A Bloody Battle and Sundry Changes
[Here is a review of Marc Morris’ recent The Norman Conquest The Battle of Hastings and the Fall of Anglo-Saxon England (Pegusus, 2013)–originally published in the Gulfport Public Library site and Steven Till’s medieval blog steventill.com] ————————- This book is the result of monumental research and careful interpretation, a combination that through Morris’ clear writing style, gives us a distinctly nuanced historical book readable for the general public. Morris iterates many historians when he says that “the invasion is the single most important event in English history. It altered what is meant to be English.” He offers what he calls a “justified narrative,” reconstructing what probably happened from scant contemporary accounts, most of them slanted toward the English or the Norman side. That’s the case of the famous Bayeux Tapestry, 230 feet of embroidery that tell the story cartoon-style, highlighting the role of William’s half brother Odo, bishop of Bayeux. “The story of the Conquest is full of dramatic reversals of fortune and often quite despicable deeds,” Morris writes. “In several instances, the key players in the drama sought to justify their actions by commissioning what are essentially propaganda pieces … it is often difficult, and sometimes impossible, to say exactly what happened.” In part this is a detective story, and the historian must proceed by inference, indirection and deduction. There are huge holes in the narrative — stretches of years in the life of William the Conqueror, for example, where nothing is known. He begins his account of the Norman Conquest and with an overview of the troubled times in English history of Viking raids and warrior conflicts and the ramifications with the death of the last Anglo-Saxon kings, Edward/later also designated as The Confessor in 1066. Added to English conflict is the inter-Norman conflict in France that was reaching a more than unusual intensity because of the question of successor. William, the right gender and oldest, but he did not have a sufficient traditional “right” due to the requirement of legitimate birth. (Interestingly, in French language histories he is called Guillaume le Batard (the Bastard) , and in English accounts, William the Conqueror.) Political turmoil in England from Edward’s death was profound on succession, for which William has a possible right. The actual pages of the reality of the Conquest are filled with power struggles, bloody conflicts for decades, wanton destruction of churches, property, and the thousands of the unprotected. Mixed in with all of this was the Roman church, gradually turning itself to an institution in this new land. All of this is fully documented with a clarity of language that is a delight. The devil of truth speaks in tangential details — for instance in the signatures on a charter issued the day in 1068 that William’s wife Matilda was crowned at Westminster. “The content of the grant is unimportant,” Morris observes, “but its witness-list allows us to see the composition of William’s court at this particularly crucial juncture.” Far from being a distraction, this scrupulous examination of the record provides balance and perspective in a narrative crowded with names and events, and on many points still controversial today — for instance in the notorious “Harrying of the North” in 1069, when as many as 100,000 English starved under William’s campaign to suppress rebellion. Naturally, a lasting effect of William and the Norman Invasion is William’s having to spend the next 40 years subduing rebellions, usually very bloody and vicious, in England after granting Norman warriors large estates. Another effect is the idea of English “rights” in Normandy and France since William spent considerable time there after the Conquest. The Hundred Years War springs immediately to mind. There are two important areas that Morris gives little attention though: (1) economics (where did they get the actual “geld”?). Morris does point out (p. 25) that “slavery was a widespread institution and one of the main motors of the economy” but does not explain it historically. And (2) in spite of the close association with the Church, a kind of proto-secular history as the antithesis of the teachings of Jesus, which, as recent historical unearthings tell us, carried itself on simultaneously, is not given enough space. William’s organizational ability centered on the Doomsday Book, a monumental undertaking, a sort of Census taken every ten years. In just one short year, the entire country had been catalogued for ownership, size of estates, towns, churches, people. Historians argue about the purpose, but whatever it was, it became a basis for taxation and recognition of what was there. To Morris, the Book “set the feudal system in place,” and ensconced it for hundreds of years to come.A profound social effect of the Book was that it established, almost in stone, the aristocratic hierarchy, a social organization that exists to this day, much reduced of course, but for almost 700 years it defined English society. And in that society, Normans replaced the English in the controlling aristocracy. A side effect of the Book was the rapid development of Common Law to deal with and hopefully settle disputes. The Book was a tremendous help here because there was now data for to support claims. England was literally rebuilt. Normans established their power centres with hundreds of barricaded castles, destroying existing ones if necessary. The Tower of London of later political infamy was built during this time. Morris points out that the Normans destroyed dozens of existing churches and cathedrals and rebuilt them in their own style.There was a close alliance between the ruling Normans and the Catholic Church, an alliance that strengthened both, ultimately leading to a schism with Henry VIII. The French influence continued much further than the political and economic life. Language was a primary change in that French and Latin became the lingua franca in England especially in those powerful areas of politics and social superiority. Existing languages became the “people’s tongue.” It would remain, and then eventually become part of what we know today as English. True, the Normans brought feudalism, Romanesque architecture and the French language to England, but they were themselves originally Norsemen, first plundering and then settling at what
Why Did The Harmonium Disappear From All India Radio?
Amalendu Bikas Kar Chowdhury [Amalendu Bikas Kar Chowdhury is a renowned singer, song writer and music director, associated with All India Radio for a long period of time. This essay appears in a fine selection on the history of the wireless in India—Kolkata Betaar: 1927-1977 (edt. Bhabesh Das & Prabhat Kumar Das, Purbanchal Sanskriti Kendra, 2013). Translated by HUG] ————————————————————————————– Two news bulletins: April 18 and April 19, 1980 from the All India Radio, Calcutta, informs us that all artists of Akashvani are free to perform with the harmonium as an accompaniment once again. Therefore, it is evident that the harmonium did actually disappear from the world of the wireless in this part of the world at some point of time. But why did such a thing happen? There are a couple of interesting apocryphal stories about this matter. Suresh Chakraborty in his well-known essay Sudha Sagara Teere (Desh, June, 1979) writes: “What a portentous moment was that when Pandit Nehru uttered—‘I simply cannot tolerate that instrument. It is revolting to my very being.’— in his mind the cloying custom of inaugurating every meeting or congregation with an inaugural musical composition, with the omnipresent harmonium in tandem. A thoroughly middle class and utterly banal practice, it is still very much a social phenomenon that we tolerate.” So, Nehru’s minions got into the act and made sure that the harmonium made itself scarce from the radio station. In another anecdote, E.R. Ramkumar in the Sunday Magazine, The Times of India, December 10, 1979, tells us in his informative article, Harmonium: Why the Boycott?: “Lionel Fielden, India’s first broadcasting chief, banned the harmonium in 1939 as he felt it was not suitable to the tonal inflections of Indian classical music.” But these kinds of conjectures, as I have already hinted, are largely apocryphal, with no solid factual evidence behind them. The real reason behind this decision was Rabindranath Tagore, who did not think that the harmonium has or should have anything to do with Indian music. So, he had shot off a terse letter to the then Calcutta Bureau chief of Akashvani, Shri Asoke Kumar Sen, on 19/21 January, 1940. Uttarayan Santiniketan, Bengal January 19/21, 1940 Ref: D.O. GC 1414 dated 17.1. 40 ————– Dear Ashoke, I have always been very much against the prevalent use of the harmonium for purposes of accompaniment in our music and it is banished completely from our asrama. You will be doing a great service to the cause of Indian music if you can get it abandoned from the studios of All India Radio. Yours sincerely, Rabindranath Tagore ———————— Sj. Ashoke Kr. Sen All India Radio 1, Garstin Place, Calcutta And who can disregard Tagore of the late 1930s? Naturally the harmonium, promptly and with an air of finality, did make an exit from radio stations beginning March 1, 1940. It reappeared on July 9, 1974 on AIR, Calcutta when that wizard of a harmonium player, Montu Banerjee, initiated a solo programme and started broadcasting his pieces with a new-found gusto. Actually, it is from October 1971 that some of the performers began using the harmonium as accompanying instrument—Manindra Mohan Banerjee, Satyendranath Chakraborty, Dhiresh Chandra Mitra, Muneshwar Dayal, apart from Montu Banerjee himself, were all on the AIR roster. Gradually, Akashvani did seem to facilitate the instrument’s coming back to vogue in group based or special programmes. But make no mistake: this happened gingerly. Because there were classists and Tagoreans of the earlier variety still on the lookout. But no dictum is ever full and final. Many artists did revere the instrument, especially those who would sing folk numbers. And they missed it hugely. The reasons for which the harmonium had to be shown the door are still very much there, if one is persuaded by them, that is. One must remember that there has been a sea change in the manufacturing techniques of the instrument itself. Its tone and musical quality have improved tremendously mainly because of superior artisanal expertise. Though it is still debatable whether the harmonium is able to elicit the right kind of mellifluousness when broadcast through the wireless. But I am trying to question this very mirage: what is this notion of the right kind of musicality? The notion is mystical rather than logical or musical. E. R. Ramkumar tells us that though the instrument got a new lease of life, Akashvani had still dispatched the following note to an artist at one point: “The harmonium has not appeared in the broadcast of Karnatak music from AIR as an accompanying or solo instrument. Even in Hindusthani music, the instrument has only been tentatively introduced. We have not received orders from the Directorate to introduce the harmonium in Karnatak music. According to existing rules, there is no provision for auditions in harmonium either for playing solo or as accompaniment.” To this Ramkumar adds his own little commentary—“This was the reply of All India Radio officials in Delhi and Bombay to an artist’s request for an audition test—eight years after the instrument was supposed to have been allowed into the AIR premises ‘on parole.’” Well, let us examine the arguments for and against banishing the harmonium. Jnan Prakash Ghosh had articulated somewhere that the vitality and colour in which the genre of Thumri finds itself today has much to do with the regular employment of harmonium in its wake. This observation is spot on. It is amazing how much of glow and dazzle an accomplished and imaginative harmonium player can bring out of the instrument revealing a host of notes which the singer himself may not have even thought of while expressing the composition in his voice. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=am66Kx_I3Ec Some of the astounding voices of our time have used the harmonium to its fullest potential—Faiyyaz Khan, Ghulam Ali, Aamir Khan, Begum Akhtar. And this is only the North of India. If we consider the South—who can forget Chembai Vaidyanatha, S.G. Kittappa, B.S. Raja Iyengar and others. And light classical music and more
The Abused Goddesses and the Fissures of Referentiality
Prasanta Chakravarty The Abused Goddesses advertising campaign (http://www.buzzfeed.com/regajha/indias-incredibly-powerful-abused-goddesses-campaign-condemn) has given rise to strong reactions in the virtual space. While some initial reactions on the campaign were cautiously positive, albeit with some amount of unarticulated unease, soon the discursive feminist space on the internet articulated its reservations against the campaign powerfully and in no uncertain terms. If the advertising agency and the people behind it think that all publicity is good publicity then it is entitled to think so naively. That is hardly the point—that is, merely making an ‘impact’ through bad publicity or controversy. The success and failure of the campaign depends on many variables and the jury is still out. But it is not just about whether those images are ‘reaching a target spectatorship’ but about trying to understand the context, timing and also the modes of representation. In this case, the detractors tell us that using such battered images and narrative in order to make a case against domestic violence is shady and untrustworthy at several levels. First, contextually, the organization behind this campaign is a deeply conservative one which is trying to cash in on drawing our attention to such retrogressive images of womanhood, women as distant and glorified goddesses. The organization funding it: Save Our Sisters—the very name betraying the worst kind of infantilizing and patronizing NGO activity that is rife when such organizations, flushed with funds and a civilizing missionary zeal undertake to save backward, unenlightened nations such as ours. Taproot, the advertising agency behind the campaign seems to be playing right into the hands of people having such disturbing motivations. In addition to patronizing, in this case the narrative is orientalised rather crassly, it would seem. This is a problem that the feminists have been alive to right from the initial stages of the movement: that the latent codes of protective chivalry and spin thereof not only fortify established domestic structures and hierarchies but may hide within themselves a culture of perversity against its victims privately. Such secret perversity is perpetrated by highlighting the exaggerated, hyperbolic mode of socially representing women as unattainable and chaste creatures. For example, one may ask whether a lascivious hunter mentality lurks beneath when the god-man highlights chastity in women and concomitant asceticism in men, taking quick protective cudgels on behalf of the entire womenfolk. There is something dubious in the very language that argues for such purity. Even as such false glorification goes on in public, battering, maiming and abuse may go on unchecked within. As it often does. The reprehensible nature of such enterprise needs to be marked, identified and brought to notice. Again and again. In some parts of the West, (particularly in Northern Europe and the Low countries) democratization and reformed modes of Christianity have been able to exorcise such forms of ‘medievalism’. Until forms of irrationality and monstrosity erupt again. Individual acts of violence and passion sometimes take collective shape from time to time. They surprise us with their staying power. But just like these advertisements are not just about their impact, they are also not necessarily and purely about the motivations of this or that dubious organization. I wonder whether there is more to it than to be ‘for’ or ‘against’ such representations; representations that are likely to come back to us in future too in new ways. And not necessarily from such missionaries either. How can this event and act of representation be historicised by not radically separating the practices of social agents from their multiple identities in their dynamic, active culture but by prolonging personal and collective memory? This is something that I wish to talk about, namely, the simultaneity of presence, absence and anteriority in a chain of a narrative about memory in acts of representations. And what might be the secrets of the represented object with the operations of representing? Is it of any use to the feminist discourse if we are able to read the discourse of infantilizing by taking it to its logical extreme, that is, by marking the traces of the monstrous and perverse within the interstices of representation and history? The Mnemonic Image The idea of mythical images taking a full shape would appreciate its Janus faced double-handedness: on one hand is the enactment of the mimetic art of likeness, by giving proportion and depth to the models and thus claiming a certain kind of iconic realism. But images of worship, the miraculous eruptions that sustain the validity of such images also simultaneously produce an appearance and simulacrum—a metaphysical excess by which proportion no longer remain natural. Images spill over. Images of worship then may become monstrous or sublime or serene which may again be accompanied by simultaneous forms of monstrosity. There are times when the mimetic may exceed its original purpose and become expressive or both tendencies may create a productive tension within an act of representation. It is here that eikestic art may relate to the fantastic. History marries form. It is upon this wilful deception, relying on a Coleridgean sense of willing suspension of disbelief, that the whole idea of relating to images and icons and relics and symbols stand or fall. The binary division of history and mythography is suspended and the material nature of irrationality is brought before our senses in its full force when the idea of the mnemonic image begins to take shape. If it happens purely at the terrain of the image, it sidesteps the temporal, historical dimension. That is private aesthetic. But if we provide history with movement and simultaneity then the mnemonic may serve other functions. Many cultures live in simultaneous time. So, we say that such and such person has a feudal mindset or such and such is thoroughly modern in her outlook or in fashioning herself. Many temporal varieties of people make our world and therefore, each one of us may hide multiplicity of temporality within us too. What happens to representations when we come to them from our various selves? Carlo Ginzburg
Coldness and Cruelty: Two Contracts of von Sacher-Masoch
I Contract between Mrs Fanny von Pistor and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch On his word of honour, Mr Leopold von Sacher-Masoch undertakes to be the slave of Mrs von Pistor, and to carry out all her wishes for a period of six months. On her behalf, Mrs von Pistor shall not demand anything of him that would dishonor him in any way (as a man or as a citizen). Moreover, she shall allow him six hours a day for his personal work, and shall never look at his letters and writings. On the occurrence of any misdemeanor or negligence or act of lèse majesté, the mistress (Fanny von Pistor) may punish her slave (Leopold von Sacher-Masoch) in whatever manner she pleases. In short, the subject shall obey his sovereign with complete servility and shall greet any benevolence on her part as a precious gift; he shall not lay claim to her love nor to any right to be her lover. On her behalf, Fanny von Pistor undertakes to wear furs as often as possible, especially when she is behaving cruelly. At the end of the six months, this period of enslavement shall be considered by both parties as not having occurred, and they shall make no serious allusion to it. Everything that happened is to be forgotten, and the previous loving relationship restored. These six months need not run consecutively: they make be subject to interruptions beginning and ending according to the whims of the sovereign lady. We, the undersigned, confirm this contract, FANNY PISTOR BAGANOW LEOPOLD, KNIGHT OF SACHER-MASOCH Came into operation 8th December 1869. ———————————————————————— II Contract between Wanda and Sacher-Masoch My Slave, The conditions under which I accept you as my slave and tolerate you at my side are as follows: You shall renounce your identity completely. You shall submit totally to my will. In my hands you are a blind instrument that carries out all my orders without discussion. If ever you should forget that you are my slave and do not obey me implicitly in all matters, I shall have the right to punish and correct you as I please, without your daring to complain. Anything pleasant and enjoyable that I shall grant you will be a favour on my part which you must acknowledge with gratitude. I shall always behave faultlessly toward you but shall have no obligations to do so. You shall be neither a son nor a brother nor a friend; you shall be no more than my slave groveling in the dust. Your body and your soul too shall belong to me, and even if this causes you great suffering, you shall submit your feelings and sentiments to my authority. I shall be allowed to exercise the greatest cruelty, and if I should mutilate you, you shall bear it without complaint. You shall work for me like a slave and although I may wallow in luxury whilst leaving you in privation and treading you underfoot, you shall kiss the foot that tramples you without a murmur. I shall have the right to dismiss you at any time, but you shall not be allowed to leave me against my will, and if you should escape, you hereby recognize that I have the power and the right to torture you to death by the most horrible methods imaginable. You have nothing save me; for you I am everything, your life, your future, your happiness, your unhappiness, your torment and your joy. You shall carry out everything I ask of you, whether it is good or evil, and if I should demand that you commit a crime, you shall turn criminal to obey my will. Your honour belongs to me, as does your blood, your mind, and your ability to work. Should you ever find my domination unendurable and should your chains ever become too heavy, you shall be obliged to kill yourself for I will never set you free. “I undertake, on my word of honour, to be the slave of Mrs Wanda von Dunajew, in the exact way that she demands, and to submit myself without resistance to everything she will impose on me.” DR. LEOPOLD, KNIGHT OF SACHER-MASOCH ————————————————————————————————————————————— Leopold von Sacher-Masoch was born in 1835 in Lemberg, Galicia. He was of Slav, Spanish and Bohemian descent. His ancestors held official positions in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His father was Chief of Police of Lemburg, and as a child he witnessed prison scenes and riots which were to have a profound effect on him. He was appointed Professor of History at Graz and began his literary career by writing historical novels. He met with rapid success: one of his first genre novels, The Divorced Woman (1870) aroused interest even in America. …In the language of Masoch’s folklore, history, politics, mysticism, eroticism, nationalism and perversion are closely intermingled, forming a nebula around the scenes of flagellation; he was consequently disturbed when Krafft-Ebing [Text-book of Insanity, 1879; Psychopathia Sexualis, 1886] used his name to designate a perversion. Masoch was famous and honored as a writer. Masoch’s tastes in matters of love are well known: he enjoyed pretending to be a bear or a bandit or having himself pursued, tied up and subject to punishments, humiliations and even acute physical pain by an opulent fur-clad woman with a whip; he was given to dressing up as a servant, making use of all kinds of fetishes and disguises, placing advertisements in newspapers, signing contracts with the women in his life and if need be prostituting them. An affair with Anna von Kottowitz inspired The Divorced Woman, another affair, with Fanny von Pistor, Venus in Furs. Then a young lady by the name of Aurore Rumelin approached him by means of a somewhat ambiguous correspondence, took the pseudonym of Wanda, and married Masoch in 1873. As a companion she was at once docile, demanding and overwhelmed. Masoch was fated to be disappointed as though the masquerades he planned were bound to give rise to misunderstandings. He was