantor, in his study of twentieth-century attacks on Romantic criticism, acknowledges the self-serving quality of the image put forth by Romantic poets who saw themselves as isolated and inspired geniuses possessed of special gifts unavailable to the masses. According to this image, explains Cantor, the artist stands above society as a prophetic visionary, leading it into the future, while free of its past and not engaged in its present activities (in the sense of being essentially unaffected and above all uncorrupted by them.)
8.4.1 Detailed Description

Chapter-wise Summary Chapter I
The men of great genius are of calm and tranquil temper in all that relates to themselves. For example, the works of Chaucer are saturated with cheerfulness which reveals the temperament of man himself and Shakespeares sweetness of temper and the calmness of self-possession of Milton are all noteworthy. Coleridge deems it a writers duty to feel and express a resentment proportioned to the greatness of the provocation of importance of the object.
en t
Coleridge did not accept the conventions of 18th century poetry and he formed his own theories of poetry. The first of his principles was that:Not the poem which we have read, but that to which we return with the greatest pleasure, possesses that genuine power and claims the name of essential poetry.The second principle was that whatever lines can be translated into other words of the same language without diminution of their significance, either in sense of association or in any worthy feeling, are so far vicious in their diction. According to Coleridge, Bowles a writer of sonnets whom he admired, and Cooper are the first poets who combine natural thoughts with natural diction and the first to reconcile the heart with the head. Chapter II
re
fo
rT
ra
di
110
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
Chapter III Here Coleridge has spoken of the decline of literature in its aim and function. Earlier authors spoke of sages and counsellors as did Bacon. Then they addressed themselves to learned writers and later on they started writing for the candid writer, but the critic had risen as the author sunk. In this chapter Coleridge points out the striking qualities of Southey as a writer, historian, bibliographer and essayist. Southey was employed wholly in subjects of his own choice and ambition and his achievements are more varied than those of any other writer. As a writer he made his talents subservient to the best interests of humanity. His cause has ever been the cause of pure religion and liberty, of national independence and of national Illumination.
Fancy and Imagination are two distinct and widely-different faculties. They come from, respectively, the Greek phantasia and the Latin imagination. In the popular usage of these English words, their meanings have, in recent times, come to be almost synonymous. But they should not be, for their root words were not too similar. The character and privilege of Genius, and one of the marks that distinguish genius from talents: the prime merit of genius: to represent familiar objects as to awaken in the minds of others a kindred feeling concerning them and a freshness of sensation. Genius produces the strongest impressions of novelty while it rescues the most admitted truths from the impotence caused by the very circumstance of their universal admission.
en t
Coleridge feels that human nature has been regarded as a problem in all ages and thus provides various solutions to the problem. The first is based on the principle of the absence and presence of the will, which is a materialistic concept. The second concept is idealistic, according to which on our perceptions we seem to ourselves merely passive to an external power. The third theory was based on the fact that human nature acts by a mechanism of its 111
re
Chapter V, VI, VII
fo
rT
In Chapter IV he draws a patronizing distinction between Wordsworths purpose of considering only the influences or effects of Fancy and Imagination as they are manifested in poetry. He himself considered that both Fancy and Imagination are two distinct and widely different faculties. Coleridge finds that Fancy and Imagination are often considered to be the same. He says: The first and most important point to be proved is, that two conceptions perfectly distinct are confused under one and the same word, and (this done) to appropriate that word exclusively to one meaning, and the synonym... to the other.... Milton had a highly imaginative faculty, Cowley a very fanciful mind.The difference is the same as that between delirium and mania. Coleridges purpose in doing so was to investigate the seminal principle as he himself points out: To admire on principle, is the only way to imitate without loss of originality. By the term seminal principle he meant: the process of imaginative creation, rather than poems themselves.
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
Chapter IV
tio n
own, without any conscious effort of the will. Here Coleridge also discusses the law of association: its history traced from Aristotle to Hartley. Aristotles general law of association states that ideas, by having been together, acquire a power to recall each other. It means that every partial representation awakens the total representation of which it had been a part. Coleridge finds Hartley differing from Aristotle on the basis of his conviction that he differed only to err. In Chapter VI, Coleridge throws light on the weakness of Hartleys system. According to him different parts of Hartleys theory rest essentially on their mechanical basis, else they lose their main support as well as the very motive which led to their adoption. Coleridge feels that if Hartleys theory is to be accepted in its highest abstraction and most philosophical form, the third law would itself become nugatory. In Chapter VII, Coleridge finds that according to Hartleys theory it is necessary that will and all acts of thought and attention are parts and products of blind mechanism instead of being distinct powers which function to control, determine and modify the chaos and association. Hartleys theory includes all the difficulties of intercommunication between substances which do not have any property in common without any of the conveniences of the dualistic hypothesis. Thus, his theory of association was discarded. Chapter VIII
The philosophical studies of Locke, Berkley, Hartley and Leibnitz did not satisfy Coleridge fully and he started wondering whether philosophy is possible as a science and what its conditions are. He soon realized that philosophy is an affectionate search for truth which is the correlative of Being. This can be conceived only by assuming as a postulate that both are identical and co-inherent; that intelligence and being are reciprocally each others prostrate. His study of Plato, Plotinus, Marsilio Ficino and Giordano Bruno prepared him to accept the ancient and most natural philosophy of seeming hardihood. Coleridge was also 112
en t
This chapter discusses the system of Dualism as introduced by Descartes according to which the soul was regarded as a thinking substance (intelligence) and the body as a space filling substance (matter). But, the philosophers did not know how the one acted on the other and then the system was refined by Spinoza first and then by Leibnitz into the doctrine of Harmonic praestabilita. Then there was the hypothesis of Hylozoism according to which if we consider matter and life to be one, we will have to accept that every atom of our body has a soul of its own. Then Coleridge gives the assumption of materialism according to which: how being can transform itself into a knowing, becomes conceivable on one only condition; namely, if it can be shown that the... Sentient, is itself a species of Being, i.e. Either as a property or attribute, or as an hypostasis or self subsistence.Coleridge further feels that neither of these systems, or any possible theory of association, supplies or supersedes a theory of perception, or explains the formation of associable. Chapter IX
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
affected by the writings of Behmen, De Thyoras and other mystics which made him believe that the philosophy which was based merely on reason was incomplete by its very nature. Coleridges understanding became more invigorated and disciplined after studying Kant. His novelty, originality and the depths and compression of his thoughts impressed Coleridge. Coleridge observed that Fichte supplied the idea of a system that was truly metaphysical and of a metaphysics which was truly systematic, similarities of ideas and even expressions can be found in the writings of Schelling and Coleridge, but for that the latter cannot be charged of plagiarism because many of his ideas entered into his mind even before the writings of Schelling came into being. Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Here Coleridge suggests to his readers to either read the whole chapter connectedly or to pass over it entirely. He does not expect his reader to read it with a totally unprejudiced mind as this is not possible but it is neither for readers having preformed, firm and unchangeable notions regarding matter, spirit, soul, body, action, time, space etc. In this chapter he gives several of his thesis in which he says that truth is correlative of being. He further says truth is either mediate, i.e. derived from other truth/s or immediate and original, the latter is absolute while the former is of dependent or conditional certainty. Absolute truth should be sought as self-grounded, unconditional and known by its own light. Coleridge makes reference to one such principle which may be proved, a priori. This principle cannot be any object or thing. It can neither be found in a subject nor in any object but in that which is the identity of both. The required identity of object and representation is there in self-consciousness of spirit and it is only in the act and evolution of self-consciousness that one highest principle of knowing can 113
en t
re
fo
rT
The chapter acts as a valuable advice to those who felt inclined to authors in early life. Coleridge says that one must never pick up literature as a profession as literature can be better produced in a few delightful leisurely hours than in weeks of forced labour. He further adds that talent and genius are two different things and while the former can exist without the latter, the latter can neither exist nor manifest itself without talents. Thus, he suggests to every such scholar who feels that he is genius to devote his talents to some popular trade or profession and his genius to objects of his tranquil and unbiased choice.
ra
di
tio
na
lE
This Chapter is one of digression and anecdotes. It serves as an interlude which discusses the nature and genesis of the imagination of plastic power. To do this he begins with the coinage of a new word Esemplastic as he thought that it was a new term which would aid in the recollection of meaning and prevent it from being confounded with the usual import of the word imagination. The chapter also consists of various anecdotes of Coleridges literary life and his opinion in religion and politics progressed.
du
ca
tio n
be found. Coleridge introduces some technical terms in philosophy to preclude confusion of thought. He thinks that unusual and new coined words are truly evil, but vagueness and confusion in thought is a greater evil than that. He ends by saying that he will describe Imagination and show how it is different from Fancy. He does not agree with Wordsworths views on Imagination and Fancy. Chapter XIII Coleridge had given a detailed description of his views on Imagination and Fancy. Coleridge believes Imagination to be of two kinds, i.e. Primary and Secondary. The Primary Imagination, according to him the living Power and prime agent of all human Perception, and is a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I Am. The Secondary Imagination is an echo of the former, co-existing with the conscious will, yet still as identical with the primary in the kind of its agency and differing only in degree and in the mode of its expression. It dissolves, diffuses, dissipates to recreate; or where this process is rendered, impossible yet still at all events it struggles to idealize and unify. It is essentially life-sustaining, even as objects are essentially fixed and dead. Imagination 1. 2.
Primary Imagination:This is the living power and prime agent of all human Perception. Secondary Imagination : This is an echo of the primary imagination; it differs from the primary imagination in Degree and in the Mode of operation. More specifically, it dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to Recreateor, if that is impossible, to idealize and identify, that means, the functions of memory and mental interpretation of sensory data into meaning within the mind. Coleridge says that the secondary imagination is essentially Vital even as all objects, as objects, are essentially fixed and dead. The secondary imagination is pliable and malleable on the voluntary (conscious) or subconscious level, as in dreaming.
On the other hand Fancy is bound to fixities and definites. Fancy is a mode of memory emancipated from the order of time and space; while it is blended with, and modified by that empirical phenomenon of the will, which we express by the word choice. But equally with the ordinary memory the Fancy must receive all its materials ready made from the law of association. With fancy there is no creation involved; it is simply a reconfiguration of existing ideas. Rather than composing a completely original concept or description, the fanciful poet simply reorders concepts, putting them in a new and, possibly, fresh relationship to each other. Through juxtaposition ideas, concepts, and descriptions are made clear. The more imaginative the juxtaposition is, the more exciting the poem becomes. The origin of the opposition between primary and secondary imagination is vaguely Kantian. Fancy is a limited or false parallel of Secondary Imagination. Coleridge criticizes Wordsworths near-equivalence between imagination and fancy; fancy merely combines; 114
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
The primary imagination is the miracle of consciousness itselfhuman consciousness involves self-consciousness: I see a tree. If a tree is posited, first the viewer must posit the I that sees the tree. The subjects, are aware of themselves confronting an object. The tree is an object of the experience of the viewer; being human involves synthesis of subject and object. The raw data is constituted into intelligible forms, making them correspond to our mental categories. In this basic sense, imagination is the creative, synthesizing power that operates in all perception. Fancy is more limited to sensory data. Fancy is dead; it is too dependent upon the laws of association. In speaking of the primary imagination, Coleridge says it posits pure being. As repetition and re-seeking, it is linked with the basic human capacity to perceive and bring order to an otherwise chaotic world of sense data. Rhetorically, Coleridge is elevating our sense of humanitys status perhaps to an even higher level than that posited of the Renaissance man the microcosm, since in Coleridges partly Schelling-based view, the mind is fundamentally creative. Coleridge cultivates a sense of mysterious communion drawn from the Bible, the Scholastic notion of community, and German Idealism. God says that he simply is. Being is mysterious, and so is our power of perception: the harmony between our minds and the world is mysterious. If secondary imagination is poetic imagination, it answers a needit responds to the threat posed by quotidian habit and stale perception, and it gives us a chance to make it new perpetually. The imagination makes possible a permanent revolution in consciousness. Mystery and belief in the supernatural are a meeting ground between Wordsworth and Coleridge, although they start from a different place to get there. Secondary imagination is apparently Coleridges term for the poetic imagination. It is a purposive, directed echo of the primary imagination. The poet is used by and uses imagination to create symbolic meaning systems. Poetic imagination dissolves, diffuses, and dissipates in order to re-create. Wordsworths Lucy Gray and Solitary Reaper exemplify 115
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
Wordsworths fancy is Coleridges wit, which is a pure play of the intellect, of concepts, without the passion of poetry. Primary Imagination can be related to Kants Understanding, while Secondary or Poetic Imagination is nearer to Kants Reason. In Kants theory, the role of the Understanding face to experience was an active one: it sets its own forms and categories on experience, synthesizes the impressions into phenomena and elaborates judgments. Every human being, thus, is, so far as he perceives anything at all, a creator and an idealizing agent. Coleridge establishes an analogy between the imaginative capability of the poet and the creativity of the infinite I Am. Imagination integrates the opposites, finding a balance of contraries. As Wordsworth had said, it makes strange what is familiar and familiarizes what is strange. Indeed, this idea was the groundwork for the original plan of the Lyrical Ballads to be written in collaboration by Wordsworth and Coleridge. Wordsworth was to deal with themes of common life whose imaginative heightening would lead to an intuition of the presence of the unknown; Coleridge would develop fantastic themes (The Ancient Mariner ) imaginatively infusing them with the known so as to produce credibility. In any case, Coleridge says, the work of the poet must join accurate observation with the modifying power of imagination, mixing the old and the new in such a way that the freshness of sensations is always present in the poem.
du
ca
tio n
Interpretation of the Senses
In this chapter Coleridge describes the occasion of the Lyrical Ballads. He has opined that he would direct his endeavours to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic, so as to transfer from our inward nature, a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of Imagination that suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith. For his part in the Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth was to 116
Coleridge observes,Fancy is a mode of Memory emancipated from the order of time and spaceblended with and modified by that empirical phenomenon of the will.....Choice. This seems to be what I usually mean by imagination: to use the minds eye/ear. . .etc. to simulate another sensation of something that might be absent, or nonexistent. All materials are ready-made from the Law of Association. So Coleridge is of the view that one can use Fancy as a kind of power to create memory-mosaics or collages, rearranging what has been experienced into a new combination or shape to suit our fancy . Imagination is an esemplastic powerNorton says that that phrase is Coleridges coinage, and is built from root words, to mean that imagination has the power to Mold into unity.
en t
Chapter XIV
re
fo
rT
ra
di
The concept of the romantic imagination is subject to varied interpretation due to the varied and changing perceptions of romantic artists. There are several ways through which the concept of the romantic imagination in Samuel Taylor Coleridges poetry can be perceived. This difference in perception is a result of the readers personal interpretation of the subject matter, which varies from person to person. Throughout Coleridges poetry, the theme of Nature acts as a vehicle through which, the romantic imagination of the poet can be interpreted. Coleridges states of mind through these interactions are based upon his own perception of the world around him and can therefore be seen as his romantic imagination.
tio
na
lE
du
symbolic treatment of a given character. A symbol is not just one word or a mere deviceit is a mode of language in its own right. Wordsworths secondary imagination breaks up, conjoins, and reconciles disparate categories of perception, feeling, and experiencethe Lucy Gray lines, a violet by a mossy stone / half hidden from the eye / fair as a star when only one / is shining in the sky ,do exactly that with respect to our ideas about Lucy, violets, and stars. These wouldnt be ordinarily put into a meaningful relationship, but Wordsworth does so without hesitation. Notice the phrases lethargy of custom and film of familiarity. The secondary imagination helps to counter the threat posed by daily habit, which leads to stale perceptions and thoughts. Everything is turned into an abstraction, a category, other peoples convictions, perceptions, and feelings. Coleridge makes one of the first in a long line of arguments against mass culture as something dehumanizing. Poetry is revolutionary with regard to perceptionit shakes up the mind. It reorganizes minds so that they perceive and think themselves and the world differently, and to some extent more democratically and ecumenically. One may even, as Wordsworth promises, see into the life of things.
ca
tio n
propose to himself as his object, to give charm to novelty to everyday happenings. He was to to awaken the minds and attention from lethargy of customs and direct it to the loveliness and wonders of the world before us. With these views in mind Coleridge wrote The Ancient Mariner, The Dark Ladie and Christabel. When Coleridge and Wordsworth were neighbors, they used to discuss what Coleridge here refers to as the two cardinal points of poetry: 1. 2. The power of exciting the readers sympathy. . .by a faithful adherence to the truth of nature. The power of giving the interest of novelty by the modifying colors of imagination (but this seems like, by Coleridges terminology, Fancy is the one who can modify colors, not imagination.)
Chapter XV
Coleridge observes that a poem cannot be composed by applying ones general talent to poetic composition, rather it is the result of inspiration and of a genial and productive nature. To illustrate this statement he has examined two of Shakespeares poems: Venus and Adonis and Lucrece and has elucidated how characteristics like the creation of imagery and the harmonious presentation of thoughts and feelings can be acquired by labour and wide study, but the sense of musical delight and the power of producing it in poetry is a gift of imagination and can never be learnt. While remaining aloof from the world he creates,Shakespeare depict in Venus and Adonis the passions of his characters, their psychology and actions. Moreover Shakespeares poems elicit his creative power and intellectual energy and abound in images enlivened by a dominant passion and having a human and intellectual life transferred to them from the poets own spirit.
en t
Here Coleridge presents striking points of difference between the poetry of the 15th and 16th century and that of the present age. Coleridge says that the main objective of the poets of the present age is to create new and striking images and that his characters and descriptions are specific and individual but the poet is careless in his diction and meter. Coleridge 117
re
Chapter XVI
fo
rT
ra
di
A poem contains the same elements as a prose composition; the difference therefore must consist in a different combination of them, in consequence of a different object proposed. According to the difference of the object will be the difference of the combination. The lowest sense is as a mnemonic, such as thirty days hath September. . . where its called a poem only by the virtue of rhyme or meter or both. . . .a particular pleasure is found in anticipating the recurrence of sounds and quantities, all compositions that have this charm superadded, whatever be their contents, May be entitled poems. . . .So much for the superficial Form.
tio
na
lE
du
Coleridges definitions of his special meaning of Poem, Poetry, and Poet
ca
tio n
observes that the poetry of the 15th and 16th century the imagery was always general and even their thoughts were not novel . The poets aimed at exquisite polish of the diction combined with perfect simplicity. They examined the position of words and phrases carefully not only to make each part melodious, but to provide harmony to the whole. Coleridge wishes for the unity of the characteristic merits of the 15th and 16th century poets and those of the present age. Chapter XVII Coleridge praises Wordsworths views on reform of poetic diction and for evincing the truth of passion and dramatic propriety of the figures and metaphors in the original poets. His figures and metaphors gradually degenerated into mere artifices of connection and ornament. So Wordsworth made efforts to improve poetic theme and diction.
Objecting to Wordsworths opinion in the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads the language too of these men is adopted because such men hourly communicate with the best objects from which the best part of language is originally derived, Coleridge felt that a rustics language purified from all provincialism and grossness and so far re-constructed as to be made consistent with the rules of grammar.... will not differ from the language of any other man of commonsense, however learned or refined he may be, except as far as the notions which the rustic has to convey are fewer and more indiscriminate. Coleridge further adds that the rustic, because of his imperfect developments of his faculties could be conveying insulted facts gained from his scanty experience or his traditional belief whereas, the educated man seeks to discover and express the connection of things from which some more or less general law is deducible. Coleridge explicitly states that language comes into being through the voluntary act of the human being. So according to him the best part of human language, ... is derived from reflections of the acts of the mind itself. It is formed 118
en t
re
fo
Coleridge objects to Wordsworths theory that: the proper diction for poetry in general consists altogether in a language taken, with due exceptions, from the mouths of men in real life, a language which actually constitutes the natural conversation of men under the influence of natural feelings. According to Coleridge the most interesting of Wordsworths poems, for example, Michael, Ruth ,Brothers, the Mad Mother and so on are by no means taken from rustic life. Moreover, their sentiments and language are attributable to causes and circumstances which are not necessarily connected with their occupations and abode. So Coleridge is convinced that for human soul to prosper in rustic life a certain vantage ground is pre-requisite. It is not every man that is likely to be improved by a country life or by country labours. Education, or original sensibility or both must pre-exist if the changes, forms and incidents of nature are to prove a sufficient stimulant. Where these are not sufficient, the mind contracts and hardens by want of stimulants, and the man becomes selfish, sensual, gross and hardhearted. Coleridge adopts with full faith the principle of Aristotle that poetry is essentially ideal and that it avoids and excludes all accidents. He also opines that the persons of poetry must be clothed with generic attributes with the common attributes of the class.
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
by a voluntary appropriation of fixed symbol to internal acts, to processes and results of imagination, the greater part of which have no place in the consciousness of uneducated man. Language does not reproduce things. Coleridge put an emphasis on the true relation between words and ideas here. Though language is an organised instrument to express ones inner act of the mind, it cannot be separated from the active act of reading and understanding by the aid of imagination. The latter presupposes the voluntary application of word; that is, the arbitrariness of words as sign in order to fit them to that active,inner proceeding. Instead of the static rigidity of Scholastic model, what Coleridge had in mind is an idea of language as an arbitrary sign of the mind. Chapter XVIII
en t
It appears to Coleridge that certain passages of the Preface to Lyrical Ballads indicate that Wordsworth meant to confine his style and language to those particular subjects from low and rustic lifewhich acted as the new theme to English poetry. He did so because the language of the rustic was natural. Many of Wordsworths poems in the Lyrical Ballads are good examples of thought, image and passion expressed in simple style and language which is the most suitable for such sentiments and ideas. Chapter XX Coleridge states that the characteristic excellence of Wordsworths style is not simplicity but individuality. Wordsworths poetry is praised as he confirms to genuine, logical English and is most individualized and characteristic. Wordsworths style is so highly individualized 119
re
Chapter XIX
fo
Coleridge observes the theory and points out that it is essential that the poetry differs from that of prose. He focusses on the origin and elements of metre, its necessary consequences and on the conditions imposed on a metrical writer in the choice of his diction. He says that metre is a proper form of poetry and poetry is considered to be imperfect and defective without metre because metre originates from the balance of mind by that spontaneous effort which keeps a check on the workings of passion. Coleridge finds that Wordsworths theory guides a poet in the choice of language for his poetry. This theory acts as one of the principles required to be established to meet the ultimate end of criticism.
rT
ra
di
tio
na
Coleridge points out that a language of a class cannot be adopted merely by using the words which are understood and used by that class. To follow that order of words is also essential for it. This order of words differs in the language of uneducated people from that of the educated ones. An uneducated person is unable to forsee the whole of what he is to convey and cannot arrange the different parts of the idea into an organised whole to present his idea as a complete unit. Wordsworth in his The Last of the Flock uses words in the manner as commonly used by rustics as well as educated people because the order of words is not the same as as used by the uneducated class.
lE
du
ca
tio n
that it can be easily recognized. Even in the poems where he speaks through his characters, hid voice is easily detectable. A person who has read only a few poems of Wordsworth can easily recognize his quotation by recognizing his style. On the other hand, it would be difficult to select a quotation from Wordsworths more elevated compositions, examples of diction particularly his own and a style which cannot be imitated because here his choice of words is such as is not commonly used in real life. Chapter XXI Coleridge wishes for a just and fair criticism of Wordsworths poetry based totally upon an evaluation of his published poems. He feels that mere opining of any individual or critic must not weigh down the opinion of the author himself. According to Coleridge the investigation in which the critic tries to establish the principles, which form the foundation of poetry in general, is fair and philosophical. Such principles will act as the canons of criticism in the light of which the critic will evaluate particular passages either for praise or for criticism.
Chapter XXII
Coleridge opines that if somebody finds the principles, as set by Wordsworth, to be erroneous in any way, he should correct the mistakes in the light of the critics opinions on his theories. If Wordsworths poetic compositions have been influenced by his mistaken theory, the effects should be pointed out and instances given. It will prove that the supposed characteristics of Wordsworths poetry for which the critics blame him, are not their real attributes. Wordsworth does not always write in the language of the low and the rustic. He does so only when he is conscious of his theory and thus sticks to it. But a wide number of passages of his poetry have been written in a language which is dignified and suits his grandeur. Coleridge draws attention to certain major defects of Wordsworths poetry-the first of which Inconstancy of the style as Wordsworth is very often found using prosaic language in poetry. The second defect in Wordsworths poetry, is a matter-of-factness in certain 120
en t
re
fo
rT
Coleridge feels that the critic has a right to praise or condemn a piece of literature while the writer has the authority to reply but not to complain. The limits to the softness or harshness of a critics comments cannot be prescribed, yet a critic must choose the appropriate words to produce the effect which he desires to. If, in his criticism, the critic attacks the author for personal reasons, his criticism which is filled with meanness, remains no longer just and impartial and the critic turns into a backbiter. Coleridge approves of the criticism which is based on previously formulated rules and principles as such criticism will be objective and not personal and arbitrary. However severe in tone, such a criticism will probably still be tolerable.
ra
di
tio
na
lE
Then if the premises be rational, his deductions legitimate, and his conclusions justly applied, the reader, and possibly the poet himself, may adopt his judgment and in the independence of free agency.
du
ca
tio n
In this chapter Coleridge has provided evidence with his Letters from Germany particularly referring to a disquisition on the modern drama, a critique on the Tragedy of Bertram that he has been falsely charged with any fickleness in his principles of taste.
en t
This chapter acts as the conclusion to the complete work Biographia Literaria. In the view of Coleridge, one is sometimes punished for faults by incidents which are not caused by those faults and this a very severe punishment.For there is always a consolatory feeling that accompanies the sense of proportion between antecedents and consequents. The sense of Before and After becomes both intelligible and intellectual when, and only when, we contemplate the succession in the relations of Cause and effect....Coleridge does not desire to trouble his readers with complaints with which they are not concerned, but he wants them to learn from his experience an important truth that we must not only love our neighbours as ourselves, but ourselves likewise as our neighbours; and that we can do neither unless we love God above both.Coleridge had never believed that he had an enemy in the world but then he started thinking whether he had a single friend in the world. His critics, even those who used 121
re
Chapter XXIV
fo
rT
Chapter XXIII
ra
These defects as brought forth be Coleridge in Wordsworths poetry, are occasional and infrequent while the merits are far more comparatively. The first among these merits is an austere purity of language both grammatically and logically; in short a perfect appropriateness of words to the meaning.The second characteristic excellence of Mr. Wordsworths work is: a correspondent weight and sanity of Thoughts and Sentiments, won not from books, but from the poets own meditative observation. They are fresh and have the dew upon them.The third merit is the sinewy strength and originality of single lines and paragraph: the frequent curiosa felicitas of his diction... The fourth one is the perfect truth of nature in his images and descriptions, as taken immediately from nature, and proving a long and genial intimacy with the spirit which gives the physiognomic expression to all the works of nature.The fifth characteristic feature of Wordsworths poetry is:a meditative pathos, a union of deep and subtle thought with sensibility; a sympathy with man as man; the sympathy indeed as a contemplator, from whose view no difference of rank conceals the sameness of nature; no injuries of wind and weather, or toil, or even of ignorance, wholly disguise the human face divine.
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
poems. The third defect is an undue predilection for the dramatic form in certain poems, because of which either the thoughts and diction are different from that of the poet, and then there arises an incongruity of style; or they are the same and indistinguishable, and then it presents a species of ventriloquism, where two are represented as talking, while in truth one man only speaks. The fourth class of defects is closely connected with the former; but yet are such as arise likewise from an intensity of feeling disproportionate to such knowledge and value of the objects in general, even of the most cultivated classes; and with which they can be supposed to sympathize. The fifth and last defect is that there are thoughts and images too great for the subject.
to appreciate him earlier, had attacked him severely. Coleridges Argument about Poetic Diction Coleridges argument about poetic diction can be summarized under three main heads: 1. Coleridge opined that in arguing that the language of metrical composition is essentially the same as that of prose, if Wordsworth meant only that poetry and prose have the same vocabulary or diction, he was being absolutely true. But, Coleridge concluded that Wordsworth really meant that the poetic manner of combining words was no different from that of prose, and this he retorted as apparently false. Coleridge argued that if a given figure or image us used badly by a given poet, the reason for the badness is not that the figure is a repetition of what other poets have done, but that in some way or the other, grammar, logic, psychology, good sense or taste may have been violated.
2.
3.
The poet is the person who can, by creative imagination, produce the poetry. A poet is a unified person who brings the whole soul of man into activity. Imagination of this sort demonstrates the potential for the harmonious operation of our faculties: sensory perception, feeling, reason or intellect, willpower, which will not be at odds when we are engaged with a poem; all will be exercised in a productive way. Imagination may be what Coleridge calls in the Biographia Literaria the esemplastic power or the power that makes things into one, but that same power doesnt cancel differences to arrive at some indeterminate lump of oneness. Instead, it reveals itself in the balance or reconciliation of opposite or discordant qualities. Lucy Gray is a fine illustration of imagination at work in creating symbolic language: Lucy, the star, and the violet dont lose their identity but instead gain something by being related to one another so vitally. Coleridges Dejection: an Ode offers a negative illustration in which the poets imagination isnt harmonizing the natural world with his own subjective experience
en t
re
Coleridges view about Poet
fo
It is that species of composition, which is opposed to works of science, by proposing for its immediate object pleasure, not truth; and from all other species . . . it is discriminated by proposing to itself such delight from the whole, as is compatible with a distinct gratification from each component part. So a poem is a living, complex entity. If you cut a branch from the tree, the tree isnt whole anymore, and the branch has lost its purpose.
rT
ra
di
Coleridges view about Poem
122
tio
Coleridge also argued that education, and not the lack of it, makes a poet. Uneducated men are disorderly in their writing. If the peasantry of Wordsworths Westmoreland spoke a vigorous language this came not from uninstructed communion with nature, but from a spirit of independence and from a solid religious education and acquaintance with the Bible and hymnbook. One kind of speech (socially defined) could not be more real than another.
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
and emotional state. He remains isolated, and can create no order because his genial spirits fail and he can only see, not feel, how beautiful natures eternal forms are. Symbolic language is said to remain true to the creative and imaginative process; it registers the life in which alone nature lives. It does not render the world as externality, and does not imitate it or distort it, but brings home to us the power of the primary and secondary imagination.
8.4.2 Critics on Biographia Literaria

Critics have reacted strongly to the Biographia Literaria. Herbert Read says that Coleridge made criticism into science, and using his own experiences and those of his fellow poets as material for his research, revealed to the world for the first time some part of the mystery of genius and of the universal and eternal significance of art. I.A. Richards considers him to be a fore-runner of science and semantics and compares him to Galileo who discovered new fields of human enquiry. On the other hand, Prof. Raysor and Rene Wellek do not have a high opinion of Coleridge as a critic. Prof. Raysor considers Coleridges theory of imagination as eccentric and unfortunate and regards Coleridge as a mediocre philosopher. Rene Wellek is of the opinion that Coleridges theories are either derived or borrowed from German philosophers, especially Schelling. Cazamian forms a high opinion of Coleridge and his Biographia Literaria. He says: The well-known differentiation between imagination and fancy, which Wordsworth interpreted after his own fashion, is a way to laying stress upon the creative activity of the mind, as opposed to the passive association of mental pictures; but for Coleridge it has a mystical significance. This feeling for the secret link existing between problems, together with this habit of intermingling, even perhaps of confounding them, by no means deprives him of vision on precise points. In Biographia Literaria certain intentions, as well as certain successes or failings of Wordsworth, are caught and illuminated to their depths; so searching is the light, that it is even cruel. His remarks on Shakespeare to show a sound intuition of the profound unity of the dramatic art. Accustomed as he is to reach to the heart of the things, to find there the same vital impulse which animates his own thought, and to see this secret life produce what becomes the apparent world of the senses. Coleridge is thus able to discuss with an unerring insight the paths along which a central impulse has radiated, so to speak, towards all the fundamental ideas, aspects and characteristics of a work.
en t
In the process of thinking two different powers which are called active and passive are at work.. The functioning of these two distinct powers is not possible without an intermediate faculty, which is at once both active and passive. In philosophical language this 123
re
8.4.3 Glossary
Imagination
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
intermediate faculty is called imagination. Primary Imagination The primary Imagination, Coleridge holds to be the living power and prime agent of all human perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I am. Secondary Imagination The secondary Imagination , Coleridge considers as an echo of the primary imagination, co-existing with the conscious will, yet still as identical with the primary in the kind of its agency, and differing only in degree , and in the mode of its operation. It dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to create: or where this process is rendered impossible, yet still at all events it struggles to idealize and to unify. It is essentially vital , even as all objects ( as objects) are essentially fixed and dead. Fancy
Esemplastic
Willing Suspension of Disbelief Coleridge felt that it should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic, yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.
8.5
Coleridges Biographia Literaria is an attempt to trace a pattern in the development of British poetry and philosophy, and to found a system of critical thought by reflecting on a single poetic life. In it all at once the conceptual disorder of its author, his uncommon critical insight, his occasional guilty conscience and his moral enthusiasm uncovered; and, above all, a moving testimony of the ideal poetic character who has taken upon himself the arduous task of becoming the subject of his own history is found. Coleridge disagrees with Wordsworth on the idea that we must get back to nature. 124
en t
Let Us Sum Up
re
fo
rT
Coleridge coined this new term which would aid in the recollection of meaning and prevent it from being confounded with the usual import of the word imagination.
ra
di
tio
Fancy, ... has no other counters to play with, but fixities and definities. The fancy is indeed no other than a mode of memory emancipated from the order of time and space; while it is blended with, and modified by that empirical phenomenon of the will, which we express by the word Choice. But equally with the ordinary memory the Fancy must receive its materials ready made from the law of association.
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
What does Coleridge say about Wordsworths style? What, according to Coleridge, are the defects and beauties of Wordsworths poetry?
en t
re
What is your opinion about the Romantic Age? Briefly discuss the life and works of Coleridge. Coleridge is often described as a poet of the imagination. What does this appellation mean? Comment on Primary and Secondary Imagination and the difference between the two. Write a note on Coleridges views on Poetic Diction. Elucidate Coleridges idea on Esemplastic power. What according to Coleridge are the two cardinal points of poetry?
fo
rT
1.
Write a short note on Coleridge as a Critic.
ra
8.6
Review Questions
di
It is true that both poets offer a touch of the meditative and the mystical, but Coleridge privileges the philosophy of self-consciousness over Wordsworths rustic wise passiveness. As for poetic diction, rustic language is tied too closely to narrow, particular things. Philosophical language is superior because it flows from reflections on the acts of the mind itself. Through this discussion, he makes many valueable judgments, leaving his audience with a clear understanding of his stance on certain issues. Some of the issues he tackles include politics, religion, social values, and human identity. His treatment of these issues tends to be conservative in its foundation, yet also blatant and original. He does not cater to one certain audience; rather he expresses his own thoughts from a personal viewpoint. Coleridge delivers the Biographia Literaria without a second thought of whether or not there will be any disagreement from his audience.
tio
na
125
lE
du
ca
tio n
He does not agree with the idea that rustic life is purer than city life. Only a philosopher (or at least an educated person) could benefit from close contact with nature. Nature, like trade, narrows the mind, and we quickly become impervious to its charms. Moreover, while Wordsworth relies a great deal on habit and meditation, Coleridges concept of imagination seems more dynamic and active, and his idealism is more thoroughgoing than that of Wordsworths wise passiveness, which implies a high degree of openness to the power of external things and the sensations they provide. Coleridge opposes the materialist concept of experience, and he applies his point of disagreement with Wordsworth very broadlyonly cultivation makes us capable of experiencing nature and truly appreciating the difference between consciousness and self-consciousness.
8.7
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
Bibliography
Abrams, M.H. A Glossary of Literary Terms. New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1993. Anne K. Mellor, English Romantic Irony :Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980. Coleridge, S. T. ([1817] 1907) Biographia Literaria. J. Shawcross (ed). Oxford: Oxford U.P.
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
126
tio
na
____________
lE
Timothy Corrigan, Coleridge, Language, and Criticism (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1982)
du
Schlegel F. The Aesthetic and Miscellaneous Works, ed. E.J. Millington. London: Bell. 1915.
ca
Richards, I.A. Coleridge on Imagination. London: Routledge. 1962.
tio n
Leitch, Vincent B., ed. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York : Norton, 2001.
UNIT9 MATTHEW ARNOLD : CULTURE AND ANARCHY

About the Author Reading Text 9.4.1 9.4.2 9.4.3 9.4.4 9.4.5 Cuture and Anarchy Detailed Summary Critical Analysis Style Hebraism and Hallenism
9.5 9.6 9.7 9.8 9.9
Self Assessment Questions Answers to the Questions Let Us Sum Up Review Questions Bibliography
9.0
Objectives
In this unit I propose to make you read and understand criticism. The text selected for this purpose is one of the best masterpieces of political and social criticism written in English language. Such type of critical writings are important for guiding the society and literary scenario alike for development of socio-political life. Arnold began his literary career as a poet and then turned a prophet with his highly creative and valuable pieces of critical writings. You will be made familiar with the literary scene of the Victorian Age, prose writings of the period and development of critical writings. You are advised to read about the Age, life and literary genius of Arnold, before reading his Culture and Anarchy to develop capability to : (i) (ii) (iii) read about the characteristic features of the Victorian Age, read and understand literary and social criticism, understand Mathhew Arnold special place as a literary genius, 127
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
About the Age
(iv) (v) (vi)
read and understand Culture and Anarchy, critically analyse various concepts and ideas put forward by Arnold, and answer the questions based on text in your own words.
9.1
Introduction
The scope of Victorian achievement in literary criticism has not been delineated with complete precision. A good deal of the evidence lies buried in the reviews. When it has been sifted it may prove to have forestalled much twentieth-century opinion about Victorian writers. There is not likely to be a great change in the view that the number of critics who are still of practical importance is relatively small. Only two Victorian critics, Arnold and Stephen, are really living influences alive in the way that Dickens and George Eliot are alive, as constituent elements in modern culture. Important criticism requires, in addition to delicacy, insight, reading, and disinterestedness, a certain moral rootedness, an intelligently positive direction of mind, qualities which are very rarely found together. Some distance after Arnold and Stephen come Swinburne, Bagehot, Pater, Morley, and R.H. Hutton. The academic critics such as Saintsbury, Gosse, and Dowden do not count in the same way, though they have their uses. One of the results of nineteenth-century sociological and historical studies was a deeper understanding of the organic nature of culture, of which linguistic clarity and literary vitality are crucial components. This understanding, as we find it in Macaulay, Arnold, Stephen, Bagehot, and others, was a great improvement on the mere listing of writers or the study of each in isolation. But this ability to think organically about literature, and to handle it as a living organism, tended in time to be reduced to a mere accumulation of what was hopefully called background. There is, of course, all the difference in the world. They want to prove that Shakespeare was not for all time, but of an age. There is not limit to background material and only the feeling for life which Arnold succiently called tact can decide what historical information is relevant and ensure that literature matters in the way it should. Good criticism is as rare as any other kind of literary excellence and, as Arnold wrote, at some epochs no other creation is possible. Arnolds aim seems to be to find a middle way between the objective, judicial approach adopted by such classical critics as Johnson and the eager, responsive approach made by such Romantic critics as Hazlitt. In two more of the lectures which he delivered at Oxford, he dwells in turn on the need to acknowledge the authority of intellectual and aesthetic standards and on the need for flexibility and receptiveness. These two lectures, The Literary Influence of Academics and The Function of Criticism at the Present Time, made their earliest appearance in book form in the first series of Essays in Criticism (r865). Criticism can help to reinvigorate our intellectual life, and can serve future creative writers, by discharging its true function. This is simply to know the best that is known and thought in the world, and by in its turn making this known, to create a current of true and fresh ideas. Doing this, it will contribute to the production in time of an intellectual and spiritual 128
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
situation of which creative genius will be able profitably to avail itself. If it is to succeed, criticism must be essentially the exercise of a freely ranging, openminded curiosity. Moreover, it must be disinterested; it must steadily refuse to lend itself to ulterior, political, practical considerations. The practical man sees an object, above all, as helping or hindering his plans; the critic must try to view it more detachedly, to see it as in itself it really is. Criticism, so conceived, is to be directed not only upon works of art but also upon life in general. Arnold himself in this essay directs it upon passages from two recent political speeches celebrating the greatness of the English race and its achievements. He shows up what is excessive and offensive in these rhapsodies by placing beside them a brutally compact newspaper report of a squalid child-murder recently committed in the very country which they extol. This is the comparative method which we have already seen him use so skilfully in his critique of Miltons blank verse. For Arnold holds that the habit of dispassionate appraisal fostered by strictly literary criticism can be of the widest social utility.
9.2
About The Age
Queen Victoria ascended to the throne in 1837 and reigned over Britain till her death in 1901. The Victorian Age proper thus extends from the year 1837 to the year 1901. However, for literary purposes, the Victorian Age may be said to have begun from the year 1832 (the year of the passing of the first Reform Bill) and to have ended with the year 1892 (the year of the death of Tennyson, the most outstanding literary figure of the period). The Victorian Age was wonderfully rich and varied in all respects. The most obvious feature of this great epoch in British history was the enormous material progress that was achieved by the British people. The wealth of the country increased several times, though at the same time the population of England almost doubled. The effect of the Industrial Revolution of the 18th century worked themselves out and altered the whole structure of society. The relations of class with class were changed. The progress of science was indeed, a conspicuous feature of the Victorian Age. The discoveries of science added far more to peoples positive knowledge of themselves and the universe than their forefathers and gained in all the preceding eighteen centuries of the Christian era. Nor is this unparalleled increase in knowledge the only point to be considered. In estimating the influence of science upon life and literature, it is further to be noted that, by reason of the spread of popular education, newspapers, magazines, and cheap books, the facts and speculations of the experts were not longer kept to the experts themselves, but passed rapidly into the possession of the reading public at large. The Victorian Age was marked throughout by the prominence of a spirit of inquiry and criticism, by scepticism and religious uncertainty, and by spiritual struggle and unrest, and these are among the most of the persistent and characteristic notes of its higher literature. At 129
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
the same time, the analytical and critical habit of mind, which was encouraged by science, profoundly influenced literature in other ways, and a marked development of realism was one important result. Another important feature of the Victorian Age was the progress of democracy. The Reform Bill of 1832 had certainly extended the franchise, but it did not satisfy those who had pressed for a more radical measure. The agitation for electoral reform therefore continued, and a popular movement called Chantism kept England in a state of political unrest for about ten years. A strong individualism was another aspect of the Victorian Age. In its crudest form, it could lead to the justification of ruthless competition in business. It also led to the assertion that only lack of initiative and hard work prevented any one from making a fortune. The belief in individualism (every man for himself) meant an opposition to those schemes of reform which affected society collectively. Particularly in the first half of the period, there was an emphasis on the virtues of the self-made man and a criticism of those who tended to interfere with the free flow of endeavour. The Oxford Movement was an attempt to recover a lost tradition. It was responsible for a good deal of spurious medievalism ; but it did grasp the truth, which the 18th century had observed : that the Middle Ages had qualities and capacities which the moderns had lost. The theologians of this movement wished to recover the connection with the Continent and with its own past which the English Church had lost at the Reformation. The great writers of the period could not reconcile themselves to the glorification of material and commercial progress by the people. There is, therefore, a note of revolt in the literature of the time against this glorification and against the general complacency which resulted from it.
9.3
About The Author
Matthew Arnold was born in Laleham, in the valley of the Thames, on the 24th December, 1822. Of the ten children born to his parents, he was the second. At the time of his birth, his father Thomas Arnold was not yet famous. Afterwards, in 1828, Thomas Arnold was appointed Headmaster of Rugby School and in that capacity he acquired a wide reputation in the country. Mary penrose Arnold, Matthews mother, was the daughter of a clerical family of some distinction. At the age of thirteen, Matthew was sent to Winchester, his fathers old school where, however, he stayed for one year only. In August 1837, he became a pupil at Rugby School and there he remained until 1841. In 1841 Matthew Arnold entered Balliol College, Oxford, as a classical scholar. There he distinguished himself by winning prizes in poetry and by his general excellence in the classics. Due to his social activities he could secure only second class. He made up for the misfortune of his second class by securing the Newdigate Prize with his poem Cromwell and 130
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
by passing to Oriel College where he was elected a Fellow in 1845. In the summer of 1846, he made a trip to France and obtained an interview with George Sand, the famous French novelist. Back at Oxford, he appeared to his associates to be as conceited as ever. He produced on them the impression of a man of Olympian manners. In 1847, Matthew Arnold was appointed Private Secretary to Lord Landsowne, the influential Whig statesman. During his visit to the Continent in 1846-47, Arnold seems to have met a girl with blue eyes. Her identity is unknown, but in his volume of poems published in 1849, he gave her the name Marguerite. There seems to have been a love-affair between the two, but the actual facts are not known. The love-affair did not develop much because there seems to have been some insuperable obstacle in the way of its continuance. Subsequently, Matthew Arnold fell in love with Miss Frances Lucy Wightman daughter of a judge, Sir William Wightman. Sir William refused his consent to the marriage because Arnolds income as Private Secretary to Lord Lansdowne was not enough. Arnold now began to look for a more remunerative job. Through the patronage of Lord Lansdowne, Arnold was appointed an Inspector of Schools on the 14th April, 1851. Arnolds marriage to Miss Wightman took place in the June 1851, and the honeymoon was spent in France, Switzerland, and Italy. Arnold and his wife had six children. Of the three boys, one died in infancy, and two in their teens. These were tragic losses, but the marriage itself proved to be remarkably happy. Both husband and wife were extremely sociable and had a wide circle of friends. One of the daughters shared her fathers love of travel, and he almost found her company indispensable on his journeys. In 1857 Arnold was elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford, in which capacity he worked for ten years, having been re-elected for a second term in 1862 on the expiry of his first five-year term. He was the first layman to occupy the Chair of Poetry at Oxford University, and he was the first to lecture in English instead of in Latin. Arnold had by this date published three volumes of literary criticism : On Translating Homer (1861), Essays in Criticism (1865), and On the Study of Celtic Literature (1867). These were followed by Culture and Anarchy (1869). In this book and in Friendships Garland (1879), he handled social and political problems. He also wrote books on religion. In St. Paul and Protestantism (1870), Literature and Dogma (1873), God and the Bible (1975), and Last Essays on Church and Religion (1877), he grappled with the question of religious beliefs. In 1879 was published a collection of political and literary studies entitled Mixed Essays. In 1888 came the second series of his Essays in Criticism. In 1888, on the 15th April, he went to Liverpool to meet his daughter and granddaughter who were arriving from America ; in his eagerness he leaped over a low fence and fell down dead, his heart having failed.
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
131
lE
du
ca
tio n
9.4
Reading Text 9.4.1 Culture And Anarchy
9.4.2 Detailed Summary
Culture does not approve of those people who mechanically serve some stock notion or operation, and who by doing so go astray. At the same time, it is not the aim of culture to offer some rival fetish. All that culture recommends is that we should turn a free and fresh stream of thought upon the whole matter in question. The provincialism of the English Puritans and Protestant Nonconformists is an undeniable fact. The reason for this provincialism is that the Nonconformists are not in contact with the main current of national life, as the members of an Establishment are. The English people have unfortunately developed a tendency to Hebraise, which means that they have 132
en t
The whole scope of the book called Culture and Anarchy is to recommend culture as the great help out of the present difficulties of the English nation. Culture is a pursuit of total perfection by means of knowing the best which has been thought and said in the world, and through this knowledge turning a stream of fresh and free thought upon our stock notions and habits which we now follow staunchly but mechanically.
re
fo
Preface
rT
ra
Despite a large number of contemporary allusions in the book, Culture and Anarchy has established itself as a classic in the English language. Its ideas have by no means become obsolete, and its style is still a source of delight and has been regarded as the best thing he ever wrote.
di
tio
na
Although Arnold was in general sympathy with the democratic movement, he yet believed firmly that there could be no society without discipline and order, and that there were tendencies in the national life which, if not checked, would lead to anarchy. These tendencies were very much in his mind when he wrote the chapters of this book.
lE
du
Arnold wrote Culture and Anarchy at a time of considerable social and political unrest. The defeat of Gladstones Reform Bill in 1866 gave rise to a determined agitation for the extension of the suffrage.
ca
tio n
Arnolds last lecture as Professor of Poetry at Oxford University was printed in the Cornhill Magazine in 1867 in the form of an article under the heading Culture and Its Enemies. This was followed by five more articles, in the course of 1868, under the general title of Anarchy and Authority. In January 1869, he collected these six articles and published them in the form of a book to which he gave the title Culture and Anarchy, writing also an Introduction and a long Preface. When a second edition of the book was to be printed in 1875, Arnold carefully revised the whole and provided headings to the six articles.
begun to sacrifice all other sides of their personalities for the sake of the religious side. Culture is the disinterested endeavour after mans perfection. Therefore it would like to cure the provincialism of the Nonconformists. The most appropriate way of curing their provincialism would be to allow the establishment of a Presbyterian Church side by side with the existing Episcopal Church in England. Men of culture look forward to the day when the Hebraising Philistines of England will be converted. There has been too much of Hebraising, and now is the time to hellenise. That does not, however, mean that Hebraism should completely be discarded. The habits and discipline received from Hebraism will remain for the English people an everlasting possession. But the need of the present time is to take to Hellenism. Introduction
An intellectual love of knowledge is not the whole basis of culture. Culture certainly demands an intellectual curiosity or the scientific passion to see things as they are, but culture also requires something more. Culture is also based on the moral and social passion for doing good. in fact, culture is a study of perfection. Culture certainly aims at rendering an intelligent person yet more intelligent ; but culture also aims at making reason and the will of God prevail. Culture aims at a perfection in which both beauty and intelligence are present, a perfection which unites the two noblest of things, namely sweetness and light. The man of culture aims at sweetness and light, while the man who goes against these is a Philistine. In regarding sweetness and light to be the ingredients of perfection, culture resembles poetry. The men of culture are the true champions and supports of the social idea of equality. The great men of culture were those who felt a passion for diffusing or propagating the best knowledge and the best ideas of their time. Chapter-II : Doing As One Likes Culture is a means of bringing light to us. Light shows us that there is nothing very admirable in merely doing as one likes. Light tells us that the really desirable thing is to like what right reason dictates and to follow the authority of reason. If light, brought to us by 133
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
Chapter-I : Sweetness and Light
di
tio
Arnold admits that, like Mr Bright and Mr Harrison, he too is a Liberal but he claims that he is a Liberal tempered by experience, reflection, and renouncement and that he is, above all, a believer in culture.
na
In the Introduction, Arnold mentions two very important men of his time, Mr Bright and Mr Frederic Harrison, both of whom had made some disparaging comments on Arnolds view of culture. Mr Harrison, for instance, had said that culture might be useful to a bookreviewer or a professor of literary writing but that it was useless if applied to politics. According to Mr Harrison, the man of culture is in politics one of the poorest mortals alive.
lE
du
ca
tio n
culture, shows us all this, then it is clear that we have got a practical benefit out of culture. The question now is how to organize this authority and how to make the State a powerful instrument of controlling anarchy and establishing order. There are three classes in English society the aristocracy, the middle class, and the working people. According to Carlyle, the power which should exercise authority over the whole country is the aristocracy. According to Mr. Lowe, that power is the middle class. According to the Reform League, that power is the working class. If no particular class of society deserves to be vested with authority to run the country, the only alternative is that the whole community should be given that authority. In other words, the State should be made powerful enough to exercise control over all affairs. If that is done, the individual will not be able to do just as he likes. This will be possible only if people are urged to develop their best selves. Chapter-III : Barbarians, Philistine, Populace
As for the working class, there are three distinct sections of it. Two of these sections can, again, be appropriately described as the Philistines. The third section of the working class is that vast section which has long remained half-hidden amidst its poverty and squalor but which is now emerging to assert its right to do as it likes, and to misbehave or agitate just as it likes. For this vast portion of the working class, the designation of Populace would be most suitable. Every class in England entertains a feeling of complacency. The Barbarians are satisfied with what they are ; the Philistines remain satisfied with themselves ; and the Populace finds reason enough to remain satisfied with themselves too. Each class finds its ordinary self to be admirable and has no notion of its best self. The English system is defective because there is no sound centre of authority here and because there is no source of right reason and no means of promoting the best self of the nation. The government in England believes that there is no such thing as a best self and no such thing as a right reason having a claim to paramount authority. Chapter-IV : Herbraism and Hellenism The English people, as a nation show much energy but little intelligence. Energy is one force, and intelligence another. These two forces can best be described respectively as the 134
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
The best way to describe the middle class in English society is to use for it the name or designation of Philistines. Probably the term Philistines suits the aristocratic class also, because this class is by its very nature inaccessible to ideas and because the Philistines are the people hostile to the children of light. However, in order to distinguish the aristocratic class from the middle class a different designation is necessary for the former, and that designation should be the Barbarians. The English aristocratic class has plenty of the same individualism which the Barbarian had.
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
forces of Hebraism and Hellenism. Hebraism means the Hebrew system of thought and religion, while Hellenism stands for the system of thought and religion of the ancient Greeks. Neither Hebraism nor Hellenism is by itself and alone enough for mankind. The world should be evenly and happily balanced between these two forces, though in actual practice it is never so balanced. Hebraism essentially sets doing above knowing. Christianity brought about no change in this essential bent of Hebraism. Self-conquest, self-devotion, obedience not to our own individual will but to the will of God-this is the fundamental idea of Christianity just as it is fundamental idea of Hebraism. The simple and attractive ideal which Hellenism offers to human beings is that they should get rid of their ignorance, that they should see things as they are, and that they should, by doing so, see thing in their beauty. By virtue of this ideal, Hellenism is invested with sweetness and light. Hebraism, on the other hand, is always pre-occupied with the difficulties which oppose the pursuit or attainment of perfection. Although since the Renaissance the main road of mankinds progress has been Hellenism, the English people have been showing a great inclination towards Hebraism. Their main impulse has been towards strictness of conscience. The result of this has been a certain confusion and false movement. What is needed in England is some sound order and authority. This can only be achieved if people try to see things as they really are.
en t
The English people are quite energetic and sensible. But they have little faith in right reason, and a great faith in their own independent actions. The group of human forces, which have been described already as Hebraism, are over-developed in the English people. The result is that they people are more interested in the moral side of their nature than in anything else. They attach more importance to obedience than to intelligence. For them, the one thing needful is strictness of conscience, or the staunch adherence to some fixed law of doing. They do not realize the importance of spontaneity of consciousness, which tends continually to enlarge mans whole law of doing. Now, Hebraism alone cannot satisfy all the demands of human nature because man has his intellectual side also and not only his moral side. Sweetness and light which are the two principal ingredients of culture are connected with that side of humanity which has been described as Hellenism. The ancient Greeks believed in the true and firm law of things, the law of light or the law of seeing things as they are. The Puritan force in England means a care for fire and strength, for strictness of conscience, for Hebraism, rather than a care for sweetness and light, for spontaneity of consciousness, for Hellenism. The great mistake of Puritanism is that it thinks itself to be in possession of a rule telling them the unum necessarium (or the one thing needful) ; and it then remains satisfied with a very crude conception of what that rule is. The real unum necessarium is to come to our best at all points. At this particular time, the English people need Hellenism 135
re
fo
rT
ra
di
Chapter-V : Porro Unum Est Necessarium
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
more than Hebraism. The present state of English society needs an importation of Hellenism into Hebraism in all fields of English life. The trouble with English society is that it has developed its Hebrewside too much and its Hellenic side feebly and at random. The need of the time is a fuller and harmonious development of the personality, free play of thought upon routine notions, spontaneity of consciousness, sweetness and light ; and these are just the things which culture emphasizes and promotes.
Yet another policy which the Liberals are pursuing without due consideration is that of free trade. This policy again shows how the Liberals are pursuing their operations in a mechanical way. This policy again shows how the Liberals are doing things without any reference to an intelligible law of things and without reference to human life as a whole. In fact, the Liberals have wrong notions even in regard to population. With population increasing all the time, the problem of poverty will not be solved but aggravated. It is wrong to spread the notion that children are sent into this world by God and that God takes pleasure in endlessly increasing the number of living beings on this earth. Conclusion : Much of the disorder and perplexity in England is due to the disbelief of the Barbarians 136
en t
re
There is yet another operation which the liberals have undertaken, and that operation too shows the inability of the Liberals to allow their mind and consciousness to play upon matters engaging their attention. This operation relates to the attempt of the Liberals to enable a man to marry the sister of his dead wife.
fo
rT
The policies of the Liberal Party in England do not show sufficient intelligence among the Liberal politicians. Just as the proposal to disestablish the Irish Church is misconceived, so is the proposed parliamentary measure known s the Real Estate Intestacy Bill. The latter Bill aims at preventing the land of a man, who dies without making his will, from going, as it used to go, to his eldest son. According to this Bill, if a man dies without making his will, his land would be distributed equally among all his children.
ra
di
tio
na
The Nonconformists are mistaken in their decision to bring about the disestablishment of the Irish Church and to put pressure on the Liberal Party to introduced in Parliament a Bill to that effect.
lE
du
The English people are at this time busy in removing certain evils by methods which are not quite right. For instance, they have undertaken an operation to bring about the disestablishment of the Irish Church. Now, there is no doubt that the present Churchestablishment in Ireland is contrary to reason and justice. But the proposal to disestablish the Irish Church has been prompted not by a love of reason and justice but by the Nonconformists antipathy to all religious establishments and endowments.
ca
tio n
Chapter-VI : Our Liberal Practitioners
ad the Philistines in right reason and in a paramount best self. On account of this disbelief, there has been a decay and break-up of the organizations which have so long ruled the country through their ordinary self only. Culture is the most resolute enemy of anarchy. The lovers of culture are strong opposers of anarchy. The true business of the friends of culture is not to encourage the demand for fire and strength but to encourage the spread of sweetness and light. The friends of culture have to spread the belief in right reason and in a firm intelligible law of things. Clear and firm ideas are more important than the mechanical details for the execution of those ideas. In the field of education, clear ideas are especially very important, because education is the road to culture. In the educational sphere, the German or Swiss or French laws are more sound than the English laws.
In Culture and Anarchy, Arnold appears as the censor of his age and as a prophet. A prophet in this sense does not mean one who makes prophecies but one who studies the problems of his times, analyzes the prevalent conditions of his time, puts his fingers on the evils undermining society, and offers solutions and cures. A prophet is thus a physician who diagnoses the maladies and the diseases from which society suffers, and who tries to heal society. Arnold found that the English people of his time were misguided and misled by wrong kinds of leaders, and so, through his sharp criticism and mild rebukes, he drew the attention of his readers to their errors and their short sightedness. He had no axe to grind, no selfish motive, no ambition or desire for self-advancement. Like Carlyle, he found himself in complete disagreement with the political and religious leaders of the time but, whereas Carlyle spoke in thundering and denunciatory tones, Arnold adopted an urbane manner in keeping with his own ideal of sweetness and light.
en t
As Culture and Anarchy deals wholly, with the problems and evils of its own time, it is necessary for the reader of today to get thoroughly acquainted with the social, political, and religious history of the Victorian Age. Arnold touches upon the problems of education in his time. As an Inspector of Schools, 137
re
fo
rT
ra
Culture and Anarchy bristles with ideas. Indeed, it contains a multiplicity of ideas which show Arnold as a thinker ; and it also contains many useful suggestions which show Arnold as a reformer. The most important idea in the book is Arnolds concept of culture, and the most useful suggestion offered by Arnold for the solution of the problems facing his country at that time is also culture or the practical application and value of culture. Culture he defines as the pursuit of perfection-general perfection, harmonious perfection, perfection which is dynamic not static, and perfection which resides in an inward condition of mind and not in an outward set of circumstances. Two of the most important features of this perfection, at which culture aims, are sweetness and light.
di
tio
na
lE
du
9.4.3 Critical Summary
ca
tio n
he had ample opportunities for studying these problems in his own country and he was also provided with opportunities to go abroad in order to study the educational systems in various European countries. In the Preface to this book, Arnold refers to the objections he had raised some of the practices prevailing at Eton, and the reply made to his objections by a schoolmaster by the name of Oscar Browning. Then in Chapter III, he refers to State-Control over education in Prussia and in France, and advocates a similar control over education in his own country. In the Chapter called Doing As One Likes, Arnold clearly brings out the drawback of claim of the individual to do as he pleased. In this connection Arnold says : Every one of us has the idea of country as a sentiment ; hardly any one of us has the idea of the State as a working power. The State, says Arnold, represents the collective and corporate will and authority of the nation ; it represents the right reason of the nation ; and right reason is what culture also insists upon.
Arnolds style is an admirable instrument for the presentation of thought. It is clear, simple, and precise. It runs like a smooth, limpid river-with almost too tranquil a stream. If style resembles the clothes of a well-dressed man, which attract no attention but when examined are found seemly, then Arnolds style is perfect. It is never obtrusive, never by a vivid phrase or a picturesque epithet distracts attention from the matter. The chief features of his writings are grace and lucidity ; at his best he produced nearly perfect prose. He had a few obvious mannerisms, but at the same time his style is intensely individual, an exact expression of a rare and original personality. Even in passages of pure argument there is a kind of sober sheen about it. Sometimes, as in the famous passage on 138
en t
9.4.4
re
The style in which Arnold writes is one of the greatest merits of Culture and Anarchy. Lucidity and elegance are the two most striking merits of this style. There are no obscurities and ambiguities in what Arnold writes. He is clear in his mind about what he has to say, and he says it in a manner which does not leave the reader in any doubt about what he is saving. However, this does not mean that it is too simple a style. Clarity it certainly possesses, but at the same time it demands from the reader his fullest attention.
Style
fo
rT
ra
di
One remarkable feature of Culture and Anarchy is Arnolds use of irony. Irony is allpervasive in the book. Irony is the principal weapon of attack in Arnolds hands. Indeed, he shows himself to be a master of comic irony.
tio
na
In another respect Arnold shows himself to be a pioneer, and that is in his comments on the increasing population of England. While the general view at that time was that an increase in population was something highly desirable and therefore to be encouraged, Arnold deplored this approach to population. He points out that an increase in population in England has led to an increase in the number of paupers also. In other words, Arnold realized that too many people would aggravate the problem of poverty, and that shows him to be ahead of his time.
lE
du
ca
tio n
Oxford, it can fall into haunting rhythms and glow with the fresh colours of a spring morning.
9.4.5 Hebraism and Hellenism

Arnold divides the forces that move the world into two grand divisions Hellenism and Hebraism, the Greek idea and the Jewish idea, the power of intellect and the power of conscience. The uppermost idea with Hellenism is to see things as they really are ; the uppermost idea with hebraism is conduct and obedience. The Greek quarrel with the body and its desires is that they hinder right thinking ; the Hebrew quarrel with them is that they hinder right acting. Arnolds conviction of the superiority of Hellenism as a remedy for modern ills is backed up by the Hellenic type of mind, its calmness, its lucidity, its sense of form and measure. Indeed, Arnold is probably the purest classic writer that English literature as yet has to show ; classic not merely in the repose and purity of his style, but in the unity and simplicity of his mind.
Answer the following questions in brief : 1. 2. 3. 4. What does Arnold mean by culture?
Write a note on Arnold as a censor of his age.
en t
2.
3.
re
Culture and Anarchy may truly be described as an indictment of Victorian society in England. In this book Arnold appears as a critic and censor of his age. He does not share the smugness and complacency of the vast bulk of the aristocracy and the middle class of his time. On the contrary, he tries to prick the bubble of their vanity and their feelings of self important and of the importance of their country. The final end and aim of both Hebraism and Hellenism is undoubtedly the same. The final aim in each case is mans perfection or salvation. The final end and aim of both is that we should become partakers of the divine nature ; and this aim is surely splendid 139
fo
1.
According to Arnold, culture certainly has as one of its grounds the scientific passion for pure knowledge. Culture certainly has a desire to see things as they are. But, at the same time, culture is also based on the moral and social passion for doing good. By doing good, Arnold means the desire for removing human error, clearing human confusion, diminishing human misery, and the wish to leave the world better and happier than it previously was.
rT
9.6
Answers To The Questions
ra
What stand does Arnold take on religion? Write a note on style of Matthew Arnold.
di
What is the final end and aim of both Hebraism and Hellenism?
tio
na
lE
9.5
Self Assessment Questions
du
ca
tio n
and admirable. 4. The modern spirit, Arnold thinks, has made belief in the supernatural impossible for many Englishmen and soon it will make such a belief impossible for very many more. But Arnold is anxious that under the influence of the modern spirit, people should not discard religion itself because religion is not wholly and exclusively based on a belief in the supernatural. Arnolds prose style has received high praise from most critics. His prose style has been called charming and fascinating. It is regarded as possessing both grace and elegance.
5.
(ii) (iii) (iv) (v) (vi)
assess Matthew Arnolds literary genius, discuss qualities of a work of criticism,
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
Comment on Arnolds gospel of culture. How does Arnold expose the fallacy of the Englishmans right to do as he likes? Consider the view that Culture and Anarchy is an indictment of the Victorian Age.
en t
Discuss the meaning of the title of this text. Discuss the relation between Hebraism and Hellenism. Write a note on Arnolds analysis of the character of the English middle class. Discuss Arnolds criticism oft he character and policies of the Liberal Party of his time. Consider Arnolds views on the subject of religion. Bring out the salient features of Arnolds prose style in Culture and Anarchy. Discuss characteristics of the three classes of English society.
re
fo
rT
9.8
Review Questions
ra
answer the questions based on text.
di
understand and appreciate Culture and Anarchy and
140
tio
discuss and evaluate influences and reflections of Victorian age on the writings,
na
lE
(i)
appreciate and evaluate a prose writing,
du
After reading and understanding about Victorian Age, prose writing in nineteenth century and culture and Anarchy of Matthew Arnold, you will be able to :
ca
9.7
Let Us Sum Up
tio n
9.9
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.
Bibliography
Chesterton, G.K., The Victorian Age in Literature, 1913. Elton, O., A Survey of English Literature 1830-1880. Irvine, W., Apes. Angels and Victorians, 1955 Madden, W.A., Matthew Arnold, 1953.
Rai, V. History of English Literature, Vol. I-III, Varanasi, Bhartiya Vidya Prakashan, 1967. Super, R.H., The Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold.
_____________
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
141
lE
Water, J.D., The Outline of Literature, Vol. I-II, Jaipur Bookman, 1992.
du
Sampson, G., Cambridge History of English Literature, London, CVP, 1941.
ca
tio n
McCarthy, P.J., Matthew Arnold and Three Classes, 1962.
UNIT-10 T.S. ELIOT : TRADITION AND INDIVIDUAL TALENT

Reading Tradition and Individual Talent (Text) 10.3.1 10.3.2 Eliots Concept of Tradition Eliots Theory of the Impersonality of Poetry
10.4 10.5 10.6
10.1 Introduction
T.S. Eliot heads the list of analytical critics. Dissatisfied with the vagueness of impressionistic criticism, he institutes a scientific inquiry into the process by which a work is produced to account for its effect. As this was the method followed by Aristotle also, Eliot declared himself a classicist in 1928. Therefore, the right approach to criticism, according to Eliot, is the classical. He says that a critic needs external evidence to confirm what is right and what is wrong. Fact findings, (not mere elucidation and interpretation ) which is the main function of criticism can be best done when the critic has something outside himself to guide him some standard of perfection to judge a work by, based upon tradition and the accumulated 142
en t
T.S. Eliot said in 1921 : The twentieth century is still the nineteenth, although it may in time acquire its own character with the increased application of scientific and psychological methods of literary inquiry the character it has acquired since may be said to be one of analysis. Present day criticism is more a science than an art. The critic is now no longer a friend to the reader advising him what to read and how to read it, but an expert writing for the expert. These analytical critics include the psychological and sociological critics.
re
fo
rT
ra
give a detailed analysis of T.S. Eliots essay Tradition and Individual Talent, known as an unofficial manifesto of his creed.
di
The objective of this unit is to
tio
10.0 Objectives
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
Life and Works of T.S. Eliot
wisdom of time. True criticism therefore is the institution of a scientific enquiry into work of art to see it as it really is. The essay Tradition and Individual Talent was first published in 1919 in the Times Literary Supplement as a critical article. The essay may be regarded as an unofficial manifesto of Eliots creed, for it contains all those critical principles from which his criticism has been derived ever since. It is a declaration of Eliots critical creed and these principles are the basis of all his subsequent criticism. The essay is divided into three parts. The first part gives us Eliots concept of tradition, and in the second part is developed his theory of the impersonality of poetry. The short third part is in the nature of a conclusion, or summing up of the whole discussion.
When Eliot began publishing poetry, Victorian Romanticism was at its last gasp, in the chatty, matter-of-fact, but basically sentimental poems of the Georgians, of whom Rupert Brooke was the most popular. Eliot, both by personal inclination and for what he sensed to be the needs of the time, reacted sharply against nineteenth-century writers and their criticism. In his reviewing he asserted the excellence of half-forgotten 16th and 17th century writers and in his poetry, made a sense of wit again important. Irony is probably the most pervasive characteristic of this early London poems: not only the ironic wit of the seventeenth century Metaphysicals, but also a modern impudent, allusive irony derived from the French Symbolists Jules Laforgue and from Ezra Pound.
en t
Later, Eliots poetry became more earnest and broadly philosophical, though The Waste Land, certainly a philosophical comment on twentieth-century society, is still wickedly infested with literary sick jokes and embellished with exaggeratedly learned notes. The spirit of The Waste Land seems pessimistic, but its message is one of exhortation to better things, and Ash Wednesday Four Quartets (1944) are poems firmly based in Christian faith, though 143
re
Eliots later poetry
fo
rT
His reaction against romanticism
ra
T. S. Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1888. After a Harvard degree he came to Europe to complete his studies and because of the war, stayed in England, where he did low-paid works as a teacher and bank-clerk, while writing reviews of startling originality. Like many other young artist, he was helped and influenced at this time by Ezra pound, on whose advice he is said to have cut his most famous poem, The Waste Land by about half. In his youth Eliot was understandably regarded as a rebel, because his new ideas were radical; but he was always of a sober nature, and with his conversion to Anglo-Catholicism in 1927and his Professorship of Poetry at Harvard in 1932, he became a highly respectable and respected figure, giving talks on religion and culture as a director of Faber and Faber doing much a number of verse plays. He died in 1965.
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
10.2 Life and Works of T.S. Eliot
tio n
always of a somber kind. (Eliot is never exuberant.) Four Quartets, arguably Eliots finest work, is easier to understand than the earlier poems: the literary allusions have almost disappeared and there is no deliberate cultivation of obscurity. Eliot is undeniably a difficult poet, and certainly more irritating for this because the difficulty is often quite deliberate. T.S. Eliots Works
T.S. Eliots poetical career has been divided into five phases or periods : (i)
(ii)
4. Rhapsody on a Windy Night 5. The Boston Evening Transcript
en t
(iii)
The Third Period (1918-1925). The most important poems of this period are as follows. 1. Gerontion Burbank with a Baedekar Sweeney Erect A Cooking Eggo. Sweeney among the Nightingales The Waste Land, 1992. The Hollow Men, 1925 144
2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
re
6. Mr Apollinax
fo
rT
3. The Preludes
ra
2. Portrait of a Lady.
di
1. The Love-Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.
tio
The Second Period: Prufrock and other Observation, 1917, The most significant poems of this phase are as follow:
na
The First period : Eliots Juvenalia 1905-1909. The poems of this period are immature and mere school-boy exercises. These poems still show signs of poetic talent. They were published in the various college and school magazines named the Smith Academy Record and the Harvard Advocate.
lE
du
ca
(A) T.S. Eliots Poetry
tio n
T.S. Eliots literary production spreads over 45 years. He wrote poems, plays, literary and social essays during this long period. He worked as a journalist and editor. His writings may be divided under three heads i.e poetry, drama and prose.
(iv)
The Fourth Period (1925-1935). It is called the period of Eliots Christian Poetry. The following are the significant poems of this Christian period: 1. Ash Wednesday , 1930 2. Journey of the Magi 3. Animila 4. Marina
6. Coriolan 7. A number of minor and unfinished poems. (v)
3. The Dry Salvage, 1941 4. Little Gidding, 1942 (B) Drama
2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
Murder in the Cathedral, 1935
en t
Eliots prose was published in the form of articles and essays in the various periodicals and journals of the day. The following are the literary essays which are highly admired because of his critical pronouncements: 1. 2. The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism, 1933 The Idea of a Christian Society, 1939
re
(C) Prose
fo
The Family Reunion, 1939 The Cocktail Party, 1950 The Confidential Clerk, 1954 The Elder Statesman, 1959
rT
1.
The Rock, a Pageant Play , 1934.
ra
Eliot endeavoured to revive English poetic drama. His poetic dramas are as follow.:
di
tio
na
145
2. East Coker, 1940
lE
1. Burnt Norton, 1936
du
The Fifth Period. This period of Eliots religious poetry is distinguished with the previous Christian poetry. It is the period of four Quartets which were published as follows.
ca
tio n
5. Choruses from The Rock
3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.
Notes Towards a Definition of Culture, 1948 Selected Essays, Third Edition, 1951 On Poetry and Poets, 1957 To Criticise the Critic, 1965 Tradition and Individual Talent Poetry and Drama The Function of Criticism The English Metaphysical Poets The Frontiers of Criticism, etc.
In English writing we seldom speak of tradition, though we occasionally apply its name in deploring its absence. We can not refer to the tradition or a tradition, at most, we employ the adjective in saying, that the poetry of So-and-so traditional or even too traditional. Seldom, perhaps, does traditional or even too tradition. Seldom, perhaps, does the word appear except in a phrase of censure. If otherwise, it is vaguely, approbative, with the implication, as to the work approved, of some pleasing archaeological reconstruction. You can hardly make the work agreeable to English ears without this comfortable reference to the reassuring Science of archaeology. Certainly the word is not likely to appear in our appreciations of living or dead writers. Every nation, every race, has not only its own creative, but its own critical turn of mind; and is even more oblivious of the shortcomings and limitation of its critical habits than of those of its creative genius. We know or think we know, from the enormous mass of critical writing that has appeared in the French language the critical method or habit of the French.; we only conclude (we are such unconscious people) that the French are more critical than we, and sometimes even plume ourselves a little with the fact, as if the French were the less spontaneous. Perhaps they are; but we might remind ourselves that criticism is as inevitable as breathing and that we should be none the worse for articulating what passes in our mind when we read a book and feel an emotion about it, for criticizing our own mind in their work of criticism. One of the fact that might come to light in this process is our tendency to insist, when we prasis a poet, upon those aspects of his work in which he least resemble anyone else. In these aspects
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
146
tio
Now you read Eliots Tradition and Individual Talent :
na
10.3 Reading Tradition and Individual Talent (Text)
lE
Eliot was a renowned editor of he magazine named The Criterion which was in circulation from 1922-1939. This magazine was closed because of the outbreak of war in Europe.
du
ca
tio n
or parts of his work we pretend to find what is individual, what the peculiar essence of the man. We dwell with satisfaction upon the poets difference from his predecessors, especially his immediate predecessor; we endeavor to find something that can be isolated in order to be enjoyed. Whereas if we approach a poet without this prejudice we shall often find that not only the best, but the most individual part of his work may be those in which the dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality most vigorously. And I do not mean the impressionable period of adolescence, but he period of full maturity. Yet if the only form of tradition, of handing down, consisted in following the ways of the immediate generation before us in a blind or timid adherence to its successes, tradition should positively be discouraged. We have seen many such simple currents soon lost in the sand; and novelty is better than repetition. Tradition is a matter of much wider significance. It cannot be inherited, and if you want it you must obtain it by great labour. It involves, in the first place, the historical sense, which we may call nearly indispensable to any one who would continue to be a poet beyond his twenty fifth year; and the historical sense involves a perception, not only of pastness of the past of the ,but of its presence; the historical sencse compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order. This historical sense, which is a sense of the timeless as well of the temporal and of the timeless and of the temporal together is what make a writer most acutely conscious of his place in time, of his own contemporaneity. No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him along; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead. I mean this as a principle of aesthetic, not merely historical, criticism. The necessity that he shall conform, that he shall cohere, is not onesided; what happens when a new work of art is created is something that happens simultaneously to all the work of art which preceded it. The existing monuments form an ideal order among themselves, which is modified by the introduction of the new (the really new) work of art among them. The existing order is complete before the new work arrives; for order to persist after the supervention of novelty, the, whole existing order must be, if ever so slightly, altered; and so the relations, proportions, values of each work of art toward the whole are readjusted; and this is conformity between the old and the new. Whoever has approved this idea of order, of the form of European of English literature will not find it preposterous that the past should be altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past. And the poet who is aware of this will be aware of great difficulties and responsibilities. In a peculiar sense he will be aware also that he must inevitably be judged by the standards of the past. I say judged, not amputated, by them; not judged to be as good as, or worse or better than, the dead; and certainly not judged by the canons of dead critics. It is a judgement, a comparison, in which two things are measured by each other. To conform merely 147
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
would be for the new work not really to conform at all; it would not be new, and would therefore not be a work of art. And we do not quite say that the new is more valuable because it fits in; but its fitting in is a test of its value-a test, it is true, which can only be slowly and cautiously applied, for we are none of us infallible judges of conformity. We say: it appears to conform, and is perhaps individual, or it appears individual, and may conform; but we are hardly likely to find that it is one and not the other. To proceed to a more intelligible exposition of the relation of the poet to the past: he can neither take the past as a lump, an indiscriminate bolus, nor can he form himself wholly on one or two private admirations, nor can he form himself wholly upon one preferred period. The first course is inadmissible, the second is an important experience of youth, and the third is a pleasant and highly desirable supplement. The poet must be very conscious of the main current, which does not at all flow invariabl through the most distinguished reputations. He must be quite aware of the obvious fact that art never improves, but that the material of art is never quite the same. He must be aware that the mind of Europe the mind of his own countrya mind which he learns in time to be much more important than his own private mindis a mind which changes, and that this change is a development which abandons nothing en-route, which does not superannuate either Shakespeare, or Homer, or the rock drawing of the Magdalenian draughtsmen. That this development, refinement perhaps, complication certainly, is not, from the point of view of the artist, any improvement. Perhaps now even an improvement from the point of view of the psychologist or not to the extent which we imagine; perhaps only in the end based upon a complication in economics and machinery. But the difference between the present and the past is that the conscious present is an awareness of the past in a way and to an extent which the pasts awareness of itself cannot show.
I am alive to a usual objection to what is clearly part of my programme for the metier of poetry. The objection is that the doctrine requires a ridiculous amount of erudition (pedantry), a claim which can be rejected by appeal to the lives of poets in any pantheon. It will even be affirmed that much learning deadens or perverts poetic sensibility. While, however, we persist in believing that a poet ought to know as much as will not encroach upon his necessary receptivity and necessary laziness, it is not desirable to confine knowledge to whatever can be put into a useful shape for examinations, drawing- rooms or the still more pretentious modes of publicity. Some can absorb knowledge , the more tardy must sweat for it. Shakespeare acquired more essential history from Plutarch than most men could from the whole British Museum. What is to be insisted upon is that the poet must develop or procure the consciousness of the past and that he should continue to develop this consciousness throughout his career. What happens is a continual surrender of himself as he is at the moment to something which is more valuable. The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality. 148
en t
re
fo
rT
Someone said: The dead writers are remote from us because we know so much more than they did. Precisely, and they are that which we know.
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
There remains to define this process of depersonalization and its relation to the sense of tradition. It is in this de-personalization that art may be said to approach the condition of science. I therefore invite you to consider, as a suggestive analogy, the action which takes place when a bit of finely filiated platinum is introduced into a chamber containing oxygen and sulphur dioxide. II Honest criticism and sensitive appreciation is directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry. If we attend to the confused cries of he newspaper critics and the susurrus of popular repetition that follows, we shall hear the names of poets in great numbers; if we seek not Bluebook knowledge but the enjoyment of poetry, and ask for a poem, we shall seldom find it. I have tried to point out the importance of the relation of the poem to other by other poems by other authors, and suggested the conception of poetry as a living whole of all the poetry that has ever been written. The other aspect of this impersonal theory of poetry is the relation of the poem to its author. And I hinted, by an analogy, that the mind of the mature poet differs from that of the immature one not precisely in any valuation of personality, not being necessarily more interesting, or having more to say, but rather by being a more finely perfected medium in which special, or very varied, feelings are at liberty to enter into new combinations. The analogy was that of the catalyst. When the two gases previously mentioned are mixed in the presence of a filament of platinum, they form sulphurous acid. This combination takes place only if the platinum is present; nevertheless the newly formed acid contains no trace of platinum, and the platinum itself is apparently unaffected: has remained inert, neutral , and unchanged. The mind of the poet is the shred of platinum. It may partly or exclusively operate upon the experience of the man himself, but the more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates; the more perfectly will the mind digest and transmute the passions which are its material. The experience, you will notice, the elements which enter the presence of the transforming catalyst, are of two kinds: emotions and feelings. The effect of a work of art upon the person who enjoys it is an experience different in kind from any experience not of art. It may be formed out of one emotion, or may be a combination of several; and various feelings, inhering for the writer in particular words or phrases or images may be added to compose the final result. Or great poetry may be made without the direct use of any emotion whatever : composed out of feelings solely. Canto XV of the Inferno (Brunctto Latini) is a working up of the emotion evident in the situation; but the effect, though single as that of any work of art, is obtained by considerable complexity of detail. The last quatrain gives an image, a feeling attaching to an image, which, came, which did not develop simply out of what precedes, but which was probably in suspension in the poets mind until the proper combination arrived for it to add itself to. The poets mind is in fact a receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feelings, phrases, images, which remain there until all the particles which can unite form a new compound are present together.
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
149
lE
du
ca
tio n
And now methinks I could een chide myself
en t
Shall be revenged after no common action. Does the silkworm expend her yellow labours. For thee? For thee does she undo herself? Are lordship sold to maintain ladyships For the poor benefit of a bewildering minute? Why does you fellow falsify highways, And put his life between the judges lips, To refine such a thing-keep horse and men 150
re
For doating on her beauty, though her death
fo
rT
I will quote a passage which is unfamiliar enough to be regarded with fresh attention in the light-or darkness-of other observations.
ra
The point of view which I am struggling to attack is perhaps related to the metaphysical theory of the substantial unity of the soul : for my meaning is, that the poet has, not a personality to express, but particular medium, which is only a medium and not a personality, in which impressions and experiences combine in peculiar and unexpected ways. Impressions and experiences which are important for the man may take no place in the poetry, and those which become important in the poetry may play quite a negligible part in the man, the personality.
di
tio
na
lE
If you compare several representative passages of the greatest poetry you see how great is the variety of types of combination, and also how completely any semi-ethical criterion of sublimity misses the mark. For it is not the greatness, the intensity, of the emotions, the components, but the intensity of the artistic process, the pressure, so to speak, under which the fusion takes place, that counts. The episode of Paolo and Francesca employs a definite emotion , but the intensity of the poetry is something quite different from whatever intensity in the supposed experience it may give the impression of . It is no more intense, furthermore, than Canto X X VI, the voyage of Ulysses, which has not the direct dependence upon an emotion. Great variety is possible in the process of transmutation of emotion: the murder of Agamemnon, or the agony of Othello, gives an artistic effect apparently closer to a possible original than the scenes form Dante. In the Agamemnon, the artistic emotion approximates to the emotion of an actual spectator; in Othello to the emotion of the protagonist himself. But the difference between art and the event is always absolute; the combination which is murder of Agamemnon is probably as complex as that which is the voyage of Ulysses. In either case there has been a fusion of elements. The ode of Keats contains a number of feelings which have nothing particular to do with the nightingale, but which the nightingale, partly perhaps because of its attractive name, and partly because of its reputation, served to bring together.
du
ca
tio n
To beat their valours for her?..... In this passage (as is evident if it is taken in its context) there is a combination of positive and negative emotions: an intensely strong attraction towards beauty and an equally intense fascination by the ugliness which is contrasted with it and which destroys it. This balance of contrasted emotion is in the dramatic situation to which the speech is pertinent, but that situation alone is inadequate to it. This is, so to speak, the structural emotion, provided by the drama. But the whole effect, the dominant tone, is due to the fact that a number of floating feelings having an affinity to this emotion by no means superficially evident , have combined with it to give as a new art emotion. It is not in his personal emotions, the emotions provoked by particular events in his life, that the poet is in any way remarkable, or interesting. His particular emotion may be simple, or crude, or flat. The emotion in his poetry will be a very complex thing, but not with the complexity of the emotions of people who have very complex or unusual emotions in life. One error, in fact, of eccentricity in poetry is to seek for new human emotions to express; and in this search for novelty in the wrong place it discovers the perverse. The business of the poet is not to find new emotions, but to use the ordinary ones and, in working them up into poetry, to express feelings which are not in actual emotions. And emotions which he has never experienced will serve his turn as well as those familiar to him. Consequently, we must believe that emotion recollected in tranquility is an inexact formula. For it is neither emotion, nor recollection, nor, without distortion of meaning, tranquility. It is a concentration, and a new thing resulting from the concentration of a very great number of experiences which to the practical and active person would not seem to be experiences at all, it is a concentration which does not happen consciously or of deliberation. These experiences are not recollected, and they finally unite in an atmosphere which is tranquil only in that it is a passive attending upon the event. Of course this is not quite the whole story . There is a great deal, in the writing of poetry, which must be conscious and deliberate. In fact, the bad poet is usually unconscious where he ought to be conscious, and conscious where he ought to be unconscious. Both errors tend to make him personal. Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape form personality. But of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.
en t
This essay proposes to halt at the frontier of metaphysics or mysticism, and confine itself to such practical conclusions as can be applied by the responsible person interested in poetry. To divert interest from the poet to the poetry is a laudable aim: for it would conduce to a juster estimation of actual poetry, good and bad. There are many people, who appreciate the expression of sincere emotion in verse, and there is a smaller number of people who can appreciate technical excellence. But very few know when there is an expression of significant emotion, emotion which has its life in the poem and not in the history of the poet. The emotion 151
re
III
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
of art is impersonal. And the poet cannot reach this impersonality without surrendering himself wholly to the work to be done. And he is not likely to know what is to be done unless he lives in what is not merely the present, but the present moment of the past, unless he is conscious, not of what is dead, but of what is already living.
10.3.1 Eliots Concept of Tradition

The Significance of Tradition Eliot begins by pointing out that the word tradition is generally regarded as a term of censure. It sounds disagreeable to the English ears. When the English praise a poet, they praise him for those aspects of his work which are individual and original. It is supposed that his chief merits lie in such parts. This undue stress on individuality, according to Eliot, is a wrong thing. If they examine the matter critically with an unprejudiced mind, they will realize that the best and the most individual part of a poets work is that which shows the maximum influence of the writers of the past. To quote his own words Whereas if we approach a poet without this prejudice, we shall often find that not only the best, but the cost individual parts of his work may be those in which the dead poets, his ancestors assert their immortality most vigorously. Tradition : Ways in which It can be acquired
Tradition, according to Eliot, does not mean a blind adherence to the ways of the precious generation or generations. This would be mere slavish imitation, a mere repetition of what has already been achieved, and novelty is better than repetition. Tradition for Eliot, is a matter of much wider significance. Tradition in the true sense of the term cannot be inherited, it can only be obtained by hard labour. This labour is the labour of knowing the past writers. It is the critical labour of shifting the good from the bad, and of knowing what is good and useful. Tradition can be obtained only by those who have the historical sense, It is this historical sense which makes a literary writer realize that the past exists in the present, and that the past and the present form one simultaneous order. This historical sense is the sense of the timeless and the temporal, as well as of the timeless and the temporal together. It is this historic sense which makes a writer traditional. In brief, sense of tradition implies (a) a recognition of the continuity of literature (b) a critical judgement as to which of the writers of the past, continue to be significant in the present, and (c) a knowledge of these significant writers, obtained through painstaking efforts. Tradition, thus represents accumulated wisdom and experience of ages, and so its knowledge is essential for really great and noble achievements.
Eliots conception of tradition is a dynamic one. According to him, tradition is not something fixed and static, it is constantly changing, growing and becoming different from what it is. A writer in the present must seek guidance from the past, he must conform to the literary tradition. But just as the past directs and guides the present, so the present alters and modifies 152
en t
Dynamic Conception of Tradition
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
the past. When a new work of art is created, it is really new and original, the whole literary tradition is modified though ever so slightly. The relationship between the past and the present is not one - sided; it is a reciprocal relationship. The past directs the present, and is itself modified and altered by the present. Everygreat poet like Virgil, Dante or Shakespeare adds something to the literary tradition out of which the future poetry will be written. Its function The work of a poet in the present is to be compared and contrasted with works of the past, and judged by the standards of the past. The comparison is to be made for knowing the facts, all the facts, about the new work of art. The comparison is made for the purposes of analysis, and for forming a better understanding of the new. The past helps us to understand the present and it throws light on the past. It is in this way alone that we can form an idea of what is really individual and new. Sense of Tradition
en t
The poet must also realize that art never improves, though its material is never the same. The great works of art never lose their significance, for there is no qualitative improvement in it. There may be refinement, there may be development but from the point of view of the artist there is no improvement. (For example, it will not be correct to say that the act of Shakespeare is better and higher than that of Eliot. Their works are of different kinds, for the material on which they worked was different). T.S. Eliot is of the view that the duty of a poet is to acquire, to the best of his ability, the knowledge of the past. This knowledge of the past will make him aware of the traditions. Such awareness of tradition, sharpens poetic sensibility and is indispensable for poetic creation.
The personality of the artist is not important; the important thing is the sense of tradition. An artist must continue to acquire greater and greater objectivity. His emotions and passions must be depersonalized; he must be as impersonal and objective as a scientist. An artist must forget his personal joys and sorrows, and be absorbed in acquiring a sense of tradition and expressing it in his poetry. Thus, the poets personality is merely a medium, having the same significance as a catalytic agent has in chemical reactions. 153
re
10.3.2 Eliots Theory of the Impersonality of Poetry

Impersonality of Poetry
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
A sense of tradition, according to Eliot, in the real sense means consciousness of the main current which does not at all flow invariably through the most distinguished reputations. In other words, to know the tradition, the poet must judge critically what are the main trends, and what are not. A poet must confine himself to the main trends to the exclusion of all that is incidental or topical. He must also realise that the main literary trends are not determined by the great poets alone. Minor poets also are significant. They are not to be ignored.
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
The Poetic Process In the second part of the essay, Eliot develops further his theory of the impersonality of poetry. He compares the mind of the poet to a catalyst and the process of poetic creation to the process of a chemical reaction just as chemical reactions take place in the presence of a catalyst alone, so also the poets mind is the catalytic agent for combining different emotions into something new. Suppose there is a jar containing Oxygen and Sulphur dioxide. These two gases combine to form Sulphurous acid when a fine filament of platinum (catalytic) is introduced into the jar. The combination takes place only in the presence of the piece of platinum, but the metal itself does not undergo any change. The mind of the poet is catalytic agent. The mind of the poet is constantly forming emotions and experiences, into new wholes, but the new combination does not contain even a trace of the poets mind, just as the newly formed sulphurous acid does not contain any trace of platinum. In the case of young and immature poet, his mind, his personal experiences and emotions may find some expression in his composition but as he gains maturity and perfection the passions are melted and form the substance of his poetry. In other words, the personality of a poet does not find expression in his poetry; it acts, like a catalytic agent in the process of poetic composition.
Eliot next compares the poets mind to a jar in which are stored numberless feelings, emotions, etc., which remain there in an unorganized and chaotic form till all the particles which can unite to form a new compound are present together. Thus poetry is orgnisation rather than inspiration. Thus the greatness of a poem does not depend upon the intensity of emotions but upon the intensity of the process of poetic composition. The more intense is the poetic process, the greater is the poem. There is always a difference between the artistic emotions and the personal emotions of the poet. For example, the famous Ode to Nightingale of Keats contains a number of emotions which have nothing to do with the nightingale. The difference between art and event is always absolute. The poet has no personality to express, he is merely a medium in which impression and experiences combine in peculiar and unexpected ways. Impressions and experiences which are important for the writers as an individual may find no place in his poetry, and those which become important have no significance for the man. Eliot thus rejects romantic subjectivism. The emotions of poetry are different from personal emotions of the poet. His personal emotions may be simple or crude, but the emotions of his poetry may be complex and refined. The business of a poet is not to find new emotions. He may express only ordinary emotions 154
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
Poetry as Organisation
di
The experiences which enter the poetic process, says Eliot, may be of two kinds. They are emotions and feelings. Poetry may be composed out of emotions or out of feelings only or out of both. T.S. Eliot here distinguishes between emotions and feelings but does not state what this difference is. The distinction may be ignored as it has bearing on his impersonal theory of poetry.
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
Poetry as Escape from Personality
(i)
en t
(ii)
(iii)
(iv) (v) (vi) (vii)
re
In this unit we have explained to you that with T.S. Eliot the notion of criticism underwent a change. With the increase of application of scientific methods, criticism acquired the character of analysis. A critic now was no longer a friend to reader suggesting him what to read and how to read but an expert writing for the expert. Criticism is an institution of scientific inquiry into a work of art to see as it really is. Eliots concept of Tradition and Theory of the Impersonality of Poetry well exhibit the fact. Tradition can be obtained only by those who have a historical sense. Tradition is not static, it is dynamic. An artist must be as impersonal and objective as a scientist. The personality of a poet acts like a catalytic agent in the process of poetic composition.
fo
rT
10.4 Let Us Sum Up
ra
Eliot concludes Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. Thus Eliot does not deny personality or emotion to the poet. Only, he must depersonalize his emotions. There should be an extinction of his personality. This impersonality can be achieved only when the poet surrenders himself completely to the work that is to be done. And the poet can know what is to be done, only if he acquires a sense of tradition, the historic sense, which makes, him conscious, not only of the present, but also of the present moment of the past, not only of what is dead, but of what is already living.
di
tio
na
155
lE
du
ca
but he must impart to them a new significance and a new meaning. And it is not necessary that they should be his personal emotions. Even emotions which he has never personally experienced can serve the purpose of poetry. (For example, emotions which result from the reading of books can serve his turn). Eliot rejects Wordsworths theory of poetry having its origin in emotions recollected in tranquility and points out that in the process of poetic composition there is neither emotion, nor recollection nor tranquility. In the poetic process there is only concentration of a number of experiences, and a new thing results from this concentration. And this process of concentration is neither conscious not deliberate; it is a passive one. The difference between a good and a bad poet is that a bad poet is conscious where he should be unconscious and unconscious where he should be conscious. It is this consciousness of the wrong kind which makes a poem personal, whereas mature art must be impersonal. But Eliot does not tell us when a poet should be conscious, and when not. The poet has been left vague and indeterminate.
tio n
(viii) (ix)
Poetry is an organization of depersonalized feelings and emotions. Poetry is an escape from personality.

1. 2. 3. Discuss Eliots Theory of the Impersonality of Poetry. Discuss Eliots concept of tradition.
10.6 Bibliography
1. 2. D.J. Enright and Ernest De Chickera : English Critical Texts (OUP). B. Prasad : An Introduction to English Criticism (Macmillan).
__________
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
156
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
Discuss T.S. Eliot as a critic. Support your answer with illustrations from Tradition and Individual Talent.
UNIT-11 F.R. LEAVIS : REVALUATION

Structure 11.0 11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4. 11.5 Objectives Introduction
Scrutiny Leavis views on an ideal critic Introduction to the Text. 11.5.1 The Line of Wit 11.5.2 Miltons Verse 11.5.3 Pope 11.5.4 The Augustan Tradition 11.5.5 Wordsworth 11.5.6 Shelley 11.5.7 Keats
11. 6
Let Us sum up
11. 8 Bibliography
11.0.
en t
re
Objectives
The objectives of the unit are to: give an introduction to the socio-historic scenario of the twentieth century and the academic climate that gave birth to Practical criticism. give a brief bio-line especially of Frank Raymond Leavishis career as a critic and the uniqueness of his personality. introduce Scrutiny. the brain child of F.R. Leavis, its evangelical task of redeeming society, reiterating the need for social values embedded in great literature and Leavis lasting impact.
fo
11. 7 Review Questions.
rT
ra
di
tio
na
157
lE
du
ca
tio n
About the Author
introduce to and sum up the text given by Leavis give a brief note on Leavis views on a critic to help the readers see if he has fulfilled the goals he has set forth.
11.1 Introduction
At the dawn of the twentieth century the worlds face had thoroughly been altered by industrialism, revolution in technology, mass civilization and egalitarianism. The old values were gradually slipping away. The rapid changes of the Machine Age had destroyed the great cultural tradition. The breach in the continuity had resulted in the uprooting of the glorious ways of life rooted in the soil, but great literature preserves these values and as long as literature and the valuation or a responsive critical reading of it persist then the lost values could be recovered and relived.
The three pioneers who shaped the Cambridge English School in the 1920s were I. A. Richards, William Empson and F. R. Leavis. I.A. Richards founded a method of studying literature called Practical Criticism. The main idea promoted by this mode is that one could make a close study of the text by isolating the text from the context. Without worrying about the historical moment, its characteristic outlook and social movements there is a technique of analyzing the precise details of the text. . Richardss student William Empson presented his tutor a book published in 1930 titled Seven Types of Ambiguity in reading poetry which took his mentors method of analysis to another extreme. He viewed poetry as seriously as if it were mathematics. T.S. Eliot called Empsons method the lime squeezer school of criticism. F. R. Leavis who was a crusader of practical criticism, took the semantic dimension given by Empson a step forward giving a moral turn to practical criticism. Leavis envisioned the
en t
re
The insistence upon close reading and the impact created by Matthew Arnold were palpable in the 1920s. F.R. Leavis adopted and adapted many of the fundamental ideas of Arnold and gave them a new currency thereby elevating Arnold to a canonical figure in the history of English criticism. Leavis recognizes Arnolds concern in considering genuineness the problem of how the critic makes those prior kinds of judgement, those initial recognitions of life and quality which must precede, inform and control all profitable discussion of poetry and any evaluation of it as criticism of life (Selden 511)
fo
rT
ra
di
158
tio
The important developments in critical theory following the Romantics were contained in the works of mid and late Victorians like George Eliot, Matthew Arnold and Henry James. The trends that emerged in the late nineteenth century bifurcated into two tracks. The first track led through Samuel Johnson and Matthew Arnold to T.S. Eliot and F. R. Leavis. Their works could be grouped under the label practical criticism. These critics were more concerned with a close reading of the texts and they left out broader issues which were the concerns of the ideas-led critics like Sidney, Wordsworth, Coleridge, George Eliot and Henry James.
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
Universities serving as the creative centers of civilization. The liberal Leavisite criticism replaced the nineteenth century tradition of realism. Leavis reasserted the importance of Literature. He did not like to see the Universities bending themselves to satisfy the growing demands of capitalism and turning out to be mere career training institutions.
11.2 About the Author

Frank Raymond Leavis (18951978) was the last of the pioneers who turned out to be the most influential figure in the twentieth century. He could be paralleled to none other than Dr. Johnson. Born in Cambridge, he was not recognized by the then academicians. [He was a Jew.] He participated in the First World War as a stretcher bearer when Britain fought against Germany. Even then he is said to have carried a copy of Miltons poems. He returned to England after service in World War II to become a lecturer in English at Emmanuel College (1925) and later a fellow at Downing College (1936-52.) His career as a writer and critic commenced with the publication of Mass Civilization and Minority Culture (1930) denouncing mass culture. His Education and University got published in 1943 and his critical essays on writers of English fiction like D.H. Lawrence, Novelist in 1955 and later Anna Karenina and Other Essays in 1968. His English Literature in Our Time and the University appeared in 1969 and Nor shall my Sword: Discourses on Pluralism, Compassion and Social Hope in 1972. As a person, he was known for his stern, handsome, aquiline features, the open shirts, the frugal mode of life, the athleticism, the unflinching integrity, the gentlemanliness of manner ... (Bergonzi 47) Steiner recalls with nostalgia his unceremonious appearance which had an intensity while leaving a lectern in a Cambridge hall. He is still best remembered for his relentless pursuit in reshaping the tenor and spirit of his time and refining the English sensibility. He married Q.D. Roth in 1929 and she came to be called Q.D. Leavis. His doctoral dissertation was on the relationship between journalism and literature. His wifes was on popular fiction.
F.R. Leavis started a journal called Scrutiny in 1932. It emerged out of the debates and institutional developments within the Cambridge English School in the twenties. It brought out the supreme value of great literature and also the necessity for evaluative literary criticism. Scrutiny discussed a wide range of art forms which include music and cinema highlighting the link between literary achievement and general cultural health. This journal with its many contributors undertook the job of saving civilization by stressing upon the moral value of literary study. The contributors were Q.D. Leavis, L.C. Knights, Boris Ford, Denys Thompson, and Welfred Mellers. Leavis who was the prominent contributor until 1953, felt that a true critic should perform the evangelical task of creating awareness of the debasement of the recent culture and reveal the richness of the past. In fact Scrutiny undertook the job of saving civilization. Scrutinys combination of moral urgency 159
en t
re
11.3
Scrutiny
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
and supposedly ordinary critical language produced an idiolect which was easily recognizable. (Bergonzi 53) Leavis was not for a theory of a poem or a self-contained aesthetic work divorced from society, culture and tradition. This journal committed itself to educating people and even when Leavisism declined his influence was felt in English departments, and teacher training colleges in England, in books and periodicals which were devoted to the teaching of English in schools. The journal The Use of English founded in 1949 was an off shoot of Scrutiny. Raymond Williams and Richard Hoggart carried the legacy of Leavisite criticism. Leavis had the gift of a true critic. Relevance is a key word throughout Leaviss criticism (Buckley158) and Leavis was careful in using the critical language with a curious exactness, not reducing it to a jargon. Like the great critics, Dr.Johnson, Lessing, Saint-Beuve and Belinskya, Leavis has survived in his own right as a critic for whom criticism is an act of pivotal social intelligence. He felt that only criticism can make literature do its job. None other than a critic could be a complete reader. If I. A. Richards felt that poetry can save mankind, Leavis elevated the role of criticism claiming that it can save us. Beginning with his New Bearings in English Poetry (1933), and ending with The Living Principle (1975), Leavis carried on with intense concentration and commitment his close textual analysis of which Revaluation(1963) was a fine example. Leavis is seen at his best in the 1930s and his Revaluation was conceived even when he wrote his first work. The essays in this collection were written as separate pieces though they were meant as part of a single book.
11.4 Leavis Views On Criticism And An Ideal Critic

Leavis criticism of the critics throws light on his own view of what criticism should be. He equates Dr.Johnsons criticism to living classics; he feels that Dr. Johnsonss work can be read afresh like one enjoys works of literature with unaffected pleasure and new stimulus. It is both alive and life giving. And Leavis is in no way dissimilar to Dr. Johnson. What Leavis has achieved is the remarkable feat of making criticism an act of pivotal social intelligence. He was of the firm conviction that only a critic can be an ideal reader. A critic in his encounter with the text is bound to do a revaluation. The critic refines his own response and thus enters into a dialogue and this notion of dialogue is central to Leavis. (Lodge 623) Without a fruitful dialogue the judgments are bound to be arbitrary impressions. Leavis conviction was that only in mans capacity to respond to art he exhibits the general fitness for humane existence and only a mind with some literary education is capable of assessing political and social matters, for any valuable judgment on human affairs requires a literacy of feeling. Any society which does not have a worthy literature and a parallel critical study of it is not fully alive. And as Steiner points out Leaviss conception of literary criticism can be summed up as a plea for a live, humane social order.
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
160
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
11.5 Introduction to the text

Revaluation was planned by F.R. Leavis even while he was writing New Bearings in English Poetry with a view to giving a complete perspective, i.e., to complete the account of the present of English poetry with the correlated account of the past. (Leavis 9) Leavis spells out the business of a criticto see the poetry of the present as continuation and development The works of those in the past are alive only in so far as they are alive to those in the present. The critic also aims at defining and ordering in terms of its own implicit organization, a kind of ideal and impersonal living memory. (10) Leavis begins with the analysis of the poetry of the seventeenth century and ends with Keats and in so doing he desires to give only the main strands of development in the English tradition, its essential structure. The critic deals with a tradition when he chooses to study the contributions of individual writers; for, if the representative work of a writer determines the quality of a writer, then a tradition is determined by the representative writers of that period. F.R. Leavis gives his reasons for the choice of poets from each period. Though he desired to begin with a chapter on Shakespeare, he decided it would be too much apart from the writers chosen for his present consideration. Donne and Dryden are chosen for they have contributed significantly to the development of the English literary tradition. Spensers contribution to English tradition is obvious in his impact on Miltons verse and that both are closely associated is reflected in the chapters on Milton and Keats. The unique critical observation offered in the introduction is that the link in the line of poets from Donne and Ben Jonson to Pope and from Pope to Crabbe is more closely knit than that of those poets of the Romantic period from Wordsworth; the three stars, Wordsworth, Shelley and Keats, are treated separately in three different chapters to highlight their uniqueness and individuality. To Leavis Wordsworth: illustrates a relation between thinking and feeling that invites the critic to revise the limited view of the possibilities that is got from studying the tradition of wit. (Leavis 15). If with Wordsworths works he could establish the relationship between thinking and feeling, Shelley represented the characteristics of the nineteenth century establishing the divorce between thought and feeling, intelligence and sensibility. He concludes his introductory remarks defining criticism: what criticism undertakes is the profitable discussion of literature. (15-16) Leavis acknowledges his indebtedness to those with whom he discussed literature as a teacher.
en t
Attempting a new perspective Leavis surveys the Oxford Book of Seventeenth Century Verse and when he begins to read the works of Donne, he finds in his verse an extraordinary force of originality which makes him a living poet. He not only recognizes 161
re
11.5.1 Chapter I
The Line of Wit
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
the union of poetry and music in his verse but also the perfect control of intonation, gesture, movement and rhythm. The Anniversarie and A nocturnal upon St. Lucies Day are examples of his skillful handling of the stanzas from building up of varied cumulative effects. Donnes spoken idiom adds to the dramatic quality of his poetry. The fact that Donne is a living inspiration is confirmed in the verse of Thomas Carew. The opening stanza of Satyre iii echoes Donnes tone and Carews works link him with Lovelace and Suckling. Carew deserves to be given prominence in Oxford for his originality, strength, and individual force. In assessing Carews works Leavis finds the element of the tradition of chivalry bound up with the contemporary culture and manners which make his work both contemporary yet traditional. The inclusion of Carew in Professor Griersons Metaphysical Lyrics and Poems of the Seventeenth Century and the urbane elegance speak of the major influence of Donne. This influence of Donne leads him to evaluate the merits of Ben Jonson. He distinguishes the classical quality of Ben Jonson from that of Miltons. In the idiomatic quality there is the tone of spoken language which reveals the influence of Donne on Jonson. The samples such as The Forest and To the same display the Augustan tradition of translating and imitating Horace and Juvenal. They also reflect the English mode which establishes the contemporaneity with a combination of urbanity and maturity as an achieved actuality,but the weakness in the verse does not escape the keen observation of Leavis. In his Epigrammes the verse is found labored, without felicity. Jonsons verse holds more instances of his scholarship rather than spontaneity. His Ode has both the stamp of the Caroline tradition and the influence of Donne. Jonsons weakness is not ignored by Leavis, but he lauds him for his continuing the English tradition and initiating a common heritage which would benefit the later poets. What Jonson has accomplished is what Eliot calls wita tough reasonableness beneath the slight lyric grace. Miltons Comus has the touch of Jonson only in its insistence on art or wit but not the kind of Jonsonian wit. During the course of the analysis of the Metaphysical tradition, Leavis identifies Cowley as more of a representative of the Metaphysical tradition than even Marvell, who enjoyed a better reception. But in Cowleys On the Death of Mr. William Hervey there is not only the touch of Spenser mingled with the elegiac tone of Milton but also the traits of the eighteenth century Grays. In the wit and seriousness of Marvell the wisdom of a ripe civilization is seen crystallized. And in Pope, Leavis observes the line of tradition which flowed from Ben Jonson ended and took a new turn. Leavis assesses Popes strength juxtaposing it with that of Dryden. And in the process Pope emerges superior to Dryden in his finer profundity of organization, greater intensity of art, and a greater variety. Though Dryden is rated the great representative of the later seventeenth century Marvells poetry is found indubitably better than that of Drydens in Leaviss fresh evaluation. 162
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
Leavis attributes the turn in the poetic tradition to the appearance of English prose in the early years of Restoration. He gives a graphic description of the socio-historic changes of the Restoration Age. Thus the revaluation in Chapter I includes the merits of Donne, Jonson, Cowley, Herbert, Milton, Marvell, Dryden and the uniqueness of the writers who have been in touch with the classical and the contemporary.
11.5.2 Chapter II
Miltons Verse Eliots and Middleton Murrys comments accomplished their purpose of dislodging Milton from the prominent position he had enjoyed for centuries. Leavis takes a closer look at Miltons Grand Style and tries to explain why readers lost interest in Milton in spite of his greatness. In his close analysis he perceives Miltons language evoking the serene classical world which had a powerful impact on Miltons sensibility and he did use a grand style to match the subject which came to be known for pompous Miltonicism. Leaviss keenness enables him to appreciate the cadences, the rise and fall, the slopes and curves of his verse, but it was the difficult places in his verse that made Eliot introduce the damaging adjective to Miltons verse magniloquence. Leavis finds patches of swift diversity of associations and dramatic passages in Paradise Lost which to him sound more Shakespearean than Miltonic. With authority Leavis observes: The total effect is as if words as words withdrew themselves from the focus of our attention and we were directly aware of a tissue of feelings and perceptions. (52) There are portions in Paradise Lost, Book Four, especially in the description of the Garden of Eden, Leavis points out the opulent use of words like sapphire, Orient Pearl, sands of Gold and the like where grandeur remains in words but there is very little focus on perceptions and sensations. Leavis concludes that Milton . exhibits a feeling for words rather than a capacity for feeling through words. (53) The major drawback of Milton is that his language was totally divorced from actual speechthe emotional and the sensory texture of actual living speech. Miltons Comus has innumerable instances of ejaculatory piling up of clauses. Leavis goes on to pinpoint the one major flaw which is inescapable and that is his use of Latin. Milton is so lost in Latin that his English has no semblance of the English language in its order, structure and accentuation. Leavis expresses with regret this loss of feeling for ones native language in such a great poet like Milton, but Leavis does appreciate the musical quality in Miltons verse and acknowledges the moral purpose which is mandated by Leavis as an important quality of any great art, but for Leavis none can make such audacious comments on Milton when he declares that Miltons defect of intelligence is a defect of imagination. (60)
en t
Since T.S. Eliot was unfair to Pope, Leavis attempts a reorientation to successfully revalue his works. Many have classified Pope a satirist and Leavis begins his assessment by 163
re
11.5.3 Pope
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
giving a fine example of Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady as a classic example of Pope where he is not satiric. Pope has also extended the Metaphysical traditionhe being the last of the seventeenth century as well as the first of the eighteenth century in his Satires of Dr. Donne Versified. The metaphysical wit is best seen in the heterogeneous ideas yoked by violence together. There is no separate chapter dedicated for the revaluation of Shakespeares works and Leavis is quite conscious of that; he knows fully well that the scope of the present task does not warrant an exclusive study of the worlds greatest dramatist. But no poet is assessed without a comparison with Shakespeare. The tone of seriousness mingled with the ludicrous is quite common to the critical intelligence of Shakespeare which Leavis tracks in the language of Pope as well where the monotony of sustained seriousness of the nineteenth century is not present. To conclude that Pope screams with malignant fury is to reveal ones inability to read Pope. Leavis feels that he is a little understood poet. And Pope is credited with the capturing the essential aspects of Augustan culture; not just stopping with the understanding of the moral values; his imagination fires to a creative glow that produces what is poetry even by Romantic standards. In Dunciad Leavis finds the genius of Pope fully manifest. Pope is the last of the poets of the Metaphysical age and yet he communicates with not only Johnson but with Thomas Gray. .
11.5.4
The Augustan Tradition and the Eighteenth Century
Leavis opines that the only poet who carried on the tradition of Pope to some degree was Thomas Gray. His Elegy is a happy blend of Pope and Milton and so overtly related to the Augustan tradition. Grays Elegy is a successful creative work where he expresses positive Augustan traits with his churchyard meditations which hold a lot of social substance. Leavis gives an exhaustive evaluation of the Elegy. When he begins the analysis of the poetry of Collins he finds a definite shift or a movement away from the Augustan in his verse. Ode to Evening stands apart as a classic example for its uniqueness, but Leavis is quite aware of the fact that the decisive turn had already happened in the poetry of Prior who wrote a kind of society verse; specifically about the Restoration society which had changed. Augustan poetry was more about the concerns of human centrality. And the representative Augustan poems are none other than The Rape of the Lock, the Essay on Man and the Epistle to Arbuthnot in which Pope brought into his verse the vitality of his age. 164
en t
re
fo
The strength of the eighteenth century could be traced only in poets like Pope, Johnson, Goldsmith and Crabbe and not in the precursors of the Romantic Age like Gray, Collins, Cowper, Dyer and Lady Winchilsea. Leavis echoes the judgment of many critics that something had gone wrong. Though Pope was the presiding genius of that period he was not as popular as Donne. Edgell Rickword in his review of The Oxford Book of Eighteenth Century Verse observes the obvious lull between 1720 and 1780 in poetic creations. If any one could be considered representative of this period, according to Rickwood, it is William Whitehead.
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
In that most apprehensive habitude And those sensations which have been derivd
en t
He does not spare the mistakes of Empson who in his Seven Types of Ambiguity has misquoted and misrepresented Wordsworth. None but Leavis who is thoroughly exposed not only to the works of all poets but to popular criticism could pin point errors of acclaimed critics with authority.
Realising the tremendous influence Wordsworth had on people like Mill and Leslie Stephen, Leavis does give the reason for it. He observes the greatest service done by a poet of his stature in making us lie as we do in our birth on the cool flowery lap of the earth. (153) He also gives the credit for imparting wisdom even to Leavis himself in revaluating the lines in Tintern Abbey, The Recluse, Margaret or The Ruined Cottage. In Wordsworth there is extraordinary creative power which goes hand in hand with the critical consciousness in the use of it. (155) 165
re
From this beloved Presence
fo
rT
In one beloved presence, nay and more,
ra
Leavis finds the existing criticism on Wordsworth rather unsatisfactory and therefore attempts a fresh revaluation of his poetry. He finds Wordsworth possessing the genius of a great philosophic poet. In The Prelude the essential Wordsworthian philosophy, especially the doctrines concerning the growth of mind and relation of Man to Nature, are apparent even in the expository tone and manner of his verse, but Leaviss argument is that The Prelude cannot easily be paraphrased. For no reader can easily understand it at one reading. Getting anywhere close to meaning of the lines of The Prelude without adequate exposure to the philosophical and psychological argument is absolutely impossible, for the poet uses a technical phraseology as found in the lines quoted by Leavis:
di
tio
na
lE
du
11.5.5 Wordsworth
ca
In Dr. Johnson the Augustanism manifested in his greater concern for a literary order than for a feeling for social order. Moving on to the poetry of Cowper, he finds the close affinities with Johnsons in The Castaway. It is in Goldsmith that Leavis finds what Eliot welcomes virtues of good prose is the first and minimum requirement of good poetry. (115) Goldsmith showed interest in the lives of the poor and in realism. His later works bear the stamp of the Romantic rather than of the Augustan. In the analysis of Blakes contribution Leavis acknowledges that he is individual, original, and isolated enough not to be influenced by the Augustan tradition; he carved out a niche for himself by creating a completely and uncompromisingly individual idiom and technique. (117) The main ingredients of Augustan poetry such as decorum, order, elegance, consistency were not found beyond the Augustan period and though Byron succeeded in writing satiric poetry which is characteristic of the Augustan poets, his mode was thoroughly different.
tio n
Shelley in his poem presents an emotion in itself, for itself, for its own sake which is best exhibited in To a Skylark where the words exbibit a spontaneous overflow. Leavis then goes on to analyze Mont Blanc and the idiosyncratic poem When the Lamp is Shattered. The major traits of Shelley are unraveled to the readers which are his love for Love, loving and a notable lack of self knowledge and a a capacity for ecstatic idealizing which are found in Epipsychidion ,but the analysis of the love of loathing that is manifest in The Cenci yields Leavis scope to compare Shelley with Shakespeare; for in The Cenci he finds particular echoes of Shakespeare, but in this same work all the weaknesses are also traced by the critic. The sonnet England 1819 throws open Shelleys sensitive humanity and his innate idealizing bent of mind. Shelleys close resemblance to Byron is noticed by Leavis
en t
re
The Ode reveals the typical Shelleyan characteristics of philosophical ideas and judgment of a moral order. Taking up the universally agreed criticism of Shelleys genius as essentially lyrical Leavis points out that the term which would have meant in others an emotional intensity finds an alteration in Shelley whose verse in peculiarly emotional. Shelley expects in poetry a sensibility dissociated from intelligence. The conviction that feeling should be divorced from thought is examined further. When compared to Wordsworth, Shelley is more lyrical, for the former performed the exercise of critically exploring his experience thereby allowing emotions to be recollected in tranquility.
fo
rT
ra
di
Leavis begins this chapter alluding to the comments made by an illustrious critic who has observed that though he was fascinated by Shelley in his teens he became unreadable in his mature years. Shelleys revolutionary doctrines and his ideas expressed in his poetry became a matter of disenchantment with the poet, but Leavis makes it clear that those doctrines alone make Shelley a distinguished poet. This affirmation leads Leavis on to the examination of his famous Ode to the West Wind. Pointing out the positive traits in the poet, he elaborates on the oft repeated criticism that Shelley is extraordinarily lyrical.
166
tio
na
lE
du
11.5.6 Shelley
ca
The one marked difference in Leaviss observation is that he goes beyond the usual labels attributed to Wordsworth. While many find the prime preoccupation of Wordsworth to be nature, Leavis finds the poet more deeply concerned about human naturalness with sanity and spiritual health and the living connections between man and the extra human universe. Indeed the comparison between Wordsworth and D.H. Lawrence is undertaken by the critic mainly to bring home the contrast. The only point of comparison lies in both the poets being engaged in delving into the illimitable mystery that wells up into consciousness. The sharp contrast is the total absence of sex in Wordsworth and the prime preoccupation with it in Lawrence. Leavis acknowledges that Wordsworth does not suffer from any morbid repression. He brings in Shelleys observations of Wordsworth merely to support the difference between them. In the exclusive analysis of his poems, Leavis rates the Lucy poems to be typically Wordsworthian , for none but Wordsworth could have written these poems.
tio n
in his Mask of Anarchy, and Leavis goes back to the observation of the critic who found Shelley unreadable saying that in The Triumph of Life there is enough substance to go back any number of times even if other works are unreadable. The chapter concludes with the comparative analysis of Coleridge and Mont Blanc in Note I, Shelley and Othello in Note 2 and Note 3 dwells on Swinburne.
11.5.7 Keats
Though many have eulogized Keats for his poetic genius raising him to the level of a hero and a martyr, Leavis adds a clause that his greatness is a matter of promise and potentiality rather than achievement. The sincere commitment to the noble role of a critic prevents Leavis from excesses. He knew as well as everyone that Keats wings of poesy were clipped by the cruel hand of death, but for which he would have contributed a great deal. Leavis openly points out the wrongness of criticism like Murrys comparison of Keats with Shakespeare who declares Keats poems comparable to nothing in English literature save the works of Shakespeares maturity. (226) He does not subscribe to the view of Mr. Symons either, who finds Keats giving more importance to art than life. Using the Ode to a Nightingale, the one which is universally acclaimed as the best among the Odes, Leavis disputes the observations of Murry and Symons. With his clinical scrutiny of each word in this marvelous creation, Leavis finds the Ode not merely an outpouring of a sensuous poet but every detail exhibiting an extraordinary intensity or realization, a rightness and delicacy of touch creating a structure of a fine and complex organism. (229) To refute the position of Symons Leavis goes to prove that the Ode is better art than what Symons has recognized and that Keats was only half in love with death, but had the complementary desire for a full life unattended by the disadvantages of weariness, the fever and the fret. The Ode is better in a way involving a relation to life than the prescription of art for arts sake would allow room for. The famous lines of the Ode on a Grecian Urn: Beauty is truth, truth beauty that is all/Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. make one believe that Keats is an aesthete, a devotee of Art and Beauty contemplating beauty above all things. But Art which may imply the aesthetic antithesis of Life is not found in Keats. On the contrary there is a strong grasping at fullness of life. And Keats finds in art a higher reality contemplating on which actual life seems thin and unreal. Clearly, the urn for Keats is the incitement and support to a day-dream; the dream of a life that, without any drawbacks, shall give him all the desires - shall be for ever warm and still be enjoyed, remaining, among the leaves, free from all the inevitable limitations that the nightingale, the light-winged Dryad, has never known. (236) In The Eve of St. Agnes, The Eve of St.Mark, and La Belle Dame sans Merci, the pre-Raphaelite cult of Beauty, an aesthetic religiosity which is the completest expression of that Victorian romanticism draws on the poet Keats. Leavis reiterates the fact that Keats was for that aestheticism which expressed itself in the intensity of living. The Ode to Autumn 167
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
exemplifies this complete touch with the life of the outside worlda firm sense of the solid world instead of remaining lost in the dreamy reality. Ripeness is all expresses the poets concern with the ripeness of autumn. The critics close reading of the text enables him to appreciate the richness of life that comes alive in the last stanza of the poem where a native English strength pervades its every detail such us the familiar scenes of autumn and the sounds including the mourning of gnats, the bleating of the lambs, singing of the hedge crickets and the treble soft whistling of the red breasts evoke the thin sounds heard in the warm autumnal air. In Keats analysis of Hyperion one recognizes the typical Leavisite tendency to establish the link in the poetic tradition. His observation goes thus:Hyperion, in fact, offers a good way of bringing home the predominance of Milton a Milton associated with Spenserin the poetry of the nineteenth century, for Tennyson represents the Victorian main current. (249) Leavis goes beyond the texts of Keats to give reason for the serenity and the intensity of effect in his poems; and he attributes the merits of the poet to the discipline and self-searching by Keats during moments of personal disasters and blows of fate. But this personal urgency is completely impersonalized; it has become the life, the informing spirit, of the profoundest kind of impersonality. (251) The poets uncommonly strong, sincere, and sensitive spirit mellowed by tragic experience finds expression in his poetry displaying an unparalleled maturity. In his Note on Beauty is Truth, Leavis quoting the remarks of a friend on this line, finds his own observation not very different from that. It is only to drive home the fact that Keats is well aware of the fact that he is talking about an Urn fully aware of the reality and has not escaped into the realm of fantasy. The main argument of Leavis throughout the essay is that Keats is no escapist; even when impelled to escape in a day-dream he does so only momentarily for in such an arrest of time or vividly realized fantasy the poet experiences a satisfying contrast to human life filled with the agonies, the strife of human hearts.
11.6. Let Us Sum Up
Leavis lives up to the goal that he sets forth for himself i.e. to revaluate some of the great pieces of literature for either there were some misconceptions or he had something new and different to offer. Revaluations is certainly a classic testimony to Leavis scholarship his mastery of literature and the contemporary criticism available on those literary pieces. He quotes the views of some of all the acclaimed critics like Middleton Murray, Allen Tate and T.S. Eliot and through his close study of the texts. Revaluation includes the textual analyses of the works of the so-called minor to major poets. Each Chapter concludes with a section of Notes where some rare pieces and some quite popular ones are chosen for a fresh scrutiny. The notes section of the first chapter on Line of Wit include verses of Carew, Cowley and Herrick. It is in his Chapter on Milton that Leavis disagrees with Allen Tate who was of the view that Milton was disliked only because of prejudice; and dismisses Milton with a closing remark that inspite all his merits even the oft prescribed play Samson Agonistes may help learners only in so far as to form a literary taste but cannot be read with enjoyment. The note
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
168
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
section on Pope has an elaborate study on Popes Satiric Modes. The chapter on Augustan Tradition has nearly eight note section and includes a wide variety of poets such as Thomas Gray, Thomson, Spenser, Milton, Wordsworth, Landor, Mathew Green, Blake, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Keats and Shelley. As already mentioned, in the last three chapters Leavis establishes his perspective on the three popular Romantic poets Wordsworth , Keats and Shelley. Leavis has certainly proved his importance as a literary critic and further emerged as a publicist for the idea of criticism. Thus he has paved the way for literary criticism to get firmly rooted in the academic world.

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. What is practical criticism? How is F.R. Leavis different from other literary critics? Write a note on Leaviss views on an ideal critic.
What have learnt of the famous English poets from Leavis Revaluation?
11.8 Bibliography
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
en t
3.
4. 5.
re
Lodge, David. Ed. 20th Century Literary Criticism: A Reader. London: Longman Group Ltd., 1972. Nagarajan, M.S. English Literary Criticism and Theory: An Introductory History. Hyderabad: Orient Longman Pvt. Ltd., 2006. Seldon, Raman.ed. The Theory of Criticism: From Plato to through Present A Reader. London: Longman Group U.K. Ltd., 1988.
Sethuraman, V.S., Indira . C.T., SriRaman, eds. Poetical Criticism. Chennai: Macmillan India Press, 2000. Sinfield, Alan. Ed. The Context of English Literature: Society and Literature. London: Methuen&Co.,1983. ____________ 169
fo
Cox. C. B., and Dyson, A.E. eds. The Twentieth-Century Mind: History, Ideas, and Literature in Britain. London: Oxford University Press, 1972.
rT
ra
Bucklely, Vincent. Poetry and Morality: Studies on the Criticism of Matthew Arnold T.S. Eliot and F.R. Leavis. London: Chatto and Windus, 1961.
di
Bergonzi, Bernard. Exploring English: Criticism, Theory, Culture. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991.
tio
na
lE
How has Scrutiny elevated the role of literary criticism?
du
ca
tio n
UNIT-12 NORTHROP FRYE : MYTH AND ARCHETYPE (I)

About the Age About the Text 12.4.1 Detailed Description 12.4.2 Critical Analysis of the Text
12.5 12.6 12.7
12.0 Objectives
introduce the students to the concept of myth and archetypes. gain a knowledge of the various aspects and features of myth and archetypes in literature. enable them to understand archetypal criticism of Northrop Frye. familiarize them with the examples of myth and archetypes in literature.
12.1 Introduction
Archetypal criticism is based largely on the works of C. G. Jung and Joseph Campbell . Some of the major figures of archetypal criticism are Robert Graves, Francis Fergusson, Philip Wheelwright, Leslie Fiedler, Northrop Frye, Maud Bodkin, and G. Wilson Knight. These critics view the genres and individual plot patterns of literature, including highly sophisticated and realistic works, as recurrences of certain archetypes and essential mythic formulae. According to Jung, Archetypes, are :primordial images; the psychic residue of repeated types of experience in the lives of very ancient ancestors which are inherited in the collective unconscious of the human race and are expressed in myths, religion, dreams, and private fantasies, as well as in the works of literature.
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
The objective of the unit are to:
di
170
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
About the Author
en t
12.3 About the Age

Literary Criticism of the twentieth century deals with a variety of theories like Marxism, Freudianism, New Criticism, Structuralism, Post-Structuralism, Deconstruction and so on. New discoveries in the field of science, anthropology, sociology, psychoanalysis and linguistics have brought about a revolution in critical outlook, technique and critical methods. In theory, Marxist criticism is a descendant of the realistic criticism of the nineteenth century and it developed into a coherent theory only after the Russian revolution. In America it was shortlived and the most outstanding Marxist critic was Gyorgy Lukacs . In American criticism, New Criticism developed with John Crowe Ransomes The New Criticism. The pioneers of New Criticism are T.S. Eliot and I.A. Richards. The New 171
re
Fryes major works include Fearful Symmetry, a study of William Blake; Anatomy of Criticism, where Frye defines and describes his literary theories; The Educated Imagination, a discussion of the social role of art intended for a general audience; and The Great Code and Words with Power, in which Frye applies his literary theories to The Bible.
fo
rT
Northrop Frye was an influential critic and scholar. Born in ,Sherbrooke but raised in Moncton, New Brunswick, Frye studied for his undergraduate degree at Victoria College, University of Toronto and then studied theology at Emmanuel College . After a brief stint as student minister in Saskatchewan, he was ordained as a minister of the United Church of Canada. He then studied at Merton College, Oxford, before returning to Victoria College for his entire professional career. Frye rose to international prominence as a result of his first book, Fearful Symmetry, published in 1947. Until that point, the prophetic poetry of William Blake had long been poorly understood, considered by some to be delusional ramblings. Frye found in it a system of metaphor derived from Paradise Lost and from the Bible.
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
In The Anatomy of Criticism, Northrop Frye developed the archetypal approach into a radical and inclusive revision of the traditional grounds both of the theory of literature and the practice of literary criticism. Since all these critics tend to emphasize the underlying mythical patterns in literature , on the assumption that myths are closer to the elemental archetype than are the artful products of sophisticated writers of literary works, Archetypal criticism is usually associated with myth criticism. The death-rebirth theme is often said to be the archetype of archetypes, and is held to be grounded in the cycle of the seasons and the organic cycle of human life; this archetype, informs primitive rituals of the sacrificial king, myths of the god who dies to be reborn, and a multitude of diverse literary works, including the Bible, Dantes Divine Comedy, and Coleridges Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Some common examples of archetypes include water, sun, moon, colors, circles, the Great Mother, Wise Old Man, etc. In terms of archetypal criticism, the color white might be associated with innocence or could signify death or the supernatural.
tio n
12.4 About the Text
Fryes work breaks from both Frazer and Jung in such a way that it is distinct from its anthropological and psychoanalytical precursors. For Frye, the death-rebirth myth that Frazer sees manifest in agriculture and the harvest is not ritualistic since it is involuntary, and therefore, must be done. As for Jung, Frye was uninterested about the collective unconscious on the grounds of feeling it was unnecessary: since the unconscious is unknowable it cannot be studied. How archetypes came to be was also of no concern to Frye; rather, the function and effect of archetypes is his interest. For Frye, literary archetypes play an essential role in refashioning the material universe into an alternative verbal universe that is humanly intelligible and viable, because it is adapted to essential human needs and concerns . Frye begins the essay The Archetypes of Literature by saying that one cannot learn literature : one learns about it in a certain way but what one learns transitively is the 172
en t
re
Bodkins Archetypal Patterns in Poetry, the first work on the subject of archetypal literary criticism, applies Jungs theories about the collective unconscious, archetypes, and primordial images to literature. It was not until the work of the Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye that archetypal criticism was theorized in purely literary terms. The major work of Fryes to deal with archetypes is Anatomy of Criticism but his essay The Archetypes of Literature is a precursor to the book. Fryes thesis in The Archetypes of Literature remains largely unchanged in Anatomy of Criticism. Fryes work helped displace New Criticism as the major mode of analyzing literary texts, before giving way to structuralism and semiotics.
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
Far from being primitive fictions about the natural world, some supposed ancestor, or tribal practice myths are reflections of a profound reality. They dramatically represent our instinctive understandings. Moreover, unlike Freuds concepts, myths are collective and communal, and so bring a sense of wholeness and togetherness to social life. Native peoples, and indeed whole civilizations, have their own mythologies, but there appear to be common images, themes and motives.
lE
du
ca
critics made a twofold division of language into denotation or literal meaning and connotation or suggestive meaning. The psychoanalytic criticism of literature began with the publication of Freuds Interpretation of Dreams in 1900. Out of Freudian analysis grew the Jungian version of the subconscious as a collective subconscious that serves as a reservoir of the archetypal pattern, the primordial images of mankind. Myth criticism aims at discovering behind all literature the original myths of mankind. In England Maud Bodkin has made the best use of psychoanalysis in her book Archetypal Patterns in her Poetry. The myth criticism under the influence of Frazer and Jung rose as a reaction to New Criticism. It depends on the insights revealed by anthropology, psychology, philosophy, religions and linguistics. Northrop Frye, a Canadian critic, in his Anatomy of Criticism, combines Myth criticism with an attempt at an all embracing theory of literature that is mainly the theory of forms. He draws freely on the whole range of literature and interprets sensitively.
tio n
criticism of literature. It is the culmination of Fryes theory in which it unites the elements of characterization. This whole is organized around a metaphor of human desire and frustration as manifested in the Great Chain of Being (divine, human, animal, vegetable, mineral) by analogy to the four seasons. Fryes conceptual framework for literature In seeking integrity for criticism, Frye rejects what he termed the deterministic fallacy. He defines this as the movement of a scholar with a special interest in geography or economics [to] express . . . that interest by the rhetorical device of putting his favourite study into a causal relationship with whatever interests him less. By attaching criticism to an external framework rather than locating the framework for criticism within literature, this kind of critic essentially substitute[s] a critical attitude for criticism. For Frye critical integrity means that the axioms and postulates of criticism . . . have to grow out of the art it deals with. Taking his cue from Aristotle, Fryes methodology in defining a conceptual framework begins inductively, follow[ing] the natural order and begin[ning] with the primary facts . The primary facts, in this case, are the works of literature themselves. Fryes inductive survey of these facts reveal a general tendency on the part of great classics to revert to [primitive formulas]. This revelation prompts his next move, or rather, inductive leap I suggest that it is time for criticism to leap to a new ground from which it can discover what the organizing or containing forms of its conceptual framework are. Criticism seems to be badly in need of a coordinating principle, a central hypothesis which, like the theory of evolution in biology, will see the phenomena it deals with as parts of a whole. Arguing that criticism cannot be a systematic [and thus scientific] study unless there is a quality in literature which enables it to be so, Frye puts forward the hypothesis that just as there is an order of nature behind the natural sciences, so literature is not a piled aggregate of works, but an order of words. This order of words constitutes criticisms conceptual framework, its coordinating principle. Terms associated with archetypal criticism Anima - feminine aspect - the inner feminine part of the male personality or a mans image of a woman. Animus - male aspect - an inner masculine part of the female personality or a womans image of a man.
en t
Myth - Myth in its most ordinary meaning refers to stories of gods or other supernatural beings handed down from ancient times. A collection of traditional myths in a culture or nation reflects, allegorically, its cultural or national history. The stories of the Genesis, Exudes and Apostles in Jewish mythology, for instance, are part of the constitution of Jewish nation or culture. Being read and re-read by generations of people in a nation/ culture, these myths are often regarded as its spiritual identity. Writers also turn to myths as sources of inspiration, mythos in Greek meaning narration and plot. As the verbal expression of ancient dreams and rituals, the myth is also the structural principle of imaginative literature when it 173
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
12.4.1 Detailed Description
a)
b) c)
en t
Archetypes embody humanities hopes, fears, and aspirations since the beginning of time. For example the life/death cycle of humanity has been related to the seasonal cycle of nature; thus, we understand our lives in relationship to nature. Various Archetypes. Great Mother, quests, scapegoats, spiritual/meditative withdrawals, descents/ascents to heaven/hell, death/rebirth. Archetypal narratives: Temptation, creation of humans, creation of evil, salvation, death and rebirth, glorious utopian future. American Archetypes: Cowboy, good cop/bad cop, woodsman, entrepreneur, soccer mom, working mom . The first one to use the concept in the sense it now appears in contemporary archetypal 174
re
Archetype:The term Archetype in criticism denotes recurrent narrative designs, patterns of action, character types or images which are said to be identifiable in a wide variety of works of literature as well as in myths, dreams, and even ritualized modes of social behaviour. According to Northrop Frye, an archetype is a symbol, story or image that recurs often enough in literature to be recognizable as an element of literature as a whole. Universal symbols that evoke deep and perhaps unconscious responses because they bear the weight of our human hopes, fears, and frustrations. Any primal meaningful symbol (character, image, object) or meaningful narrative (temptation & fall, flood, salvation).
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
Archetype - a typical or recurring image, character, narrative design, theme, or other literary phenomenon that has been in literature from the beginning and regularly reappears. The word archetype, according to Jung, was much used in ancient Greek, arch meaning root and origin while typos pattern or model. The modern concept of the archetype appeared in the late nineteenth century, referring to the recurring literary phenomena such as motifs, themes, and narrative designs.Frye sees archetypes as recurring patterns in literature; in contrast, Jung views archetypes as primal, ancient images/experience that we have inherited.
lE
du
ca
tio n
gives meaning to rituals and form to dreams. In the long tradition of mimesis, the myth occupied a low position for its obvious irrationality and distortion. Giambattisha Vico, however, helped to restore the importance of the myth in his New Sciences : the first science to be learned should be mythology or the interpretation of fables; forall the histories of the gentiles have their beginnings in the fables, which were the first histories of the gentile nation. By such a method the beginnings of the sciences as well as of the nations are to be discovered. The eighteenth century Romanticists also placed the myth, the wisdom of poetry, on the same footing with science and reason. Sigmund Freud says in Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming that myths are distorted vestiges of the wishful fantasies of whole nations, the secular dreams of youthful humanities. But we have to wait for an elaborate theory of myth and archetype from his student, the Swiss psychologist Carl G. Jung.
criticism is cultural anthropologist James G. Frazer at the turn of the century, to explain the structural principles behind the archetypal myths and rituals in the tales and ceremonies of diverse cultures. Myths and archetypes thus offered the literary critic one more alternative, in addition to the generic or the historical, to questions concerning literary convention or genre. Because of its more or less universal nature, the archetype is important for constructing macro structures of literature connecting different times and geographical locations. History of archetypical criticism As archetypes usually include myths (tales, rituals, totems, taboos, etc.), so archetypal criticism is often used for myth and archetypal criticism. However, archetypal criticism owes especially to the following three people for their separate contributions: Frazer in the late nineteenth century revealed the recurring mythical patterns in tales and rituals; Jung in 1930s and 1940s developed a theory of archetypes out of it; and Frye proposed, based on the previous two, a whole system of literary archetypal criticism in the 1950s. Northrop Frye is one of the few world renowned Canadian humanistic scholars, and the Anatomy of Criticism has been his contribution to the world of criticism.. The early influence on Frye includes T. S. Eliot and W. Shakespeare for their images of nature and season, and Frye realized that there might be a tradition of romance and rituals behind these images. Frye differs from Frazer, Freud, and Jung in that literature is the core of his discussion of culture. He believes that literature involves human collectivity rather than individual ego (to exclude much of Freud), and that collective unconscious in the psychological sense has little bearing on literature. Frye tries to give literary criticism an independent status when he blames the other critical approaches for being parasitical (to psychology, sociology, etc) and badly in need of a conceptual or theoretical framework. Like formalism, he argues that a science of literary study comprises of literariness and theorization. Fryes archetypes originate, properly speaking, not from rituals, or religion, or heredity (though he does not deny all these), but from the very nature of literature itselfthe cycle, and it is this inner structure that connects literature to myth. Far from being primitive fictions about the natural world, some supposed ancestor, or tribal practice myths are reflections of a profound reality. They dramatically represent our instinctive understandings. Moreover, unlike Freuds concepts, myths are collective and communal, and so bring a sense of wholeness and togetherness to social life. Native peoples, and indeed whole civilizations, have their own mythologies, but there appear to be common images, themes and motives. Mythic criticism is subsequent to literature, as history is to action. We cannot clothe with plot and character the skeletal requirements of criticism and expect literature to result. Works of art follow their own devices and grow out of the artists imagination, only submitting to criticism if they still seem incomplete or unsatisfactory. But mythic criticism can show the writer where his imagery is coming from, and suggest 175
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
reasons for its power. Subsequent work deep thought, reading and endless toying with possibilities may then turn up further material. Whether that material is useful can only be found by testing it in the poem, a trial and error process of continual adaptation and refinement that may eventually achieve the strengths of the coherence theory of truth: transforming power, internal consistency, simplicity, elegance and fertility. The mythology of the classical world provided themes for some of the worlds greatest drama, and similar themes can be traced in Renaissance literature through to modern poetry. Hamlet, for example, is often seen as the reluctant hero who must sacrifice himself to purify a Denmark made diseased by the foul and unnatural murder of its king. Yeats, Pound and Eliot employ the myths of history, rebirth and fulfillment through sacrifice, as do other poets.
The theory of myths that forms the third essay has possibly been Fryes most influential contribution. He starts by identifying the four seasons spring, summer, autumn and winter with the four main plots or mythoi of romance, comedy, tragedy, and irony/satire. These are further broken down into phases. The mythos of winter consists of six phases, the last representing human life in terms of unrelieved bondage: prisons, madhouses, lynching mobs and places of execution. The human figures of this phase are the dispossessed, the destitute and mad-ogres, witches, Baudelaires black giantess and Popes Dullness. Frye distinguishes between signs (which point outward to things beyond themselves) and motifs (which are understood inwardly as parts of a verbal structure). Literature is preeminently an autonomous verbal structure where the sign-values are subordinate to the interconnectedness of motifs. The fourth essay proposes a theory of genres, where Frye outlined the differences between the lyric, epic, dramatic work, etc.
The third essay is the culmination of Fryes theory in that it unites the elements of characterization and each of the five symbolic phases presented in the first two essays into an organic whole. This whole is organized around a metaphor of human desire and frustration as manifested in the Great Chain of Being (divine, human, animal, vegetable, mineral) by analogy 176
en t
Archetypal Criticism: Theory of Myths
re
fo
rT
ra
di
Frye attempted a general theory of literature, which he approached from four perspectives. Rather that justify what were little more than matters of preference (i.e. squabble over the relative merits of authors and their works) scholars should derive principles, structures and laws from the study of literature itself. His first essay in Anatomy of Criticism recognized various levels of realism in literature, an articulation he termed a theory of modes. The second essay put forward a theory of symbols, recognizing five levels ranging from the mundane to the anagogic (the last represented in work of a religious or spiritual nature).
tio
na
lE
du
Myth criticism continues to draw freely on the psychology of Jung, on social anthropology, on the study of religions , on metaphor and depth psychology, but the archetypal criticism of Northrop Frye has attempted to redefine what criticism is, and what it can be expected to do.
ca
tio n
to the four seasons. At one pole we have apocalyptic imagery which typifies the revelation of heaven and ultimate fulfillment of human desire. In this state, the literary structure points toward unification of all things in a single anagogical symbol. The ultimate of the divine is the deity, of the human is Christ (or any other being that embodies the oneness of humanity in its spiritual culmination), of the animal is the lamb, of the vegetable is the Tree of Life or vine, and of the mineral is the heavenly Jerusalem or city of God. At the opposite pole lies demonic imagery which typifies the unfulfillment, perversion, or opposition of human desire. In this state, things tend toward anarchy or tyranny. The divine is an angry, inscrutable God demanding sacrifice, the human is the tyrannical anti-christ, the animal is a predator such as a lion, the vegetable is the evil wood as found at the beginning of Dantes Inferno or Hawthornes Young Goodman Brown, and the city is the dystopia embodied by Orwells 1984 or Kafkas The Castle. Finally we have the analogical imagery, or more simply, depictions of states that are similar to paradise or hell, but not identical. There is a great deal of variety in the imagery of these structures, but tame animals and wise rulers are common in structures analogical to the apocalyptic (analogy of innocence), while predatory aristocrats and masses living in squalor characterize analogy to the demonic (analogy of experience). Frye then identifies the mythical mode with the apocalyptic, the ironic with the demonic, and the romantic and low mimetic with their respective analogies. The high mimetic, then, occupies the center of all four. This ordering allows Frye to place the modes in a circular structure and point to the cyclical nature of myth and archetypes. In this setting, literature represents the natural cycle of birth, growth, maturity, decline, death, resurrection, rebirth, and the repetition of the cycle. The remainder of the chapter deals with the cycle of the four seasons as embodied by four mythoi: comedy, romance, tragedy, and irony or satire.
en t
First, there is undisplaced myth, generally concerned with gods or demons, and which takes the form of two contrasting worlds of total metaphorical identification, one desirable and the other undesirable. These worlds are often identified with the existential heavens and hell of the religions contemporary with such literature. These two forms of metaphorical organization we call the apocalyptic and the demonic respectively. Second, we have the general tendency we have called romantic, the tendency to suggest implicit mythical patterns in a world more closely associated with human experience. Third, we have the tendency of realism...to throw it the emphasis on content and representation rather than on the shape of the story. Miltons representation of the Garden of Eden and of Eve clearly belongs to the first category by virtue of Miltons literal treatment of the myth. 177
re
Frye suggests that the study of myths and archetypes is important. He groups myths into three categories:
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
Frye has defined a literary symbol as A unit of any literary structure that can be isolated for critical attention. He has delineated four symbolic phases: literal/descriptive (motifs and signs) formal (image) mythical (archetype) anagogic (monad)
Frye has observed in The Anatomy of Criticism that the structural principles of painting are frequently described in terms of their analogues in plane geometry [or solid, by a further reach of analogy]. Geometrical shapes are analogous only to pictorial forms, not by any means identical with them; the real structural principles of painting are to be derived, not from an external analogy with something else, but from the internal analogy of the art itself. The structural principles of literature, similarly, are to be derived from archetypal and analogic criticism, the only kinds that assume a larger context of literature as a whole. Frye has also opined that as the modes of fiction move from the mythical to the low mimetic and ironic, they approach a point of extreme realism or representative likeness to life. It follows that the mythical mode, the stories about gods, in which characters have the greatest possible power of action, is the most abstract and conventionalized of all literary modes, just as the corresponding modes in other artsreligious Byzantine painting, for exampleshow the highest degree of stylization in their structure. Hence the structural principles of literature are as closely related to mythology and comparative religion as those of painting are to geometry.
The critics who hope to find in myth the key to artistic creation make much of the number of characteristics that poetry shares with dream. The process that Freud calls the 178
en t
Myth as a key to artistic creation
re
fo
rT
ra
di
The mythical phase is the treatment of a symbol as an archetype. This concept relates most closely with intertextuality and considers the symbol in a work as interconnected with similar symbolism throughout the entire body of literature. While Frye deals with myths and archetypes from a broader perspective in the third essay, in this section he focuses on the critical method of tracing a symbols heritage through literary works both prior and subsequent to the work in question. Frye argues that convention is a vital part of literature and that copyright is deleterious to the process of literary creation. Frye points to the use of convention in Shakespeare and Milton as examples to strengthen his argument that even verbatim copying of text and plot does not entail a death of creativity. Further, Frye argues that romantic, anticonventional writers such as Walt Whitman tend to follow convention anyway. In criticism, the study of the archetypal phase of a symbol is akin to the nature perspective in the psychological debate over nature versus nurture. Rather than viewing the symbol as a unique achievement of the author or some inherent quality of the text, the archetypal phase situates the symbol in its society of literary kindred as a product of its conventional forebears.
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
en t
Myth, is one extreme of literary design; naturalism is the other, and in between lies the whole area of romance, which displaces myth in a human direction and yet, in contrast to realism, conventionalizes content in an idealized direction. The central principle of displacement is that what can be metaphorically identified in a myth can only be linked in romance by some form of simile: analogy, significant association, incidental accompanying imagery, and the like. Frye identifies and classifies the archetypes of literature. Most of Fryes form analysis is technical but illuminating.
The four mythoi that we are dealing with, comedy, romance, tragedy, and irony, may now be seen as four aspects of a central unifying myth. Agon or conflict is the basis or archetypal theme of romance,... Pathos or catastrophe, whether in triumph or in defeat, is the archetypal 179
re
The fact that myth operates at the top level of human desire does not mean that it necessarily presents its world as attained or attainable by human beings. In terms of meaning or dianoia, myth is the same world looked at as an area or field of activity, bearing in mind our principle that the meaning or pattern of poetry is a structure of imagery with conceptual implications. The world of mythical imagery is usually represented by the conception of heaven or Paradise in religion, and it is apocalyptic, in the sense of that word already explained, a world of total metaphor, in which everything is potentially identical with everything else, as though it were all inside a single infinite body.
fo
rT
ra
di
Myths of the birth of the hero, of revival and resurrection, of creation and ... of the defeat of the powers of darkness, winter and death. Subordinate characters: the father and mother. The archetype of romance and of most dithyrambic and rhapsodic poetry.
tio
na
The dawn, spring , and birth phase.
lE
Frye glimpses the possibility of envisaging literature as the complication of a relatively... simple group of formulas that can be studied in a primitive culture. In the light of this possibility, the search for archetypes becomes a kind of literary anthropology, concerned with the way that literature is informed by pre-literary categories such as ritual, myth and folk tale. Since the quest-myth is central to ritual and myth and thus to literature all the literary genre may be derived from it. Groupings under the rubrics of the four seasons emerge.
du
ca
tio n
dream work shows startling similarities with poetic work. In both there is condensation (the combining several images in one image), displacement (the vesting in some apparently unimportant element, the underlying significance of the whole), and over-determination (several quite different significances focussed upon the same element so that it bears more than one meaning). In both poetry and dream, logical relationships are frequently evaded or transcended by the mere juxtaposition of images. This discovery, for Northrop Frye, points to the possibility of turning literary criticism into a true science. No true science, he argues, can be content to rest in the structural analysis of the object with which it deals. The poet is only the efficient cause of the poem, but the poem, having form has a formal cause that is to be sought. On examination, Frye finds this formal cause to be the archetype.
theme of tragedy. Sparagmos, or the sense that heroism and effective action are absent, disorganized or foredoomed to defeat, and that confusion and anarchy reign over the world, is the archetypal theme of irony and satire. Anagnorisis, or recognition of a newborn society rising in triumph around a still somewhat mysterious hero and his bride, is the archetypal theme of comedy. Anatomy of Criticism would not be so notable if it were a static taxonomy. It is more like a phase space, a model that describes every possible state of the system through time. The key to that is Fryes five modes of fiction, with each mode defined by the power of the hero. In the mode of myth, the hero is superior in kind to other men and the environment of other men. These stories in which the hero is a divine being are important for literature, but generally fall outside the normal literary categories.
In a myth we can have a sun-god or a tree-god; in a romance we may have a person who is significantly associated with the sun or trees. In more realistic modes the association becomes less significant and more a matter of incidental, even coincidental or accidental, imagery. In the dragon-killing legend of the St. George and Perseus family, a country under an old feeble king is terrorized by a dragon who eventually demands the Kings daughter, but is slain by the hero. This seems to be a romantic analogy of a myth of a waste land restored to life by a fertility god. In the myth, then, the dragon and the old king would be identified. We can in 180
Frye tells us that irony, pushed to extremes, returns to the mode of myth. Characters who are so constrained by circumstances that they fall below the level of common humanity become hard to distinguish from the superhumans of myth: both kinds of stories enact archetypal patterns that do not turn on ordinary questions of personality or motivation. Fryes chief example of this return to myth is Finnegans Wake, but we also see it in the low mimetic mode, particularly in science fiction.
en t
re
fo
When the hero is not powerful or intelligent, the scene is one of bondage, absurdity, or frustration and the mode is ironic.
rT
ra
The low mimetic mode treats of a hero who is no better than the rest of us, which we find in most comedy and realistic fiction. The reader responds to the heros common humanity in this sort of fiction. The story must display the canons of probability that we use in ordinary experience.
di
tio
The high mimetic mode obtains when the hero is superior in degree to other men, but not to the environment. This is the kind of hero Aristotle principally had in mind: the leader whom we find in most epic and tragedy.
na
lE
In a romance, the hero is superior in degree to other men and to the environment, but is simply an extraordinary human being. The laws of nature in romances are often not those that are met with in the real world, but they are self-consistent once they are established.
du
ca
tio n
Role of archetype, myth and metaphor in the Bible
Frye opens his Anatomy of Criticism with a prefatory statement in which he says that it was his determination to apply the principles of literary symbolism and biblical typology that he had learned from Blake to another poet, namely, Spenser, that had led instead to the writing of the Anatomy . He defines an archetype as a typical or recurring image or symbol which connects one poem with another and thereby helps to unify and integrate our literary experience (99)typical in this context being only a slight step away from typological. He states in his essay on Archetypal Criticism that the structural principles of literature ... are to be derived from archetypal and anagogic criticism, the only kinds that assume a larger context of literature as a whole, and indicates that he will be using the symbolism of the Bible, and to a lesser extent Classical mythology, as a grammar of literary archetypes . Finally, he asserts that higher criticism would be interested in the typological unity that the activities of lower, or analytic, criticism were originally intended to help construct, and that a genuine higher criticism of the Bible would therefore be a synthesizing process that would start with the assumption that the Bible is definitive myth, a single archetypal structure extending from creation to apocalypse
en t
re
In a formulation that is reiterated almost verbatim some twenty-five years later in The 181
fo
rT
ra
Critics have observed that Northrop Frye significantly expands upon the traditional conception of typology, which regards the Bible as a self-contained unity, by suggesting that the Old Testament provides antitypes of which prebiblical mythologies are the types, and that New Testament antitypes will themselves become types of new, postbiblical antitypes. This study explores the implications of Fryes archetypological theory for our understanding of both the origins of our existing biblically derived mythology and possible metamorphoses that this mythology may undergo in the future. Extrapolating from the typological principle that the Old Testament anticipates and prefigures the New while the New Testament reveals and fulfils the Old, the essay asks whether the older might anticipate the newerin other words, whether prebiblical mythologies might represent adumbrations, or indications in faint outline, of myths and mythologies yet to come.
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
fact concentrate the myth still further into an Oedipus fantasy in which the hero is not the old kings son-in-law but his son, and the rescued damsel the heros mother. If the story were a private dream such identifications would be made as a matter of course. But to make it a plausible, symmetrical, and morally acceptable story a good deal of displacement is necessary, and it is only after a comparative study of the story type has been made that the metaphorical structure within it begins to emerge. Mr. Frye helps the reader recognize some of the recurring myths that connect religious and secular literature, and he shows how ideological and social changes can cause changes in the interpretation and emphasis of those myths. While early hard-line Christians regarded parallel classical myths as demonic parodies of the true biblical ones, he adds that later, more liberal Christians came to regard classical mythology as a kind of supplement or counterpoint to the Christian one.
Great Code, however, Frye then asserts that the heuristic principle of this higher criticism would be St. Augustines axiom that the Old Testament is revealed in the New and the New concealed in the Old :everything that happens in the Old Testament is a typeor adumbration of something that happens in the New Testament, and what happens in the New Testament constitutes an a realized form, of something foreshadowed in the Old Testament. Therefore, the two testaments are not so much allegories of one another as metaphorical identifications of one another and form a double mirror, each reflecting the other but neither the world outside . The typological unity and single archetypal structure can be said to correspond when type and antitype are said to confine themselves to the Bible as a self-contained unit, whereas an archetype is free to repeat itself ad infinitum throughout the body of literature as a whole, or, as Frye prefers to call it, the total order of words. The Old Testament contains antitypes for which the prebiblical mythologies provide the types. From its own point of view, surely, Frye writes, the Bible is providing the antitypes of which Canaanite and other pre-Biblical cults are the types . And the New Testament antitypes will themselves become types of new, post biblical antitypes, represented in the recreation. In his new book, Words with Power, the distinguished literary theorist Northrop Frye examines the role of myth and metaphor in the Bible, showing how many of its central themes and images reverberate throughout Western literature. His conclusion is that the organizing structures of the Bible and the corresponding structures of secular literature reflect each other, that a finite number of species of myths (including myths of creation, fall, exodus, destruction and redemption) provide the narrative sources of literature. As Mr. Frye sees it, the idea of the axis mundi the vertical line postulated by the ancients as running through the cosmos, connecting heaven to earth and earth to hell underlies many of Western literatures central myths, providing writers with a wealth of metaphors and images. Those images, he notes, tend to fall into two categories: ascent and descent. Images of ascent, which symbolize mans longing for heavenly perfection, include Jacobs ladder, the purgatorial mountain in Dantes Divine Comedy, the turning staircase in T. S. Eliots Ash Wednesday and the towers and spirals that recur in Yeatss poetry. The reverse movement downward into death or damnation has yielded equally powerful images. Christs descent to earth echoes Adams fall from innocence, while Adams expulsion from the garden is mirrored by the exile of Cain. Whereas Mr. Frye sees downward movements in Dante and Milton as simply descents to death and hell, he argues that they can take on more creative aspects in other writerss work. Proserpines descent every winter into the nether world is a necessary prelude to her ascent in the spring and the earths renewed fertility. Proserpine, who disappears into the underworld for six months of every year. The pure myth is clearly one of death and revival; the story as we have it is slightly displaced, but the mythical pattern is easy to see. Prometheus is 182
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
punished by Zeus for bringing fire down from heaven but is heralded as the liberator of mankind. Ahab descends into madness as he searches for the great white whale but in doing so becomes a symbol of mans eternal quest for wisdom. Three Organizations Of Myths And Archetypal Symbols In Literature First, there is undisplaced myth, generally concerned with gods or demons, and which takes the form of two contrasting worlds of total metaphorical identification, one desirable and the other undesirable. These worlds are often identified with the existential heavens and hells of the religious contemporary with such literature. These two forms of metaphorical organization are called the apocalyptic and the demonic respectively. Second, the romantic tendency to suggest implicit mythical patterns in a world more closely associated with human experience. Third, the tendency of realism throws emphasis on content and representation rather than on the shape of the story. Ironic literature begins with realism and tends toward myth, its mythical patterns being as a rule more suggestive of the demonic than of the apocalyptic, though sometimes it simply continues the romantic tradition of stylization. Hawthorne, Poe, Conrad, Hardy and Virginia Wolf all provide examples. Fryes observation is that in analyzing a picture, the further back we go, the more conscious we are of the organizing design. At a great distance from, say, a Madonna, we can see nothing but the archetype of the Madonna, a large centripetal blue mass with a contrasting point of interest at its center. In the criticism of literature, too, the critic often has to stand back from the poem to see its archetypal organization. If onestands back from the beginning of the fifth act of Hamlet, one sees a grave opening on the stage, the hero, his enemy, and the heroine descending into it, followed by a fatal struggle in the upper world. If one stands back from a realistic novel such as Tolstoys Resurrection or Zolas Germinal, one can see the mythopoetic designs indicated by those titles. With brilliant audacity Fry identifies myth with literature, asserting that myth is a structural organizing principle of literary form and that an archetype is essentially an element of ones literary experience . And in The Stubborn Structure (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1970) he claims that mythology as a whole provides a kind of diagram or blueprint of what literature as a whole is all about, an imaginative survey of the human situation from the beginning to the end, from the height to the depth, of what is imaginatively conceivable The literary structure of the mythical cycle is elaborated in Anatomy of Criticism: the five basic modes of the heros power of action (myth, romance, high/low mimetic, and irony); the five layers of symbolic meaning (literal, figurative, formal, mythical, and Biblical); the four mythoi of the archetypes (comedy, romance, tragedy, and irony) corresponding to the four phases of nature (spring, summer, autumn, winter), which in turn reveal three imageries (apocalyptic, demonic, and analogical which may be further divided into innocence and experience). And these structures may be further divided. All works of literature, Frye argues, can be classified into four mythos which together 183
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
form a cycle. Romance: Frye uses the word in its older sense, designating the literature of wishfulfillment, stories of heroism and extravagant adventures. Romance encompasses the entire mythic cycle, as it typically involves a quest downward into a dark world, a waste land, a city of the dead. If successful, the hero emerges from darkness and returns, or the world itself, plunged into a waste state, is revived. Tragedy: Tragedy involves the downward movement, from a more romantic world into the realm of satire and irony.
Frye pointedly contrasted his archetypal or myth criticism with the rhetorical analysis of the new critics He describes the imagination as the creative force in the mind from which everything that we call culture and civilization derives. As far as the Archetype is concerned, it comes from Greek archetypon which means - beginning Pattern. The archetype is itself a myth, like the quest .He adds that knowledge of the archetypes enables us to perceive the shared myths that literary works rely on and explore.He holds that archetypes-distinct from the personal unconscious that each of us acquires from our individual experiences According to Frye, the literary critic should be concerned only with ritual or dream patterns. The 184
12.5 Let Us Sum Up
en t
The various parts of the entire mythic cycle correspond with a time in the life cycle, a time of day, and, in the Western tradition, with a particular season . Certain images and characters become associated with each. These patterns play out in a variety of ways, according to the author, the culture, and the level of realism or mimeticism. Fryes theory does not represent the final end of literary criticism nor did the man himself make any such claim. His theories give one excellent understanding of literatures formal elements and structures, and these apply equally-well to sitcoms as to sacred texts.
re
fo
rT
ra
At the beginning... the obstructing characters are in charge... and the audience recognizes that they are usurpers. At the end... the device that brings the hero and heroine together causes a new society to crystalize around the hero.... The appearance of this new society is frequently signaled by some kind of party or festive ritual.... Weddings are most common....
di
tio
na
Comedy: Comedy (again, see Webster 1913 for the more traditional definition of this word, which Frye uses) takes an upward movement. The plot involves the overcoming of a problem established early on, and the tale ends on some kind of positive note, back in the world of Romance. You might consider the ending to the Original Star Wars Trilogy when reading Fryes description of the pure comic form, which also references the Romantic world to which comedy returns:
lE
du
ca
Irony and Satire: Ironic and satiric literature tries to give form to the shifting ambiguities and complexities of unidealized existence. This mode is Romance in reverse; the characters efforts lead not to renewal but rather unrelieved bondage.
tio n
readers should not confuse literature with criticism For Frye, a common mistake is assuming that criticism is the making of value judgements. The earlier criticism of Frye caused him to be called an archetypal critic, yet A.C. Hamilton labels him as a social critic. He says that since 1957 Frye has all but avoided the term archetype in order to directly address societys cultural concerns. He may be labelled as a social critic because he grants the critic authority through transforming oneself into focus of a community, except that by community he means a n ideal community, one that is free, classless and fraternal, to which everyone belongs.
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Give Fryes contribution to mythological approach to literary analysis ?
What is meant by archetypal criticism?
Give an outline of Fryes conceptual framework for literature. Write short notes on the following terms : i)Archetypes ii)Collective Unconsciousness
6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
Write a short history of archetypal criticism. How does Northrop Frye reveal the role of myth, metaphor and archetypes in the Bible ?
How is myth a key to artistic creation ? Write a note on the organization of myths and archetypal symbols in literature.
12.7 Bibliography
en t
1.
2.
3. 4.
re
Adamson, Joseph. Northrop Frye: AVisionary Life. Toronto: ECW Press: Distributed by General Publ., 1993. Balfour, Ian. Northrop Frye. Boston: Twayne, 1988.
Bates, Ronald. Northrop Frye. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1971. Cook, David. Northrop Frye: A Vision of the New World. New York: St. Martins, 1985. _____________
fo
rT
Explain the theory of myths in your own words.
ra
di
tio
na
185
lE
du
ca
Discuss Frye as myth critic.
tio n
UNIT-13 NORTHROP FRYE MYTH AND ARCHETYPE (II)

13.0 Objectives 13.1 Introduction 13.2 Myths of the Society
13.2.2 Myth of Freedom 13.2.3 Archetypal criticism as a new poetics 13.2.4 Northrop fryes theory of archetypes 13.3 13.4 13.5 13.6 13.7 13.8 13.9 Archetypal criticism as a new poetics Northrop Fryes theory of archetypes Phases of Romance Northrop Frye and Ideology
13.10 A Few Common Archetypes in Literature 13.11 Glossary
13.12 Let Us Sum Up
13.14 Bibliography
13.0 Objectives
The objectives of the unit are to introduce the students to the myths of the society, concern and freedom. gain a knowledge of the various aspects and features of Archetypal criticism as a new poetics enable them to understand archetypal criticism of Northrop Frye. 186
en t
re
fo
rT
Uses of Archetypal Criticism
ra
Northrop Frye: The Theoretical Imagination.
di
Arguments about the Contemporary Dilemma with FryesArchetypal Literary Criticism
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
13.2.1 Myth of Concern
familiarize them with the examples of Northrop Fryes theory of archetypes. introduce the contemporary dilemma with Fryes Archetypal Literary Criticism elaborate on book reviews by Michael Dolzani on Northrop Fryes The Theoretical Imagination. teach the uses of Archetypal Criticism
13.1 Introduction
In Anatomy of Criticism 1957, Frye seeks to establish literary criticism as a discipline independent of other fields of inquiry with its own critical principle rather than accepting the practice of implementing theories from other disciplines like sociology, psychology or theology.
b. c. d.
Ethical Criticism
: Theory of Symbols
Archetypal Criticism : Theory of Myths
13.2 Myths Of the Society
en t
Northrop Frye once said: As long as I have been a literary critic, I have been interested in the relations between culture and the social conditions under which it is produced.
Frye, with his views of literary universe has emerged as a fairly prominent social critic in his own right. He advocates the organic and technical autonomy of literary criticism and moves from literary to social criticism. In The Critical Path Frye notes that the critical works with two poles, the literary and the social, and that correct criticism would be a mediation between the two extremes: Criticism will always have two aspects, one turned toward the structure of literature and the other turned toward the other cultural phenomena that form the social environment of literature. Together they balance each other: when one is worked on to the exclusion of the other, the critical perspective goes out of focus. If criticism is in proper balance, the tendency 187
re
fo
He also asserts that the task of literary critic is not to make value judgement but to make implicit structures of literature explicit. Literature gives expression to repressed elements of human psyche that will not bear suppression as their integration is necessary for further growth and development: the important thing is to realize that no social vision is ever definitive; there is always more outside it. The circle of stories is there to keep us continually expanding and re-shaping that vision.
rT
ra
di
tio
Rhetorical Criticism : Theory of Genres
na
lE
a.
Historical Criticism : Theory of Modes
du
In Anatomy of Criticism, Frye delineates some of the structures inherent to literature by describing four inter related approaches.
ca
tio n
of the critics to move from critical to larger social issues become more intelligible. Such a movement need not be due to a dissatisfaction with the narrowness of criticism as a discipline, but should be simply the result of a social context, a sense present in all critics from whom one is in the least likely to learn anything. Frye argues, by the extension of mythic literary modes of analysis to the social sphere. Fryes system is contained in the all important assumptions that literature functions as a microcosm of culture, so that the abilities involved in the right reading of literature qualify one to interpret culture.
The myth of concern is thus attached with the life lived in a particular society which is guided by its rituals. It is intensively traditional, becoming the way of elders and giving to culture a limited orbit of possibilities. Frye articulates the myth of concern in evolutionary terms : it begins and thrives in the oral phase of a culture that phase is largely undifferentiated: but then in time it develops different social, political, legal, and literary branches.
Frye thinks myth of freedom on the other hand as part of the myth of concern that stresses the importance of the non-mythical elements in culture, of the truths and realities that 188
en t
13.2.1 Myth of Concern
13.2.2 Myth of Freedom
re
The myth of concern exists to hold society together, so far as words can help to do this.For it, truth and reality are not directly connected with reasoning or evidence, but are socially established. What is true, for concern, is what society does and believe in response to authority, and a belief, so far as a belief is verbalized, is a statement of willingness toparticipate in a myth of concern. The typical language of concern therefore tends to become the language of belief.
fo
rT
ra
The Critical Path is Fryes dialectical framework that holds together a variety of subjects such as Marxism and Democracy, mass media, social contract theories. Contemporary youth culture, theory of education and so on. The point of confrontation is set against the background of the myth of concern and the myth of freedom:
di
tio
na
In every age there is a structure as ideas, images, beliefs, assumptions, anxieties, and hopes which express the view of mans situation and destiny generally held at that time. I call this structure a mythology, and its units myths. A myth in this sense, is an expression of mans concern about himself, about his place in the scheme of things, about his relation to society and god, about the ultimate origin and ultimate fate, either of himself or of human species generally. A mythology is thus a product of human concern, of our involvement with ourselves, and it always looks at the world from a man centered point of view.
lE
du
ca
tio n
In Fryes primary reading of culture, in which all the myths of the societies are bifurcated into two encompassing categories- myths of concern and myths of freedom which he sees as two different and opposing myths of Western culture and offer an insight into life and literature today. Mythology for him, is a vision of society:
are studied rather than created, provided by nature rather than by social vision. This will be a common sense view that Frye has established a very vital relationship between literary criticism and culture. Fryes view of the social function of criticism enters the argument here : the literary critic, as per Fryes opinion is prepared to see that myths of concern in society are like those in literature in that they represent the range of imaginative possibilities of belief.
13.2.3 Archetypal criticism as a new poetics

For Frye, this new poetics is to be found in the principle of the mythological framework, which has come to be known as archetypal criticism. It is through the lens of this framework, which is essentially a centrifugal movement of backing up from the text towards the archetype, that the social function of literary criticism becomes apparent. Essentially, what criticism can do, according to Frye, is awaken students to successive levels of awareness of the mythology that lies behind the ideology in which their society indoctrinates them (Stingle 4). That is, the study of recurring structural patterns grants students an emancipatory distance from their own society, and gives them a vision of a higher human state the Longinian sublime that is not accessible directly through their own experience, but ultimately transforms and expands their experience, so that the poetic model becomes a model to live by. In what he terms a kerygmatic mode, myths become myths to live by and metaphors metaphors to live in, which . . . not only work for us but constantly expand our horizons, [so that] we may enter the world of [kerygma or transformative power] and pass on to others what we have found to be true for ourselves. Because of its important social function, Frye felt that literary criticism was an essential part of a liberal education, and worked tirelessly to communicate his ideas to a wider audience. For many years now, he wrote in 1987, I have been addressing myself primarily, not to other critics, but to students and a nonspecialist public, realizing that whatever new directions can come to my discipline will come from their needs and their intense if unfocused vision. It is therefore fitting that his last book, published posthumously, should be one that he describes as being something of a shorter and more accessible version of the longer books, The Great Code and Words with Power, which he asks his readers to read sympathetically, not as proceeding from a judgment seat of final conviction, but from a rest stop on a pilgrimage, however near the pilgrimage may now be to its close.
en t
13.4 Northrop Fryes theory of Archetypes

Summer: Romance Tales from this mythos are marked by extraordinarily persistent nostalgia, and a search for some kind of imaginative golden age in time or space. These stories typically have virtuous heroes and beautiful heroines who represent ideals and villains that threaten their ascendancy. 189
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
Plot The common plot is a basic quest sequence: Struggle: perilous journey and minor adventures Ritual death: crucial struggle, usually a battle in which either the hero or his foe, or both, must die . Recognition: the exaltation of the hero Often the hero will disappear after the ritual death and will reappear for the final stage. More specifically the tale begins with a land that is ruled by a helpless old king being laid to waste by a dragon. Young people are offered up until the kings daughter is to be sacrificed; then the hero arrives, kills the dragon, marries the kings daughter, and ascends to throne. Characters
Eiron hero: an unequivocally right and virtuous character old wise man: often a magician who effects action Alazon
sybilline: often the lady for whose sake or at whose bidding the quest is performed enemy: in religious tales this character may take the form of a horrible monster that represents different ideas of Satan; in a secular story, the enemy may be guarding a hoard of gold, which may represent power and wisdom spirits of nature (shy nymph, elusive half-wild creatures, wild man): elude moral antithesis because they are partly of the moral neutrality of the world or partly of the world of mystery that is never seen; these characters intensify and focus the romantic mood Many characters that are on the virtuous side in romance have a counterpart: the heros helper is balanced by the traitor; the heroine, by siren or beautiful witch; and the dragon, by helpful animals. Not all of these characters or even complete pairs of characters need to appear in every tale. Dialectic structure resists subtlety and complexity: characters are either for or against the quest: those who assist are gallant or pure; those who obstruct are villainous or cowardly. Jung (dream terms): quest-romance is search of libido or desire of self-fulfillment that will deliver it from the anxieties of reality; antagonists are sinister figures, giants, ogres, witches 190
en t
Traits
re
fo
Bomolochoi
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
In romance the readers values are bound up with hero who unequivocally represents what is supposed to be right and virtuous. If the tale rises to the level of myth, the hero will show signs of divinity and the enemy will have demonic qualities.
du
ca
tio n
and magicians of parental origin. Frazer (ritual terms): quest-romance signifies fertility (food and drink, bread and wine, body and blood, union of male and female) over wasteland
13.5 Phases of Romance

1. Complete innocence: These stories often relate to the birth of the hero, an event which is commonly associated with a flood or water imagery; it is common to have a hero locked in a chest, symbolizing that fertility and youth is the real wealth Youthful innocence of inexperience: This phase usually presents a pastoral world, a generally pleasant wooded landscape with glades, shaded valleys, and murmuring brooks; the story tends to center on a youthful hero, still overshadowed by parents and surrounded by youthful companions Completion of an ideal: This is the typical quest where the hero sets out on an adventure to destroy the monster and evil and return goodness and fertility to the land Happy society resists change: The heros society, which is innocent, is assaulted by an enemy, which is experience, but it withstands and survives the assault; this is often seen in a moral allegory or morality play; it may be a society or the individual that needs to be defended Reflective or idyllic view: Here experience and adventure is contemplated, a similar world as that in the second phase is present, but with a knowledge of experience that did not previously exist Society ceases to exist beyond contemplation: These are tales often told in quotation marks by one individual to a small group; there is a coziness to this type of tale as it is free from confrontation and has a relaxed and entertaining tone.
2.
3. 4.
6.
There are two basic categories in Fryes framework, comedic and tragic. Each category is further subdivided into two categories: comedy and romance for the comedic; tragedy and satire (or ironic) for the tragic. Though he is dismissive of Frazer, Frye uses the seasons in his archetypal schema. Each season is aligned with a literary genre: comedy with spring, romance with summer, tragedy with autumn, and satire with winter. Comedy is aligned with spring because the genre of comedy is characterized by the birth of the hero, revival and resurrection. Also, spring symbolizes the defeat of winter and darkness. Romance and summer are paired together because summer is the culmination of life in the seasonal calendar, and the romance genre culminates with some sort of triumph, usually a marriage. Autumn is the dying stage of the seasonal calendar, which parallels the tragedy genre because it is, above all, known for the fall or demise of the protagonist. Satire is metonymized with winter on the grounds that satire is a dark genre; satire is a disillusioned and mocking form of the three other genres. It is noted for its darkness, dissolution, the return 191
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
5.
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
of chaos, and the defeat of the heroic figure. The context of a genre determines how a symbol or image is to be interpreted. Frye outlines five different spheres in his schema: human, animal, vegetation, mineral, and water. The comedic human world is representative of wish-fulfillment and being community centred. In contrast, the tragic human world is of isolation, tyranny, and the fallen hero. Animals in the comedic genres are docile and pastoral (e.g. sheep), while animals are predatory and hunters in the tragic (e.g. wolves). For the realm of vegetation, the comedic is, again, pastoral but also represented by gardens, parks, roses and lotuses. As for the tragic, vegetation is of a wild forest, or as being barren. Cities, a temple, or precious stones represent the comedic mineral realm. The tragic mineral realm is noted for being a desert, ruins, or of sinister geometrical images (Frye 1456). Lastly, the water realm is represented by rivers in the comedic. With the tragic, the seas, and especially floods, signify the water sphere. Frye admits that his schema in The Archetypes of Literature is simplistic, but makes room for exceptions by noting that there are neutral archetypes. The example he cites are islands such as Circes or Prosperos which cannot be categorized under the tragic or comedic.
By mythology, Frye means the underlying structure discernible in stories. About mythology, Frye points out there are only a few species of myth though there are an infinite number of individual myths. For example, these species, or archetypes, of myths include myths of creation, of fall, of exodus and migration, of the destruction of the human race in the past (deluge myths) or the future (apocalyptic myths), and of redemption. Frye uses the term archetype differently than Jung does.By archetype, Frye means only a recurring pattern..In Anatomy of Criticism, he clearly states that he sees no need for the collective unconscious in the domain of literary studies. By ideology, Frye means structures of social authority, wherein the principle invoked is that we belong to something before we are anything, that our loyalties and sense of solidarity are prior to intelligence. This sense of solidarity is not simply emotional, any more than it is simply intellectual; it might better be called existential.Frye identifies ideology with solidified dogma. He thinks that an ideology starts by providing its own version of whatever in its traditional mythology it considers relevant, and uses this version to form and enforce a social 192
en t
re
fo
rT
In Anatomy of Criticism, Frye defines the aims of archetypal literary theory as an attempt to describe a few of the basic grammatical elements of literary expression in the classical and Christian heritage of the western literary tradition by focusing on the aspects of literature that are comparable to tonality, rhythm, and canonical imitation in music.In Forming Fours, a review of Jungs Two Essays on Analytical Psychology and Psychology and Alchemy, Frye describes archetypal literary theory as that mode of criticism which treats the poem not as an imitation of nature but as an imitation of other poems. It studies conventions and genres, and the kind of recurrent imagery which connects one poem with another.
ra
di
tio
na
13.6 Northrop Frye and Ideology
lE
du
ca
tio n
contract. An ideology is thus an applied mythology, and its adaptations of myths are ones that, when we are inside an ideological structure, we must believe, or say we believe. Frye asserts that an ideologys desire to make its own canon and perspective the only acceptable choice results in intolerance and persecution as all other perspectives are denounced as heretical or perhaps even evil. Frye gives priority to mythology over ideology because ideologies develop and dissipate while the archetypal myth remains. Mythologies, or archetypal patterns, are capable of being created and viewed through many ideologies. Myth is a source of ideology but is not dependent on ideology. Ideology is a partial and static implementation of the fluid myth or archetype.In the following excerpt, Frye makes his point about the value of mythic structure over ideology: The principle involved is that there is a flexibility in the story that its ideological reference does not permit. To paraphrase an axiom of D.H. Lawrence, we should trust no writers beliefs or attitudes, but concentrate on his [sic] myth, which is infinitely wiser than he is, and is the only element that can survive when the ideology attached to it fades . It is this very flexibility of the archetypal structure that in Fryes mind gives it more value and privilege than ideology, which is less likely to be flexible . For Frye, the ideological is also less valuable in literary theory because it places a political or personal agenda before a literary agenda. Frye characterizes many contemporary critics as still being stuck in what he terms an ideological stage because they are interested in their ideology more than they are interested in literature; they approach literature first from a feminist, historical, radical, post-colonial or religious position.Frye anticipates ideological criticisms of his theories, and of literature, and he presents such an ideological emphasis as a hedge clipper, trimming awaydenying the value of all that does not fit the ideology. The hedge (literature, myth, archetypal structure) is made to fit the view approved by the ideology. In Words with Power, Frye does not seek to deny ideological approaches to literature; he accepts them as valid and valuable. He says only that should be some critics who are interested in literature before ideology and that they should deal with literature in terms of its own metaphorical and mythical structures and language . Frye explains the relationship between mythology and ideology as follows: I think of a poet, in relation to his [sic] society, as being at the center of a cross like a plus sign.The horizontal bar forms the social and ideological conditioning that made him intelligible to his contemporaries, and in fact to himself. The vertical bar is the mythological line of descent from previous poets back to Homer. Fryes success in gaining acceptance for the separation of mythology from ideology has only been partial as the arguments Frye has asserted about the dead end of ideology have not been widely accepted. Frye himself must have been dissatisfied with the success of his project as he spends one hundred pages of Words With Power revising and restating his concepts of ideology and mythology, a discussion he first broached in The Critical Path, twenty years earlier . For reasons I will investigate next, Deanne Bogdan, for one, remains 193
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
unconvinced by Fryes conception. In the postmodern feminist critiques of Fryes work,Bodkin, a student and then a colleague of Frye, asked him to write an introduction, which he wrote, but which she then did not publish. In this Unpublished Introduction to Beyond Communication, which can now be found in Northrop Fryes Writings on Education, Frye wrote, We have feminist, Marxist or deconstructive critics who are primarily interested in those subjects, and approach literature with the aim of annexing it their main interest. Here every work of literature becomes a document for feminism or Marxism, to be examined within that point of viewSuch determinations, it is clear, are imperialistic ideologies out to conquer one more field. Their proponents say that if they didnt conquer it some other ideology would because every critical approach is equally ideological. I think this is a half-truth. An ideology is a myth kidnapped by a power structure or a pressure group, and it is essential to distinguish the ideological from the mythological elements in every work of literature. I wish the present book had paid more attention to the study of myths and folk tales and the way in which they reflect the primary concerns of mankind, the concerns of food and sex and property and freedom. Because it is these concerns that the poets have inherited, and just as there is information that is separable from the ideologies that normally transmit it, so there are concerns that belong to all humanity, and are still there whatever their ideological contexts.
His lasting reputation rests principally on the theory of literary criticism that he developed in Anatomy of Criticism, one of the most important works of literary theory published in the twentieth century.
13.7 Arguments about the Contemporary Dilemma with Fryes Archetypal Literary Criticism
It has been argued that Fryes version of archetypal criticism strictly categorizes works 7ction between the mythical elements and then interprets it in terms of the contents of the myth. Some critics have questioned the universality of Fryes framework, because it might have 194
en t
Frye rose to international prominence as a result of his first book, Fearful Symmetry, published in 1947. Until that point, the prophetic poetry of William Blake had long been poorly understood, considered by some to be delusional ramblings. Frye found in it a system of metaphor derived from Paradise Lost and from the Bible. Not only was his study of Blakes poetry a major contribution, but in his book, Frye outlined an innovative manner of studying literature that deeply influenced the study of literature in general. Frye was a major influence on, amongst others, Harold Bloom and Margaret Atwood.
re
fo
rT
ra
Here is the dilemma made manifest in the crucible of a single book and its introduction, which remained unpublished until it was included in Fryes collected works. Frye is trying to separate the manifestations of the archetype, the archetypal images, from the myth, the archetypal pattern, but lacks Jungs language and theory to do so.
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
excluded certain literary experience (the cycle of the season is quite different in Africa, for instance). But this structuralist literary anthropology does delineate a framework for the Western literature from a new perspective.
13.8 Northrop Frye: The Theoretical Imagination

What awakens us from the cyclical nightmare of history, according to Blake, is the creative power of the imagination, which is redemptive in a fourfold way. First, it shows us that most of what we think of as real and inevitable is in fact self- or socially-imposed restriction, mind-forgd manacles. Blake was ahead of his time in grasping how powerfully ideological conditioning forestructures fact, logic, feeling, even perception. Second, the imagination is visionary in the sense of presenting us with a vision of what reality would be like if those restrictions were not final: certain genres, such as comedy and romance, drive teleologically towards the goal of a recreated world in which human primary concerns are fulfilled. The primary concerns begin with those elements necessary for physical survival, but expand into a spiritual dimension where they become whatever contributes to a more abundant human life, including freedom, sexual love, creative work, etc. Third, such a vision of fulfilled life is not mere wish-fulfillment; it is Promethean in becoming both a model for social action and a method of discipline. The ideal worlds of myth, romance, and comedy are not intended for aestheticist escapism or mere entertainment: the word poet means maker, and the arts, like liberal education in general, provide a training in the kind of patience, social purpose, sense of craftsmanship, and commitment to a gradual process of building something necessary to bring about any real change. Finally, the limit of reality is not the possible. Human consciousness is born out of certain pre-existing conditions, traditionally referred to as nature, human nature, and society, which, because they appear to it as objective and external, it tends to assume are not only unalterable but formative. But at a certain pitch of intensity, the imagination realizes that such structures are constructs. They are all power structures and are indeed formative; but what they form is a reduced and passive identity, that ideological construct we call the ordinary ego. By contrast, the Real Self, as Blake called the imagination, is active and constructive; it sees, not as it must, or wishes, or wills to see, but as it is capable of imagining: As the Eye, Such the Object. Along with love and religion, the arts, if pursued in a certain spirit, can become a kind of discipline, a process of meditation through symbols that provides training in what Frye calls ecstatic metaphor, an identification of self and other, subject and object, that transforms both into two aspects of a common identity. Such transformation is identity that nonetheless preserves the particularities, differences, and individuality that make otherness so attractive to us in the first place. Such a total identity is more than any utopia ever dreamed of, including that of Marxism and it has to be, because no utopia founded on the limitations of nature or reality (i.e., the limitations of ideology and the will to power) can ever get beyond the dilemma of the One and the Many. At some point it will be forced to choose between a private fantasy of individual fulfillment or a social fantasy of collectivism. As private self-interest denies the claims of community and collectivism denies the claims of
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
195
lE
du
ca
tio n
individuality, repression and authoritarianism will eventually set in, and the wheel of history turn in one more cycle.
13.9 Uses of Archetypal Criticism

Evaluation of an Example: Examines how a specific text compares with the archetype. The focus here would likely be in finding insightful variations from the traditional archetype and analyzing how these function. An examination of a text that simply pointed out how the narrative meets the criteria for a specific archetype would be flat and uninteresting.
Archetypal symbols vary more than archetype narratives or character types, but any symbol with deep roots in a cultures mythology, such as the forbidden fruit in Genesis or even the poison apple in Snow White, is an example of a symbol that resonates to archetypal critics. Thus Fryes approach was invigorating, but has not been broadly accepted. His categories seem arbitrary, and many works of art do not fit neatly into any category. For all his what both Blake and Frye call apocalyptic, a revelation of the final form of society as a total learning, Fryes focus was on western literature and its classification. So general a view does not help the practising poet with rewriting, or the critic explaining how one piece of literature is better than another, beyond of course understanding the larger picture. 196
en t
The Journey: A narrative archetype where the protagonist must overcome a series of obstacles before reaching his or her goal. The quintessential journey archetype in Western culture is arguably Homers Odyssey.
re
fo
Femme Fatale: A female character type who brings upon catastrophic and disastrous events. Eve from the story of Genesis or Pandora from Greek mythology are two such figures.
rT
13.10 A Few Common Archetypes in Literature
ra
di
tio
Definition of Archetypes: Too broad for this class, this approach would require creating your own theory of archetypes relying on numerous examples for support. Northrop Frye did this with literary narratives, Joseph Campbell with world myths, and Carl Jung with dream imagery.
na
Comparison of Archetypal Traits: By using the traits outlined in the archetype create a comparison of two or more works. The archetypal traits can be used here to guide the analysis implicitly or explicitly.
lE
du
Textual Analysis: Since the archetypes offer insight into typical traits that are present in different types of writing, they are useful in explicating a text in the readers mind. By using the archetypal traits as a guide, select interesting or unique traits and discuss their function in the work. This could easily be applied to plot, characters, symbols, and setting.
ca
tio n
But important matters lie behind symbolism. Literature employs words, and the reality behind words has been the central preoccupation of twentieth century philosophy. Linguistic philosophy attempted to explain away the great philosophical dilemmas of existence as the improper use of words. Structuralism described literature as the surface expression of deep anthropological (and often) binary codes. Poststructuralism denied that words could be anything but part of an endless web of yet more words, without final referent or meaning. Postmodernism uses words as flat, media images, without deeper reference. None of these has been very unconvincing. Words do have great emotional and intellectual power if employed in certain ways, and these ways draw on matters of deep and lasting interest to the human psyche. Mythic criticism (indeed all criticism: Frye makes this point) is subsequent to literature, as history is to action. We cannot clothe with plot and character the skeletal requirements of criticism and expect literature to result. Works of art follow their own devices and grow out of the artists imagination, only submitting to criticism if they still seem incomplete or unsatisfactory. But mythic criticism can show the writer where his imagery is coming from, and suggest reasons for its power. Subsequent work deep thought, reading and endless toying with possibilities may then turn up further material. Whether that material is useful can only be found by testing it in the poem, a trial and error process of continual adaptation and refinement that may eventually achieve the strengths of the coherence theory of truth: transforming power, internal consistency, simplicity, elegance and fertility.
en t
Collective Unconscious - a set of primal memories common to the human race, existing below each persons conscious mind. Persona - the image we present to the world.
Shadow - darker, sometimes hidden (deliberately or unconsciously), elements of a persons psyche.
13.12 Let Us Sum Up

Fryes approach was invigorating, but has not been broadly accepted. In Anatomy of Criticism, Frye delineates some of the structures inherent to literature by 197
re
Archetype - a typical or recurring image, character, narrative design, theme, or other literary phenomenon that has been in literature from the beginning and regularly reappears. Frye sees archetypes as recurring patterns in literature; in contrast, Jung views archetypes as primal, ancient images/experience that we have inherited.
fo
rT
Animus - male aspect - an inner masculine part of the female personality or a womans image of a man.
ra
13.11
Glossary
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
describing four inter related approaches. a. b. c. d. Historical Criticism : Theory of Modes Ethical Criticism : Theory of Symbols
Archetypal Criticism : Theory of Myths Rhetorical Criticism : Theory of Genres
2. 3. 4. 5.
What are the uses of archetypal criticism ? Enumerate a few common archetypes in literature.
2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7
Frye, Northrop. Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1969.
en t
Hamilton, A. C. Northrop Frye: Anatomy of His Criticism. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1990. Lentricchia, Frank. After the New Criticism. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1980. Abrams, M. H. Archetypal Criticism. A Glossary of Literary Terms. Fort Worth: HBJ, 1993. Bates, Roland. Northrop Frye. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1971. Leitch, Vincent B. Northrop Frye. The Norton Anthology: Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. New York: Norton, 2001.
re
fo
rT
1.
Denham, Robert. Northrop Frye and Critical Method. University Park: Pennsylvania UP, 1978.
ra
13.14 Bibliography
di
Write short notes on the Phases of Romance.
198
tio
Frye gives priority to mythology over ideology. Discuss.
na
lE
1.
How is mythology a vision of society ?
du
ca
Fryes system is contained in the all important assumptions that literature functions as a microcosm of culture, so that the abilities involved in the right reading of literature qualify one to interpret culture.what criticism can do, according to Frye, is awaken students to successive levels of awareness of the mythology that lies behind the ideology in which their society indoctrinates them.Frye gives priority to mythology over ideology.
tio n
UNIT-14 LIONEL TRILLING:THE LIBERAL IMAGINATION AND THE OPPOSING SELF

Structure 14.0 14.1 14.2 14.3 14.4 14.5 14.6 14.7 14.8 Objectives
Life of Lionel Trilling Works of Lionel Trilling Trilling and Psychoanalytic Theory
Trillings The Liberal Imagination and The Opposing Self Let Us Sum Up Review Questions Bibliography
14.0 Objectives
en t
14.1 Introduction
Lionel Trilling (1905-1975) was a figure of great intellectual distinction in the world of literature and ideas. What set Trilling apart from even his most talented contemporaries was his way of drawing subtle lines of understanding between literature and crucial aspects of current life, including education, relations between the sexes, and political allegiances. He moved far beyond the aesthetic concerns of poetry and fiction. While his ostensible subject was literature, his theme was civilization. Morris Dickstein says in his foreword to the Rodden anthology, What meant most to him was to be possessed by a book, to be disoriented and changed by 199
re
focus on psychoanalytic criticism, having its base in his sense of history consisting of a number of forces - political, sociological, cultural, philosophical, psychological and so on.
fo
provide key concepts of liberal imagination and conflict between self-definition and the influence of culture,
rT
provide a minute examination of Lionel Trillings The Liberal Imagination and The Opposing Self: Nine Essays in Criticism,
ra
The objectives of this unit are to:
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
Introduction
it. For Trilling a great book was the verbal enactment of will and desire by an author determined to impose himself; at some level, reading for Trilling was an act of submission. The liveliest controversy surrounding Lionel Trilling since his death centers on whether or how far he shifted his political thinking from an early liberalism to a conservatism (or neoconservatism) that some of his friends embraced but to which he never gave any overt support. Advocates on both sides can find passages in Trillings writing that seem to support their views. But a careful reading of those passages (and others) leads to the core of Trillings outlook. His first notable statement about liberalism, literature, and politics appears in the preface to his most influential collection of essays, The Liberal Imagination (1950). To the carrying out of the job of criticizing The Liberal Imagination, literature has a unique relevance, not merely because so much of modern literature has explicitly directed itself upon politics, but more importantly because literature is the human activity that takes the fullest and most precise account of variousness, possibility, complexity, and difficulty. Earlier, in his introduction to The Partisan Reader (1946), Trilling issued this elegantly ominous caution: Unless we insist that politics is imagination and mind, we will learn that imagination and mind are politics, and of a kind we will not like.
The most famous of his own books, The Liberal Imagination, a brilliant collection of essays that is now precisely fifty years old, was framed as a critique of post-war political and social attitudes. As he saw it, liberalism was the only philosophical, political and literary tradition still alive in the United States; conservatives existed, but they produced on paper nothing but irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas. Liberalism, left without serious enemies, had become glib and self-deceiving, above all in its often genial relationship with Soviet tyranny. Trilling became official liberalisms chief critic, and performed that office superbly. He saw literature, with its sensitivity and wisdom, as the corrective to politics. If politics pushes us toward the banal, literature pulls us back to a more subtle and realistic account of life. Politics makes us dumb, literature makes us aware of the world and of ourselves. Better than almost any other critic of the 20th century, Trilling could point his readers toward the moral subtleties in the work of writers ranging from Keats to Orwell.
14.2 Life of Lionel Trilling

Lionel Trilling was an outstanding scholar at Columbia University and the only son of David and Fannie Cohen Trilling. He was born on the fourth of July in 1905 in New York City. His father David W.Trilling was a native of Byalistok, now a city in North-eastern Poland and 200
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
Indeed, early in The Liberal Imagination, Trilling declared his interest in what he called the dark and bloody crossroads where literature and politics meet, except that for him bloody meant embattled rather than violent; and literature, because of its intrinsic humanism, had more wisdom to offer than the activist and morally troubling world of politics. It is this interplay of literature, politics, and ideas that gives Trillings work a scope and a richness not found in most literary criticism.
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
14.3 Works of Lionel Trilling
en t
re
Fiction: The Middle of the Journey (1947)
Of This Time, of That Place and Other Stories (1979) The Journey Abandoned: The Unfinished Novel (2008) (published posthumously, edited by Geraldine Murphy) Books and Collections of Essays: Matthew Arnold (1939) E. M. Forster (1943) 201
fo
He graduated in 1925 and received his M.A. in 1926. He received his Ph.D. in 1938 with a dissertation on Matthew Arnold, which he later published, and reviewed with approval by Edmund Wilson and Robert Penn Warren and in 1939 was promoted to assistant professor, becoming the first Jewish professor to receive tenure in the Department of English. After teaching at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and at Hunter College, Trilling returned to Columbia to teach literature and became a full professor in 1948 and in 1965 was named the George Edward Woodberry Professor of Literature and Criticism. His study of E. M. Forster, in 1943, was the occasion for a seven-page article in The Time. A novel, The Middle of the Journey, appeared in 1947; it had a less happy reception and disappointing sales, but it was widely noticed. He was a popular professor, and for 30 years he taught Columbias Colloquium on Important Books with Jacques Barzun, a well-regarded course on the relationship between literature and cultural history. His students included Norman Podhoretz, Allen Ginsburg, and John Hollander.
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
came to America at the age of sixteen. He was a successful custom tailor but later in the quest of raising his status he gave up tailoring and became a wholesale furrier. Unfortunately he proved a complete failure in his newly adopted profession leading the family towards a critical financial position. Trillings mother Fannie Cohen was a continuous source of inspiration to him. Trillings father was a good reader but his mother was among the best read people and she continued her reading until her eyes failed her. American author and teacher, Lionel Trilling was an enormously influential critic who vehemently eschewed simplistic or emotional responses to art or morality. The author of many works, he was especially exigent, to use one of his favorite words, in his essays, most of which have long been out of print. Distrustful of rapture and keen on reading literature as, in Wieseltiers words, documents for a moral history of culture, Trilling embraced complexity and nuance and held critical integrity in the highest esteem. His essays possess great intellectual weight, and their richness, deep seriousness of thought, and sonorous vocabulary and syntax are balanced by a lashing wit and remarkable energy.
ca
tio n
The Liberal Imagination (1950) The Opposing Self (1955) Freud and the Crisis of Our Culture (1955) A Gathering of Fugitives (1956) (1965) Sincerity and Authenticity (1972), a collection of the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures given at Harvard in 1969
Prefaces to The Experience of Literature (1979) Speaking of Literature and Society (1980)
14.4 Lionel Trilling and Psychoanalytic Theory
The majority of the literary theorists use Freudian or psychoanalytic theory in literary criticism to have the possibilities of a new scientific approach to creativity. The most frequent application of psychoanalytic theory in criticism was in the field of biography. Psychoanalysis was a tool that could extend ones knowledge of a writers inner life. Behind Freuds view that the writers creation was in some sense a sublimated form of a neurosis lay the idea that genius was a product of insanity. The question of the extent to which art was a product of neurosis, or whether it was an achievement accomplished in spite of neurosis, was an open one. Writers of the Romantic era were generally the best targets for psychoanalytic analysis. The more neurotic the writer, the more reasonable was the use of the psychoanalytic formula to explain his eccentricities. For this reason writers like Edgar Allan Poe, P. B. Shelley, Charlotte Bronte, Margaret Fuller, August Strindberg or DH Lawrence were favorites among psychoanalysts. In his persistent search for the filaments between life and literature Trilling came across various influences and Freudian psychoanalysis was one of these. Tracing the origin of this thought he finds a sort of relation between psychoanalysis and Romanticist Tradition. According to Trilling, the feature common to both Freudianism and Romanticist Tradition is the manifestation of the hidden element of human nature and its ceaseless conflict with the visible. In almost all his major works, particularly, The Liberal Imagination and The Opposing Self, he largely deals with the writers and thinkers of the nineteenth century - Arnold, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Freud, Jane Austen etc. All of them were inclined towards the delineation of the hidden thing - the suppressed life. He hails Arnold as the first modern man who could raise his doubts about the possible changes in society and the condition of self in it. Long before Freud, it was to Arnold that the idea of the self occurred - both the primitive and the conscious self.
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
202
tio
na
lE
du
ca
Mind in the Modern World: The 1972 Thomas Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities (1973)
tio n
Trilling understood psychoanalysis more fully than his contemporaries, William Empson, Edmund Wilson, and Kenneth Burke. Trillings Freud was, to some degree, his own invention. He invented the Freud he needed and reinvented him from decade to decade as the cultural situation changed. In his essay on Wordsworths Immortality Ode, Trilling adapted psychoanalysis to an ideologically charged celebration of moral realism. In this essay he weaves together Freuds theories of ego development and of the death instinct. In stressing the moral rather than the objective dimension of Freuds work, Trilling was marking the political implications of his particular use of Freud. In The Liberal Imagination, he was always addressing a political - cultural situation, the corruption of Americas liberal intellectuals by Stalinism. The Freudian moralism that urges the necessity of renouncing the pleasure principle for the sake of reality is also a political appeal to liberals, to put away the childish dreams of the radical thirties. In Trillings first psychoanalytically oriented study of a literary text, Freud makes his appearance as a great moralist in the line of the classic tragic realism. By the fifties, Trilling had moved on to new uses of Freud. Certainly the tragic theme persisted in Trillings writing, but his emphasis was on a radical instability in the modern self. Trillings concern was no longer with becoming older, wiser, chastened by experience but with being. In the fifties Trilling was looking for an elemental quality of the self that could withstand and the post war moral chaos and enable the self to conserve itself. He found this principal of coherence in biology. He
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
Psychoanalysis as a peculiarly modern element preoccupied Trillings critical temper. Psychoanalysis was an interest inherited from nineteenth century biographical studies. The credit of discovering the systematic study of the unconscious goes to Freud. Trillings interests seen essentially Freudian though expressed in Hegelian terms. Like Freud, Trilling fully recognizes the pain that the self experiences in society, or in the culture in which it exists. Freudian theory which finds neurosis as the source of artistic genius - an escape from reality by means of substitute gratifications - in Trillings view is erroneous. They suggest that artistic failure must also rely in the theory of neurosis, not only the psychological insight but also deficiency in insight should be considered in terms of neurosis. For Trilling the most important aspect of Freuds thought was its moral dimension. Trilling agreed with Philip Rieff that Freud has no message; he accepts contradiction and builds his psychology on it. The chief implication that Trilling finds in Freud is the ethic of passivity. In the fifties Trilling used Freuds thought, especially the doctrine of the death instinct, to legitimize his own yearning for a great good place, beyond culture, in which a weary New York Intellectual might find peace and rest. Although Freud makes only one brief appearance in 1939- book on Matthew Arnold, Trilling had been reading Freud since the mid - thirties. In 1940 he published an important essay, Freud and Literature, offering a synoptic critique of the psychoanalytic approach to literature; in 1941 he used Freudian ideas as the framework of his essay on Wordsworths Immortality Ode; and in 1945, in Art and Neurosis, he criticized popular notions of artistic creativity as a compensation for psychological handicaps.
na
203
lE
du
ca
tio n
In his essay on Keats The Poet as Hero: Keats in His Letters, Trilling discusses the relation of psychoanalysis to criticism. Trilling seems to be interested both in Keats geniality, his preoccupation with the primitive appetite and the family and philosophical influences on his mind, which proved influential in his poetry. Extending Freuds concepts of neurosis, Trilling brings Lamb as an authority to support the sanity of artistic genius that the poet does not dream like an ordinary person, that is why sleeping his dreams are the product of his imaginative insight. Hence the poet in his dreams cannot be taken to be under the control of his subject, he rather subjugates and shapes it. Trilling views that the creative always stands in opposition to circumstance. His diagnosis of Keats self shows how with the active tacit agreement of the immitigable reality of evil, he was able to reconcile it in life through aesthetic transcendence. It was only in the fifties that the protest of biology against culture became a central theme of Trillings criticism. Trillings biologism was a protest against what he regarded as an oversocialized conception of human nature in psychoanalytic writing as well as in the new sociology. He points out the denial of individual autonomy implicit in the exaggerated emphasis on social adjustment in the writing of various Freudian revisionists. Against their sociologically 204
en t
re
fo
rT
In Trillings essay of 1953 on Henry Jamess The Bostonians, Trilling interprets Jamess satire on feminism as an expression of intense sexual anxiety. According to Trilling, the feminists are led into perversity by their radical impulse to rearrange life according to an abstract theory. For Freud the goal of life is simply death, far from justifying any hope of historical profess. His theory, proposes that life itself is nothing but a round about course, a circuitous path imposed on living substance by external influences. Trilling makes Freuds theory of the conservative nature of living substance, the basis of a moral and aesthetic recommendation. To the degree that a text exemplifies the principle of inertia, it is for Trilling a useful corrective to a culture sick from the hypertrophy of the radical will. Easy essay of Trilling is likely to present only a part of his mind, a reaction not only to the dominant cultural mood but also to a previous mood of his own. Therefore alternations and fluctuations of mood can be seen in Trillings essays.
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
followed Freud in assuming as fact that the most ancient quality of being is biological. In the fifties Trillings affirmation of the biological was still involved in his controversy against the liberals, but he was addressing the crisis of selfhood more directly, rather than only as part of a larger political debate. For Trilling a basic confidence about the self is a nineteenth - century quality that unites Wordsworth and Keats and distinguishes them from representative figures of the modern period such as Kafka and Beckett. Keats is Trillings type of the opposing self by virtue of the moral and psychological strength with which he faces his death. For Trilling, Keatss self - certitude and his strong attachment to reality make a contrast with the diminished self of Kafka. Death for Kafkas characters has a very different meaning than for Keats because they live without ever having had a sense of being existentially alive. Trillings sentiment of being was a sentiment not of action and commitment but of disengagement and detachment from motion and struggle.
tio n
grounded optimism about the end to the conflict between the self and culture, Trilling reaffirms Freuds own pessimism, grounded in a biological conception of the unavoidability of intra psychic conflict. Instead of the revisionists view of the individual totally defined by culture, Trilling insists on what he says was Freuds view of the self, within but also beyond culture. According to Trilling, Freud needed to believe that there was some point at which it was possible to stand beyond the reach of culture, a beyond, Trilling defines as biological. Biology provided a way to argue that the self contained as inherent principle of resistance to absorption and dissolution in culture. Biology was a complex world. In Trillings writing it became humanized such that it no longer represented a principal directly opposite to that of culture. Biology served Trilling as a foundational principle, a solid rock in relation to which contemporary threats to the self, like totalitarian ideologies and mass culture might seem less threatening. The self needed a principle of permanence to fend off the increasing threat to its autonomy. It was not enough to urge the importance of liveliness and variousness, wit and style, as Trilling had in The Liberal Imagination. These positives might only contribute to the selfs instability Trilling was looking for something more fundamental, and biology became the conservative principle that would help to hold things to their center. Trillings great theme is freedom. He emphasized, instead of active freedom, a primordial, static, essentially conservative principle within the self that allows it to cohere and resist the disintegrative process of modernity. Trilling praises Freuds rationalistic positivism for the aim that it sets of psychotherapy or suitable adjustment to reality. Trillings extensive views on psychoanalysis and his attempts to connect psychoanalytic ideas to literature are demonstrated of reality and imagination. Although he deals with a number of issues - reality and mind, politics and imagination, and sincerity and authenticity - they eventually lead to the straight question of two powers of the self and the culture in a continual interaction with each other. Freud conceived of a separate existence of the biological self beyond the reach of cultural forces. Trilling inherited his sense of self as a biological fact from Freud. Not merely the interior life of the individual but the reconstitution of society was Freuds ultimate concern. Freud considered the greatest potential benefit of his science to be not merely the curing of individuals suffering from neurosis, important though this is, but the promise that it could lead to a better understanding, and perhaps control, of larger human affairs. Trilling recognizes the potential value for literature of Freuds concepts of the repetition - compulsion and the death instinct. He is interested in establishing specific connections between biographical events and tendencies in the poetry but the larger ways in which family and philosophical influences worked together in the mind of the poet were expressed in his poetry.
en t
14.5 The Essays of The Liberal Imagination and The Opposing Self
The Liberal Imagination (1950) and The Opposing Self (1955)are two important collection of essays which mingle literary criticism with analyses of culture, politics, and history. They bring Trilling immediate national attention as a literary critic of the first order, ranking 205
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
alongside F. R. Leavis and Edmund Wilson. The great critics masterworks make a case for the necessity of the imaginative works in a society ever more worshipful of the liberal ideals of rationality and progress. Trilling...shows how criticism, written with grace, style, and a selfquestioning cast of mind, can itself become a form of literature, as well as a valuable contribution to how we think about society. In the essay Freud and Literature of The Liberal Imagination the Freudian psychology is referred to as the only systematic account of the human mind. Freud discovered the scientific method by which the unconscious can be studied. The poet has always exercised his art upon the human nature of the Freudian psychology. Therefore it could be said that the psychoanalytical theory had a great effect upon literature. The relationship is mutual; the effect of Freud upon literature has been no greater than the effect of literature upon Freud. Psychoanalysis is one of the culminations of the Romanticist literature of the nineteenth century. In Diderots Rameaus Nephew there is a common characteristic of a perception in both Freud and Romanticism, the perception of the hidden element of human nature and of the opposition between the hidden and the visible. The hidden element takes many forms and it is not necessarily dark and bad. For Blake the bad was the good, while for Wordsworth and Burke what was hidden and unconscious was wisdom and power, which work in despite of the conscious intellect.
The poets educated and sensitive people throughout Europe become aware of the ravages that reason might make upon the affective life. In certain novels the almost complete identification of author and hero and of the reader with both suggests a leniency of moral judgment. The autobiographical novel has a further influence upon the moral sensibility by its hinting that a man could not be judged by any single moment in his life without taking into account the determining past and the fulfilling future. Again and again it is seen that the effective utilitarian ego is being dismissed to an inferior position and a plea being made on behalf of the anarchic and self-indulgent id. The idea of the mind is found as an invisible thing, one part of which can contemplate and mock the other. Proust was a writer who showed the Freudian influence in the investigation of sleep, of sexual deviation, of the way of association, or the interest in metaphor. According to Trilling the motive of the interpretation of the literary critic or biographer who makes use of the Freudian theory is not that of exposing the secret shame of the writer and limiting the meaning of his work, but on the contrary, that of finding grounders for sympathy with the writer and for increasing the possible significances of the work. Kafka has explored the Freudian conceptions of guilt and punishment, of the dream, and of the fear of the father. Thomas Mann was most susceptible to the Freudian anthropology. In Freud and Literature to understand Freuds attitude to art, the intensity of the passion with which Freud believes that positivistic rationalism is the very form of intellectual virtue, is to be seen. Freud says that the aim of psychoanalysis is the control of the night side of life. Where id was, that is, where all the irrational, non-logical, pleasure seeking dark force were - there shall ego be - that is, intelligence and control. From his rationalistic positivism 206
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
Freud believes that the analytical method can explain the inner meaning of the work of art and the temperament of the artist as man. A famous example of the method is the attempt to solve the problem of Hamlet as suggested by Freud and as carried out by Dr. Ernest Jones, his early and distinguished follower. The research undertakes the mystery of Hamlets character and also discovering the deeper working of Shakespeares mind. Part of the mystery is why Hamlet after he had so definitely resolved to do so, did not avenge upon his hated uncle on his fathers death. But there is another mystery to the play, which Freud calls the mystery of its effect, its magical appeal that draws so much interest toward it. The Jones research undertakes to discover what it was that Shakespeare intended to say about Hamlet. Shakespeare says that the guilt Hamlet feels at his unconscious attachment to his mother makes him incapable to act. There is an Oedipus situation in Hamlet. The aspect of the method which finds the solution to the mystery of Hamlet in the temperament of Shakespeare himself, shall be discussed. Dr. 207
en t
re
For Freud there are two ways to dealing with external reality. One is practical, effective, positive; the way of the conscious self, of the ego which must be made independent of the super-ego and extend its organization over the id, and it is the right way. The other way is called the fictional way and the common example of this is day dreaming in with we give ourselves a certain pleasure by imagining our difficulties solved or our desires gratified. For Freud as psychoanalytic practitioner there are the polar extremes of reality and illusion. Reality is a word implying respect and it means what are there illusions is a derogatory word, and it means response to what is not there. The polar extremes are practical reality and neurotic illusion, the latter judged by the former. The Freudian view assumes that the mind for good as well as bad helps create its reality by selection and evaluation. In this view reality is subjected to creation. Love, morality, honor and esteem are the compounds of a created reality. The dream and the neurosis on the one hand and art on the other hand have certain common elements, that unconscious processes are at work in both and they share too the element of fantasy, though in different degrees. But there is a vital difference. The poet is in command of his fantasy, while it is exactly the mark of the neurotic that he is possessed by his fantasy. Of the distinction between the artist and the neurotic Freud tells that the artist is not like the neurotic, as he knows how to find a way back from the world of imagination. When Freud speaks of art dealing with the reality he actually means the reward that a successful artist can win.
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
comes much of Freuds strength in the form of the goal of therapy, the desire to bring to men a decent measure of earthly happiness. He speaks of art as one of the true charms of the good life of writers, he speaks with admiration and appreciates in literature the specific emotional insights and observations. Freud speaks of literary men because they have understood the part played in life by the hidden motives, as the precursors of his own science. On the contrary, Freud also speaks of art with contempt. He says that art is a substitute gratification and an illusion in contrast to reality. One of its chief functions is to serve as a narcotic. For Freud the artist is a neurotic. He says of the hero of a novel as destined to be a poet or a neurotic and belongs to that race of beings whose realm is not of this world.
Jones conclude that anything which will give the key to the inner meaning of the play will necessarily give the clue to much of the deeper workings of Shakespeares mind. Of all mental systems, the Freudian psychology is the one which makes poetry belong naturally to the very constitution of mind. Poetry is a kind of beneficent distortion of the minds right course. According to a theory, Freud says that all dreams, even the unpleasant ones, could be understood upon analysis to have the intention of fulfilling the dreamers wishes. They are in the service of what Freud calls the pleasure principle. Freud evolved another theory, where he first makes the assumption that there is in the psychic life a repetitioncompulsion which goes beyond the pleasure principle. Such a compulsion cannot be meaningless, it must have an intent and that intent is the developing on fear.
Certainly one element in the greatness of Huckleberry Finn and of Tom Sawyer is that it succeeds first as a boys book, One can read it at ten and then annually ever after, and each year find that it is as fresh as the year before, that it has changed only in becoming somewhat larger. Huckleberry Finn is praised as a universal book, applicable to mankind in general and at all times and in all places. In form and style the book is an almost perfect work. The form of the book is based on the so-called picaresque novel or the novel of the road, which string its incidents on the line of the heros travels. The prose of the book is established on American informal speech, which gives ease and freedom in the use of language. Most of all it has to do with the structure of the sentences which, is simple, direct and fluent. The subtle variation of speech in the book of which Mark Twain was justly proud, are still part of the liveliness and flavour of the book. The mark of the strictest literary sensibility is everywhere to be found in the prose of Huckleberry Finn. It is this prose that Ernest Hemingway had chiefly in mind when he said that all modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.
en t
re
fo
rT
In the essay Huckleberry Finn, Trilling sums up that Mark Twain had a theory of unconscious composition and believed that a book must write itself. The book which he referred to as Huck Finns Autobiography refused to do the job of its own creation and he would not coerce it. When at last Huckleberry Finn was completed and published and widely loved Mark Twain became somewhat aware of what he had accomplished with the book that has been begun as journey work and depreciated, postponed, threatened with destruction. It is his masterpiece- one of the worlds great books and one of the central documents of American culture. Its greatness lies primarily in its power of telling the truth. His earlier work The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, does not represent his usual view either of boys book or of boys. He well knew that no one sets a higher value on truth than a boy. Truth is the whole of a boys conscious demand upon the world of adults. He is likely to believe that the adult world is in a conspiracy to lie to him and it is this belief by no means unfounded that arouses Tom and Huck and all boys to their moral sensitivity, their everlasting concern with justice, which they call fairness. At the same time it often makes them skillful and profound liars in their own defense yet they do not tell the ultimate lie of adults: they do not lie to themselves.
ra
di
208
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
en t
In Keatss social geniality there was an element of his personality, which acted to check it. His illness embittered him, separating him as he grew more certain of his death, from those who still had the prospect of life, making him jealous. Keats began to see that one reason for his being liked was his retiring quietness, a certain courteous withdrawal from social competitiveness. Nobody is naturally satisfied by the society around them as it never really lends itself to their purposes and expectations. Of Keats this was especially true. Solitary as he might be in his mind, he was never a man of or physical solitude. Company gave him pleasure. He lived but little alone. In Keats family feeling was hugely strong and perfectly direct. His affection for his brothers and sister is a definitive part of his character. His familial feeling amounted to a passion. 209
re
Bernard Shaw recognizes a quality in Keats which he called Keats geniality. He had a passion for friendship and society, to which he happily contributed and the quality of his letters is in part to be explained by it. The delicacy of feeling and the conviction of observation of Keats letters have appeared because Keats had been able carelessly to entrust his thoughts to his friends. The credit of the misspelled immediacy of the letters goes to the confidence between friends and to the free manners of the group. Keats loved the actuality of life; its coarseness and commonness delighted him. Trilling says that Keats sense of actuality was quick and in the line of the English poetic humorists.
fo
rT
ra
di
The charm of Keats letters comes from his conscious desire to live life in the heroic mode. The phrase in his letters, life is a vale of soul making, is his summing up of the sense which if one becomes aware of its existence in him, one can understand to have dominated his mind. He believed that life was given for him to find the right use of it, that it was a kind of continuous magical confrontation requiring to be met with the right answer. He believed that his answer was to be derived from intuition, courage, and the accumulation of experience. Keats was nothing if not a man of ideas. His way of conceiving life is characteristic of the spirited young man of high gifts. Keats at a very early age passed beyond all self-conscious hesitation about looking deep into life and himself and about freely telling his thoughts. Therefore the fascination for Keats mind is due to the wisdom of maturity arising from the preoccupations of youth.
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
In The Poet as Hero : Keats in His Letters of The Opposing Self, Trilling said that in the history of literature the letters of John Keats have an interest which is equal to that of their writers principle of created work. In thinking about Keats as a poet, Dr. F.R. Leavis said that the important documents are his poems, not his letters. His letters are illuminating and suggestive yet in relation to Keats as a poet they are secondary. Because of the letters it is impossible to think of Keats only as a poet, instead he is thought of a certain kind of man, a hero. A man or a hero who fully engages the attention is always distinguished by some particular role. So Keats cannot be thought of as a man without being imagined in his occupation of a poet. Once his letters are read it becomes clear that his being a poet was his chosen way of being a man.
He conceived the emotional effect of knowledge of poetry, which for him was successful when it led the reader to calmness. If Keats did not accept the traditional antagonism between sensation and poetry on the one hand and intellect and knowledge on the other, it was because he understood intellect and knowledge in a certain way. He did not suppose that mind was an entity different in kind from and opposed to the sensations and emotions. Rather mind came into being when the sensations and emotions were checked by external resistance or by conflict with each other, when to use the language of Freud, the pleasure principle is confronted by the reality principle. In Keats the reality principle was strong in proportion to the pleasure principle. Philosophy and knowledge, the matter of the intellect, were for him associated in their old traditional way with the burden of life. To be philosophical means to acknowledge with the mind the pain of the world, and it means to derive courage from taking thought. The power and quality of Keatss mind and the energy of his heroism concentrate in the phrase-Negative Capability. The Conception of Negative Capability leads to his brothers Keats wrote about a quality especially in literature that went to make a man of achievement. It is Negative Capability that is when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, 210
en t
re
fo
rT
Keatss capacity for pleasure implies his capacity for the understanding of tragic reality. It also served his capacity for what he called abstractions. Ideas, abstractions, were his life. He lived to perceive ultimate things, essences. That is what appetite or love always means to him. Plato said that love is the child of Abundance and Want, and for Keats it was just that. In one of the remarkable passages of his letters Keats says that the heart is is the teat from which the mind or intelligence suck identity. Keats geniality toward himself, his bold acceptance of his primitive appetite, had its decisive effect upon the nature of his creative intelligence and his moral character. The heroic quality of Keats or the quality of moral energy is understood by Keats temperamental endowment. The traits that make up the spirited part of the soul were early and extreme in Keats. Keats himself made clear genetic connection between felicity and manly energy. He did not refine by negation but by the natural growth, by the tendency of life to refine. Keats mature masculinity is the essence of his being. Energy is the basis of his conception of morality. In Keats own life he recognizes two states of being which seem equally opposed to energy. One is despair or melancholy and the other is happy passivity or indolence of laziness. He had an awareness of the female principle as a power, an energy.
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
Keatss mind could be understood with an awareness of his powers of enjoyment. Pleasure of the senses was for him the very ground of life and moreover the ground of thought. More than any other poet Keats is platonic, it was by the natural impulse of his temperament that his mind moved up the ladder of love which Plato expounds, beginning with the love of things and moving toward the love of ideas, with existences and moving towards essences. But the movement is of a special kind, from a preoccupation with sense to a preoccupation with intellect. It is his characteristic mode of thought all through his life to begin with sense which generates the idea and remains continuous with it. Keats was royal to sense and to the pleasure of the senses. For him there was no distinction of prestige among the senses.
en t
Keatss thinking takes a remarkable flight into a sort of transcendental psychology in the effort to suggest how intelligences become souls. Intelligences become souls when they acquire identities. The horrible circumstances which are the cause of the miseries of man work towards his soul-making by altering his nature. To Keats Shakespeare was a sort of patron saint or guardian angel. Keats found possible to conceive Shakespeares tragic salvation, the soul accepting the fate that defines it. Shakespeare had been one of the important influences in Keats doctrine of soul-making. In the essay Wordsworth and the Rabbis, Trilling said that Wordsworth once existed as an attractive idea or an intellectual possibility among his ordinary reader and to the literary man a loved poet, possibly, for modern taste he is too Christian a poet. He is certainly not to be wholly characterized by the Christian element of his poetry. Trilling acknowledges Wordsworths concern for the life of humbleness and quiet, his search for peace, his sense of the burdens of this life, those which are inherent in the flesh and spirit of man, and his belief that the bonds of society ought to be inner and habitual, not merely external and formal, and the strengthening of these bonds by the acts and attitudes, of charity is a great duty. Christian too seems his responsiveness to the idea that there is virtue in the discharge of duties. His impulse to submit to the conditions of life under a guidance, his sense of the possibility and actuality of 211
re
fo
rT
ra
Keatss attachment to the principle of reality was a strong one. He perceived the fact of evil very clearly and put it at the centre of his mental life. Equally he had clear knowledge of the self. To Keats the self was just as real as the evil that destroys it. The idea of reality and the idea of self and its complete destruction go together for him. He conceives of the energy of the self as at least one source of reality. Keats never deceives himself into believing that the power of imagination is supreme, that it can make the power of circumstance of no account. It is the very nature of his whole intellectual and moral activity that he holds in balance the reality of self and the reality of circumstance. The knowledge of circumstance and of self both together constitutes a truth. The self confronting painful circumstances makes Keats to attempt at the solution of the problem of evil, to show that how life may be called blessed when its circumstances are cursed. In his letters to Georges and Georgians Keats in Kentucky had dealt with the problem both aesthetically and morally. The simple declaration of the self in its vital energy means much to Keats.
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason. Keats thinks of Negative Capability as an element of intellectual power. The only means of strengthening ones intellect is to make up ones mind about nothing, to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts. Keatss statements may well be true in reference to a certain kind of person dealing with a certain kind of problem. It will be a human problem to which the exercise of Negative Capability is appropriate. Shakespeare is Keats example of a mind content with half-knowledge, capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries and doubts. Keats says that the excellence of every art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeable evaporate, from being close relation with Beauty and Truth. With a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration. It is a very large human problem, nothing less than the problem of evil.
enlightenment, it needs scarcely be said, is one of the characteristic things about him. Faith and hope were to him great virtues, but he conceived that they rested upon the still greater virtue, charity. Through all his poetic life Wordsworth was preoccupied by the idea, by the sentiment, by the problem of being. All experience, all emotions lead to it. He was haunted by the mysterious fact that he existed. He could discover in himself different intensities and qualities of being. Being is sometimes animal; sometimes it is an appetite and a passion; sometimes it is almost a suspension of the movement of the breath and blood. With sentiment of being into consideration, Trilling says that there arises a question of its degree of actuality or of its survival. Wordsworth puts the awareness of being to the text in situations where its presence may perhaps most easily be questioned-in very old people. Wordsworths usual way is to represent the old man as being below the human condition apparently scarcely able to communicate, and then suddenly show the intensity of his human existence. It is an attractive thing about Wordsworth that his acute sense of the being of others desires from, and serves to affirm and heighten, his acute sense of his own being. It has not been Trillings intention to make a separation between Wordsworth and the literature of Trillings time. The separation cannot be made. Wordsworth and the great writers of Trillings time stand on the common ground of the concern with being and its problems. Wordsworth may be said to have discovered and first explored the ground upon which todays literature has established itself. Again and again in Todays Literature at its most apocalyptic and intense, the readers find the impulse to create figures who are intended to suggest that life is justified in its elemental biological simplicity, and in the manner of Wordsworth, these figures are conceived of as being of humble status and humble hearts. In Mansfield Park, Trilling advocates that Jane Austens irony is primarily a method of comprehension and secondarily a matter of tone. It perceives the world through paradoxes and irregularities. It is by no means detached. It is the supporter with generosity of spirit. But it is preoccupied not only with the charm of the extensive virtues but also with the cost at which they are to be gained and exercised. Her first or basic irony is the recognition of the fact that spirit is not free, it is conditional and limited by circumstances. Trilling says that nobody has ever found it possible to like the heroine, Fanny Price of Mansfield Park because of here conscious virtue, debility and poor in spirit. Mary Crawford of the same novel is the antithesis of Fanny Price. The boldness with which the antithesis is devised is typical of the uncompromising honesty of the novel. In Mary Crawford there is the first brilliant example of a distinctively modern type, the person who cultivates the style of sensitivity, virtue and intelligence. For the author as well as for the heroine, Mansfield Park is the good place - it is the Great Good Place. Fannys loving praise of Mansfield, which makes the novels last word, does glance at ironies and encompasses ironies. Of these ironies the chief is that Lady Bertram, Sir Thomass wife is part of the perfection. She is being teased as well as loved in the novel. Trilling is never able to resist the notion that in her attitude to Lady Bertram Jane Austen is 212
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
teasing herself, that she is turning her irony upon her own fantasy of ideal existence. Lady Bertram is her mocking representation of her wish to escape from the requirements of personality. It was Jane Austen who first represented the specifically modern personality and the culture in which it had its being. Never before had the moral life been shown as she shows it to be, never before had it been conceived to be so complex and difficult and exhausting. Hegel speaks of the secularization of spirituality as a prime characteristic of the modern era and Jane Austen is the first to tell what this involves. She is the first novelist to represent society, the general culture as playing a part in the moral life. In the essay Anna Karenina, Trilling said that Anna Karenina, the novel by Tolstoi was an example of naturalistic representation. About the book, Matthew Arnold said that it was not to be taken as a work of art but as a piece of life. The novel as an art form had reached a very high point in its development. Besides Flaubert, Zola and Balzac on the scene, Tolstoi made a reasonable effect with Anna Karenina. According to Philip Rahv, in a Tolstoian novel it is never the division but always the unity of art and life which makes the illumination. Tolstoi possesses to the highest degree the quality of lifelikeness in his works. Tolstois objectivity is changed with affection and more than anything else it is this moral quality that accounts for the unique illusion of reality that he creates. It is when the novelist really loves his characters that he can show them in their completeness and contradiction, in their failures as well as in their charm. Tolstois objectivity is simply the power of his love to suffer no abatement from the account it takes of the fact that usually falls below its ideal of itself. Trilling says that it is chiefly Tolstois moral vision that accounts for the happiness with which the readers respond to Anna Karenina. Part of the magic of the book is that it violates our notions of the ratio that should exist between the importance of an event and the amount of space that is given to it. Tolstois awareness that the spirit of man is always at the mercy of the actual and trivial could well be understood in the scene where great amount of attention and space is given to the shirts of Levin. To this scene Matthew Arnold exclaims the book is not to be taken as art but as life itself, and perhaps as much as anything else this scene suggests the energy of animal intelligence that marks Tolstoi as a novelist. There is not knowledge rarer than the understanding of spirit as it exists in the inescapable conditions which the actual and the trivial make for it. It is true that Freuds influence on literature has been very great. In biography its first effect was sensational but not fortunate. A new response was seen in reading the work of literature with a lively sense of its concealed and ambiguous meanings, as if it were, as indeed it is, a being no less alive and contradictory than the man who created it. And this response to the literary work has had a corrective effect upon our conception of literary biography. There is no single meaning to any work of art. This is true because it makes art a richer thing and also because historical and personal experience show it to be true. Changes in historical context and in personal mood change the meaning of a work and indicate that artistic understanding is not a question of fact but of value. Even if the authors intention were precisely 213
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
determinable, the meaning of a work cannot lie in the authors intention alone. It must also lie in its effect. The audience partly determines the meaning of the work. Freud says that in addition to the authors intention, the mystery of Hamlets effect must also be taken into account. Historically Hamlets effect had been single and brought about solely by the magical power of the Oedipus motive. In the essay on Keats it is said that at present time the theory of poetic creation holds that the poet derives his power from some lacking or deprivation he has suffered. It is taken for granted that the poet writes out of darkness of the spirit or not at all. But this was not Keats belief. For him the writing of poetry was first a regular work, his occupation, and then a great joy. For several obvious reasons he was much concerned with health, the word occurs frequently in his poems and he hated ill health, whether physical or mental.
In Mansfield Park it is discussed that Jane Austens malice of irony is directed not only upon certain of the characters of her novels but also upon the reader himself. The shock of audiences surprise at the disappointment of their settled views is of course the more startling because they believe that they have settled their views in conformity with the authors own. The interference with their moral and intellectual comfort constitutes malice on the part of the author. Mary Crawford in Mansfield Park is conceived to win the charmed admiration of almost any reader. She is all pungency and wit. Her mind is as lively and competent as her body. She is downright, open, intelligent and impatient. Irony is her natural mode and audience is drawn to think of her voice as being as nearly the authors own. Yet in the end audience is asked to believe that she is not to be admired, that her lively mind compounds, by very reason of its liveliness, with the world, the flesh and the devil. By the implication of secularization of spirituality it is required of the audience that they judge not merely the moral act itself but also the quality of the agent. In the essay Anna Karenina, it is said that Tolstoi gives to the novel its norm and standard of reality. Only one other writer who has ever seemed to his readers to have this normative quality in a more positive and formulated way was with Homer. It was what Pope 214
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
In Wordsworth and the Rabbis the readers look at Wordsworth in the context of his own time and in the context of their time, what may properly be called the Christian element of his poetry can be made to speak to them, as it spoke to so many who were not Christians and made them in one degree or another accessible to Christianity. After analyzing Wordsworths sense of the being, the readers summarize that he is not separated from them by his preoccupation with being, for it is their preoccupation. Yet, he is separated from them because his conception of being seems different from theirs. Wordsworths mind has an element of mysticism. His mysticism consists of two elements, his conception of the world as being semantic, and his capacity for intense pleasure. When the readers speak of Wordsworth as a mystic in any other sense, they are sure to be expressing their incomprehension of intensity with which he experienced his own being, and their incomprehension of the relation which his sentiment of being bore to his will.
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
felt when he said that nature and Homer were the same. One of the ways of accounting for the normative quality of Homer is to speak of his objectivity. Homer gives the reader the object itself without interposing his personality between it and the reader. He gives the person or thing or event without judging it, as Nature gives it. And to the extent that this is true of Homer or Tolstoi is not objectivity, but subjectivity, for every object in The Iliad or in Anna Karenina exists in the medium of authors love. This love is so pervasive, so constant and equitable, that it creates the illusion of objectivity. Nowadays the sense of evil comes easily to all. All share what Henry James called the imagination of disaster. The imagination of disaster is a bold and courageous function of the mind but it is also exclusive and jealous - it does not easily permit other imaginations to work beside it; it more readily conceives evil than that to which the evil may befall; or if it does conceive the thing that may be harmed, it is likely to do so in a merely abstract way. The readers taste for the literature which arises from this imagination is a natural one, yet it has in it the danger of evil being assumed equivalent to reality. The literary production since Tolstoi has been enormously brilliant and relevant, yet it is a striking fact that, although many writers have been able to tell their readers of the pain of life, virtually no writer has been able to tell them of pain in terms of lifes possible joy and although many have represented the distortion of human relationship, scarcely any have been able to make actual what the normalities of relationships are. But in Tolstoi the family is an actuality; parenthood is a real and not a symbolic condition; the affections truly exist and may be spoken of without embarrassment; love wakes and wanes is tender or quarrelsome. It is the low pitch of Tolstois imagination of disaster that reminds his readers of what life in its normal actuality is. Lionel Trilling is one of the few critics to have actually written at some length on the relationship between psychoanalysis and literature. No other critic has shown a comparable grasp of the significance of psychoanalysis and its perfect incorporation in his criticism. Trilling has brought psychoanalytic through in harmony with his criticism. Trilling understood psychoanalysis more fully than his contemporaries William Empson, Edmund Wilson and Kenneth Burke, who also made use of it in their criticism. His careful formulation of its concepts in non-technical language shows that he understands their boundaries as well as what they contain; his conclusions are conservative and judicially stated; his suggestions for new uses of these ideas in criticism are brilliant. And yet at the sometime a reluctance to follow to its logical conclusion can be seen in his essays. The great strength of Trillings essays is its recognition of the contributions which psychoanalysis has made and can make to the study of literature and even to its production. Most important of all is the demonstration that the regular processes of mental functioning are poetic in nature. It is obvious that Trilling has a grasp of what psychoanalysis tells us about the mind and its functioning. Trillings predominant interest as a critic was to effect a meaningfully dialogue between literature and life. He made the life of the mind a challenging critical pursuit, and searched for the filaments between literature and social sciences, philosophy and depth, 215
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
psychology and life. He always thought that literature is as much a criticism of the life as life is and ought to be a criticism of literature. He often affirmed that the artistic existence of a work was largely determined by its authentic critique of life. Trilling understood literature as an act of the moral imagination and as an agent of social and political health. It was the spiritual and moral health of a work that, in Trillings view, determined its enduring qualities. Trilling has never been dogmatic in his conclusions. Every yes in Trillings writing is followed soon after by a no in a rhythm nearly as regular as breathing or the systole and diastole of the heart. He was more likely to argue one side and than the other in alternation. The crisis of Trilling has to guard against making too much of any particular expression of opinion. Each essay is likely to present only a part of Trillings mind, reaction not only to the dominant cultural mood but also to a previous mood of his own. We need to speak not of fixed ideological positions but of alternations and fluctuations of mood. Trilling was a graceful man and the inherent gracefulness is shown itself principally in his writings. He wrote possibly the best critical prose of his time-supple, flexible, fluent, yet firm. This gracefulness was something of a moral quality or at least allied to the moral character of Trilling. Trillings outlook is uncompromisingly naturalistic and Freudian. Freud is the one fixed pillar of conviction to which he personally held. Freud himself was the primal father figure of psychoanalysis. If Trilling could be called doctrinaire about anything, it is in his adherence to Freudianism, Trilling remained an uncompromising rationalist to the end. If Mark Van Doren was Columbias most famous author, then Lionel Trilling was certainly its most famous critic. One of the most public of this centurys public intellectuals, Trilling became nationally known for both his scholarship and his literary criticism, which appealed to a wide audience. At Columbia, however, Trilling was also recognized as a gifted and dedicated teacher with a special commitment to undergraduate education. Such was Trillings reputation that students of all kinds were known to come to the College expressly to take Trilling. A native of Queens, he entered Columbia in 1921, when the College was beginning to experiment with general education courses. When he began teaching in the early 1930s, he was quickly recognized as one of the schools most acute minds, though also something of an iconoclast. He began teaching general education courses early in his careerin the 1930s, he co-taught a section of the Colloquium on Important Books with Jacques Barzun. Later he became a mainstay of Humanities A. The future generations of readers will read his writings and discover that they too have become better acquired with themselves, a reality about which the modern man is most anxious and uncertain. This reality of oneself is the utmost reality according to Trilling. The faculty of rational intellect, the idea of mind, that he had once described as a poor gray thing, was not so gray after all. In writers like Hazlitt, Arnold, Mill and George Orwell, this faculty was rigorously and obstinately exercised, which had led to its own self-transcendence and to its transformation into literature. In the writing of Lionel Trilling one can observe these processes at work. Trilling was our teacher and his writings are now a permanent part of our cultures heritage. 216
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
What made Lionel Trilling unique among literary critics was the way he applied the idea of the moral imagination to the writers he especially admired. In the course of discussing works by Henry James, E. M. Forster, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, George Orwell, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, among others, Trilling raised questions about how we live our lives, about the nature of good and evil, about the roles played by culture and biology, about our ambivalence in making moral choices. Readers came to look for something in Trilling that went beyond the insights of traditional literary criticism. They expected something closer to philosophical wisdom.
en t
2.
3. 4.
5. 6.
re
1.
What made Lionel Trilling a unique figure among literary critics? Elucidate. Trillings The Liberal Imagination mingles literary criticism with analyses of culture, politics, and history. Discuss.
What brings Trilling immediate national attention as a literary critic of the first order? Trilling shows how criticism, written with grace, style, and a self-questioning cast of mind, can itself become a form of literature, as well as a valuable contribution to how we think about society. Discuss. Trillings theory proposes that life itself is nothing but a round about course, a circuitous path imposed on living substance by external influences. Write a detailed answer. Trilling emphasized, instead of active freedom, a primordial, static, essentially conservative principle within the self that allows it to cohere and resist the disintegrative 217
fo
rT
In The Liberal Imagination and The Opposing Self Trilling combines literary and social criticism, and deals with the state of the individual in modern society through analysis. He has brought psychoanalytic thought in harmony with his criticism. These Postcolonial texts from the pen of Trilling introduce the key concepts of liberal imagination and conflict between self-definition and the influence of culture..They are the best critical works of Lionel Trilling. Trilling shows how criticism, written with grace, style, and a self-questioning cast of mind, can itself become a form of literature, as well as a valuable contribution to how we think about society. Through its interpretation of the major social, political and literary issues, the books have carved a niche for itself in the list of major Postcolonial texts of the contemporary era. In the end, it can be said that Lionel Trilling came to prominence as a spokesman for moral realism and the tragic view of life. This view of psychoanalysis is a useful tool in the hands of a critic and its base in his sense of history consisting of a number of forces - political, sociological, cultural, philosophical, psychological and so on. Primarily he is grouped in the historical school of criticism and critics belonging to this group laid emphasis on the study of the biography of an author, containing dynamic forces - psychological as well as social that played significant role in contributing the personality of the artist.
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
14.6 Let Us Sum Up
process of modernity. Explain. 7. 8. 9. Keats cannot be thought of as a man without being imagined in his occupation of a poet. Discuss in reference to the theory given in The Opposing Self. Keats thinks of Negative Capability as an element of intellectual power. Discuss. Being is sometimes animal; sometimes it is an appetite and a passion; sometimes it is almost a suspension of the movement of the breath and blood. Discuss Trillings analysis about Wordsworth in the light of this statement. Jane Austens irony is primarily a method of comprehension and secondarily a matter of tone. Substantiate your views as Trilling advocates in Mansfield Park.
10. 11. 12.
14.8 Bibliography
1.
2. 3. 4. 5.
en t
Trilling, Trilling. The Opposing Self: Nine Essays in Criticism. New York: The Yiking Press, 1955. ____________
re
Trilling, Trilling. The Liberal Imagination: Essays on Literature and Society. 1950; rpt, London: Mercury Books, 1961.
fo
Marcus, Steven. Lionel Trilling, 1905-1975, in Art, Politics and Will: Essays in Honor of Lionel Trilling. Ed. Quentin Anderson and et all. New York: Basic Books, 1977.
rT
Krupnik, Mark. Lionel Trilling and the Fate of Cultural Criticism. The Uses of Freud, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1961.
ra
di
Fraiberg, Louis. Lionel Trillings Creative Extension of Freudian Concepts, in Psychoanalysis and American Literary Criticism. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1960.
218
tio
na
lE
Trilling made the life of the mind a challenging critical pursuit, and searched for the filaments between literature and social sciences, philosophy and depth, psychology and life. Discuss.
du
ca
Jane Austene is the first novelist to represent society, the general culture as playing a part in the moral life. Do you agree with Trilling?
tio n
UNIT-15
ELAINE SHOWALTER: TOWARDS A FEMINIST POETICS
Literary Works Introduction to towards a Feminist Poetics 15.4.1 Three Phases of Feminist Writings 15.4.2 Cultural Feminism 15.4.3 Gynocritics 15.4.4 Critical Reception
15.5 15.6 15.7
Let Us Sum Up Review Questionso Bibliography
15.0 Objectives
One of Americas foremost academic literary scholars, Showalter is renowned for her pioneering feminist studies of nineteenth- and twentieth-century female authors and her provocative cultural analysis of womens oppression in the history of psychiatry. In her influential book A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Bront to Lessing (1977), Showalter advanced a new form of feminist literary theory under the term gynocriticism, offering an alternative framework for the interpretation of womens literary history. Likewise, in works such as The Female Malady: Women, Madness, and English Culture, 18301980 (1985) and Hystories: Hysterical Epidemics and Modern Culture (1997), Showalter forged the branch of feminist criticism known as hystory, an attempt to reinterpret and redefine the pejorative notion of womens hysteria as embodied in literary and social history. Showalters contributions to feminist criticism and womens studies have helped influence the canon of 219
en t
re
15.1 Introduction
fo
The following unit presents an overview of Showalters work and critical reception of her works. Besides it also discusses cultural Feminism and theory of gynocriticism
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
Biographical Information
British and American literature, bringing new visibility and legitimacy to often forgotten or under-appreciated female authors.
15.2 Biographical Information

Elain Showalter was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1941 to parents Paul Cottler and Violet Rottenberg Cottler. Though he never finished grammar school, Showalters immigrant father was a successful wool merchant. Showalters mother completed high school but remained at home in the role of housewife. Showalter chose to attend Bryn Mawr College against the wishes of her parents who both disapproved of their daughters intellectual leanings and educational ambitions. Nonetheless, Showalter completed her bachelors degree in English at Bryn Mawr in 1962 and subsequently pursued graduate studies in English at Brandeis University. Her parents also objected to her engagement to English Showalter, a French scholar, who was not Jewish. When Showalter began her graduate work at Brandeis, her parents stopped supporting her financially, and after she married Showalter in 1963, they disowned her. Showalter completed her masters degree in English at Brandeis in 1964 and embarked upon her doctoral studies at the University of California at Davis, where her husband had taken a teaching appointment in the French department. In 1970, after starting a family she moved to Princeton University, where her husband had accepted a faculty position, Showalter received her doctorate in English from University of California Davis and was hired as an assistant professor at Douglass College of Rutgers University in New Jersey. In the late 1960s, she became active in the new womens movement and served as president of the Princeton chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1969. Her involvement in NOW brought her into contact with other emerging feminist leaders, most notably feminist literary scholar Kate Millett and feminist art historian Linda Nochlin. During this early period of activism, Showalter edited Womens Liberation and Literature (1971) and published A Literature of Their Own, her first major work of literary scholarship. While at Douglass, she moved from assistant professor to associate professor in 1974, and became a full professor of English in 1983. She also served as a visiting professor of English and womens studies at the University of Delaware between 1976 and 1977. During this period, she received several important fellowships, including a Guggenheim fellowship in 1977 and a Rockefeller humanities fellowship in 1981. In 1984 Showalter left Douglass for Princeton University, where she accepted a position as a professor of English and was later named the Avalon Professor of Humanities. She has worked as an editor for several feminist scholarly journals and publishers, including Womens Studies, Signs, the Feminist Press, and Virago Press. A member of the Modern Language Association (MLA), Showalter served on its Commission on the Status of Women in the Profession from 1971 to 1972 and as the organizations president from 1998 to 1999. Showalter has also worked as a freelance journalist in both the print and broadcast media.
en t
Among the founding scholars of feminist literary criticism and womens studies in 220
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
As editor of The New Feminist Criticism: Essays on Women, Literature, and Theory (1985), Showalter brought together one of the most comprehensive collections of feminist literary theory and criticism to date, including examples of French feminism, gynocriticism, and African-American and lesbian feminist criticism. Showalter subsequently published Sisters Choice: Tradition and Change in American Womens Writing (1991), a critical counterpart to A Literature of Their Own, in which she traces the development of American womens writing through a wide-ranging literary survey and close studies of Margaret Fuller and Louisa May Alcott, Kate Chopins The Awakening, Edith Whartons The House of Mirth, and various gothic forms of womens writing from the 1960s. In the mid-1980s, Showalter extended her critical outlook from literary criticism to cultural history, focusing on embedded conceptions of mental health and the expression of sexual issues in terms of gender. 221
en t
re
America, Showalter broke new ground in the 1970s by creating a progressive literary theory known as gynocriticism. Unlike traditional literary criticism, gynocriticism focused on the history, themes, genres, and structures of literature by women, seeking to create a method of analyzing literature written by women and to develop models of interpretation based on female experience, rather than adapting male interpretive theories and models. Putting her theory into practice, Showalter edited the anthology Womens Liberation and Literature, consisting of excerpts from works considered essential to feminist literary study, such as Mary Wollstonecrafts A Vindication of the Rights of Women and Henrik Ibsens A Dolls House. In A Literature of Their Own, a revision and elaboration of her doctoral dissertation, Showalter rebukes the unfair critical standards applied to the work of English women writers in the nineteenth century and contends that, as a result, female artists paid a terrible price for their creative work in terms of guilt, self-loathing, and frustrated effort. Between 1975 and 1981, Showalter published three essays in academic journals that, taken together with A Literature of Their Own, form the foundation of her literary critical outlook and have become major tenets of American feminist literary criticism. The first, Literary Criticism (1975), published in the journal Signs, discusses two approaches to feminist criticismfeminist critique, which examines the anti-female biases of traditional readings and literary canons; and feminist reevaluation of women writers considered to be minor figures, as they represent the idea of a historical female subculture. Showalters next seminal essay, Toward a Feminist Poetics, was originally published in Mary Jacobuss anthology Women Writing and Writing about Women (1979). In this piece, Showalter introduced the term gynocritics and demonstrated its efficacy with a feminist critique of Thomas Hardys The Mayor of Casterbridge and its male-centered critical interpretations. In the third essay, Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness (1981), originally published in the journal Critical Inquiry, Showalter used the female cultural analysis developed by Oxford anthropologists Shirley and Edwin Ardner to argue that women form a muted group within the dominant male culture, a group whose reality and culture overlap with those of the dominant culture, but is not contained within it. She further maintained that womens writing constitutes a double-voiced discourse that always embodies the social, literary, and cultural heritages of both the muted and the dominant.
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
15.3 Literary Works
Showalters best known works are Toward a Feminist Poetics (1979), The Female Malady: Women, Madness, and English Culture (18301980) (1985), Sexual Anarchy: Gender at Culture at the Fin de Siecle (1990), Hystories: Hysterical Epidemics and Modern Media (1997), and Inventing Herself: Claiming a Feminist Intellectual Heritage (2001). In 2007 Showalter was chair of the judges for the prestigious British literary award, the Man Booker International Prize. Showalters Ph.D. thesis is called The Double Critical Standard: Criticism of Women 222
She is the Avalon Foundation Professor Emerita. Her academic honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship (197778) and a Rockefeller Humanities fellowship (198182). She is also the past-president of the Modern Language Association (MLA).
en t
re
Showalter is a specialist in Victorian literature and the Fin-de-Siecle (turn of the 19th century). Her most innovative work in this field is in madness and hysteria in literature, specifically in womens writing and in the portrayal of female characters.
fo
rT
ra
In The Female Malady, a study of the sexual politics of British psychiatric history, Showalter argued that a feminization of madness occurred in the nineteenth century, and that women became the primary recipients of psychiatric treatment, serving as the cultural exemplars of insanity. She further maintained that until the late 1970s, psychiatry treated women in the confining context of femininity, which was largely responsible for their psychological demoralization. Sexual Anarchy: Gender and Culture at the Fin-de-Sicle (1990) presents a literary and cultural analysis of the corresponding millennial crises of the 1890s and the 1990s, particularly as evident in the anxiety wrought by female sexual liberation and the corresponding scourges of syphilis and AIDS, and expressed in homoerotic elements of male adventure fiction by Robert Louis Stevenson and Rider Haggard, and late-twentieth-century films. Showalter returned to the subject of mental health in Hystories, in which she examines a variety of mysterious afflictions that emerged during the 1980s and 1990s, including chronic fatigue syndrome, Gulf War syndrome, alien abductions, and recovered memories of sexual abuse. Turning a skeptical eye to these ambiguous epidemics, Showalter asserts that all are psychosomatic conditions that reflect a proliferation of mass hysteria, amplified by widespread communication media and millennial anxiety. Inventing Herself: Claiming a Feminist Intellectual Heritage (2000) presents a survey of various feminist icons, a broad label that Showalter affixes to intellectuals such as Wollstonecraft, Fuller, Eleanor Marx, and Simone de Beauvoir as well as contemporary celebrity figures such as Oprah Winfrey and Diana, Princess of Wales. Showalter has also edited Daughters of Decadence: Women Writers of the Finde-Sicle (1993), an anthology of womens writings from the late-nineteenth century, Her husband, English Showalter, is a Yale-educated professor of 18th century French literature. The Showalters have two children, Michael Showalter, an actor and comedian, and Vinca Showalter LaFleur, a professional speechwriter.
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
Writers in England, 18451880 (1969) and was later turned into the book A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Bront to Lessing (1978), which contains a lengthy and much-discussed chapter on Virginia Woolf. The Female Malady: Women, Madness, and English Culture, 18301980 (1985) discusses hysteria, which was once known as the female malady and according to Showalter, is called depression today. Showalter demonstrates how cultural ideas about proper feminine behaviour have shaped the definition and treatment of female insanity from the Victorian era to the present. Sexual Anarchy: Gender at Culture at the Fin de Siecle (1990) outlines a history of the sexes and the crises, themes, and problems associated with the battle for sexual supremacy and identity. In the 1990s, Showalter began writing for popular magazines, bringing her work further into the public sphere than it ever had been during her academic career. Showalter was the television critic for People magazine in 1996. She explains her impetus to do popular cultural work: Ive always really loved popular culture, but it wasnt something serious intellectuals were supposed to be concerned about. I would like to be able to bring my background and my skills to subjects that do reach a wide audience (Plett). In Hystories: Hysterical Epidemics and Modern Media (1997) Showalter argues that hysteria, a medical condition traditionally seen as feminine, has persisted for centuries and is now manifesting itself in cultural phenomena in the forms of socially- and medically-accepted maladies. Psychological and physical effects of unhappy lives become hysterical epidemics when popular media saturate the public with paranoid reports and findings, essentially legitimizing, as Showalter calls them, imaginary illnesses (Hystories, cover). Showalter says Hysteria is part of everyday life. It not only survives in the 1990s, but it is more contagious than in the past. Newspapers, magazines, talk shows, self-help books, and of course the Internet ensure that ideas, once planted, manifest themselves internationally as symptoms (Plett). Inventing Herself: Claiming a Feminist Intellectual Heritage (2001) surveys feminist icons since the 18th century, situated mostly in the U.S. and the United Kingdom. Showalter covers the contributions of predominately intellectuals like Mary Wollstonecraft, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Camille Paglia. Noting popular medias importance to the perception of women and feminism today, Showalter also discusses the contributions of popular personalities like Oprah Winfrey and Princess Diana.
en t
Showalters book Inventing Herself (2001), a survey of feminist icons, seems to be the culmination of a long-time interest in communicating the importance of understanding feminist tradition. Showalters early essays and editorial work in the late 1970s and the 1980s survey the history of the feminist tradition within the wilderness of literary theory and criticism. Working in the field of feminist literary theory and criticism, which was just emerging as a 223
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
serious scholarly pursuit in universities in the 1970s, Showalters writing reflects a conscious effort to convey the importance of mapping her disciplines past in order to both ground it in substantive theory, and amass a knowledge base that will be able to inform a path for future feminist academic pursuit. Teaching Literature (2003) is essentially a guide to teaching English literature to undergraduate students in university. Showalter covers approaches to teaching theory, preparing syllabi and talking about taboo subjects among many other practical topics. Showalter says that teaching should be taken as seriously and given as much intellectual consideration as scholarship. Faculty Towers: The Academic Novel and Its Discontents (2005) is a study of the Anglo-American academic novel from the 1950s to the present.
15.4.1 Three Phrases of Feminist Writings

In Towards a Feminist Poetics Showalter traces the history of womens literature, suggesting that it can be divided into three phases feminine, from 1840 to the death of George Eliot in 1880; feminist, from 1880 to 1920, the date of female suffrage in America; and female, from 1920 to the present. (i)Feminine: In the Feminine phase (18401880), women wrote in an effort to equal the intellectual achievements of the male culture, and internalized its assumptions about female nature (New, 137). It is an interpretation of texts from a feminist perspective to expose clichs, stereotypes, and negative images of women. Generally focusing on male literary and theoretical texts, it also calls attention to the gaps in a literary history that has largely excluded writing by women. This approach dominated feminists criticism when it first emerged in the 1970s and is strongly linked to the decades political agendas; Kate Milletts Sexual Politics (1970), for example, describes the mistreatment of women in fiction by Henry Miller and others to the oppression of women in a patriarchal society. As early as 1975, Carolyn Heilbrun and Catherine Stimpson associated such readings with the righteous, angry first stages of feminist criticism. Showalter would go on to suggest (in 1979 and 1981) that by continuing to emphasize writing by men, the strategy of feminist criticism remained dependent on existing models of interpretation. It did, however, lay the foundation for what she identified as
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
224
tio
na
Working in the field of feminist literary theory and criticism, which was just emerging as a serious scholarly pursuit in universities in the 1970s, Showalters writing reflects a conscious effort to convey the importance of mapping her disciplines past in order to both ground it in substantive theory, and amass a knowledge base that will be able to inform a path for future feminist academic pursuit.
lE
du
15.4 Introduction to Towards a Feminist Poetics
ca
tio n
the second, gynocritical phase of feminist criticism, focusing on women as writers with values, methods, and traditions of their own. It has also led to more fully elaborated theories of women as readers, and continues to be an important tool in exposing the operation of sexism in culture and society. (ii) Feminist: The Feminist phase (18801920) was characterized by womens writing that protested against male standards and values, and advocated womens rights and values, including a demand for autonomy. (iii)Female: The Female phase (1920 ) is one of self-discovery. Showalter says, women reject both imitation and protesttwo forms of dependencyand turn instead to female experience as the source of an autonomous art, extending the feminist analysis of culture to the forms and techniques of literature
Rejecting both imitation and protest, Showalter advocates approaching feminist criticism from a cultural perspective in the current Female phase, rather than from perspectives that traditionally come from an androcentric perspective like psychoanalytic and biological theories, for example. Feminists in the past have worked within these traditions by revising and criticizing female representations, or lack thereof, in the male traditions (that is, in the Feminine and Feminist phases). In her essay Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness (1981), Showalter says, A cultural theory acknowledges that there are important differences between women as writers: class, race nationality, and history are literary determinants as significant as gender. Nonetheless, womens culture forms a collective experience within the cultural whole, an experience that binds women writers to each other over time and space (New, 260).Growing out of the radical feminism of the late 1960s and early 1970s, cultural feminism involves an analysis and usually a celebration of womens culture and community. The general strategy of cultural feminism is to seize upon many of those qualities traditionally ascribed to womensubjectivity, closeness to nature, compassion, reliance on otherand claim them as positive, even superior, traits. As opposed to the liberal feminist desire for access to existing male institutions, cultural feminists argue that these must be radically reimagined tin terms of such female values. Adrienne Rich, for example, called in 1974 for a woman-centered university that would provide childcare, sponsor research for rather than on human beings, and undo the usual hierarchies. Other thinkers associated with the movement include Mary Daly, Susan Griffin, Andrea Dworkin, and Carol Gilligan, to name only a few. Though most cultural feminists emphasize that womens association with certain female qualities is not innate but learned, and would offer them as alternative values for men as well as for women, their position has been criticized for seeming to reiterate conventional gender stereotypesthat women are nurturing, men aggressive, etc. In an attempt to stress what women have in common, cultural feminism has also often been guilty of obscuring crucial differences of race and class among women, generalizing about womens culture from what 225
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
15.4.2 Cultural Feminism
ca
tio n
15.4.3 Gynocritics
In contrast to [an] angry or loving fixation on male literature, the program of gynocritics is to construct a female framework for the analysis of womens literature, to develop new models based on the study of female experience, rather than to adapt male models and theories. Gynocritics begins at the point when we free ourselves from the linear absolutes of male literary history, stop trying to fit women between the lines of the male tradition, and focus instead on the newly visible world of female culture. (New, 131) This does not mean that the goal of gynocritics is to erase the differences between male and female writing; gynocritics is not on a pilgrimage to the promised land in which gender would lose its power, in which all texts would be sexless and equal, like angels (New, 266). Rather gynocritics aims to understand the specificity of womens writing not as a product of sexism but as a fundamental aspect of female Gynocritics reality.a term introduced by 226
en t
re
Showalter coined the term gynocritics to describe literary criticism based in a feminine perspective. Probably the best description Showalter gives of gynocritics is in Toward a Feminist Poetics:
fo
rT
ra
Showalter does not advocate replacing psychoanalysis, for example, with cultural anthropology; rather, she suggests that approaching womens writing from a cultural perspective is one among many valid perspectives that will uncover female traditions. However, cultural anthropology and social history are especially fruitful because they can perhaps offer us a terminology and a diagram of womens cultural situation (New, 266). Showalters caveat is that feminist critics must use cultural analyses as ways to understand what women write, rather than to dictate what they ought to write (New, 266). However isolationist-like Showalters perspective may sound at first, she does not advocate a separation of the female tradition from the male tradition. She argues that women must work both inside and outside the male tradition simultaneously (New, 264). Showalter says the most constructive approach to future feminist theory and criticism lies in a focus on nurturing a new feminine cultural perspective within a feminist tradition that at the same time exists within the male tradition, but on which it is not dependent and to which it is not answerable.
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
is actually the culture of women who are white, Western, and middle-class. Some radical feminists have further accused cultural feminists of retreating from political struggle into more private, spiritual quests, of making politics only personal, a matter of individual lifestyle. Notwithstanding these criticisms, it is cultural feminism that largely underlies the explosion of scholarship on women in the past two decades, and the approach has perhaps only been strengthened by having to confront essentialism and racial/class bias. In most areas of the humanities and social sciences, the examination of women in relation not to men but to other womenwomens culturehas opened up whole new areas of inquiry. The move toward gender studies in the 1990s has brought a return to looking at men and women together, seeing womens cultures in relation to dominate ones.
en t
Showalter has been widely appreciated by critics for her prodigious knowledge, insightful analysis, and accessible prose. Most feminist literary scholars have lauded her achievement in helping to legitimize and further develop feminist critique, particularly by reevaluating the social and historical context within which womens writing is studied. However, some critics have contended that Showalters reach often exceeds her grasp, faulting her for raising provocative questions and presenting a wealth of material without analyzing it, or trying unsuccessfully to force-fit her usually expansive subject matter into a rigid critical context. Others have criticized Showalter for omitting or glossing over women writers who do not fit neatly into her thesis or analytical construct. 227
re
Showalter acknowledges the difficulty of defining the unique difference of womens writing which she says is a slippery and demanding task in Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness (New, 249). She says that gynocritics may never succeed in understanding the special differences of womens writing, or realize a distinct female literary tradition. But, with grounding in theory and historical research, Showalter sees gynocriticism as a way to learn something solid, enduring, and real about the relation of women to literary culture (New, 249).Elaine Showalters A Literature of their own (1977) and Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubars The Mad woman in the Attic (1979). These books were enthusiastically welcomed as whey were the long waited major studies on women writers. Elaine Showalter in A Literature of their Own traces a female literary tradition in the English novel from the Brontes to the present day. First there is a prolonged phase of imitation of the prevailing modes of the dominant tradition and internalization of its standards of art and its views on social roles. Second there is a phase of protest against these standards and values, including a demand for autonomy. Finally there is a phase of self discovery a turning inward freedom from some of the dependency of opposition, a search for identity. An appropriate terminology for women writers is to call these stages feminine, feminist and female. (A Literature of Their Own) Thus, the British female tradition is a accordingly divided rather neatly into three phases (a) the Feminine phase (1840-80) (b) The Female phase from 1880 to 1920 (c) The Female phase from 1920 to present.
15.4.4 Critical Reception
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
Elaine Showalter in her 1979 Toward a Feminist Poetics and elaborated in her 1981 Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness, focuses on images, themes, plots, and genres, on individual authors and patterns of influence among women, in an effort to identify what is specifically characteristic of womens writing and to construct a female framework for the analysis of womens literature. Showalter called gynocritics the second phase of feminist criticism, because it succeeded and built upon an earlier phase of feminist critique, which had focused on women as the writers of male texts. The shift toward gynocritics in the U.S. and England was paralleled by the celebration of womens writing by French feminists such as Hlne Cixous and Luce Irigaray. Its rise also coincided with the rise of cultural feminism, and, as with cultural feminism, its focus on women has recently begun to give way to studies of gender.
15.5 Let Us Sum Up
2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
15.7 Bibliography
1. English, Deirdre. Wollstonecraft to Lady Di, The Nation. June 11, 2001. 228
en t
1.
What do you mean by Gynocritics? Describe in brief the three phases of feminist theory. By whom was Elaines feminist theory criticised and why ? Describe Shawalters History Of Womens Literature. Explain in detail the term Gynocritics. Elaine Showalter advocates Cultural Feminism. Why ?
re
fo
Showalter describes the development of Feminist theory as having a number of phases. The first she calls feminist critique - where the feminist reader examines the ideologies behind literary phenomena. The second Showalter calls Gynocritics - where the woman is producer of textual meaning including the psychodynamics of female creativity; linguistics and the problem of a female language; the trajectory of the individual or collective female literary career and literary history. The last phase she calls gender theory - where the ideological inscription and the literary effects of the sex/gender system are explored.
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
In later works such as Hystories and Inventing Herself, critics have hailed Showalters impressive synthesis of evidence, though some have found her arguments less substantial and convincing than in previous works. Despite such shortcomings, Showalter has been highly regarded for calling attention to complex issues surrounding gender and sexual politics. Many of her works, most notably A Literature of Their Own and The Female Malady, have endured as staples of feminist literary criticism in university curricula.
du
ca
tio n
In addition, some reviewers have objected to Showalters literary biases, especially in regards to the Victorian era, and her dubious psychoanalytic assumptions. Showalters works of cultural history, particularly The Female Malady and Sexual Anarchy, have received mixed reviews, but have been generally praised for their broad, interdisciplinary approach to literary, cultural, and social trends. Showalters feminist history of psychiatry in The Female Malady has been commended for raising disturbing and important questions about the politics of interpretation and the power of gender as a determining factor in psychiatric treatment. Her focus on the psychiatric patientrather than the history of the psychiatric professionhas also been viewed as a valuable contribution to the subject. However, some reviewers have faulted Showalter for her selective use of data and statistics, and her imprecise use of key terms, such as hysteria.
2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.
Moi, Toril. Sexual/Textual Politics. London: Routledge, 1985. Showalter, Elaine. A literature of their own: British women novelists from Bront to Lessing. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1977. Showalter, Elaine. Toward a Feminist Poetics, Womens Writing and Writing About Women. London: Croom Helm, 1979. Showalter, Elaine. Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness, Critical Inquiry University of Chicago: Winter, 1981. Showalter, Elaine. The Female Malady: Women, Madness, And English Culture, 1830 1980. New York: Pantheon Books, 1985.
Showalter, Elaine. Teaching literature. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003. Showalter, Elaine. Faculty Towers: The Academic Novel and Its Discontents. Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania, 2005.
rT
ra
en t
re
fo
di
tio
Showalter, Elaine. Inventing Herself: Claiming A Feminist Intellectual Heritage. New York: Scribner, 2001.
_____________
na
229
Showalter, Elaine. Hystories: Hysterical Epidemics And Modern Media. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.
lE
Showalter, Elaine. Sexual Anarchy: Gender And Culture At The Fin De Sicle. New York: Viking, 1990.
du
ca
Showalter, Elaine, ed. New Feminist Criticism: Essays On Women, Literature, And Theory. New York: Pantheon Books, 1985.
tio n
UNIT-16
SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR: A FEMINIST WITH A DIFFERENCE
Structure 16.0 16.1 16.2 16.3 16.4 16.5 16.6 16.7 16.8 16.9 Objectives Introduction
Woman through the Prism of Biology Woman as The Other A Critique of de Beauvoirs Feminism Let Us Sum Up Annotations and Bibliographical References Review Questions Bibliography
16.0 Objective
16.1 Introduction
Simone de Beauvoir, who was a noted novelist, essayist, playwright and social activist was born in Paris in 1908. She was an illustrious daughter of a lawyer. She took a degree in Philosophy at the Sorbonne University in 1929. She came in contact with a profound intellectual and existentialist thinker Jean Paul Sartre. They lived together as a couple. She taught at Lycee at Marseille and Rouen from 1931 to 1937 and at Paris from 1938 to 1943. After the Second World War, she emerged as one of the strongest leaders of the existentialist move230
en t
We have tried to project Simone de Beauvoir in this unit as an intellectual of integrity. The objective of this study is to highlight de Beauvoirs personality as a feminist activist, a profound scholar and an existentialist philosopher who lived with Jean- Paul Sartre and pioneered twentieth century feminism.
re
fo
The purpose of this unit is to place Simone de Beauvoir in the proper perspective so far as the Feminist scenerio is concerned. She was not recognised as a feminist by several Feminist critics in France and elsewhere. She was even called a misogynist by the younger generation of feminists. Attempt has been made to highlight her magnum opus Le Deuxieme Sexe as a seminal treatise on Feminism. Simone de Beauvoirs reputation as a feminist depends largely on Le Deuxieme Sexe.
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
Simone de Beauvoirs Seminal Ideas on Woman
Beauvoir became a well known figure in Post-war French, riding on the wave of popular interest in Sartres philosophy of existentialism which she adapted for her own purposes in The Second Sex. He played a prominent role in rejuvenating French intellectual life after 1930s and the German occupation of a larger part of the country during the Second World War war. Her novel Les Mandarins, which is a portrait of post war French, won her the Prix Goncourt in 1954. Simone de Beauvoirs journalism brought her fame on either side of the Atlantic. Her works are an authentic testimony of French intellectual life from the 1940s to 1970s. Simone de Beauvoir was involved, like Jean paul Sartre, in those socio political struggles which have defined contemporary France. She supported decolonisation in the 1950s and also Algerian independence in the Algerian war: She was one of the signitories in the 1960- petition opposing Gen De Gaulles policies in Algeria. She worked with Sartre on the Russell war crimes Tribunal (RWCT) an international body named after the British philosopher Bertrand Russell, set up to investigate the American action in Vietnam. She accompanied Sartre in many foreign countries at the invitation of writers associations. She went to Cuba with Sartre in 1960 at the invitation of Fidel Castros government. She went to China in 1955 and had a meeting with Mao-Tse-Dung. In 1963, she visited Russia and had a meeting with Nikita Khrushev. She was invited to Egypt by Mohammed Hassanein Heikal, the then chairman and editor-in-chief of Al-Ahram. Both Sartre ans Simone de Beauvoir were warmly received by Col.Nasser. She created a niche for herself as a professor of philosophy. She was influenced by Jean Genet and Gustave Flaubert, Claude Levi-Strauss Jacques Lacan. Deirdra Bair- an American scholar- wrote her biography.
en t
16.2 Simone de Beauvoirs Seminal Ideas on Woman

The cetnral thesis of Simone de Beauvoirs book The Second Sex is that since 231
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
ment working with Sartre on Les Temps Modernes. Her first novel LInvitee was published in 1943. La Song de Autres was published in 1945. Her play Les Bouches Inutiles was stayed at the theatre de Carrefours. Le Deuxieme Sexe (The Second Sex) apperared in 1949 and her novel Les Mandarins appeared in 1954 and won the Prix Goncourt- the highest literary award of France.She was one the most influential thinkers of her generation. She was awarded the Austrian State Prize for her outstanding contribution to European literature in 1978. She died in 1986. Her magnum opus The Second Sex (Le Deuxieme Sexe) is an uninhibited treatise on woman by a woman of wit and learning that Simone de Beauvoir was. It is a work on woman- her historical and contemporary situation in Western culture, which is scientifically accurate in matters of biology, comprehensive and frank in its treatment of womans individuality and social relations. She has portayed the independent woman of today. Her philosophy is based on Jean Paul Sartres existentialism. Modemoiselle de Beauvoirs book The Second Sex is not on philosophy but on woman. Though she is a French woman, she shows her first hand knowledge about the United States of America, Germany, Cuba and Soviet Russia. She draws heavily upon French life and customs in her elaborate account of womans past and contemporary situation.
du
ca
tio n
patriaichal times, women have in general been forced to occupy a secondary place in the world in relation to men though they constitute numerically half of the human race. She states that this secondary standing is not imposed of necessity by natural feminine characteristics but rather by strong environmental forces of educational and social tradition under the purposeful control of men. This, she maintains, has resulted in the failure of women to take a place of human dignity as free and independent existents, associated with men on a plane of intellectual and professional equality. There are many henpecked husbands and many women exert a considerable influence upon men in position of authority. Simone de Beauvoir holds that a larger fraction of wealth and property in the United States of America is in womens names and that womans dominance in American life is a fact. In the United States, a good many women do succeed in attaining position of professional independence. They have even children but it hardly had any adverse effect on their career competence. Simone de Beauvoir goes to the extent of saying that successful business-women are often conscious of the fact that neither men nor women commonly enjoy working under feminine direction: the boss should be a man. In the United States, about twenty million women- half of them married and many having children- are employed in the press, in radio programmes, and in agencies of public enlightenment. The independent woman as envisaged by Simone de Beauvoir is in ideal: Thousands of unmarried employed women entertain the hope that marriage might release them from job in which they have no real interest and they regard it as a temporary burden. It is only the highly trained professional woman with a profound interest in her job that attains independence and equality and it is the basis for ideal human relations between men and women. Dorothy Parker in her book Modern Women: The Lost Sex says that women should be regarded as human beings.2 If one goes for a walk with ones eyes open. it is enough to realise that humanity is divided into two classes of individuals whose clothes, faces, bodies, smiles, gaits, interests, and occupations are manifestly different. Perhaps these differences are superficial, perhaps they are destined to disappear. What is certain is that they do obviously exist. 3 The question, What is Woman? has been answered by Simone de Beauvoir in her book The Second Sex. Woman has ovaries, a uterus: these peculiatities imprison her in her subjectivity, circumscribes her within the limits of own nature.............She thinks with her gland.4 Aristotle said, We should regard the famale nature as afflicted with a natural defectiveness. and St.Thomas prounced woman to be an imperfect man and incidental being. This is symbolized in Genesis (Old Testament of the Bible) where Eve is depicted as created from what Bossuet called a supernumerary bone of Adam. 5 Michelet calls woman, the relative being Thus, woman is not regardrd as an autonomous being. Man can think of himself without woman. She cannot think of herself without man. remarks Benda in his Rapport dUriel. She is what man decrees. He is the subject, he is the absolute- she is the other.6
en t
The category of the Other is a premordial as consciousness itself. Otherness is a 232

re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
In the nineteenth century, the feminist quarrel became more or less a quarrel of partisans. As one of the consequences of the industrial revolution was the entrance of women into productive labour, the oppenents became rather aggressive. The bourgeoisie class kept the women cloistered into home but the working class could not afford it. The women, therefore, were made to work at lower wages. Feminism, thus, acquired an economic face. In proving womans inferiority, the anti-feminists began to draw upon not only religion, philosophy and theology but also upon biology and psychology. The conservative bourgeoisie saw the emancipation of women as a potential menace to their morality and male chauvinism. Simone de Beauvoir does not postulate woman as inferior to man though woman has been defined to perform functional roles of cooks, matrons, harlots, blue stockings, etc. Her very existence lies in man. Woman has been defined in relation to man. Anti-feminists say that Eve, having been created after Adam, is evidently a secondary being and that Christ was made a man. Simone de Beauvoir states If we are to gain understanding, we must get out of these ruts; we must discard the vague notions of superiority, inferiority, and equality10 which have hitherto corrupted every analysis of woman. We must start afresh without any preconceived notions, prejudices, taboos or complexes. In recent debates on the status of women, The United Nations has persistently maintained that the equility of the sexes is becoming a reality. Simone de Beauvoir discusses woman in The Second Sex from the biological, psychological and historical view points. She comes to the conclusion that The women of today are on the way to dethrone the myth of femininity; they are beginning to affirm their indepen233
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
fundamental category of human thought. To the natives of a country, all who inhabit other countries are foreigners; Jews are different for anti-Semites, Negroes are inferior to American Whites, aborigines art natives for colonists, proletarians are the lower class for the privileged.7 Very often this privilege upon inequality of numbers- the majority imposes its rule upon the minority or persecutes it. But women are not a minority, like the American Negroes or the Jews; there are as many women as there are men on the globe. They are, of course, different in terms of anatomy and physiology. Throughout history they have been subordinated to men. They cannot imagine a world without men. The division of the sexes is, therefore, a biologcal fact. Woman is the other, says Simone de Beauvoir, in a totality of which two components are necessary to one another.8 Woman has never been socially emancipated through mans need- the sexual desire and the desire for offspring. Master and slave are united by a reciprocal need (economic in nature) which does not liberate the slave. Woman has always been mans dependant but the two sexes have never shared the world of equality. Though man regards woman as the Other, she feels the necessary bond that ties her to man irrespective of reciprocity: She accepts her role as the Other. But the duality of the sexes, like any other duality, gives rise to conflict. Legislators, priests, philosophers, writers and scientists have endeavoured to show that the subordinate position of woman is will in heaven and advantageous on the earth. The religions invented by men reflect the wish for domination.9 Diderot strove to show that woman was, like man, a human being. Later John Stuart Mill came fervently to her defence.
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
dence in concrete ways; but they have not yet succeeded in living completely the life of a human being. Reared by women within a feminine world, their normal destiny is marriage, which still means practically the subordination to man.........11
16.3 Woman Through the Prism of Biology

To say that woman is a womb an ovary: she is female is derogatory because it defines her animality and imprisons her in her sex. Biology certainly demonstates the sexual differentiation. Aristotle conceded that woman carried and nourished the living seed created by the father alone and the foetus arose from the union of sperm and mentrual blood, woman furnishing only the passive matter while the male principle contributed force, activity, movement and life. Hippocrates held a similar doctrine, recognizing two kinds of seed- the weak or famale and the strong or male. The theory of Aritotle survived through the Middle Ages. Hegelian view is that Man is the active principle while woman is the passive principle. Today it is well known that the sex is determined by the chromosome constitution established at the time of fertilization. Simone de Beauvoir comments at this stage, What we should note in particular is that neither gamete can be regarded as superior to the other: when they unite, both lose their individuality in the fertilized egg12 or the embryo. The biological facts disprove any hierarchy of the sex and they fail to explain why woman is the Other. They do not condemn her to remain in the suordinate role13 in relation to man. From puberty to menopause, woman is a theatre of a play that unfolds within her body. Merleau Ponty states that woman is not a completed reality, but rather a becoming reality, and it is in her becoming that she should be compared with man and her possibilities should be defined. Her body is not a thing but a situation. Her body is not enough to define her as woman. Biology doesnt explain why woman is the Other. The reality of living in the world depends largely on the individual conscioisness. It is however a fact, as Jean-Paul Sartre and Merleau-Ponty have also endorsed that sexuality is co-extensive with existence. The fundamental thesis of Sigmund Freud is that all human behaviour is the outcome of desire i.e. the search for pleasure. Freud and Merleau-Ponty hold that anatomy is destiny. The body is the instrument of out grasp upon the world. Woman is weaker than man, she has less muscular strength, fewer red blood corpuscles, less lung capacity, she runs more slowly, can lift less heavy weights, can compete with man in hardly any sport; she cannot stand up to him in a fight.15 To all this weakness must be added the instability, the lack of control, and the fragility. In addition to the primary sexual characteristics, woman has various secondary peculiarities that are more of less produced through hormonal action. Generally woman is shorter than man and lighter: her skeleton is more delicate and the pelvis is larger in adaptation to the function of pregnancy and childbirth; her connected tissues accumulate fat and her contours are, thus, more rounded than those of man. The rotundity of her flesh accounts for her beauty and charm. Her appearance- structure, skin, hair- is distinctly different from man. Muscular strength is much less in woman: it is about two-thirds that of man; she has less respiratory capacity, the lungs and trachea being smaller. The larynx is relatively smaller. The specific gravity of the blood is much lower in
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
234
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
en t
Her individual life is not so rich as mans. This myth of woman being a weaker sex is based exclusively on the biological perception. Simone de Beauvoir observes that woman can be defined by her consciousness of her femininity ie her existential consciouness. Even psychoanalysis fails to explain why woman is the Other.15 She cannot be defined as a sexual organism. He awareness of herself is not totally defined by her sexuality. While Simone de Beauvoirs comprehensive work raises many interesting issues and evolves in particular a theory of womans subjectivity and identity. She observes that a woman is not born but she becomes one. She builds a historical model of womens subjugation, exploitation and sexploitation. In her view, economic subjugation is not sufficient to account for the existential Othering of women. She however notes that through labour woman has conquered her dignity as a human being and this economic factor remain the basic factor in her evolution. Simone de Beauvoir discards the theoretical streams of biology, psychoanalysis, and historical materialism to define woman. They are not perfectly explanatory for womens Otherization. Simone de Beauvoir indebted to the work of Levi-Strauss.Women represent the immanence of the flesh.She is physically opaque to herself and is unable to exteranalize her subjectivity to develop existential autonomy.
16.5 A Critique of de Beauvoirs Feminism

Simone de Beauvoir owes much of her reputation as feminist to her book The Second Sex. For her, it is not the question of women finding their place in society as it is, but of tranforming society itself. She demands not only an improvement in womens condition, but the abolition of the very system that engenders inequalities, injustice. Simone de Beauvoir realised that socialism would not lead to the emancipation of women and that the desired emancipation must be the work of women themselves. The Second Sex occupies the central position in the history of discourse on women and feminism. Simone de Beauvoir was a reference for many women. Betty Freidan, an American feminist, expressed her gratitude 235
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
16.4 Woman as the Other
ca
woman and there is less haemoglobin: women are, therefore, less robust and more disposed to anaemia than men. Their pulse runs faster, the vascular system is less stable, with ready blushing. Instability is a striking characteristic of her physical constitution. Among other things, man shows greater stability in the metabolism of calcium; Woman losing a great deal of it during menstruation and pregnancy. The ovaries exert a catabolic action which results into instability which causes problem in the ovaries, and in the thyroid gland, which is more developed in woman than in man. Irregularities in the endocrine secretions react on the sympathetic nervous system. Consequently, nervous and muscular control is uncertain. This lack in stability and control defines womans emotional behavour. It is bound up with circulatory fluctuationspalpitation of the heart, blushing, etc and it is on this account that women are subject to such displays of agitation such as shedding tears, hysterical laughter and the nervous crises. Women live as long as men, or longer but they are much more ailing. 14
tio n
to her for having enabled her to understand womens condition. The Second Sex provided the womens movement with a theoretical tool. Simone de Beauvoir performed the pioneering role as a feminist: The feminists in 1970s discussed the ideas of Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex such as the denunciation of cultural myths, the questioning of marriage, the family and motherhood, the boredom of housewives, the economic dependency of married women, the taboos surrounding womens sex lives, and their lack of freedom and so on. Some of them found her book The Second Sex a deeply embarassing document. Toril Moi wrote in 1986 that many feminists rejected the anti-feminism of exitentialism- that philosophy that underlies Simone de Beauvoirs theories. There are passages in The Second Sex where Simone de Beauvoir describes female sexual initiation in shocking terms. Women are compared to passive, empty receptacles, and their sexual arousal is reminscent of the oozing of a decomposing corpse. There are thus, clear overtones of disgust in her description of womens sexual desire. She even uses the term rut which is applied to animals. Some feminist critics such Toril Moi did accuse Simone de Beauvoir of being misogynistic in attitude. Her desire is to model women on men: she glamourizes maleness. She under estimates the womans worth and potentialities. She is enamoured of masculine values. Though Simone de Beauvoir has been subjected to misogynistic and anti-feminist attack, her work The Second Sex remains her magnum opus. The movement for the liberation or emancipation of women in France has been dubbed as anti-feminist and anti-egalitarian. But feminism as a very comprehensive term. Monique Rami- a French feminist historian- concedes that feminism designates everything that is spoken or written about the condition of women in society and every movement relatied to the condition of women society, if the condition is the outcome of the dominant masculine sex. This attitide irons out several contradictions. The stand of feminism which rejects Simone de Beauvoir accusing her of reformism and misogyny is because a sort of devalorization of feminine difference is seen in her work. Such critics confuse the social equality of the sexes with seeking to eradicate sexual difference. It only means that Simone de Beauvoirs reformism has not been appreciated by the critics like Antoinette Fouque. Alison T. Holland regards Simone de Beauvoirs feminism militant, She observes that her feminism deals with the situation in which women find themselves, with the very real problems they face and whose goal is the complete transformation of patriarchal society. In the 1970s Simone de Beauvoir began to participate in womens collective social campaignes with the women of her younger generation to improve their lives. She did not impose her authority but encouraged and supported the younger women. This is clearly borne out by the accounts of these women such as Christine Delphy and Anne Zelinsky. They have described Beauvoirs contribution to the Womens Liberation Movement (WLF). 16 She campaigned for the legalisation of abortion and free contraception. As a feminist activist she combated discrimination against women, especially in the working place. She rendered financial assistance to help women survivors of domestic violence and criminal sexual assault. Throughout the 1970s Simone de Beauvoirs position evolved, becoming more radical. The note of radicalisation can be traced in her writings and in the interviews she gave 236
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
during the nineteen- seventies and eighties. Her tone got harder, more bitter and more aggressive after 1970. Jacques Zephir says that she laid less emphasis on theoretical and philosophical considerations but preoccupied herself with practical solution to the womens problems. If Le Deuxieme Sexe had been written by this time, it would have been different in approach. She is quite explicit about it in her memoirs. This was precisely the period when Simone de Beauvoir approved of the new generation of feminist for rejecting her optimistic vision of the future, which she visualised at the end of Le Deuxieme Sexe. She told Alice Schwarzer that she was all praise for the new generation of feminists in taking their fate into their own hands.
16.6 Let Us Sum Up

17
Simone de Beauvoir has a notion of The Eternal Feminine and The Elernal Masculine which accounts for the battle of the sexes. This battle of the sexes is not implicit in the anatomy of man and woman. Society, being codified by man, decrees that woman is inferior to man. It is impossible, according to Simone de Beauvoir, to demonstrate the existence of an inherent rivalry between the human male and female on the basis of physiological nature. The hostility could be located in the intermediate terrain between biology and psychology. Freuds psychoanalysis goes a long way to interpret Woman. But it is not perfect. The emancipated woman of today wants to be active in society. The modern woman accepts masculine values: she prides herself in thinking, taking action, working and creating, on the same terms as men;....... she declares herself their equal.18 Man would be libeated through womans liberation. She does not believe that a change in womans economic condition alone was enough to transform her though this was and has been a basis factor in her evolution but until it has brought about the moral, social, cultured and other consequences that it promises and requires, the new woman cannot appear. Woman cannot be transformed unless society has made her really the equal of man. It seems quite certain to Simone de Beauvoir that sooner or later, they will arrive at complete economic and social equality and it will bring about and inner metamorphosis.19 The direct, natural, necessary relation of human creatures is the relation between man and woman: The relation between man and woman is the most natural relation of one human being to another human being. In January 1999, hundreds of women, of all ages, from all over the world gathered together in Paris to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Le Deuxieme Sexe. The conference was an opportunity to Simone de Beauvoirs contribution to feminism both in terms of theory and activism. Several testimonies revealed that Beauvoir had been a grand inspiration to them. She performed and provided a role model for women, through her rejection of marriage, and motherhood, through her equal and open relationship with Jean-Paul Sartre, through her intellectual, political and feminist commitment and militancy within the womens movement. Such testimonies are found in many books and articles written about her. Dorothy Kauffmann expresses the significance of Simone de Beauvoir s work and social activism: If a single woman is singled out as an inspiring pioneer for making changes in womens situation, it would be Simone de Beauvoir . Contemporary feminism begins with her monumental book Deuxieme Sexe. Since it publication in English
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
237
lE
du
ca
tio n
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.
Ibid,P.17 Ibid,P.20 Ibid,P.22 Ibid,P.27 Ibid,P.30 Ibid,P.43 Ibid,P.65 Ibid,P.P.63-64 Ibid,P.81
en t
MLF means in French Mouvement de Liberation des Femmes. Beauvoir, Simone de: The Second Sex (Trans.&Ed. H.M.Parshley) 238
re
fo
rT
Ibid,P.16
ra
Ibid,P.16
di
Ibid,P.15
tio
Simone de Beauvoir: The Second Sex. Trans.&Ed. H.M.Parshley. Jonathancape Ltd.1953. see Introduction PP.14-15.
na
Dorothy Parker: Modern Woman:The Lost Sex.
lE
Simone de Beauvoirs Le Deuxieme Sexe was edited and translated into English by H.M.Parshley and it was published by Jonathan Cape Ltd. 1953.
du
16.7 Annotations and Bibliographical References
ca
translation The Second Sex by H.M.Parshley, it has led to an unfailing awareness to women about their being and becoming. Simone de Beauvoir has been actively engaged in all major political struggles against womens oppression in France and elsewhere. It is a pity that she should be dismissed as an anti-feminist and misogynist by some women.20 It is worthwhile to highlight that it is largely as the author of Le Deuxieme Sexe that Simone de Beauvoirs reputaion stands or falls. One can refute or defend her ideas but it is crystal clear that this book represented the very lifeline which helped many feminists to make sense of their lives. Many of them wrote to her, Votre live ms t un grand secours. Votre livre ma sauve (Your work has been a great help and it has saved us) Toril Mai writes feelingly: ...........Beauvoir provided women all over the world with a vision of change. It is this stregnth of vision which is inspiring and that it is also the reason why The Second Sex remains the founding text of materialist feminism in the twentieth century. 21
tio n
18. 19. 20. 21.
Ibid,P.737 Ibid,P.738 Kauffmann,Dorothy: Simone de Beauvoir:Questions of Difference and Generation. Yale French Studies.72.P.128 Moi,Toril: Simone de Beauvoir:The Making of an Intellectual Woman. Oxford 1994. P.213 Blacknell.
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Discuss Simone de Beauvoir as a pioneer of Twentieth Century Feminism. Write a note on the concept of the Other as discussed in The Second Sex. What is the central thesis of Simone de Beauvoir about woman.
16.9 Bibliography
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
en t
re
Boon, Joseph Allen: Libidinal Currents:Sexuality and the Shaping of Modernism (University of Chicago Press.1998) Homans, Margaret (ed.) Virginia Woolf: A Collection of Critical Essays. Engliewood eliff. NJ. 1993 Kauffman, Dorothy: Interviews with Simone de Beauvoir. Signs Winter (1997) Laurence, Patricia Ontek: The Reading of Silence: Virginia Woolf in the English Tradition (Standford University Press 1991)
Le,Doeuff,M.: Simone de Beauvoir and Existentialism Feminist Studies Summer.1980 Leurs,Wyndhan: Men Without Art (London Cassel & Co. 1934) Mahon,J : Existentialism, Feminism and Simone de Beauvoir(London Macmillan. 1997) 239
fo
Bowlby, Rachel: Feminist Destinations and Further Essays on Virgina Woolf (Edinburg.1997)
rT
Booth: Greatness Engendered:George Eliot and Virginia Woolf. (N.Y. Comell University Press.1092)
ra
di
Beauvoir,Simone de: The Second Sex (Trans.& Ed. H.M.Parshley.Le Deuxieme Sexe.) (Jonathan Cape.Ltd.1953)
tio
na
Sum up Simone de Beauvoirs ideas on the Future of woman.
lE
du
ca
Write an essays on the biological description of woman on the basis of Simone de Beauvoirs book The Second Sex.
tio n
11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.
Marks,E. (ed.) Critical Essays on Simone de Beauvoir (Boston: Hall 1987) Marks, E and Courtivron: (eds) New French Feminism: An Anthology (Brighton. Harvester Press. 1981) Moi, Toril: Existentialism and Feminism: The Rhetoric of Biology in the Second Sex. (Oxford Blacknell. 1994) Moi,Toril: Simone de Beauvoir:The Making an Intellectual woman (Oxford Blacknell. 1994) Sandra Gilbert and Gubar, Susan: The Mad Woman in the Attic:The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth Century Imagination. (London.Yale University Press.1987)
Stephan, Sir Leslie; Charlotte Bronte (London.Smith Elder & Co. 1982) Showalter, Elaine: A Literature of their Own: British Women Novelists From Bronte to Lessing (Princeton University, Press 1977) Woolf, Virginia: Orlando (Harcourt Brace. 1982)
en t
re
fo
rT
Zwerdling, Alex: Virginia Woolf and the Real World (Berkeley. University of California Press. 1886) __________________
ra
Woolf, Virginia: Waves (Harcourt Brace & Co. 1978)
di
Woolf, Virginia: The Vovage Out (London. Penguins.1991)
240
tio
Woolf, Virginia: Collected Essays (London: Hogarth. 1982)
na
lE
du
ca
Scwartzer,A: Simone de Beauvoir Today (Trand. M.Howarth) (London Chatto & Windus 1984)
tio n
UNIT-17 FRANTZ FANON : THE WRETCHED OF THE EARTH (I)

About the Age Introduction of the Text 17.4.1 Extracts from the Preface 17.4.2 Detailed Explanation 17.4.3 Extracts from the Conclusion
17.6 17.7
17.0 Objectives
This unit would give an insight of
the worldwide black liberation struggles of the 1960, the role of violence in decolonalization,
en t
17.1 Introduction
Frantz Fanon was a distinguished Black psychiatrist and anticolonialist from Algeria. He published The Wretched of the Earth in 1963. The Wretched of the Earth, is considered by many to be one of the colonical books on the worldwide black liberation struggles of the 1960. He is writing in anger because of the need of addresses the role of violence in decolonization and the challenges and the class collisions and question of cultural hegemony in the creations and maintinance of a new countrys national consciousness. His approach to the matter is by no means a settled approach, but instead his attack is revolutionary. One of his 241
re
the challenges of political organization and class collisions the question of cultural hegemony in the creation and maintenance of new country national consciousness.
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
17.5
Let Us Sum Up
lE
du
ca
tio n
About the Author
main points is that the first will be the last and the last will be the first. He also uses many other ideologies that support his beliefs and viewpoint. This book is very interesting and would give students different idealogies and perspectives of the colonized world.

Frantz Fanon was born on the Caribbean island of Martinique, in the French Colony. He was born into a mixed family background: his father was the descendent of African slaves, and his mother was said to be an illegitimate child of mixed race, whose white ancestors came from Strasboury in Alsace. His family was socioeconomically middle class. He left Martinique in 1943, when he volunteered to fight with the free French in World War II and he remained with the French after the war to study medicine and psychiatry on scholarship in Lyon.
Fanon left French for Algeria, where he had been stationed for sometime during the war. He secured an appointment as a psychiatrist at Blida Joinvilla psychiatric Hospital. He pioneered in socio-therapy which connected him with his patients, cultural backgrounds. Following the outbreak of the Algerian revolution in Nov. 1954 he joined the FLN liberation Front as a result of contacts with Dr. Pierre Chanlet at Blide in 1955. In 1956 he formally resigned his post and fled to Tunisia and began working openly with the Algerian independence movement.
He died in Bethesda, Maryland, on December 6, 1961 under the name of Ibrahim Fanon. He was buried at Algeria with honour by the Algerian National Army of Liberation.
17.3 About the Age

Postcolonialism in Africa refers in general to the era between 1960 and 1970, during which time many African nations gained political independence from their colonial rulers. Many authors writing during this time, and even during colonial times, saw themselves as both artists and political activists, and their works reflected their concerns regarding the political and social 242
en t
While in Ghana, Fanon developed Leukemia, and though encouraged by friends to rest, he refused. He completed his final and most fiery indictment of the colonial condition, The Wretched of the Earth in months.
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
While in France, Fanon wrote his first book, Black Skin White Masks, an analysis of the effects of colonial subjugation on humanity. This book was originally his doctoral-thesis submitted at Lyon and entitled, The Desalination of the Black Man. The rejection of the thesis had Fanon seeking to have the book published. It was Frances Jeanson his mentor who insisted on the new title. For Fanon, being colonized by a language had larger implications for ones political consciousness. To speak..........means above all to assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization. (p.17-18) Speaking French means that one accepts, or is coerced into accepting, the collective consciousness of the French, which identifies blackness with evil and sin.
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
en t
Postcolonial studies gained popularity in England during the 1960s with the establishment of Commonwealth literaturein the United States, this phenomenon did not reach its zenith until the 1990s. Because postcolonial writers are studied by and read most often by Western audiences, their works are often seen as being representative of the Third World and studied as much for the anthropological information they provide as they are as works of fiction. This, notes Bart Moore-Gilbert in his Postcolonial Theory, has led to the creation of a criticism that is unique in its set of reading practices, which are preoccupied principally with analysis of cultural forms which mediate, challenge, or reflect upon relations of domination and subordination. In his study of postcolonial African fiction, Graham Huggan also comments on this phenomenon, theorizing that western critics need to make an increased effort to expand their interpretive universe in order to studyAfrican texts as fiction, rather than as windows into the cultures they represent. This difficulty is further compounded by the fact that many indigenous African authors in the postcolonial era and beyond remain un-translated, and are thus unavailable to western critics. In the meantime, the canon of translated or Europeanlanguage works that are available, although but a minor part of African literature in general, have come to define postcolonial literature and its critical response. African writers are themselves very conscious of this gap between texts that are accessible to the West and those that remain in Africa. This unit aims at focusing on two eminent African poets who have continued to enrich the cultures at the expense of their own. Here it is pertinent to mention that truthful and fruitful human experience forms the basis for written expression in any branch of literature. Conveyed through a language of international exchange, it can reach a wider audience for whom it becomes a useful reference in times of need. The English language attained international prominence due to several reasons; one of the most important being colonization. As in other countries of the Commonwealth, English was imposed on Anglophone Africa as a means of easy communication and administrative
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
243
lE
du
conditions of their countries. As nation after nation gained independence from their colonial rulers, beginning in the mid-twentieth century, a sense of euphoria swept through Africa as each country celebrated its independence from years of political and cultural domination. Much of early postcolonial writing reflects this sense of freedom and hope. In the years that followed, as many African nations struggled to reinvigorate long-subservient societies and culture, writers of postcolonial Africa began reflecting the horrors their countries suffered following decolonization, and their writing is often imbued with a sense of despair and anger, at both the state of their nations and the leaders who replaced former colonial oppressors. This sense of disillusionment, reflected in the works ofAfrican writers and poets, marked the beginning of a major change in African intellectual and literary development. Beginning in the 1970s, the direction of African writing began to change, with writers forging new forms of expression reflecting more clearly their own thoughts about culture and politics in their works. The writing of this period and later moves away from the subject matter of postcolonial Africa, and moves into the realm of new and realistic texts that reflect the concerns of their respective nations.
ca
tio n
convenience. It is a historical irony that the same language serves the African writer in voicing his thoughts and feelings to the world at large. While discussing the future of English, Simeon Porter observes, It will adopt to meet new needs and in that incessant reshaping and adaptation, every speaker and writer consciously or unconsciously will play some part. (181) Today, the prediction of Porter came true of African writing in English. It brought strength and appeal to the English language by adding a large range of new vocabulary and usage. Writing on the problems faced by the African English writers, Chinua Achebe the famous Nigerian writer says, The African writer should aim to use English that brings out his message without altering the language to the extent that its value as a medium of international exchange will be lost. He should aim at fashioning out an English, which is at once unusual and able to carry his peculiar experience. (61) It is applaud-able that the writers of Africa succeeded in accomplishing the above task set by Achebe, which is by any means not an easy one. Their successful integration of native experience and expression in an alien tongue received worldwide acclaim.
17.4.1 Extracts from the Preface

They would do well to read Fanon; for he shows clearly that this irrepressible violence is neither sound and fury, nor the resurrection of savage instincts, nor even the effect of resentment: it is man re-creating himself. I think we understood this truth at one time, but we have forgotten it- that no gentleness can efface the marks of violence; only violence itself can destroy them. The native cures himself of colonial neurosis by thrusting out the settler through force of arms. When his rage boils over, he rediscovers his lost innocence and he comes to know himself in that he himself creates his self. Far removed from his war, we consider it as triumph of barbarism; but of it own volition it achieves, slowly but surely, the emancipation of the rebel, for bit it destroys in him and around him the colonial gloom. Once begun, it is a war that gives no quarter. You may fear or be feared; that is to say, abandon yourself to the disassociations of a sham existence or conquer your birthright of unity. When the peasant takes a gun in his hands, the old myths grow dim and the prohibitions are one by one forgotten. The rebels weapon is the proof of his humanity. For in the first days of the revolt you must kill: to shoot down a European is to kill two birds with one stone, to destroy an oppressor and the man he oppresses at the same time: there remain a dead man, and a free man; the survivor, for
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
The Wretched of the Earth was the most important work on decolonization. It was first published in 1961 by Francis Maspero and has a preface by Jean-Paul Sartre. In it Fanon analyses the role of class, race, national culture and violence in the struggle for national liberation.
di
244
tio
17.4 Introduction of the Text
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
the first time, feels a National soil under his foot. And when you have read Fanons last chapter, you will be convinced that it would be better for you to be a native at the uttermost depth of his misery than to be a former settler. It is not right for a police official to be obliged to torture for ten hours a day; at that rate, his nerves will fall to bits, unless the torturers are forbidden in their own interests to work overtime. When it is desirable that the morality of the Nation and the Army should be protected by the rigours of the law, it is not right that the former should systematically demoralize the letter, nor that a country with a Republican tradition should confide hundreds and thousands of its young folk to the care of putschist officers. It is not right, my fellow-countrymen, you who know very well all the crimes committed in our name, its not at all right that you do not breathe a word about them to anyone, not even to your own soul, for fear of having to stand in judgement on yourself. I am willing to believe that at the beginning you did not realize what was happening; later, you doubted whether such things could be true; but now you know, and still you hold your tongues. Eight years of silence; what degradation! And your silence is all of no avail; today the blinding sun of torture is at its zenith; it lights up the whole country. Under that merciless glare, there is not a laugh that does not ring false, not a face that is not painted to hide fear or anger, not a single action that does not betray our disgust, and our complicity. It is enough today for two French people to meet together for there to be a dead man between them. One dead man did I say? In other days France was the name of a country. We should take care that in 1961 it does not become the name of a nervous disease. Will we recover? Yes. For violence, like Achilles lance, can heal the wounds that it has inflicted. Today, we are bound hand and foot, humiliated and sick with fear; we cannot fall lower. Happily this is not yet enough for the colonialist aristocracy; it cannot complete its delaying mission in Algeria until it has first finished colonizing the French. Every day we retreat in front of the battle, but you may be sure that we will not avoid it; the killers need it; theyll go for us and hit out blindly to left and right. Thus the day of magicians and fetishes will end: you will have to fight, or rot in concentrations camps. This is the end of the dialectic; you condemn this war but do not yet dare to declare yourselves to be on the side of the Algerian fighters; never fear, you can count on the settlers and the hired soldiers; theyll make you take the plunge. Then, perhaps, when your back is to the wall, you will let loose at last that new violence which is raised up in you by old, oft-repeated crimes. But, as they say, thats another story: the history of mankind. The time is drawing near, I am sure, when we will join the ranks of those who makes it.
en t
The Wretched of the Earth presents a durable intellectual framework based on medical as well as sociological evidence, for the abolition of colonial (white) rule. The book lays out a clear blueprint for revolution and considers all of its potential consequences, for rebel and colonialist alike. The book is divided into five chapters: 245
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
Chapter 1-Concerning Violence Summary and Analysis Upon reading the first page, indeed the first paragraph, the reader realizes at once there is a vast difference between Frantz Fanons approach to the black struggle and that of Rev. Martin Luther Kings nonviolent consciousness raising. Fanon asserts that decolonization is always a violent struggle and those who would undertake it must be prepared to get and keep the upper hand. Although Frantz Fanon does not endorse violence per se, he describes the act of colonization wherein one class of human beings subjugates another as pure violence, often accompanied by the brutality of knives and guns. Wherever there is colonization there is institutionalized violence of a type that systematically robs the native of his civil, economic, and human rights, and is thus a highly abnormal and unnatural condition Chapter 2-Spontaneity: Its Strength and Weakness
Chapter 3-The Pitfalls of National Consciousness
Chapter 4-On National Culture As the stirrings of revolt begin to energize the natives, a need arises for new forms of cultural expression to give voice to the new consciousness, Fanon says. Since colonialism has throttled not only the native identity but also the indigenous culture and infused the culture of the mother country into the natives, an artistic renaissance often must be preceded by deep research into pre-existing native culture.
In this final chapter, Fanon the psychiatrist presents his most incendiary evidence for revolution at any cost to overthrow colonialism. As a physician pledged to follow the Hippocratic oath, Fanon must think first, last and always of the welfare of his patients. In this instance, his patients are the mentally disabled of an Algerian psychiatric hospital.
The Wretched of the Earth (French:Les Damnes de la Terre) is Frantz Fanons most famous work, written during and regarding the Algerian struggle for independence from colo246
en t
Chapter 5-Colonial War and Mental Disorders
17.4.2 Detailed Explanation
re
fo
rT
ra
Fanon discusses at length the fragile state of national unity and the threats to its survival that could undermine and eventually destroy the decolonialist rebellion. He also poses the age-old Marxist question whether a bourgeoisie is a phase of the revolution that can be, in effect, skipped on the road to independence.
di
tio
na
In this chapter, Fanon explores in depth the dynamics of an effective anti-colonialist revolution. He describes and explains the push-me-pull-you transitional points that mark the road from colonialism to independence, drawing from recent history and his own knowledge of the Algerian situation.
lE
du
ca
tio n
nial rule. In The Wretched of the Earth Fanon develops the Manichean perspective implicit in The Black Skin, White Masks. The Black Skin, White Masks is part manifesto, part analysis; it both presents Fanons personal experience as a black intellectual in a whites world and elaborated the ways in which the colonizer/colonized relationship is normalised as psychology. As a psychiatrist, Fanon explored the psychological effect of colonisation on the psyche of a nation as well as its broader implications for building a movement for decolonization. For Fanon in The Wretched of the Earth, the colonizers presence in Algeria is based sheerly on military strength. Any resistance to this strength must also be a violent nature because it is the only language the colonizer speaks. The relevance of language and the reformation of discourse pervades much of his work, which is why it is so interdisciplinary, spanning psychiatric concerns to encompass politics, sociology, anthropology, linguistics and literature. A controversial introduction to the text by Jean-Paul Sartre presents the thesis as an advocacy of violence. This focus derives from the books opening chapter Concerning Violence which is a caustic indictment of colonialism and its legacy. It discusses violence as a means of liberation and a catharsis to subjugation. It also details the violence of colonialism as a process itself. He mentions the well-known crimes of Hanoi and Madagascar to emphaslize his nonresentment. He also lays emphasis on The New Man and Black Consciousness. Both as a theorist influenced by intrigued and as an advocate of resistance and revolution, especially with relation to violence in revolution The Wretched of the Earth constitute a warning to the oppressed of the dangers they face in the whirlwind of decolonization and the transition to a neo-colonialist/globalised world. Colonial domination, because it is total and tends to oversimplify, very soon manages to disrupt in spectacular fashion the cultural life of a conquered people. This cultural obliteration is made possible by the negation of national reality, by new legal relations introduced by the occupying power, by the banishment of the natives and their customs to outlying districts by colonial society, by expropriation, and by the systematic enslaving of men and women. He believed that in the colonial situation, dynamism is replaced fairly quickly by a substantification of the attitudes of the colonising power. The area of culture is then marked off by fences and signposts. These are in fact so many defence mechanisms of the most elementary type, comparable for more than one good reason to the simple instinct for preservation. The interest of this period he said is that the oppressor does not manage to convince himself of the objective non-existence of the oppressed nation and its culture. Every effort is made to bring the colonised person to admit the inferiority of his culture which has been transformed into instinctive patterns of behaviour, to recognise the unreality of his nation, and, in the last extreme, the confused and imperfect character of his own biological structure.
en t
Vis--vis this state of affairs, the natives reactions are not unanimous While the mass of the people maintain intact traditions which are completely different from those of the colonial situation, and the artisan style solidifies into a formalism which is more and more stereotyped, 247
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
the intellectual throws himself in frenzied fashion into the frantic acquisition of the culture of the occupying power and takes every opportunity of unfavorably criticizing his own national culture, or else takes refuge in setting out and substantiating the claims of that culture in a way that is passionate but rapidly becomes unproductive. The common nature of these two reactions lies in the fact that they both lead to impossible contradictions. Whether a turncoat or a substantialist the native is ineffectual precisely because the analysis of the colonial situation is not carried out on strict lines. The colonial situation calls a halt to national culture in almost every field. Within the framework of colonial domination there is not and there will never be such phenomena as new cultural departures or changes in the national culture. Here and there valiant attempts are sometimes made to reanimate the cultural dynamic and to give fresh impulses to its themes, its forms and its tonalities. The immediate, palpable and obvious interest of such leaps ahead is nil. But if we follow up the consequences to the very end we see that preparations are being thus made to brush the cobwebs off national consciousness to question oppression and to open up the struggle for freedom. A national culture under colonial domination is a contested culture whose destruction is sought in systematic fashion. It very quickly becomes a culture condemned to secrecy. This idea of clandestine culture is immediately seen in the reactions of the occupying power which interprets attachment to traditions as faithfulness to the spirit of the nation and as a refusal to submit. This persistence in following forms of culture which are already condemned to extinction is already a demonstration of nationality; but it is a demonstration which is a throw-back to the laws of inertia. There is no taking of the offensive and no redefining of relationships. There is simply a concentration on a hard core of culture which is becoming more and more shrivelled up, inert and empty. By the time a century or two of exploitation has passed there comes about a veritable emaciation of the stock of national culture. It becomes a set of automatic habits, some traditions of dress and a few broken-down institutions. Little movement can be discerned in such remnants of culture; there is no real creativity and no overflowing life. The poverty of the people, national oppression and the inhibition of culture are one and the same thing. After a century of colonial domination we find a culture which is rigid in the extreme, or rather what we find are the dregs of culture, its mineral strata. The withering away of the reality of the nation and the deathpangs of the national culture are linked to each other in mutual dependences. This is why it is of capital importance to follow the evolution of these relations during the struggle for national freedom. The negation of the natives culture, the contempt for any manifestation of culture whether active or emotional and the placing outside the pale of all specialised branches of organisation contribute to breed aggressive patterns of conduct in the native. But these patterns of conduct are of the reflexive type; they are poorly differentiated, anarchic and ineffective. Colonial exploitation, poverty and endemic famine drive the native more and more to open, organised revolt. The necessity for an open and decisive breach is formed progressively and
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
248
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
imperceptibly, and comes to be felt by the great majority of the people. Those tensions which hitherto were non-existent come into being. International events, the collapse of whole sections of colonial empires and the contradictions inherent in the colonial system strengthen and uphold the natives combativity while promoting and giving support to national consciousness. These new-found tensions which are present at all stages in the real nature of colonialism have their repercussions on the cultural plane. In literature, for example, there is relative overproduction. From being a reply on a minor scale to the dominating power, the literature produced by natives becomes differentiated and makes itself into a will to particularism. The intelligentsia, which during the period of repression was essentially a consuming public, now themselves become producers. This literature at first chooses to confine itself to the tragic and poetic style; but later on novels, short stories and essays are attempted. It is as if a kind of internal organisation or law of expression existed which wills that poetic expression become less frequent in proportion as the objectives and the methods of the struggle for liberation become more precise. Themes are completely altered; in fact, we find less and less of bitter, hopeless recrimination and less also of that violent, resounding, florid writing which on the whole serves to reassure the occupying power. The colonists have in former times encouraged these modes of expression and made their existence possible. Stinging denunciations, the exposing of distressing conditions and passions which find their outlet in expression are in fact assimilated by the occupying power in a cathartic process. To aid such processes is in a certain sense to avoid their dramatisation and to clear the atmosphere. But such a situation can only be transitory. In fact, the progress of national consciousness among the people modifies and gives precision to the literary utterances of the native intellectual. The continued cohesion of the people constitutes for the intellectual an invitation to go farther than his cry of protest. The lament first makes the indictment; then it makes an appeal. In the period that follows, the words of command are heard. The crystallisation of the national consciousness will both disrupt literary styles and themes, and also create a completely new public. While at the beginning the native intellectual used to produce his work to be read exclusively by the oppressor, whether with the intention of charming him or of denouncing him through ethnical or subjectivist means, now the native writer progressively takes on the habit of addressing his own people.
en t
On another level, the oral tradition - stories, epics and songs of the people - which formerly were filed away as set pieces are now beginning to change. The storytellers who used to relate inert episodes now bring them alive and introduce into them modifications which are increasingly fundamental. There is a tendency to bring conflicts up to date and to modernise the kinds of struggle which the stories evoke, together with the names of heroes and the types of weapons. The method of allusion is more and more widely used. The formula This all happened long ago is substituted by that of What we are going to speak of happened somewhere else, but it might well have happened here today, and it might happen tomorrow. The example of Algeria is significant in this context. From 1952-3 on, the storytellers, who were before that time stereotyped and tedious to listen to, completely overturned their traditional methods of storytelling and the contents of their tales. Their public, which was formerly scattered, 249
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
became compact. The epic, with its typified categories, reappeared; it became an authentic form of entertainment which took on once more a cultural value. Colonialism made no mistake when from 1955 on it proceeded to arrest these storytellers systematically. Where handicrafts are concerned, the forms of expression which formerly were the dregs of art, surviving as if in a daze, now begin to reach out. Woodwork, for example, which formerly turned out certain faces and attitudes by the million, begins to be differentiated. The inexpressive or overwrought mask comes to life and the arms tend to be raised from the body as if to sketch an action. Compositions containing two, three or five figures appear. The traditional schools are led on to creative efforts by the rising avalanche of amateurs or of critics. This new vigour in this sector of cultural life very often passes unseen; and yet its contribution to the national effort is of capital importance. By carving figures and faces which are full of life, and by taking as his theme a group fixed on the same pedestal, the artist invites participation in an organised movement.
He felt that the repercussions of the awakening of national consciousness in the domains of ceramics and pottery-making, the same observations may be drawn. Formalism is abandoned in the craftsmans work. Jugs, jars and trays are modified, at first imperceptibly, then almost savagely. The colours, of which formerly there were but few and which obeyed the traditional rules of harmony, increase in number and are influenced by the repercussion of the rising revolution. Certain ochres and blues, which seemed forbidden to all eternity in a given cultural area, now assert themselves without giving rise to scandal. In the same way the stylisation of the human face, which according to sociologists is typical of very clearly defined regions, becomes suddenly completely relative. The specialist coming from the home country and the ethnologist are quick to note these changes. On the whole such changes are condemned in the name of a rigid code of artistic style and of a cultural life which grows up at the heart of the colonial system. The colonialist specialists do not recognise these new forms and rush to the help of the traditions of the indigenous society. It is the colonialists who become the defenders of the native style. We remember perfectly, and the example took on a certain measure of importance since the real nature of colonialism was not involved, the reactions of the white jazz specialists when after the Second World War new styles such as the be-bop took definite shape. The fact is that in their eyes jazz should only be the despairing, broken-down nostalgia of an old Negro who is trapped between five glasses of whisky, the curse of his race, and the racial hatred of the white men. As soon as the Negro comes to an understanding of himself, and understands the rest of the world differently, when he gives birth to hope and forces back the racist universe, it is clear that his trumpet sounds more clearly and his voice less hoarsely. The new fashions in jazz are not simply born of economic competition. We must without any doubt see in them one of the consequences of the defeat, slow but sure, of the southern world of the United States. And it is not utopian to suppose that in fifty years time the type of jazz howl hiccupped by a poor misfortunate Negro will be upheld only by the whites who believe in it as an expression of nigger-hood, and who are faithful to this arrested image of a type of relationship.
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
250
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
The nation is not only the condition of culture, its fruitfulness, its continuous renewal, and its deepening. It is also a necessity. It is the fight for national existence which sets culture moving and opens to it the doors of creation. Later on it is the nation which will ensure the conditions and framework necessary to culture. The nation gathers together the various indispensable elements necessary for the creation of a culture, those elements which alone can give it credibility, validity, life and creative power. In the same way it is its national character that will make such a culture open to other cultures and which will enable it to influence and permeate other cultures. A non-existent culture can hardly be expected to have bearing on reality, or to influence reality. The first necessity is the re-establishment of the nation in order to give life to national culture in the strictly biological sense of the phrase. Thus we have followed the break-up of the old strata of culture, a shattering which becomes increasingly fundamental; and we have noticed, on the eve of the decisive conflict for national freedom, the renewing of forms of expression and the rebirth of the imagination. There 251
en t
re
fo
A frequent mistake, and one which is moreover hardly justifiable is to try to find cultural expressions for and to give new values to native culture within the framework of colonial domination. This is why Fanon arrive at a proposition which at first sight seems paradoxical: the fact that in a colonised country the most elementary, most savage and the most undifferentiated nationalism is the most fervent and efficient means of defending national culture. For culture is first the expression of a nation, the expression of its preferences, of its taboos and of its patterns. It is at every stage of the whole of society that other taboos, values and patterns are formed. A national culture is the sum total of all these appraisals; it is the result of internal and external extensions exerted over society as a whole and also at every level of that society. In the colonial situation, culture, which is doubly deprived of the support of the nation and of the state, falls away and dies. The condition for its existence is therefore national liberation and the renaissance of the state.
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
We have noted the appearance of the movement in cultural forms and we have seen that this movement and these new forms are linked to the state of maturity of the national consciousness. Now, this movement tends more and more to express itself objectively, in institutions. From thence comes the need for a national existence, whatever the cost.
ca
tio n
Well before the political or fighting phase of the national movement an attentive spectator can thus feel and see the manifestation of new vigour and feel the approaching conflict. Fanon upholds the fact that the native will note unusual forms of expression and themes which are fresh and imbued with a power which is no longer that of invocation but rather of the assembling of the people, a summoning together for a precise purpose. Everything works together to awaken the natives sensibility and to make unreal and inacceptable the contemplative attitude, or the acceptance of defeat. The native rebuilds his perceptions because he renews the purpose and dynamism of the craftsmen, of dancing and music and of literature and the oral tradition. His world comes to lose its accursed character. The conditions necessary for the inevitable conflict are brought together.
remains one essential question: what are the relations between the struggle - whether political or military - and culture? Is there a suspension of culture during the conflict? Is the national struggle an expression of a culture? Finally, ought one to say that the battle for freedom, however fertile a posteriori with regard to culture, is in itself a negation of culture? In short is the struggle for liberation a cultural phenomenon or not? He believe that the conscious and organised undertaking by a colonised people to reestablish the sovereignty of that nation constitutes the most complete and obvious cultural manifestation that exists. It is not alone the success of the struggle which afterwards gives validity and vigour to culture; culture is not put into cold storage during the conflict. The struggle itself in its development and in its internal progression sends culture along different paths and traces out entirely new ones for it. The struggle for freedom does not give back to the national culture its former value and shapes; this struggle which aims at a fundamentally different set of relations between men cannot leave intact either the form or the content of the peoples culture. After the conflict there is not only the disappearance of colonialism but also the disappearance of the colonised man.
17.4.3 Extracts from the Conclusion

1.
2.
3.
en t
Europe now lives at such a mad, reckless pace that she has shaken off all guidance and all reason, and she is running headlong into the abyss; we would do well to avoid it with all possible speed. Yet it is very true that we need a model, and that we want blueprints and examples. For many among us the European model is the most inspiring. We have therefore seen in the preceding pages to what mortifying set-backs such an imitation has led us. European achievements, European techniques and the European style ought no longer to tempt us and to throw us off our balance. Let us decide not to imitate Europe; let us combine our muscles and our brains in a new direction. Let us try to create the whole man, whom Europe has been incapable of bringing to triumphant birth. 252
re
fo
We must leave our dreams and abandon our old beliefs and friendships of the time before life began. Let us waste no time in sterile litanies and nauseating mimicry. Leave this Europe where they are never done talking of Man, yet murder men everywhere they find them, at the corner of every one of their own streets, in all the corners of the globe. For centuries they have stifled almost the whole of humanity in the name of a so-called spiritual experience. Look at them today swaying between atomic and spiritual disintegration.
rT
ra
di
tio
Come, then, comrades; it would be as well to decide at once to change our ways. We must shake off the heavy darkness in which we were plunged, and leave it behind. The new day which is already at hand must find us firm, prudent and resolute.
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
Two centuries ago, a former European colony decided to catch up with Europe. It succeeded so well that the United States of America became a monster, in which the taints, the sickness and the inhumanity of Europe have grown to appalling dimensions. Comrades, have we not other work to do than to create a third Europe? The West saw itself as a spiritual adventure. It is in the name of the spirit, in the name of the spirit of Europe, that Europe has made her encroachments, that she has justified her crimes and legitimized the slavery in which she holds four-fifths of humanity.
If we wish to live up to our peoples expectations, we must seek the response elsewhere than in Europe. 5. For Europe, for ourselves and for humanity, comrades, we must turn over a new leaf, we must work out new concepts, and try to set afoot a new man.
17.5 Let Us Sum Up
en t
Fanons novel, The Wretched Of The Earth views the colonized world from the perspective of the colonized. Fanon questions the basic assumptions of colonialism. He questions whether violence is a tactic that should be employed to eliminate colonialism.. He questions whether the colonized world should copy the west or develop a whole new set of values and ideas. In all these questionings of basic assumptions of colonialism Fanon exposes the methods of control the white world uses to hold down the colonies. Fanon calls for a radical break with colonial culture, rejecting a hypocritical European humanism for a pure revolutionary consciousness. He exalts violence as a necessary pre-condition for this rupture. His book though sees the relationship and methods of control in a simplistic light; he classifies whites, and native intellectuals who have adopted western values and tactics as enemies. He fails to see how these natives and even the white world are also victims are forced into their roles by a society which itself is forced into a role. Fanon also classifies many colonized people as mentally ill. In his last chapter he brings up countless cases of children, adults, and the elderly who have been driven mad by colonialism. In one instance he classifies two children who kill their white playmate with a knife as insane. In isolating these children classifying there disorders as insanity caused by colonialism he ironically is using the very thought systems and 253
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
But if we want humanity to advance a step farther, if we want to bring it up to a different level than that which Europe has shown it, then we must invent and we must make discoveries.
du
ca
If we want to turn Africa into a new Europe, and America into a new Europe, then let us leave the destiny of our countries to Europeans. They will know how to do it better than the most gifted among us.
tio n
4.
Humanity is waiting for something other from us than such an imitation, which would be almost an obscene caricature.
technologies that Foucault points out are symptomatic of the western disciplinary society.

1. Why does Frantz Fanon acceptif not advocateviolence as an inevitable tool for social change as compared with, for example, Dr. Martin Luther King who embraced the principle of non-violence? What is the crucial element in a successful native rebellion against colonialism that is often overlooked in the early stages of an uprising?
2.
17.7 Bibliography
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
Abel, Lionel. Seven Heroes of the New Left. The New York Times Magazine 5 may 1968. Bhabha, Homi. Interrogating Identity: Frantz Fanon and the Postcolonial Prerogative. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994. 40-66. de Beauvoir, Simone. Force of Circumstance. New York: Putnam, 1964. Bergner, Gwen. Who Is That Masked Woman? or, The Role of Gender in Fanons Black Skin, White Masks. PMLA
en t
re
Toward the African Revolution. New York, 1967. Reprint of Pour la revolution africaine. Paris, 1964 ___________
fo
Black Skin, White Masks. New York: Grove, 1967. Reprint of Peau noire, masques blancs. Paris, 1952.
rT
Studies in a Dying Colonialism, or A Dying Colonialism. New York, 1965. Reprint of Lan cinq de la revolution algerienne. Paris, 1959
ra
di
The Wretched of the Earth. New York, 1965. Reprint of Les damnes de la terre. Paris, 1961.
254
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
UNIT-18 FRANTZ FANON : THE WRETCHED OF THE EARTH (II)

18.2.1 Style 18.2.2 Theme (a) Colonial Domination (b) Decolonization (c) Call for Fight for Freedom (d) National Consciousness (e) Maxism 18.3 18.4 18.5 Let Us Sum Up Review Questions Bibliography
18.0 Objectives
This unit would give an insight of-
en t
18.1 Introduction
Frantz Fanons The Wretched of the Earth, first published in 1961, is probably to most widely read of the books to emerge from the Third World upheaval of the post war period: it has been translated into sixteen languages and has reached an international audience. Initially, it was widely hailed as the most passionate and brilliant analysis of the process of decolonization. Rereading the book today, one realizes how much the world has changed in the interval: we now see the extent to which Fanon was a man of his times and the extent to 255
re
the worldwide black liberation struggles of the 1960, the role of violence in decolonalization, the question of cultural hegemony in the creation and maintenance of new country national consciousness.
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
Critical Analysis
18.2 Critical Analysis 18.2.1 Style
One can also witness the various manifestations of human behaviour that becomes inevitable once the rebels decide to take action for their own independence. It is really fascinating to observe how Fanon describes the dynamics of personalities and groups of people want to seek justice and want to build a nation of the culture not on the values that somebody else says that they must abide by.
Fanon makes the compelling (and then-shocking) case that colonialism is an unhealthy condition for the Algerian because it deprives him of not only economic and social security, education, and a chance at a better life, but more fundamentally because it robs him of his 256
en t
The author maintains an almost clinical objectivity as he describes the colonialist system, the resentment of the natives and how that resentment affects there lives as well as the lives of the colonialists as both has its own identity justice and power. The identity of these two groups can be clearly seen in Fanons representation of the struggle. These two groups struggled with each other because the colonists are on one side and the natives on the other. The natives see the colonists as the others. They are seen this way because they came over from Europe and then made them slaves in their own society. These peoples individual rights were taken away and they were forced to live a life of oppression. The colonists took over the upper caste and pushed everyone else down because they felt that their way was better.
18.2.2 Theme
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
Come, then, comrades; it would be as well to decide at once to change our ways. We must shake off the heavy darkness in which we were plunged, and leave it behind must find us firm, prodent and resolute. (Ch. 6)
na
Dr. Frantz F. brings an excellent perspective to the writing of this book that of the psychiatrist who has tried to relate the mental suffering of black Algerians affected by French colonialism. His perspective as a black man and as a physician gives him instant credibility to address these issues; his lucidity of thought and grace of expression allow him to present them in instructive compelling prose.
lE
du
ca
tio n
which he was a throwback to the Roman nationalists of the nineteenth century. Far from having been the Marx of the African Revolution (and there were some who mistook him for that), Fanon now emerges more clearly as having been its Mazzini. For the strength of The Wretched of the Earth reliesless on the incisiveness of its analysis than on the violence and inspiration of its rhetoric. It is a call to arms, not a scholarly autopsy. In the end, it seems more appropriate to apply to it the methods of literaty criticism than of political science. Despite many contradictions and excesses, The Wretched of the Earth remains a remarkable achievment. The universalism of Fanons imagination and the forcefulness of his language have given the work an appeal that has already made it a modern classic.
basic humanity. Colonialism as a form of institutionalized violence generates psychiatric illnesses that stem from a complete devaluation of the self, accompanied by various phobias and extreme anxiety states that grow out of violence. In the last chapter, he presents a number of cases of mental disorder directly attributable to colonialism or to the war for independence. A central issue in these psychiatric casualties is the loss of self, of a valid human identity whether through the systematic depersonalization that strips citizens of their humanity each day..... (a) Colonial Domination: In Fanon The Wreched of the Earth colonial domination is a means to disrupt the cultural life of a conquered people. The cultural obliteration is due to negation of national existence by new legal authorities by the banishment of the natives to the outslirts by expropiation and by methodological enslaving of natives. Fanon believed colonialism as a complicated network of complicities and internal power inbalances between factions within the broader categories of colonizer and colonized. In his book he questions the basic assumptions of colonialism. He questions whether the colonized world should copy the west or develop a whole new set of values and ideas. He exposes the methods of colonial domination the white world uses to hold down the colonies. His book though sees the relationship and methods of control in a simiphistic light; he classifies whites and native intellectual who have adopted western values and tactics as enemies.
en t
Fanon believed that decolonization never takes place unnoticed, for it influences individuals and modifies them fundamentally. It is a means of the veritable creation of new men. The agents of colonizers speak the language of pure force and do not seek to hide the domination. They are the medium of sparking the flames of violence into the minds of the natives. The exploited natives see that liberation implies the use of force and violence. Fanon felt the idea of compromise was a very important in the phenomenon of decolonization, for it compresses negotiations betweens the colonizers and the young nationalist bourgeoisie. The partisans of the colonial system know the natives can blow up bridges, ravage farms and even disrupt the economy if they do not compromise with the nationalist bourgeoise. The native bourgeouse are in turn afraid as Fanon stated of the uncertainly of the result of the masses revolt. He believed that a bourgeous that provided nationalism alone as food for the natives fails in his mission and gets trapped in a series of mishaps. Call for Fight for Freedom:The natives who are anxious for the culture of their country and who wish to give to it a universal dimension ought not therefore to place 257
(c)
re
fo
rT
ra
di
(b)
Decolonization: Decolonization is always a violent phenomenon..... Decolonization which sets out to change the order of the world. It is a historical process, it is the meeting of two forces and is nourished by the situation within the colonies.
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
their confidence in the single principle of inevitable, undifferentiated independence written into the consciousness of the people in order to achieve their task. The liberation of the nation is one thing; the methods and popular content of the fight are another. It seems to me that the future of national culture and its riches are equally also part and parcel of the values which have ordained the struggle for freedom. And now it is time to denounce certain phrases. National claims, it is here and there stated, are a phase that humanity has left behind. It is the day of great concerted actions, and retarded nationalists ought in consequence to set their mistakes aright. We, however, consider that the mistake, which may have very serious consequences, lies in wishing to skip the national period. If culture is the expression of national consciousness, I will not hesitate to affirm that in the case with which we are dealing it is the national consciousness which is the most elaborate form of culture. The consciousness of self is not the closing of a door to communication. Philosophic thought teaches us, on the contrary, that it is its guarantee. National consciousness, which is not nationalism, is the only thing that will give us an international dimension. This problem of national consciousness and of national culture takes on in Africa a special dimension. The birth of national consciousness in Africa has a strictly contemporaneous connexion with the African consciousness. The responsibility of the African as regards national culture is also a responsibility with regard to African-Negro culture. This joint responsibility is not the fact of a metaphysical principle but the awareness of a simple rule which wills that every independent nation in an Africa where colonialism is still entrenched is an encircled nation, a nation which is fragile and in permanent danger. If man is known by his acts, then we will say that the most urgent thing today for the intellectual is to build up his nation. If this building up is true, that is to say if it interprets the manifest will of the people and reveals the eager African peoples, then the building of a nation is of necessity accompanied by the discovery and encouragement of universalising values. Far from keeping aloof from other nations, therefore, it is national liberation which leads the nation to play its part on the stage of history. It is at the heart of national consciousness that international consciousness lives and grows. And this two-fold emerging is ultimately the source of all culture.
(d)
en t
National Consciousness: In On National Culture, an essay collected in The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon foregrounds the following paradox: national identy, while vital to the emerence of a Third World revolution, paradoxically limits such efforts at liberation because it re-inscribes an essentialist, totalizing, fetishized, often middle-class specific understanding of rather than encouraging a nuanced articulation of an oppressed peoples cultural heterogeneity across class. In other words, although the concept of nation infairly characterizes colonized subjects as historically unfied in their primitiveness or exoticness, the terms promise of solidarity and 258
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
en t
re
It is only from that moment that we can speak of a national literature. Here there is, at the level of literary creation, the taking up and clarification of themes which are typically nationalist. This may be properly called a literature of combat, in the sense that it calls on the whole people to fight for their existence as a nation. It is a literature of combat, because it moulds the national consciousness, giving it form and contours and flinging open before it new and boundless horizons; it is a literature of combat because it assumes responsibility, and because it is the will to liberty expressed in terms of time and space. The contact of the people with the new movement gives rise to a new rhythm of life and to forgotten muscular tensions, and develops the imagination. Every time the storyteller relates a fresh episode to his public, he presides over a real invocation. The existence of a new type of man is revealed to the public. The present is no longer turned in upon itself but spread out for all to see. The storyteller once more gives free rein to his imagination; he makes innovations and he creates a work of art. It even happens that the characters, which are barely ready for such a transformation - highway robbers or more or less antisocial vagabonds - are taken up and remodelled. The emergence of the imagination and of the creative urge in the songs and epic stories of a colonised country is worth following. The storyteller replies to the expectant people 259
fo
rT
ra
di
A national culture is not a folkore, not an abstract populism that believes it can discover the peoples true nature. It is not made up of the inert dregs of gratuitous actions, that is to say actions which are less and less attached to the ever-present reality of the people. A national culture is the whole body of efforts made by a people in the sphere of though to describe, justify, and praise the action through which that people has created itself and keeps itself in existence. (233)
tio
na
lE
du
unity often proves helpful nonetheless in their attempts at political amelioration. Fanon encourages a materialist conceptualization of the nation that is based not so much on collective cultural traditions or ancestor-worship as political agency and the collective attempt to dismantle the economic foundations of colonial rule. Colonialism, as Fanon argues not only physically disarms the colonized subjects but robs her of a precolonial cultural heritage. And yet, if colonialism in this sense galvanizes the native intellectual to renew contact once more with the oldest and most pre-colonial spring, of life of their people, Fanon is careful to point out that these attempts at recovering national continuity throughout history are often contrived and ultimately self-defeating. I am ready to concede, he admits, that on the plane of factual being the past existence of an Aztee civilization does not change anything very much in the diet of the Maxican peasant of today. In the passage below, Fanon explain that national indentity only carries meaning insofar as it reflects the combined revolutaionary efforts of an oppressed people aiming at collective libration:
ca
tio n
by successive approximations, and makes his way, apparently alone but in fact helped on by his public, towards the seeking out of new patterns, that is to say national patterns. Comedy and farce disappear, or lose their attraction. As for dramatisation, it is no longer placed on the plane of the troubled intellectual and his tormented conscience. By losing its characteristics of despair and revolt, the drama becomes part of the common lot of the people and forms part of an action in preparation or already in progress. (e)
The identity of these two groups can be clearly seen in Fanons representation of the struggle. These two groups struggled with each other because the colonists are on one side, and the natives on the other. The natives see the colonists as the others. They are seen this way because they came over from Europe and took over the natives land and then made them slaves in thier own society. These peoples individual rights were taken away, and they were forced to live a life of oppression. The colonists took over the took over the upper class, and pushed everyone else down because they felt that their way was better. Therefore, the upper class wrote the history of the oppressed nation, but of mother country exploiting the colonies. The only way to get the oppressed nation into history was if the individual rises up and decides to write what he has seen and heard. These natives then lie in wait to take over their rights and freedom from which they have been stolen. The native is an oppressed person whose permanent dream is to become the persecutor. These people want to seek justice for that which they have been dealt by the colonists. The natives are fighting for the justice of their national culture. They want to build a nation on that culture not on the values that somebody else says that they must abide by. Justice will never exist in their national culture. It will not exist because the bourgeoisie will not let it. They are greedy people who only want the colonists kicked out, so they can take over. They do not care about the people; they just care about being bourgeoisie. When they kick out the colonists, they will not kick them out completely. They will only keep them for their capitalist intentions to make them money. In so following these habits, they take over The small people therefore causing those of the middle class to take over the poor natives, and send them home to the jungle. So the cycle of injustice continues unless a change is made to stop the greedy bourgeoisie from further wrecking the spirits of the people. The people will not stand for this and therefore, they will rise up and defend themselves against those that do not believe in a government for the people. The national government, if it chooses to be national, ought to govern by the people, by the outcastes and for the outcaste. This is the only 260
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
Maxism: In Frantz Fanons book, The Wretched of the Earth, he talks about identity, justice, and power in the context of several ideologies. These categories can be better understood in the context of two groups, the colonists and the natives. Each one has its own identity, justice and power.
way to break the cycle of injustice done in third world countries. Whether power causes injustice or injustice causes power it does not matter, power needs to be in the hands of the correct people. It is not in the case of the colonists or the bourgeoisie. The colonist are never to remind the native who is in power. He reminds the native that there he alone is master. The colonist puts up a force against the native and somehow expects that the native will never respond. The native in complete contrast to the colonists beliefs is always ready and waiting for the day that he can strike. Those of the bourgeoisie really the masses in order to kick out the colonists. Then they so happen to forget that they made these promises because they do not want a mass mobilization. If they can not control the masses then they do not have power over them. That is an issue they would like to avoid. Again, the people are riled up only to be put down later. Words like mouthwash, word spinning, blather, and fruitless agitation will be used to describe what were formerly promises to the the native. If people by change do not agree with what the dominant party agrees with then they are kicked out, persecuted, and harassed. The masses have to run and hide for fear of upsetting the bourgeoisie. According to the bourgeoisie, they have no power and no authority to do anything, but the natives want the power to be free and to express themselves in a powerful way.
18.3 Let Us Sum Up
In some ways, what one makes of the book depends on what one makes of Fanon himself. By the details of his biography, Frantz Fanon was a kind of black Everyman a marginal man who was nonetheless able to transcend his marginality. He was born in 1925 in to a middle-class black family in Martinique in the French West Indian Intensely conscious of his race, but also irrevocably within the orbit of French society virtue of his education and class position, he found himself unable unambiguously throw in his lot with either. Like others of his background, Fanon fell under the influence of Aime Cesaire, the Martiniquean poet and politician, and of the movement negritude of which Cesaire was a leader. He was to remain deeply marked by it early encounter, although negritude came increasingly to seem shallow and partial to him as time went on. His first book, Black Skin, White Masks, published 1952, publicly revealed this ambiguous break with Cesaire. It also shows something else- the manner in which Fanon was able to use this ambivalent potition among captures and races to develop a series of penetrating insights into the psychology of races and colonial domination. His continual preoccupation with these themes was later give rise to some of the most incandescent passages in The Wretched of the Earth.
en t

1. What does Frantz Fanon see as the role of the church, or organized religion, in the case of a popular rebellion? 261
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
2.
What does Fanon identify as the forces that would restrain a colonial government from an all-out military destruction of an armed civilian rebellion?
18.5 Bibliography
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Abel, Lionel. Seven Heroes of the New Left. The New York Times Magazine 5 may 1968. Bhabha, Homi. Interrogating Identity: Frantz Fanon and the Postcolonial Prerogative. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994. 40-66. de Beauvoir, Simone. Force of Circumstance. New York: Putnam, 1964.
The Wretched of the Earth. New York, 1965. Reprint of Les damnes de la terre. Paris, 1961. Studies in a Dying Colonialism, or A Dying Colonialism. New York, 1965. Reprint of Lan cinq de la revolution algerienne. Paris, 1959
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
___________
di
Toward the African Revolution. New York, 1967. Reprint of Pour la revolution africaine. Paris, 1964
262
tio
Black Skin, White Masks. New York: Grove, 1967. Reprint of Peau noire, masques blancs. Paris, 1952.
na
lE
du
ca
Bergner, Gwen. Who Is That Masked Woman? or, The Role of Gender in Fanons Black Skin, White Masks. PMLA
tio n
UNIT-19 SALMAN RUSHDIE: IMAGINARY HOMELANDS: ESSAYS AND CRITICISM 1981-1991 (I)
Structure 19.0 19.1 19.2 19.3 Objectives
Critical Analysis of Imaginary Homelands: Essays And Criticism 1981-1991
19.3.2 The Emergence of the New Empire
19.3.3 Debate between Censorship and Eclecticism
19.5 19.6
19.0 Objectives
The objectives of this unit are to: provide a minute examination of Salman Rushdies Imaginary Homelands,
en t
19.1 Introduction
One of the greatest practitioners of fictional art in contemporary Indian Writing in English, Salman Rushdie was born to a rich Muslim family in Bombay on 19th June, 1947. He was educated at Cathedral School, Bombay, and Kings College, Cambridge. William Walsh has commented thus about his earlier life, In an earlier career, he worked in an advertising agency as a copywriter. This multi-faceted genius has created the fictional works like Grimus, Midnights Children, Shame, The Satanic Verses, The Moors Last Sigh, The Fury, Shalimar the Clown and The Enchantress of Florence. He has won a number of literary awards, including the Booker Prize in 1981 and the Whitebread Prize in 1988. Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia informs thus about his literary achievements: In June 2007, he was appointed 263
re
throws light on the Postcolonial issues like diaspora, immigration, Empire, multiplicity and hybridity.
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
19.4
Let Us Sum Up
na
19.3.4 Ideals of Hybridity and Multiplicity
lE
du
19.3.1 The Riddle of Diaspora
ca
Major Themes in Imaginary Homelands
tio n
Introduction
1981-1991
Section-1
The first section of the work has three piecesImaginary Homelands, Errata: or Unreliable Narration in Midnights Children and The Riddle of Midnight: India, August 1987. The aforesaid articles centre around his Midnights Children, a novel, which in the words of William Walsh combines the rush and fluency of Mulk Raj Anand, the speculative and metaphysical habit of Raja Rao, the shrewd psychological acumen of R.K.Narayan and fantasy of G.V.Desani. These three essays are the works of an artist, who is expostulating his fictional technique in his criticism. In these critical essays, the master craftsman is defending his creative work from the charges, levelled by his detractors. Saleem Sinai of the novel is considered to be an unreliable narrator. The novel is not an authoritative guide to the culture and civilization of India. Rushdie has himself mentioned these flaws in the second essay of the section. As per Hindu mythology, Lord Ganesha sat on the feet of the bard Vyasa and wrote the entire text of Mahabharata. However, in the novel, Salim Sinai narrates that Ganesha sat at the feet of the poet Valmiki and wrote the Ramayana. Another instance of the sloppy narration is the Amritsar massacre. The novel mentions that Dyer entered the Jallianwala Bagh compound with fifty white troops. These troops were not white. There are several other instances of this erratic description of Indian scene. Rushdie has reported many of them in the second essay of the section. One defence of this unreliable technique of narration may be that the narrator is a stupid fellow, who is unaware of his surroundings. But, Rushdie rejects this idea: the narrator of Midnights Children is neither particularly stupid nor particularly unaware of what is happening. The question is what is the reason for this inaccuracy in the fiction of such a reputed novelist? This incorrect narration is rather introduced into the text of the novel under a proper plan. Mark the following statement from the second essay: 264
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
19.2 Critical Analysis of Imaginary Homelands: Essays And Criticism
ca
a Knight Bachelor for services to literature He also holds, in France, the highest rank Commandeur in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. In 2007, he began a five-year term as Distinguished Writer in Residence at Emory University. His fictional oeuvre has earned for this stalwart of Indian English fiction wide fame and prestige. Anuradha Dingwaneys words are worth quoting here, There is an entire generation of novelists from India who feel the weight of Rushdies influence as enabling their own talents. This creative genius has also penned certain essays and critical articles. Imaginary Homelands, divided into twelve sections, is a collection of these critical pieces, written by him during 1981-1991. The essays reveal the true critical acumen along with the sharp literary sensibility of Rushdie. They discuss everything under the sun, including the problems of diasporic immigrants, the debate between eclecticism and censorship, the dragon like power of the Empire and several other contemporary social, political and literary issues.
tio n
Originally error-free passages had the taint of inaccuracy introduced. Unintentional mistakes on being discovered, are not expunged from the text, but rather, emphasized, given more prominence in the story. There is a very interesting factor responsible for this inaccurate narrative technique. Rushdie in the novel is not a dispassionate and disinterested chronicler, as he just remembers the past. The element of nostalgia is the driving force of the novel and one of the simplest truth about any set of memories is that many of them will be false. The novelist gives more weight to his own memory than to the actual happenings, as his purpose is not to reproduce the literal history of the period; it is to decipher the nostalgic feelings about the past. Through these lapses of the narration, Rushdie validates significance of memory for himself. The critic in Rushdie asserts, whenever a conflict arose between literal and remembered truth, I would favour the remembered version. The mistakes of Salim are the mistakes of a fallible memory. The incomplete memory of the past shows the novelists nostalgic attachment for his homeland. The great novelist justifies his technique in the following words: Many readers wanted it to be the history, even the guide book, which it was never meant to be, others resented its incompleteness These variously disappointed readers were judging the book not as a novel, but as some sort of inadequate reference book or encyclopaedia. This nostalgic emphasis on the memory of the past is the focal point of Rushdies creative and critical works. The memory of the past is always fractured and fragmentary. Most of the Indian writers, who have left for the West, have this feeling of nostalgia for the homeland and Rushdie is no exception. An Indian writer, living in alien land considers his present to be a foreign land, while the past is a home though lost in the mists of the lost times. As that past is lost, the author has just the broken mirror to look at the bygone events. So, there are the blunders of historical narration in his fiction. But, this broken mirror may be more valuable than the one, which is supposedly flawless. The feeling of displacement in a new country haunts the author and he looks towards the past. This feeling of alienation coupled with the nostalgia is too common in the diasporic authors of India. For example, V.S.Naipaul in The Enigma of Arrival, a hauntingly brilliant novel talks about the theme of exile. In the aforesaid novel of Naipaul, the nervousness of the speaker is evident in the following expression: After all my time in England, I still had that nervousness in a new place, that rawness of response, still felt myself to be in the other mans country, felt my strangeness, my solitude. And every excursion into a new part of the countrywhat for others might have been an adventure was for me like a tearing at an old scab. The Swedish Academy noted Naipauls affinity with Joseph Conrad thus : Naipaul is Conrads heir as the annalist of the destinies of empires in the moral sense: what they do to human beings. His authority as a narrator is grounded in the memory of what others have forgotten, the history of the vanquished. 265
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
In the aforesaid statement about Naipaul, the role of memory is stressed. The authors are generally experiencing the psychological turbulence because of their displacement and nostalgia. Like Ruth in Keats Ode to a Nightingale, Indian diasporic authors are in tears amid the alien corn, as they harbour the memories of Indian past and are not completely acclimatized to new culture. Rushdie is also hurt by this enigma of arrival in a distant land. In the essay Imaginary Homelands, Rushdie has mentioned the dilemma of the authors in settling in alien countries. A feeling of guilt engulfs most of the immigrant authors, as they had left their homelands and the orthodox ideologies. They straddle two cultures. However, this distance from the homeland is the source of tremendous fertility in an author. This longing for the homelands in alien lands is the genesis of artistic creativity for the authors.
The major part of this essay is concerned with this pessimistic scenario of Modern India. The critic in Rushdie raises the questionDoes India exist? He agrees with J. K. Galbraiths description of India as functionary anarchy. The politics of religious mania is haunting India. In this way, the tragic vision of Midnights Children is justified in the essay. The three essays of the first section are the works of self-justification. Rushdie, the novelist, is vindicating his creative fictional art in his criticism. This technique of justifying ones creative works in ones own critical writings has several antecedents. Dryden, Fielding, Dr. Johnson, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Arnold, Eliot and several others have defended their creative art in their criticism. Much of Drydens criticism is contained in the prefaces to his plays and in the An Essay of Dramatic Poesie; and it represents various aspects of a continuous literary war that Dryden had to fight with his own detractors and critics. It is the defensive part of his criticism that predominates every period of his life. George Watson, in his book The Literary Critics, has emphasized Drydens habit of self-justification. Watson illustrates this point of view by quoting from the dedicatory letter to Drydens The Rival Ladies. In this letter, Dryden defended his rhymed heroic play:
en t
But that benefit which I consider most in it [rhyme], because I have seldome found it, 266
re
fo
rT
ra
In the third essay of the section, Rushdie has mentioned that the most common Indian criticism of Midnights Children was that it was too pessimistic about the future. Rushdie has given the sufficient reply of this charge. No one considers the end of the novel any more pessimistic, as the events of India since the publication of the novel are darker than what the novelist had dreamt of.
di
tio
na
the British Indian writer does not have the option of rejecting English, anyway. His children, her children will grow up speaking it, probably as a first language; and in the forging of a British Indian identity, the English language is of central importance.
lE
du
This essay Imaginary Homelands is also notable for several other approaches of Rushdie. For instance, he opines that his criticism of Indian society is marked by objectivity as he is commenting on contemporary Indian ethos from the outside. The great novelist also defends the employment of English language as the medium of his creative literature:
ca
tio n
is that it bounds and circumscribes the fancy. For imagination in a poet is a faculty so wild and lawless that, like a high-ranging spaniel, it must have clogs tied to it lest it outruns the judgment. The great easiness of the blank verse renders the poet too luxuriant One of the four wheels of the English novel, Fielding justified his innovative fictional technique in the three prefaces to Joseph Andrews. He has clearly spelt out his theory of comic epic, which he followed in his novels like Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones. This tradition of justifying ones creative art in ones own criticism was continued in the 20th century too. For example Virginia Woolf, one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century, has defended the incoherence in her stream of consciousness novels thus: Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semitransparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end. Is it not the task of the novelist to convey this varying, this unknown and uncircumscribed spirit, whatever aberration or complexity it may display, with as little mixture of the alien and external as possible? We are not pleading merely for courage and sincerity; we are suggesting that the proper stuff of fiction is a little other than custom would have us believe it. Let us record the atoms as they fall upon the mind in the order in which they fall, let us trace the pattern, however disconnected and incoherent in appearance, which each sight or incident scores upon the consciousness. Wilfred Owen, who is notable for war poems like Anthem for Doomed Youth, Dulce Et Decorum Est, The Parable of the Old Man and the Young and Strange Meeting made clear the aims of his poetry in his celebrated Preface. The famous statement of this leading poet of the First World War is: Above all I am not concerned with Poetry. My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity. Eliots poetry and drama are also justified in his critical writings. According to George Watosn, It is Eliots rooted assumption that criticism is an aid to his own career as a poet. L. G. Salingar too comments in his essay T. S. Eliot: Poet and Critic: In his critical essays, Eliot is deeply concerned with his practical interests as a poet. He is brilliant and illuminating when he declares his own taste or when he deals with his versification and certain aspects of poetic language his critical pronouncements form a tricky instrument for the understanding of his poetry. Several Indo Anglian authors have also vindicated their creative writings in their criticism. For instance, one of the pioneers of Indo-Anglian fiction Mulk Raj Anand (December 12, 1905 - September 28, 2004) wrote the essay The Story of My Experiments With A White Lie to support his novel Untouchable. Anand himself says: If I may be forgiven for being self-conscious, I would like to analyse some of the elements in the process of writing my novel Untouchable, because I can indicate some of these orthodox, miscellaneous, but relevant causalities which compelled me to write this particular work of fiction. 267
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
Recognized as one of Indias foremost poets, Kamala Das (b. March 31, 1934) defends her poetic language in An Introduction, one of the most famous confessional poems of Indian English Literature: Dont write in English, they said, English is not your mother- tongue. Why not leave Me alone, critics, friends, visiting cousins,
Any language I like? The language I speak Becomes mine, its distortions, its queerness All mine, mine alone. It is half English, half Indian, funny perhaps, but it is honest, It is as human as I am human, dont You see? It voices my joys, my longings, my Hopes, and it is useful to me as cawing Is to crows or roaring to the lions, it Is human speech
Section-2
The second section of the book has five essaysCensorship, The Assassination of Indira Gandhi, Dynasty, Zia Ul- Haq. 17 August 1988 and Daughter of the East. The essays reveal Rushdies command over sub-continental social and political themes. In the first essay, Rushdie initiates a highly erudite argument against censorship, while favouring eclecticism in art, literature and society. He gives a very interesting example to illustrate his point of view. For Karachi TV, the great novelist produced American playwright Edward Albees play The Zoo Story, which, according to Wikipedia, explores themes of isolation, loneliness, social disparity and dehumanization in a commercial world. Rushdie himself played a character in this production, who had a long monologue in which he described the repeated attacks by landladys dog on him. In an attempt to have friendship with the dog, he brought for it half a dozen hamburgers. The dog did not accept them and attacked him again. Rushdie was supposed to say, It was six perfectly good hamburgers with not enough pork in them to make it disgusting. The TV executive censored the dialogue: the word pork may not be spoken on Pakistani Television.
en t
re
fo
rT
Rushdie has followed this long chain of creative critics to produce a unique defence of his own fictional oeuvre.
ra
di
268
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
Every one of you? Why not let me speak in
Censorship distorts the voice of dissent; it is against liberal democratic setup. Absence of proper information and the presence of the lies are the effects of this censorship. It can deaden the imagination of the people. Truths are kept hidden and falsehood is spread on account of its demonic presence. Rushdie explains this point of view with the example of genocide in Baluchistan: During Mr. Bhuttos campaign of genocide in Baluchistan, the news media remained silent. Officially, Baluchistan was at peace. Those who died, died unofficial deaths. It must have comforted them to know that the States truth declared them all to be alive. The second essay of the section throws illuminating lights on the social and political scenario of India after the assassination of Mrs Indira Gandhi. Rushdie paints a very dismal picture of the period, resembling thus the gloomy anti- secular ethos, depicted in The Riddle of Midnight: India, August 1987 of the first section. In that essay, Rushdie had raised a questionDoes India exist? The genesis of this question is the politics of religious hatred. The venom of religious obscurantism has been given a sufficient space in the essay, dealing with the events of India after the passing away of Mrs Indira Gandhi. Rushdie depicts the apprehensions, common in the hearts of the Indians after the enormous national tragedy of Mrs Gandhis killing: And it is clear that what is most to be feared is an outbreak of reprisal killings, of Hindu-Sikh communal violence, both inside and outside Punjab. The wind was sown in Amritsar; now, perhaps (and it would be good to be wrong), the whirlwind ripens. thus:
en t
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/1/newsid_2537000/ 2537887.stm) In the manner of a dispassionate political analyst, Rushdie also discusses in the essay the Centre- State relations, which are called by him delicate, fragile affairs. The great Indian paradox is that the states are ancient historical entities, whereas the nation is still new born. According to Rushdie, it is the new-born India, the baby, so to speak, the Central Government, that holds sway over the graybeards. The essay presents some examples of the interference of the Central Government in the affairs of the States during Mrs Gandhis tenure (A) Refusal to discuss the demands of the Akali Dal in Punjab for the restoration to the State Government of the powers, which Centre had seized. (B) Removal of the properly elected 269
re
Outbreaks of religious violence have occurred in parts of India in the wake of yesterdays assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by Sikh members of her bodyguard. Extra police and troops have been deployed in the Indian capital, Delhi, after angry mobs set fire to four Sikh temples. Several Sikh-owned businesses were also attacked and stones were thrown at a car bringing Indias President Zail Singh, a Sikh, from the airport.
fo
rT
ra
The phobic time, hinted by Rushdie in the aforesaid lines, was also reported by BBC
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, Farooq Abdullah. (C) The dismissal of N. T. Rama Rao in Andhra Pradesh. Rushdie makes the following comments about Centre- State relations in India: There is no denying that the Central government must govern; but it is time that the States legitimate grievances received the kind of sympathetic hearing which they have been denied for years. If this happens, then there is a glimmer of hope for the future. If it does not, then one must fear for the union.
Rushdie, a relentless critic of Congress Party and Indira Ji accuses the Party of its dubious role in the rise of religious fundamentalism in India, One of the saddest aspects of the growth of communalism has been that, at times, Mrs. Gandhis Congress Party has seemed to be going out to get the Hindu vote. This attack on religious obscurantism exhibits his desire to propagate the ideals of multiplicity, pluralism and tolerance. Rushdies invective against Indira Ji continues in his condemnation of the Nehru family for its dynastic aspirations, Let us remember about the NehrusMotilal, his son Jawaharlal, his daughter Indira, her sons Rajiv and Sanjaythat when it comes to power they make the Kennedys look like amateurs. Rushdie has written a whole essay Dynasty in this section to talk about the ill-effects of the dynastic rule in India. 270
en t
re
According to many scholars, India is the most culturally, linguistically and genetically diverse geographical entity after the African continent. Indias democratic republic is premised on a national belief in pluralism, not the standard nationalist invocation of a shared history, a single language and an assimilationist culture. State boundaries in India are mostly drawn on linguistic lines. In addition India is also one of the most religiously diverse countries in the world, with significant Hindu (80.5%) , Muslim (13.4%), Christian (2.3%), Sikh (2.1%), Buddhist, Bahai, Ahmadi, Jain and Parsi populations. Cities like Mumbai in Maharashtra display high levels of multilingualism and multiculturalism, spurred by political integration after independence and migration from rural areas
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
Through this discussion on Centre- State relations, Rushdie hints at the broad multiplicity of Indian culture and civilization. India is just like a salad bowl or melting pot. Any attempt by the Centre to interfere in the hybridity of the States is strongly resented. Wikipedia has made the following entry about the multiplicity of India:
na
lE
du
THE 17th congress of the CPI (M) expresses concern at the growing attacks on the rights of the Indian states, adversely affecting federal character of the Indian polity and crippling the economy of state governments. The character of India as a multi-national, multi-lingual, multi-religious state is being blatantly ignored and attempts to impose a unitary form of government are being made in the country. (http://www.cpim.org/pd/2002/april14/ 04142002_17cong_res_centre_state.htm)
ca
tio n
Peoples Democracy, weekly organ of CPI (M) makes the similar assertion:
In T. S. Eliots view, the critic, one would suppose, if he is to justify his existence, should endeavour to discipline his personal prejudices and cranks. A critic should make an attempt to come out of his personal likes and dislikes to make a fair comment on the other persons. In his delineation of Mrs. Gandhis character, Rushdie, though an extraordinary creative genius, appears to be a victim of several prejudices. On account of his biased psyche towards her, he fails to see the good works done by the leader. Mainstream, one of the leading political magazines of the country, brought out an important article about Mrs. Gandhi in its October 27, 2007 issue. As per that article, Indira Gandhi symbolised the Third Worlds regeneration. Under her leadership, Indian foreign policy matured from the conscious assertion of the rights and aspirations of newly free nations to a keen awareness on their part of their own responsibility in the global context. By refusing to sign the NPT she gained political credit for upholding Indias independence and for taking a principled stand against a discriminatory treaty. With Indira Gandhi at the helm, India re-emerged in the South Asian strategic stage and her India recorded its ability and willingness to grasp the opportunities of power politics in a regional context. She made a mark in the world as an unrivalled leader and a champion of the Third World. (http:// www.mainstreamweekly.net/article389.html) Rushdies tainted vision could not see all this. It is a sorry statement to make about this leading novelist of contemporary times. The section under discussion also has two essays about Pakistan and its leaders. The first one explicates the nightmarish reign of Pakistan by General Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, one of the cruellest modern tyrants. He imposed on Pakistan the medieval, misogynist and stultifying ideology of his religion. Rushdie has spoken thus about this aspect of General Zias regime, Islam in the Indo-Pakistani subcontinent has developed historically along moderate lines, with a strong strain of pluralistic Sufi philosophy; Zia was this Islams enemy. For the bleak scenario of Pakistan under General Zia, mark the following expression from the essay: Pakistan under Zia has become a nightmarish, surreal land, in which battlefield armaments meant for the Afghan rebels are traded more or less openly on the countrys black market; in which the citizens of Karachi speak, with a shrug, of the daily collusion between the police force and large-scale gangs of thieves; in which private armies of heavily armed men defend and service one of the worlds biggest narcotics industries; in which elections take place without the participation of any political parties.
en t
The next essay of the section Daughter of the East discusses Benazir Bhuttos political vision through her book Daughter of the East. Rushdie makes the following statement about this book: Benazir is curiously absent from her own book, Daughter of the East. The voice that speaks, the marks that are made here, belong to an American ghost. In this book, Benazir appears only Zulfikar Ali Bhuttos girl still unwilling to admit that the martyred parent even committed the tiniest of sins. She does not at all mention the genocide in Baluchistan by 271
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
her father. She draws a daughterly veil over the misdeeds of Bhutto regime. Section-3 The third section contains four scholarly articlesCommonwealth Literature Does Not Exist, Anita Desai, Kipling and Hobson-Jobson. The first article of the section is quite thought provoking as it raises several issues concerned with Commonwealth Literature. The critical piece is notable for Rushdies animosity for this type of literature. A British magazine published interviews with Shiva Naipaul (the younger brother of the novelist V. S. Naipaul and also a Trinidadian and British novelist and journalist, who produced literary works like Fireflies ,The Chip-Chip Gatherers ,North of South ,Black & White, Love and Death in a Hot Country , Beyond the Dragons Mouth: Stories and Pieces and An Unfinished Journey), Buchi Emecheta (a prolific African novelist who has published over 20 books, including the seminal works, Second-Class Citizen, The Bride Price, The Slave Girl and The Joys of Motherhood) and Rushdie. These three were in agreement that the term Commonwealth Literature is little distasteful. These three interviews appeared in that magazine under the headline Commonwealth Writersbut dont call them that. Rushdie raises the questions about the boundaries of the Commonwealth Literature:
It occurred to me, as I surveyed the muddle, that the category is a chimeraThe word has of course come to mean an unreal, monstrous creature of the imagination; but you will recall that the classical chimera was a monster of a rather special type. It had the head of a lion, the body of a goat and a serpents tail. This is to say, it could exist only in dreams, being composed of elements which could not possibly be joined together in the real world. What are the ill-effects of this chimera literature? What may be the one possible definition of this group? One definition of it may be that it is a body of writing in the English 272
en t
What is the basis of creating such a ghetto of writers? That is beyond Rushdies comprehension. This literature does not share a common ideology or thinking in its group. Rushdie prefers to call it a chimera:
re
There is no strong base for the definition of this group. The illuminating scholar Rushdie illustrates this idea by referring to a Commonwealth Conference, which was attended by the Australian poet Randolph Stow, the West Indian Wilson Harris, Ngugi wa Thiono from Kenya, Anita Desai from India and Canadian novelist Aritha van Herk along with Rushdie. Rushdie came to the conclusion through this Conference that this literature lacks a proper definition of its scope and aims. Rushdie writes thus about this aspect of Commonwealth Literature, I became quite sure that our differences were so much significant than our similarities.
fo
rT
ra
di
South Africa and Pakistan, for instance, are not members of the Commonwealth, but their authors apparently belong to its literature. On the other hand, England, which, as far as Im aware, has not been expelled from the Commonwealth quite yet, has been excluded from its literary manifestations.
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
language by the authors, who are not white Britons, or Irish or the citizens of U.S.A. This sketch of the boundaries is also not without its defects: I dont know whether black Americans are citizens of this bizarre Commonwealth or not. Probably not. It is also uncertain whether citizens of Commonwealth countries writing in languages other than EnglishHindi, for exampleor who switch out of English, like Ngugi, are permitted into the club or asked to keep out. Moreover this ghetto culture in literature would make it narrower, topographical and even racially segregationist. This term, which is not in the least marked by eclecticism, may provoke misleading readings of some authors. Rushdie prefers the broader term English Literature, meaning literature of the English language. In a way, this commonwealth literature permits academic institutions, publishers, critics and even readers to dump a large segment of English literature into a box and then more or less ignore it. The first section of the book presented Rushdie as a critic involved in self-justification; however the essay on Anita Desai in the third section reveals the critical insight of the critic for the other works of literature too. Rushdie traces in Anita Desai, an element of solitude: Her most memorable creationsthe old woman, Nanda Kaul, in Fire on the Mountain, or Bim in Clear Light of Dayhave been isolated, singular figures. And the books themselves have been private universes, illuminated by the authors perceptiveness, delicacy of language and sharp wit, but remaining, in a sense, as solitary, as separate, as their characters. Rushdie analyses the text of her novel In Custody. The plot of this novel contrasts the slow death of a false friendship and the painful birth of a true one. In a lucid, transparent and unassuming style, Rushdie mentions the broad outlines of the plot. Deven, a lover of Urdu poetry, is hoaxed by his boyhood friend Murad to go to Delhi and interview the great, ageing Urdu poet Nur for Murads magazine. Murads appalling behaviour makes the point that our friends are likely to destroy us as our enemies. But, the emotional part of the novel is in the relationship between Deven and his hero Nur. In the end, Deven understands that he has become the custodian both of Nurs friendship and of his poetry. Along with this touching theme of friendship, Desai has dealt with such sensitive themes as the unease of minority communities in modern India, the new imperialism of Hindi language and the decay that is, tragically, all too evident throughout the fissuring body of Indian society. In the critical piece on Kipling, Rushdie finds him to be a curious mixture of Indian and English elements: The influence of India on Kiplingon his picture of the world as well his languageresulted in what has struck me as a personality in conflict with itself, part bazararboy, part Sahib. In the early stories, this conflict is to be found everywhere. Despite all this contradiction in him, Kipling seems to have a tilt in his personality towards the English. According to Rusdie, The Indians he portrays are wife-killers, scamps, betrayers of their own brothers, 273
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
unfaithful wives and the like.Indians bribe witnesses, desert their political leaders, and are gullible too The final essay of the section pedantically discusses Hobson-Jobson, the legendary dictionary of British India. Rushdie holds the following opinion about this dictionary: These thousand-odd pages bear eloquent testimony to the unparalleled intermingling that took place between English and the languages of India... Section-4 The fourth section deals primarily with movies and television. It has five essays Outside The Whale, Attenboroughs Gandhi, Satyjit Ray, Handsworth Songs and The Location of Brazil. The title of the first essay Outside The Whale is derived from Orwells essay Inside The Whale. According to Wikipedia, Inside the Whale is an essay in three parts written by George Orwell in 1940. The first part provides details of Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller. Orwell analyses the book in detail and explores the historical context of Paris post-slump. The second part analyses different sets of authors who were fashionable between certain times. At the end of this curious essay, Orwellwho began by describing writers who ignored contemporary reality as usually footlers or plain idiotsembraces and espouses this quietist philosophy. Rushdie quotes Orwell:
In that essay, Orwell had found that quietist approach in Henry Miller: The whales belly is simply a womb big enough for an adult a storm that would sink all the battleships in the world would hardly reach you as an echoMiller himself is inside the whale,a willing JonahHe feels no impulse to alter or control the process that he is undergoing. He has performed the essential Jonah act of allowing himself to be swallowed, remaining passive, accepting. It will be seen what this amounts to. It is a species of quietism. According to Rushdie, due to this quietist approach, Millers reputation is more or less evaporated. Rushdie challenges this quietist approach and favours politically committed art: If we, in 1984, are asked to choose between, on the one hand, the Miller of Tropic of Cancer and on the other hand, the collected works of Auden, MacNeice and Spender, I doubt that many of us would go for old Henry. So, it would appear that politically committed art can actually prove more durable than messages from the stomach of the fish. Orwell himself modified his ideals six years later in the essay Politics and the English Language: In our age there is no such thing as keeping out of politics. All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia. In the essay Inside
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
Progress and reaction have both turned out to be swindles. Seemingly there is nothing left but quietismrobbing reality of its terrors by simply submitting to it. Get inside the whale or rather, admit you are inside the hale (for you are, of course). Give yourself over to the world-process simply accept it, endure it, record it. That seems to be the formula that any sensitive novelist is likely to adopt.
di
274
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
the Whale, Orwell is propagating the escapist approach, away from the thunder of war. Rushdies opinion about Orwells logic is worth quoting: Faced with the overwhelming evils of exterminations and purges and fire-bombings, and all the appalling manifestations of politics-gone-wild, he turned his talents to the business of constructing and also of justifying an escape-route. Hence his notion of the ordinary man as victim, and therefore of passivity as the literary stance closest to that of ordinary man. He is using this type of logic as a means of building a path back to the womb, into the whale and away from the thunder of war. This looks very like the plan of a man who has given up the struggle. Even though he knows that there is no such thing as keeping out of politics, he attempts the construction of a mechanism with just that purpose. Sit it out, he recommends; we writers will be safe inside the whale, until the storm dies down. On account of his intellectual defeat, Orwell had come to the conclusion that resistance was useless. He gave way to defeatism and despair. However, this defeatist, escapist and quietist option of withdrawing from the fray makes the enemies of civilization safe and protected from any threat of the righteous people. Rushdies approach is antithetical to Orwells. While Orwell wished quietism, Rushdie propagated rowdyism. He is for the protesting wail in place of the whale: The truth is that there is no whale. We live in a world without the hiding places; the missiles have made sure of thatI am recommending the ancient tradition of making as big a fuss, as noisy a complaint about the world as is humanly possible. Where Orwell wished quietism, let there be rowdyism; in place of the whale, the protesting wail. John Clement Ball in the article Pessoptimism: Satire And The Menippean Grotesque in Rushdies Midnights Children has summarized Rushdies argument in the following words: Outside the Whale argues for recognition of the sociopolitical, referential contexts of all works of art, proceeding to challenge George Orwells quietist option for the writer. Rushdie insists that writers take sides in debates and make as big a fuss as possible about injustices and oppressions; using comedy, satire, deflation, the artist must not be the servant of some beetle-browed ideology, but rather its critic, its antagonist, its scourge. In The Satanic Verses, the satirist Baal describes his work, [a] poets work, in similar terms: To name the unnamable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world and stop it from going to sleep. Satire, in such statements, becomes the very essence of responsible art. Outside the whale are the unceasing storm and the perpetual quarrel. Outside the whale there is a genuine need for political literature. Outside the whale we see that all the human-beings are irradiated by history. The men are radioactive with history and politics. The writer is obliged to accept that he is part of the crowd, part of the ocean, part of the storm. Rushdie continues that the intelligentsia should make a fuss about the Raj fictions and the movies, which show the zombie-like revival of the defunct Empire. Various films, TV 275
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
shows and books propagate a number of wrong notions about history, which must be contested and quarreled with as loudly and as embarrassingly as possible. Rushdie details some of these works thus: After the big-budget fantasy double-bill of Gandhi and Octopussy we have had the blackface minstrel-show of The Far Pavilions in its TV serial incarnation, and immediately afterwards the overpraised Jewel in the Crown. I should also include the alleged documentary about Subhas Chandra Bose, Granada Televisions War of the Springing Tiger, which, in the finest traditions of journalistic impartiality, described Indias second-most-revered independence leader as a clown. And lest we begin to console ourselves that the painful experiences are coming to an end, we are reminded that David Leans film of A Passage to India is in the offing. I remember seeing an interview with Mr. Lean in The Times, in which he explained his reasons for wishing to make a film of Forsters novel. I havent seen Dickie Attenboroughs Gandhi yet, he said, but as far as Im aware, nobody has yet succeeded in putting India on the screen. The Indian film industry, from Satyjit Ray to Mr. N.T.Rama Rao, will no doubt feel suitably humbled by the great mans opinion. Rushdies ideology in writing about these jewels of the crown is similar to Edward Saids thinking. Rushdie himself said, The creation of a false orient of cruel-lipped princes and dusky slim-hipped maidens, of ungodliness, fire and the sword, has been brilliantly described by Edward Said in his classic study Orientalism, in which he makes clear that the purpose of such false portraits was to provide moral, cultural and artistic justification of imperialism and for its underpinning ideology, that of the racial superiority of the Caucasian over the Asiatic. Pramod K. Nayar in his book Postcolonial Literature: An Introduction (Delhi: Pearson, 2008) stresses the same point: Postcolonial writing, it appears, will always be obsessed with history and historywriting. Postcolonial literatures central and continuing concerns are, therefore with modes of retrieving pre-colonial history, correcting misrepresentations of their culture in European texts and, by extension, controlling the representation of their cultures identity.
The next essay Attenboroughs Gandhi explicates well the ideology of the previous essay, Outside The Whale. In the essay about Attenboroughs Gandhi, Rushdie comes forward to resist the misinterpretation of history by the film maker, who used the film as a medium to present a colonized account of Indian National Movement. According to Rushdie, the British have been mangling Indian history for centuries. Rushdie adds: Much of the debate about the film has concerned omissions: why no Subhas Bose? Why no Tagore? The films makers answer that it would have been impossible to include 276
But in our whaleless world, in this world without quiet corners, there can be no easy escapes from history, from hullabaloo, from terrible, unquiet fuss.
en t
Rushdie thinks that we should make a lot of fuss about all this misleading representation of history by the Empire. There is nothing like a quiet place inside the whale:
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
everything and everyone, and of course selection is central to any work of art. But artistic selection creates meanings, and in Gandhi these are frequently dubious and in some cases frighteningly nave. Rushdie gives an example of the distorted history in the movie, where after Jallianwala Bagh massacre, the outraged Englishmen question the unrepentant Dyer about the ferocity of his actions. Through Attenboroughs description, the audience realizes that Dyers actions were those of a cruel and over-zealous individual and they were condemned by Anglo-India. Rushdie considers it a falsehood and raises his protest against the evil designs of the Empire in a typical Postcolonial manner: The British in Punjab in 1919 were panicky. They feared a second Indian Mutiny. They had nightmares about rape. The court-martial may have condemned Dyer, but the colonists did not. He had taught the wogs a lesson; he was a hero. And when he returned to England, he was given a heros welcome. An appeal fund launched on his behalf made him a rich man. Tagore, disgusted by the British reaction to the massacre returned his knighthood. Besides, the movie presents a false image of most of the leaders of independence struggle. Patel, one of the hardest men, is shown as a clown. Nehru Ji is just presented as Bapus acolyte. Rushdie does not accept all this nonsense and challenges Attenboroughs colonial designs of justifying the Empire and diminishing the value of the leaders of Indian National Movement. In the essay on Satyajit Ray, Rushdie depicts the great film-makers conflict with the Bombay cinema. To illustrate this point of view, Rushdie quotes an interview of Nargis Dutt, a celebrated heroine of bollywood: Nargis: Why do you think films like Pather Panchali become popular abroad? ... Because people there want to see India in an abject condition. That is the image they have of our country and a film that confirms that image seems to them authentic.
en t
Nargis: To win awards. His films are not commercially successful. They only win awards What I want is that if Mr.Ray projects Indian poverty abroad, he should also show Modern India. His Hindi movie Shatranj Ke Khiladi exhibits the lowest point in the disturbed relationship between him and the Bombay cinema: This film, Rays first (and to date only) feature film in Hindi, was a deliberate attempt to enter the mainstream of Indian culture. According to legends, the movie bosses of Bombay ruined the films chances by putting pressure on national distributors not to book it. The next essay is about a documentary Handsworth Songs, prepared by Black Audio Film Collective. The documentary was multi-layered, original and imaginative. Its director 277
re
Interviewer: But why should a renowned director like Ray do such a thing?
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
John Akomfrah is getting mentioned around town as a talent to watch. The documentary attempts to excavate hidden ruptures/ agonies of race. The Websitewww.tate.org.uk makes the following comments about the documentary, quite in the manner of Rushdie: Handsworth Songs , directed by John Akomfrah, was the first major film of the Black Audio Film Collective. It explores the origins of the uprisings by black communities in Handsworth, Birmingham in 1985. Its themes are race, memory, ideology and Britains colonial past. The song, writes Michael OPray, is a cultural form which can dig as deep as any analysis ... The poetry of song ... is a potent weapon, that for centuries has been used powerfully by the colonisers themselves. The final essay of the section discusses Terry Gillans magnificent film of future totalitarianism, Brazil. According to Rushdie, At the most obvious level, the film is set in Dystopia, Utopias dark opposite, the worst of all possible worlds. Section-5
For proof of the existence of this stain, we can look, for instance, at the huge, undiminished appetite of white Britons for television series, films, plays and books all filled with nostalgia for the Great Pink Age. Or think about the ease with which the English language allows the terms of racial abuse to be coined: wog, frog, kraut, dago, spic, yid, coon, nigger, Argie. Can there be another language with so wide-ranging a vocabulary of racist denigration? British thought and society have never been purged of the filth of imperialism. One of the key concepts of imperialism was that military superiority implied cultural superiority, and this enabled the British to repress cultures far older than their own. Rushdies ideology is analogous to Frantz Fanons point of view in Black Skin White Masks. According to Fanon, 278
en t
The essay discusses the racial harassment of the migrants by the new and rejuvenated Empire. This racial prejudice is a crisis of the whole culture of Great Britain. The stain of racial superimacy has penetrated deep into every aspect of the British culture. The postcolonial scholar Rushdie explicates this scar thus in the essay:
re
fo
rT
The many British blacks and Asians who phoned in or wrote agreed, virtually unanimously, that the lecture had done no more than tell the simple truth. To them, I had gone no further than the ABC of racial prejudice in Britain. There was also, unsurprisingly, a hostile response from some members of the white community
ra
di
Fifth section contains five pieces about the experiences of migrants, primarily Indian migrants to Britain. This section has five articlesThe New Empire Within Britain, An Unimportant Fire, Home Front, V.S.Naipaul and The Painter and The Pest. The first essay was originally written for the Opinions slot in the early days of Channel 4, publicservice television and radio broadcaster in the United Kingdom, centred around a television channel of the same name which began transmissions on 2 November 1982.(Wikipedia) Rushdie has written thus about the essay in the Introduction of the book:
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
White men consider themselves superior to black men. The Empire colonized the minds of the subjects by its notorious agenda of repressing the native culture. Taisha Abraham has discussed the same point of view, while commenting on the growth of English literature and language in India: English education under colonial rule, therefore, had two primary goals. One it universalized the values embedded in western culture, literature and in the modern European sciences by showing other forms of indigenous knowledge and customs in the colonies as incomplete, inadequate, barbaric and extraneous to proper education. Two it moulded the colonized in certain ways that best suited their reception of Western knowledge. The present essay talks about the racial problems faced by the immigrants in Britian. Every major social institution of this country is coloured by this racial prejudice. Rushdie has described these racial problems, encountered by the blacks in Britain: So whats it like, this country to which the immigrants came and in which their children are growing up? You wouldnt recognize it. Because this isnt the England of fair play, tolerance, decency and equalitymaybe that place never existed anyway, except in fairy-tales. In the streets of the new Empire, black women are abused and black children are beaten up on their way home from school. In the run-down hosing estates of the new Empire, black families have their windows broken, they are afraid to go out after dark, human and animal excrement arrives through their letter-boxes. The police offer threat instead of protection, and the courts offer samll hope of redress. The description of the diasporic immigrant sensibility has been a fvourite subject with the Postcolonial critics and authors. The narration of Rushdie in the essay has parallels in Kiran Desais treatment of Asian/African diaspora in the novel The Inheritance of Loss. The predicament of Jemubhai in Kiran Desais novel exhibits the ill effects of this racial bias: Thus Jemubhais mind had begun to warp; he grew stranger to himself than he was to those around him, found his skin odd-coloured, his own accent peculiar. He forgot how to laugh, could barely manage to lift his lips in a smile, and if he ever did, he held his hand over his mouth, because he could barely let anyone see his gums, his teeth. They seemed too private. He began to wash obsessively, concerned he would be accused of smelling, and each morning he scrubbed off the thick milky scent of sleep, the barnyard smell that wreathed him when he woke and impregnated the fabric of his pajamas. To the end of his life, he would never be seen without socks and shoes and would prefer shadow to light, faded days to sunny, for he was suspicious that sunlight might reveal him, in his hideousness, all too clearly. The next essay An Unimportant Fire contains the same theme of racial prejudice. Written in journalistic manner, the essay talks of an unimportant fire in The London Borough of Camden. The fire broke out at 46 Gloucester Place, owned by London Lets. The fire scene tells the pathetic conditions of these houses. Black and Asian families are more likely to be placed in such nasty places: 279
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
When it started, no alarm rang. It had been switched off. The fire extinguishers were empty. The fire exits were blocked. It was night-time, but the stairs were in darkness, because there were no bulbs in the lighting sockets. And in the single, cramped top-floor room, where they had been housed for nine months, Mrs. Abdul Karim, a Bangladeshi woman, and her five-year-old son and three-year-old daughter died of suffocation. The essay on V. S. Naipaul brings out the usual sultry and gloomy atmosphere in the writings of the great novelist. Naipauls affection for the human race is diminished. The essay presents an examination of The Enigma of Arrival. According to Rushdie, it is one of the saddest books I have read in a long while, its tone one of unbroken melancholy. Rushdie makes the following remark about the book: Through the storywell, the accountof the farm labourer Jack and his garden, we are shown how the narrators view of rustic England changes. At first idyllicOf literature and antiquity and the landscape Jack and his garden seemed emanationsit develops along more realistic lines. Jacks heath fails, his garden decays, he dies, the new occupants of his cottage pour concrete over his garden. The idea of timelessness, of Jack as being solid, rooted in his earth, turns out to be false.
Section-6
The sixth section contains the pieces A General Election and Charter 88 along with Rushdies conversation with Edward Said, the most articulate and visible advocate of the Palestinian cause in the United States. The first two pieces exhibit his sharp political acumen, while in the interview with Edward Said, he has been able to explore various international political and literary issues.
These sections deal with authors like Nadine Gordimer, Rian Malan, Nuruddin Farah, Kapuscinski, John Berger, Graham Greene, John Le Carre, Bruce Chatwin, Julian Barnes, Kazuo Ishiguro, Michel Tournier, Italo Calvino, Stephen Hawking, Andrei Sakharov, Umberto Eco, Gunter Grass, Heinrich Boll, Siegfried Lenz, Peter Schneider, Christopher Ransmayr, 280
en t
Sections 7-11
re
fo
For centuries, now it has been the fate of the peoples of the East to be discovered by the West, with dramatic and usually unpleasant consequences. The story of Akumal and Shapinsky is one small instance in which the East has been able to repay the compliment, and with a happy ending, too.
rT
ra
The article The Painter and the Pest explores the curious aesthetic relationship between Harold Shapinsky, an artist living in New York city and Akumal Ramachander, a teacher of elementary English at an Agricultural College in Bangalore. It is through the efforts of Ramachander that Shapinskys art is known to the world. The Indian teacher introduced the artist to the art lovers the world over. Rushdies postcolonial intellect is delighted at the fact that East has been able to propagate an artistic work of the West:
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
Maurice Sendak, Wilhelm Grimm, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, E.L.Doctorow, Michael Herr, Richard Ford, Raymond Carver, Isaac Bashevis singer, Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, Thomas Pynchon, Kurt Vonnegut and Grace Paley. These short pieces exhibit Rushdies penchant for sharp critical writing. The critical pieces display his command over world literatures and his fecundity in interpreting literature of every cultural background. Section-12 The first essay of the final section Naipaul among the Believers deals with Naipauls Among the Believers, which recounts the authors seven month sojourn across Muslim Asia, from Iran to Pakistan to Malaysia to Indonesia and back again to Iran. (http:// brothersjudd.com) It is not just an ordinary travel book. Rushdie comments thus about the book: this is no ordinary travel book: it has theses to expound. The Islamic revival, Naipaul says, is a throwback to medieval times which seeks to create abstract men of the faith, men who would be nothing more than the rules. Its act of renunciation of the West is a fatal flaw
Rushdie calls this travel book a rather superficial book. The essay In God we trust explicates the secular credentials of the author. He declares, I have thought of myself as a wholly secular person, and have been drawn towards the great tradition of secular radicalism The next essay In Good Faith defends his novel The Satanic Verses, which has a group of characters most of whom are British Muslims, or not particularly religious persons of Muslim background. Rushdie asserts, The Satanic Verses celebrates hybridity, impurity, intermingling, the transformation that comes of new and unexpected combinations of human beings, cultures, ideas, politics, movies, songs.
en t
19.3 Major Themes in Imaginary Homelands 19.3.1 The Riddle of Diaspora
In Pramod K. Nayars book Postcolonial Literature: An Introduction (Delhi: Pearson Longman, 2008) the term diaspora has been explained thus: Diaspora can be the voluntary or forced movement of peoples from their homelands into new regions. Having arrived in a new geographical and cultural context, they negotiate two cultures: their own and the new one. This diasporic culture is necessarily mixed and an 281
re
fo
rT
ra
di
The trouble is that its a highly selective truth, a novelists truth masquerading as objective reality. Take Iran: no hint in these pages that in the new Islam there is a good deal more than Khomensim
tio
na
However, Rushdie does not approve of Naipauls description of Islam. Rushdie thinks that Naipauls picture is not complete and comments about this book in the following manner:
lE
du
ca
tio n
amalgamation of the two cultures. Robin Cohen in Global Diasporas: An Introduction (London: Routledge, 2001) thinks that the old country always has claim over the psyche of the diasporans. Imaginary Homelands displays the diasporic sensibility of Rushdie at its best. Nostalgia for the homelands and misbehaviour with the diasporic immigrants in alien lands are exhibited in typical postcolonial manner. The main focus of Rushdie in the first section of the book is on memory and nostalgia for the past. For example, mark the following statement: It may be argued that the past is a country from which we have all emigrated, that its loss is part of our common humanity. I suggest that the writer who is out-of-country and even out-of-language may experience this loss in an intensified form. It is made more concrete for him by the physical fact of discontinuity, of his present being in a different place from his past, of his being elsewhere. This may enable him to speak properly and concretely on a subject of universal significance and appeal.
In the essay Outside the Whale, Rushdie asserts that there can be no easy escapes from history, from hullabaloo, from terrible, unquiet fuss. He has recommended a tradition of making as big a fuss, as noisy a complaint about the world as is humanly possible. In several of his pieces in the book, Rushdie makes a protesting fuss against the revival of the Empire in Britain. In The New Empire within Britain he states, British society has never been cleansed of the filth of imperialism. According to Rushdie, Attenboroughs movie Gandhi is the best example of these imperialistic tendencies of the English. This movie is the result of the undiminished and maniac nostalgia of the British for the Great Pink Age of the Empire.
en t
19.3.3 Debate between Censorship and Eclecticise

In the essay on censorship, Rushdie dwells upon the effects of censorship. It suppresses 282
re
19.3.2 The Emergence of the New Empire
fo
In a way, the diaspora has double consciousnessnostalgia for the imaginary homelands and alienation in foreign lands. V. S. Naipaul details this dilemma in his novel The Enigma of Arrival, That idea of ruin and dereliction, of outof placeness, was something I felt about myself, attached to myself: a man from another hemisphere, another background
rT
ra
di
The displaced individual in the alien lands does not find the situation to be favourable to his plans and desires. The intensity of anguish is enhanced by the fact that the person had come to the West, considering it to be a place of enlightenment. The western sojourn is notable for the feelings of alienation and sorrow in the hearts of the immigrants. The diaspora experiences the worst type of racial prejudice in the West. In the essay The New Empire Within Britian, Rushdie outlines the fact that the immigrants face racial bigotry everywhere in Britain: The fact remains that every major institution in this country is permeated by racial prejudice to some degree.
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
the truth and spreads the falsehood. It can deaden the imagination of people. In place of censorship, Rushdie propagates the eclectic free flow of thought. This eclectic belief permits dissent and demonstrates that opposition is the bedrock of democracy.
19.3.4 Ideals of Hybridity and Multiplicity

The contemporary world, variously depicted as a salad bowl or a melting pot, is marked by hybridity and multiplicity. Rushdie celebrates these ideals in his works and Imaginary Homelands is no exception. The postcolonial social order is notable for new and unexpected combinations of human beings, cultures, ideas, politics, movies, songs. In the essay In Good Faith, Rushdie favours the mongrelization and abhors the absolutism of the pure. According to him, Mlange, hotchpotch, a bit of this and a bit of that is how newness enters the world. This emphasis of Rushdie on the concept of hybridity makes him a man of secular credentials; he believes in the coexistence of several religions/ cultures/ ethnicities.
19.4 Let Us Sum Up
1. 2. 3.
Discuss Imaginary Homelands as a critical work. How does Rushdie defend the inaccuracy of narration in Midnights Children?
en t
4.
5. 6. 7.
re
Should we call Rushdie a dispassionate and disinterested chronicler or someone who has presented the distorted version of history? Give a reasoned answer, quoting from Imaginary Homelands.
its my presence that is foreign, and that the past is home, albeit a lost home in a lost city in the mists of time. Discuss the relevance of the statement from Imaginary Homelands, applying it to Rushdies major novels. Are the three essays of the first section works of self-justification, where the novelist is vindicating his creative art? Illustrate your answer from the text. What is censorship? Discuss the effects of it on literature and arts. Trace the examples of censorship, given by Rushdie in the essay Censorship? Comment briefly on Rushdies treatment of Mrs. Indira Gandhis political career. 283
fo
rT
ra
Through the discussion in this unit, we come to realize that Imaginary Homelands is eclectic and provocative (Richard Heller). Through its interpretation of the major social, political and literary issues, the book has carved a niche for itself in the list of major Postcolonial texts of the contemporary era. In the end, it can be said that it is a collection of essays, covering a wide variety of topics like the defence of his own creative works, Commonwealth Literature, Sub-continental political scenario, censorship, film criticism, diaspora, immigration, Empire, hybridity and multiplicity etc.
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.
How does Rushdie analyse Benazir Bhutto? Discuss Rusdies views about Commonwealth Literature. The subject of Anita Desais fiction has, thus far, been solitude. Comment on this remark of Rushdie about Desai. Throw light on Rushdies interpretation of Deven-Nur relationship in Anita Desais In Custody. Discuss the origin of the essay Outside the Whale. Throw light on Satyajit Ray-Bombay cinema relationship, as discussed by Rushdie. Throw light on the treatment of diaspora in Imaginary Homelands.
Bring out the traces of racial prejudice in An Unimportant Fire.
Elucidate Rushdies point of view in the essay In God We Trust and In Good Faith. Explicate the terms hybridity and multiplicity, quoting from Imaginary Homelands.
19.6 Bibliography
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.
en t
Brennan, Timothy. Salman Rushdie and the Third World: Myths of the Nation. London: Macmillan, 1989.
Cundy, Catherine. Salman Rushdie. Manchester and New York: Manchester UP, 1996. Gandhi, Leela. Postcolonial Theory: A Critical Introduction. Delhi: OUP, 1999. Goonetillek, D.C.R.A. Salman Rushdie. New York: St. Matins Press, 1998. Grant, Damian. Salman Rushdie. Plymouth: Northcote House Publishers, 1999. Harrison, James. Salman Rushdie. New York: Twayne, 1992. 284
re
Ashcroft, Bill. On Post-Colonial Futures: Transformations of Colonial Culture. London, New York: Continuum, 2001.
fo
Ahmad, Aijaz. In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures. London and New York: Verso, 1992.
rT
Abraham, Taisha. Introducing Postcolonial Theory: Issues And Debates. Macmillan, 2007.
ra
di
tio
na
Discuss East-West encounter in the essays V.S.Naipaul and The Painter and the Pest.
lE
du
How does Rushdie analyse the problems of the immigrants in Britain? Can you suggest any parallel of this description in world literature?
ca
tio n
10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 16. 17.
King, Bruce. ed. New National and Post-Colonial Literatures. 1996. Oxford: Clarendon Press,1998. Mittapali, Rajeshwar, and Joel Kuortti. eds. Salman Rushdie: New Critical Insights (Vol.1). New Delhi: Atlantic, 2003. Mukherjee, Meenaxi, and Harish Trivedi. eds. Interrogating Postcolonialism :Theory, Text and Context. Shimla: IIAS,1996.
Said, Edward.Culture and Imperialism. London: Vintage, 1994. Trivedi, Harish. Colonial Transactions: English Literature and India. 1993. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1995.
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
_____________
na
285
lE
Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage, 1979.
du
Rushdie, Salman. Imaginary Homelands, Essays and Criticism 1981-1991. 1991. London: Granta Books in collaboration with Penguin, 1992.
ca
Parameswaran, Uma. The Perforated Sheet: Essays on Salman Rushdies Art. Delhi: Affiliate Esat-West, 1988.
tio n
Nayar, Pramod K. Postcolonial Literature: An Introduction. New Delhi: Pearson Longman, 2008.
UNIT-20 SALMAN RUSHDIE : IMAGINARY HOMELANDS: ESSAYS AND CRITICISM 1981-1991 (II)
Structure 20.0 20.1 20.2 Objectives
Major Issues in Imaginary Homelands 20.2.1 Nostalgia 20.2.2 Views about Politically Committed Art
20.2.3 Criticism of Sub-Continental Social and Political Scenario 20.2.4 Treatment of Intellectual Imperialism 20.2.5 Religious Mania and Secularism
20.2.7 Rushdie as a Film-Critic 20.3
Analysis of Literary Works on the basis of Imaginary Homelands 20.3.1 Kiran Desais The Loss of Inheritance 20.3.2 Stephen Gills Immigrant
20.4 20.5 20.6
Let Us Sum Up
Review Questions
20.0 Objectives
The objectives of the unit are to: introduce the Imaginary Homelands to students as a major Postcolonial text, familiarize with the key concepts of Postcolonial theory highlight Rushdies contribution to film and political criticism, develop critical insight in the students and enable them to analyze a text. 286
en t
Bibliography
re
fo
20.3.3 U. R. Anantha Murthys Samskara: A Rite for a Dead Man
rT
ra
di
tio
20.2.6 Views about the Language of Literary Creation
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
Introduction
20.1 Introduction
The previous unit had interpreted the text of Imaginary Homelands along with the basic themes of diaspora, Empire, censorship and hybridity in it. This unit is a continuation of the previous one and analyses Rushdies views about nostalgia, immigration problems, secularism, sub-continental political scene and the role of English language in India. Imaginary Homelands dissects all these issues quite minutely and pedantically. That is why Brian Morton and Frances Hill call it compelling. One notable feature of the unit is that it applies certain theories of Rushdie to three Indian novels. George Watson, while analyzing Drydens essay Of Dramatic Poesie in The Literary Critics comments, The chief triumph of the examen lies in its attempt at comparative criticism, in its balancing of the qualities of the English drama against those of the French. The unit also promotes this type of critical approach by finding parallels between Rushdies pronouncements and three Indian novels.
20.2 Major Issues in Imaginary Homelands 20.2.1 Nostalgia
The authors in exile are sick for home, and they are in tears amid the alien corn. Pramod K. Nayar has commented thus about the presence of nostalgic experiences in the diasporic writings, Much of diasporic writing explores the theme of an original home. This original home as now lostdue to their exileis constantly worked into the imagination and myth of the displaced individual/ community. Nostalgia is therefore a key theme in diasporic writing. Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia introduces the concept of nostalgia, The term nostalgia describes a longing for the past, often in idealized form. The word is made up of two Greek roots (nostos returning home, and algos pain), to refer to the pain a sick person feels because he wishes to return to his native home, and fears never to see it again. It was described as a medical condition, a form of melancholy, in the Early Modern period, and came to be an important topic in Romanticism. The historical moorings of this concept are further discussed in the following manner by Wikipedia: The term was coined in 1688 by Johannes Hofer (1669-1752) in his Basel dissertation. Hofer introduced nostalgia or mal du pays homesickness for the condition also known as mal du Suisse Swiss illness or Schweizerheimweh Swiss homesickness, because of its 287
en t
re
fo
rT
She stood in tears amid the alien corn.
ra
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when sick for home,
di
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
tio
One invariable element of all Postcolonial/ diasporic literature is the element of nostalgia in it. These scholars, critics and novelists seem to be in tune with Keats celebrated expression in Ode to a Nightingale:
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
I went to visit the house in the photograph and stood outside it, neither daring nor wishing to announce myself to its owners. (I didnt want to see how theyd ruined the interior.) I was overwhelmed. The photograph had naturally been taken in black and white; and my memory, feeding on such images as this, had begun to see my childhood in the same way, monochromatically. The colours of my history had seeped out of my minds eye; now my other eyes were assaulted by colours, by the vividness of the red tiles, the yellow-edged green of cactus-leaves, the brilliance of bougainvillea creeper. Due to this nostalgia his Midnights Children, called fictional autobiography by Mac Fenwick (http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=3591), is accused of inaccurate narration. The novel contains many errors of historical reasoning. Rushdie has himself exhibited these defects in the narrative technique of the novel in the essay Errata: Or, Unreliable Narration in Midnights Children:
en t
re
fo
Salman Rushdie is one of the chief initiators of these nostalgic moods in his fiction and his critical book Imaginary Homelands is no exception. It is this obsessive affection for the past homeland that encourages him to have the portrait of his ancestral house in his present room. Imaginary Homelands, called (an) assemblage of Salman Rushdies seminar papers, television broadcasts, book reviews, movie reviews, public lectures, interviews and articles by Robert Towers(http://www.nytimes.com/ books/99/04/18/specials/rushdie-imaginary.html), begins with the artistic description of the just-mentioned portrait: An old photograph in a cheap frame hangs on a wall of the room where I work. Its a picture dating from 1946 of a house into which, at the time of its taking, I had not yet been born. The house is rather peculiar a three-storeyed gabled affair with tiled roofs and round towers in two corners, each wearing a pointy tiled hat. The same nostalgia motivates him to visit the house:
rT
ra
di
288
tio
na
lE
du
frequent occurrence in Swiss mercenaries who in the plains of lowlands of France or Italy were pining for their native mountain landscapes.Cases resulting in death were known and soldiers were sometimes successfully treated by being discharged and sent home. Receiving a diagnosis was, however, generally regarded as an insult. In 1787, Robert Hamilton (1749 1830) described a case of a soldier suffering from nostalgia, who received sensitive and successful treatment. In 1781, in the north of England, Hamilton met a new recruit who had a melancholy hung over his countenance, and wanness preyed on his cheeks, a universal weakness, but no fixed pain; a noise in his ears, and giddiness of his head. The young soldier would not eat, and he got weaker until the nurse happened to discuss his hometown with him. Hamilton noted that the topic of home seemed to cheer the soldiers spirits; after Hamilton told the young recruit that he could return home, he began eating again and his strength returned. By the 1850s, nostalgia was losing its status as a disease and coming to be seen as a symptom or stage of a pathological process. It was considered as a form of melancholia and a predisposing condition among suicides. By the 1870s, interest in nostalgia as a medical category had all but vanished.
ca
tio n
And how could Lata Mangeshkar have been heard singing on All-India Radio as early as 1946? And does Saleem not know that it was not General Sam Manekshaw who accepted the surrender of the Pakistani Army at the end of the Bangladesh Warthe Indian officer who was Tiger Niazis old chum being, of course, Jagjit Singh Arora? And why does Saleem allege that the brand of cigarettes, State Express 555, is manufactured by W.D. & H. O. Wills? Is Rushdie the only literary artist to indulge in these blunders of history? No, there are several others too. After all, a man of literature is not a social chronicler. The purpose of a literary artist is to play with the emotions; he is least concerned with the photographic representation of social history. For the history of a period, some historical document should be perused, not a literary piece. A work of literature is not a safe guide for the history of a region; literature is concerned with the emotional and aesthetic outlet of the authors feelings. Keats made the same blunder in On First Looking Into Chapmans Homer:
He stard at the Pacificand all his men Lookd at each other with a wild surmise Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
en t
This is why I made my narrator, Saleem, suspect in his narration; his mistakes are the mistakes of a fallible memory compounded by quirks of character and of circumstance, and his vision is fragmentary. It may be that when the Indian writer who writes from outside India tries to reflect that world, he is obliged to deal in broken mirrors, some of whose fragments have been irretrievably lost.
Rushdie outlines his preoccupations with politically committed writings in his essay Outside the Whale, which is a response to Orwells essay Inside the Whale. In the essay, Orwell had propagated the quietist and escapist approach to world problems, while analyzing 289
re
Here, Keats confounds Cortez with Balboa, the first white man who, with a number of followers, crossed the isthmus of Darien and saw the Pacific queen from the American coast. The website, entitled as www.stevedenning.com, has made the following entry about Keats error, Keats was in error in talking of Cortez. Actually it was Balboa, not Cortez, who first crossed the isthmus to the Pacific. Keats had read Robertsons History of America and apparently confused two scenes there described: Balboas discovery of the Pacific and Cortez first view of Mexico City. But who cares, when there is such great poetry? (http:// www.stevedenning.com/Poetry_romance.html) Rushdies novel also has errors of history, but these errors are redeemed by his artistic excellence. Through this erroneous narration, Rushdie is emphasizing the value of broken memory or nostalgia in literary creations. The significance of this fractured memory is stressed thus by Rushdie:
20.2.2 Views about Politically Committed Art
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
ca
tio n
The effects of Rushdies pronouncements about literature of protest in the essay can be clearly seen in his creative works. Even Imaginary Homelands displays his firm political convictions, where he is seen making a strong protest against the chaotic world order. Charlie Onion, while reviewing Rushdies Fury finds in it the spirit of protest, In his first American novel, Salman Rushdie offers a book whose bitingly satirical themes are more interesting than its plot. Similarly Shalimar the Clown is based mostly in a small town in the Indian region of Kashmir. The town itself is imaginary, but it is located in an accurate geographic location not far from Srinagar. In Rushdie style, the 1947 partition of India, the subsequent invasion by tribals from Pakistan-administered Kashmir reinforced by regular army units, and finally the India-Pakistan war that resulted in the partitioning of Jammu and Kashmir, all appear in the story. Similarly, the 1965 India-Pakistan war also appears (Wikipedia). Hasan Surror,
en t
re
Rushdie is not the first author to pinpoint the political/ social convictions of the authors. Rather, there is a whole tradition of scholars and writers, supporting this ideology. For instance, Rene Wellek and Austin Warren talk in much the same way, Literature occurs only in a social context, as part of a culture, in a milieu. Taines famous triad of race, milieu, and moment has, in practice, led to an exclusive study of the milieu.
fo
rT
ra
Outside the whale is the unceasing storm, the continual quarrel, the dialectic of history. Outside the whale there is a genuine need for political fiction, for books that draw new and better maps of reality, and make new languages with which we can understand the world. Outside the whale we see that we are all irradiated by history, we are radioactive with history and politics; we see that it can be as false to create a politics-free fictional universe as to create one in which nobody needs to work or eat or love or sleep. Outside the whale it becomes necessary, and even exhilarating, to grapple with the special problems created by the incorporation of political material, because politics is by turns farce and tragedy, and sometime (e.g., Zias Pakistan) both at once. Outside the whale the writer is obliged to accept that he (or she) is part of the crowd, part of the ocean, part of the storm, so that objectivity becomes a great dream, like perfection, an unattainable goal for which one must struggle in spite of the impossibility of success. Outside the whale is the world of Samuel Becketts famous formula: I cant go on, Ill go on.
di
290
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
Millers The Tropic of Cancer, a lyrical, profane, and surreal portrait of the authors experiences in the bohemian underworld of 1930s Paris (www.enotes.com). Orwell had recommended the non-involvement in the world problems. Rushdie has analyzed Orwells point of view thus: Sit it out, he recommends; we writers will be safe inside the whale, until the storm dies down.undoubtedly Orwell did give way to a kind of defeatism and despair. By the time he wrote Nineteen Eighty-four, sick and cloistered on Jura, he had plainly come to think that resistance was useless. Rushdie preferred rowdyism of protest to the calm of quietism. Rushdies celebrated expression is: I am recommending the ancient tradition of making as big a fuss, as noisy a complaint about the world as is humanly possible. Rushdie again says in an asserting manner:
en t
Rushdies essays make an emphatic protest against the sub-continental social and political subjects; he does not adopt a quietist or escapist approach of withdrawal, rather he is quite vocal, vociferous and loud in his views about India and Pakistan. In the essay The Riddle of Midnight: India, August 1987, he raises a very serious questionDoes India exist? Externally, the question appears to be a strange and redundant sort of inquiry, as after all, there the gigantic place manifestly is, a rough diamond two thousand miles long and more or less wide, as large as Europe though youd never guess it from the Mercator projection, populated by around a sixth of the human race, home of the largest film industry on earth, spawning Festivals the world over, famous as the worlds biggest democracy. But, a deeper scrutiny explicates the crumbling of the structure. The greatest challenge before the intellectuals, 291
re
A number of pieces from Imaginary Homelands are not different from his novels. In his critical essays too, the protest against the disorderly world order is evident. He speaks candidly about the politics of religion and race in Margaret Thatchers Britain, Indira Gandhis India, and Zia ul-Haqs Pakistan; about writers and books from India and Pakistan, Africa, Britain, Europe, South America, and the United States; about the vocation of the writer and the powers of literature, the potential of the imagination and the dangers of censorship; and, repeatedly, about migration as the archetypal experience of the twentieth century. He expresses his bold and unorthodox ideals without any fear and censorship, as he believes that the author should be outside the whale. He does not favour the idea that the authors should keep out of politics. Rushdie asserts, Give yourself over to the world-process simply accept it, endure it, record it. That seems to be the formula that any sensitive novelist is likely to adopt. This statement is the very basis of the prevalent political convictions of Rushdie in his writings.
20.2.3 Criticism of Sub-Continental Social and Political Scenario
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
reviewing the novel for The Hindu, called it the most political since Midnights Children. Peter Craven finds in the novel the great panorama of the tragedy of Kashmir, the needless tragedy of religious hatred, the necessary tragedy of East and West (The Age). According to Sreeram Chaulia, In Shalimar the Clown, he plunges into the viscera of terrorisms interconnectedness how dots of violence, justice and revenge link together across time and space into blood-soaked lines (Asia Times online). Suhayl Saadi reviews thus the novel in The Independent, With fewer of the stylistic irritations of his previous fictions, this is one of Rushdies best novels yet. The horror that it depicts demands to be screamed, word by word, at the minarets, steeples and congresses of those who facilitate killing, rape and torture - and at those who, unlike Rushdie, have not the courage to ask of their rulers, of their religions, of themselves: why is that? John Updike, while reviewing it for The New Yorker, finds sufficient political material in it. Updike has spoken of knowledgeable details of military and political action and harrowing depictions of atrocity and counteratrocity in the novel. Thus, it is obvious that his novels are the works of political protest, which was analyzed by him in Outside the Whale. In his fictional oeuvre, he is making as big a fuss, as noisy a complaint about the world as is humanly possible.
du
ca
tio n
leaders and social activists is to keep India united: After all, in all the thousands of years of Indian history, there never was such a creature as a united India. Nobody ever managed to rule the whole place, not the Mughals, not the British. And then, that midnight, the thing that had never existed was suddenly free. But what on earth was it? On what common ground (if any) did it, does it, stand? Some countries are united by a common language; India has around fifteen major languages and numberless minor ones. Nor are its people united by race, religion or culture. These days, you can even hear some voices suggesting that the preservation of the union is not in the common interest. J. K. Galbraiths description of India as functioning anarchystill fits, but the stresses on the country have never been so great. Does India exist? If it doesnt, the explanation is to be found in a single word: communalism. The politics of religious hatred. One great tangling issue, affecting both the neighbours is that of censorship of the press, which suffocates the voice of dissent. In Pakistan, it is everywhere, inescapable, permitting no appeal. Rushdie comments thus about the stifling of the free expression in the sub-continent: In India the authorities control the media that matterradio and television and allow some leeway to the press, comforted by their knowledge of the countrys low literacy rate. In Pakistan they go further. Not only do they control the press, but the journalists, too. At the recent conference of the Non-Aligned Movement in New Delhi, the Pakistan press corps was notable for its fearfulness. Each member was worried one of the other guys might inform on him when they returnedfor drinking, or consorting too closely with Hindus, or performing other unpatriotic acts. Indian journalists were deeply depressed by the sight of their opposite numbers behaving like sacred rabbits one moment and quislings the next. The essay Imaginary Homelands brings out some examples of this censorship in the sub-continent: The state truth about the war in Bangladesh, for instance, is that no atrocities were committed by the Pakistani army in what was then the East Wing. This version is sanctified by many persons who would describe themselves as intellectuals. And the official version of the Emergency in India was well expressed by Mrs. Gandhi in a recent BBC interview. She said that there were some people around who claimed that bad things had happened during the Emergency, forced sterilizations, things like that; but she stated, this was all false. Nothing of this type had ever occurred. The article The Assassination of Indira Gandhi discusses the problem of CentreState relations in India. According to Rushdie, there lies a great paradox about Indian political scene. The great Indian political quandary is the fragility of relations between the states and the centre. Rushdie says, At the heart of idea of India there lies a paradox: that its component parts, the states which coalesced into the union, are ancient historical entities, with cultures and independent existence going back many centuries; whereas India itself is a mere thirtyseven years old. And yet it is the new-born India, the baby, so to speak, the Central government, that holds sway over the greybeards. Centre-State relations have always, inevitably, been somewhat delicate, fragile affairs. Rushdie is for maintaining the federal character of India by
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
292
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
Rushdie rues at the fact that during Mrs. Indira Gandhis regime, there were attempts to destabilize the States by the interference of Centre in the affairs of the States. During her time in office, power has systematically been removed from the States to the Centre. Rushdie elaborates some of these events thus: The troubles in the Punjab began when the Congress-I leadership persistently refused to discuss the then very moderate demands of the Akali Dal Party for the restitution to the State government of powers which the Centre had seized. There can be no doubt that this intransigence was a major contributing factor to the growth in support for Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwales terrorists, and the whole sorry process which resulted in the attack on the Golden Temple. Elsewhere in India, too, the Centres power hunger has been very unpopular, and the Congress-I has suffered a string of defeats in State elections. Mrs. Gandhis reaction to these defeats was sadly all too predictable, and very far from democratic. She embarked on covert programmes of destabilization, one of which succeeded, at least temporarily, in toppling the popular and elected Chief Minister of Kashmir, Farooq Abdullah, and another of which backfired when N. T. Rama Rao was dismissed, in Andhra, and then had to be reinstated when it turned out that he still commanded a majority. 293
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
To be sure, regionalism is rooted in Indias manifold diversity of languages, cultures, tribes, communities, religions and so on, and encouraged by the regional concentration of those identity markers, and fuelled by a sense of regional deprivation. For many centuries, India remained the land of many lands, regions, cultures and traditions. The country of more than a billion people inhabiting some 3, 287, 263sq km., Indias broad regions, socio-culturally speaking, are distinct from one another. For instance, southern India (the home of Dravidian cultures), which is itself a region of many regions, is evidently different from the north, the west, the central and the north-east. Even the east of India is different from the North-East of India comprising today seven constituent units of Indian federation with the largest concentration of tribal peoples. (http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/volltexte/2005/5500/pdf/ hpsacp27.pdf)
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
The emphasis on the rights of the states exhibits Rushdies adoration of the multiplicity and hybridity, as the States represent diverse cultural and linguistic groups. Harihar Bhattacharya of Burdwan University too remarks:
tio n
emphasizing on the significant role of the States in the nation building. Here, it will not be out of place to say that to improve Centre-State ties, Sarkaria Commission was set up. According to Wikipedia, Sarkaria Commission was set up in June 1983 by the central government of India. The Sarkaria Commissions charter was to examine the relationship and balance of power between state and central governments in the country and suggest changes within the framework of Constitution of India. The Commission was so named as it was headed by Justice Rajinder Singh Sarkaria, a retired judge of the Supreme Court of India. The Commission submitted its final 1600-page report in 1988. The final report contained 247 specific recommendations.
Kiplings racial bigotry is often excused on the grounds that he merely reflected in his writing the attitude of his age. Its hard for members of the allegedly inferior race to accept such an excuse. Ought we to exculpate anti-Semites in Nazi Germany on the same grounds? If Kipling had maintained any sort of distance between himself and the attitudes he recorded, it would be a different matter. But, as story after story makes plain, the authors attitudesthe attitudes, that is, of Kipling as played by the English actorare identical with those of his white characters. The Indians he portrays are wife-killers (Dray Wara Yow Dee), scamps (At Howli Thana), betrayers of their own brothers (Gemini), unfaithful wives (At Twenty Two) and the like. The Empire delights in justifying the colonization of the East. According to Pramod K. Nayar, The nineteenth century, the heyday of European empires, was also the period of 294
en t
re
Pramod K. Nayar has defined Postcolonial literature thus, The violence of colonialismepistemic, cultural, economic, political, and economicis so integral to the history of Third World nations that no literature or critical approach, as far as I know, has been able to ignore it. Postcolonial literature seeks to address the ways in which non-European (Asian, African, south American, but also settler colony) literatures and cultures have been marginalized as an effect of colonial rule, and to find, if possible, modes of resistance, retrieval, and reversal of their own pre-colonial pasts. That is, this literature seeks to understand, negotiate, and critique a specific historical eventcolonial rulewhile looking forward to a more just, socially egalitarian world order. It is a literature of resistance, anger, protest, and hope. It seeks to understand history so as to plan for the future. Of course, Postcolonial literature is evidently marked by this resistance, anger and protest against the imperialistic tendencies of the Empire. Imaginary Homelands is no exception; it seeks to expose the colonial design under the garb of liberal Western ideology. In order to explode the biased approach of the Empire, Rushdie unearths the basic colonial mindset in the writings of Kipling:
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
20.2.4 Treatment of Intellectual Imperialism
ca
His pieces on Zia Ul-Haq and Benazir Bhutto display his acute awareness of the political condition of Pakistan. Under the garb of the political essays, Rushdie propagates his ideals about diaspora, nostalgia, secularism, freedom of expression, multiplicity of religions and hybridity of cultures. Due to expression of these issues, Imaginary Homelands has been admired by a number of scholars. For example, Michael Foot appreciated the work quite significantly in Observer. The comments of Foot are also present on the flap of Imaginary Homelands: Read every page of this book; better still re-read them. The invocation means no hardship, since every true reader must be captivated by Rushdies masterful invention and ease, the flow of wit and insight and passion How literature of the highest order can serve the interests of our common humanity is freshly illustrated here: a defence of his past, a promise for the future, and a surrender to nobody or nothing whatever except his own all-powerful imagination.
tio n
To support his excessively imperialistic ideas about Indian culture and civilization, William Walsh further quotes Ursula King: A contrast with the West had to be sought in order to compensate for both Western political and economic dominance, and to fight Western contempt for Indias material retardation. In this situation, to affirm, vindicate, and glorify the superiority of Indian spirituality was the Hindu reformers and proto-nationalists particular way of opposing the Wests own technological and organizational superiority: spiritual triumph was set over material domination; spirituality could conquer even more than materialism had done.
en t
It is this colonial bias that hurts the Postcolonial scholars and authors. Rushdie is also hurt at the haughty civilizing mission and the degrading pride of the White for the golden Pink Age. For proof of the existence of this racial stain, we can look, for instance, at the huge, undiminished appetite of white Britons for televised series, films, plays and books all filled with nostalgia for Great Pink Age. The author of Imaginary Homelands considers the British imperialism to be worse than German Nazism: 295
re
fo
rT
there is Vivekanandas profound belief that this Indian spirituality is to be contrasted with Western materialism, out which came his lively concern with Indias spiritual mission to the West. The assurance of spiritual superiority and the attendant missionary impulse existed in all the influential thinkers of Vivekanandas timein Tagore and Aurbindo as much as in Vivekananda himself. It was present too in the early Congress Party as well as later in the policy premises of the Government of India, particularly in Nehrus cabinets and most markedly in his leadership of the non-aligned nations and in his relations with BritainThis phenomenon has been studied most closely by Dr. Ursula King who notes that there is no word either for religion or spirituality in any of the Indian languages. There is only dharma, referring to the complex interdependence of the universal, social and individual order. Dr. King sees the idea of the essential spirituality of Indian civilization as part of the Hindu Renaissance, a reinterpretation of Hinduism based, in fact, on the work of British orientalists.
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
formulation of race theories. Science, medicine, anthropology, and other disciplines formalized theories of race that justified imperial presence in Asian and American lands. Such theories postulated and proved that the non-European races occupied the lower end of the scale of human development (development being measured through parameters created by and in Europe). The native races were primitive, child-like, effeminate, irrational, irreligious (since pagan religion was deemed to be no religion at all), criminal and unreliable. Since the native race could not take care of itself, it must be taken care of by the European. This process of racializing enabled and justified European colonial presence in Asia and Africa. This racial prejudice, which validates the Empire and denounces the East, can be seen in the extremely biased account of Swami Vivekananda, Sri Aurbindo and Tagore by William Walsh, Emeritus Professor of Commonwealth Literature at the University of Leeds. In his book Indian Literature in English (London: Longman, 1990), Walsh comments in a typical imperialistic manner:
tio n
20.2.5 Religious Mania and Secularism
One important aspect of all Postcolonial literature is the stress upon hybridity, pluralism, multiplicity and composite culture. The authors are disgusted at the lack of proper coordination among various sects and communities; they stress the need for the ideal of co-existence in this world, which is just like a salad bowl or a melting pot. Britain based Guyanese writer David Dabydeen, in his discussion of cultural pluralism, emphasizes this fact. According to Wikipedia, David Dabydeen (Born December 9, 1955) is a Guyanese-born critic, writer and novelist. Dabydeen was born in Berbice, Guyana He read English at Selwyn College, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom, and was awarded a Bachelor of Arts with honours. He then gained a Ph.D. in 18th century literature and art at University College London in 1982, and was awarded a research fellowship at Wolfson College, Oxford. He is a Professor at the Centre for British Comparative Cultural Studies at the University of Warwick in Coventry, United Kingdom. He is a member of UNESCOs Executive Board. He is the author of four novels, three collections of poetry and several works of non-fiction and criticism. His first book, Slave Song (1984), a collection of poetry, won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize and the Quiller-Couch Prize. A new collection, Turner, was published in 2002. Dabydeen uses the image of a beehive to depict the plurality of the society. G.Rai in his paper Postcolonialism: Its Meaning and Significance interprets this concept of Dabydeen thus: Dabydeen, while talking about the cultural diversity of a city like London, uses the image of a beehive. A number of different cultural groups are present in one place with little communication between them taking place. Each is confined to its own cell. Britons do not spend long enough in the West Indian cells nor do they invite West Indians to their cells either. Dabydeen concluded that 1990s London is culturally diverse, but there is little cross- fertilization 296
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
All the events of Britain are determined by the colour of ones skin. On the streets of England, black women are abused and black children are beaten. In the run-down housing estates of the new Empire, black families have their windows broken, they are afraid to go out after dark, and human and animal excrement arrives through their letter-boxes. The police offer threats instead of protection, and the courts offer small hope of redress.
du
ca
tio n
Britain isnt Nazi Germany. The British Empire isnt the Third Reich. in Germany, after the fall of Hitler, heroic attempts were made by many people to purify German thought and the German language of the pollution of Nazism. Such acts of cleansing are occasionally necessary in every society. But British thought, British society has never been cleansed of the filth of imperialism. Its still there, breeding lice and vermin, waiting for unscrupulous people to exploit it for their own ends. One of the key concepts of imperialism was that military superiority implied cultural superiority, and this enabled the British to condescend to and repress cultures far older than their own; and it still does. For the citizens of the new, imported Empire, for the colonized Asians and blacks of Britain, the police force represents that colonizing army, those regiments of occupation and control.
of cultures taking place. Very little happens by way of cultural exchange, people cross back to their cells having had a brief encounter with cultural diversity. Cultural diversity masks the continuing separation of cultures in the West and discourages border-crossings and formation of new kinds of relationship. The need of the hour is that there should be mutual interaction among the various sects; religious obscurantism should be done away with and eclectic approach towards religion should be employed. Several essays of Imaginary Homelands display this concern of Rushdie for religious mania, pervading the world in general and the subcontinent in particular. For example The Riddle of Midnight: India, August 1987 displays the ferocity of communal violence in the wake of Ram-Janam Bhumi Babri Mosque dispute. Ayodhya, a medium sized town in the State of Uttar Pradesh is the venue of this disputed site. Religious inferno, created by this issue has been well described by Rushdie: When I arrived in Delhi the old Walled City was under heavy curfew because of just an outbreak of communal violence. In the little alleys of Chandni Chowk I met a Hindu tailor, Harbans Lal, born in 1947 and as mild and gentle a man as you could wish to find. The violence terrified him. When it started, he said, I shut up the shop and ran away. A couple days later the Walled City was still bubbling with tension. The curfew was lifted for an hour or two every day to enable people to go out and buy food. The rest of the time, security was very tight. It was Eid, the great Muslim festival celebrating the end of the month of fasting, but the citys leading imams had said that Eid should not be celebrated. In Meerut, the mutilated corpses of Muslims floated in the river. The citys predominantly Hindu police force, the PAC, had run amok. Stephen Gill, Sialkot born Canadian novelist and poet has portrayed the same mania in the prefaces to his poetry collections like Shrine, Songs Before Shrine and The Flame. Gill was born in Sialkot, Pakistan, where he passed his early childhood and grew in India. After teaching in Ethiopia for three years, he migrated to England before settling in Canada. He has authored more than twenty books, including novels, literary criticism, and collections of poems. (See http://www.stephengill.ca/) In the Preface to Shrine, Gill has emotionally written about his tragic encounters with stark reality on account of religious insanity, pervading India: Every time there was a stir caused by the wind, a car on the street, the bark of a dog, or the mew of a cat, we froze inside our house. Every time there was anything unusual, unseen tragedy was expected. The nights were nightmares and the days did not bring any hope. Often the mornings dawned with more lamentable events. It was not easy to sleep when night after night the ghosts of fear looked straight into our eyes. It turned into an obsession that afflicted me every minute of every hour that whom to trust and to take in confidence. Passers-by and neighbours appeared to be the possible killers. Apparently to me, the dragons of religious terror for minorities roamed around freely. The sensitive hearts of the literary artists are perturbed by this violence, created by the 297
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
The English language has become a part of the IT revolution. English, a language that came from nowhere, is set to conquer the world. Two thousand years ago, the English language was confined to a handful of savages, now forgotten tribes on the shores of Northwest Europe; there was no English in England. Today, it is used, spoken or written in some form or the other, by perhaps 1.5 billion people around the world; of the English users, three hundred and fifty million use it as the mother tongue, and the rest as a foreign or second language. It is the only language widely used from China to Peru, and more scattered than any other language in the world. It is estimated that there are even more users of English than of the Chinese language, a language spoken in eight different varieties but written in the same way by 1.1 billion people.
en t
What should be the language of literary communication? Rushdie dwells on this question quite emphatically in the essays Imaginary Homelands and Commonwealth Literature Does Not Exist. He is for the adoption of English language by the authors of Indian origin: the British Indian writer simply does not have the option of rejecting English, anyway. His children, her children, will grow speaking it, probably as a first language; and in forging of a British Indian identity the English language is of central importance. It must, in spite of everything, be embraced. However, the Indians cant simply use the language in the way the British did; that it needs remaking for our own purposes. In the essay about Commonwealth Literature, the importance of English language is emphasized thus by Rushdie: Ill begin from an obvious starting point. English is by now the world language. It achieved this status partly as a result of the physical colonization of a quarter of the globe by the British, and it remains ambiguous but central to the affairs of just about all the countries to whom it was given, along with mission schools, trunk roads and the rules of cricket, as a gift of the British colonizers. N. Krishnaswamy and Lalitha Krishnaswamy in their book The Story of English in India (New Delhi: Foundation Books, 2006) have also displayed the significance of the English language in contemporary world order:
re
fo
rT
ra
di
298
tio
na
lE
du
20.2.6 Views about the Language of Literary Creation
ca
adders of religious fundamentalism. The essay The Assassination of Indira Gandhi brings out the same havoc, created by fundamentalist ideology: The dangers of communalism, of the kind of religious sectarianism which motivated the assassins bullets, are even more to be feared.The growth of Hindu fanaticism, as evidenced by the increasing strength of the RSS, the organization which was behind the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, has been very worrying; and it has had its parallel in the Bhinranwale group and, recently, in the increased support for the Muslim extremist Jamaat Party in Kashmir The essays on Zia ul-Haq and Benazir Bhutto exhibit the presence of religious fundamentalism in Pakistan. The greatest contribution of the book in this study of religion is perhaps the last section, which contains essays like In God We Trust, In Good Faith and Is Nothing Sacred? etc. These essays throw light on his eclectic and pluralistic philosophy of religion. In one of the essays, he declared himself as a wholly secular person.
tio n
en t
Forty years ago this week, the DMK leader C. N. Annadurai wrote a letter to the Prime Minister protesting against the imposition of Hindi over all of India.in fact, Southern leaders had been exercised about this question for quite some time. Back in 1956, the Academy of Tamil Culture passed a resolution urging that English should continue to be the official language of the Union and the language for communication between the Union and the State Governments and between one State Government and another. The signatories included Annadurai, E. V. Ramaswami Periyar, and C. Rajagopalachari. On Rajajis part this represented a certain change of mind; for he had once been a vigorous proponent of the rashtrabhasha himself. However, the organization of the campaign was the work of the DMK, which through the 1950s organized many protest meetings against the imposition of Hindi. Of course, English language is fast becoming the lingua franca the world over including India. But, Rushdies point of view is not completely true. There is another side of the coin too. I. A. Richards had pointed out two functions of the languagescientific and emotive. English for the Indians may be fit for the dry scientific purposes but not for the poetic ends. Native experiences can hardly be communicated poetically in an alien language, as it is not the language of our emotional make-up. Imaginative literature is considered to be a cathartic outlet/ release of excessive emotions in the poets heart. That cathartic release can naturally be in a language close to ones heart. This language will be a native one; it can not be the second/ alien language. 299
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
Ramachandra Guha an author and historian based in Bangalore, in his article Hindi Against India, published in The Hindu of Jan 16, 2005 had stressed the same opposition of Hindi language in the southern states:
na
lE
There is also an interesting North-South divide in Indian attitudes to English. In the North, in the so-called Hindi belt, where the capital, Delhi, is located, it is possible to think of Hindi as a future national language; but in South India, which is at present suffering from the attempts of central government to impose this national language on it, the resentment of Hindi is far greater than of English. After spending quite some time in South India, Ive become convinced that English is an essential language in India, not only because of its technical vocabularies and the international communication which it makes possible, but also simply to permit two Indians to talk to each other in a tongue which neither party hates.
du
ca
tio n
This domination of English language is not just the result of the British legacy. It is also the effect of the primacy of the United States of America in the affairs of the world. Rushdie also mentions the prevalent preference of the Indian youth for English language, The debate about the appropriateness of English in post-British India has been raging ever since 1947; but today, I find, it is a debate which has meaning only for the older generation. The children of independent India seem not to think of English as being irredeemably tainted by its colonial provenance. They use it as an Indian language, as one of the tools they have to hand. Moreover, in certain Indian states Hindi language is considered to be a target of greater animosity than the English language. According to Rushdie,
20.2.7 Rushdie as a Film-Critic

Imaginary Homelands is also notable for Rushdies interpretation of certain movies, film stars and documentaries. The most important piece, dealing with film criticism, is perhaps the analysis of Attenboroughs Gandhi. Rushdie calls the form of this movie opulent and lavish. He considers the movie to be one of the worst symbols of the Empire. The piece on Satyajit Ray brings out the fact that his achievement is astonishing. According to Rushdie, Ray has invariably preferred the intimate story to the grand epic, and is the poet par excellence of the human-scale, life-sized comedy and tragedy of ordinary men and women, journeying as we all journey, down little, but unforgettable roads. Rushdies view about Rays Pather Panchali is worth quoting:
20.3 Analysis of Literary Works on the basis of Imaginary Homelands
20.3.1 Kiran Desais The Loss of Inheritance

The diasporic sensibility, elaborated by Rushdie in Imaginary Homelands finds its true explication in Kiran Desais Man- Booker award winning novel The Loss of Inheritance, which is replete with sadness over globalization and with pleasure at the surviving intimacies of Indian village life.(John Ezard in The Guardian) Pankaj Mishra, while reviewing the novel for The New York Times comments thus about it, Although it focuses on the fate of a few powerless individuals, Kiran Desais extraordinary new novel manages to explore, with intimacy and insight, just about every contemporary international issue: globalization, multiculturalism, economic inequality, fundamentalism and terrorist violence. Despite being set in the mid-1980s, it seems the best kind of post-9/11 novel. In the novel Biju, who is hopscotching from one gritty New York restaurant to another on an elusive search for a green card, is the symbol of the double consciousness of the immigrants. The element of nostalgia, explained by Rushdie in the first section of Imaginary Homelands, is seen in the following expression of Kiran Desais work, where Biju is seen with Saeed Saeed of Zanzibar: In Stone Town they ate samosas and chapattis, jalebis, pilau rice.Saeed Saeed could sing like Amitabh Bachhan and Hema Malini. He sang, Mera Joota hai Japani and Bombay se aaya mera dostoi! He could gesture with his arms out and wriggle his hips, as 300
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
The write-ups on Handsworth Songs and Brazil exhibit Rushdies acute awareness of major world issues.
lE
this movie, made for next to nothing, mostly with untrained actors, by a director who was learning (and making up) the rules as he went along, is a work of such lyrical and emotional force that it becomes, for its audiences, as potent as their own, most deeply personal memories. To this day, the briefest snatch of Ravi Shankars wonderful theme music brings back a flood of feeling, and a crowd of images
du
ca
tio n
could Kavafya from Kazakhstan and Omar from Malaysia, and together they assailed Bju with thrilling dance numbers. Biju felt so proud of his countrys movies he almost fainted. The above passage also clearly exhibits the presence of the hybridity in the postcolonial world. The concepts of hybridity, pluralism and composite culture, propagated by Rushdie in Imaginary Homelands, are exemplified here by Desai. Moreover, the problems of Biju in settling in the West are artistically presented: He covered his timidity with manufactured disgust: How can you? Those, those women are dirty, he said primly. Stinking bitches. Sounding awkward. Fucking bitches, fucking cheap women youll get some disease smell bad hubshi all black and ugly they make me sick. By now, said Romy, I could do it with a Dog!Aaaargh!he howled, theatrically holding back his head. ArrrrghaAAA The other men laughed.
They were men; he was a baby. He was nineteen, he looked and felt several years younger. We may also mark the typical diasporic element in the predicament of Jemubhai in England: He continued to be amazed by the sights that greeted him.It took him by surprise because hed expected only grandness, hadnt realized that here, too, people could be poor and live unaesthetic lives. The spirit of regionalism, depicted by Rushdie in the essay The Assassination of Indira Gandhi finds its perfect elaboration in the Gorkha Liberation movement of the novel. One of the agitators cries out the woes of the Gorkhas thus: At that time, in April of 1947, the Communist Party of India demanded a Gorkhasthan, but the request was ignored We are laborers on the tea plantations, coolies dragging heavy loads, soldiers. And are we allowed to become doctors and government workers, owners of the tea plantations? No! We are kept at the level of servants. We fought on behalf of the British for two hundred years. We fought in World War One. We went to East Africa, to Egypt, to the Persian Gulf. We were moved from here to there as it suited them.We are soldiers, loyal, brave. India or England, they never had cause to doubt our loyalty. In the wars with Pakistan we fought our former comrades on the other side of the border. How our spirit cried. But we are Gorkhas. We are soldiers. Our character has never been in doubt. And have we been rewarded? Have we been given compensation? Are we given respect?
en t
The diasporic consciousness, enunciated by Rushdie in Imaginary Homelands, finds its parallels in Stephen Gills Immigrant too. Like Rushdie, this Sialkot-born Canadian author 301
re
20.3.2 Stephen Gills Immigrant
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
has also described the precarious condition of the immigrants in the West. Immigrant depicts the tangling problems which a newcomer to Canada encounters. In a way, the novel is presenting before the readers the psychological tussle which Gill faced while settling in Canada. R. K. Singh has aptly pointed out in his article Cross-Cultural Communication: As he portrays a new Canadians plightlanguage barriers, ethnic prejudices, cultural discrepancies and a longing for the motherlandhe seems to offer a factual record of his own experiences in Canada. Through the character of Reghu Nath in the novel, Gill has explicated the emotional theme of racial prejudice. In Immigrant, the novelist has displayed the enigmatic relationship between East and West by portraying the hopes and the fears and the struggle of a newcomer from Indian setting in Canada. The novel also exhibits an insight into the views immigrants hold of white people and vice versa. The protagonist of the novel Reghu Nath encountered this reality of the racial discord when the receptionists, in the beginning of the second chapter made no attempt to carry on a conversation whereas he was anxious to discuss many things with them.He came to Canada having a rosy picture of the West. The hopes and aspirations of an Indian, who is about to settle in Canada, are realistically mentioned through the character of Reghu Nath: He had heard that people in States and Canada were honest and very hard working, as compared to easterners. They abandoned their cars, or sold them to the poor of Asian and African countries at nominal price. He was certain that if he were nice to his Professors one of them would reward him with his car. Still tossing in bed, he visualized the University, where he would be studying He saw Professors and students of both sexes outside classes at social functions, mixing freely and casually. It would be an ideal place, entirely different from those of India where segregation of the sexes was a norm. Reghu had never been able to express his feelings of love to girls in India due to his shy nature. In his fantasy, Reghu visualized that many girls in the West were ready to welcome him with open arms.However, the dreams of Reghu are dashed as he finds numberless problems in acclimatizing himself to an alien culture. For example, he was asked to telephone the head of the department for an appointment before leaving the University. As he was not aware of the telephone manners, he hesitatingly dialled the number and the call was answered by a lady Professor in unintelligible English. He thought his student life would be tragic if everyone spoke as she did. The future looked disastrous to him because of this language barrier, created by his ignorance of the accent or colloquial expression of English speaking countries.Then entering the registration hall, Reghu Nath felt uncomfortable because he found that everyone except himself was in an informal dress. The novelist paints the predicament of Reghu: He had come in his business suit, as was the custom of his own countrys intelligentsia, who appeared in public well-groomed. He seemed to be the centre of attraction because of 302
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
his clothes, obviously not tailored in a North American style, and also because he was wearing them in stuffy suffocating weather. In D. Parmeswaris opinion, Reghu experiences a cultural shock, the one that he could least digest. Stephen Gills Reghu Nath also finds himself marginalized and disadvantaged in the new social order. The hydra headed monster of Diaspora leaves Reghus soul wounded. The forlorn lands of the West are just presenting before him the image of leaden-eyed despairs. In a way, he has fallen upon the thorns of life; and a heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed his spirits. Gill presents the tormenting and chaotic experiences of Reghu Nath thus: Within a week, Reghu found himself surrounded with many different problems. Financially, his position was not sound; educationally he did not know where he was headed; psychologically he was not adjusted to his new environment. At the University, he found himself in a mess Similarly, when he held the hand of a compatriot, he quickly found out that it was a sign of perversion in the West. Reghu Naths awkward position is artistically described by Gill in the following expression: After this incident, Reghu began to observe others. He never saw a man holding hands with other men. He also observed men seldom shook hands, a very common practice in his country. This affected his own habit of shaking hand warmly and frequently. Besides, Reghu had come to the west harbouring romantic illusions about the place. He had seen an American movie. The dashing hero of that movie had left an indelible imprint on his psyche. In that movie, the hero told a girl in the first encounter, I love you. The words of the hero produced the magical effect on the girl; the hero used the same words on several other girls and every time he had the success in winning the hearts of the girls. Gill describes Reghus imaginary romantic illusions thus: He thought it was the way of real life in the west, particularly in America. Reghu had had some love experiences in India, but he was never able to express his feelings to girls. Perhaps it was his shyness or his male ego which stood in his way.In any case, he was now in the West where he was free to practise what he had heard and read. To be very precise, Reghu Nath had the fantasy of many western girls, welcoming him with open arms. But, these romantic and illusory ideas are dashed to the earth, the moment he reaches the West. The young women puzzled him because they exhibited interest on the first date, but delayed subsequent ones. They were not ready for intimacy too early. Their only interest in becoming friendly with the men was to enjoy life by dinning out and riding in cabs. They never shared the expenses and disliked to be touched on the first date. In a way, the girls were not there with open arms. The approach of these girls is presented realistically in the novel thus: Surprisingly, nearly all the girls showed a few characteristics. For instance, they expected 303
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
to be treated as special, almost as China dolls, and disliked being touched on the first date.If he made any move towards intimacy, it was always the same story, I do not know you yet or We have to understand each other before going further. Thus, the novel presents the shattering of Reghus romantic and imaginative illusions about the much hyped west. The Western culture, civilization and ethos are considered rational, empirical and scientific by the Indians and Reghu Nath is no exception Reghu Nath too had the visions of a glorious West. But his dreams are suffocated, when he reaches Canada. He finds that racial antagonism cannot be easily eliminated from the minds of both the Westerners and Asians. W. F. Westcott has written thus about the conflict of the novel:
In the novel, Naranappa is just like Rushdie. He questioned the traditional religion and broke the chains of conventionalism in life. The Afterword of the novel clearly brings out this fact: Naranappa questioned the Brahmins of the village, exposed their Samskara (refinement of spirit, maturation through many lives) or lack of it. He lived the life of a libertine in the heart of an exclusive orthodox colony (agrahara), broke every known taboo; drank liquor, ate flesh, caught fish with his Muslim friends in the holy temple-tank, and lived with a low caste woman. He had cast off his lawfully-wedded brahmin wife, and antagonized his kin. Protected fully by modern secular laws he lived defiantly in their midst.
en t
The essay In God We Trust of Imaginary Homelands brings out Rushdie exceptionally controversial declaration of his religious ideals. In it, he has outlined his outspoken, unorthodox and unconventional approach to religion. Rushdie elaborates candidly, God, Satan, Paradise and Hell all vanished one day in my fifteenth year, when I quite abruptly lost my faith. I recall it vividly. I was at school then. The moment of awakening happened, in fact, during a Latin lesson, and afterwards, to prove my new- found atheism, I bought myself a rather tasteless ham sandwich No thunderbolt arrived to strike me down. The position taken by Rushdie is somewhat similar to the one adopted by Naranappa in U. R. Ananthamurthys Samskara, a Kannada novel, translated into English by A. K. Ramanujan. According to Chandra Holm, The short novel Samskara by U. R. Anantha Murthy, professor for English at the Mysore University, created a big furore in Karnataka when it was published more than thirty years ago. (http://www.ourkarnataka.com/books/samskAra.htm) A movie is also made on the theme of the novel. The film is said to have been a path-breaking venture and is supposed to have pioneered the parallel cinema movement in Kannada. Pattabhi Rama Reddy was the director of this film and it was produced by the company, Ramamanohara Chitra. (Wikipedia)
re
fo
rT
ra
di
304
tio
na
lE
20.3.3 U.R.Anantha Murthys Samskara: A Rite for a Dead Man
du
Gills novel traces Naths trials and tribulations as he suffers cultural shock, demanding professors, difficult women, Canadian bureaucracy and haunting memories of his native India. Many times, Gill draws on his personal knowledge of Asian life to illustrate Naths difficulty adapting to a totally foreign racial clime.
ca
tio n
20.4 Let Us Sum Up

On the basis of the penetrating analysis of the unit, it can be forcefully asserted that Imaginary Homelands has emerged as a major postcolonial text. That is why Brian Morton and Frances Hill admire the work thus, These essayson places and politics, films and assassinationscover a mere decade, but seem to concentrate more intelligence and intellectual courage than most writers summon up in a lifetime.
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.
What are Rushdies views about nostalgia and memory?
Discuss Rushdie as a politically committed artist.
What, according to Rushdie, is the quietist or escapist approach to the world problems? What, in the view of Rushdie, are the major problems faced by the subcontinent? How does Rushdie compare British imperialism with German Nazism? Write an analytical answer. Analyse Rushdies views about religious sectarianism. How does Rushdie defend the use of English language by Indian writers?
en t
13.
14.
20.6 Bibliography
1. Ananthamurthy, U.R. Samskara: A Rite for a Dead Man. Trans. A. K. Ramanujan.1978. 305
re
Throw light on Rushdies opinion about Satyjit Rays Pather Panchali.
Discuss the traces of Rushdies critical pronouncements on Kiran Desais The Inheritance of Loss.
What parallels do you find between Rushdies Imaginary Homelands and Stephen Gills Immigrant?
Do you find any similarity between Rushdies Imaginary Homelands and U. R. Anantha Murthys Samskara: A Rite for a Dead Man? Write an argumentative answer.
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
Trace the effects of Rushdies pronouncements in Outside the Whale on his fiction. Provide an illustrative answer.
lE
Do you consider Imaginary Homelands to be a work of propaganda? Give a reasoned answer.
du
ca
Throw light on Rushdies obsessive affection for the past. Illustrate your answer from the essays of Imaginary Homelands.
tio n
Bombay: OUP, 1989. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. Bahri, Deepika. Native Intelligence: Aesthetics, Politics, and Postcolonial Literature. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003. Desai, Kiran. The Inheritance of Loss. Penguin, 2006. Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. Trans. Constance Farrington. New York: Grove Press, 1963.
Krishnaswamy, N, and Lalitha Krishnaswamy. The Story of English in India. New Delhi: Foundation Books, 2006. Loomba, Ania. Colonialism/ Postcolonialism. London: Routledge, 1998.
Nayar, Pramod K. Postcolonial Literature: An Introduction. New Delhi: Pearson Longman, 2008. Parmeswari, D. The Cultural Baggage: A Reading of Stephen Gills Immigrant. Glimpses. Ed.Hamadan Darwesh.Ontario: Vesta, 2005. 135- 141.
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
____________
di
Rushdie, Salman. Imaginary Homelands, Essays and Criticism 1981-1991. 1991. London: Granta Books in collaboration with Penguin, 1992.
306
tio
Rai, G. Post Colonialism: Its Meaning and Significance. Spiel Journal of English Studies 1.2 (2005): 1- 22.
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
Gill, Stephen. Immigrant. Ontario:Vesta,1982.
UNIT-21 MULK RAJ ANAND : SOCIAL PROTEST IN MY NOVELS

21.2.1 Art and Life 21.2.2 Art for Lifes Sake 21.2.3 Distancing between the Art and the Artist 21.3 21.4 Art of the Novel Anands Writings 21.4.1 Humanism 21.4.2 Character 21.4.3 Compactness 21.4.4 Form and Content
21.4.5 Stream of Consciousness Technique 21.4.6 Creative Use of Language
en t
21.5 21.6 21.7
21.0 Objectives
The objective of this unit is to: introduce Mulk Raj Anands views on art, focusing on his humanitarianism 307
re
fo
21.4.7 Anands Fiction as Literature of Protest 21.4.7.1 Untouchable, 21.4.7.2 Coolie 21.4.7.3 Morning Face and Private Life of an Indian Prince
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
Views on Art
illustrate Anands humanitarianism from his novels .
21.1 Introduction
One ofthe big three of the Indian English novel - the other two being R.K.Narayan and Raja Rao - Mulk Raj Anand is indubitably the most prolific and versatile of all the Indian fictionists writing in English. He, one of Indias foremost novelists, is among the most remarkable of contemporary fiction writers of the world. He has written, besides fiction, books and articles on varied subjects, such as art and painting, education, theatre, criticism, poetry, English language, Indian dishes, female beauty, Indian civilization, the story of man, the story of India, autobiography of ideas etc. Anand is a voracious reader of literature, art, philosophy etc. and as such one can discern innumerable formative influences - both European and Asiatic - on his mind and art, on the content and technique of his writings. He candidly admits in the letters, prefaces, articles and Apology for Heroism that he has lived and written under the impact of countless writers, among whom the most important are Aristotle, Rousseau, Marx, Ruskin, Bertrand Russell, the Bloomsbury intellectuals, Locke, Iqbal, Gandhi, Buddha, the ancient Indian saints, the English Renaissance scholars, Tagore, Nehru, Bhai Vir Singh, Prem Chand, Sarat Chand Chatterlji, Bankim Chand Chatterji, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Gorky, James Joyce, Fielding, Smollett, Dickens, Hardy, D.H. Lawrence, Freud, Adler, Jung, Einstein, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Victor Hugo, Goethe. Anand has not only been able to comprehend the major trends in world literature, but has also correctly understood the various fictional forms coming into being since the days of Cervantes. Besides, he has carefully perused E.M. Forsters Aspects of the Novel, Percy Lubbocks Craft of Fiction, and other books and articles on the art of fiction. Anand refers to the impact of these writers on him; but it is difficult to say in what way and how much he has been influenced by them. His books are read and admired the world over. His first novel, Untouchable, published in the early thirties, has been translated into twenty world languages and keeps its interest intact to this day. Professional and academic critics, both in India and abroad - Europe, America and Australia - have evaluated his works. Among these, the most distinguished are K.R.Srinivasa Iyengar, M.K.Naik, C.D.Narasimhaiah, K.N.Sinha, Margaret Berry, Marlene Fisher, William Walsh, G.S. Balarama Gupta, Satyanarain Singh, Debjani Chatterjee, H.C. Raizada, R.S.Singh and others. No wonder, in recognition of his contribution to literature, he was awarded, though a bit late, the much coveted Sahitya Akademi Award in 1972. One of the greatest practitioners of fictional art in contemporary Indian Writing in English, Mulk Raj Anand is not so much concerned with any formal philosophy as with men and women. He emphatically states that he creates novels, not to expose his philosophy of humanism, but to portray human beings in their wholeness, with their interior as well as exterior life. In a letter written to G.S.Balarama Gupta on January 8, 1971, he maintains: I did not write tracts on humanism, but I have written about human beings.
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
308
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
21.2 Views on Art 21.2.1 Art and Life

The relation between art and life is not as direct as the one between newspaper propaganda and life. Nevertheless, even the most detached and objective writer knows that there is a genuine and vital connection between art and life. While creating a work of art, the artist expresses the significant aspects of a given experience through images largely shaped by the desire in his mind. Thus as an art work results from the reflection in the mind of the artist of all the aspects of his experience, it is fundamentally related to life, only improving on it, or rather intensifying it through the creative myth, so as to change life in the deeper centers of other peoples experience and thus present an integral vision of what life could be like. The artist is able to penetrate the core of reality by presenting things from a fresh angle, and consequently he offers the most comprehensive vision of things. The greatness of the artists work is measured by the extent to which it confirms peoples vision and reflects their moods, emotions, passions, thoughts and desires. Such a work of art communicates a profound vision of life, and is really revolutionary. It aims at integrating man and society, and not at providing a formula for escape. According to Anand: If this conception of the function of art in society approximates to the real needs of people in our time, then the artist is a revolutionary in the true sense. And as he can perceive reality at its highest, and disclose the way to a new life, the artist stands as an inspiring force behind all those men and women who face the tasks of reconstructing the future society out of the shambles of a near prehistoric present.
21.2.2 Art for Lifes Sake

Discarding the dictum of Art for Arts sake, Anand asserts that Art is for lifes sake, for the sake of mans progress. Literature should be used as a means of alleviating the sufferings of fellow human beings. He observes: But any writer who said that he was not interested in la condition humaine was either posing or yielding to a fanatical love of isolationism ... The creative artist is a realist who allows his vision to be shaped by the time, the place and the circumstances of the period to which he belongs. Thus Anand is opposed to the formalists or aesthetes who hold that art, though influenced by life, is essentially governed by its own inner logic, and not by outside forces. According to him, every writer is a committed artist, because the aim of art is to achieve integration, that is, to effect connection between man and man, and between the individual and the world. He moulds the values by which men must live. But this does not mean that art should be mistaken for the pulpit. The artist should present his message in his creative work without distorting its artistic side. The creative writing is not merely a realistic depiction of life; but it is a manifestation of an impressionistic vision, that is, the desire image of the writer, as Anand describes it. Such a work makes man aware of his destiny as a social being. However, it does not have a mere thesis to prove; it has a vision to convey. It propagates a certain view of life and it is propagandistic in the sense in which all art
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
309
lE
du
ca
tio n
is propaganda, though it is not propaganda alone. Anand says in this connection: All art is propaganda. The art of Ajanta is propaganda for Buddhism. The art of Ellora is propaganda for Hinduism. The art of the Western novel is propaganda for humanity against the bourgeois. Gorky as a humanist dared to speak of man, mans condition, not to say how awful it is, but he also suggested what man could be. And thus he did propaganda for man. Thus Anand, like Lawrence, Gorky and Eric Gill, believes that the work of a creative writer is always inspired by a mission: a powerful attack on the evils of life like hypocrisy, cruelty, insensitivity, etc. and an advocacy of love and compassion which make human life nobler and happier. The novel, Anand repeatedly affirms, neither states a case, nor suggests practical solutions of certain problems, nor offers a direct exhortation. It mainly interprets the problems related to mans destiny. It should certainly concentrate upon the real drama of the body-soul and the truth of life, with all its sufferings. It must be directly concerned with the core of the problem of its time: the tragedy of man. Anand averts that the novel is not the vehicle of presenting directly philosophy or moral preaching or the writers doctrinaire opinions. No wonder he attacks Raja Rao by saying that after Kanthapura he becomes an anti-novel novelist because he deliberately uses philosophy as an essential part of the novel. His objection to The Serpent and the Rope is that moral reflections and philosophical ideas weigh heavy on the large portions of the novel. Raja Rao, according to him, growingly defies the novel form and uses it to preach, thus seeking to revive the Yoga Vasistha method, with its pale cast of thought, obviously brooding on human destiny and exhorting men and women to seek personal salvation, through the Vedantic ideal. Philosophy is inseparable from a great work of art; but it should be implicit in it, and not explicit. The writer should not insert his doctrinaire opinions in the novel, which as an art form has its own distinct pattern based on human relations. Anands approach differs from that of D.H.Lawrence who does not see any wide gulf between the novel and philosophy. In short, he opines that the novel should not be an exposition of some system of philosophy; rather it should portray the wisdom of the heart. Speaking of his books, he repeatedly asserts that they are an expression of the wisdom of the heart, and not of any formal philosophy. He writes to G.S.Balarama Gupta: ... I do not believe in any one system of philosophy, but in the wisdom of the heart. He advises the reader not to discover in his books philosophy, but the wisdom of the heart.
No doubt, the author is subjective to a great extent, but he, according to Anand, should try his best to keep himself aloof from his work. Like Flaubert and Henry James, he seems to believe that the writer should be present in his book like God in his created world, invisible yet omnipresent. In a letter written to Saros Cowasjee on Nov. 22, 1967, he writes: The novelist should try to become the great god, Brahma, who creates mankind, but is not responsible for it, that is to say, does not determine their destiny. Distance is very important in art, because art, though like life, and reflecting it, is not life. Literature and life are parallel developments. Again, Anand observes: As the painter corrects his perspective by moving 310
en t
21.2.3 Distancing between the Art and the Artist
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
away from the canvas and looking at his picture from a certain distance so the novelist tends to create a structure, a unity out of the contrary and discordant elements, by adopting the attitude of God Almighty both creating the world and looking at his creation from afar. The writer writes from the compulsion of one kind or the other, deeply related to himself. As a matter of fact, it is some sort of his body-soul search which is behind his creative activities. Anand illustrates it by giving the instance of his becoming a writer. He tells us that he wrote from the compulsion of a morbid obsession with myself and the people who possessed me, deep in my conscience. This compulsion is sometimes in the form of other kinds of wild and inchoate urges. In Anands own case, the other urges driving him to write were; the desire to get recognition; the search for philosophical insights founded on the lives of real people; and the urge to reveal the ugliness of death in life by portraying dramatically the universal non-human realities of life. But above all, the writer writes because he gets a discrete pleasure from creating something. Also, he wishes to get confirmation of the fact that other people feel and think like him. That is to say, he wishes to hear the reader say that he has felt or thought just like his such and such character. This compulsion of the writer whatever its form may be, becomes his original inspiration to write. Anand avers that in the creative process both the body and soul are involved. As a matter of fact, the distinction between body and soul disappears, and the creative artist sees that the body in soul and the soul body. The creative activity does not mean simply the physical absorption of the author; it needs his complete involvement-the involvement of his conscious self as well as his unconscious. He feels the magic of the quick, which brings things out of the illuminations, working like some sort of secret electric button which switches on a dim light, fed by some power-house of the unconscious. Thereafter the creative activity passes through the process of the distillation of emotions carried out and controlled by the brain, thus bringing about some kind of co-ordination of the amorphous urges. It is only after this that the creative artist gets a kind of tranquility as though one had had ones best for the time being and thrown off the weight of centuries, hidden feelings of oppression, disgust and horror against insults, off ones chest.
en t
21.3Art of the Novel

Of all Indian English novelists, Mulk Raj Anand has discussed the art of the novel most consciously and comprehensively. Like many of his illustrious European and American predecessors and contemporaries, he has his views on fiction which he calls certain hunches about the novel. However, he has not put them systematically in any book like E.M.Forster. They are contained in his prefaces, letters, articles, addresses, conversations, interviews, three essays in the form of apologia -How I Became a Writer, The Changeling - An IndoAnglian Novelists Credo and Why I Write? - critical writings and the book, Apology for Heroism. It is essential to systematize, interpret and examine his cogitations on the craft of fiction in order to arrive at a correct estimate of his own art as a novelist. 311
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
Anand does not believe that the novel can only be reportage about social conditions; or that it is, as the subjectivists assert, just a means of describing skillfully mans psychological states like the subconscious, dream etc.; or that it is, as the cheap artists think, an instrument to offer easy recreation and escape to the tired ladies. As a matter of fact, the novel should be an exploration of social realism, not in its wooden but in its most vigorous form. Social realism in a work of art should be poetic in its nature. That is to say, it should not be literary photography of social life, but should be inalienable from the artists desire image or the romantic will. He points out that the novelist lives through the experiences of other human beings, and understands their passions, joys and sorrows, and their approaches to life and fate. He does not pass judgment on the actions, thoughts and passions of people, but tries to comprehend the motivations working in their subconscious and unconscious minds. Thus he is able to know
en t
re
The novel, in Anands opinion, is the most human of European forms of creative literature. He describes its true nature as a dramatic representation, through space and time, of the internal changes in the lives of characters. It should be used, as great novelists Balzac, Dickens, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, - have done it, as a powerful vehicle of expressing a sense of reality on many planes, and an intense awareness of the possibility of individual growth, as well as a criticism of life. The ultimate purpose of the novel is to make man understand himself, to stir his consciousness, to intensify his emotions and to enable him to experience Rasa or the flavour of beauty. Great novels are the result of great passions. Instead of being sugar-coated pills or tranquillizers, they are capable of changing human personality and turning the world upside down. No doubt, the novel expresses the authors fundamental experience, the inchoate urges of his body-soul; but at the same time, it presents life in its essential nature, with all its vagueness, conflicts and disorders.
fo
rT
ra
di
312
tio
na
lE
The novel, according to Anand, differs from the tract in that it is more human; it has a greater scope to delineate contrary emotions; it has a lesser possibility of becoming biased; it makes a concrete, and not a general statement; and it only poses the question, but does not answer it. Anand also distinguishes between the modern novel and the novel written in the earlier times. While the novel in the previous centuries was obviously concerned with moral values, the modern novel lays stress on the individuals psychological life and motivations. Tolstoy is perhaps the first great writer who has brought about this major change in the novel by concentrating on the inner changes in man as against the superficial effects of the external social phenomena. The modern novel portrays the soul drama of man; it deals with the crisis of man in every human situation. It is strikingly distinct from the epic or bardic recital of the old times. The novel may still have the hangover of the three principal elements of the old narrative the story-teller, the characters and the audience with sufficient moral lessons and philosophy of life; but it mainly treats of the crises in which the characters are involved, and avoids as far as possible, direct discourse on the philosophy of life and moral lessons. The modern novelist does not stop every now and then to lecture on the rules of human conduct, though in a dramatic manner he reveals the goodness and wickedness in life by depicting the tensions of human beings, caused by the struggle between the emotional, mental and physical life.
du
ca
tio n
and depict the reasons of the good and evil natures of men. Above all, he, like every other creative artist, is deeply concerned with the discovery of truth and dedication to it in all humility. Indeed, truth should matter much to a writer, but he should present it imaginatively in such a way as sincerity is not adversely affected. He should observe life very carefully to discover in it the essence of human existence, the inner core of reality, and should strive to fathom the depth of human consciousness. In a word, The novel should interpret the truth of life from felt experience, and not from books.
Under the impact of this movement, it became a fashion and a compulsion to be on the Left, to be an amateur Marxist. The converts, as John Lehmann points out, had a desire to express a new humanism, a new belief in brotherhood and the value of the life of every single breathing man and woman. Also, they believed that art should be propaganda, and that it should principally deal with class struggle. The writers were deeply involved in the struggle for a new society. Anand actively participated in almost all the important conferences and activities of the decade. He happened to read Karl Marxs letters on India which considerably clarified and strengthened his thoughts. Though he did not take up party membership, yet he followed his new creed vigorously. Not only this, he edited Marxs letters for the Indian public. He was deeply impressed by the human values underlying Marxism, and among these values, according to him, the dignity of man is the highest. Besides, Marxism unfolded to him an interpretation of, and a solution to, the miseries and hardships of his fellow human beings. Written under the influence of the thirties movement, Anands early novels are mainly a literature of protest. Like many books of this period, they describe the daily life of the oppressed and offer glimpses of the oppressors. They belong to a kind of social realism which lays stress on human misery without clearly showing the possibility of a better future.
en t
re
21.4.1 Anands Humanism

Anands central preoccupation in his writings is with humanism. He regards art and 313
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
Anands writings are to be studied in relation to the movement of thirties in England. For, as a writer he was shaped in the thirties when social problems were more important than the individual, and when the old Fates God and Nature-were superseded by the new Fates- Economics and Politics, since they governed the common man. Anand lived in London for over twenty years from 1924 to 1945, and naturally he was profoundly influenced by the thirties movement. In London he came under numerous literary, political and social influences, and it is in them that the sources of his synthesis of Marxist and humanist thought can be seen. He realized the significance of the thirties movement, since it began to see political, social and human causes as genuine impulses for the novel and poetry. Hence, a close understanding of the thirties movement is essential to comprehend correctly Anands entire political philosophy.
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
21.4 Anands Writings
2. 3. 4.
5.
7.
8. 9. 10.
en t
This humanism believes that the individual attains full manhood by integrating his personal satisfactions and continuous creative self-development through significant creative work with the hand, the heart and the brain .... This humanism believes in the widest and deepest possible development of creative art and the awareness of beauty. This humanism believes in the brotherhood of man through the affirmations of love. This humanism believes in the application of imagination, reason and scientific method in all human undertakings, making room for the understanding of different instincts and 314
re
6.
The humanism believes in an ethic which is based on human psychology and human values, in this earthy existence, achieved through the relations of persons and persons, and persons and society.
fo
This humanism believes, in opposition to all theories of fatalistic acceptance of God, predestination and determinism that human beings, conditioned by mans history, possess genuine freedom of creative choice and action.
rT
ra
This humanism, which puts man in the centre of the Universe, believes that human beings possess the potential power to understand many problems, hitherto undreamt of, both in relation to themselves and to nature.
di
tio
This humanism believes that man is an evolutionary product of the matter of which he is part.
na
This humanism believes that matter precedes mind in any metaphysical attitude towards the universe.
lE
1.
This humanism places man in the centre of all things.
du
literature as the instruments of humanism. The creative artist should have ardent love for human beings, especially the downtrodden, and should offer them his own exuberant passion by sharing with them the burning and melting which is an intrinsic aspect of life at its intensest. This enables the writer, as well as the reader, to maintain the equilibrium in his life, and live cheerfully even in the face of the tragic events of the world. This humanism was, in Anands case, the compulsion to write books. He came to grasp it under the influence of Marx, Guru Nanak, Gandhi and others, and it was the outcome of the synthesis of the best in Asia and Europe. In Apology for Heroism, he states his position as a humanist: I believe, first and foremost, in human beings, in Man, the whole man ...The humanism which I prefer does not rest on a Divine Sanction ... but puts its faith in the creative imagination of man, in his capacity to transform himself, in the tireless mental and physical energy with which he can, often in the face of great odds, raise himself to tremendous heights of dignity and redeem the world from its misery and pain....Anands humanist philosophy finds its most systematic expression in his book, Is There a Contemporary Indian Civilization? He elaborates it as follows:
ca
tio n
emotions. 11. This humanism believes in the constant questioning of the basic assumptions and convictions of inventive science, employing, throughout, human tests based on moral values.
12. This humanism wishes to connect itself to international humanism, so that, in spite of differences, a comprehensive universalize outlook may prevail ... . Anands humanism, as stated above, is an amalgam of the best ofAsiatic and European knowledge and traditions. G.S.Balarama Gupta rightly discovers in his humanism the Protegorean concept of man as the measure of all things. Anand points to the growth of the humanist values in Buddha, the medieval Hindu saints, Islam, Guru Nanak, Rammohan Roy, M.N.Roy and Jawaharlal Nehru. Really, his concept of comprehensive humanism is not, in any way, strikingly original. Knowing it fully well, he plainly says: ... by humanism I do not mean anything more or less than what it has always meant, illumination or enlightenment in the interests of man, true to his highest nature and his noblest vision.
21.4.2 Characters
For Anand, the novel begins with character. The novelist draws his characters from the real men and women whom he happens to know in actual life. Some people haunt the writer and compel to him, and he knows them fully well for a pretty long period. Thus real people are the germ of the novel. Speaking of his beginning as a novelist, Anand states that he felt interested in some people and they forced him to put them down in novels. His first novel, Untouchable, was centered upon a sweeper boy, Bakha, whom he adored as a hero from his childhood because he was physically like a god, played all the games superbly and could recite whole cantos from the epic poem Heer Ranjha of Waris Shah ... . He was obsessed with his tragedy which lay in the fact that this extraordinarily talented boy was always insulted by most of the people because of his low caste, and could never get a chance to go to school. Throughout his literary career, Anand wrote about real people like Bakha, Munoo, Gangu, Lal Singh, Birpal Singh, Gauri and others whom he knew quite closely in his early life. He reincarnates them repeatedly in his writings, not photographically but artistically and imaginatively. Of his fictional characters modeled after the people with whom he chanced to live at one or the other stage of his life, Anand writes in his special Preface to the second Indian edition of Two Leaves and a Bud (1951): All these heroes, as the other men and women who had emerged in my novels and short stories, were dear to me, because they were the reflections of the real people I had known during my childhood and youth. And I was only repaying the debt of gratitude I owed them for much of the inspiration they had given me to mature into manhood, when I began to interpret their lives in my writing. They were not mere phantoms. They were flesh of my flesh and blood of my blood, and obsessed me in the way in which certain human beings 315
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
obsess an artists soul. And I was doing no more than what a write does when he seeks to interpret the truth from the realities of his life. However, since art is not the literal transcript of life, these characters, taken directly from life, are considerably transformed by the authors creative imagination, and thus become strikingly original and unique. Anand confesses that the characters taken from my intimate experience, but are transformed creatively from within -often a lamb becomes a lion and a dove becomes jackal. I rely on my subconscious life a good in my creative work, and allow my fantasy to play havoc with facts. Indeed, Anand puts a lot of his dream elements into his characters, thus making them strange creatures. The more and more he thinks and writes about them, the more and more complicated and rare human beings they grow. Apropos of his creation of Bakha, he writes: I kept on dreaming about several strains in the central character of Bakha, almost as though I was molding his personality and transmuting it from actuality into the hero of a nightmare. Anand feels that the writer should have an inner desire to depict the beauty, tenderness, terror, etc. in the lives of his characters. In addition, he should become one with his people in order to make them living and interesting. Describing his own process of creating characters, Anand says: I had to go through their sufferings and little joys as my own. I had to become weak with their weaknesses. I had become strong with the strength of their resilience. I had to build up parallel worlds, to reflect, in my somewhat crooked mirror, since imitation of nature is not possible .Also, Anand thinks that the novelist should depict man in his essential nature -his primeval innocence and his desire to attain a higher consciousness. He himself has always striven to achieve this ideal of character-creation in his fiction. Characters in the novel should be given maximum freedom to express themselves so as to make the book both a convincing picture of life and artistically satisfying. But to achieve it, the novelist has to annihilate his personality. By keeping himself aloof from his book, he is also able to avoid sentimentality which damages a work of art irreparably. Anand says in this connection: I must admit that the struggle to extirpate the novelists own personality and ideas, in order to give scope for the character to express himself, was very hard. I had the benefit of the criticism of another Indian intellectual, Dr. K.S.Shelvankar. Once I explained to him the terms of reference of the novel, he was ruthless and sat down with me to cut all the projections which might intrude the authors personality onto the characters. This made for certain resilience and established the necessary distance to exclude sentimentality. However, Anand thinks that the writer should in no case sacrifice the quick of his own passion for the central character. While writing his masterpiece, Untouchable, he did not eliminate the quick of his own passion for Bakha and did not adopt a formalist empty shell approach to the work, for it is the writers warmth for his character that endears him to the reader. Anand declares that he has not put his intellectual ideas into Bakha, but has certainly maintained his warmth towards him. He regards the quick of human experience, which he calls tenderness, as something indispensable to the writer to create interesting and life-like 316
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
characters. When given full freedom to think, feel and act according to his own psychology, a character sometimes goes beyond the control of the author, and runs away with the narrative. Like many great novelists, Anand is fully aware of this fact. While commenting briefly on his novel, Private Life of an Indian Prince, he remarks: Most writers know how a character in a novel; sometimes takes control and runs away with the story. The author has been content to allow Dr. Shankar to take possession of the narrative, as well as become Sancho Panza to the Princes Don Quizote. Differing from most of the Indian writers like Bankim Chand Chatterji, Sarat Chand Chatterji, Ratannath Sarshar and Rabindra nath Tagore, Anand, perhaps under the influence of Rousseau, Gogol, Tolstoy and Gorky, believes that even the so-called lowest dregs of humanity, living in utmost poverty, squalor and degradation, could become heroes of fiction. This is the reason why he makes sweepers, coolies and the lowly like Bakha, Munoo, Gangu, Gauri, Lalu and others as the central figures of some of his best known books. To Anand, the modern writer, living in a highly complex world, is concerned with multi-dimensional characters. Quite often he is obsessed by characters who, by their actions and words, unfold their inner life, and reveal the tensions which cause disharmony and discord in life. The author should emphasize the harmonies resulting from the discords of these people. Besides, he should deal with characters who are dangerous and are able to get rid of their subjective despair. They are capable of facing those who may destroy them. They should be portrayed as having conflicts in their hearts and minds like the people we see around us. They should be shown immersed in active discussion and disruption because light can be felt only when the darkness, which is the opposite of light, is understood. They should be depicted with all the unreasonableness of the human heart and temperament emanating from the unconscious.
21.4.3 Compactness
Anand knows the value of a well-built and compact novel. That is why when he commenced his literary career; he paid great attention to the compactness and proper form of his books. He tells us that when he found his long confessional narrative of over two thousand pages unmanageable and shapeless, he picked up some characters from it and built around them short and compact novels. Nevertheless, he was worried about, and dissatisfied with, them because he found them still formless. However new the theme and the implied value judgments of a prose-narrative may be, it becomes a novel only when it is couched in the language of fiction, with some respect for the integral pattern. If the form of the novel is loose, the novelist has to explore the technical devices in order to make it artistically satisfying. True, Anand does not approve of the looseness of the form of the novel. It is on this ground that he finds fault with Munshi Prem Chands masterpiece in Hindi language, Godan. The novel, according to him, is an art form, and has its own integral pattern.
en t
re
Anand affirms that the novel, being something sober and true to life, should be built on 317
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
Anand holds a definite view on the relationship between form and content. Form is important in a work of art, but it should not be achieved at the cost of content. Borrowing Roy Campbells phrase, he writes Saros Cowasjee: it is no use keeping the form, the kerb, and the edge all right and destroy the bloody horse- . Further, in his review of Henry Greens Loving, he states that the primary concern of art is not form but sensibility. However, this does not mean that content is all-important. Form- the shaping principle as Northrop Frye calls it - is equally indispensable to a work of art. As a matter of fact, both should be complementary and supplementary to each other. He rightly points out that the technique of fiction writing greatly changes with the passage of time. The changed human situation and environment
en t
21.4.4 Form and Content
re
Anand attaches due significance to conscious craftsmanship. Though he may not be as deliberate and painstaking an artist as Jane Austen, Henry James, Hemingway and Joyce Cary, yet often he works hard to revise and redraft his book so as to make its meaning and form as artistically satisfying as possible. Like Joyce Cary who laboured indefatigably on his first novel, Aissa Saved and Hemingway who re-wrote The Old Man and the Sea over a hundred times, Anand repeatedly read and re-read, shaped and re-shaped his first novel, Untouchable. He recalls: I would cut, but find the sacrifice of my previous words difficult. Then I would add marginal corrections and leave it. This tortuous process of revising the book continued tirelessly for years. He assiduously worked on it for nearly five years. Indeed, Anand regards meticulous craftsmanship as very important for a good novelist. He admires R.K.Narayan as an adept craftsman, who interprets the moods of his characters and imparts a definite pattern to the book without obvious imposition and intervention. He offers value judgments quite often; but these comments, instead of appearing inessential and deliberate in the design of the book, interpret the will of the characters. This is the reason why he is able to achieve organic composition as on canvas, where comparison and contrasts bring out the internal crisis of the human personality.
fo
rT
ra
di
318
tio
na
lE
du
ca
a plot which is free from artificiality and sensationalism. He dismisses Kiplings long narrative, the Naulakha, as something other than the novel because it abounds in artificiality and sensationalism, and is, therefore, not worthy of serious attention. True, the novel should not be sentimental and melodramatic. Anand avers that even the best craftsmanship can only result in mawkishness and vulgarity, if the book lacks in a genuine appreciation of the social, political, psychological and other problems of people. The structure of the nineteenth century novel with a definite beginning, middle and an end does not find favour with Anand. The twentieth century fiction writers like James Joyce, Marcel Proust and others have convincingly proved that a prose narrative can assume the novel-form and can be created out of anything, provided it is imparted a pattern. As a matter of fact, he is fascinated by the new structural trend in the modern novel; the replacement of the traditional structure-a beginning, a middle and an end-by the poetic pattern without plot. Several of his novels, including the first-viz. Untouchable, evidence it.
tio n
necessitates new devices in place of the old ones. That is why the modern novelist, in order to delineate the contemporary human situation and environment dominated by the modern technology, employs the techniques which are radically different from the narrative devices used in the earlier centuries. In his writing Anand makes use of the various narrative modes. He is aware of the basic advantages of everyone of them. He knows that the first person singular narrative technique enables the writer to make the infrequent comments and generalizations convincing. He illustrates it by referring to Raja Raos The Serpent and the Rope, and stated that the novelists use of the first-person singular method helps to make the incidental comment natural. Anand points to another advantage of the use of the first-person singular in a novel. The I of this narrative mode may be purposively employed in a book as a neutral character, who can have his own identity as much separately from other men and women in the book as from the author himself. Anand resorts to this narrative technique in his well-known novel, Private Life of an Indian Prince, and comments on this device in his Authors Note prefixed to the book: The neutral I of the first person singular has tended, in this book, to become a character in his own right. the I in this novel is not to be mistaken for the author, who has reverted to the Indian tradition of anonymity and looks on, like Sivas searing third eye, at the unfolding of this tragicomedy. Anand regards the omniscient-author device as indispensable for probing and depicting the intricacies of the people. An omniscient narrator is like a God, seeing and portraying men and women in the most effective manner: the novelist is a new kind of God, who loves people, who overcomes his own isolation, puts his own knots alongside theirs, grows with them, manifests himself in the multiplicity of their beings and releases them into their own unique life, and co-exists with them in the joys and sorrows of their very human life. Anand holds that a definite advance in the novel form has been made by James Joyces stream of consciousness technique, extended further by Dorothy Richardson and refined by Virginia Woolf. It was a coincidence that he got a copy of James Joyces banned book, Ulysses, from his friend and literary mentor, Bonamy Dobree, and was deeply impressed by it. Also, he chanced to see Prousts remarkable use of the stream of consciousness technique in Remembrance of Things Past, which absorbed him for years with its reiterations of feelings, in integral musical rhythms. The stream of consciousness technique, according to Anand, is the product of the shattered world of the modern machine age in which man incessantly strives to achieve integration amidst the tensions and pulls of too much of technology. Naturally, Anand is of the view that a modern writer, who has something significant to communicate to the world, will, in all probability, resort to Joyces process, and cannot go back to the narrative form of the novels of earlier periods. This technique is invaluable for recording the various levels of the consciousness of the people and the drama of the soul. Besides, the unities of time
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
319
lE
du
ca
tio n
and place are possible by recording the details of one day of the life of a character with the help of this technique. More than that, the device can enable the novelist to reproduce the disturbed, restless and paranoiac stream of consciousness of the people of our time, not in the form of raw material as Joyce has done, but in such a manner as to suggest value judgments about the characters.
21.4.5 Stream of Consciousness Technique

Anand regards the stream of consciousness technique as something very valuable, and uses it, with slight alteration, in his first novel, Untouchable and in The Road and The Big Heart. He elaborates the advantages of the use of it in Untouchable thus: first, it has enabled him to impart the book a fairly neat framework, appropriate for the dramatization of the central characters inner experience; secondly, it has given him the joyful awareness of eternality of time which specially pleases the Indian in him. He employs it effectively in The Road, and is aware of it as shown by his following remark: I, therefore, pursued the mirror game, at various levels of consciousness of the people, concave and convex, involved in this drama of the road. You will notice that, technically, it is not a straight narrative, but diversified by breaking through the obvious planes to the impalpable world of feelings of the characters involved. Thus Anand finds the stream of consciousness technique a convenient device to be employed limitedly for the purpose of depicting directly the internal experiences of the characters so as to reveal their essential humanness and the fusion of their inner psychological reality with the outer social reality. Nevertheless, the artist in Anand does not fail to perceive the danger of this device of story-telling. If an intellectual novelist attempts to render the stream of consciousness of a naive character, he runs the risk of falsifying the illogical logic of his characters heart by inserting in it his own intellectuality. While writing Untouchable, Anand faced the difficulty in making a correct and artistic use of it. He was confronted with the problem of keeping artistic detachment so that his own intuitive experiences might not intrude into Bakhas stream of consciousness. In a word, Anand uses this narrative technique in a modified form, simplifying it in order to present effectively a vivid picture both of his characters mind and of social milieu. But for Untouchable, The Road and The Big Heart, he usually follows in his novels the conventional modes of narration. A novelist, in Anands opinion, can amalgamate the various techniques of storytelling in his work. He cites the instance of Raja Raos Kanthapura in which the author interpenetrates the narrative with character analysis and also employs Joyces technique and automatic writing in long passages, assimilating these influences within the context of prophetic writing. Anand is aware of the importance of style in a book, though he has not talked much about it in his critical writings. No doubt, the content is of vital importance for a writer; but the 320
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
manner of presentation and expression cannot be ignored. In his discussion on Creative Writing in the Present Crisis, he states: Of course, it is not enough to want to say something. Everything depends on how one says it - how the imagination of a writer can transform the various realities, interpenetrate characters with insight, and connect the poetry and the prose. And, certainly, there has to be some kind of style.
21.4.6 Creative Use of Language

Anand speaks about the creative use of language in literature. He justifies his frequent use of the Punjabi vernacular in his fiction. He asserts that his use of Indian phraseology needs no defense because it is natural. In fact, the novelists style should be in complete harmony with his characters. It should express adequately the feelings and thoughts of a character in a particular situation. Anand illustrates it from his use of prose to portray Lakhas feelings and thoughts. He writes: The motive force for his words is the creation of an emotional complex, which is a peculiarity of the pariah world. I wished to reproduce in his speech the very breath of his voice, the confused, almost inchoate, smoke of his feelings of despair, and the suppressed fire of his half dead person. The creative writer breaks the rules of grammar and coins new words so as to enrich the language. In support of this argument, Anand cites the instances of the three Irish writers: George Moore, Bernard Shaw and James Joyce. The talent of the true imaginative writer, says he, is like a flame. It burns away the dead wood of accepted works and shines forth in original images. The style of language, which belongs to him or her, is the expression of the total personality, projected to a vision beyond the routine experience. Thus Anand approved of the writers fondness of word coinage. He admires James Joyces technique of worldcoinage as employed in Ulysses and other books because he does so for the sake of conveying his vision as effectively and artistically as possible. Anand himself employs Joyces device of word-coinage in his novels, especially in Untouchable. Anand is averse to the artificiality of prose style. The purpose of writing is to communicate, and hence the writer should write in simple, natural, direct and honest prose. He should follow Gandhijis advice to write simply and directly without using tricks. Anand eulogizes the inartificial and felt prose style of the novels of the first few Indian-English writers, of Sri Aurobindos letters, of Vivekanandas lectures and of Nehrus Autobiography. However, in great works the style has a soaring and poetic tendency. He describes it by the metaphor of pigeon. In this kind of prose style, the words soar in the imagination like pigeons in flight, shrill when they are frightened, nervous and sensitive, often soft and soothing, somewhat heavyfooted, but always compelled by the love of flight.
en t
re
214.7 Anands Fiction as a Literature of Protest

Anands fiction may be called a literature of protest - a kind of literature which he 321
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
Anand candidly wrote about the poor with whom he was most familiar. True, he immersed himself in the sub-world of the poor, the insulted and the injured, through continuous pilgrimages to the villages, the small town and big town bastis of our country. He abhorred all sort of distinction of caste, creed, class, status, the outworn and outdated traditions and conventions. Realizing the importance of his role and responsibility at a turning point of Indias history, he was determined to become the fiery voice of the people, who, through his own torments, urges and exaltations, by realizing the pains, frustrations and aspirations of others, and by cultivating his incipient powers of expression, transmutes in art all feelings, all thought, all experience . Unlike his great predecessors like Tagore, Sarat Chandra and Munshi
en t
I certainly felt, in the midst of my own poetry and exile, the compulsion that it is better not to win applause by conforming to my establishment, but to face the privileged order and to claim the right to notice the existence of men like Bakha. And I was determined to take all the punishment of all confrontation I wanted to renounce those who have for centuries included in the prison of the fourfold order the men whom they also continually destroyed as their enemies by duty. I wanted to reveal how much men had changed from what they originally were -the contrast being available in the lesser way out, a living crucifixion, or prolonged suicide. I wanted to show the vast death of my country before the limping life promised by one-legged politics. I wished to abnegate the death, by slow degrees, as in a vast concentration camp, the death through alienation, caused by the need of everyone to earn a pittance from the flunkeys of the few white sahibs, the death whose bleached bones were scattered across the landscape in various attitudes of prostration before the tin gods and the clay gods and the brass gods. I wanted to bring to light the ghosts of the dead souls murdered without a rite by the Dharma bugs. I wanted to beckon all the phantoms, so that they should haunt the dreams of the half-dead, and awaken them, may be, to the lingering sparks of life ... I wanted to burn and shine like: Tiger, tiger, burning bright .
re
fo
rT
ra
di
322
tio
na
lE
du
holds in high esteem because it strikes hard at the roots of sectionalism, snobbery, contempt, etc. which cause the modern mans degeneration and despair. His creative writings are doubtless saturated with the element of protest which is inalienably related to his view of life. He writes, as he says, from compulsions of a morbid obsession with myself and the people who possessed me, deep in my conscience. His works are not mere exercises of intellectual Marxism, as many believe; but they are a spontaneous expression of a protest against the shockingly sordid and painful spectacle of human misery. Anands inherent sense of justice roused in him, even when he was a child, a protest against God who for no reason singled out his lovely innocent cousin Kaushalya to die. Later, the young novelist could not compromise with his fathers subservience to the British and his mothers faith in ritualistic observance, superstitions and gullibility. It was again this sense of justice that compelled him to raise his angry voice against the suppression of freedom of thought and expression, religious hypocrisy and social repression. A committed humanist, he heralds a revolt, a creative struggle to bring about a new society. He does not indulge in diatribe but makes a constructive protest. With a sense of satisfaction, he recalls:
ca
tio n
Illustration from the Novels
en t
Mulk Raj Anands first five novels including some of his best work, Coolie, Untouchable, Two Leaves and a Bud, The Village and Across the Black Waters, appeared between 1933 and 1940, although he had already written a considerable amount before this, including a study of Persian paintings and a book on curries. He is passionately concerned with the villages, with the ferocious poverty and the cruelties of caste, with orphans, untouchables and urban labourers. He writes in an angry reformist way, like a less humorous Dickens and a more emotional Wells, of the personal sufferings induced by economics really economics, one feels, even when he is writing of caste. His sharpest, best-organized novel is Untouchable, which was very highly thought of by E.M.Forster. It is an interesting combination of hard material, narrow specific theme and throbbing Shelleyan manner. The action, occupying a single day, is precipitated by a great catastrophe, an accidental touching 323
re
21.4.7.1 Untouchable
fo
rT
I felt that, only through fiction, which is the transformation, through the imagination, of the concrete life, in words, sounds and vibrations, one may probe into the many layers of human consciousness in its various phases.
ra
di
Like Charles Dickens he is a true social protestor - the elements of which are visible in his novels especially Untouchable and coolie, the two early masterpieces which evidence his steep journey away from Bloomsbury literary consciousness to the non-literary worlds, whose denizens have always been considered vulgar and unfit for the respectable worlds. In these two books, he identifies himself with the despair, helplessness, agony and misery of his protagonists like Bakha and Munoo whom he elevates to the status of heroes of fiction from the darkest pits of poverty, squalor and degradation. Strikingly sincere in his portrayal of truth about the intricacies of human existence, he felt that the novel should interpret the truth of life, from felt experience, and not from books. A committed humanist, he found fiction as the most appropriate vehicle of his genuinely new ideas and realities. He writes:
tio
na
lE
du
ca
Prem Chand, the champions of the humble and peasantry, Anand, with his characteristic doggedness delved deep into the depth of human consciousness of the lowly, the squalor and ugliness of human life, against a background of taboos-ridden society and its callous laws. Significantly enough, Anand, more than any other Indian writer, had felt on his pulses the fate of the underdog and the underprivileged, who, before him remained mostly unnoticed in Indian literature. Anand was much pained to see the life quick in man, being crushed under the heavy weight of man-made laws, the scheme of cruelty and exploitation, the decadent and perverted orthodoxy that held India in its devilish grip. But it would not be wise to put labels on Anands writings, as he is genuinely humane. Incidentally, the proletariat in him had all the courage to protest against the odds of the prevailing social order of his times. He very well knew that This struggle requires the courage to say the unmentionable things, the unconventional truths, the recognition of our civilization.
tio n
The novel has proved a great success; it has not only run into many editions, but has been translated into more than twenty languages of the world. The story of Bakha, a scavenger, a descendant of the weakness of the down-trodden, the helplessness of the poor embodies Anands vehement protest against the indignant fourfold Hindu caste system, which kills the valiant, the beautiful and the glorious. In the midst of his spiritual conflicts and emotional crises, the sweeper-lad wishes to dress himself like a gentleman in the fashion of Tommies. He is noble, healthy, vibrates with life, just in contrast to his dirty profession and appallingly subhuman status. The graphic description of Bakhas morning and evening rounds of regimental latrines, his deputizing for his fathers job in the town, the insults heaped on him for not announcing his approach, the molestation of his sister Sohini by the devil incarnate, hollow-cheeked Pundit Kali Nath, the flinging of the bread on the brick pavement near the gutter to be picked up by him - all these present a world of untold horrid miseries and humiliations. Anands rage against the high-caste Hindus, who have cleverly condemned a whole community of people, is evident. Noble savages like Bakha and Munoo are not permitted to give vent to all the latent potentialities of manhood in them. Bakhas sincere craving for Red Lamp cigarettes, trousers, puttees, sola topi is an unconscious reaction against the life that has been forced upon him by his smoky world of refuse. His traumatic experience, when he gets a slap for polluting the caste Hindu by his unholy touch followed by the crescendo of Dirty dof! Son of a bitch, forces him to delve deep into his conscience, the very truth of his existence. He realizes his fate: Untouchable! Untouchable! Thats the word! Untouchable! I am an Untouchable! And so
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
324
tio
Untouchable was, in its sources, a ballad born of the freedom I had tried to win for truth against the age-old lies of the Hindus by which they upheld discrimination . Someone in the great Mahabharata had cried Caste, caste - there is no caste. And I wanted to repeat this truth to the dead souls, from the compassion of my self-explanations in the various Hindu hells, in the hope that I would myself come clean after I had been through the sewer, as it were.
na
lE
du
in the morning. Everything that follows is affected by it, even the innocent and vividly realized hockey match. Of the three solutions hinted at to the problem of the untouchable Christ, Gandhi and Main Drainage it is the last which is more favourable. Untouchable (1935), which poured out like hot lava from the volcano of Anands crazed imagination despite the best efforts of scholars like Bonamy Dobree, Maurice Brown and others to seek a publisher, was rejected by nineteen publishers for too much misery, evil and degradation in it. E.M.Forster, whose Preface to the novel made the book acceptable to a publisher, has, without rhetoric and circumlocution, praised Anand for directness of the attack and has frankly brought out the fact that Indians have evolved a hideous nightmare unknown to the West: the belief that the products are ritually unclean as well as physically unpleasant, and that those who carry them away or otherwise help to dispose of them are outcastes from society. Really, it takes the human mind to evolve anything so devilish. No animal could have hit on it. Anand was hailed for portraying the stark realities of poverty, dirt and squalor that engulfed the millions of silent sufferers, and for his sincere protest against such an internal system. Describing the creative process of writing Untouchable, he says:
ca
tio n
Anand was impressed by the Christian missionary Colonel Hutchinson; but he rejected Christianity for its unscientific creation of myth and its view that man is a born sinner. Naturally, Anand made humanity as his chief concern. The gospel of Christ, as in Untouchable, does not interest Bakha. He raises a volley of questions about the identity of Yessuh Messih. Hutchinsons devotional songs fail arouse Bakhas emotions, since Christianity does not appear to touch the fringe of his problem. Theology does not satisfy him and the temporary charm of Sahibs company soon evaporates. The Colonel makes a muddle of the whole thing. Hinduism also, with its network of castes, its mysticism and illogical and blind faiths, has been severely opposed by Anand. Bakhas visit to the temple is much revealing. The author gives a strikingly realistic analysis of Bakhas mental conflicts and spiritual crises, when he is filled with awe at the sight of twelve-headed and ten-armed gods and goddesses of the Hindus. The invocation to different gods and goddesses (Ram, Ram, Sri, Hari, Narayan, Sri Krishna, Hey Hanuman Jodah, Kali Mai, Om, Om, Shanti Deva) appears to draw him towards the temple and
en t
re
fo
But God did not answer my protest. So I have tended to regard him, since then, as the enemy of mankind. In fact, from that time my belief in the man with a big beard sitting on the top of the sky, determining the fate of everyone, has been shaken more or less completely.
rT
ra
Anands protest against the miserable life of the untouchables acquires a new significance in the context of numerous recent incidents of atrocities, committed by the Hindus on the Harijans. How they are burnt alive, killed in cold blood, deprived of their land and housesis a sordid story with no parallel in history to match it. It is a matter of great irony that most of the political parties in India have professed at one stage or the other to be true Gandhians but little substantial has been done for the emancipation of the untouchables. Practice of untouchability has been made a crime under the Indian Constitution, still there are millions of untouchables who have to depend on the dirty job of cleaning the latrines for their bread. Political promises to ameliorate their sufferings are just a lip service, as nothing very concrete has been done to introduce flush system in all the cities and villages of the country. Indias present predicament, after thirty years of independence, is a vindication of Anands vivid imagination. In the matter of religion, Anand has always vehemently protested against the mystic origins and myth-making. He recalls his first sharp reaction to the merciful God on the death of his innocent cousin Kaushalya at the tender age of nine:
di
tio
na
325
lE
du
ca
tio n
long as he continues to clean the latrines, he will never get rid of this label. They think we are dirt, because we clean their dirt. He occasionally stirs out of his humility and is on the point of revolt, but the sparks of his angry voice are hushed by his realization of harsh realities. The novel proposes three probable solutions to Bakhas problem of cleaning the latrines: he can accept the kind offer of the Salvation Army Chief, Colonel! Hutchinson he can take comfort in Gandhis mild reprimand of caste-Hindus and the eulogy of untouchables as Harijans (sons of God); he can hope for new life with the introduction of the machine, suggested by the poet. The last (the machine), an obvious reference to the flush system, appeals to him and he wishes to know further about is.
21.4.7.2 Coolie
The novel is a sincere protest against the emergence of a new world of money, wageslaves, distinction of class and status and mans haunting loneliness. Anand discovers to his shock that the coolies like Munoo are completely beaten down by the curse of money power in the Iron Age. The mean prevailing social order and the new values created by this new civilization strike at, as in the case of Munoo, the instinctive natural warm-heartedness and spirituality that underline the real zest for life. Its infernal effects lead to tragic waste and suffering and the individual is not able to redeem himself from the clutches of hard possessiveness and a soft emotionalism. Even the best moments of Munoos life marred by the thought: We belong to suffering! We belong to suffering! My love. They are born to suffer and blush unseen. The introduction of machine increased production but it gave birth to the problems of employment, slum areas, lust for wealth, colonial imperialism and, above all, the conflicts between 326
en t
re
In Coolie(1936), the macrocosm of real India, Anand presents, as John Lehmann puts, ... not the feudal splendors and feudal mysticism of traditional Indian literature, but the hard and suffering lives of the millions of his countrys poor. Munoos forced journey from his idyllic surroundings through the madhouse prison of a shrewd and vindictive housewife, the wife of a bank babu, the short respite at Daulatpur under the roof of Prabha, the sordid cotton industry of Bombay and lastly the crazy, yet comforting world of a highly immoral and pretentious Anglo-Indian woman in the tranquil hills and valleys with death following on its heels - is variably a ceaseless quest for happiness. Munoo, the coolie, has been humanized and is assigned a place in serious literature by Anand, and he represents millions of coolies, not only in India but all over the world. He is an object of exploitation in one way or the other and he has to bear his misfortunes with a patient shrug. The wild bird of his heart fluttered every now and then with desire for happiness. Anand indicts the new value of the so-called social order for its selfishness and sadistic cruelty. Munoo is thoroughly convinced of his inferiority, and the soul of a servant is instilled into him. In a rage, he bursts out: The babus are the Sahib-logs, and all servants look alike; there must only be two kinds of people in the world: the rich and the poor.
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
seemed to advance towards him like a monster, and to envelop him. Anand frowns at the religion that does not allow its devotee to have a free access to his deity. The low hoarse cry Polluted, Polluted, Polluted rudely shakes him, for, to his amazement, he discovers that his entry has defiled the temple of his deity. He is dazed and his blood is congealed. His discovery of the priests attempt to molest Sohini rouses not only the hero in him to strike back, but also his indignation at the cold lifeless gods who fail to protect an innocent girl from the indecent advances and lusty clutches of a devil. Anand mocks at the hypocrisy and hollowness of Hindu religion for its curse of pollution by touch which baffles all reason, sensibility and good sense, in contrast to the allowance of all sorts of unclean practices like gargling and spitting in the stream, relieving in the open, swindling by the moneylender as Ganesh Nath does, and manipulation of the scales by the confectioner.
One has to convey in a language that is not ones own, the spirit that is ones own. One has to convey the various shades and omissions of a certain thought-movement that looks maltreated in an alien language. I used the word alien, yet English is not really an alien language to us.... We are all instinctively bilingual, many of us writing in our language and in English. We cannot write like the English. We should not. We cannot write only as Indians. We have grown to look at the large world as part of us. In fact, the imaginative use of the English language in creative work is different from higgledy and piggledy English. Surprisingly enough, there are about one thousand Indian words in the Oxford English Dictionary, Anands own contribution exceeding fifty words. It is the socio-economic changes that characterize the Indian English. The hand-over of the mothertongue continues in the expression of even those Indians, who have the privilege of getting education at Oxford or Cambridge or London. Hence the conscious use of phrase from 327
en t
re
fo
It has been maintained by many scholars that it is not possible for a writer to create significant works in a language that is not his mother-tongue. Anands entire fiction is a protest against such a baseless conviction. His language is an easy natural Indian English. It is a shade of English just like Irish English or London Cockney, with the inevitable echoes of the mothertongue. With its Indian queerness and distortions, Anands technique of word-coin-age, use of swear words, epithets from Punjabi and Hindustani reveal the real personality of the speaker and make him characteristically revealing. Speaking of the language of the Indo-English writers, Raja Rao remarks:
rT
ra
di
tio
na
the labour and the mill-owners, followed by strikes and lock-outs, trade unionism, psychological complexes and emotional sterility. Anand discovers in the life of coolies a real world of shocking miseries and a strange race shivering, weak, bleary, with twisted, ugly black faces, black, filthy, gutless, spineless ... vacant looks, idiots, looking at the smoky heavens ... with horrible unexpressed pain, large writ on their faces. The crushing weight of machine-civilization causes a fearful conflict of master-servant relationship. Even the primary emotions of love are adversely affected, as the workers are stuck in the mud of contentment. The sharks, bulls and bears of industrial world exploit the coolies lack of resistance, wit and courage. A life, like that of Munoo, deprived of its courage and healthy passions, cannot produce anything creative. The professional Trade Union leaders, the modern Judas, who sing to the temper of capitalists, like Lala Onkar Nath, further increase the sufferings of the coolies. Love of money, which is a natural corollary of industrial life, has dehumanized man. It has robbed him of his passions and given him the numbness of iron. Even Munoos uncle Daya Ram becomes a victim of the lure of money, with his characteristic hillmans tender emotions -hardened and dried up. He wants to keep the wages of Munoo to himself and leaves him to the mercy of the ill-tempered, selfish and vindictive woman, to be crushed to death like his mother, who moved the mill stone, round and round till she had languished and expired. He gets blows on his ribs for hunger and ragged tunic for his clothes. Daya Rams love of money and the sense of inferiority, during the service in the bank, chill all his warm-heartedness.
lE
du
ca
tio n
Indian languages in English is natural. About his first novel, Untouchable, Anand recalls: In sinking my own roots into Bakhas world, I had overcome the partial isolation of living for some years abroad and talking for long periods in English rather than in Punjabi. And Gandhi had said: If you dont want to write in your mother-tongue then say your say in any other language that comes to hand. Again he had advised: The ardour of the untouchables who had become touchables in the Sabarmati Ashram had obliterated the intellectualized falsities of the clever Bloomsburyite in me. I had retained the love of word vibrations. I wanted to show the growth of a native soul from within the native body, the glimmer of flashes of consciousness in the supposedly most depressed people, the craving for life right in the midst of misery and torpor.
As a writer Mulk Raj Anand lacks the concrete sagacity, the finesse, the appetite for the illustrational - to use Henry Jamess phrase - which marks everything that R.K.Narayan writes; nor does he have that sense of the metaphysical nature of man we find in the other distinguished novelist, Raja Rao. But he has a stricken and genuine feeling for the deprived, a grasp of the social structure of his society and an extraordinary fluency of communication. This fluency of communication has something Russian in it, and Russian too (but in an infinitely more attractive sense than the earlier Marxist-dominated way) are two later works, Morning Face (1968) and Private Life of an Indian Prince (revised, 1970). These two books which are, it appears from Saros Cowasjees introduction, highly autobiographical, summon up the great name of Dostoevsky in their pouring out of an intensely realized personal grief. They show in addition how the mind which created Coolie came to be formed, how the boy Krishna once folded lovingly into the family, becomes coldly detached and alone. The rhythm of this desperate progress is defined with an unusual purity and precision, and so with the same mastery is the collapse of the princes mind in Private Life of an Indian Prince. In both these works, free as they are from undue political scaffolding, there is an extraordinary combination of psychological
en t
re
fo
rT
21.4.7.3 Morning Face and Private Life of an Indian Prince
ra
The passions which have occupied me were, perhaps, my own dominant moods, and, therefore, all those characters may be said to be part of the same autobiography, of the torments, ecstasies and deliriums of the last two generations, in search of happiness on this earth, for myself and other human beings.
di
328
tio
na
In the end, it may be remarked that it is only a talented writer like Anand who can, with the help of the mother-tongue, create the actual atmosphere by depicting realistically the tensions, confusions and emotional crises of his characters. Untouchable and Coolie are brilliant examples of the creative activity in Indian literature. Anands works are a long series of his sincere protest against social evils in the hope of seeking happiness for himself and the toiling millions. He writes:
lE
du
ca
tio n
perception and human agony. Like all themes in art, the theme of exploitation and social protest in Mulk Raj Anands novels also has its correlates in life in his own life as well in the life around him. One of these correlates was the cantonment. He always moved with his father who, as a soldier in army, shifted from cantonment to cantonment. He gained first-hand knowledge of the under-privileged particularly those of the pre-partitioned Punjab. Anand had lived in the society of the children of untouchables in his childhood and youth. Naturally, therefore, Anand had a feeling of tenderness and sympathy for the down-trodden, which prompted him to portray their exploitation in his novels. He himself had been the victim of beatings by the police during the Jalianwala Bagh. This may be one of the situations which created in him an unconscious inclination to project beatings in his novels. His stay with Gandhiji in Sabarmati Ashram and his association with the students Movement, the Kisan Sabha and the Indian National Congress in 1928 would have added poignancy to his treatment of social protest. Anands range of the theme of social protest has widened from its social aspects to economic and political ones from novel to novel in the early stage of his career. As a result of his contact with Gandhiji, he could gain close and sympathetic understanding not only of the social injustices but also of the economic and political oppression of the down-trodden by the high class people for their own ends. The exploiters in his novels are big landlords, money-lenders, feudal lords, industrialists, capitalists, tea-planters, temple-priests, tradesmen, school masters and other high class people. The exploited are the untouchables, landless peasants, laborers and coolies etc. With such a penetrating insight into the social protest and such a touching presentation of its various facets, Anand has carved out for himself a niche in the temple of fame.
Through the discussion in this unit, we come to realize that Anand is the only Indian English novelist who shows a thorough study and understanding of world fiction. He is saturated with the fictional forms right from the days of Cervantes down to the present age. He agrees with E.M.Forsters view that the content of fiction has not changed though the technique has changed considerably and the story in the traditional form has, to a great extent, been replaced by the pattern in the narrative. Like Percy Lubbock, he stresses that the novel has grown in the hands of the masters. From Cervantes and Boccaccios simple narratives, it has undergone an almost complete change in the form of Tolstoys imaginative portrayal of inner life as against the outer events which usually appear to govern human life in the works of Thomas Nash, Robert Greene, Mrs. Aphra Behn, Fielding, Smollett and Dickens. In the end, it may be said that Anand as a fiction writer has contributed not only to the growth of the Indian English novel, but also to the novel as a literary genre. His high conception of the role of Indian English writer also sums up his own contribution to the development of the novel.
en t

1. According to Anand there is a genuine and vital connection between art and life. 329
re
fo
rT
21.5 Let Us Sum Up
ra
di
tio
na
lE
du
ca
tio n
Discuss. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Anand opines that the novel should not be an exposition of some system of philosophy; rather it should portray the wisdom of the heart. Illuminate. Anand regards art and literature as the instruments of humanism. Substantiate your views. Anand is averse to the artificiality of prose style. Prove the importance of this statement.
8.
9.
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Berry, Margaret, Mulk Raj Anand: The Man and the Novelist, Amsterdam : Oriental Press, 1971. Cowasjee, Saros, Coolie: An Assessment, Delhi O.U.P., 1976.
6. 7.
en t
Derret, M.E. The Modern Indian Novel in English. Brussels: Universiti Libre de Bruxelles, 1966. Dutt, Prabhat Kumar. Mulk Raj Anand in Relation to Tagore, Prem Chand and Sarat Chatterji, Contemporary Indian Literature, V-II-12 (Dec. 1965), 19-20. Gupta, G.S.Balarama, Mulk Raj Anand: A Study of his Fiction in Human Perspective, Bareilly: Prakash Book Depot, 1974. Iyengar, K.R.Srinivas. Indian Writing in English, Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1962.
re
Cowasjee, Saros, So Many Freedoms: A Study of the Major Fiction of Mulk Raj Anand. Delhi O.U.P., 1977.
fo
rT
ra
21.7 Bibliography
di
Anand has been called the champion of down-trodden and under-privileged people. Discuss.
330
tio
na
Anand identifies himself with the despair, helplessness, agony and misery of hisprotagonists like Bakha and Munoo whom he elevates to the status of heroes of fiction from the darkest pits of poverty, squalor and degradation. Discuss.
lE
du
7.
Anands Untouchable and coolie, evidence his steep journey away from Bloomsbury literary consciousness to the non-literary worlds, whose denizens have always been considered vulgar and unfit for the respectable worlds. Discuss.
ca
Anand, with his characteristic doggedness delved deep into the depth of human consciousness of the lowly, the squalor and ugliness of human life, against a background of taboos-ridden society and its callous laws. Discuss.
tio n
Anands fiction may be called a literature of protest. Discuss.
8. 9. 10. 11. 12.
Lindsay, Jack. The Elephant and the Lotus: A study of the Novels of Mulk Raj Anand, Bombay : Kutab Popular, 1965. Mukherjee, Meenakshi. The Twice Born Fiction. New Delhi: Heinemann Educational Books, 1971. Naik, M.K. Mulk Raj Anand. Delhi: Arnold-Heinemann, 1973. Raizada, Harish. The Lotus and the Rose, Aligarh : Faculty of Arts, A.M.U. 1978.
___________
en t
re
fo
rT
ra
di
tio
na
331
lE
du
ca
tio n
Sharma, K.K. Perspectives of Mulk Raj Anand. Ghaziabad: Vimal Prakashan, 1978.

Bharatha's Natyashastra

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Bharatha's Natyashastra

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Bharatha's Natyashastra

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

UNIT-1 BHARATAS NATYASHASTRA

Structure 1.0 1.1 Objectives Introduction

Aesthetics in Indian and Western Context

1.1.1 Aesthetics in Indian and Western Context

Commentators on the Natyashastra

Bharata, the Author of the Natyashastra

Aim of the Natyashastra

Date of composition of the Natyashastra

Division of the Nayashastra

Nayakas (heroes) and nayikas (heroines).

Subject matter of the first chapter of the Natyashastra

The Origin of Drama

Offering puja to the gods of the stage.

The characteristic of a drama

Brahma pacifies the Vighnas

How are the different parts of drama to be presented ?

1.10 Let Us Sum Up

1.11 Review questions

UNIT-2 RASADHYAYAS OF NATYASHASTRA

Kavya prayojana ( purpose of poetry).

Rasadasha (relishable state)

2.8 2.9 2.10

Let Us Sum Up Review Questions Bibliography

Nature of rasa Four kinds of ( jnana) knowledge

Sadharanikarana (Generalization) Factors of rasavighna (obstructions to rasa experience)

States of the Mind

2.2.1 Sthayi bhavas (basic mental states)

ii) they make known the nature of emotion in the hero

2.2.4 Sattvikas (Involuntary gestures)

iii) they make the spectator experience an identical emotion .

2.2.3 Anubhavas ( voluntary gestures)

2.2.5 Vyabhicharibhavas (transient emotions)

moha or distraction by reeling sensations and staggering looks

chinta or anxiety by deep breathing, meditation, sighing, agony

dianya depression by dullness, absentmindedness, negligence of cleanliness

alasya or sloth by moroseness, sleeplessness, disinterest in work

asuya or jealousy by decrying others merits

rati or love giving rise to shringar or the erotic

Illustration Of The Constituents Of Rasas

Uddipan vibhavas or stimulating factors or determinants : azure-lidded

Bhava Or Abhasas (Semblance Of Rasa)

Alambana vibhava: Madeline and Porphyro

By the dusk curtains: twas a midnight charm

Rasanubhuti (rasa realization) 2.7.1 Kavya Prayojana ( Purpose Of Poetry)

Abhinavagupa divides anand into three classes: vishayanand, kavyanand and 18

Rasa formula and Eliots Objective Correlative

2.7.2 States of the Mind

2.7.3 Rasadasha (Relishable State)

2.7.4 Nature of Rasa

2.7.5 Four Kinds Of ( Jnana) Knowledge

2.7.6 Sadharanikarana (Generalization)

2.7.7 Factors Of Rasavighna (Obstructions To Rasa Experience)

ii) iii) iv) v) vi) vii)

spectators incertitude as to the rasa purposed by the poet

delineation of non sentient objects or of vyabhicharis which depend upon sthayi

refusal by the spectator or reader to concede the existence of the rasa

Ghosh, M. Natya-shastra. Kolkata: Manisha Granthalaya, 1967.

UNIT-3 ACARYA KUNTAKAS VAKROKTIJIVITAM

Pada-parrddha-vakrat (Grammatical obliquity) vkya-vakrat (Sentential obliquity)

Prabandha- vakrat (compositional obliquity)