Affect and Absence: Irony in Siegfried Sassoon’s War Poetry
Avinash Antony & Somak Mukherjee On 13th July 1918 Siegfried Sassoon, now a decorated war-hero, was shot in the head near Arras, France. Ironically, it was not the enemy but a British soldier who shot him, thinking him to be a German soldier. This is one of the very many instances of irony that The First World War is replete with. In fact, in his seminal work Great War In Modern Memory, Paul Fussell points out “… every war is ironic because every war is worse than expected. Every war constitutes an irony of situation because its means are so melodramatically disproportionate to its presumed ends. In the great war, eight million people were destroyed because two persons, the archduke Francis Ferdinand and his consort, had been shot.”[i] This piece, however, is not an essay on irony; neither is it an essay on the Great War and Modern Memory, the poetry of Siegfried Sassoon, or war poetry in general. To be frank, this essay deals only fleetingly with some of the poems that Sassoon wrote in the years between 1914-1918.What this paper attempts to indicate is how affect is conveyed through absence: how the use of the ironic mode allows the reader to understand precisely because the poet does not speak. In the poem “The Dugout”[ii] written in July 1918, Sassoon has the speaker tell a fellow soldier not to sleep because “you are too young to fall asleep forever/and when you sleep you remind me of the dead.” One notes that almost everything remains unsaid in this poem. Except for the title, there is nothing in the poem to indicate where the speaker is, whom he is addressing, and in what conditions they are. Apart from an underground shelter, ‘dugout’ could also mean ‘a canoe’ as well as ‘a marijuana container.’ Divorced from context, it is perfectly legitimate to think that the speaker is either on a boat or in a den of vice. The poem could well be one that indicates the horrors of narcotic consumption. However, when it is put in context, one remembers the conditions the soldiers faced in the trenches. Sassoon describes these conditions in “Dreamers”[iii] I see them in foul dugouts gnawed by rats and in the ruined trenches lashed with rain. In the latter poem, Sassoon evokes the soldier’s traumatic experience in a far more straightforward manner. The poem is visceral precisely because it reveals; “The Dugout”, on the other hand, is affective precisely because it refuses to reveal. One is aware of the intensity of the trauma the speaker has suffered only when one questions why a sleeping youth reminds him of the dead. Is the speaker so affected because he has seen so many young men lying in the same manner on the battlefield? Or does the youth’s gesture while he sleeps remind the speaker of a state of innocence that, he recognizes, is long dead? The violence with which the speaker shakes the youth by the shoulder then, indicates how horrified the speaker is by the memory of death. And again, all this is indicated without once telling us whether the speaker is a soldier. Sassoon’s “Everyone Sang”[iv] also forces us to confront a strange ambiguity. It speaks about the first Armistice at Compiegne, 11th November 1918. Here he says Everyone suddenly burst out singing: And I was filled with such delight As prison birds must find in freedom Winging wildly across the white In the second stanza, the poem changes tone remarkably. Although he does say that everyone’s voice was suddenly lifted (which corresponds to the joyful tone of the first stanza), he now compares the beauty of the moment to a setting sun. He then reveals My heart was shaken with tears and horror Drifted away …O but everyone Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing Will never be done. One isn’t sure why exactly why the singing will never be done. Is it because the joy that was felt at the end of the war will last forever? Or is it that the dead soldiers now sing as angels in heaven; their songs both wordless and inaccessible to us humans? Is the phrase “wordless songs” a contradiction? Taken by itself, the phrase “the singing will never be done” could also be a more tempered version of Adorno’s claim that “to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.”[v] Barbaric, as we know, was used to refer to those considered devoid of language. Are the songs wordless, then, because no words can bear the weight of testimony? And can we ever be sure? Irony, as a rhetorical device as well as a philosophical trope, has been discussed to death. In fact, one can recall at least one death that was caused by an excess of irony: the death of Socrates. Over the years, scholars have identified many different kinds of irony, each defined in different ways. In an attempt to avoid all of these, let us propose a simple working definition of the term. If an utterance, when taken out of context, means something completely different from (and usually the opposite of) what it means when the context is considered, that utterance is ironic. Of course, situations can be ironic too, but even in such cases, there is a duality of meaning and a context that effects the difference. The etymology of the word seems to support this: ‘irony’ comes from the Greek eironeia which meant ‘deceit’ but then came to mean ‘pretended ignorance’ usually used to prove a point. One recalls Swift’s “A Modest Proposal”[vi] where it is the knowledge that cannibalism is considered an insurmountable social taboo that allows us to understand that the text is a satire. An interesting view of irony, and one that seems most apt, is presented in Kierkegaard’s The Concept of Irony.[vii] In positing that irony is absolute negation, Kierkegaard alerts us to the fact that the ironic statement refuses to take a stance. Logically speaking,
Moonlit Rats and Owls
Manash Bhattacharjee Today is the sixtieth death anniversary of Jibanananda Das (17 February 1899 – 22 October 1954). Shaking himself off Tagore’s Victorian and mystical influences, Jibanananda made the most distinctive mark in the early modernist phase of Bengali poetry. There was as much a new, naturalist lyricism in his poetry as much as new ways of describing time. Time in Jibanananda’s poems was not an abstract, contemplative category, but an optical one, visible in the passing of seasons and the activities of birds and insects. It is through time one measures two intimate aspects of human life: waiting and memory, and Jibanananda’s poetry is replete with imageries where the lover waits and remembers through the passing of time, most intensely captured through naturalistic images. Nature in Jibanananda’s poetry does not resonate with the exuberant charms found in Tagore, but appears, rather, in slow, terrible images of decay. The birth of each new season and activity in nature also marks an end, a death of the previous season. There is also ‘human’ nature, and Jibanananda’s sensibility is equally tilted towards the harsh, primitive naturalism of ‘human nature’. The sexual ‘nature’ of feelings is often described in predatory terms, through the dangerous lures hiding in the dark belly of nature. This created controversy around his poems. Jibanananda was a master of bleak images, and the shadow of pessimism haunted his poems. The effects of early industraialisation and the moving away from village to city life disturbed him. This theme would become the preoccupation of many later poets from Calcutta. To conclude with a word on his most celebrated and well-known poem, Banalata Sen: Today the poem reads like an allegory imagining an impossible juxtaposition—a Bengali woman from a mofussil town of Bangladesh, belonging to the ‘vaidya’ caste, being emblematic of a Buddhist era that flung across ‘national’ boundaries, mapping a geography and time most palpably remote. The poem is perhaps still as enigmatic as ever because it manages to violently juxtapose the petty everydayness of contemporary life with a longing for a place, an era and a pair of eyes that no longer exist. ——————————– After the Harvest The harvest was over who knows when – hay, leaves, various remains, broken eggs scattered in the fields – snake skin, nest-like cold. Beyond all these, at the heart of the field, sleep a few familiar people, strangely inert. There someone else sleeps too – day and night the one I used to meet for a long time. With heart-games, so many misdeeeds I committed on her. Peace still reigns: deep green grass, grasshoppers today envelop her thoughts and the taste of her dark questions. Simple You will never come to hear this song – tonight my call will float in air along the pathway, yet this song comes to heart. Yet I do not forget the language of calling – love still stays alive in the heart, I still sing into the earth’s ear into the star’s ear; I know you will never hear it – tonight my call will float in air along the pathway, yet the song comes to heart. You water, you wave – your body paces like sea-waves – your simple mind floats by the surge of sea waters; some wave she doesn’t know touched her in which darkness; a wave she doesn’t know searches her in the dark; you are Sindhu’s night-waters, Sindhu’s night-waves; who loves you, does anyone carry you in his heart. You go along the surge of waves and far-flung waters behind call you back. You are only a night’s single day; A crowd of men and women Call you far away – so far away – To some sea coast, forest – field – or A sky where floats a make-believe Light of falling stars, Or a sky where the bent Moon like a crescent Raises up – sinks – your life’s taste For you are them, all; Where tree branches shake In a cold night – like the white Bone of dead hands – Where the forest takes dark Primal smells to heart And sings a song. You had come like a Night’s wind to the solitary Heart‘s song And gave whatever a night could. After Twenty Five Years For the last time when I met her in the field I said, ‘One day at such hour come again – if you so desire – after twenty five years’. Saying this I returned home. Later the moon and stars died so many times in the field, in the moonlight rats and owls in search of paddy fields came and went; with eyes closed on the left and right so many people fell asleep; I alone stayed awake; though times arrives faster than the flight of stars, twenty five years don’t get over. Then – one day the field is again full of yellow grass; dew drops float on leaves, dry branches, everywhere; the sparrow’s broken nest is wet with dew; broken bird-eggs on the road, cold – stiff; cucumber flowers, one or two rotten white cucumbers, broken spider webs, dried-up spiders over leaves and stems; the road is visible in the bright moonlight; a few stars are seen in the cold sky – rats and owls roam over the fields their thirst even today quenched by seeds, twenty five years however were long over. A Strange Darkness A strange darkness has set upon this world. Today the blind Are the most clear sighted Those without any love, friendliness or stirrings of pity: the world today is paralysed without their advice. Those who still have deep faith in human beings; even now before whom great truths, art and piety come naturally: today their hearts are food for vultures and jackals. Banalata Sen A thousand nights I have walked this earth. From the Singhalese sea to the Malaya ocean in the dead of night
Ethnic Minorities, Sexual Violence and University Spaces: Notes from Visvabharati and Jadavpur University
Sarmistha Dutta Gupta On a September afternoon, when the sky was signalling the arrival of the Pujo season in Bengal and yet monsoon flowers like dopati were in full bloom, I joined a rally in Santiniketan. The rally was organized by the students of Visvabharati to demand justice for a fellow-student from Sikkim who was sexually abused by her seniors in the university shortly after joining the institution in July. The rally also bore a special significance as it was being organized on the birthday of the survivor who was still hospitalized, bearing the brunt of severe physical injuries and psychological trauma. It was mainly the ethnic minorities from north Bengal, Sikkim and other north-eastern states that participated in this rally though a small group of other students also joined them. A smaller group of leftist students, mostly from the plains, had already submitted a deputation to the university authority demanding action against the accused. The day after the Santiniketan rally, another procession in solidarity with the Visvabharati students walked from College Square in Kolkata, led by the students of north Bengal and the north-east studying in JadavpurUniversity. The rally in Santiniketan was without slogans. Some of the students carried posters, sometimes they sang. The team of five ‘outsiders’ from Kolkata to which I belonged, comprised of members of the West Bengal-based women’s rights network Maitree. By virtue of being an ‘outsider,’ I also had the perspective of the ‘unattached’ observer. I noticed that most of the students felt a deep sense of let-down. Those from the hills were not convinced as to how many from the university community were standing by them and by the painter couple who had sent their daughter to study fine arts in Santiniketan. Some divisive political outfits were already exploiting the extremely sensitive nature of the situation and trying to polarize the students of the hills from those from the plains. Many of those students from north Bengal and Sikkim, who were stolidly standing by the survivor and her family, seemed to be quite unsure of the sincerity of those protesters who, following the same thread of events, were demanding the formation of GSCASH in Visvabharati, the way it has been implemented in JawaharlalNehruUniversity. ‘Are they genuinely concerned about the wellbeing of the girl?’ asked the student-organizers of the rally. The procession seemed to reflect a couple of things. First, a definite lack of trust and bonding between local students and those from the hills and from north-eastern states. The ethnic minorities and other students from these regions, who usually tend to stick together to negotiate language and other cultural differences when they first arrive for study, may develop friendly terms with their other peers but feel a justified uneasiness in trusting others to take up issues collectively. Let me come back to this anon. The other thing I noticed was the conspicuous absence of local citizens and the university community in this near-silent protest walk. I am not assuming for a moment that their absence means that they were necessarily unsympathetic and insensitive towards the survivor and her condition. It may well be possible that many of them did not get the news of the protest march on time. With my close links with Santiniketan, I can testify to the fact that many local residents including university teachers extended their helping hand unhesitatingly to the friends of the survivor without making themselves visible. Yet I certainly sensed an atmosphere of terror, spread among the local citizenry in a calculated manner, which influenced them to stay in, rather than to come out in support of students. This has been done without any use of force whatsoever, by coercing people into believing that being undisturbed is a virtue and any flutter or dissent is a severe crime to be curbed ruthlessly. It seemed that these courageous students were taking out a protest march in a society which is well on its way to becoming an oppressive Orwellian dystopia, where breaking conventions invites strict chastisement and lessons in moral edification. 2 Every year a sizeable number of students come to study in Visvabharati and JadavpurUniversity from north Bengal, Sikkim and north-east India at large. Although on campus they may not feel any particular discomfort, there is a lot of unease outside the university spaces with the kinds of provincialism usually directed at them. The feeling of discomfort and perceptions of insensitivity are felt much more acutely in Kolkata than Santiniketan as Visvabharati used to generate a sense of shared cosmopolitanism which may not be metropolitan in its outlook but was certainly borderless and more international in its engagement. As many Bengalis from both India and Bangladesh, routinely face the incredibly banal and downright obtuse question ‘Are you a Bengali or a Muslim?’, similarly many young people belonging to ethnic minorities from Darjeeling-Gangtok-Shillong-Imphal are regularly asked in Kolkata and other places in south Bengal, ‘Are you a Hindustani or are you from China or Japan?’ Such questions might be posed and racial comments passed on them anywhere—while shopping in the old Gariahat market or any of the new malls in Kolkata, or while looking for a place to rent in the city. The situation is much more complex for girls. They are forced to tolerate the intent gaze of many male strangers in the streets, who are always indefatigably curious in measuring the difference in their bodily features. The rude stare and often lewd remarks equally combines racial and sexual aggression with the young women (usually dressed in western clothes, speaking English or their mother tongue) perceived as the ‘other’ by local men. Sometimes such aggression takes extreme forms, taking full advantage of a person’s unfamiliarity with the local language and distance from the social milieu. This is what happened recently in Santiniketan where the vulnerability of the first-year-student from Sikkim was manifold. While it is true that hate crimes haven’t yet taken lives of young men like Nido Taniam in Bengal, the repeated
Kalpana Press
Avinandan Sthanpati Chandannagar/Chandernagore is usually slotted as an erstwhile French colony. Though that identity is almost shut out from memory now. It is like any other small town–congested, filthy and sporadically peppered with high-rises. The French butter, if at all relished at a distant past, and its after-taste, seems almost a surreal idea. The burrabazar area is a goldmine for the promoters. Especially since this area is close to both river Ganges and the Grand Trunk Road. In this burrabazar you will detect a century old letter press. Kalpana Press. The current owner, Swapan Das, inherited the press from his father. At one point, the press used to employ compositors and machinemen and binders. The works. The dual blow of advancement in technology and the economic downturn, has forced Swapan-babu to take care of the press. Single-handed. He is not sure about the future of the press. Perhaps a multi-storied high-rise will replace this quaint place. Who knows whether his legal claims would be honoured if such an eventuality is to befall Kalpana Press ! Here are a few snaps of a toiling, lonesome fighter of a printer, whose future remains stark and uncertain. ———————————————————————————————————————— _______________________________________________________________ ———————————————————————————————————————- ——————————————————————————————————————– —————————————————————————————————————— —————————————————————————————————————- ————————————————————————————————————— ————————————————————————————————————- ————————————————————————————————————– —————————————————————————————————————- —————————————————————————————————————- —————————————————————————————————————- —————————————————————————————————————- —————————————————————————————————————– —————————————————————————————————————— —————————————————————————————————————— —————————————————————————————————————— —————————————————————————————————————– —————————————————————————————————————— —————————————————————————————————————— ——————————————————————————————————————- [This photo-essay was first published in Agamikaal, No. 3, 2014] adminhumanitiesunderground.org