There was a fine struggle for the beads! : Franz Boas, His Journals
Among the Innuit of Baffin Island 1883 In the summer of 1883 Franz Boas travelled from Germany to Cumberland Sound, Baffin Island, aboard the sailing vessel Germania whose main objective was to evacuate the personnel of the German station of the First International Polar Year from Kingua Fiord. Boas planned to spend a year as a participatory observer, living and travelling with and studying the Inuit of this part of Baffin Island. This detailed study summarizes and evaluates Boas’ preparations, his fieldwork, and the subsequent period of data analysis and evaluation. The fieldwork may be divided into two phases: Over the winter of 1883–1884 Boas confined himself to Cumberland Sound and during this phase he was considerably dependent on the American and Scottish whalers wintering at Kekerten. During the second phase, in the spring and summer of 1884, Boas crossed the Cumberland Peninsula and visited numerous Inuit communities along the Davis Strait coast; during this period he was much more dependent on his own resources. Below—a selection from his journal entries of late 1883. ___________________________ [Notebook] 2 Oct, 1883 [Tuesday] Calm in the morning; at 8.30 the Eskimos towed the ship out of the harbour; afterwards there was a good northerly breeze. Overcast; east shore clear. Soon afterwards we had a very strong north wind and high seas which probably make it impossible to pick up the oil; very cold. [FB/MK] (…) Listen Marie, if you want to be proud of me about it [his research] because the people in Hamburg praised me as I was leaving, you have no real cause to be. It was quite natural that they should flatter me ostentatiously on the last day. Don’t be afraid, I know what such talk signifies, so I remain your sensible Franz. And even after what I later read about myself in the newspaper, [which was more laudatory] than I would prefer, I shall still be writing sensibly; I know too that the Berliner Tageblatt will be tooting its own horn. The only yardstick of what one does is the acknowledgment that one has done one’s duty, whether the success is great or small. Believe me, no idle gossip will ever turn my head. I have my eye firmly on my goal and know what I have to do and what work is worthwhile. You know, I don’t even think much of the fine expressions about devotion to science. Anyone who goes out to investigate something has his own good personal reasons, whether it be the pure desire for knowledge, the desire for adventure, or whatever. And you know what it was in my case: the desire to establish an independent existence – even before I knew that my beloved loves me again – and scientific interest. I do not know what would have been more difficult for me, to go or to stay. (…) Since the weather is no better, and since there is no prospect of a change in the weather, the captain has decided to take us to Middleaktuk, and then to return home. If it is better on the morning of the 4th he wants to take the oil with him. In the morning I finished my letters; I could see only extensive, heavy ice masses to the north, lying immediately west of Middleaktuk I. An ice field about 15-20′ high; we are passing a piece that has broken off. Three last cheers and the final parting from Europe for this year. 21 Oct, 1883. This morning we had to repitch the tent entirely, because the wind had reduced it to total disarray. The roof lay on the ground and everything was full of ice and snow. For 3 days we unfortunates have had no dry gloves left, so this morning I hit on the bright idea of using stockings as gloves; this works quite magnificently. (…) Due to the shortage of firewood I have had to reduce our meals to one, at noon, when we have coffee and bread with frozen meat, or soup, bread and butter. In the morning and evening there is only bread and meat. We had been working all morning to be able to have lunch and now the hot soup pot has appeared in our tent, and with it all the Eskimos, each with his tin cup in hand. 23 October [Tuesday] I began to work out my observations. After long contemplation the barometer was mounted near the table. I gave Nachojaschi and Yankee bread, powder and tobacco; I also gave N.[achojaschi] another knife since he had lost his. In the afternoon they asked me to go and see a sick woman. She had pneumonia and was very sick, with a high fever. I wanted to put warm, wet poultices on her chest, but realized that it was impossible, because she was continually sitting with her chest and abdomen bare, catching the full draught from the door. So I could do nothing but give her some opium for her cough and quinine for her fever. 24 [October, Wednesday] I have had Wilhelm make a box for the thermometer. I am continuing to work up my data from Pagnirtu. My things are gradually getting finished; thus my stockings, curletang [I. qulittaq = outer coat] and pants are ready. Mutch’s kuni [Inuk woman] is complaining of a sore ear. The sick woman appears to be slightly better, but I prefer not to give her anything more, since I still cannot help her. 26[October, Friday] In the morning Mutch made a coffin for the dead woman, who has not yet been buried. Itu did not come to make coffee for Mutch this morning, because his son was very scared over the woman’s death. The occupants of the hut have abandoned her. One woman immediately tore her skin pants off and ran outside when she realized that she was dead. She had died unnoticed by anyone. [FB/parents, sisters] (…) When you get these letters from me, you will
Malayaj, A Letter: The Poet of Habit & the Poet of Collision
Malayaj: A Letter _______________ 2-4-1971 To: Sri Rameshchandra Shah 3/2, Professor’s Colony Vidha Vihar Bhopal 462002 Dear Ramesh Bhai, Your letter has arrived “hale and hearty”. I am sending another letter to Jyotsna-ji along with this mail. The kind of uncivilized behavior that I had indulged in earlier by not writing to her may be remedied a little by this note. Dearest friend of mine, I did not yet receive the book, the survey of international literature. Perhaps it is lost in transit. I also could not detect ‘Kalpana’ in any of the stalls here and hence could not take a look at it. Pray, who has conducted the survey? And what were the main arguments? Actually, Hindi journals and magazines these days are so full of levity that it is impossible to nurture a literary ambience of response and counter-response, analytical survey and response to such reports. Much work is left undone just because there is no such clime and ambience. For instance, suppose you wish to write a good response to that light and frivolous report by Chandrakant Devtale in ‘Filhaal’, you have no avenue. Where will you send your piece? Isn’t that a problem? About Filhaal I fully trust your opinion. I could have written a piece in ‘Dinmaan’ about Filhaal but one can see that Sarveshwarji is extremely enamoured of Ashok with certain old baggage. That becomes apparent from his unfair characterization of that magazine in his recent comments. Let me now come to the content of your letter. I am happy that you took up my cue about the Agyeya versus Muktibodh issue. After having completed my writing, for a few days now I have been thinking about the accomplishments and personality of Agyeya. Much of that on the same lines as you have suggested too. True, the Hindi-wallahs have turned completely ingrate! You are perhaps not surprised that there is very little or no reaction to my essay. The mujahedeens of the Muktibodh camp must have underlined my name in the black register. One can howl and cry on this one too, just like Ashok has done in Filhaal about the departure of certain values. I am only reassured by the fact that there are still people like you around who understand the nuances of our material conditions. I am truly indebted to you for the valuable thoughts that you have on my writing. And the way you have been thinking about Agyeya’s prose and poesy—that adds a new dimension to Agyeya scholarship. My friend, please write about this issue in detailed fashion in the future. This your statement, for instance, is full of rare insight I feel: “After experiencing the movement of his sensibility in prose, he seemed to gain more breath. So when he came back to verse, that became somewhat more answering to his needs.” In these two sentences one may detect a new way of looking, a fresh method, in Agyeya scholarship. You have rightly pointed out to the historical necessity of Agyeya’s arrival on the literary scene, and the way he provided an intellectual direction to writing also was the demand of the times. Then you mention a certain sophistication in his diction—this is something I did not write about. So aptly put. My suggestion is that please do not let go of these thoughts about Agyeya in those 15 pages. Consider these pages as early notes for a fuller and larger work on the man and his writings. Particularly this issue about his prose-poetry demands a fuller and longer discussion. I have so far gone twice through the piece on the creative impulse of feelings. With love. So many things come to my mind. Where do I even begin? It is a living, throbbing piece; hence it has touched me so much at so many levels. There are a few things in my mind as an aside right now. Shamsher’s poetic persona is an enigmatic one. That is the reason everyone is so eager to gauge his work and style. Perhaps the personality of Shamsher, much like Nirala, is the most enigmatic and self-contradictory in the Hindi writing world. I feel that there is a difference between self-contradiction and inner-turmoil. One can see that there are many contradictory applications and theorems that Shamsher wants to connect in his writings. For instance, asti and nasti, that which is and that which is not. This I am painting with a broad brush but this can be explained with examples from his work. Is there such self-contradiction in Agyeya too? There are clashes about philosophies in his writings, no doubt. But that is not a battle between affirmation and negation. Rather, the problem of consistency is a characteristic of Agyeya, not of Shamsher. Your chief thesis about the poet-personality of Shamsher is that owing to his habitual character he was steadily moving towards equitability in aesthetic tone and consistency of a kind. This observation, I feel, is more germane to Agyeya. Whether Shamsher had progressed towards equitability of taste may be debatable but surely Agyeya had been moving towards such a goal with his intelligence and judgments. In this context, isn’t your comment that indulging in thought leads to clarity and a searching mentality not a simplified generality? I completely agree that Shamsher does not tackle his subject in its full complexity but rather chooses a safe corner of self enclosed mutinous art. But is that only because in his writings there is little clash between thought and feeling? There is a different kind of clash which takes him towards another kind of intricate and unsafe form of art: that is the collision between one end of feeling and the other end. The affirmative and the negative strains are part of the same stream of a felt-process. Not thought process but the two aspects of the felt-form. One has to read Shamsher’s surrealistic poems in order to appreciate this collision, where he altogether abandons the known linguistic
Avinash Mishra: A Governing Tone of Stoic Regression
HUG ______ जो अकेला है उसे और डर दीजिए जो प्रतिबद्ध है उसे और उदासीनता दीजिए जो भूखा है उसे और नारे दीजिए जो सताया हुआ है उसे और अवसाद दीजिए जो हत्यारा है उसे और समर्थन दीजिए जो छीन सकता है उसे और ताकत दीजिए जो पिछड़ा है उसे और आरक्षण दीजिए To the solitary Give more fear To the committed Give more nonchalance To the hungry Give more slogans To the afflicted Give more ennui To the killer Give more reinforcement To the marauder Give more muscle To the backward Give more reservation Such eloquence is like gold dust shining beneath a silvery eddying river.But a most perilous eloquence.Here is a transitional move in contemporary Hindi poetry. In the times of shrill and settled regimens of social polarization, a serrated, reckless bit of aristocratic dissociation; a proud distancing that has escalating regression inbuilt into its mood and structure. What is the aesthetic problematique here? What relations of forces joust? What concealed morality is violently unearthed by effecting a satirical reversal at the end? The primordial elements in music are balefully unconcerned about human predilections. The forces of willed nature hover around: fear and indifference, pleadings and a cultivation of ennui, creaturely cruelty is soaked in the unleashing of raw power. And then a conceptual chiasmus, an intrusion of the social by naming and satirizing the one that cannot be touched in progressive circles: affirmative action and social reservation. Or is it that this ironical reversal is already thought out before the very structure of the poem is laid bare? Can social satire withstand the weight of a vital aesthetic principle? Is the force and power of a new poetic principle arriving with a terrible regressive potential—a reminder of the banality and treachery done to art in the name of social commitment in Hindi poetry writing since the 1970s, which can only be purged so violently? Who decides the limits of poetic expression? The wise, committed masters keep a leash on what can be said and what must be left untouched. And the lid is blown away by such violent satire. We are stunned by the starkness of the move. There is no metaphysical comfort in acts and conducts but rather a logical progression to the limits of all that is intrinsic and primordial. Movement I—Fear and Aloofness: जो अकेला है उसे और डर दीजिए जो प्रतिबद्ध है उसे और उदासीनता दीजिए The vision is unforgiving and hence it arrives with a possibility of transfiguring art. All pathological discharge—dismay and dread, fear and trepidation—must be thrown to the wind. A heroic egoism is at play here.By acknowledging fear as a primary motivating force man usually rationalizes his life. He takes the first step towards security. Which is another name for society. But primal forms of fear—a hunch that life is not worth living or the fear of eventual obliteration—such stirrings could elicit other emotions.If one does not come to a contractual transaction with fear, there are only two options: either give oneself willfully and masochistically to fear’s demands. Or transcend it by summoning a self conscious subjective force—“Pour on. I will endure” as Lear declared to the invading storm. Yes, testing forms of courage must be inundated with the pelting ways of pitiless fear.That is the only route by which the scale of commitment can turn minimally moral. Moral courage is a commitment that fundamentally smirks at virtue. It takes in fear differently. In the face of capricious heavenly wrath, the initial reflex reaction is bewilderment. Faced with the calamitous forces of nature perhaps, our very creaturely fibers shake to their foundation. We could transfer bewilderment into trembling, like a guilty thing surprised—as Kierkegaard guides us in Fear and Trembling. Abjectness in that case presupposes submission. The obverse is to swim along with the forces. In the face of intimidating evil an ego, a principle stands forth. The willed individual seeks vile and ingratitudinous bouts of fear so that he can summon moral courage. This way lies freedom. Solitude before all else. And solitude is the original commitment. Commitment is not an aim. It is a resolve to shun all that is available. And such are the times that every bit of our existence is being made available—primarily radicalism. Social commitment, as and within available forms of solidarities, is only worth relinquishing. There is no benediction. Commitment is pure phlegm. The rigour of nonchalance is a punishing form of commitment. The power of aloofness is not disinterestedness, but its obverse. Detachment could give you poise but it could also give you an original form of irresponsibility which is vital for cultivating commitment. Indifference and recklessness make one fearless. Fearless to the routine forms of corporatism and other specializations of partiality. “L’art, mes enfants, c’est d’tre absolument soi-meme,” wrote Paul Verlaine. By “absolument soi-meme” he meant the transcendent subjectivity, not the ego. The absolute self in poetry is what creates and responds to rhyme and meter, the sensual and the expressive. Only the poet himself: as a reckless classical aesthetic principle, as a detached vocation, is the only one who is able to shun all tailor made sources of busy involvement.His objective ego is yet not systematized into prejudgment and prescription. This mood, such startling militancy, is transitional in Hindi poetry of our times. Movement II—Slogans and Ennui: जो भूखा है उसे और नारे दीजिए जो सताया हुआ है उसे और अवसाद दीजिए The first inklings of irony. Sloganeering is a travesty of solidarity. It is an egotistic move, a daily routine. The slogan, in its originary intention, is supposed to be a memorable motto. The slogan’s power is in its repetitive force. It could be chant in a clan-ceremony or a war cry of militia. There is a rhetorical nature (the form) and a unified purpose (the social expression) to every slogan. In earlier times they were utilized primarily as passwords to insure proper recognition of individuals at night or in the confusion of battles. Progressive
‘Your Life Is Writing. So, Write.’
Andre Gorz ______________ Here is a short section from the open letter of love and despair written by renowned French philosopher André Gorz to his British-born wife, Doreen. (later published as Letter to D. A Love Story). Among other things, Gorz happens to be the founding father of green politics in France. But few had ever before heard of the self-effacing, beautiful woman Gorz met by chance at a card game in Switzerland some 60 years ago and who became his wife and professional partner – without whom, wrote the anti-capitalist thinker, his lifetime’s work would ‘lose its sense and importance’. But it was her tragic illness that led both of them to their deaths. Their bodies were discovered on 24 September side by side in the bedroom of their 19th-century house in the village of Vosnon, near Troyes. They had committed suicide together two days earlier by lethal injection. On the table beside them were piles of letters they had written explaining their act to officials and friends. There were detailed instructions for their cremation. Their ashes were scattered in the gardens of their home. Gorz concludes his letter with these haunting words: “You’ve just turned 82. You’re still beautiful, graceful and desirable. We’ve lived together now for 58 years and l love you more than ever. Lately. I’ve fallen in love with you all over again and I once more feel a gnawing emptiness inside that can only be filled when your body is pressed against mine. At night I sometimes see the figure of a man, on an empty road in a deserted landscape, walking behind a hearse. I am that man. It’s you the hearse is taking away. I don’t want to be there for your cremation; I don’t want to be given an urn with your ashes in it. I hear the voice of Kathleen Ferrier singing, ‘Die Welt ist leer, Ich will nicht leben mehr’* and I wake up. I check your breathing, my hand brushes over you. Neither of us wants to outlive the other. We’ve often said to ourselves that if, by some miracle, we were to have a second life, we’d like’ to spend it together. 21 March – 6 June 2006.” __________________________________________ An earlier section, here: *** After two or three years living in exile like this, life took a turn for the better. I was hired by L’Express. The research material you’d compiled had been a real asset in landing the job. I remember exactly how it happened. L’Express had become a daily designed to support Pierre Mendes France’s electoral campaign of 1955-56. When the paper went back to being a weekly again, the journalists on the daily, of which I was one, were told they’d be sacked unless they could prove themselves in the first issues of the new format. I remember writing a feature on peaceful coexistence, quoting a speech of Eisenhower’s from three years earlier outlining all that brought the American and Soviet peoples together. At the time no one had bylines at L’Express. JJSS, as we called Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, cited mine as a perfect example of the kind of thing he was looking for and ended on this note: ‘Here’s a person who knows the value of solid source material’. We acquired, you and I, a reputation for being inseparable, ‘obsessionally concerned for each other’, Jean Daniel would later write. I managed to finish the Essay in the course of those same weeks and a few days later we found a small rundown apartment in the rue du Bac at an amazingly low price. All we’d hoped for was about to happen. I’ve described elsewhere the reception Sartre gave the staggering mass of pages I foisted on him. I realized then what I’d known from the start: that manuscript was never going to find a publisher, even if Sartre recommended it (‘You over-estimate my power,’ he said). You saw how badly I took it, then the way I blindly refused to come to terms with the problem: I began writing a devastating attack on myself that was to become the start of a new book. I wondered how you could bear the fact that work I’d subordinated everything else to for as long as you’d known me had ended in failure. And here I was, trying to get over it by launching myself head first into a new venture that was going to monopolise me for God knows how long. But you didn’t seem worried or even annoyed. ‘Your life is writing. So, write,’ you said again. As though your vocation was to comfort me in mine. Our life changed. People flocked to our little apartment. You had your regular friends who’d drop in at the end of the day for a whisky. You organised dinners or lunches several times a week. We lived at the centre of the universe. For us, the distinction between contacts, information-gatherers and friends became blurred. Branko, a Yugoslav diplomat, was all those things at once. He started out as the head of the Yugoslav Information Centre in the avenue de l’Opera and ended up as first secretary at the embassy. Thanks to Branko, we met certain French and foreign intellectuals who were dominant figures in the postwar period. You had your own circle, your own life, even while you were completely involved in mine. At our first New Year’s Eve with ‘Castor’, Sartre and the Temps modernes ‘family’, Sartre set about seducing you with earnest intensity and the jubilation shone on his face when you responded with the breezy irreverence you reserved for the great of this world. I don’t know whether it was on that occasion or later that one of Sartre’s friends put me seriously on my guard: ‘My dear G., watch out. Your wife’s more beautiful than ever. If I decide to go after her, I’ll be ir-re-sis-tible.’ It was in the rue du Bac that you really came into your own. You traded that sweet little English voice