Great Literature Cannot Reach Half-Humans
HUG interviews Anil Kumar Yadav _____________________________ HUG: What do you do? Anil: Mostly I live in the subconscious, or in semi consciousness, shall we say. Something silently keeps on happening in my head. Not objective happening actually, but rather something is always ‘taking place’. And I am acutely aware of this drive. I am continually observing myself, as if in an out of body experience. I often have changed jobs or have not had stable jobs. So, I observe. May be there are three possible coordinates, each overlapping with the other. Not that these thoughts are all well formulated, but still— First there is an acute craving to find a new language. So that one can at least come somewhat closer to the real. But I keep on failing. My writing, its relevance, if any, seems to be only partial. I do have a language of my own; I nurture a particular way of expression, my style, that is—but that does not mean that I have discovered a new vocabulary. I am unable to make any profound connection with the passing moments of our time. I am also being quartered by a piercing, devastating sense of dread. Every waking moment. Even while half asleep. How shall I put it! See, there are these two parts in my mind. Two sides, yes. Each conspires and negates the other. Each will not allow the other to function at all. Not that these two sides are indignant with each other. They are not. They are like childhood playmates-बाल-सखा . There is this negative side; it wanders. This is my imaginative side. The positive side of my mind, on the other hand, keeps on thinking. It is driven by the worthy, necessary wishes of life. The third is about my non-faith in relations and friends. Particularly friends. Not that one needs friends in order to help solve things or to be by one’s side, during times difficult or joyous. That kind of sentimentality I have long let go. No, not that. But friends can actually sometimes invest in and refine one’s thought process. By brainstorming along with you about life’s various issues, they give you a sense of perspective, or so I used to think. But I have no faith in faith, none in relations—in love, friendship or relatives anymore. These not only work at a very superficial order of things, but the real point is that friends can never do anything about how you will actually deal with life or about your deepest concerns in life. I am far more connected now with my feelings and thoughts as I have learned to navigate life on my own terms. You do not rely upon faith anymore. You live life. Period. I gradually began feeling that all my so called affective relationships have no investment whatsoever with my concerns, with truth, with my fantasies, and with life’s realties at all. These are the things I do. HUG: What do you see? Anil: This word mainstream has lost all connotations because the margin keeps on shifting and morphing continuously. All these debates about the mainstream and the margin are simply putrified and ossified into meaninglessness. There are deep connivances. People that I see and work with are like gladiators, safeguarding and defending the interests of their emperors. I feel helpless and I can see this helplessness with utmost clarity. People like me are so beyond even the margins that even to remark or comment about politicians, corrupt godmen, criminals or the mafia raj seems to be meaningless. Such a small fry I am. The deep connect that the thinking, feeling class of people used to have with the local and the regional have just evaporated. Only the politicians are mostly connected with their constituencies, using that connection for their own ends. They will cry with you if your mother passes away, right? But the artists and the thinking class have left their public sense of critical and irreverent attitude in order to cater to mere publicity. Forget bohemianism; the artists are not even connected to their mohalla. The ubiquity of the tentacles of such a culture that the medium allows and proliferates makes me see helplessness with an even greater sense of clarity. All relationships are also part of the same change; they operate in flux. That is real. In fiction or in a travelogue, you refract the different modes of this forlorn, paralyzed reality. This helpless predicament becomes most vivid when I feel that my language is unable to reach people. I am a writer and I am unable to reach out with some serious concern or with some genuine humour to the people I write for? Just think of the level of vulnerability! One reason for that is my own limitation, I am sure. The other is that the levels of consciousness in my circle of readership are very very poor. I can only talk about the Hindi language readership. But I suspect the malaise goes deeper and is endemic. My purported readers are materialistic, wooly and thick. And the levels of feelings have gone numb. I am particularly thinking of the lower middle class, the poor and the half-humans. They do not see or hear. Their senses are numb. They have been made numb. They are destined to remain confused. See, for generations they have not had adequate food, shelter, education. And it is not just about economic exploitation. There is this rich exploitation in the name of religion or caste. Have you seen lower middle class folks carefully? Their gait and height and body weight? They are dwarfs. Great literature cannot reach half-humans. No sir. What finer aesthetic qualities are we talking about? Shall I then dumb down my own capabilities? That means I am sacrificing life and art in order to do some kind of penance, right, for being born in such situations in the subcontinent?So, I only observe these half-humans—sometimes with compassion, but often with disgust
Set Your Inner Deities and Demons Free
Shobhan Som interviews Ramkinkar Baij [Translation: HUG] Shobhan: Kinkarda—how does one learn painting and artistry? Ramkinkar: First, you must learn how to observe. Your eyes and mind must be open and agile. This exquisite and brimming world of rupa wishes to witness her maya’s pratirupa through you. That pratirupa is your painting or sketch. The basic ways of artistry are line, tone, colour and texture. You create form with the help of these tools. These are like the alphabets of art—a, b, c, d. When spectators look at an art object, they perceive rupa, mediated through these elements. The sense of line, tone, colour and texture are present right within nature. The way to learn painting is to relate your power of observation to these basic alphabetical tools. If you are able to see correctly, then you will also be able to show it so. Shobhan: The students of art school learn artistry by observing live models sitting at close quarters. You do not make such models sit in your class. But ask students to create from life itself. Ramkinkar: Placing an inert human being in front of you and life itself are not the same thing. You cannot find life in self-conscious and tentative possibilities. Life is dynamic. Life resides in naturalness. One has to see the ease with which life moves; your job is to catch a glimpse of that, feel how the life force throbs. As an artist dynamism should propel you. If you cannot, if you make mistakes, watch life again and once again. Try to analyze where the error is being committed. Draw again, create one more time. Painting cannot be a copy of anatomy. Copying inert life in toto makes no art object, no sculpture. Shobhan: In your classes on sculpting clay-model busts, instead of providing us with a common model, you have asked us to observe each other and sculpt the busts. Why this? Ramkinkar: In case of creating human busts, one has to feel and observe the subject from every angle, in the round, not in relief. You all, my students, have for years in the past not only seen each other’s physical features, but have known each other deeply too. In such art one not only needs to respect the rules of verisimilitude but must bring forth and reveal the inner traits of an individual. Not just frontally; you have to capture the person from every angle. In the atelier, as you place the clay on the whirling-couch and move about, you can see each other from every side. And as you look at each other, the inner deities and demons of the other will become sharper and clearer by the very touch of your fingers on the clay. You will know your subject deeply, begin to feel his presence. Such dynamic, intimate observation and detailing is impossible if an inert model is placed in front of you. Shobhan: There are issues of measurement and estimation. Can we use calipers? Ramkinkar: Minimize the use of calipers as much as possible. Get a sense of the countenance and profile of the subject. The physical tool will give you accuracy but art is not about accuracy. Use your eyes for calculating proportion. Do use machines only when there is any scope for doubt. Or else do not. Your eyes need to be trained into this sense of assessment. Another thing, if you observe carefully you shall see that the two eyes of a human are not exactly the same. The face is slightly asymmetrical. This is most evident if you look at the two sides of the nose, cheeks and ears. Whenever you indulge in the art of portraiture, give special attention to this aspect. (He looks at a scroll painting being mounted badly and yells with a start). What is that, how…? Shobhan: Why Kinkarda? Ramkinkar: Eh, you have dressed the princess with a gamchha! Mounting is an essential part of painting. Just like the dignity of the princess is diminished if clothed in a gamchha, so also one cannot present a picture in any which way. Even a good picture gets a raw deal if not mounted properly. The painting is incomplete until mounted. It is not about expensive mounting. Have you not seen those ornate, foreign frames? One is not sure whether to look at the painting or the frame! Good mountings reveal the painting, not curb its potential. Gaganbabu (Gaganendranath Tagore) revolutionized things by putting a premium on neat mountings once he watched the Japanese. The top of the painting and the two sides must have equal measurement and the bottom one and a half times to that—this is how cut-mounting works. Frame ought to be thin, with a certain economy, and stark. Mashtarmashai (Nandalal Bose) has conducted lot of experiments with mountings. Shobhan: What is abstract art? What is its objective? Ramkinkar: Some art puts a premium on description, others instead of mimesis, endeavor to capture the inner lyric of the subject matter. Just like in music. One cannot copy the rupa of music. One cannot copy a cuckoo and papiya in order to catch the musical sense of the season of spring. One must feel the season and set out to create the form of spring in music. That is how the ragas are shaped, or are set free actually. One is only then able to catch a glimpse of the aseem within our finitude. Abstract art is the harnessed music of our feelings about the great outdoors. There is a deeper symmetry in all successful abstract art. The rhythm of the lines shall sing aloud. Listen deeply to our classical music and feel the strains—you shall realize how abstraction plays out. And its objective will become clearer to you. Tradition and abstraction are not always at loggerheads. Shobhan: But when one of our students works on some abstract form, you smash and
Restlessness, Structural Degeneration and Dialogic Possibilities in Contemporary Hindi Poetry: Asad Zaidi, Manmohan and Shubha
HumanitiesUnderground had, in March of 2016, initiated a discussion on contemporary Hindi poetry in Benaras, with a group of poets who are composing and thinking right now about the intricacies of the poetic art. In a free flowing discussion, we spoke of contemporary poetry’s current and changing contours, its entrenched legacies and future possibilities, as also the reading dynamics emerging from new reading publics. This is the second installment, where a different set of poets writing since the 1970s, engage with similar questions and concerns. Asad Zaidi, Manmohan and Shubha, have witnessed momentous political, social changes in the subcontinent and have borne these in their poetry. As they continue to compose art work, they reflect on the markers of contemporary poetic universe in Hindi, bringing to the discussion, some very definite and definitive viewpoints on the relationship between art and social practice. In these recordings, they also raise significant questions about forms of memorialization and ritualistic gestures in a changed political clime, and how these could mediate trajectories in the future. Are we sufficiently grappling with the moral vacuity, aesthetic stasis, the weakening of solidarities and lack of scrutinizing dialogue/commentary in poetry writing? And finally, there is here, a genuine wish and call for a greater, more robust communication with the younger generation of poets, crucial to the forging of collective struggles against artistic crassness, self aggrandizing egotism and the reactionary tendencies rife in both politics and the lived life. This is an ongoing debate. HUG wishes to carry and trail this thread in the future too, through other new and fresh interactive sessions. HUG thanks Rajkumar Kumar for his valuable help with the editing of the video and other suggestions. Here is the link. Please use speakers or headphones : adminhumanitiesunderground.org
I Believe In The Good Fairy Of Your Native Land: Correspondences between Gabriela Mistral and Victoria Ocampo
__________________________ There developed a curious and lasting friendship between two supremely talented people: Gabriela Mistral/ Lucila Godoy Alcayaga (1889-1957) of Chile and Victoria Ocampo (1890-1979) of Argentina. It would be difficult to imagine two writers more dissimilar in background and upbringing, appearance and habit, not to mention literary careers. Yet because of their accomplishments, they shared an anomalous status as celebrities in their own countries and internationally. Despite their differences, they had more than a little in common. Both Mistral and Ocampo lived their adult lives as single women. While their public worlds were principally male, they lived in predominantly female households. They both claimed pride in their Basque heritage, and they took an unorthodox approach to religion. Both were physically imposing women in societies that prized petiteness. In their letters and visits, they shared their love of the open countryside and seashore. Because they led unconventional lives, they were controversial figures, subject to false rumors and mythologies that plagued them all their lives. And to their mutual surprise and delight, they had the same birthday, April seventh, one year apart. This became a touchstone in their letters; no matter where they were living, they sent affectionate messages to one another on that date. Stubborn and nonconforming, both women described themselves as having “violent” dispositions, which Ocampo would express in explosive bursts of temper and Mistral by reciting accusations of real and imagined wrongs. Both women, above all, felt passionately about distinct aspects of their American condition, which they perceived from a transnational, Latin American perspective. They both cared deeply about fostering spiritual unity and moral purpose among fellow Americans in the context of the continent’s truncated modernity. Yet their priorities did not always mesh: Mistral’s emotional defense of indigenous America seemed excessive to Ocampo, and Ocampo’s predilection for European culture struck Mistral as misguided. They also shared a penchant for letter writing.Each cultivated hundreds of correspondents, writing up to a dozen letters a day. Within weeks of their first meeting, Mistral and Ocampo discovered one another as women charged with writing, exploring, and defining the American (read Latin American) condition.That absorption in and engagement with America,expressed throughout their correspondence, arises from the unsettling political, social, and literary events of their era. The letters reveal two women who contributed in many ways to Latin America’s emergence onto the world stage. Here is a very short selection from the final and mature phase of their friendship and mutual affection: ____________________ February 21. 1954 My very dear Gabriela: I’ll draw up the list of books for you right away. But I warn you that the majority of the books that are published in B.A. are translations. Please tell me if they interest you as well. For the time being I’ll send you my translation of The Living Room by Graham Greene. I still don’t have any news about my passport. The worst part is that my petition has gotten no response. I’ve heard that they gave Borges his passport and certificate of good conduct. He hadn’t received them until now. I don’t know by what means he obtained them (he didn’t want to visit the minister of the interior either). But Borges wasn’t in prison for twenty-seven days, as I was. And the twenty-seven days of unjust punishment appear to be a powerful reason for not excusing the evil that one has suffered. I don’t know if I told you in my last letter that I gave up my trip to Turin, where Stravinsky had invited me to do the recitation of “Persé- phone,”as I had done before under his direction in B.A., Rio, and Florence. This sacrifice wasn’t easy. But now it doesn’t matter to me. I won’t say I’m happy, but I do have a clear conscience and the assurance of having done the only thing that my sense of dignity allowed. Many people think that I’m an idiot and no more. Well it seems that few people think twice about going to the minister to ask for a passport if they can’t get it through the police department (which is the usual place). But since I don’t consider myself a criminal or a political conspirator, but rather a person who has kept her freedom of thought, I don’t choose to act (under pressure from the dictatorship) as if I really were a criminal political conspirator. If you want to, or if you can make inquiries as to why they aren’t giving me my passport and certificate of good conduct to travel, it would be good, even if only out of curiosity: just to see what they’re going to invent to justify an attitude that is totally arbitrary, unjust, and infuriating. I see in the newspapers that my old friend, now the French ambassador to Washington and influential ex-minister from the Coopération Intellectuelle (do you remember those days?), is lunching with our ambassador to Washington, the representative of a government that physically and morally tortures innocent people . . . Ainsi va le monde. I no longer believe in the good faith of any politician, any diplomat, or any person tied to monetary interests. Amen! I’m living quite alone. I don’t see María Rosa as I did before (although I’ve invited her to come here, to bathe in the sea, because I know that otherwise she’d have no summer vacation). This is because her blind Communism (disguised as pacifism) gets on my nerves. Since I don’t want to broach political subjects in her presence, and since politics is truly her passion these days, we are inhibited in our conversation. I understand that her mission (pacifism) will be taking her to Europe again soon. The government doesn’t seem to have an eye on her as it does on me. I think that her Communist faith fills her life, which is fortunate in her case. It’s a pity, for those of us who don’t think like her, that that is her faith. I regret that I don’t have a sufficient amount