Paul Celan And The Future of the Poem
Manash Bhattacharjee The name “Paul Celan” in the title refers to not only Paul Celan the poet but also Paul Celan who talks about poetry. Celan is in dialogue with his craft; with others in his craft, as well as in dialogue with those he feels illuminate the possibilities and problems of his craft, that is, poetry. So, Paul Celan in the title is a poet who asks questions about poetry, including the fundamental question: What is poetry? The word “future” does not mean an unspecified, free idea of a future out there, future as such, but a specific moment or moments in future time that have a correspondence with the past, the future of a past, a past’s future, that creates a new reference point across time. But because this future is the future of the “poem”, a solitary product of time, the idea of the future here is not to be imagined in collective terms. Nor is this future a private one, because a poem is always intended for a reader. A poem, strictly belonging to neither the individual nor the collective, is always in relation with the world. That relation is of course political and tends towards the ethical. The conjunction “and” in the title means the future of the poem is not reducible to the name Paul Celan but is seen in conjunction with the poet’s idea of the poem’s future. I will probe into Celan’s reflections on poetry by looking at his famous speech on 22 October, 1960, The Meridian, which he delivered on the occasion of receiving the Georg Büchner Prize. His Rumanian birth – marking him a foreigner – his narrowly escaping a Nazi labour camp sixteen years before the announcement of this prize, and his imbuing his German mother tongue with Hebrew and Yiddish influences that didn’t endear him to the German literary establishment, created, according to Ger Killeen, “an air of improbability” around Celan being awarded the prize. Despite being aware of these incongruities, Celan decided to brave what he revealed to a friend as “a dark summer.” In his acceptance speech, Celan delved into German dramatist Büchner’s works to chart out his views on art and poetry. He picked up certain key moments from the plays Danton’s Death (1835), Leonce and Lena (1836) and the incomplete Woyzeck (1837) as well as Büchner’s only short story, Lenz (1835). Büchner is the only name explicitly present in Celan’s speech. Büchner plays the role of an equator, the central figure, as Celan’s charts out the imaginary meridian of poetry. But there are others, more implicitly present, in the speech, including Martin Heidegger, Martin Buber and Osip Mandelstam. Amongst them, Celan’s engagement with Heidegger is the oldest, dating back to 1952, when he started reading Being and Time. I shall first trace Celan’s reading of Heidegger in relation to what matters in The Meridian speech. Towards and Not Towards Heidegger James K. Lyon, who has written in detail about the Heidegger–Celan affair (and whose research I will exclusively read from in this section), tells us Celan was an unspecialized novice in philosophy when he started reading Being and Time. Ignoring the question of Being in the text, Celan focused instead on the concepts, the vocabulary and what he marked as Heidegger’s “phenomenological investigation.” In terms of vocabulary, Celan picked up Heidegger’s style of using compound words like “being-no-longer-in-the-world” and “this-not-yet” as poetic moves which turned literal language figurative. This exercise also helped Celan gain command over the German language. In terms of concepts, Celan picked up quite a few of them. From Being and Time, the idea of truth as “unconcealedness” appealed to Celan, and he took note of the corresponding idea of “Being-in-untruth” as an essential characteristic of “Being-in-the-world.” The idea of truth was serious for Celan, but, unlike for Heidegger, it did not mean any abstract principle for him but a real characteristic showing itself through openness, candour, sincerity and, in negative terms, the opposite of deceitfulness, falsehood, shallowness. Celan found post-war Germany mired in untruth. As Lyon clarifies, the truth Celan passionately sought in his poems was not metaphysical but something specific, to be established temporally through time, event and person. While reading Being and Time, Celan also made two notations: one, the question of how poetry’s permanence is related to time, and, two, that poetry stands more in relation to world-time than time. Taking the notion of truth and time together, Celan made a twist of something he read in The Question of Being, where the philosopher had written how through forgetfulness a “past entity” concealed or lost from memory could be brought into unconcealedness or unconcealment by “thoughtful remembrance.” Celan translated “past entity” into “what was in the past” or “that which happened”, thus fixing the concept to a specific historical event of post–World War II Germany where there was rampant forgetfulness around him working overtime to obliterate the memories of the Holocaust. For Celan, truth as well as time were tied to the notion of memory and forgetting, centered on specific events in historical time, and he read Heidegger’s concepts through that lens of understanding. It marked a decisive shift in The Meridian speech. The other crucial aspect regarding Celan’s reading of Heidegger are the concepts surrounding language. Celan noted in his intense reading in 1953 of Heidegger’s Wrong Path, of the essay ‘What are poets for?’, where Heidegger calls language the house of Being. In the fall of the same year, Celan writes a poem, ‘With a Changing Key’, using the same metaphor: With a changing key You unlock the house where The snow of what’s silenced is driven. Once again we find, Celan taking up a Heideggerian concept to make a crucial alteration: If language is the house of Being, that house no longer offers an image of calm and security because inside it lies a frozen silence that is bound to confront the poet even when he tries to
The Idea of an Institution
HUG If media reports are to be believed, then Presidency University in Kolkata is on the verge of formalizing a set of mandatory guidelines for its campus (and off-campus) inhabitants—about maintaining ‘university’ hours, holding protests and dharnas, using campus walls and substances, and finally about making negative or critical comments on the institution on social media sites. No institution can run without some form of rules and institutional mechanisms, of course. But what is important is to note the drift of those rules in this case. In other words, what do we gain by giving shape to this university in a certain manner—in order to inculcate a set of brilliant students and make the institution a site for a particular kind of excellence? We shall come back to these two words—brilliance and excellence – in a bit. There has been an interesting legend about this institution in question, a significant myth that is circulated periodically in the media and in the Bengali imagination generally—that as a harbinger of a certain argumentative tradition in the Bengali psyche and by way of ushering in a relentless and rigorous form of scholarship to go with it, this institution has produced prodigal individuals and a climate where a no-nonsense exchange of ideas can take place—ideas that then might transform disciplines and laboratories, boardrooms and political platforms. From this idea of an argumentative institute, then Presidency College, again sometimes in a mythical fashion, got another quite different tag after the seventies—that here was an institution which was not coldly or instrumentally reformist and merely argumentative, that it could also infuse powerful forms of personal and political romanticism within its ambit of ideas, that ideas needed to be tested on historical and material ground realities; that it was important and possible to be contrarians in a climate of conformity and ruthless oppression. On these twin towers of thinking—rigorously rational and considered romantic (which occasionally did clash with each other) – debates and ideas were bookended, even after it became clear that the institution was not marked by any particularly identifiable set of ferment or drive. This began to change by the eighties with the mushrooming of the very idea of management and management institutes—just like it happened in another institute in another part of the country—St Stephens, though the character of the two institutes are in many ways quite different too. (About this shift in ethos in St Stephens, where the idea of babudom got layered with the incursion of management studies, Sanjay Subrahmanyam has eloquently written). Singular events in the nineties showed this shift. In Presidency, many were surprised to see some student volunteers in formal jackets and all ‘tied up’, in their otherwise traditionally cerebral college festival Milieu. It seemed that in a place of robustness and laidback nonchalance, a set of people with a jarring set of principles had suddenly arrived or were trying to advance a different set of ethos which was neither classically argumentative nor like the ones undertaken by the risk-taking romantics. Some of the new lot was very articulate, with good social skills (often powerful quizzers and debaters, so that it seemed like they were thinking minds with a sense of argument). But if looked at carefully, one would see that a champion debater can argue from many sides, dazzlingly, polemically sometimes. The culture of debate paradoxically resists analysis. It also makes you conversant with multiple viewpoints and might help blunt your principled and ideological moorings. This new group of people consisted of doers, focussed, utterly practical in mindset, with an antipathy for what they actually considered was a needless wallowing in the realm of ideas—be it rational or suicidally romantic. The demise of USSR and its aftermath greatly helped this group of doers to sharpen their pragmatic position in the one direction possible: the market. They wanted to have a say in the development of their own situation and usher in a new ethos in Kolkata that needed a facelift, they argued. Finding it impossible to sustain their kind of dream in a powerfully laidback culture, they would flee the city and be highly successful in their chosen terrains. Not all were management people, mind you, but even if they were in more fundamental fields, the ethos was managerial and practical. It did not matter whether you debated for socialism in college. Success in the real world meant using social skills for creating and securing jobs, trying to relate theory through the lab to the market, helping create assets for the individual and the nation, fashioning happiness and happy events around our lives. And steadfastly keeping away from the robust and the transformative, the spontaneous and the morbid, even from the watery philanthropic and the civilized. This new ethos, born in the late eighties, has now taken a much more virulent and powerful form. And it is not just the administration and the faculty who think differently now. But primarily it is the students who have bought into this ethos—a zeitgeist of sorts that goes well with Thought and Literary festivals, with banning cycles and substances alike. Naturally, the idea of discipline has become a major rallying point now, even for otherwise progressive souls (or is it because they are progressives?). Lumpens are everywhere—this fear has infected the middle class Bengali living room. And these lumpens have short-sighted, populist and young mavericks to egg them on too from within the university! They distract the meritorious and the brilliant—the future nation builders in whose safe hands must we bequeath our labs and conference halls, our library carrels and our quadrangles, our starched sarees and our closed circuit networks. What’s more—there will be a blanket ban on ideas being exchanged about the soundness of the policies that the university will undertake. So, no badmouthing your institution in the public sphere and social media sites. This gag order not just subverts all forms of ‘harebrained thinking’ but even the very dictum of the old world liberals is gone now:
Why Classics?
Utpal Dutt Snobs have always been contemptuous (over their morning cups of coffee, if you please) of the non-professional theatre groups in the city who are modestly building up a movement. Slogan-mongering, puerile, Communist, un-Indian—they have used many such odd epithets. So far, perhaps, they have had a ground—we have been busy too long making theatre a living newspaper and we had reasons for it. But we have also been guilty of neglecting the past, of scoffing at it with silly phrases borrowed from our smattering of Left literature. But now we can throw down the gauntlet. One group is rescuing Tagore from the emasculating chauvism of Santiniketan; another is rediscovering forgotten classics of the nineteenth century; a third bringing you Shudraka’s masterpiece. The classics belong to us and we alone can interpret them for the modern audience. Shorn of the classics, a modern repertoire becomes shorn of tradition, rootless and empty. For, the greatest experiment consists in carrying tradition forward, not in denying it; in interpreting and moulding it for our epoch, not in rejecting it as old. Moreover, the classics give us elemental noble passions that are wanting in contemporary drama. As Robert Jones once said in disgust, “Modern drama has been reduced to conversation about whether egg is hard-boiled or not.” There is a tendency in the name of revivalism to compress the emotions of men and women into the trivialities of breakfast and dinner. The dramatists are busy imitating probable conversation: what would such a character caught in such a situation say if he were real? The result—not even a fraction of complex modern life finds expression in theatre. Life is not just conversation and behaviour, but thought, emotion, passion. Desperate attempts have been made all over the world to capture on stage these other great aspects of life. Tagore heightened his drama from the real to the allegorical. Toller poetized the struggle of the working class. O’Neill’s Strange Interlude (1928) introduces inner voices of the characters. Brecht tried the epic style with modern themes. Eliot wrote Shakespearean verse about cocktail parties. But most of this expressionist and poetic drama has failed; it has become mere jugglery with forms. It has not the simplicity of the classics. Why is this so? Because theatre has abandoned its conventions. There was a time when the theatre was all convention. The Chorus introduced the play; the king’s chariot was imaginary; Vasantasena’s lavish villa was described purely through the spoken word; so was Cleopatra’s voyage down the Nile, and the death of Ophelia. There was a time when the actor soliloquized and gave us a glimpse into his soul and not only into his behaviour. What after all is the value of the opera-bouffeish murder of Duncan without the beautiful revelation of a man’s soul in ‘Is this a dagger?’ speech? Hamlet would be a typical Renaissance melodrama of intrigue, murder, ghost, duel, suicide and four corpses to bring the curtain down, except for the soliloquies, the conflicts within a thinker, his struggles with himself, which tone down the horror and give the frantic incidents a new meaning. The Chinese tragedian entered the stage and immediately introduced himself and his problems to the audiences. The Japanese stage manager in black freely walked around on the stage, prompting and helping the actors. But in 1840 a man called David Hill invented the photograph, and soon after, the disease of realism gripped the theatre in Europe. And now the Bengali theatre has caught it too. In this country of picturesque gesture and musical language, the dramatists are busy limiting the actor to the appearances of life, immobility and prosaic how-do-do’s. Would you believe this is the country where the Jatra developed—Jatra, which relies entirely on blank verse and sweeping gesture? Would you believe that Girish Ghosh wrote his Pandab Gaurab (The Glory of the Pandavas, 1900) and Kshirodeprasad his Bhishma (1913)? The playwright today is afraid to philosophize, whereas his predecessor could dare to write in dramatic form a full-fledged treatise on the essential loneliness of man, to express through Bhishma the philosophy of individualism. Thus, the classics teach us to heighten events from merely a photograph to a full painted canvas. They recapture for us the language of theatre. They show us the methods whereby we may so handle a modern theme that will surprise with a fine excess; it will awe, astound, ennoble. Behind the humdrum incidents of daily life, it will capture the soul of man. —————————————————— adminhumanitiesunderground.org
Creating Beauty Is A Noiseless Battle
Joy Goswami It has been the polestar of Bangla poetry: Phire Esho Chaka (Come Back, O Wheel)/ To Gayatri. And the original manuscript lies right in front me at this moment. Like Kafka’s diary, there are descriptions of a few dream sequences in the manuscript. The collection has elicited all kinds of praise and reverence in the last 40 odd years. What can I say that is new? But as I see the jottings and scribbles in the marginalia, I feel that I am right there with the poet as he gives shape to those lines. Goosebumps. Binoy Majumdar, the poet, seems to be a riddle, an enigma in the firmament of Bangla poetry. How do we see a poet today? We see him as a social explicator, as a critic, even as a reformer. The poet is routinely offered sundry platforms, chairs and silken shawls. Though troubled by some initial hesitation, the poet gets used to such a role as days go by. When the society is mired in violence, corruption and skulduggery and cannot see any light, sensitive, art loving people cannot rely on politicians and standard do-gooders any more. The kind of doubts they are assailed by, the kind of interrogations that arise in their minds, who else but a poet can satisfactorily answer them! Why? Since the poet is pained by the sorrows of others. Come, let’s all pay a visit to the poet. And then a collective voice cries out: Please say something. Please. And in this manner a group of uncertain, wandering people reach the poet and gradually push him towards the wall. As he is shoved right to the wall, a stool is advanced to him. And then the collective voice again: Get up on that stool, please stand up. We cannot see you, cannot hear you clearly. Here, a hand-mike, please use this. The poet—since everyone is so eager and expecting, relinquishes his vacillation, and starts speaking. And as he speaks, all his indecisions and waverings tend to recede by and by, till they vanish altogether. Television screens, literary festivals, protest meetings—all become regular events in his life, part of his existence. In such a life one speaks more than one writes. And when one speaks, one gets to believe that he is speaking to the whole of his community—for the Jati. The sensitive, common people are allayed of their apprehension of darkness engulfing them. Finally, there is someone who can speak on their behalf. A few can, at least. Every single time society witnesses a fresh accident, an incendiary poem would appear. Poem? Or opinion. Do we have time to ponder on that distinction? Here is our true poet. This is what art is supposed to perform. Be a conduit in protests, a vehicle in rallies. Its sole function. Sole function, and in such a manner? And what about that poet who is himself lost, seeking direction in every turn? The one who discovers the world anew every single day and feels that he did get to learn something novel. There is a possibility that yesterday’s mistake could be corrected today. And therefore, jots down one’s everyday experience and encounters in a meticulously drawn diary. Yes, as poetry. Unadulterated poetry. Do they have no right to create art, those who are unable to directly recommend that society must take such and such bearing or make this or that pitch? What role is left for such poets? If Binoy is placed aloft that stool, one is certain that he will hardly stay there for too long. He will fidget, feeling lost and suffocated. And then he will simply walk away. If we see that Binoy has been pressed on to that wall by an expectant mob, he will be too absorbed with his surroundings to pass any judgement. Perhaps he will turn around and face the wall instead. And then? —-See this wall, do you? There is something going on within it. —-Something? What do you mean? —-May be a rivulet is meandering across and some scenes are unfolding. Disturbing scenes. All lie there within this wall. Latent. You just need the eye to behold. This is exactly the exchange that Binoy is having with Balika Kankaboti even as he composes this timeless collection of poems. One recalls Bergman’s almost contemporary creation: Through a Glass Darkly, where a young woman’s intense gaze through an orifice in the wall will lead her into a magical realm where everyone is agog and waiting, everyone radiant in their expectation—for God might appear there at any moment. If someone sets his eyes on things differently and catches a glimpse of more than what we would usually notice (perspectives that we feel others should appreciate), we brand him as mentally unbalanced. Just like that woman in Through a Glass Darkly. What is Binoy able to see? He can see an ordinary, local grocery store. And walks past that store casually, freely. And then he relates that object and his relationship with that object to the whole of creation at a cosmic level. This local, ordinary grocery store is attached to the tiller in his field to the forces of gravity to the tireless sun to goddess Venus or Saraswati. In this magnificent, staggering cosmos, what more can a poet give, other than a series of flabbergasted moments of revelation, marvelling anew at every fresh object and seeking to forge relationships with those? But marvelling and revelation—are those sufficient? Can one write poetry with such a meagre capital in the world today? In a world where airplanes ram themselves into trade-centres, where tanks strut in Christ’s own town, where Gujarat happens in the next room—can one continue to write poetry latching on to wonder and surprise? Binoy Majumdar had to say this by way of prefacing this book: these adorations in love (through these poems) are an accurate journal and chronicle. But what shall we do with such loverly devotion? What can society gain by these ruminations?