EDITORIAL
Some died in neglect, others in the midst of every attention. No remedy was found that could be used as a specific; for what did good in one case, did harm in another. Strong and weak constitutions proved equally incapable of resistance, all alike being swept away, although dieted with the utmost precaution. By far the most terrible feature in the malady was the dejection which ensued when any one felt himself sickening, for the despair into which they instantly fell took away their power of resistance, and left them a much easier prey to the disorder; besides which, there was the awful spectacle of men dying like sheep, through having caught the infection in nursing each other. This caused the greatest mortality… On the one hand, if they were afraid to visit each other, they perished from neglect; indeed many houses were emptied of their inmates for want of a nurse: on the other, if they ventured to do so, death was the consequence. This was especially the case with such as made any pretensions to goodness: honour made them unsparing of themselves in their attendance in their friends' houses, where even the members of the family were at last worn out by the moans of the dying, and succumbed to the force of the disaster … Men now coolly ventured on what they had formerly done in a corner, and not just as they pleased, seeing the rapid transitions produced by persons in prosperity suddenly dying and those who before had nothing succeeding to their property. So they resolved to spend quickly and enjoy themselves, regarding their lives and riches as alike things of a day. Perseverance in what men called honour was popular with none, it was so uncertain whether they would be spared to attain the object; but it was settled that present enjoyment, and all that contributed to it, was both honourable and useful. Fear of gods or law of man there was none to restrain them. As for the first, they judged it to be just the same whether they worshipped them or not, as they saw all alike perishing; and for the last, no one expected to live to be brought to trial for his offences, but each felt that a far severer sentence had been already passed upon them all and hung ever over their heads, and before this fell it was only reasonable to enjoy life a little. Such was the nature of the calamity…
The
impact of this passage cannot be lost on anyone who saw and experienced the
devastating effect that the merciless COVID-19 unleashed upon mankind. The
lines cited above provide a graphic account and appear to have been extracted
from a recent reportage. Yet, readers will be startled to know that they come
not from any contemporary news desk but from The History of the
Peloponnesian War penned by Thucydides some 2500 years ago. The amazing
parallel that we observe in the two situations, despite a span of 25 centuries
separating them, compel us to understand that epidemic, pestilence, natural
calamity, pandemic and the like are an integral part of the human experience
and that they are always universal as well as contemporary.
It is true that survivors
refuse to draw any lesson from the past or present and love to continue to
cherish the illusion of immunity from disaster. They tend to forget that if
life is all about hedonistic pleasures, it is also about restraint about how we
conduct ourselves as a member of the social community. To make a mockery of
protocols like ‘social dis-tancing’ and wearing a ‘mask’ only shows how
insensitive we can be to feelings of compassion for others.
The near and dear ones who
have been snatched away from our midst will never return. The doctors and
health workers who have lost their lives so that others could live deserve all
our gratitude. Our obligation to them all cannot end with merely our prayers
for the peace and rest of the departed souls. We need to take it as a
collective responsibility to contribute our very best to ensure that no one
feels alienated and segregated again on account of our lack of empathy and
concern for our fellow men, women and children no matter from what class, caste
or region they come from. To all those who used the pandemic as an opportunity
to grow rich and affluent overnight by hoarding medicines, Oxygen gas cylinders
and the like, I wish to remind them of a statement made by The Gulag Archipelago: “Do not pursue what is illusory – property and
position: all that is gained at the expense of your nerves decade after decade
and can be confiscated in one fell night. Live with a steady superiority over
life – don't be afraid of misfortune, and do not
yearn after happiness; it is after all, all the same: the bitter doesn't last
forever, and the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing.
Before closing this editorial note, I deem it an honour to thank all the contributors who have enriched this volume with their presence. I also deem it a privilege to dedicate this edition of Re-Markings as our salutation to all the medical scientists in the world who have done their very best to make the planet pandemic-safe by giving us the vaccines at a pace that is simply incredible.
Nibir K. Ghosh
Chief Editor
CONTENTS
The Mythology of Imperialism at 50: A Conversation with Jonah Raskin – Nibir K. Ghosh / 7
An Evening to Remember: E-launch of 20th Anniversary
Special Number, 18th March 2021 – Sugata Bose / 16
If You don’t Know Me by Now…Black Lives Matter – E. Ethelbert Miller / 20
A Conversation with Anita Auden Money – Nibir K. Ghosh / 23
Michelangelo goes to Istanbul: Enard’s Tell Them of Battles, Kings and Elephants – Rajesh Sharma / 36
The Bliss of the ‘Inward Eye’: A Birth-Centenary Tribute
to Satyajit Ray – Nibir K. Ghosh &
Sunita Rani Ghosh / 41
Ye Mera India: Conceptualizing the West, Home, and
Belonging in Popular Hindi Cinema – Urvashi
Sabu / 48
Native/Non-native
Dialectics: Myths and Folklore in Thomas King’s The Back of the Turtle – Charu Mathur /
54
Tradition and
Deviation: The Wounded Self in Bhabani Bhattacharya’s Novels – S. P. Swain &
Ramani Ranjan Panigrahi / 61
Divakaruni’s
The Forest of Enchantments: A Feminist Version of the Ramayana –
Gunjan Chaturvedi / 69
Redefining Progress:
Perpetual Dilemma Between Self and Soul in the Modern Age – Abha Sharma /
78
Rediscovering the Indigenous Identity: A Study of Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony and Easterine Kire’s Son of the Thundercloud – Riya Dutta & Seema Singh / 86
Ecological
Undercurrents in Barbara Gowdy’s The
White Bone – Ashoo Toor / 96
Exploration of Dalit Sociological Life and Feminism: Bama’s Karukku and Sangati – Pramod Kumari / 103
The ‘Form’ of Mourning: Reading Julian Barnes’s Levels of Life – Sahajmeet / 111
Fantasy Literature: A Child-Centric Approach – Insha Iftikhar / 118
The Institution of Marriage in Shobhaa De’s Spouse – Santosh Kumar Singh / 125
Reading Amit Chaudhuri’s Novels in the Light of Rājaśekhara’s Kāvyamīmāsā – Shivali Garg / 132
Psychological Displacement in Monica Ali’s Brick Lane – Asma Rafiq & Alisha Chaudhary / 140
Women as Victims of Inhuman Social Realities in Pre-independence Bengal – Emily Pandey / 148
Poetry
Tuncay
Gary – The Theatre is
being Demolished / 152,
Fauré, Satie, Debussy and Ravel / 152, Reached the
Middle / 153, To be Exposed on an Island / 154
Cyril Wong –
Diary Entry / 155
Deena Padayachee –
Gauntlet / 156
Pratiti Kaushal – A Battle you couldn’t Survive / 157
Book Review
The Secret Diary of Hendrik
Groen – Sushil
Gupta /
158
Unwinding Self by Susheel Kumar Sharma –
H.
C. Gupta / 159
The Village Poet & Other Stories by
Manoranjan Behura – Debashreemayee Das
/ 160
An Evening to Remember: E-launch of 20th Anniversary Special Number, 18th March 2021
Sugata
Bose
First of all, may I congratulate Professor
Ghosh and everyone associated with Re-Markings on the publication of this
wonderful 20th anniversary celebratory number. It was very good to hear Jonah
Raskin and Anita Auden Money. It is so wonderful that Re-Markings has had
special issues on Doris Lessing and W. H. Auden. No historian of the 20th
century can afford to not cite W. H. Auden. He has a brilliant poem on every
major historical event to have occurred in the last century including, of
course, on partition which Ayesha Jalal and I quote in full in our book Modern
South Asia: History, Culture, Political Economy.
The 18th of March is of course a red-letter
day in South Asian history. On March 18th 1944, the Indian National
Army moved into North-eastern India towards Imphal and Kohima. With "Chalo
Delhi" on their lips, the Azad Hind Fauj crossed the Indo-Burma frontier
and carried the armed struggle for liberation onto the Indian soil. They
marched singing their battle song kadam kadam badhaye ja. Step by step
they would advance until the Indian flag fluttered over the red fort of Delhi.
On that historic occasion, Netaji issued a lyrical order of the day in which he
dwelt on the theme of sacrificial patriotism:
There, there in the distance – beyond
that river, beyond those jungles, beyond those hills lies the promised land—the
soil from which we sprang—the land to which we shall now return. Hark! India is
calling! India’s metropolis Delhi is calling! three hundred and eighty-eight million
of our countrymen are calling. Blood is calling to blood. Get up, we have no
time to lose. Take up your arms. There, in front of you, is the road that our
pio-neers have built. We shall march along that road. We shall carve our way
through the enemy's ranks or if God wills, we shall die a martyr's death. And
in our last sleep we shall kiss the road that will bring our Army to Delhi. The
road to Delhi is the road to Freedom. Chalo Delhi!
The INA soldiers were ecstatic to be on
Indian soil, and journalists reported scenes of jubilation and camaraderie as
they closed in on Imphal and Kohima.
My father Dr. Sisir Kumar Bose invited Abid
Hassan, a very close aide of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, to deliver the Netaji
oration in Calcutta 51 years ago, on January 23rd 1970. That morning
Abid Hassan deli-vered his beautifully crafted and deeply moving Netaji oration
titled “The Men from Imphal.” He had chosen to foreground in his oration the
harrowing retreat of the brave soldiers of freedom after their march to Delhi
had been halted at Imphal. In one brilliant paragraph, he portrayed the
character of the army of liberation to which he belonged:
What a group we were and ours was but a unit
among many of its kind in our army. I felt proud and I feel more proud today
that I belong to it. Baluchis were there among us and Assa-mese, Kashmiris and
Malyalis, Pathans and Sikhs and Guja-ratis. Proud members of classes called the
Martials and those still then denied reputation for martial valour but who
proved in battle that they could, by their deeds, claim equal honour. Every
region in India was represented. Every religion and every caste mixed
inseparably together, not only in bigger formations but even in small platoons
and sections. Each unit being a living tribute to the unity of India. We had
our different private faiths and we had our different languages but, in our
purpose, and in our political belief, we were a well-knit, determined and
indivisible whole.
Once they reached Mandalay, Netaji came to
meet them. The Sikhs oiled their beards; the Punjabi Muslims, the Dogras and
Rajputs twirled their moustaches. We the indiscriminate, Abid Hassan said, “put
on as good a face as we could manage." As Netaji spoke to them, their
weariness seemed to depart and they felt refreshing new blood circulating in
their veins. Abid Hassan understood the essence of his leadership: "He was
all we had as our leader to whom each one of us however humble meant something
and who to us all meant everything. He belonged to us, to us all of the Azad
Hind movement and entirely without any compromise." Abid Hassan then
flashed back to October 1943 to illustrate the meaning of “without any compromise”
by telling the story of Netaji's visit to the Chettiar temple in Singapore. He
had turned away the Head Priest saying, "What, come to your temple where
even Hindus of other castes are not permitted entry, not to speak of members of
other communities who are equally near and dear to me?" He agreed to go
when the High Priest returned with an invitation to an Indian national
demonstration. When we came to the temple, Abid Hassan remembered, "I
found it filled to capacity with the uniforms of the INA officers and men and
the black caps of South Indian Muslims glaringly evident. The memory I retain
is one of an invigorating music as that of a symphony dedicated to the unity of
the motherland. That music sustained him during his travails on the
battlefield."
Abid Hassan returned to us and stayed at our
home in 1976 and we interviewed him over three days. On the basis of that
interview, my mother wrote a long-form article “The Memory of a Soldier.”
Krishna Bose's diary which I was reading the other day, contains an important
entry on March 14 1976, regarding the tape-recording session that day. Abid
Hassan says, she notes on 17th August 1945 in Saigon, he would have
accompanied Netaji and Netaji himself wished so but because of military
protocol, Colonel Habibur Rahman was asked to go. He was senior anyway, all of
them were to follow him shortly so they did not realize that it would become a
matter of such importance at the moment.
Jonah Raskin mentioned Ravi Shankar so I
should tell you that during this period of the interview on March 15 1976,
Pandit Ravi Shankar came to see the Netaji Museum, Netaji Research Bureau, from
where I am speaking today and we showed him around. On January 23rd
of that year, he had presented a wonderful birthday concert for Netaji
performing the ragas Shayamkalyan, Charukeshi and Manj Khamaj on the occasion
of the second International Netaji Seminar that year. The first one had been
organized by my father in 1973. Since this is the 20th anniversary
of a journal, I thought I’d read to you a letter that Abid Hassan wrote to my
father about the Netaji Research Bureau's new journal The Oracle in
1979: "My dear Sisir, thanks ever so much for sending me a copy of The
Oracle. You have brought it out very well indeed, much better than I
expected. But then you are always so thorough and painstaking attending to all
my minute details, just like your uncle and it is the drudgery of attending to
details that pays dividends in the end. I know so many people envy you when
success is achieved but, of course, they are not there to help you with a hand
at the wheel pulling the cart out when it is stuck in the mire. How many years
day in and day out have you been attending to the Netaji Seminar! It is, thanks
mainly to your efforts, that it has now turned out to be a veritable scholarly
research institute." I know that not only Nibir Ghosh but also the team
around him, attend to the details and that is what makes Re-Markings such a
wonderful journal.
51 years ago, Abid Hassan had, in his Netaji
oration, referred to these frustrating times "when India again seems to be
a house divided against itself." The times have turned even more ominous
now and in human acts that Abid Hassan deplored, are becoming an everyday
reality in today's India. His oration was, in Sisir Kumar Bose's words, a
moving affirmation of the revolutionary faith given to us by our leader. Abid
Hassan had closed his oration with a message of hope "the people of India
will accept any leadership provided the call remains the same and the call
cannot be but forget not that the grossest crime is to compromise with
injustice and wrong."
I know Nibir had made a special request to me
to end with a little bit of music. Now as he was about to proclaim the
formation of the Azad Hind government, Netaji asked Abid Hassan to get the
national anthem Jan Gan Man rendered in Hindustani, so that soldiers of
the Azad Hind Fauj could appreciate the meaning of Rabindranath Tagore's song.
In Singapore Abid Hassan got the lyricist Mumtaz Hussein compose the Hindustani
song in three verses, rather than five of the original. Ram Singh Thakur wrote
down a band score based on the original tune. Mumtaz Hussein did not attempt a
translation but sought to capture the spirit of Tagore's song: "joyo
hey" naturally became "jaya ho" long before A. R. Rahman made
"Jai Ho" famous, the world over. The first verse that mentioned
several place names bore a strong resemblance to the Ben-gali lyric. A
comparison of the second verse evoking unity, which is not part of today's
national anthem, gives a clear sense of the connection between the Bengali original
and the Hindustani version. The Azad Hind version went thus: “Sabke dil mein preet basaye/ Teri meethi vani/ Har sube
rehne waale/ Har majhab ke praani/ Sab bhed aur fark mitake/ Sab god teri aake/
Gunthe prem ki maala.” [Your sweet voice/ Fills all
hearts with affection/ Those in each province/ And those of each religion/ In your bosom, they
shelter seek/ And garlands of love do they weave.]
So, I really do hope that Re-Markings will
play a role in binding, not just all of the communities of India but all of the
communities and peoples of the world with a garland of love, through their
literary pursuits which has always been both politically engaged and ethically
informed.
·
Professor
Sugata Bose, Gardiner
Professor of Oceanic History at Harvard University, USA, is Chairperson, Netaji
Research Bureau, Kolkata and former Member of Parliament (Lok Sabha). He is the
author of Internationally acclaimed books that include His Majesty's
Opponent: Subhas Chandra Bose and India's Struggle Against Empire, The Nation
as Mother and Other Visions of Nationhood, The
Essential Writings of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, Modern South
Asia: History, Culture, Political Economy among others. Professor Bose delivered
the above address as Chief Guest at the event.
The Mythology of Imperialism at 50:
A Conversation with Jonah Raskin
Nibir
K. Ghosh
Jonah Raskin, former
chair of the Communication Studies Department at Sonoma State University,
U.S.A., is the author of fourteen major books that include: The
Mythology of Imperialism: Joyce Cary, E.M. Forster, Joseph Conrad, Rudyard
Kipling, D.H. Lawrence (1971); Out of the Whale: Growing Up in the American Left (1973); Underground
(1978); My Search for B. Traven (1980); For
the Hell of It: The Life and Times of Abbie Hoffman (1996) and American
Scream: Allen Ginsberg's ‘Howl’ and The Making of the Beat Generation (2004).
In the late 1960s, he taught English and American literature at the State
University of New York at Stony Brook and for most of the 1970s he worked as a
reporter, a journalist and an editor at University Review, a
monthly magazine of politics and the arts. As a Fulbright Professor in
Belgium, he taught American literature at the University of Antwerp and the
University of Ghent. e serves on the advisory board of Re-Markings and is a
regular contributor to the journal. He visited India in March-April 2017 to
deliver the Keynote address at the international con-ference on “Peaceful & Prosperous South Asia: Opportunities
& Challenges” organized by JIIT, Noida from 27-29 March 2017. He
also delivered a talk on “American Literature”
organized by ELSA in collaboration with Re-Markings at Agra on March 31,
2017. This conversation focuses on Jonah Raskin’s epoch-making book The
Mythology of Imperialism that has reached the 50-year milestone of its enduring
popularity in 2021. In his unique style, the author shares his views on various
issues and concerns related to Imperialism that went into the making of the
book and their continuous relevance in con-temporary times.
Ghosh: Heartiest
felicitations Jonah on your magnum opus, The Mythology of Imperialism, reaching
the half-century milestone of its first publication by Random House in 1971.
How does it feel being the author of a book that has seen fifty years of
existence in a rapidly changing world?
Jonah Raskin: First of all thank you for
your questions and for your congratulations. I could write a whole book in
response to your questions. I’ll try to be brief and to the point. The world is
changing rapidly as you say, but in my view we still have imperialisms and we
still have colonialisms. We still have centers of empire and distant
peripheries, though with the latest technologies the peripheries aren’t as
distant as they once were. I wrote The
Mythology of Imperialism when I was 28-years-old. It was published when I
was 29, so when I think of the book I also think of my own young manhood during
a turbulent time, when the U.S. was at war with Vietnam, and much of the world
was in upheaval. The book is a reflection of who I was at a particular time and
place. I mostly think of Mythology
today as an artifact, though I’m told it’s more than that and that it has
contemporary relevance. I am not sure about that.
Ghosh: What led you to
contemplate writing on the theme of Imperialism especially at a time when equally
major issues were confronting the world?
Jonah Raskin: I didn’t see other equally major issues. I thought that
all the issues of the time were subsumed under “imperialism,” though I didn’t
give enough attention to what I might now call “anti-imperialist” literature,
literature from what was called the “Third World” and what some today might
call “post-colonial lit.” The old colonialism is mostly gone, but I think it
has been replaced by new colonialism.
Ghosh: Could you shed some
light on both the title and the subtitle of your book?
Jonah Raskin: Doing research for the book
in Manchester and London I discovered that when the Brits had an empire, they
came in contact with societies that had myths and rituals. They had a kind of
anthropological approach to countries they invaded and occupied and tried to
control. I thought that the Brits also had their own con-temporary myths and
rituals and that in that regard they were similar to the cultures they aimed to
tame. Originally, the book didn’t have a subtitle. The subtitle for the second
edition was the idea of the publisher, Monthly Review, and in my view it was mostly
intended to publicize the book and sell copies. The word “revolutionary,” which
is in the subtitle, has less meaning today than it once had. In the 1960s it
was taken over by advertising and public relations. In the 1980s we had what
was called “The Reagan Revolution.” Imperialism was a word that pushed buttons
in the early 1970s. It still does. I wanted to be provocative.
Ghosh: “The
Mythology of Imperialism is as solid as granite;
it should be around for a long, long time. It is great reading.” What reasons
would you cite to substantiate this remark of Maxwell Geismar in terms of the
enduring popularity of The Mythology?
Jonah Raskin: I don’t put much stock in what Geismar said. He was a
generation older than I and looking for young scholars and literary critics to
praise. He was kind enough to say lovely things about my book, in part because
he wanted to colonize me and make me one of his disciples. I wanted to be my
own master and nobody else’s disciple.
Ghosh: What went into your
decision to include the authors that you discuss: Joseph
Conrad, Rudyard Kipling, D. H. Lawrence, E. M. Forster, and Joyce Cary?
Jonah Raskin: Conrad and Kipling were obvious
contenders. The germ of the idea for the book was a comment by T. S. Eliot who
saw Conrad and Kipling as opposites. They were to a certain extent, and, while
Conrad loved the British Empire, he was also a fierce critic of Belgian
colonialism in the Congo. My Ph.D. thesis was only about Conrad and Kipling.
When I decided to expand the thesis into a book I knew I wanted to include
Forster especially because of his novel A
Passage to India. I threw in Cary because I liked many of his novels,
including The Horse’s Mouth. I
included a chapter on Cary’s Mister
Johnson be-cause it has an African protagonist. If I were to rewrite the
book now I would definitely include Virginia Woolf. She had a lot to say about
empire. I would also probably include V. S. Naipaul. He would make for a useful
foil to Kipling and also to E. M. Forster. I love contrasting and comparing,
though I try to be subtle about it.
Ghosh: How come the name
of George Orwell, who made political writing an art and changed the contours of
the English novel, does not come for elaborate discussion in the book?
Jonah Raskin: I could write volumes about Eric Blair,
aka George Orwell, whom I first read when I was 18 and at college when all
first year students were required to read Orwell's essay "Shooting an
Elephant" and write an essay about it, which I found
incredibly difficult because I had conflicting feelings. Like almost every
author I have ever written about I could have written more about Orwell than I
did write about him. I usually want to write less than write more. Sometimes,
as the notable Latin American author Eduardo Galeano said, "Less
is more." I am not trying to be cute. Most writers don't know when to
stop. Orwell did. He said a lot in a small space and he said it clearly. My
aims as a writer have been more or less the same as Orwell's: "sheer
egotism," "aesthetic enthusiasm," "historical impulse"
and "political purpose." At college, we were supposed to
understand Orwell's story without knowing anything about his biography or the
historical conditions that gave rise to his work. I think that's a wrong-headed
approach. You can't understand Orwell unless you know something about his
life and the times in which he lived. "Shooting an Elephant" is
probably beyond the imagination and critical faculties of an 18-year-old
American student. The only elephants in New York were in the zoo and it was
illegal to shoot and kill them. Orwell was writing about how the human beings
who operated the British Empire were trapped by their roles and had to behave
in a certain way. He wrote, "I was stuck between my hatred of the empire I
served and my rage against the evil-spirited little beasts who tried to make my
job impossible." At 18 I didn't realize that when Orwell wrote about
"the evil-spirited little beasts" he was writing about the people of
Burma, who weren't "evil" or "beasts" or
"little." I can see now that while Orwell had certain ideas
about empire and why he should abandon it, he also had imbibed many of the
attitudes of the empire. He was a part of the thing he hated, and as he put it
he wanted to "drive a bayonet into a Buddhist priest’s guts."
That's intense. It's also a vivid image. He doesn't say "kill," or
"exterminate the brutes," as Mr. Kurtz says in Heart of Darkness. "Drive a bayonet" into a
priest's guts couldn't be more vivid or visceral. Imperialism and colonialism
are evil because they warp the humanity of everyone involved, colonizers
as well as colonized.
I'm reminded
of a conversation I had with a professor of English when I was in New Delhi. I
was complaining about the British who tried to control India. The professor
said, "At least the English were here in India, unlike the Americans who
try to control us at a distance and by email and Facebook." Orwell was in
Burma not in London. He saw and felt the empire first hand. From him and his
writings I learned the importance of experience. If you want to write about the
Spanish Civil War, you go to Spain during the Civil War. If you want to write
about people who are down and out in London and Paris you live and work among
the people who are down and out. I have embedded myself in many of the
communities I have written about. Orwell has been my role model.
Ghosh: You begin the book
with the statement, “We, the readers and students of literature, have
been hijacked. The literary critics, our teachers, those assassins of culture,
have put us up against the wall and held us captive.” What made you see the
“literary critics” as “assassins of culture”?
Jonah Raskin: Once again I was being provocative. But I would also
say that I recognized at the time that literary critics had power. They
influenced readers, students, teachers. For a long time, they told people what
books to read and what books not to read. They limited the whole idea of
culture. I think my language also reflects the influence of Sartre on my
writing. I knew some of the major American literary critics, including Lionel
Trilling, and thought that much of what they wrote was pernicious. When I wrote
that passage there was a lot of hijacking of airplanes. I borrowed the concept
and the image and applied it to literary criticism. I thought that our
teachers, my teachers, tried to take us and me, specifically, to places where
we and I didn’t want to go, intellectually and culturally speaking. I didn’t
want to go to Oxford and Cambridge which many of my professor regarded as the
pinnacle of something they called “civilization.” What about Cairo, Beijing,
Mumbai and Hyderabad and their notable contributions to the arts, architecture,
philosophy and music? Zero information from my professors. They didn't know and
didn’t care to know.
Ghosh: In the words of Sinéad Kennedy, “The Mythology of
Imperialism calls upon its readers to view it as ‘a weapon for revolution’
and suggests that the role of the writer is not just to explore the world but
to be ‘a political and cultural revolutionary.’” What is your take on Kennedy’s
observation?
Jonah Raskin: Sinéad
was using my book for her own purposes. There are many roles for writers. One
of them is to be cultural revolutionaries. If they write books that are
original and provocative they will prompt readers to rethink the world and
perhaps to change their modes of behavior, but I don’t think that novels or
poems really do change the world. Think of all the anti-war novels and poems we
have had since The Iliad, Homer’s
great anti-war epic. And still we have had wars for thousands of years. But if
someone wants to write an anti-war epic, I say go ahead.
Ghosh: In terms of career options,
what consequences were you subjected to on account of your ability to demolish
myths created by those who wielded power in the groves of American academe?
Jonah Raskin: I did
not receive tenure at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. That was
in part because of my writings, but it was also because I was in fact a
cultural revolutionary and was arrested and jailed three times in 1968 and
1969.
Ghosh: Could you please
share the narrative of your role as a cultural revolutionary and the story of
your arrest and jail?
Jonah Raskin: As I have mentioned above, I did not receive tenure at the
State University of New York at Stony Brook because my writings were
provocative and inflammatory to say the least and often written in language
that was not academic but meant to appeal to the long-haired, marijuana-smoking
hippies who were leaving colleges, tra-veling widely and settling down in
communes all over the country. Also, I was denied tenure because I was arrested
and jailed three times in 1968 and 1969. The first time I was arrested was with
about 700 others who were protesting at Columbia where I had been a student
from 1959 to 1964.
Ghosh: What were the
protests about?
Jonah Raskin: What were we protesting? The university was con-ducting
research for the U.S. government that was used to wage war. It was making
inroads in Harlem, the adjacent Black community, without consulting the
inhabitants. It was also woefully backward in terms of the curriculum and
needed a radical overhaul. Sadly, in the English Department not a single writer
of color was taught. No Richard Wright, no James Baldwin, no Zora Neale
Hurston. No women writers were taught. No Emily Dickinson and no Virginia
Woolf. I took a class called “Comparative Literature.” What did we compare?
English, Irish and French writers. No Asian or African writers. The
professors thought they were genuine intellectuals. If they were intellectuals,
they were intellectuals with blinders. I’ll skip the second time I was
arrested, though I’ll say this: Columbia wanted me to apologize to the
university authorities for my political actions on campus. I was told
“You were taught to be a scholar and a gentleman and you didn’t
behave in a gentlemanly way.” When I chose not to apologize, the university had
me arrested – not very gentlemanly. The third time I was arrested I was
protesting the War in Vietnam and the murder of two members of the Black
Panther Party who were shot and killed while they were asleep. Law enforcement
agents killed them. That third time I was also beaten and tortured. I do not
exaggerate. I needed about 50 stitches in my head. My whole body was black and
blue from the sticks and clubs that battered my body. Nowadays, many people
know that there is police violence and brutality, especially against Blacks. In
1969, it was unusual for a white professor to be beaten and tortured.
Ghosh: Bridget Fowler, in a review of
your book, points out that your revolutionary views of the time did not quite
fit in with the “usual conventions of the professional academic.” Any comments?
Jonah Raskin: I
meant to go against the conventions. That’s obvious. Fowler made some astute
criticism of Mythology and she also
recognized some of its strengths. I would say that I wanted to write a book
that would be as creative as a work of literature, to break away from the
language of literary critics and forge my own vocabulary to use to talk about
Kipling, Conrad and the “gang.”
Ghosh: Has your view about
Imperialism that you so passionately advocated in 1971 undergone any change in 2021?
Jonah Raskin: I
recently wrote and published a book about American literature titled, A Terrible Beauty: The Wilderness of American
Literature. It’s a survey. In some ways it is in my view a “better” book
than Mythology, but it has not yet had the appeal of Mythology. If you want to be noticed and
read it pays to be provocative. I am not the same person today at 79 that I was
at 29 and 30, or the same person I was at 22 when I left New York and went to
Manchester, England to write about the British Empire and British literature.
In New York in 1964 when I left the USA no English department would have given
me the green light to write a book that showed the relationships of Kipling and
Conrad to imperialism. Perhaps we have come a long way since then. Maybe not. I
don't want to place too much emphasis on the accolades of former students, but
I would point out that former stu-dents send me accolades all the time. I would
also point out what Doris Lessing said, “I wish someone like Jonah Raskin had
been around to teach me when I was young.” I was always on the side of the
students, the learners. Well, not always. But I tried to put myself in their
shoes and to be helpful.
Ghosh: How do you view the subtler
contemporary variants of the Imperialism virus?
Jonah Raskin: Good
point. Imperialism is a virus. During my last time teaching I asked students to
read Tayeb Salih’s Migration to the North,
a short brilliant work of fiction from the Sudan that explores what we mean
when we talk about a “virus.” Racism is a virus. There are others, including
sexism and patriarchy.
Ghosh: Kindly share your views about
the notion of the “White Man’s Burden” forwarded by the likes of Rudyard
Kipling.
Jonah Raskin: Kipling
was a literary genius, multi-talented with paternalistic ideas and attitudes
toward India and Indians. He reinforced ideas of empire. The Brits said they
wanted to bring “civilization” to their colonies. Well they brought the English
language and Shakespeare and they also did their best to dismantle the
civilizations they found in India. Supposedly someone asked Nehru what he
thought of “western civilization.” He apparently said, “It’s a good idea,”
meaning that it wasn’t much more than just an idea and that westerners might
try to civilize themselves. The U.S. still needs to civilize itself.
I recently read and wrote
a review of Amit Chaudhuri’s Finding the Raga: An Improvisation on Indian
Music. I said, “Rudyard
Kipling—the Anglo-Indian novelist, short story writer and bard of the British
Empire—must have known that it wasn't true when he wrote, ‘East is East, and
West is West, and Never the twain Shall Meet.’ After all, Kipling merged East
and West in his own head and fused them in books like Plain Tales from the Hills, a collection of short stories, and in
his novel, Kim, which is a retelling
of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.”
I have not forgotten Kipling, The
Mythology of Imperialism or my own youthful self who still lives inside me,
I am happy to say. In a way, the book brought me to you, Nibir and to
Re-Markings and gave me a second life as a critic of art, literature and music.
Also, when I was in India a few years ago I met and
got to know a bit from a student who had read Mythology which had been published in India by Aakar Books which is
located near the Girdhari Lal Cricket Academy in New Delhi. The student noticed
the tone of my book and recognized that it was written in part from a sense of
anger. That is true. The student learned, he said, that one could write from a
sense of anger. I believe that Conrad wrote Heart
of Darkness with a pen dipped in the ink of moral outrage. Remember please
that he noted that “The conquest of the earth, which mostly means
the taking it away from those who have
a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is
not a pretty thing when you look into it too much.”
Ghosh: Please elaborate on your statement in the
opening chapter of your book, “Culture and literature are political weapons,
both in the hands of the colonialists and their revolutionary adversaries.”
Jonah Raskin: When I was a student in the late 1950s and early 1960s,
the prevailing notion in academia in the U.S. was that literature was
apolitical. Over the years I have recognized that most everything is political,
in the sense that it involves power. Who tells the story is significant. The
point of view of the narrator matters. When the narrator is an Indian, rather
than a Brit, it changes nearly everything. We can read and appreciate novels,
poems and plays from cultures not our own, but it’s also helpful to be aware of
the underlying points of view. When I was a student, I learned a lot about
India when I turned away from Kipling and began to read the novels of Mulk Raj
Anand. His perspective opened my mind.
Ghosh: From
the standpoint of 1971, you say: “the great modern writer is a rebel and a
craftsman, that he is both a nihilist and a utopian. He destroys old worlds and
builds new ones from the rubble about him.” What, according to you, should be
the role of the modern writer in coming to terms with the contradictions
visible in society and polity?
Jonah Raskin: It helps if and when the writer is aware of the
contra-dictions in the society which inevitably shape the lives of individuals.
A novelist can explore how social conditions influence human psy-chology and
how human thinking can change the workings of society. It’s dialectical. In my
view, a writer has to be a craftsman. He or she has to master the art form in
which he or she works. Now I’m sounding preachy, which I don’t like. Politics
is no substitute for tech-nique and skill. I remember that Conrad once said
that when revising a work it was essential not simply to change a word here or
there, but to take a second or a third look at the society and deepen one’s perspective.
Ghosh: Edward
Said considered The Mythology of Imperialism among the few important
books of the time. In your Afterword to the book you have focused on Edward
Said. What is your view of Edward Said’s work on Colonialism, Orientalism etc.
in terms of your stand on Imperialism?
Jonah Raskin: I think that Said made important contributions to
the study of literature and to that part of the world once known as “The
Orient.” But Said doesn’t have the last word. There is no such thing as the
last word. I was honored that Said invited his students at Columbia to read The Mythology of Imperialism, because
the book began when I was an undergraduate at Columbia. That felt like coming
full circle. Some of the early orientalists made important contributions to the
understanding of the East. They weren’t all narrow minded. The problem with
book like Said’s Orientalism is that
readers, scholars and teachers assumed that it was “a sacred text.” The “proper”
response to the book, if I can call it that, is to think critically about it
and to interrogate it. I hope readers will think critically about my own ideas
and the way I have expressed them.
Ghosh: Thank you Jonah for your precious time and insightful words.
v
A Conversation with
Anita Auden Money
Nibir K. Ghosh
Anita Auden Money was born in
Calcutta during the last days of the British Raj to John Bicknell Auden – an
eminent British geologist who worked for the Geological Survey of India
until just after Independence – and Shiela Bonnerjee – a Bengali painter and the granddaughter of
W. C. Bonnerjee, first President of the Indian National Congress. After reading
English at Oxford and with Art as an interest, she has been preoccupied with
various academic and literary engagements. She has worked for the poetry magazine Agenda founded by William Cookson. She
is interested in poetry, literature and critical debate and writes occasional
memoirs and reviews. Till February 2020, she worked as an administrator in an
inner city London comprehensive and is cur-rently doing some
voluntary tutoring with Action Tutoring. Being half English and half
Indian, she is a
perfect instance of the East-meets-West paradigm. She is
interested in social issues and education in its broadest sense to include
cultural life and heritage and to encourage students to appreciate their own
diverse cultures as well as the Wes-tern culture where they are being educated.
She considers it a privilege to be the niece of W. H. Auden, one of 20th
century’s greatest poets. In this conversation, she talks at length about her
varied experiences and about the life and poetry of her uncle.
NKG: It must be a privilege to be connected to W. C. Bonnerjee,
the first president of the Indian National Congress through family lineage. Please
share some of your impressions pertaining to this historical connect?
AAM: My
mother Sheila and her sisters Minnie, Anila and Indira, often called the
Bonnerjee sisters, spoke of their grandfather as Grey Beard. They did not
really know him but were well aware of him. My mother’s aunt (on her father’s
side), Agnes Majumdar, has written a memoir which describes both her father W.
C. and mother Hemangini and the time spent in England in a house in Croydon. There
is also another slim memoir jointly written by Agnes and Sadhona Bonnerjee with
a foreword by N. B. Bonarjee (another branch of the family) and preface by
Protap Bonnerjee, my mother’s brother. It is interesting to read about his
early life and his decision to go to England, forfeiting his father’s approval
and breaking with tradition by crossing the black water. W. C. died in England
and is buried in the old Croydon Cemetery. He shares a tombstone with his son
Saral Krishna who died young. I visited with Rosina Visram who has written
about Asians in Britain.
NKG: What
are the impressions of Agnes Majumdar about W. C. Bonnerjee?
AAM: Agnes comments
on W.C.’s great admiration for Western culture and education. All his children
(boys and girls) were sent to school and then university in England. His
daughter Nelly became a doctor and married an English barrister, while his son
Shelley married an English woman but returned to India. Susie, also a doctor,
went to work in India and Agnes, Pramila and Ratna (my grandfather) married
Indians. W. C. belongs to the school of
reform initiated by Ram Mohan Roy and Vivian Derozio and recognized the causes
of India’s weakness. He has been criticized for his English leanings but he knew
moderation was needed and that it was essential to gain the sympathy and
goodwill at least of some of the ruling classes in England as well as of their
re-presentatives in India for the growth of the Indian National Congress. Alan
Octavius Hume was a friend and ally in the establishment of the Congress. W. C.
did not hesitate to raise his voice at the time of the Ilbert Bill and the
India Councils Act and it is he who established and paid for the Indian
Committee so that Indian grievances could be aired in the House of Commons. It
is a source of pride to know what an ex-cellent barrister he was and that his
intelligence and culture was noted by contemporaries. I am also glad to hear
that he spoke English beau-tifully!
NKG: In what way did your parents influence you?
What would you consider as their legacy to you? Did your mother Sheila Auden
share her Bengali heritage with you at any point of time in your formative
years?
AAM: Calcutta
in the 1940s was a cosmopolitan city; my parents and Minnie (my mother’s sister
and Principal of Bethune College) and her husband Lindsay Emerson (a journalist
on The Statesman) with whom they shared the apartment in Lansdowne Road
had a wide, inter-national circle of friends and acquaintances that included
both Euro-peans and Indians. Sudhin Datta, the poet, writer and critic was a
great friend. My mother would often break into Bengali when speaking with
Minnie or other relations and friends. She also spoke about aunts in purdah and
about her mother Kitty (nee Ray) who was one of the first girls to go to
Presidency College and her father, Ratna, a witty racon-teur and accomplished
Barrister who after Rugby, read Greats at Balliol and then studied Law at the
Middle Temple.
She encouraged, without in any way dictating, an
interest in poetry, literature and the arts and in particular mythology and
fairy tales while my father, also encouraging these interests, introduced us to
a sense of place, maps and evolution. Between them they instilled in us a
curiosity about people, things and ideas which linked the world.
There was often music playing on the large gramophone – Beethoven in particular – and Minnie would sit in an armchair correcting the
work of students. In our bedroom a bookcase constructed of wooden packing cases
housed numerous children’s books and we were often read to, not just by John
and Sheila but also Minnie and Lindsay. I recall a number of cocktail parties
and the sound of voices from the drawing room when Rita and I were in bed.
Sometimes guests would come in and even read to us.
NKG: Tell
about your mother’s love of painting and other interests.
AAM: My
mother, a painter, who, on her return from European worked briefly with Jamini
Roy, also illustrated books and wrote articles on fashion and stories for
children (usually with a moral or making a particular point as in Beavers Dam) which were published in Shankars
Weekly, The Illustrated Weekly of India, The Courtier and The
Statesman. Though she was largely trained in the West (at The Central in
London and also in Germany) her paintings and illustrations have a quality that
is both idiosyncratic and Indian. She signed her name at the bottom of the
pictures in Bengali. I have a copy of The Caramel Doll which she illustrated; a
story about two Queens, Suo Rani the favourite and Duo Rani the forlorn,
written by Abanindranath Tagore and translated by the poet Bishnu and his wife
Pranati Dey, friends of my parents.
She later painted a Hindu
Pantheon which Wystan bought and hung in Kirchstetten. It is now back with me
and hangs in my son Otto’s bed-room. She also painted a number of Christian
themes but unlike her aunt Agnes never became a Christian but took infinite
care to see that Rita, my sister, and I, attended Mass on Sundays. I remember her
dressed elegantly in a sari wearing high heels, taking Rita and me by bus to
Burton on Trent for Mass as there was no Catholic Church in Repton where we
were staying with my Grandfather, only St Wystan’s.
NKG: What
memories of your father do you recall vividly?
AAM: My
father John told us about Jimsi, the wolf he had rescued as a cub when climbing
in the Himalayas but finally had to give to Calcutta Zoo and there were stories
about Mimi the monkey who was jealous when my father married my mother and
during a cocktail party turned on the taps in the bathroom but was unable to
turn them off and was found shivering on a window sill. We loved rides in his
jeep and visits to the Geological Survey where there seemed to be lots of
monkeys in the trees. During holidays in Darjeeling where we stayed in the
Majumdar’s house ‘Point Clear’ in Jalapahar we could see the peaks of Kanchenjunga and
Everest. Our father had mapped some of the Himalayas and had taken part in the
K2 Expedition.
Later we enjoyed holidays
in Europe as well as a Christmas in Khartoum and one in Kabul when my father’s
work took him to Sudan and Afghanistan. My parents were based in Rome in the
60s (my father was working for the FAO) and we visited and had a great
affection for Italy, already having stayed in Ischia with Wystan on our way to
England from India in 1951. At his request we took my father’s ashes to India,
scattering half in the Ganges followed by a ceremony at The Geological Survey
where they planted a tree in his memory, and the other half at Rishikesh. My
mother’s ashes were scattered at the confluence of the Ranjeet and Teesta
rivers.
NKG: Did your uncle Wystan encourage your reading interests
in any way?
AAM: We had a fine
copy of Grimms sent by Wystan from New York which added to our library: we had
all the Andrew Lang books – pink, red, blue, green and yellow – Hans Anderson,
George MacDonald, Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, the Myths of Greece and Rome by
Guerber, and the Norse Myths, both well illustrated and with many
pre-Raphaelite pictures, Indian Myths, The
Arthurian Legends, Rudyard Kipling’s Just So stories, The
Cautionary Tales, Strewelpeter, the
Baba books, Winnie the Pooh, Heidi,
Orlando the Marmalade Cat, and many others – one I especially liked
called The Cold-bloodied Penguin which had Disney like illustrations and
contrasts the cold north with the sunny south and a sense of nostalgia which
you find in Colonial lives.
NKG: During your study of literature at Oxford University,
who were the writers you were specially drawn to?
AAM: When
I was at Oxford (1959 to 1962) the syllabus did not really encompass the 20th
century although I think there was an optional paper. Like many other students I had read a good
deal of the classics and quite a bit of 20th century writing before
going up to Oxford. At Oxford we covered Old English, Middle English, through
the Eliza-bethans to the 17th, 18th and 19th
century.
I enjoyed the emphasis on
language and how it developed and was enriched by foreign borrowings and early
debates on the issue. I remember poems from Old and Middle English like The Wanderer, The Seafarer, The Ruin, The
Dream of the Rood, Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, Sir Orfeo, Chaucer’s
Troilus and Criseyde. I read through Shakespeare’s plays and was
particularly interested in Measure for
Measure and the sense of rebirth in later plays.
I liked Donne and the
‘metaphysicals’ and appreciated the scope of Milton’s Paradise Lost, the
cinematic effects he achieved, his use of Latinate constructions but also his
musicality. I also discovered the 18th century: Johnson’s Rasselas, Swift’s Gullivers Travels, Pope’s Rape
of the Lock, Sterne’s Tristram Shandy. I was interested in some of the debates about
scientific experiments and early attempts to fly.
I would have liked to do a
B.Litt. on Coleridge as I had been reading through his Biographia but was persuaded to do it on Shelley’s prose. This was
never completed but I read through all Shelley’s letters, The Defence of Poetry and other writings including his own two
Gothic Novels and Mary Shelley’s comments on his metaphysical views. In the process I became interested in Gothic
Novels and read Franken-stein, Vathek,
The Castle of Otranto, Ann Radcliffe’s novels, Charlotte Dacre’s Zofloya
or The Moor, Melmoth the Wanderer,
Dracula, The Monk and others, including a parody written in the early 19th
century called The Heroine by Eaton Stannard Barrett. In fact, I compiled a
lengthy bibliography of Gothic Literature. I also read Godwin’s Caleb Williams which I found very
interesting and Confessions of a
Justified Sinner. Like Helen Gardner, my tutor Rachel Trickett
who later became Principal of St Hugh’s was critical of the New Criticism and
over-interpreting texts and using technical jargon.
NKG: Did you ever contemplate being a writer
yourself?
AAM: I
have always written a little, mainly poems, though now do not find myself
trying to write a poem but more interested in short pieces with thoughts on
different things or responses to situations and like the idea of short stories,
a medium I particularly enjoy in preference to novels.
NKG: Have you ever experienced the dilemma of double
conscious-ness in terms of your family connections with those engaged in the
struggle for freedom against British rule and your being the daughter of a
British citizen employed in the services of the Empire as a geologist?
AAM: I am
critical of many aspects of British rule in India, but particularly because of
the attitude and prejudices of some of the people who went out to work there.
However Shashi Tharoor‘s Inglorious
Empire, while pointing out how the
East India Company exploited India and created a situation of economic reliance
that continued, does not pay enough attention to individual Englishmen like my
father who worked for the Geological Survey of India and far from exploiting
India, worked for the country, got on very well with individual Indians and was
highly critical about the prejudices of some of the English in India. My father
had early on appreciated the intelligence of many of the Indians he met, though
irritated by the affectations and snobberies about public schools displayed by
anglicized Indians including members of my mother’s family. It is in this
context interesting to note Kipling’s reaction to The Indian National Congress.
The Bengali ‘Balliol-educated’ lawyers who featured prominently in the Congress
were mocked as having acquired a superficial induction in Western culture.
Contrary to the thinking of earlier administrators, Kipling felt that Western
culture could not be successfully grafted on to what he saw as the obscurantism
of the sub-continent. This opens a huge area of debate about culture, hybridity
and the bonds created by Empire and is something that preoccupies me.
NKG: It must be a mark of distinction to be the
niece of Wystan Hugh Auden, one of twentieth century’s greatest poets. What
features of W. H. Auden’s life would you like to highlight?
AAM: Both
my father and Wystan broke away from prejudiced racial attitudes then current
in society: my father married a Bengali and Wystan left England for America,
became an American citizen and lived with Chester Kallman who was Jewish.
Constance Rosalie showed an interest in my mother’s background and was glad
that my father, after an unhappy first marriage, was now happy. However, she
and George Augustus hoped that the children of the marriage would be christened.
This finally happened with my mother’s approval after my father became a Roman
Catholic; he felt it was more universal and Anglicanism was too closely
associated with the Raj. If Constance Rosalie found it hard to accept Wystan’s
homosexuality and George Augustus had ambivalent views about Chester’s
Jewishness, they were not narrow-minded and John and Wystan were able to
communicate with them. In 1941 Wystan who had met Chester wrote a letter to my
father who had married my mother and I had just been born, saying, “Every ohm
of private happiness and decency is, I am convinced, a political asset to the
world.”
NKG: How
often did you get to meet your uncle Wystan?
AAM: In 1951
Wystan visited India and stayed with us in Calcutta. It was our first meeting
with him though he was already a presence in our lives. My mother remembers how
impressed the servants had been when he shook each one by the hand. Less
diplomatic than Louis MacNeice (who also visited India) in his responses to
culture-vulturism, he complained among other things about watching Indian
dancing, not his cup of tea, though in an early letter to my father had recommended
yoga as a technique, at the same time firmly dismissing what he thought to be
any accompanying mumbo-jumbo. E. F. Benson, a writer Wystan, my parents and
many of us have enjoyed, captures the burlesque of some of the turn of the
century fascination with the occult, unconscious workings of the mind and
frequent absurdities of East West relations – what you could describe as
Western gullibility versus Eastern enterprise.
Yeats had his dictated writing and Indian interests, Gerald Heard, Aldous
Huxley and Christopher Isherwood explored Vedanta, but Wystan turned to psychology.
My mother also distrusted facile attempts at under-standing Eastern philosophy,
but she minded what she felt was Wystan’s antipathy to the East. There is a letter
Wystan wrote to her years later in response to an apology of hers after an
evening when having drunk too much, she had aired some grievances.
NKG: What
did Wystan write in the letter you mention?
AAM: Here
are some excerpts from the letter:
My ‘antipathy’ to things
Eastern is very largely the defence mechanism of a writer. The East is a whole world, or several whole
worlds, of religion, art, thought which must be taken seriously, not dabbled
in. I have no patience with Westerners who take little nibbles at Yoga or Zen
or Eastern art and think themselves citizens of the world in consequence. Since I am not prepared to devote my whole
life to the East, I think the wisest and most respectful course is not to
consider it at all
… I understand well how mad
you must get with the English Family – it is not just the Audens, but English
society as a whole is an in-bred snooty family. Why do you think that I went to
America? (Incidentally, if you had trouble with Papa, how do you think I felt
when he went into a diatribe against the Jews in Chester’s presence?). Try to
be patient with us, though, my dear.
Love, Wystan
NKG: What other memories would you like to talk about?
AAM: Our
stay in Ischia on our way from India to England remains in my memory as it did
with my sister Rita as a special time full of new experiences. We met Chester
whom we liked and saw as another uncle. He had, rather to my mother’s surprise,
bought her a purple dress which she never wore though amused by the gift. The
household included Giocondo who helped generally, Mose the dog and Lucina the
cat. We used to frequent two cafes in
Forio, one run by a man called Peter and the other by Maria and Gisella. I remember
sitting in a café and being put to a test to draw a house, road and I think a
river or stream, drawings which were then interpreted. Chester had us match-ing
people to animals, birds, reptiles, not easy but revealing. During some siestas
Wystan read us Seaton’s Aunt (Walter de la Mare) and The Hobbit (Tolkien).
On one occasion in Ischia Wystan
asked if we did not find the thought of our parents marrying puzzling. At the
time I recall finding the question intrusive though realized later that this
was prompted by a genuine interest in both what we thought and curiosity in how
chance brings people together and
the oddity of marriages. He was fascinated by the mystery of two humans with
their variant genes uniting in marri-age and creating new entities. He had
always been puzzled by his own parents whom he felt were in some ways ill
matched. The Epithala-mium he wrote for my sister’s marriage to Peter Mudford
is interesting in a number of ways. He had earlier sent me a letter marked TOP
SECRET asking for the maternal surnames for his surprise poem: “Wherefore, as
Mudfords, Audens/ Seth-Smiths, Bonnerjees,/ With civic spear and distaff/ We
hail a gangrol/ Paleocene pseudo – rat/ the Ur-Papa of princes/ and crossing
sweepers.”
Bonnerjee was misspelt with
a g making one think of Miss Gee! The poem
makes clear how our genetic origins defy snobbery. My sister did not like the
poem (one of her favourites was Musee des
Beaux Arts) but she got on very well with Wystan who admired her intelligence
and was impressed that she was a surgeon. For her wedding he had taken the
trouble to buy a new silk suit. On being offered a gardenia to wear in his
lapel he discovered that there was no button hole and promptly cut a hole (having
somehow borrowed a small pair of scissors from my mother) so that he could wear
the gardenia for this special occasion. For my wedding in Florence, he made a
huge effort to come though he was in extreme discomfort after an accident.
He
opened accounts for my sister, myself and his godson Philip Spender at
Blackwells in Oxford so that we could buy books. His tenure of the Chair of
Poetry coincided with my time at Oxford. Not everyone had voted for him but he
had a strong supporter in Enid Starkie who had said that the Chair should go to
someone outside Oxford and a practising poet. His talks drew crowds and I felt
a proud niece to have such a famous, though controversial, uncle whose ideas
always challenged thought. The disapproval of his move to America continues to
remain a shadow in England.
Both my father and Wystan in
spite of their scientific interests believed in hidden powers and were
superstitious. As the third and youngest son Wystan told my mother he
identified with the Fairy tale hero who is lucky but the shadow of this luck
was a sense that poetry was un-Christian, as in fact magic. Curdie in The Princess and the Goblin, one of the
books Wystan liked and read as a child, recites poems to ward off the goblins.
Addressing Chester and Christopher Isherwood he says: “Although you be, as I
am, one of those/ Who feels a Christian ought to write in prose/ For poetry is
magic: born in sin, you/ May read it to exorcise the gentile in you.”
NKG:
Auden has stated in Shorts (Thankyou, Fog): “Whatever their personal faith/ all
poets, as such,/ are polytheists.” What is your take on this?
AAM: These ideas, expressed aphoristically, should also be understood
aphoristically as a truth which can be interpreted in various ways. Professor
John Bayley has pointed out in The
Romantic Survival that part of the energy of Wystan's work lies in the
tension between two voices – a can and an ought. Wystan had discussed
doubleness with Charles Williams whom he liked and admired quoting Montaigne, “We are, I know not how, double in ourselves,
so that we believe what we disbelieve, and cannot rid ourselves of what we
condemn.” He had suggested The
Double Man as the American title for his collection known in England as New Year Letter. As John Fuller has
pointed out there is something here also of Jung’s lame shadow.
NKG: What
similarities did you find in your father and uncle?
AAM: Both
Wystan and my father were good people. They had many minor faults and small
prejudices but believed in the dignity of people and treating them as equals, helping
where they could. Each had something of the healer as did my sister Rita.
NKG: What aspects of Auden’s poetry do you
consider to be most significant? Do you agree that Auden was a great
experimenter with artistic forms?
AAM: He experimented
with different forms and his technical profi-ciency has been acknowledged by
many people. I find his comment under ‘Choirboys’ in A Certain World interesting: “As a choir boy, I had to learn, not only to sight-read music, but also
to enunciate words clearly – there is a famous tongue twister in the Jubilate –
‘For why, it is He that hath made us and not we ourselves’ – and to notice the
difference between their metrical values
when spoken and when sung, so that, long before I took a conscious interest in
poetry I had acquired a certain sensitivity to language which I could not have
acquired in any other way.”
NKG: Many
celebrity writers have praised Auden’s poetry. Do you have any such opinion in
mind?
AAM: Yes.
Derek Walcott who discovered his poetry as a young boy in St Lucia has said: “I
think Auden actually dared a lot more than either Pound or Eliot. I think his
intellect was far more adventurous, far braver, far stronger, and far more
reckless than either of them.” Alexander McCall Smith in his book What W.H
Auden Can Do For You says that Auden changed his life and that when he died
he felt a great humane voice had been silenced, a view shared by a number of
people. He speaks of the intellectual density of his work, the lines ‘packed
with ideas.’ This might sometimes be a fault but it is also a strength and the
ideas become part of a landscape characteristic of Auden throughout his
poetry.
NKG: What
about the views of his critics?
AAM: Wystan’s
critics point to the lack of memorability in much of the later work and of a
decline in technique and tone. When a poet has set himself the novel and very
difficult task of giving the ‘drab truthfulness of prose’ poetic form, there
will be a different rhythm and less obvious memorability but I feel that there are
many memorable lines. I like many of the poems in Thankyou, Fog particularly ‘Nocturne’ and ‘Lullaby’ published after
his death.
NKG: Do
you agree that Auden’s early poems were more popular in comparison to his later
creations?
AAM: Wystan’s earlier poems may remain for many people those they
remember and love but it would be a pity if poems written after the late 50s
are ignored. They need a different attention to find the music and have
important things to say. In
his last works you hear a quieter single voice and growing sense of gratitude
and acceptance. The English language is praised for its peculiar qualities. Edward
Mendelson has noted the frequency of the word ‘odd’ in various combinations in
his last poems and it brings to mind the world of strange compatibles in Edward
Lear like The Owl and The Pussycat.
NKG: Could
you throw some light on Auden’s poem on the Partition of India?
AAM: Wystan’s
poem “Partition” written in 1966 describes the arbitrary
dividing by a lawyer who had no knowledge of India into India and Pakistan. My
father had written to him in 1948 shortly after Independence about the Calcutta
riots and how he and other Europeans had helped collect bodies lying in the
streets as they were less at risk than Hindu and Muslim friends. Awareness of
the problems in India were primarily due to my father for he and Wystan
corresponded throughout their lives but I am sure Wystan also found information
from other sources as well.
NKG:
In his celebrated elegy on the death of W. B. Yeats, Auden makes a
characteristic pronouncement: “Poetry makes nothing happen.” Yet, at the end of
the poem he says: “With the farming of a verse/ Make a vineyard of the curse,/ Sing of
human unsuccess/ In a rapture of distress;/ In the deserts of the heart/ Let
the healing fountain start…” Do you see any dichotomy in the two assertions?
AAM: The
line, “For poetry makes nothing happen” challenges interpretation and has been
lifted out of context to be queried in isolation. The negative assertion
appears to be contradicted by the high note of affirmation of the poet’s voice
at the end of the poem. Wystan grew increasingly concerned
about his own rhetorical ability and the danger of misuse and inflation into
propaganda, disapproving of Shelley’s assertion that poets are the legislators of the
world. It is this concern or double take on the role of poetry that creates a
sense of dichotomy but if you read the beautiful lines that follow, a subtle
context is provided: “it survives /In the valley of its making where
executives/ Would never want to tamper, flows on south/ from ranches of
isolation and the busy griefs,/ Raw towns that we believe and die in: it
survives,/ A way of happening, a mouth.”
Poetry
may not directly make
things happen in the Primary World but as a construct of the Secondary World of
the Imagination, shares the poet’s vision of truth with the reader. This truth
is common to all and each person is uniquely responsible to society.
NKG: Auden’s birth centenary went unnoticed in 2007 in
England. The Bible says that “a prophet has no
honour in his own country.” Do you think it holds true for Auden?
AAM: The Centenary, while in some ways low key, gathered momen-tum and took
place through the year with many celebratory events, the first at
Westminster Abbey. But some of the English still hold it against Wystan that he
went to America and there is the criticism of his later work. He does not
appear to be formally honoured in his own country, though with many individual
admirers. I was hoping they would issue a stamp particularly as he wrote Night Mail but when I approached the
relevant people, the idea was not taken up.
NKG: Re-Markings brought
out a special section on Auden in its March 2007 issue with an endorsement by
none else than Edward Mendel-son? How would you respond to such a gesture by
Mendelson?
AAM: Having an endorsement by
Edward Mendelson is ideal as he is the person who knows the most about Wystan’s
work and has devoted his life to understanding Wystan.
NKG: You have had an interesting career marked by
diverse engage-ments. Kindly shed some light on the work you have enjoyed most.
AAM: I have enjoyed aspects of everything I have done and
feel that there is a linking pattern. Giving exercise classes for women taught
me how to encourage people to look after their figures and improve morale as
well as providing me with a discipline that I keep up in a small way aware how
important this is as one grows older. Working in antiques taught me about the
development of different styles through different periods and the hybrid
influences that make colonial furniture so interesting. It also acted as a complement
to my knowledge of different periods of literature.
Working at Agenda introduced
me to new disciplines: learning to use a computer and control a mouse in my
fifties, managing accounts, fund-raising and organising events. As to editing,
it made me realise how easy it is to miss mistakes when checking copy and that
it takes se-veral eyes to spot all errors. I later helped organise an ambitious
3-day conference at Senate House with John Armstrong on Modern Poetry and
Prejudice. What I came to understand was how varied and sometimes divisive
views on writers and poets can be and how the question of taste and judgement
turn into tyrannies. My own tastes were more eclectic than that of William
Cookson, the Founder and Editor of Agenda.
Judging poetry can be a very subjective thing though you find groups of
people might share similar tastes. I think many people writing were more
concerned with what they were saying than how they were saying it. I used to
respond to the tone of a poem as well as its rhythm.
Working in an Inner City State Secondary was an eye-opener. I had a wide-ranging
role starting as a PA to the Head, then working in the library, later
supporting the Sixth Form, organising work experience for students, some
enrichment activities and finally running a careers programme. But I also had
to cover in Reception, help with general office activities and lettings. I
found it beneficial to be in an environ-ment that reflected the inner city
multi-ethnic reality instead of the more middleclass and, by and large, more
prosperous world I had been familiar with. I liked engaging with students and
staff who came from a wide range of backgrounds. Though I felt critical about
aspects of the curriculum I admired how teachers managed the challenges they
faced in controlling and interesting large classes.
NKG: How
would you respond to Auden’s remark that poetry can be good without being
great?
AAM: A very
sensible and wise comment that embraces the whole range of poetry and includes
light verse, nursery rhymes and song lyrics, appreciating what is well
constructed and entertaining. To ignore these smaller achievements in the
search for the great is to create a completely false understanding of poetry.
In fact, one can only appre-ciate what is great if one is capable of
appreciating what is good and when looking for models to learn from it is more
productive to follow what is good rather than what is great. Wystan had spoken
highly of De La Mare’s anthology Come
Hither for including nursery rhymes as well as poems by Keats.
NKG: In
the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, what lines from Auden do you have in mind
for the younger generation?
AAM: “Human
Time is a City/ Where each inhabitant has/ A political duty/ Nobody else can
perform,/ Made cogent by Her Motto:/ Listen, Mortals, Lest Ye Die.” However, I
prefer the idea of people discovering their own lines.
NKG:
Thanks, Anita, for this engaging conversation.
AAM:
Thank you Nibir for this opportunity.
v
The Bliss of the ‘Inward Eye’: A Birth-Centenary Tribute to
Satyajit Ray
Nibir
K. Ghosh & Sunita Rani Ghosh
Not to have seen the cinema
of Ray means existing in the world without seeing the sun or the moon. – Akira Kurosawa
‘Truth is beauty, beauty truth,’ wrote John
Keats at the end of his “Ode On a Grecian Urn” after advocating ‘Heard melodies
are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter’ in his immortal poem. In the context
of Keats’s poem, it is right to presume that truth, no matter how bitter, when
mani-fested in any artistic garb becomes an artefact of beauty. Even in these
dreadful times when the entire globe is engaged in coming to terms with death,
decay and destruction, wrought by the ravages of the COVID-19 reality, a film
like Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road) or Apur Sansar
(The World of Apu) can make us understand that the human struggle for existence
and survival against overwhelming odds and calamities is not a rarely occurring
phenomenon but is part and parcel of the ever-ongoing narrative of human
existence. These films do not offer an easy escape from reality like mainstream
Bollywood stuff where drama, dance and song transport us to a world filled with
euphoria where everything ends in imagined happiness.
As art-film addicts, we have
always been a great admirer of Satyajit Ray movies. We have watched with relish
most of his films that brought him national acclaim as well as international
renown. We have enjoyed with immense aesthetic delight most of his creative
renderings on celluloid including Pather Panchali (1955), Aparajito (The Unvanquished, 1956),
Apur Sansar, 1959),
Charulata (The Lonely Wife, 1964),
Aryaner Din Ratri (Days and Nights in the Forest,
1969), Pratidwandi
(the Adversary, 1970), Seemabaddha (Company Limited, 1971), Asani Sanket
(Distant Thunder, 1973), Sonar Kella (the Golden Fortress, 1974), Shatranj Ke Khilari (The Chess Players, 1977: his
first Hindi film), Sadgati (Deliverance, 1981), Ghare Baire (The Home
and the World, 1984), Ganashatru (An Enemy of the People, 1989), Agantuk
(The Stranger, 1991). Each of his cinematic creation keeps us glued to the
screen as we witness with wonder the unfolding of life in its various
manifestations through the play of light and shade, silence and speech, action
and stillness.
In a career spanning over
four decades, Ray’s enviable list of national and international awards and
accolades – Magasaysay Award, Bharat Ratna,
Dadasaheb Phalke Award, Soviet Land Nehru Award, Vidyasagar Award, French Légion
d’Honneur, Oscar Award for
Lifetime Achieve-ment, to name just a few – bear ample testimony to the
range and variety of his contribution in enriching the cinematic world with his
innovative thoughts and ideas in multi-dimensional roles, not only as a
director par excellence but in diverse arenas like screenplay, music,
photography, dialogue, editing, costume design, cast alignment, settings etc.
Born on 2 May 1921 in
Calcutta (now Kolkata), Satyajit Ray lost his father Sukumar Ray at the age of 2
year 4 months. His mother Suprabha Ray brought him up singlehandedly and encouraged
him to be interested in art and aesthetics. The colonial backdrop of Calcutta
naturally attracted Ray to everything essentially Western: Art, Literature, Music,
Cinema. After graduating in Economics (honours) from Presidency College,
Calcutta, his mother urged him to go to Santiniketan for getting an insight
into Indian art and tradition that would help him in his proposed career as a
commercial artist.
Apart from his mother’s
desire, the lure of Tagore himself (who had been a friend of his father and
grandfather) made him overcome his initial reluctance. The imprint that Santiniketan
made on his impressionable mind is lucidly recorded in his own words: “In the
two and a half years, I had time to think, and time to realise that, almost
without being aware of it, the place had opened windows for me. More than
anything else, it had brought me an awareness of our tradition, which I knew
would serve as a foundation for any branch of art that I wished to pursue.”
Ray’s love and esteem for
Rabindranath Tagore grew manifold with the passage of time. Five of Ray’s films
are based on the works of Tagore. It seems what attracted him most to Tagore
was the latter’s inherent humanism and Indianness. Ray’s reverence and gratitude
to Tagore can also be ascertained from the 54-minute documentary film, Rabindranath
Tagore (1961), he made to mark the first centenary of Tagore’s birth in
1961. With a heart full of emotion, Ray narrates at the beginning of the
documentary: “On August
7, 1941, in Calcutta, a man died. His mortal remains
perished, but he left behind him a heritage which no fire could
consume. It was a heritage of words and music and
poetry, of ideas and ideals and it has the power to move us today and in the days
to come. We, owe him so much, salute his memory…”
It may be mentioned that
even at the tender age of 6 Ray had accom-panied his mother on her visit to
Santiniketan and met Rabindranath Tagore. When he gave the Nobel Laureate a
notebook for his autograph, Tagore wrote a short poem for Ray in Bengali. The
lines translated into English read thus: “Many a time/ Have I travelled many a
mile/ to nations far away/ I've gone to see the mountains,/ the oceans I've
been to view./ But I failed to notice with my two eyes wide open/ What lay not
two steps from my home:/ On a sheaf of paddy grain/ A shining drop of dew.”
It is significant that, in
resonating Tagore’s idea so implicit in the short poem, Ray never tried to
dazzle his audience with glittering and eye-catching locations, so imminent in
the then contemporary Indian cinema, but confined himself to what lay close at
hand to discover “a shining drop of dew on a sheaf of paddy grain.” Rather than
undertake frequent travels in search of alluring locations, he preferred to opt
for spots and places that matched the mood and the ambience of the story he was
adapting for a particular film.
Though Ray never had any formal training in
the art of Cinema, he acquired most of the skills of the trade intuitively. He
loved watching American films right from his early childhood, a fact that he
mentions in his Oscar Award acceptance speech that he gave from his hospital
bed in 1992:
It's an extraordinary
experience for me to receive this magni-ficent award; certainly the best
achievement of my movie-making career. When I was a small, small school boy, I
was terribly interested in the cinema. Became a film fan … I have learned
everything I've learned about the craft of cinema from the making of American
films. I've been watching American films very carefully over the years and I
loved them for what they entertain, and then later loved them for what they
taught. So, I express my gratitude to the American cinema, to the motion
picture association who have given me this award and who have made me feel so
proud.
Ray may have been an avid
watcher of American films but the advice he received from Jean Renoir in 1949
must have impacted him quite a bit. Renoir had told him: “If you could only
shake Hollywood out of your system and evolve your own style, you would be
making great films here.” Ray actually did that as can be evinced from his own
statement: “I make films for the love of it…I enjoy
every moment of the film ma-king process.”
He adds further: “I write my own scenario and my
own dialogue…I find it fascinating to do so. I select my own actors, some-times from
among the professionals, sometimes right from the street, and when I do that, it
seems to me that casting is great fun, because you're actually looking for flesh and blood
incarnations of the characters you've dreamt up in the process of writing.”
It is noteworthy that the
stories and plots of his films came from established writers: Bibhutibhushan
Bandopadhyay, Rabindranath Tagore, Sunil Gangopadhyay, Shankar, Munshi
Premchand, Henrik Ibsen, Ray himself among others. His film adaptations do reveal
that he allowed his creative freedom to determine what was necessary to retain
from the originals to portray what he thought to be quintessentially human.
Andrew Robinson rightly avers that Ray, in course of his adaptations, may have
had in mind what Renoir had once told Ray: “We don’t admire a painting for its
fidelity to the model, all we want is for the model to stimulate the painter’s
imagination.”
Ray’s turning point in life came in the year
1950 when he made a trip to London with his wife Bijoya. He was then seriously
reflecting on his idea of making Pather Panchali. In his six-months long
stay there he saw a large number of films
including Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves which made a profound
impression on Ray. He writes: “All through my stay in London, the lessons of Bicycle
Thieves and neo-realist cinema stayed with me.” Bicycle Thieves had strengthened
his belief that a realistic cinema could be created with an almost entirely
amateur cast and shooting at actual locations. Urged by his zeal and passion,
Ray had completed his treatment of Pather Panchali on the return journey
by ship to India.
Pather Panchali was
screened in 1955. The film brought him instant global renown with eleven international
prizes, including Best Human Documentary at the Cannes Film Festival. It was a
kind of fulfilment of Ray’s dream of making a film steeped in humanism and shot
on actual location in the midst of nature with relatively unknown cast and
characters without any make-up. His passionate desire to make Pather Panchali,
the way he always wanted to, also proved a great learning lesson to the
city-bred Ray, a fact that he humbly acknowledges: “Before I made my first film, Pather
Panchali, I had only a superficial knowledge of what life in a Bengali
village was like. Now I know a good deal about it. I know its soil, its
seasons, its trees and forests and flowers, I know how the man in field works
and how the women at the well gossip, and I know the children out in the sun
and the rain, behaving as all children in all parts of the world do.”
Though there were quite a few detractors, the
lavish praise of filmmakers like Kashiko Kawakita and many others compensated
for them all. Kawakita wrote in lyrical style: “When I first saw Pather Panchali
in 1956 at Cannes, it struck me like thunder. When I first met Satyajit Ray in
1958 at Brussels, he looked like Krishna the mighty god. Since then, he has
been my great master; through him and through his works I learnt how to live
and how to love.”
In his most anthologised
poem “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” William Wordsworth has written: “For oft, when on my couch I
lie/ In vacant or in pensive mood,/ They flash upon that inward eye/ Which is
the bliss of solitude;/ And then my heart with pleasure fills,/ And dances with
the daffodils.” The
bliss of the “inward eye,” that Wordsworth alluded to, was what Ray was
intrinsically gifted with. Rather than take recourse to complex techniques and
theories of Film-making, Ray relied on what was truly captured by his “inward
eye” which went deeper and beyond what the naked eye observed. Ray had
remarked, “a shot is beautiful only if it is right in its content, and this
rightness has little to do with what appears beautiful to the eye.”
It is often given
to understand by some of Ray’s critics (Nargis Dutt of Mother India fame
included), many of whom may not have seen even a single film of the maestro,
that Ray presented in his films a seamy side of India steeped in poverty,
deprivation, misery, superstition and the like to impress the Western audience.
Nothing can be far from the truth as is evident from the powerful statement
that Ray made in a letter to his biographer Marie Seton in 1970 to show his
displeasure against the acclaimed French filmmaker Louis Malle’s mammoth 378-minute documentary Phantom India
(1969). Phantom India had evoked strong criticisms, especially of
widespread poverty and bureaucratic corrup-tion, the problematic status of
women and the caste system, which although officially abolished with India’s
independence from Great Britain in 1947, Malle found to be worse than ever 20
years later. Satyajit Ray condemned Louis Malle’s films for their obsession
with poverty and for his ignorance of India. He stated candidly: “personally, I
don’t think any film director has any right to go to a foreign country and make
a documentary film about it unless a) he is absolutely thorough in his
groundwork on all aspects of the country – historical, social, religious and b)
he does it with genuine love. Working in a dazed state – whether in admiration
or disgust – can produce nothing of value.”
Ray
reiterated that what was deficient in the Louis Malle’s version of India was
the ‘integrity of design’ which, according to him, was a requisite that
validated creativity in filmmaking and in writing. The integrity of design
with which Ray approached his subject matter and all other attendant
responsibilities are evident from the ‘groundwork’ he applied himself to with
‘genuine love’ to create with perfection each one of his films. In fact, it is Ray’s
ability to recreate with love and passion the simple nuances of day-to-day
experiences, captured with his ‘inward eye’, that he passed on to Indian Cinema
as his legacy. In the words of Adoor Gopalkrishnan, the celebrity director of
offbeat Malyalam films: “I am proud that we, the Indian filmmakers of the
present generation, are greatly indebted to Satyajit Ray for having taught us
to look at the Indian reality in ways different and deeper than was ever
attempted before.”
The hallmark of
Ray’s essential attributes is beautifully stated in the Citation accompanying
the 64th Honorary Oscar Award (1991) conferred upon him in 1992: “To Satyajit Ray, in recognition of his rare mastery of the art of
motion pictures, and of his profound humanitarian outlook, which has had an
indelible influence on filmmakers and audiences throughout the world.” After receiving the
Oscar Award, Ray told the Time magazine, “The most distinctive feature
of my films is that they are deeply rooted in Bengali culture, mannerisms and
mores. What makes them universal in appeal is that they are about human
beings.” What Ray’s films highlight about human beings is the manner in which
they face ‘the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’ (to borrow Hamlet’s
words) with resilience, grace and equanimity, dreaming their little dreams and
moving on without giving up in despair. Life, according to Ray, was complex and
there seemed to be no easy solutions. “The
only solutions,” he said, that are ever worth anything are the solutions that
people find themselves."
It may also be pertinent to contend
that, despite the international acclaim that Ray’s films have won among the
audience overseas, his work is little known. Way back in 1978 when Professor John G. Cawelti
of Chicago University and author of celebrated The Six Gun Mystique, visited
Agra, he specifically alluded to his admiration for Rays films Apur Sansar
and Asani Sanket.
Likewise, recently, when we asked Professor
Jonah Raskin from California if he would be interested in a conversation with Re-Markings
on Satyajit Ray, he instantly responded by stating: “I am familiar
with some of Satyajit Ray's work – the Apu
Trilogy most of all. I like his
visual pacing very much. I have felt like I inhabited the world of Apu and
Ray… It is
very important I would say for Re-Markings
to honor Ray's work in a special number.”
In an interview Satyajit Ray
remarked in 1982 how he viewed the
success of his films with perfect poise: "I never imagined that any of my
films, especially Pather Panchali, would be seen throughout this country
or in other countries. The fact that they have is an indication that, if you're
able to portray universal feelings, universal relations, emotions, and
characters, you can cross certain barriers and reach out to others, even
non-Bengalis."
Ray’s astute observation about the need for
universality in films appear to be in sync with what Samuel Johnson said about
the plays of Shakespeare: “Nothing can please many, and please long, but just
representations of general nature.” It is providential, perhaps, that William
Shakespeare and Satyajit Ray, though separated by centuries, died on the same
date i.e. April 23 (Shakespeare 1616, Satyajit Ray 1992) after contributing
their very best to the enrichment of humanity beyond boundaries and barriers of
language, nation and culture.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Gupta, Udayan. “The Politics of Humanism:
An Interview with Satyajit Ray.” Cineaste, Vol. 12, No. 1 (1982), pp. 24-29.
Johnson, Samuel. Preface to Shakespeare. Ed.
D. J. Enright and Ernst De Chikera. Oxford University Press, 1962. pp.131-161.
Keats, John. “Ode on a
Grecian Urn.” Keats: Poetical Works. Ed. H. W. Garrod. Oxford University
Press, 1976. pp. 209-210.
Oscar Academy Award ‘Citation’ and ‘Acceptance Speech.’ http://aaspeechesdb.
oscars.org/ link/064-24/. Accessed 15 May 2021.
Ray, Satyajit. Louis
Malle’s Phantom India. Letter to Marie Seton dated September 6, 1970.
Marie Seton Collection, Section 2, Item 10. British Film Institute Library,
London.
Ray, Satyajit. Official
Website. https://satyajitrayworld.
org/rays_ view.html.
Robinson,
Andrew. Satyajit Ray: The Inner Eye: The Biography of a Master Film-Maker.
Oxford University Press, 2004.
Wordsworth, William. “I
Wandered Lonely as a Cloud.” Selections from Wordsworth. Ed. D. C.
Somervell. J. M. Dent and Sons Ltd., 1969. p. 60.
·
Dr. Nibir K. Ghosh is UGC Emeritus Professor, Agra College,
Agra. A Senior Fulbright Fellow at the University of Washington, Seattle, USA
during 2003-04), he has authored/edited 15 widely acclaimed books.
·
Dr. Sunita Rani Ghosh is Head, Department of
Hindi, Agra College, Agra. She has been a Visiting Scholar at the University of
Washington, Seattle, USA during 2003-04.
v
No comments:
Post a Comment