Human relationship always defined the dynamics of the action of Lawrentian novel. D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) is one of the greatest names in the history of English novel. He, along with Henry James, Joseph Conrad, James Joyce is the man behind the form and function of the newly developed genre called Modern Novel.
Lawrence published his first novel The White Peacock in 1911. This period was defined in terms of severe emotional complexity. Lawrence endured the shock of his brother's death in 1901 and the shock was so strong that he fell it. His mother's illness was another factor that went on creating new strains and stresses that reverberated incessantly in the writer's mind. The White Peacock failed to earn critical acclaim but it predicts the birth of a genius the domain of novel writing. Despite being a failure, his first novel is significant for the portrayal of four characters, Letti, the peacock, who glorifies her vanity in her triumph over man and enjoys sadistic pleasure when she sees a man servile to her vanity and charm. In a sharp contrast with her is the Leslie Lempast, a man with conservative stamp of mind and mellowed by the stronger personality of his wife; George the son of the soil who makes a mess of his life who falls prey to the seductive charms of a belle dame but faith with her love and invites frustration, and then Annabel who enshrines two Lawrentian myths the superiority of the rich and the charms of the white peacock. It is a great thing to the credit of Lawrence that these four characters recur incessantly in the fictional domain of Lawrence right till the end.
Lawrence's second novel The Tresspasser appeared in 1912. It is the least known of all of his novels. It is also the reason why the publication of the novel was suspended for a fairly long period. The story lacked connectivity : the plot was too poor to speak about Hueffer, commenting on the novel frankly opined that it is 'a rotten book of a genius'. He concluded this assessment say that an 'erotic work must be a good art which this is not'.1 'There is, write Kenneth Young, a sense of erotic frustration'. Young further explains that the 'physical elimination is neither felt nor visualized'.2
Sons and Lovers published in 1913 is the most consummate form of the novel writing. The novel also marks the consummation of the first phase of the fictional writing. Lawrence started writing the novel when his mother was on the death–bed. It is obvious that mother fixation is one the prominent aspects of the thematic structure of the novel. The novel also offers reply to those who criticized him for his inability to write a well–framed novel. Horace Gregory rightly affirms :
The process of writing Sons and Lovers was a process of mastering the technique of the novel : please himself; to please Edward Garnett, to convince his friendliest of the critic of his control over the medium, it was necessary for his first important work to have the texture of a complete novel.3
It is thus clear from the Gregory's views that Sons and Lovers is the first novel of conventional plot–structure and the growth of the character which closely resembled the conventional plot–structure of a victorian novel.
Sons and Lovers, unambiguously makes the most celebrated example of the maestro's adherence to this theme and his fixation with the mother provides essential fictional value to the narrative. Lawrence, in a letter to Garnett explains :
It follows this idea : a woman of character and refinement goes into the lower class, and has no satisfaction in her own life. She has a passion for her husband, so the children are born of passion and have heaps of vitality. But as her sons grew up, she selects them as lovers, first the eldest, then the second. These sons are urged into life by their reciprocal love for their mother–urge on and on. But then they come to manhood, they can't love because their mother is the strongest power in their lives and holds them. It is rather like Goethe and his mother, France Van Stein and Christian. As soon as the young man came into contact with woman, there is a split. William gave his sex to a fribble and his mother holds his soul. But they spin because he doesn't know where he is. The next son gets a woman who fights for his soul, fights his mother. The son loves the mother, all the sons hate and are jealous of father. The battle goes on between the mother and the girl, with son as object. The mother gradually proves stronger because of the tie of blood. The son decides to leave his soul in his mother's hand and like his elder brother, goes for passion. He gets passion then the split begins to fell again. But almost unconsciously, the mother realizes what is the matter and begins to die. The son casts off his mistress, attends to his mother dying. He is left in the end naked of everything with his drift towards death.4
It is clear from Lawrence's letter to his critic–friend that the sexual dissatisfaction of the woman is at the center of the theme and out of that sexual dissatisfaction, she nurtures the children with the passion of lovers and the passion in turn perverts the life cycle of her sons. There are two questions that form the extreme of the axis of the whole structure of the novel. The first important point is that a sexually dissatisfied woman as a result of the cool and well nurtured rage adopts her own sons as lovers. The second important point deals with the inextricable relationship between the mother–fixation and the sex–life of the sons.
Mrs. Morel is the protagonist of the first part of the novel and both the aspects of the theme discussed above are defined chiefly through her. She belongs to a lower middle class family and is brought up with high moral sense that makes her legacy of generations of puritans. She is deeply religious and loves ideas and considered very intellectual. The strain comes as a result of the two moods sharply at variance with each other. Paul on the contrary was a man purely of flesh that resulted into the strain making pivot of the dynamics of the novel :
His nature was purely sensuous and, she strove to make him moral religious. She tried to force him to face things. He could not endure it, it drove him out of his mind.5
Mrs. Morel remained harsh in dealing with her husband. In the circumstances of intoxication or squandering money, she adopts a relentless attitude whereas her husband opts for rage and indifference. The episode in which Morel drives her out of house in the wintry night is an apt revelation of this; specially in the light of the fact that she was pregnant.
It is more than obvious that Sons and Lovers is an autobiographical novel and the autobiographical elements are not manifest in terms of sexual strains and marital incompatibilities but the violent antithetic impulses between the lower and lower middle classes of the society also reflect here. The first part of the novel has very obvious strains of the class compartmentalization in the lower and lower middle classes of the contemporary society. The recurrence of the class struggle is also a much prominent, though, ignored aspect of the fictional domain of D.H. Lawrence that acquires a much prominent role in Aaron's Rod published in 1922. The growing indifference between Walter Morel and Mrs. Morel and Mrs. Morel's dislike for Jerry Purdy who was a bosom friend of Walter Morel have twin implications : one hand it reveals the vibrant strains between the husband and wife and on the other hand it reflects the antithesis within the society at various levels. The views of Edmund Wilson invite our attention. He, in his celebrated article, "Marxism and Literature", comments :
Yet a man who tries to apply Marxist principles without real understanding of literature is liable to go horribly wrong. For one thing, it is usually true in works of highest order that the purport is not a single message, but a complex vision of things, which itself is not explicit but implicit; and the reader who does not grasp them artistically but is merely looking for simple social morals, is certain to be confused.6
The relevance of Wilson's views are evidenced in the complexity of vision put to scrutiny and perception by Lawrence. The marital strains, sexual incompatibility and the class struggle are so completely fused that to isolate one from the rest is nearly impossible and the fusion leads to a composite perception of the complex vision of the novel.
William, the first born of Morels redefines the rhythm of the action with new strains. The growing indifference of Morel obliges Mrs Morel to pour all her love on her first born. The first major twist in the direction of Oedipal manifestation is observed with the birth of jealousy in the mind of the father for his son. Morel's act of clipping of the locks of William's hair when he was barely one year old illustrates the complex emotion pervading the universe peopled by the three : Waller Morel, Mrs. Morel and William. The event also determines the course of action of the novel by aggravating the pore existing indifference between the couple and simultaneously the future of the mother and child and father and child relationship.
The birth of Paul is a starking instance of the irony of the real and desired. The use of irony also predicts the nature of action and experience of the novel. Mrs. Morel didn't want the child but her motherly instinct shoot up meteorically and she resolves to produce the child. The birth of the child is aptly metaphorical to and illustrative of various forms of antithesis that define the dynamics of the plot structure of the novel. The struggle between two classes, lower and lower middle, is recreated again in the childhood of the children. They grow up under the strict supervision of their mother who never allows them to play with the children of miners. Mrs. Morel's strict abnegation comes out with two fold implications : it reveals the struggle between the two classes and at the same time it also reveals the growing contempt of the mother for her children's father. Paul gradually acquires protagonistic stature. Lawrence narrates the family discord from the point of view of Paul, the new protagonist :
Often Paul would wake up, after he had been asleep for a long time, aware of thuds downstairs. Instantly he was wide awake. Then he heard the booming shouts of his father, come home nearly drunk, then the sharp replies of his mother, then the bang, bang of his father's fist on the table, and nasty snarling about as the man's voice got higher. And then the whole was drowned in the piercing medley of shrieks and cries, from the great wind swept ash tree. The children lay silent in suspense, waiting for a lull in the wind to hear what their father was doing. He might hit their mother again. There was a feeling of horror, a kind of bristling in the darkness, and a sense of blood. They lay with their heart in the grip of immense anguish. The wind came through.7
The anguish of the children was shaped into by the mother for their father. Whenever the mother returned home bitter and angry the children would surround their mother like tiny companions. Mrs. Morel takes over William completely and when he secures employment as a clerk at some firm in London, she is glutted with inordinate pride and relief.
The strains pervading different corners of the miner's house are redefined when William, in London, falls in love with Miss Weston, and brings her home on Christmas. Lawrence intensifies the effect by cyclic recreation of time image. It is more than predictable that Mrs. Morel found the girl quite shallow and is least reluctant to show her dislike. Mrs. Morel William and Miss Weston creates an unusual love–triangle. It was a tormenting love triangle; William lived divided between love for his mother and infatuation for his girl friend. He was delivered only by death from the tormenting strain that owes its origin to the fragmented emotion of love.
The story in the first part of the novel is narrated from the point of view of Mrs. Morel; tale of woman's hunger for love and consequent perversion. Williams' death also paves way for the protagonistic stature of Paul, her second son. It is an important observation that her intimacy with Paul is more subtle than with the first born. Paul, a promising student, with many prizes and scholarships against his name that, made her mother proud. When Paul secures a job in London's Surgical Appliances Factory, she was assured that her son was well on his way to prosperity. It was also a latent desire of her mother that her son should marry wisely. She keeps an eagle eye on him. The action and experience latent in the novel is redefined and it results into the making of new strain. The views of Philip Hobsbaum invite our attention. He, on this phase of the development of the novel, remarks :
However, often Paul Morel, the Lawrence figure of the novel grows up, Sons and Lovers transmutes into what is virtually a different book. The sympathy, the author enlists for Mrs. Morel is no longer opposed to her brutish husband. Rather it is set against an object who may seem considerably less legitimate as a focus for enmity, Paul's first love Mirium. Such enmity makes this second part into a bed story for Mrs. Morel.8
Paul's love for Mirium reverberates and revitalizes the strain in the narrative. Man–woman relation acquires new reverberations with a new unconventional love–triangle. Mirium was extremely sensitive, deeply religious. Mrs. Morel's reaction to the growing attachment of Paul towards Mirium is predictable. Her reaction to Mirium was that she was 'one of those who will want to suck a man's soul and till he was none of his own left'.8 Lawrence delineate Paul and Mirium with platonic inclination towards each other. They were sexually immature so their love is manifest at sentimental level. Even after teens their relationship does not acquire typical Lawrentian maturity. The tragedy owes its origin to Paul's mother fixation. He owes his mother a notion of faithfulness. His perplexed childhood made him incapable of loving a girl. Mirium loves Paul with body and soul but he could not enjoy the liberty of loving a girl as long as his mother lived :
The fact that he might want her as a man wants a woman had in him been suppressed into shame.10
Paul's fixation with his mother and obsession with Mirium tears him into pieces. The narrative has a balance of the two paradoxical strains : the protagonist's love towards his mother and his love towards Mirium. Joseph Warren Beach rightly analyses the strains in the narrative. He says :
Sons and Lovers is primarily the story of mother fixation. Paul's love for Mirium is a desperate attempt to free himself from his excessive attachment to his mother. But this he cannot do. He cannot give to Mirium what has already been made over to his mother; and thus comes about that torturing dichotomy between him and the woman who wants all his love and to whom he can give but half.11
Paul nearly wrecks when he confesses to Mirium :
I can only give friendship – it is all I am capable of, it's a flaw in my make up. The thing over balances to one side. I had a hoppling balance. Let us have done.12
Paul likes the divided love and this agony seeks expression when he, on twenty first birthday of Mirium writes to her :
You see I can give you split love. I have given it to you this long long time but not embodied passion. See you are a nun. I have given you what I would give a holy nun as a mystic monk to a holy nun.12
The piece of epistle written by Paul to Mirium aptly illustrates pulsations of love of Paul for Mirium and simultaneously, it also reflects the insurmountable burden of mother fixation. Paul, however, admits that 'there is some sort of perversity in' their 'souls' that makes them 'not want get away from the very thing they want'.13 The confession of Paul ratifies the simultaneous existence of both the antithetic vibrations.
The advent of Mrs. Clara Dawes is a significant event in the narrative that works and new twists and turns for the development of the theme. Sex instinct propell him fast towards Clara Dawes who, unlike Mirium, was a married woman. But instead of smooth sexual interaction, Paul falters again.
He was like so many young men of his own age. Sex had become so complicated in him that he would have denied that he ever could want Clara or Mirium or any woman whom he knew. Sex desire was a sort of detached thing for him that didn't belong to a woman. He loved Mirium with his soul. It grew warm at the thought of Clara, he battled with her, he knew the curves of her breasts and her shoulders as if they have been moulded inside him and yet he did not positively desire her. He would have denied it forever.14
There is little antipathy between Clara and Mrs. Morel. One wanted to possess Paul spiritually while the other wanted him physically. Paul too had no intention to possess Clara but she was instrumental in working out a relief. Paul realizes and reveals that he would not get the right woman until his mother survives. Mrs. Morel's spiritual ailment seeks a physical counterpart when he becomes a patient of cancer. Paul pities his mother's pains and resolves to free her from all pains. One day he gives her a large dose of Morphine and frees her from all her pains. It results into the extinction of the life flame. Mrs. Morel's death was as much a relief for her as for her son but Paul's fixation with his mother was so strong that his soul oscillated between life and death :
She was the only thing that held hours up amid all this. And she was gone, intermingled herself. He wanted her to touch him, have him alongside with her. But no, he would not give in sharply, his fists were shut, his mouth set for. He would not take that direction, to the darkness, to follow her. He walked towards the faintly humming glowing town quickly.15
The above quoted excerpt make it clear that to realize life it is necessary to realize death and vice–versa. The views of Dorothy Van Ghent invite our attention. She points out :
Sons and Lovers ends with Paul a derelict in a drift towards death, which Lawrence thought of as the disease syndrome of his time and of Europe. But the death drift or the death worship is for Lawrence a hideous distortion of the relationship of life to death.16
Dorothy Van Ghent makes it clear that for Lawrence death is as dynamic as life and life without death ceases to matter.
The novel, it is widely spanning ambit encapsulates as many as three different permutations of man–woman relation, however, all the three are defined in terms of one great force determining the nature and experience of these relations. The first important couple delineated to define human relation is of Walter Morel and Mrs. Morel. The love dies and soon after their conjugation is solemnized but the pain not only defines the human relation along sexual and spiritual dimensions, but it also brings into being the idea of class struggle, which is the factor responsible for twists and turns in the narrative and it is also the idea which reverberates with defining value in many other novels of the maestro.
The tragedy of William and Mrs. Weston owes its cause to the mother complex. There are critics like Harry T. Moore and Richard Aldington who opine that the novel is the first major representation of Freud's theories of psycho analysis. But it is important to note that despite evident similarities, the novel had little to do with the Freud's theories of psycho analysis. The tragedy of Sons and Lovers originates from the tragedy of author's life that pervaded the whole milieu for about one generation. It is aptly represented by the wrecking couples of William and Mrs. Weston, Paul and Mirium and to a great extent Paul and Claura, who possessed each other deeply but remained spiritually indifferent, and, have direct bearings upon the life of the author and simultaneously on life of his own generation.
1D.H. Lawrence, Letters to Edward Garnett (London : Green and Company, 1982) 15.
2Kenneth Young, D.H. Lawrence (London : Longman, 1952) 30.
3Horace Gregory, Pilgrim of Apocalypse, A Critical Study of the Writings of D.H. Lawrence (London : Martin Secker, 1934) 17–18.
4Lawrence, Letters to Edward Garnett, 76.
5D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers (London : Penguin Books, 1949) 33.
6Edmund Wilson, "Marxism and Literature", 20th Century Literary Criticism – A Reader, ed. David Lodge (London : Longman, 1989) 247.
7Phillip Hobsbaum, A Reader's Guide to D.H. Lawrence (London : Thames and Hudson, 1981) 49.
8Lawrence, Sons and Lovers, 199.
9Lawrence, Sons and Lovers, 221.
10Joseph Warren Beach (New Delhi : Kalyani, 1988) 379.
11Lawrence, Sons and Lovers, 271.
12Lawrence, Sons and Lovers, 307.
13Lawrence, Sons and Lovers, 345.
14Lawrence, Sons and Lovers, 337.
15Lawrence, Sons and Lovers, 501.
16Dorothy, Van Ghent, The English Novel : Form and Function (London : Harper Torch Book, 1961) 261.
Abrams, M.H. A Glossary of Literary Terms. New Delhi : Macmillan, 1988.
Allott, Mirium, Novelists on Novel. London : Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1960.
Beach, Joseph Warren. The Twentieth Century Novel – Studies in Technique. New Delhi : Kalyani, 1988, Rev. Ed.
Gregory, Horace. A Pilgram of Apocalypse : A Critical Study of the Writings of D.H. Lawrence. London : Marity Seeker, 1936.
Hobsbaum, Philip. A Reader's Guide to Lawrence, D.H. London : Thames and Hudson, 1981.
Lawrence, D.H. The White Peacock. London : Penguin, 1950.
Lawrence, D.H. The Trespasser. London : William Heinemann Ltd., 1950.
Lawrence, D.H. Sons and Lovers. London : Penguin Books, 1949.
Lawrence, D.H. Aaron's Rod. London : Penguin Books, 1950.
Lawrence, D.H. Letters to Edward Garnett. London : Green and Company, 1982.
Van Ghent, Dorothy. The English Novel : Form and Function. London : Harper Torch Book, 1961.
Young Kenneth. D.H. Lawrence. London : Longman, 1952.
Wilson, Edmund. "Marxism and Literature" 20th Century Criticism – A Reader. London : Longman, 1989, 241–252.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Friday, March 26, 2010
Girish Karnad
Girish Karnad is the most important name in the area of play writing in Indian English Literature. It is unfortunate that the tradition of Indo–English drama earned minimum critical attention. The idea is ratified by K.R.S. Iyengar. He asserts that the Indo–English drama is 'neither rich in quantity nor on the whole is of high quality'1. The most unfortunate aspect of Indo–anglican drama is that it has never been fit for performance on the stage.
The greatness of Girish Karnad lies the success on the stage as well as among the readers. The use of folk elements is one of the reasons behind Karnad's success as a playwright. Iyengar, commenting on the dramatic technique of Karnad, says :
In all his three plays – be the theme historical, mythical or legendary, Karnad's approach is 'modern', and he deploys the conventions and motifs of folk art like masks and curtains to project a world of intensities, uncertainties and unpredictable denoument2.
Folk art originated in the areas where most of the people could not read and write. The genesis of this form can be attributed to the intellectual limitations of the primitive audience that found certain elements like supernatural fantasy, myths and legends, the hyperbolic beliefs associated with animals, and nature to be more absorbing. The rhyme used in folk art is simple, almost of the type of nursery rhyme and the interpretation of nature and weather also has a distinct logic, typical of the region that marks the growth of the art form. The performance of folk arts was chiefly associated with festivals and it is, however, imperative that the scope of festivity was not confined to the celebration of mirth but even the death rites contribute significantly to folk art. There had been inseparable correlation between the folk art and sophisticated art. Abrams points out that "elements of folklore have at times entered into sophisticated written literature". He also cites the instance of "three caskets in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, and the superstition about the maiden's dream which is central to Keat's Eve of St. Agnes, are both derived from folklore"3.
Communal and regional elements are of defining significance in the folklore. It has been discussed earlier that the folk songs are designed chiefly in a festive mood and, hence, it should be so composed that it is adopted by a large audience with rustic mindset. Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics elaborates the idea that 'a song may have been composed by an individual but it does not become a folk song unless it is adopted by a folk and recreated communally"4. It reveals the most important function of the folklore in a sophisticated piece of writing and it is to universalize the themes and add to the acceptability of the technical complexities.
The play begins with a long soliloquy. The action in the "Prologue" is set in a ruined temple with the broken idol. The playwright intensifies mystery as "the presiding deity of the temple cannot be identified". The authorial soliloquy begins with emphasis on the image of death. The man in the temple, identifiable with the author, speaks.
Man : I may be dead within next few hours (Long Pause).
I am not talking of 'acting' dead. Actually dead. I might die right in front of your eyes.
The reference to the medicant further ratifies the pervasion of folklorish elements in the speech of the man in the temple.
A medicant hold me : you must keep awake at least one whole night this month. If you can do that, you'll live. If not, you'll die on the last night of the month5.
The piece of the monologue discussed above suggests the predominance of the folklorish elements in the play. The image of death and medicant are employed with absorbing intensity.
The use of the supernatural is an inevitable in folk art. It has been discussed earlier that the folk art is meant to entertain the audience with limited intellect. Thus, in order to keep the audience absorbed, the narrator makes use of the supernatural. The three flames on the stage with female voices introduce supernatural fantasy. The speaker confirms the importance of the supernatural, through surprise.
Man : I don't believe it ! They are naked lamp flames ! No wicks, no lamps. No one holding them. Just lamp flames on their own, floating in the air ! Is that even possible ?6
It is, however, noticeable that the supernatural in the modern literature is conspicuous for its figurative implications. It is to be noted that the supernatural, besides being absorbing, has tremendous figurative suggestions, which accounts for the balance between the supernatural and the metaphorical. The views of E. M. Forster invite our attention. He, commenting on the function of fantasy, writes :
It implies the supernatural but need not express it. Often it does express it, and were that type of classification helpful we could make a list of the devices which writers of fantastic turn have used, such as the introduction of a god, ghost, angel, monkey, monster, midgut, which is into no man's land, the future, the past, the interior of the earth, the fourth dimension or dividing into and dividing of personality; or finally the device of parody or adaptation7.
It is clear that except the folklorish fantasy contributes significantly to the design of the play. The conversation between the Flame 4 and the man is an apt justification of this fact. Fantasy is also manifest through personification. The character of Story offers testimony to it :
The Story, in form of a woman, dressed in a new colourful sari, enters, acknowledges the enthusiastic welcome from the flames, with a languid waves of the hand and goes and sits in a corner looking most despondent. The flames gather around her.8
Folk tales always enjoyed a fair degree of festivity which is involuntary of songs and music. The playwright introduces the idea of festivity of birth and death in a cyclic correlation. The Man tells Story that 'it is a matter of life and death' for him. The playwright also makes a share of rustic audience. The Story and Flames perform the function of audience. The playwright says :
Throughout the rest of the play, the Man and the Story remain on stage. The flames too listen attentively though from distance.9
Story introduces the first major character of the play and does in the manner of a folk tale. The character is Rani, the 'Queen of the whole wide world'. It is a characteristic beginning of a folk tale with a rich complicity of the modern tendencies because her 'real name doesn't matter'. The reference to King Cobra foretells about another major character :
For when her hair was tied up in a knot, it was as though, a black king Cobra lay curled on her neck, coil upon glistening coil. When it hung loose, the tresses flowed, a torrent of black, along her young limbs, and got entangled in her silver anklets.
The opening paragraph brings into focus a number of technical aspects that are taken from folk art. The introduction of the second major character once again ratifies the author's respect for folk elements. About Rani's husband Story informs :
Soon her husband came and took her with him to his village. His name was – well, any common name will do10.
The conventions of folk tales are operated upon by subtle onslaught of irony and creates the milieu of a poor boy and a rich girl. However, Appanna and Rani both belong to same status yet the names create an atmosphere of folk tales.
Animal imagery has always been widely used in folk tales. Snakes have always been commanding an enviable position in the folk tale. The mystery associated with Cobra always commands a distinct place in the folk tales. It is important to note that King Cobra has been widely used for the delineation of complex themes and ideas. It is an animal with characteristic implications that make it a complex symbol. The legends knit around it further intensify the figurative implications inherent in it. The first spark of this complex image is realized when Kapanna compares Appanna with Cobra :
Kappanna : Mother, you can't do this ! You can't start meddling in other people's affairs. The first thing in the morning. That Appanna should have been born a wild beast or a reptile. By some mistake, he got human birth. He can't understand other people. Why do you want to tangle with him.11
Rituals always play an important role in the design of the folk art. The image of a coconut which is an image that owes its significance to local rites :
Kurudavva : In the right hand side of the wooden box is a coconut shell wrapped in a piece of paper. Inside are iron pieces of roots. Bring them.12
It is interesting to note that the character of Kurudavva is typical of folk–tales character, who contributes to the escalation of the action in the play. She contrives to accelerate the action by subtle use of the supernatural 'Women's role in these folk tales'. Brinda E. F. Beck and Peter of Clause observe in the "Introduction" to Folktales of India, also deserve special note'. They observe :
Key female characters, furthermore are often like tricksters in that they hold underdog positions. Many triumphs against great idols (for example against less virtuous woman) by combining selflessness with moral courage and religious dedication.13
The views of Beck and Claus hold perfect relevance in interpreting the characters of Kurudavva. However, she is not a 'trickster'. She combines selflessness with moral courage and religious dedication to secure 'triumph' over 'less virtuous' woman.
Kurudavva's initiative paves way for the use of myth which constitutes a necessary aspect of a folktale. Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, defines :
Myth may be defined as story or a complex of story elements taken as expressing and, therefore, as implicitly symbolizing certain deep lying aspects of human and trans–human experience14.
Karnad makes use of Kunti–myth. Kunti, the mother of Pandavas was blessed by Durvasa for conception at will. She was also blessed with power to share the boon with the one she wants to, and, she in turn, does it with Madri. Karnad recreates the duo of Kunti and Madri in a new form and with a new function. Kurudavva's revelation to Rani ratifies author's debt to the Mahabharata. She confides :
One day a medicant came to our house. No one was home. I was alone. I looked after him in every way. Cooked hot food specially for him and served him to his heart's content. He was pleased with me and gave me three pieces of a root 'Any man who eats one of them will marry you', he said.15
It is interesting to note that the medicant in a recreation of Durvasa and Kurudavva is a recreation of Kunti. The blessings of Durvasa have been concretized in to three roots.
Karnad also fuses the famous conventions of folktales : the convention of a princess kept in cage by a monster. Appanna, in the beginning he draws parallel with Rani and inkles a princely valour but soon he is transformed into a new identity :
Rani : So the demon locks her up in this castle. Then it rains for seven days and seven nights, it pours. The sea floods the city. The waters breaks down the door of the castle. Then a big whale comes to Rani and says : 'Come Rani, let us go'.16
The use of folklorish elements acquire complexity with the inclusion of Naga who consumes the root that was meant for Appanna. The use the supernatural is fused with legend and myth. The supernatural imparts dramatic intensity to the Legend. The playwrite deploys Story to intensity – the dramatic effect caused by the supernatural myth of King Cobra acquiring any form and shape.
Story, As you know, a Cobra can assume any form it likes. That night, it entered the house through the bathroom drain and took the shape of –17
The Cobra myth performs the function of intensifying the dramatic effect and it also makes a complex metaphor that balances the modern and the ancient; the primitive and the sophisticated. The cobra myth provides the playwrite with an opportunity to use mask which is a conspicuous aspects of folk–drama, and, at the same time it also creates a complex metaphor. The supernatural in the play is fused with hallucination and completes the bridge between the modern and the folklorish. The play makes a world of desire, frustration, insatiated libidoes represented by the thin ambivalence between the real and the surreal; the natural and the supernatural. Rani furnishes some complementation to story when she compares Apparna with a snake in conversation with Naga who has assumed the form of her husband :
Rani : You talk so nicely at night. But during the day I only have to open my mouth and you hiss–like a stupid snake
(Naga Laughs)
It is all very well for you to laugh. I feel like crying18.
In creating Cobra myth, the playwrite once again acknowledges his debt to folklorish elements. A reference to the views of M.H.Abrams is again obligatory who defines a myth as one story in a mythology – a system of hereditary story which were once believed to be true by a particular cultural group and which, he further explains 'serves to explain (in terms of the intentions and actions of supernatural beings) why the world is as it is and things happen or they do'.19 Abrams' views hold perfect significance in Karnad's caste of the play and imagery. Cobra assuming human form is an old belief in India.
The growing intimacy between the Cobra and Rani define the complexity of the theme. The conjugation between Rani and the Cobra is depicted through the dialogues between Rani and Kurudavva. The affirmative response of Rani to Kurudavva's query if she has 'started her married life' ratifies the union Kurudavva's giggling remark further ratifies the idea :
Kurudavva (laughs) Tired ? Poor thing! So you see the power of my roots. Didn't I tell you your husband will sting to you once he tastes it ?20
It is remarkable that besides the use of Cobra myth, Karnad employs a number of supernatural beliefs. Kapanna's revelation to his mother is an apt testimony of this preference of the playwrite which confirms his debt to the elements of folk :
Kappanna : she is not a village girl. Which village girl will dare step out at this hour ? And I am not making up stories. That day she floated out from the haunted well. Just now she stepped out of the cemetery. Looked at me, smiled and waved.21
The death of the dog is followed by the death of the mongoose. It is noticeable that the fight between the Cobra and the mongoose contribute more significantly to the theme of the play. 'There was no sign of Appanna at night after the death of the mongoose and Rani spent her nights crying, waiting and pining for him'. When Appanna started visiting her at night 'his body was covered with wounds which had only partly healed'. Story's narration inkles the genesis of scepticism in the mind of Rani 'her husband' when he comes during the day 'had no scar on him'.22 Karnad juxtapose the real with the illusory. The use of myth acquires new reverberations when Rani reveals that she is pregnant.
Rani : I have definite evidence to prove I was not fantasizing. Naga : What evidence ?
Rani : I am pregnant.23
Karnad make use of the myth about the birth of child through the intercourse of human and animal. In the Ramayana, a female crocodile conceives through a drop of sweat fallen from the body of Hanuman. Likewise Cobra Ordeal is recreation of the myth of Sita's Agni Pareeksha. The Cobra indeed intensifies scintillations of the ironic prevailing the milieu. Rani pulls the Cobra out and declares that 'Since coming to this village', she has 'held by this hand only two ...' Rani's clarifications at the questions raised at her firmly stablish simultaneous existence of the ironic :
Yes, my husband and this King Cobra. Except for these two I have not touched anyone of the male–sex. Nor have I allowed any other male to touch me. If I lie let the cobra bite me.
The irony acquires spiral twist when Elder II declares that 'she is not a woman' but a 'divine being'24 and Elder II ratifies.
The Cobra Ordeal leads to another aspect of the complex theme of the play. It is commonly observed that Folk tales deal quite exclusively with gods and such heroic figure. Irony once again plays a functional role. Rani with all her deprivation is transformed into a living goddess. The crowd surged 'forward to postrate itself before her' and even Appanna 'falls at her feet'. The action arrives at a folklorish end that Rani 'lived happily ever after with her husband and child and servant'.25 The folklorish end was onslaught of irony to reveal new significance. The views of A. K. Ramanujam invite our attention. He, commenting on the use of 'myth and local tales', says :
Yet, while the great myths and local tales share similar structures and motifs, we must not imagine they are put to the same uses or carry the same unchanging meanings. Motifs does not predict structures and structures do not predict functions, nor functions meanings26.
It is noticeable that metamorphosis of folklorish conventions is an integral aspect of modern literature. Story replies to man in response to his query about the end and says :
When one says : 'And they lived happily even after, all that is taken for granted. You sweep such headaches under the pillow and then press your head firmly down on them. It is something one has to live with, like a husband who snores or a wife who is going bald.27
The revelation is justified when Appanna sighs out helplessly and says :
What am I to do ? Is the whole world against me ? Have I sinned so much that even Nature should laugh at me ? I know I haven't slept with my wife. Let the world say what it likes. Let any miracle declare her a goddess. But I know What sense am I to make of my life that is worth nothing ?28
Cyclic recreation of words, phrases and images is also an important technical aspect of folktales. The image of black King Cobra used in the opening of the play is recreated to determine the fate of the Naga, and intensify the theme of deification :
Appanna : (Examining the dead snake). You know – it seems to have got caught in your hair and strangled itself. Your long hair saved us, Rani. The Elders were right. You are no common person. You are a goddess.29
Rani, defines the complex theme with admirable candour.
Rani : When we cremate this snake, the fire should be lit by our son.
The use of dramatic irony revitalizes the reverberations of thematic complexity.
Appanna : Aren't you going too far ? I mean that's done only for one's own father. And I am still alive.30
Rani's insistence not to abnegate her culminates the one ironic overtones and the function of dramatic irony.
It is evident from the above discussion that the use of folklorish element is one of the most conspicuous aspects of the dramatic technique of Girish Karnad in the design of the play. It is also noticeable that all the elements of folk art do not perform a restricted function but it endures the onslaughts of irony, undergoes metamorphosis and delineate a complex theme.
References
1K.R.S. Iyengar, Indian Writings in English (New Delhi : Sterling, 1997).
2Iyengar 735.
3M.H. Abrams, A Glossary of Literary Terms (1941; New Delhi : Macmillan, 1998).
4Alex Preminger, Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (London : Macmillan, 1979) 283.
5Girish Karnad, Naga Mandala : Play with a Cobra (New Delhi : Oxford University Press, 1990) 1.
6Karnad, Naga Mandala, Act I, 2.
7E.M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel (1927; London : Penguin, 1990) 106.
8Karnad, Naga Mandala, Act I, 4.
9Karnad, Naga Mandala, Act I, 5.
10Karnad, Naga Mandala, Act I, 6.
11Karnad, Naga Mandala, Act I, 8.
12Karnad, Naga Mandala, Act I, 12.
13Branda E. F. Beck, Peter J. Claus, "Introduction" Folktales of India, Ed. E.F. Beck, Peter J. Claus, Praphulla Datta and Jawaharlal Handoo (New Delhi : Motilal Banarsidas Publishers Pvt. Ltd., 1989). XXX.
14Preminger 538.
15Preminger 12.
16Karnad, Naga Mandala, Act I, 14–15.
17Karnad, Naga Mandala, Act I, 18.
18Karnad, Naga Mandala, Act II, 22.
19Abrams 102.
20Karnad, Naga Mandala, Act II, 27.
21Karnad, Naga Mandala, Act II, 28.
22Karnad, Naga Mandala, Act II, 29.
23Karnad, Naga Mandala, Act II, 31.
24Karnad, Naga Mandala, Act II, 39.
25Karnad, Naga Mandala, Act II, 40.
26A.K. Ramanujam, "Foreword" Folktales of India, Ed. E.F. Beck, Peter J. Claus, Praphulladatta Goswami and Jawaharlal Handoo (New Delhi : Motilal Banarsidas Publishers Pvt. Ltd., 1989) xvii.
27Karnad, Naga Mandala, Act II, 41.
28Karnad, Naga Mandala, Act II, 41.
29Karnad, Naga Mandala, Act II, 44.
30Karnad, Naga Mandala, Act II, 44.
Select Bibliography
Abrams, M.H. A Glossary of Literary Terms. 1941; New Delhi : Macmillan, 1998.
Beck, Brinda E. F. and Peter J. Claus. "Introduction" Folktales of India. Ed. Brinda E.F. Beck, Peter J. Claus, Praphulladatta and Jawaharlal Handoo. New Delhi : Motilal Banarsidas Publishers, 1989, xxv–xxxi.
Forster, E.M. Aspects of the Novel. 1927; London : Penguin, 1990.
Iyengar, K.R.S. Indian Writings in English. 1961; New Delhi : Sterling, 1997.
Karnad, Girish. Naga Mandala : Play with a Cobra. New Delhi : Oxford University press, 1990.
Karnad, Girish. Hayavadana. New Delhi : Oxford University Press, 1991.
Preminger, Alex. Ed. Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. London : Macmillan, 1979.
Ramanujam, A.K. "Foreword". Folktales of India. Ed. Brende E.F. Beck, Peter J. Claus, Praphulladatta Goswami and Jawaharlal Handoo. New Delhi : Motilal Banarsias Publishers Pvt. Ltd., 1989, xi–xxi.
The greatness of Girish Karnad lies the success on the stage as well as among the readers. The use of folk elements is one of the reasons behind Karnad's success as a playwright. Iyengar, commenting on the dramatic technique of Karnad, says :
In all his three plays – be the theme historical, mythical or legendary, Karnad's approach is 'modern', and he deploys the conventions and motifs of folk art like masks and curtains to project a world of intensities, uncertainties and unpredictable denoument2.
Folk art originated in the areas where most of the people could not read and write. The genesis of this form can be attributed to the intellectual limitations of the primitive audience that found certain elements like supernatural fantasy, myths and legends, the hyperbolic beliefs associated with animals, and nature to be more absorbing. The rhyme used in folk art is simple, almost of the type of nursery rhyme and the interpretation of nature and weather also has a distinct logic, typical of the region that marks the growth of the art form. The performance of folk arts was chiefly associated with festivals and it is, however, imperative that the scope of festivity was not confined to the celebration of mirth but even the death rites contribute significantly to folk art. There had been inseparable correlation between the folk art and sophisticated art. Abrams points out that "elements of folklore have at times entered into sophisticated written literature". He also cites the instance of "three caskets in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, and the superstition about the maiden's dream which is central to Keat's Eve of St. Agnes, are both derived from folklore"3.
Communal and regional elements are of defining significance in the folklore. It has been discussed earlier that the folk songs are designed chiefly in a festive mood and, hence, it should be so composed that it is adopted by a large audience with rustic mindset. Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics elaborates the idea that 'a song may have been composed by an individual but it does not become a folk song unless it is adopted by a folk and recreated communally"4. It reveals the most important function of the folklore in a sophisticated piece of writing and it is to universalize the themes and add to the acceptability of the technical complexities.
The play begins with a long soliloquy. The action in the "Prologue" is set in a ruined temple with the broken idol. The playwright intensifies mystery as "the presiding deity of the temple cannot be identified". The authorial soliloquy begins with emphasis on the image of death. The man in the temple, identifiable with the author, speaks.
Man : I may be dead within next few hours (Long Pause).
I am not talking of 'acting' dead. Actually dead. I might die right in front of your eyes.
The reference to the medicant further ratifies the pervasion of folklorish elements in the speech of the man in the temple.
A medicant hold me : you must keep awake at least one whole night this month. If you can do that, you'll live. If not, you'll die on the last night of the month5.
The piece of the monologue discussed above suggests the predominance of the folklorish elements in the play. The image of death and medicant are employed with absorbing intensity.
The use of the supernatural is an inevitable in folk art. It has been discussed earlier that the folk art is meant to entertain the audience with limited intellect. Thus, in order to keep the audience absorbed, the narrator makes use of the supernatural. The three flames on the stage with female voices introduce supernatural fantasy. The speaker confirms the importance of the supernatural, through surprise.
Man : I don't believe it ! They are naked lamp flames ! No wicks, no lamps. No one holding them. Just lamp flames on their own, floating in the air ! Is that even possible ?6
It is, however, noticeable that the supernatural in the modern literature is conspicuous for its figurative implications. It is to be noted that the supernatural, besides being absorbing, has tremendous figurative suggestions, which accounts for the balance between the supernatural and the metaphorical. The views of E. M. Forster invite our attention. He, commenting on the function of fantasy, writes :
It implies the supernatural but need not express it. Often it does express it, and were that type of classification helpful we could make a list of the devices which writers of fantastic turn have used, such as the introduction of a god, ghost, angel, monkey, monster, midgut, which is into no man's land, the future, the past, the interior of the earth, the fourth dimension or dividing into and dividing of personality; or finally the device of parody or adaptation7.
It is clear that except the folklorish fantasy contributes significantly to the design of the play. The conversation between the Flame 4 and the man is an apt justification of this fact. Fantasy is also manifest through personification. The character of Story offers testimony to it :
The Story, in form of a woman, dressed in a new colourful sari, enters, acknowledges the enthusiastic welcome from the flames, with a languid waves of the hand and goes and sits in a corner looking most despondent. The flames gather around her.8
Folk tales always enjoyed a fair degree of festivity which is involuntary of songs and music. The playwright introduces the idea of festivity of birth and death in a cyclic correlation. The Man tells Story that 'it is a matter of life and death' for him. The playwright also makes a share of rustic audience. The Story and Flames perform the function of audience. The playwright says :
Throughout the rest of the play, the Man and the Story remain on stage. The flames too listen attentively though from distance.9
Story introduces the first major character of the play and does in the manner of a folk tale. The character is Rani, the 'Queen of the whole wide world'. It is a characteristic beginning of a folk tale with a rich complicity of the modern tendencies because her 'real name doesn't matter'. The reference to King Cobra foretells about another major character :
For when her hair was tied up in a knot, it was as though, a black king Cobra lay curled on her neck, coil upon glistening coil. When it hung loose, the tresses flowed, a torrent of black, along her young limbs, and got entangled in her silver anklets.
The opening paragraph brings into focus a number of technical aspects that are taken from folk art. The introduction of the second major character once again ratifies the author's respect for folk elements. About Rani's husband Story informs :
Soon her husband came and took her with him to his village. His name was – well, any common name will do10.
The conventions of folk tales are operated upon by subtle onslaught of irony and creates the milieu of a poor boy and a rich girl. However, Appanna and Rani both belong to same status yet the names create an atmosphere of folk tales.
Animal imagery has always been widely used in folk tales. Snakes have always been commanding an enviable position in the folk tale. The mystery associated with Cobra always commands a distinct place in the folk tales. It is important to note that King Cobra has been widely used for the delineation of complex themes and ideas. It is an animal with characteristic implications that make it a complex symbol. The legends knit around it further intensify the figurative implications inherent in it. The first spark of this complex image is realized when Kapanna compares Appanna with Cobra :
Kappanna : Mother, you can't do this ! You can't start meddling in other people's affairs. The first thing in the morning. That Appanna should have been born a wild beast or a reptile. By some mistake, he got human birth. He can't understand other people. Why do you want to tangle with him.11
Rituals always play an important role in the design of the folk art. The image of a coconut which is an image that owes its significance to local rites :
Kurudavva : In the right hand side of the wooden box is a coconut shell wrapped in a piece of paper. Inside are iron pieces of roots. Bring them.12
It is interesting to note that the character of Kurudavva is typical of folk–tales character, who contributes to the escalation of the action in the play. She contrives to accelerate the action by subtle use of the supernatural 'Women's role in these folk tales'. Brinda E. F. Beck and Peter of Clause observe in the "Introduction" to Folktales of India, also deserve special note'. They observe :
Key female characters, furthermore are often like tricksters in that they hold underdog positions. Many triumphs against great idols (for example against less virtuous woman) by combining selflessness with moral courage and religious dedication.13
The views of Beck and Claus hold perfect relevance in interpreting the characters of Kurudavva. However, she is not a 'trickster'. She combines selflessness with moral courage and religious dedication to secure 'triumph' over 'less virtuous' woman.
Kurudavva's initiative paves way for the use of myth which constitutes a necessary aspect of a folktale. Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, defines :
Myth may be defined as story or a complex of story elements taken as expressing and, therefore, as implicitly symbolizing certain deep lying aspects of human and trans–human experience14.
Karnad makes use of Kunti–myth. Kunti, the mother of Pandavas was blessed by Durvasa for conception at will. She was also blessed with power to share the boon with the one she wants to, and, she in turn, does it with Madri. Karnad recreates the duo of Kunti and Madri in a new form and with a new function. Kurudavva's revelation to Rani ratifies author's debt to the Mahabharata. She confides :
One day a medicant came to our house. No one was home. I was alone. I looked after him in every way. Cooked hot food specially for him and served him to his heart's content. He was pleased with me and gave me three pieces of a root 'Any man who eats one of them will marry you', he said.15
It is interesting to note that the medicant in a recreation of Durvasa and Kurudavva is a recreation of Kunti. The blessings of Durvasa have been concretized in to three roots.
Karnad also fuses the famous conventions of folktales : the convention of a princess kept in cage by a monster. Appanna, in the beginning he draws parallel with Rani and inkles a princely valour but soon he is transformed into a new identity :
Rani : So the demon locks her up in this castle. Then it rains for seven days and seven nights, it pours. The sea floods the city. The waters breaks down the door of the castle. Then a big whale comes to Rani and says : 'Come Rani, let us go'.16
The use of folklorish elements acquire complexity with the inclusion of Naga who consumes the root that was meant for Appanna. The use the supernatural is fused with legend and myth. The supernatural imparts dramatic intensity to the Legend. The playwrite deploys Story to intensity – the dramatic effect caused by the supernatural myth of King Cobra acquiring any form and shape.
Story, As you know, a Cobra can assume any form it likes. That night, it entered the house through the bathroom drain and took the shape of –17
The Cobra myth performs the function of intensifying the dramatic effect and it also makes a complex metaphor that balances the modern and the ancient; the primitive and the sophisticated. The cobra myth provides the playwrite with an opportunity to use mask which is a conspicuous aspects of folk–drama, and, at the same time it also creates a complex metaphor. The supernatural in the play is fused with hallucination and completes the bridge between the modern and the folklorish. The play makes a world of desire, frustration, insatiated libidoes represented by the thin ambivalence between the real and the surreal; the natural and the supernatural. Rani furnishes some complementation to story when she compares Apparna with a snake in conversation with Naga who has assumed the form of her husband :
Rani : You talk so nicely at night. But during the day I only have to open my mouth and you hiss–like a stupid snake
(Naga Laughs)
It is all very well for you to laugh. I feel like crying18.
In creating Cobra myth, the playwrite once again acknowledges his debt to folklorish elements. A reference to the views of M.H.Abrams is again obligatory who defines a myth as one story in a mythology – a system of hereditary story which were once believed to be true by a particular cultural group and which, he further explains 'serves to explain (in terms of the intentions and actions of supernatural beings) why the world is as it is and things happen or they do'.19 Abrams' views hold perfect significance in Karnad's caste of the play and imagery. Cobra assuming human form is an old belief in India.
The growing intimacy between the Cobra and Rani define the complexity of the theme. The conjugation between Rani and the Cobra is depicted through the dialogues between Rani and Kurudavva. The affirmative response of Rani to Kurudavva's query if she has 'started her married life' ratifies the union Kurudavva's giggling remark further ratifies the idea :
Kurudavva (laughs) Tired ? Poor thing! So you see the power of my roots. Didn't I tell you your husband will sting to you once he tastes it ?20
It is remarkable that besides the use of Cobra myth, Karnad employs a number of supernatural beliefs. Kapanna's revelation to his mother is an apt testimony of this preference of the playwrite which confirms his debt to the elements of folk :
Kappanna : she is not a village girl. Which village girl will dare step out at this hour ? And I am not making up stories. That day she floated out from the haunted well. Just now she stepped out of the cemetery. Looked at me, smiled and waved.21
The death of the dog is followed by the death of the mongoose. It is noticeable that the fight between the Cobra and the mongoose contribute more significantly to the theme of the play. 'There was no sign of Appanna at night after the death of the mongoose and Rani spent her nights crying, waiting and pining for him'. When Appanna started visiting her at night 'his body was covered with wounds which had only partly healed'. Story's narration inkles the genesis of scepticism in the mind of Rani 'her husband' when he comes during the day 'had no scar on him'.22 Karnad juxtapose the real with the illusory. The use of myth acquires new reverberations when Rani reveals that she is pregnant.
Rani : I have definite evidence to prove I was not fantasizing. Naga : What evidence ?
Rani : I am pregnant.23
Karnad make use of the myth about the birth of child through the intercourse of human and animal. In the Ramayana, a female crocodile conceives through a drop of sweat fallen from the body of Hanuman. Likewise Cobra Ordeal is recreation of the myth of Sita's Agni Pareeksha. The Cobra indeed intensifies scintillations of the ironic prevailing the milieu. Rani pulls the Cobra out and declares that 'Since coming to this village', she has 'held by this hand only two ...' Rani's clarifications at the questions raised at her firmly stablish simultaneous existence of the ironic :
Yes, my husband and this King Cobra. Except for these two I have not touched anyone of the male–sex. Nor have I allowed any other male to touch me. If I lie let the cobra bite me.
The irony acquires spiral twist when Elder II declares that 'she is not a woman' but a 'divine being'24 and Elder II ratifies.
The Cobra Ordeal leads to another aspect of the complex theme of the play. It is commonly observed that Folk tales deal quite exclusively with gods and such heroic figure. Irony once again plays a functional role. Rani with all her deprivation is transformed into a living goddess. The crowd surged 'forward to postrate itself before her' and even Appanna 'falls at her feet'. The action arrives at a folklorish end that Rani 'lived happily ever after with her husband and child and servant'.25 The folklorish end was onslaught of irony to reveal new significance. The views of A. K. Ramanujam invite our attention. He, commenting on the use of 'myth and local tales', says :
Yet, while the great myths and local tales share similar structures and motifs, we must not imagine they are put to the same uses or carry the same unchanging meanings. Motifs does not predict structures and structures do not predict functions, nor functions meanings26.
It is noticeable that metamorphosis of folklorish conventions is an integral aspect of modern literature. Story replies to man in response to his query about the end and says :
When one says : 'And they lived happily even after, all that is taken for granted. You sweep such headaches under the pillow and then press your head firmly down on them. It is something one has to live with, like a husband who snores or a wife who is going bald.27
The revelation is justified when Appanna sighs out helplessly and says :
What am I to do ? Is the whole world against me ? Have I sinned so much that even Nature should laugh at me ? I know I haven't slept with my wife. Let the world say what it likes. Let any miracle declare her a goddess. But I know What sense am I to make of my life that is worth nothing ?28
Cyclic recreation of words, phrases and images is also an important technical aspect of folktales. The image of black King Cobra used in the opening of the play is recreated to determine the fate of the Naga, and intensify the theme of deification :
Appanna : (Examining the dead snake). You know – it seems to have got caught in your hair and strangled itself. Your long hair saved us, Rani. The Elders were right. You are no common person. You are a goddess.29
Rani, defines the complex theme with admirable candour.
Rani : When we cremate this snake, the fire should be lit by our son.
The use of dramatic irony revitalizes the reverberations of thematic complexity.
Appanna : Aren't you going too far ? I mean that's done only for one's own father. And I am still alive.30
Rani's insistence not to abnegate her culminates the one ironic overtones and the function of dramatic irony.
It is evident from the above discussion that the use of folklorish element is one of the most conspicuous aspects of the dramatic technique of Girish Karnad in the design of the play. It is also noticeable that all the elements of folk art do not perform a restricted function but it endures the onslaughts of irony, undergoes metamorphosis and delineate a complex theme.
References
1K.R.S. Iyengar, Indian Writings in English (New Delhi : Sterling, 1997).
2Iyengar 735.
3M.H. Abrams, A Glossary of Literary Terms (1941; New Delhi : Macmillan, 1998).
4Alex Preminger, Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (London : Macmillan, 1979) 283.
5Girish Karnad, Naga Mandala : Play with a Cobra (New Delhi : Oxford University Press, 1990) 1.
6Karnad, Naga Mandala, Act I, 2.
7E.M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel (1927; London : Penguin, 1990) 106.
8Karnad, Naga Mandala, Act I, 4.
9Karnad, Naga Mandala, Act I, 5.
10Karnad, Naga Mandala, Act I, 6.
11Karnad, Naga Mandala, Act I, 8.
12Karnad, Naga Mandala, Act I, 12.
13Branda E. F. Beck, Peter J. Claus, "Introduction" Folktales of India, Ed. E.F. Beck, Peter J. Claus, Praphulla Datta and Jawaharlal Handoo (New Delhi : Motilal Banarsidas Publishers Pvt. Ltd., 1989). XXX.
14Preminger 538.
15Preminger 12.
16Karnad, Naga Mandala, Act I, 14–15.
17Karnad, Naga Mandala, Act I, 18.
18Karnad, Naga Mandala, Act II, 22.
19Abrams 102.
20Karnad, Naga Mandala, Act II, 27.
21Karnad, Naga Mandala, Act II, 28.
22Karnad, Naga Mandala, Act II, 29.
23Karnad, Naga Mandala, Act II, 31.
24Karnad, Naga Mandala, Act II, 39.
25Karnad, Naga Mandala, Act II, 40.
26A.K. Ramanujam, "Foreword" Folktales of India, Ed. E.F. Beck, Peter J. Claus, Praphulladatta Goswami and Jawaharlal Handoo (New Delhi : Motilal Banarsidas Publishers Pvt. Ltd., 1989) xvii.
27Karnad, Naga Mandala, Act II, 41.
28Karnad, Naga Mandala, Act II, 41.
29Karnad, Naga Mandala, Act II, 44.
30Karnad, Naga Mandala, Act II, 44.
Select Bibliography
Abrams, M.H. A Glossary of Literary Terms. 1941; New Delhi : Macmillan, 1998.
Beck, Brinda E. F. and Peter J. Claus. "Introduction" Folktales of India. Ed. Brinda E.F. Beck, Peter J. Claus, Praphulladatta and Jawaharlal Handoo. New Delhi : Motilal Banarsidas Publishers, 1989, xxv–xxxi.
Forster, E.M. Aspects of the Novel. 1927; London : Penguin, 1990.
Iyengar, K.R.S. Indian Writings in English. 1961; New Delhi : Sterling, 1997.
Karnad, Girish. Naga Mandala : Play with a Cobra. New Delhi : Oxford University press, 1990.
Karnad, Girish. Hayavadana. New Delhi : Oxford University Press, 1991.
Preminger, Alex. Ed. Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. London : Macmillan, 1979.
Ramanujam, A.K. "Foreword". Folktales of India. Ed. Brende E.F. Beck, Peter J. Claus, Praphulladatta Goswami and Jawaharlal Handoo. New Delhi : Motilal Banarsias Publishers Pvt. Ltd., 1989, xi–xxi.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
critical review of "Tradition and Individual Talent" by Eliot (Part-2)
"Tradition and Individual Talent" is the essay of lasting significance in the history of modern criticism. The essay brought into being two principal aspects of Eliot's critical domain – tradition and impersonality in art and poetry, that rated over the realm of criticism. The essay also brings forth Eliot's views on the inter–relation between traditional and individual talent. The essay brought into being the new approach with poets of everlasting significance and it also provided the parameters for the assessment of the genius and the shortcomings of the masters but contributed to the history of English Literature. The idea of tradition with all its magnificence, has a meaning beyond the conventional sense of term. It begins with a historical sense and goes on acquiring new dimensions along political and cultural dimension, and this creates a system of axes for the assessment of the worth and genius of a poet.
The idea of Eliot's theory of tradition is based on the inevitable phenomenon of the continuity of the values during the process called civilization. Eliot beings with a description that makes tradition a term of abuse and develops to a metaphor of unquestionable authenticity. 'Seldom perhaps', he says, 'does the word appear except in a phrase of censure'. He further says :
You can hardly make the word aggreable to English ears without this comfortable reference to the reassuring science of archaeology.1
The above quoted lines from one of the most celebrated critical endeavours make it clear that Eliot aims at developing a new concept and structuring a new approach to the very phenomenon called poetry. Eliot, after beginning with the seemingly derogatory implications of the term imparts a new meaning and magnificence to the term when he identifies tradition with historical sense. The identification discussed above makes it clear that the tradition according to Eliot is something more than mere conglomeration of dead works. The identification of tradition with historical sense serves to ratify the stature of tradition in assessing the works and function of pets and poetry. He elaborates the idea of historical sense and says :
and the historical sense invokes a perception not only of the partners of the past but also of its presence : The historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones but with a feeling that whole of the literature of Europe from Homer and within it the whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order.2
Eliot in the above quoted line puts forth a dynamic manifestation of tradition which shapes the minds of different poets of different generation. Eliot also inkles that the poet's conformity into tradition is an act of rigorous intellectual efforts that constitute a poet in him. Eliot further defines the idea of historical sense and says :
The historical sense which is a sense of the timeless as well as of the temporal, and of timeless and temporal together, is what makes a writer tradition. And it is at the same time what makes a writer most acute by conscious of his place in time of his contemporaneity .3
The excerpt from the essay makes it clear that Eliot pus the whole term in a much wider context than it is otherwise used before. Eliot takes tradition to be an embodiment of values and beliefs shared by a race which leads to the idea that there is a process of natural selection and rejection. The values and the belief that die with the passage of time are subject to rejection. The values and beliefs that constitute the tradition are living one with capacity of mutual interaction. The old and the new interpenetrate and this interpenetration results into a new order defined in terms of the simultaneous existence of the values of the past and the present. The survival of past ratifies the presentness of it. The simultaneous existence of the past and the present, of the old and the new. It is, thus, evident that the poet is guided chiefly by the dynamics of the tradition. Eliot further elaborates:
No poet, no artist has a complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation in the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone, you must set him from contrast and comparison among the dead.4
Eliot reaffirms that the poet, in order to survive as a poet must invite close contrast and comparison with the dead poets. Unless, a poet is capable of doing that he ceases to matter in the history of poetry. Richard Shusterman rightly observes that the 'enduring demands preserved in a tradition make it capable of functioning as a synchronize structural system'.5 Raman Selden observes that 'the standard theories of literature often combine these apparently disparate modes of thinking'.6 It is remarkable that these apparently disparate modes of thinking are disciplined by values.
The relation between the new work of art and the tradition is another very complex idea enshrined in the essay. It is, however, true that the complete meaning of the poet is realized through his relationship with the tradition but the importance of individual talent cannot be set aside in a discussion on the Eliot's poetics. It is again noteworthy that the tradition and individual talent are not at a sharp contrast with each other but they are mutually complimentary. Eliot conceives tradition and individual talent as unifiable and show that the two have an equally important role to play in poetic creation. The views of Jean Michael Rabate capture our attention. He commenting on the function of historical sense in the caste of an individual talent says :
This requires that the "bones" belong to the individual who recomposes simultaneity at every moment without losing a combination of the timeless and the merely temporal.7
Individual talent is needed to acquire the sense of tradition. Eliot lays good emphasis on the idea of interactivity between the tradition and individual talent. If the individual talent needs to acquire tradition, then the individual talent in turn modifies tradition. Eliot ratifies the dynamic nature of tradition.
The existing monument form an ideal order among themselves, which is modified by the introduction of the new (the really new) work of art among them. The existing order is complete before the new work arrives; for order to persist after the supervention of novelty, the whole existing order must be, if ever so slightly, altered; and so the relations, proportions, values of each work of art towards the whole are readjusted; and this in conformity between the old and the new.8
The above quoted lines make clear the cyclic interdependence between tradition and individual talent. Shusterman's view again oblige inclusion, 'Old and new elements', he points out, 'derive their meaning from their reciprocal relations of contrast and coherence, in a larger whole of tradition which they themselves constitute as parts'.9 It is evident from the views of Shusterman that tradition is not anything fixed or static but it is something dynamic and everchanging. Every new participation in the tradition results into restructuring of the same tradition with different emphasis. It is constantly growing and changing and becoming different from what it has been earlier. The past directs the present and is modified by the present. This is an apt revelation of the traditional capabilities of a poet. The past helps us understand the present and the present throws light on the past. The new work of art is judged by the standards set by the past. It is in the light of the past alone that an individual talent can be. This is the way Eliot subtly reconciles the tradition and the individual talent.
Eliot's views on tradition paves way for the theorization of the impersonality in art and poetry. Divergent views about Eliot's theory of objectivity have been discussed but it is observed that critics tend to generalize the theory to a common experience. It is noticeable that the impersonality that Eliot discusses in his criticism does not imply a mechanical objectivity of a hoarding painter, but, it owes its genesis to the personality that emerges out of the creative personality of the poet. It is understandable that Eliot denies an outright and blind adherence to some peculiar faiths and belief but an emancipation from what is very personal on peculiar. He says :
...... the poet has not a personality to express but a particular medium, which is only a medium and not a personality, in which impressions and experience combine in a peculiar and unexpected ways. Impressions and experiences which are important for the man may take no place in the poetry, and those important in the poetry may play quite a negligible part in the man, the personality.10
It is clear from the above quotation that Eliot lays heavy stress on the two different aspect of a creator what he is as an individual and at the same time what he is as a creator; It is an easy inference from the above equation that Eliot's to his critical theories discards the emotion of strictly personal significance and centers his ideals on the transformation of what is personal but something of universal significance.
The above quoted excerpts from "Tradition and Individual Talent" put forth a belligerently anti romantic view of poetry which lays emphasis on poetry and discards the very idea of the personality of the poet. It is obligatory to remember Aristotle as this point of time who, against all odds takes 'plot' to be the 'soul of the tragedy' and claims that 'there can be tragedy than a character but not without a plot'.11 Eliot in these lines discovers a new possibility of a universal meaning, which free from the whims and eccentricities of the poet and has a wider significance. The comparison made out by Eliot between the mind of the poet and the catalyst in a chemical reaction further confirms the point of view. He says :
When the two gases, previously mentioned are mixed in the presence of a filament of platinum they form sulphurous acid. This combination takes place, only if the platinum is present, nevertheless the newly formed acid contains no trace of platinum, and the platinum itself is apparently unaffected.12
The analogy that Eliot puts forth makes it clear that the poetry is something entirely different from what is the personal identity of the poet. This is principally the reason that Eliot, all along the length and breadth of his critical writings, makes frequent use of terms like 'transmate', 'transform', 'digest', etc. He further suggests :
... but the more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates; the more perfectly will the mind digest and transmute the passions which are its material.13
Eliot puts forth similar views in his celebrated essay – "The Metaphysical Poets", and emerges with a more candid elaboration of the mechanism of poetic expression. He asserts :
When a poet's mind is perfectly equipped for its work, it is constantly amalgamatic disparate experience; the ordinary experience is chaotic, irregular and fragmentary. The latter falls in love or reads spinoza, and these two experiences have nothing to do with each other, or with noise of a typewriter or the smell of cooking; in the mind of the poet these experiences are always forming new wholes.14
It is obvious that Eliot aims at the recreation of a non–mechanical unity and of the store of impressions and experiences in the poet's mind. The views of William K. Wimsatt and Cleanth Brooks invite our attention. They point out :
Such an emphasis was bound to bring down upon Eliot, the charges that has had reduced the poet to an automaton who secreted his poet in same unconscious and brainless way and that he had thus committed himself to the most romantic theory possible.15
Edward Lobb comes out with a just explanation of the possibility of levelling such charges against the theory of Eliot. Lobb points out that 'as a living thing, the poet's mind can create a non–mechanical unity out of diverse, even contradictory elements.'16 Lobb compares him with Coleridge who 'found this ability to reconcile "opposite on discordant qualities" to be the characteristic of power of the living imagination'.16 The views of Lobb make it clear that the impersonality that Eliot aims at is not a mechanical impersonality but the impersonality of that owes its genesis to values prevailing in spatio–temporal continum. He in his essay – "Yeats" (1940) reiterated the importance of personality in considering his later poetry to be superior to his earlier poetry as that is more profound revelation in the last phase of poetic existence. He says :
There are two forms of impersonality; that which is natural to a skilful craftman and that which is more and more achieved by a maturing artist. The first is that of what I have called 'anthology pieces' of lyric by Loveless or Suckling or Campion a fine poet than either. The second personality is that of the poet who out of intense and passionate experience, is able to express a general truth; retaining all the peculiarity of his experience and make it a general symbol.17
It is obvious from the above quoted excerpt that the impersonality of first type is the impersonality without a personality. He makes the idea more clear in "Tradition and Individual Talent" when he says :
Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emtion; it is not an expression of the personality but an escape from the personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from them.18
It is obvious from the above quotations that personality and emotions are pre–requisites of the impersonality.
In order that Eliot's views on impersonality of poetry acquire the clarity of vision and theory, it is obligatory to compare Eliot's view on poetry with those of Wordsworth who represents the apex of Romantic idealogy. Wordsworth in the Preface to Lyrical Ballads, defines poetry and says :
Poetry is spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings : it takes its origin from the emotions recollected in tranquility till by a species of reaction tranquility gradually disappears and the emotion, kindered to that, which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced and does actually exists in the mind of the poet.13
It is clear from the above definition of William Wordsworth that he aims at purifying the emotion to the most personal by 'a specie of reaction' and the possibility of 'concentration' or 'digestion' or 'transmutation' or formation of 'new wholes' is virtually in existent in the Romantic view of poetry.
Eliot's theory of impersonality of art gets apt justification in his essay, "Hamlet and His Problems". He says :
The only way of expressing an emotion is by finding an "objective correlative"; in other words a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events, which shall be formula of that, particular emotion, such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experiences are given, the emotion is immediately evoked. If you examine any of Shakespeare's more successful tragedies, you will find this exact equivalence; you will find that the state of mind of Lady Macbeth walking in her sleep has been communicated to you by a skilful accumulation of imagined sensory impressions; the words of Macbeth hearing of his wife's death strike us as if given the sequence of events, these words were automatically released by the last event in the series.20
Eliot's views expressed earlier, make the idea very clear that the emotion to be expressed in a work of art has a contextual significance only, and outside the context of the work of art, the emotion ceases to mean, and this results into a chaos. Eliot further says that 'Hamlet (the man) is dominated by an emotion which is inexpressible, because it is in excess of the facts as they appear'.21 The theory of objective–correlative fully ratifies Eliot's adherence on the inevitability of impersonality of the emotion of art. Wimsatt and Brooks rightly observes that 'the doctrine of the objective correlative' places thoroughly anti–romantic stress on craftsmanship.'22
It is also observed that the concept of impersonality continually grows and acquires new shades. Later by the time of the pulication of After Strange Gods the idea of impersonality was apparalled in new form. Later Eliot propounded the view that the great work of art conforms to the idea of Christian orthodoxy. What Eliot exalted most in his earlier writings, the development of a point of view, and his concept of impersonality, later merged with the confinement of the work to the principles and dogmas propounded by Christian orthodoxy. In After Strange Gods he categorizes writer according to the faith and beliefs expressed in their works.
It is thus clear that "Tradition and Individual Talent" is one of the most important essay of Eliot. It puts forth two very important aspects of his critical mindset – tradition and impersonality of art and poetry that determine the nature and scope of his criticism.
References
1T. S. Eliot, "Tradition and Individual Talent", The Sacred Wood (London : Metheun, 1965) 47.
2Eliot, "Tradition and Individual Talent", The Sacred Wood, 49.
3Eliot, "Tradition and Individual Talent", The Sacred Wood, 49.
4Eliot, "Tradition and Individual Talent", The Sacred Wood, 49.
5Richard Shusterman, The Eliot and the Philosophy of Criticism (London : Duckworths, 1988) 181.
6Raman Seldon, The Theory of Criticism (New York : Longman, 1990) 405.
7Jean Michael Rabate, "Tradition and T.S. Eliot", The Cambridge Comparison to T. S. Eliot, ed., A. David Moody (London : Cambridge University Press, 1994) 214.
8Eliot, "Tradition and Individual Talent", The Sacred Wood, 50.
9Shusterman 187.
10Eliot, "Tradition and Individual Talent", The Sacred Wood, 56.
11Aristotle, The Poetics, Trans. S. H. Butcher. Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Arts (New Delhi : Kalyani, reprint 1987) 27.
12Eliot, "Tradition and Individual Talent", The Sacred Wood, 54.
13Eliot, "Tradition and Individual Talent", The Sacred Wood, 54.
14T. S. Eliot, "The Metaphysical Poets", Selected Essays (London : Faber and Faber, 1976) 248.
15William K. Wimsatt and Cleanth Brooks, Literary Criticism : A Short History (New Delhi : Oxford and I.B.H. Publishing, 1957) 665.
16Edward Lobb, T. S. Eliot and the Romantic Critical Tradition (London : Rowledge and Kegan Paul, 1981) 129.
17Eliot, "Yeats", Selected Essays, 149.
18Eliot, "Tradition and Individual Talent", Selected Essays, 58.
19William Wordsworth, Preface to Lyrical Ballads (New Delhi : Macmillan, 1981) 23.
20Eliot, "Hamlet and His Problems", The Sacred Wood, 100–101.
21Eliot, "Hamlet and His Problems", The Sacred Wood, 101.
22Wimsatt and Brooks 668.
The idea of Eliot's theory of tradition is based on the inevitable phenomenon of the continuity of the values during the process called civilization. Eliot beings with a description that makes tradition a term of abuse and develops to a metaphor of unquestionable authenticity. 'Seldom perhaps', he says, 'does the word appear except in a phrase of censure'. He further says :
You can hardly make the word aggreable to English ears without this comfortable reference to the reassuring science of archaeology.1
The above quoted lines from one of the most celebrated critical endeavours make it clear that Eliot aims at developing a new concept and structuring a new approach to the very phenomenon called poetry. Eliot, after beginning with the seemingly derogatory implications of the term imparts a new meaning and magnificence to the term when he identifies tradition with historical sense. The identification discussed above makes it clear that the tradition according to Eliot is something more than mere conglomeration of dead works. The identification of tradition with historical sense serves to ratify the stature of tradition in assessing the works and function of pets and poetry. He elaborates the idea of historical sense and says :
and the historical sense invokes a perception not only of the partners of the past but also of its presence : The historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones but with a feeling that whole of the literature of Europe from Homer and within it the whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order.2
Eliot in the above quoted line puts forth a dynamic manifestation of tradition which shapes the minds of different poets of different generation. Eliot also inkles that the poet's conformity into tradition is an act of rigorous intellectual efforts that constitute a poet in him. Eliot further defines the idea of historical sense and says :
The historical sense which is a sense of the timeless as well as of the temporal, and of timeless and temporal together, is what makes a writer tradition. And it is at the same time what makes a writer most acute by conscious of his place in time of his contemporaneity .3
The excerpt from the essay makes it clear that Eliot pus the whole term in a much wider context than it is otherwise used before. Eliot takes tradition to be an embodiment of values and beliefs shared by a race which leads to the idea that there is a process of natural selection and rejection. The values and the belief that die with the passage of time are subject to rejection. The values and beliefs that constitute the tradition are living one with capacity of mutual interaction. The old and the new interpenetrate and this interpenetration results into a new order defined in terms of the simultaneous existence of the values of the past and the present. The survival of past ratifies the presentness of it. The simultaneous existence of the past and the present, of the old and the new. It is, thus, evident that the poet is guided chiefly by the dynamics of the tradition. Eliot further elaborates:
No poet, no artist has a complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation in the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone, you must set him from contrast and comparison among the dead.4
Eliot reaffirms that the poet, in order to survive as a poet must invite close contrast and comparison with the dead poets. Unless, a poet is capable of doing that he ceases to matter in the history of poetry. Richard Shusterman rightly observes that the 'enduring demands preserved in a tradition make it capable of functioning as a synchronize structural system'.5 Raman Selden observes that 'the standard theories of literature often combine these apparently disparate modes of thinking'.6 It is remarkable that these apparently disparate modes of thinking are disciplined by values.
The relation between the new work of art and the tradition is another very complex idea enshrined in the essay. It is, however, true that the complete meaning of the poet is realized through his relationship with the tradition but the importance of individual talent cannot be set aside in a discussion on the Eliot's poetics. It is again noteworthy that the tradition and individual talent are not at a sharp contrast with each other but they are mutually complimentary. Eliot conceives tradition and individual talent as unifiable and show that the two have an equally important role to play in poetic creation. The views of Jean Michael Rabate capture our attention. He commenting on the function of historical sense in the caste of an individual talent says :
This requires that the "bones" belong to the individual who recomposes simultaneity at every moment without losing a combination of the timeless and the merely temporal.7
Individual talent is needed to acquire the sense of tradition. Eliot lays good emphasis on the idea of interactivity between the tradition and individual talent. If the individual talent needs to acquire tradition, then the individual talent in turn modifies tradition. Eliot ratifies the dynamic nature of tradition.
The existing monument form an ideal order among themselves, which is modified by the introduction of the new (the really new) work of art among them. The existing order is complete before the new work arrives; for order to persist after the supervention of novelty, the whole existing order must be, if ever so slightly, altered; and so the relations, proportions, values of each work of art towards the whole are readjusted; and this in conformity between the old and the new.8
The above quoted lines make clear the cyclic interdependence between tradition and individual talent. Shusterman's view again oblige inclusion, 'Old and new elements', he points out, 'derive their meaning from their reciprocal relations of contrast and coherence, in a larger whole of tradition which they themselves constitute as parts'.9 It is evident from the views of Shusterman that tradition is not anything fixed or static but it is something dynamic and everchanging. Every new participation in the tradition results into restructuring of the same tradition with different emphasis. It is constantly growing and changing and becoming different from what it has been earlier. The past directs the present and is modified by the present. This is an apt revelation of the traditional capabilities of a poet. The past helps us understand the present and the present throws light on the past. The new work of art is judged by the standards set by the past. It is in the light of the past alone that an individual talent can be. This is the way Eliot subtly reconciles the tradition and the individual talent.
Eliot's views on tradition paves way for the theorization of the impersonality in art and poetry. Divergent views about Eliot's theory of objectivity have been discussed but it is observed that critics tend to generalize the theory to a common experience. It is noticeable that the impersonality that Eliot discusses in his criticism does not imply a mechanical objectivity of a hoarding painter, but, it owes its genesis to the personality that emerges out of the creative personality of the poet. It is understandable that Eliot denies an outright and blind adherence to some peculiar faiths and belief but an emancipation from what is very personal on peculiar. He says :
...... the poet has not a personality to express but a particular medium, which is only a medium and not a personality, in which impressions and experience combine in a peculiar and unexpected ways. Impressions and experiences which are important for the man may take no place in the poetry, and those important in the poetry may play quite a negligible part in the man, the personality.10
It is clear from the above quotation that Eliot lays heavy stress on the two different aspect of a creator what he is as an individual and at the same time what he is as a creator; It is an easy inference from the above equation that Eliot's to his critical theories discards the emotion of strictly personal significance and centers his ideals on the transformation of what is personal but something of universal significance.
The above quoted excerpts from "Tradition and Individual Talent" put forth a belligerently anti romantic view of poetry which lays emphasis on poetry and discards the very idea of the personality of the poet. It is obligatory to remember Aristotle as this point of time who, against all odds takes 'plot' to be the 'soul of the tragedy' and claims that 'there can be tragedy than a character but not without a plot'.11 Eliot in these lines discovers a new possibility of a universal meaning, which free from the whims and eccentricities of the poet and has a wider significance. The comparison made out by Eliot between the mind of the poet and the catalyst in a chemical reaction further confirms the point of view. He says :
When the two gases, previously mentioned are mixed in the presence of a filament of platinum they form sulphurous acid. This combination takes place, only if the platinum is present, nevertheless the newly formed acid contains no trace of platinum, and the platinum itself is apparently unaffected.12
The analogy that Eliot puts forth makes it clear that the poetry is something entirely different from what is the personal identity of the poet. This is principally the reason that Eliot, all along the length and breadth of his critical writings, makes frequent use of terms like 'transmate', 'transform', 'digest', etc. He further suggests :
... but the more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates; the more perfectly will the mind digest and transmute the passions which are its material.13
Eliot puts forth similar views in his celebrated essay – "The Metaphysical Poets", and emerges with a more candid elaboration of the mechanism of poetic expression. He asserts :
When a poet's mind is perfectly equipped for its work, it is constantly amalgamatic disparate experience; the ordinary experience is chaotic, irregular and fragmentary. The latter falls in love or reads spinoza, and these two experiences have nothing to do with each other, or with noise of a typewriter or the smell of cooking; in the mind of the poet these experiences are always forming new wholes.14
It is obvious that Eliot aims at the recreation of a non–mechanical unity and of the store of impressions and experiences in the poet's mind. The views of William K. Wimsatt and Cleanth Brooks invite our attention. They point out :
Such an emphasis was bound to bring down upon Eliot, the charges that has had reduced the poet to an automaton who secreted his poet in same unconscious and brainless way and that he had thus committed himself to the most romantic theory possible.15
Edward Lobb comes out with a just explanation of the possibility of levelling such charges against the theory of Eliot. Lobb points out that 'as a living thing, the poet's mind can create a non–mechanical unity out of diverse, even contradictory elements.'16 Lobb compares him with Coleridge who 'found this ability to reconcile "opposite on discordant qualities" to be the characteristic of power of the living imagination'.16 The views of Lobb make it clear that the impersonality that Eliot aims at is not a mechanical impersonality but the impersonality of that owes its genesis to values prevailing in spatio–temporal continum. He in his essay – "Yeats" (1940) reiterated the importance of personality in considering his later poetry to be superior to his earlier poetry as that is more profound revelation in the last phase of poetic existence. He says :
There are two forms of impersonality; that which is natural to a skilful craftman and that which is more and more achieved by a maturing artist. The first is that of what I have called 'anthology pieces' of lyric by Loveless or Suckling or Campion a fine poet than either. The second personality is that of the poet who out of intense and passionate experience, is able to express a general truth; retaining all the peculiarity of his experience and make it a general symbol.17
It is obvious from the above quoted excerpt that the impersonality of first type is the impersonality without a personality. He makes the idea more clear in "Tradition and Individual Talent" when he says :
Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emtion; it is not an expression of the personality but an escape from the personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from them.18
It is obvious from the above quotations that personality and emotions are pre–requisites of the impersonality.
In order that Eliot's views on impersonality of poetry acquire the clarity of vision and theory, it is obligatory to compare Eliot's view on poetry with those of Wordsworth who represents the apex of Romantic idealogy. Wordsworth in the Preface to Lyrical Ballads, defines poetry and says :
Poetry is spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings : it takes its origin from the emotions recollected in tranquility till by a species of reaction tranquility gradually disappears and the emotion, kindered to that, which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced and does actually exists in the mind of the poet.13
It is clear from the above definition of William Wordsworth that he aims at purifying the emotion to the most personal by 'a specie of reaction' and the possibility of 'concentration' or 'digestion' or 'transmutation' or formation of 'new wholes' is virtually in existent in the Romantic view of poetry.
Eliot's theory of impersonality of art gets apt justification in his essay, "Hamlet and His Problems". He says :
The only way of expressing an emotion is by finding an "objective correlative"; in other words a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events, which shall be formula of that, particular emotion, such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experiences are given, the emotion is immediately evoked. If you examine any of Shakespeare's more successful tragedies, you will find this exact equivalence; you will find that the state of mind of Lady Macbeth walking in her sleep has been communicated to you by a skilful accumulation of imagined sensory impressions; the words of Macbeth hearing of his wife's death strike us as if given the sequence of events, these words were automatically released by the last event in the series.20
Eliot's views expressed earlier, make the idea very clear that the emotion to be expressed in a work of art has a contextual significance only, and outside the context of the work of art, the emotion ceases to mean, and this results into a chaos. Eliot further says that 'Hamlet (the man) is dominated by an emotion which is inexpressible, because it is in excess of the facts as they appear'.21 The theory of objective–correlative fully ratifies Eliot's adherence on the inevitability of impersonality of the emotion of art. Wimsatt and Brooks rightly observes that 'the doctrine of the objective correlative' places thoroughly anti–romantic stress on craftsmanship.'22
It is also observed that the concept of impersonality continually grows and acquires new shades. Later by the time of the pulication of After Strange Gods the idea of impersonality was apparalled in new form. Later Eliot propounded the view that the great work of art conforms to the idea of Christian orthodoxy. What Eliot exalted most in his earlier writings, the development of a point of view, and his concept of impersonality, later merged with the confinement of the work to the principles and dogmas propounded by Christian orthodoxy. In After Strange Gods he categorizes writer according to the faith and beliefs expressed in their works.
It is thus clear that "Tradition and Individual Talent" is one of the most important essay of Eliot. It puts forth two very important aspects of his critical mindset – tradition and impersonality of art and poetry that determine the nature and scope of his criticism.
References
1T. S. Eliot, "Tradition and Individual Talent", The Sacred Wood (London : Metheun, 1965) 47.
2Eliot, "Tradition and Individual Talent", The Sacred Wood, 49.
3Eliot, "Tradition and Individual Talent", The Sacred Wood, 49.
4Eliot, "Tradition and Individual Talent", The Sacred Wood, 49.
5Richard Shusterman, The Eliot and the Philosophy of Criticism (London : Duckworths, 1988) 181.
6Raman Seldon, The Theory of Criticism (New York : Longman, 1990) 405.
7Jean Michael Rabate, "Tradition and T.S. Eliot", The Cambridge Comparison to T. S. Eliot, ed., A. David Moody (London : Cambridge University Press, 1994) 214.
8Eliot, "Tradition and Individual Talent", The Sacred Wood, 50.
9Shusterman 187.
10Eliot, "Tradition and Individual Talent", The Sacred Wood, 56.
11Aristotle, The Poetics, Trans. S. H. Butcher. Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Arts (New Delhi : Kalyani, reprint 1987) 27.
12Eliot, "Tradition and Individual Talent", The Sacred Wood, 54.
13Eliot, "Tradition and Individual Talent", The Sacred Wood, 54.
14T. S. Eliot, "The Metaphysical Poets", Selected Essays (London : Faber and Faber, 1976) 248.
15William K. Wimsatt and Cleanth Brooks, Literary Criticism : A Short History (New Delhi : Oxford and I.B.H. Publishing, 1957) 665.
16Edward Lobb, T. S. Eliot and the Romantic Critical Tradition (London : Rowledge and Kegan Paul, 1981) 129.
17Eliot, "Yeats", Selected Essays, 149.
18Eliot, "Tradition and Individual Talent", Selected Essays, 58.
19William Wordsworth, Preface to Lyrical Ballads (New Delhi : Macmillan, 1981) 23.
20Eliot, "Hamlet and His Problems", The Sacred Wood, 100–101.
21Eliot, "Hamlet and His Problems", The Sacred Wood, 101.
22Wimsatt and Brooks 668.
Aristotle's concept of plot (Part-2)
Aristotle's concept of plot remained unquestionable till the beginning of this century when E. M. Forster questioned the relevance of Aristotlean concept of plot structure. It is, however, ironical that Forester does not come out with anything specifically new and fails to establish his abnegation to Aristotlean theory. Forester lays emphasis on the element of cause and defines plot "as a narrative of events" with "the emphasis falling on causality". He says :
The king died and then the queen died is a story. 'The kind died and then the queen died of grief' is a plot. The time sequence is preserved but the sense of casuality overshadows it14.
It is obvious that Forster is little different to Aristotle in his emphasis on the element of causality. He further elaborates his thesis by alluding to two principal demands of a plot intelligence and memory. Intelligence lays emphasis on interconnection between any two events and memory is an indirect reference to magnitude and size. "The plot maker", says "expects us to remember, we expect him to leave no loose ends"15. The plot structure of a short story demands intelligence when it is causally knit. Yet the demand of memory in connection with the plot of short story is of limited significance as the definition of the genre itself restricts the presence of loose ends.
The Aristotlean views on the plot of the tragedy bear a close relation with the function of a tragedy, i.e. catharsis of pity and fear. K.G. Shrivastava's views in his elaboration of the controversial term katharsis capture our attention :
It is true that the plot is the expression or representation of the poetic vision itself is the structure because in order to be fully bodied force, it has got to be identical with the plot17.
Shrivastava's identification of plot with vision ratifies the importance of plot and consequently Aristotlean thesis on plot in connection with the plot structure of a tragedy.
In the definition of tragedy Aristotle speaks of 'catharsis' as the specific function of a tragedy. For centuries tragedy was considered to produce specific moral effect. Through purification of passions most of the critics until nineteenth century like Jacob, Bernays firmly established the fact that catharsis is a metaphor taken from medical science. Even John Miltons was of the same view. The reason behind the critics' inclination towards this kind of interpretation is probably the fact that Aristotle was some of a physician. F. L. Lucas asserts that catharsis "A definitely medical metaphor" – A metaphor of an apparent. S. H. Butcher and B. Y. Water are prone more to purgation theory. The views of B. Y. Water invite our attention. I hope it is not rash to surmise that the much depated word Katharsis, purification or 'purgation', may have come into Aristotle's mouth from the same source. It has all the appearance of being an old word which is accepted and re–interpreted by Aristotle rather than a word freely chosen by him to denote the exact phenomenon he wishes to describe.
Plato in his appreciation of a tragedy discusses the excitation of pity as function of a tragedy and Aristotle adds fear to it. Aristotle in his Rhetoric regards pity and fear as two sister emotions. Probably through Catharsis of pity and fear he means that the function of tragedy is to make us fear for ourselves the distress we pity in others. The doctrine is based on the fact that the person capable of pity is the person who nurtures the possibility of fear. The person capable of pity is the person with rich and strong imagination and is, therefore, capable of experiencing the pain and ego such as that which we see affecting of threatening a person pitied. It is thus obvious from the above description that the Katharsis of pity and fear is not a process in two different steps but it is a singular and composite response of a man capable of thought and imagination. To the action around which the whole tragic framework has been composed. The views of Stephen Halelo invite our attention. He points out :
Pity and fear (though, of course, not these alone) are to be regarded not as uncontrollable instincts or forces, but as responses to reality which are possible for a mind in which thought and emotion are integrated and interdependent.
Halliwell further justifies the same idea of integrated response to tragic action and says :
But is also helps us to see how Aristotle conceives of the tragic emotions not as overwhelming waves of material of poetic drama. The framework for the experience of these emotions is nothing other than the cognitive understanding of the mimetic representation of human action and character.
In Rhetoric Aristotle defines fear as a form of pain or disturbance arising from an impression which is destructive or painful. He defines pity as a form of pain act – an evident evil of a destructive or painful variety in the case of one who does not deserve it. If the object of pity shares with us our essentials a pity is gradually transformed into fear. Thus, pity and fear are correlated feelings and we pity others where under like circumstance we fear for ourselves. It is important to note that fear is not caused by the direct apprehension of misfortune impending over our life but it is a sympathetic shudder we feel for a hero who in his essentials resembles us. The fear in case of a tragedy does not paralyse the mind of stun and sense as this is the direct of some impending calamity. The fear in the case of a tragedy is based on our imaginative, intellectual union with the hero. The spectator through the enlarging power of pity is elevated out of himself and identifies himself with the fade of mankind. He quits the narrow sphere of an individual and identifies himself with the fate of mankind.
Tragedy must possess a typical universal value depicting the combination of the inevitable and the unexpected. Pity and fear, awakened in connection with larger aspects of human suffering become universalised emotion sparing what is personal and self regarding. In the grow of tragic excitement, these feelings are so transformed that the net result is in noble emotional satisfaction. The emotion of pity and fear, thus hold immense significance as they bring about the catharsis and decide the fate of tragedy. If there is only pity, the tragedy would become unjustly sentimental. If there is only fear, the work becomes the melodrama. Catharsis is surely the principle expressing how emotions of an individual are made impersonal and how they are universalised. It is clear then that Aristotle theory of catharsis gives us the larger vision of the world around us by assimilating various paradoxes of spontaneity and consciousness, of intellect and emotions and of inward and outward dynamics of human mind.
References
1Aristotle, On the Art of Poetry Trans. Ingram Byewater (New Delhi : Oxford University Press, 1925) 23.
2Aristotle, On the Art of Poetry 26–27.
3Aristotle, On the Art of Poetry 35.
4David Daiches, Critical Approaches to Literature (London : Longmans, 1959) 24.
5Daiches 28.
6Daiches 28.
7Aristotle, Poetics, Tr. S. H. Butcher, Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art, (New Delhi : Kalyani, Reprint 1987) 27.
8Aristotle, Poetics, S. H. Butcher, Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art, 31.
9Butcher 31.
10Humphry House, Aristotle's Poetics (New Delhi : Kalyani, 1988) 49.
11Humphry House 59.
12Humphry House 59.
13Humphry House 59.
14Butcher 41.
15J. W. H. Alknis, Literary Criticism in Antiquity (London : Methuen, 1973) 19.
16Stephen Helliwel, Aristotle's Poetics (London : Duckworth, 1986) 213.
17E. M. Forster, The Aspects of Novel (1927; London : Penguin, 1990) 87.
18E. M. Forster 88.
19Bernard Bergonzi, The Situation of the Novel (London : Pelican Books, 1971) 252.
20K. G. Shrivastava, Aristotle's Doctrine of Tragic Catharsis (Allahabad : Kitab Mahal, 1982) 159.
21F. L. Lucas, Tragedy : Serious Drama in Relation to Aristotle's Poetics (New York : Collier Books, 1967) 123.
22Ingram Bywater, Aristotle on the Art of Poetry (New Delhi : Oxford University Press, 1985) 15–16.
23Halliwell, 173–174.
The king died and then the queen died is a story. 'The kind died and then the queen died of grief' is a plot. The time sequence is preserved but the sense of casuality overshadows it14.
It is obvious that Forster is little different to Aristotle in his emphasis on the element of causality. He further elaborates his thesis by alluding to two principal demands of a plot intelligence and memory. Intelligence lays emphasis on interconnection between any two events and memory is an indirect reference to magnitude and size. "The plot maker", says "expects us to remember, we expect him to leave no loose ends"15. The plot structure of a short story demands intelligence when it is causally knit. Yet the demand of memory in connection with the plot of short story is of limited significance as the definition of the genre itself restricts the presence of loose ends.
The Aristotlean views on the plot of the tragedy bear a close relation with the function of a tragedy, i.e. catharsis of pity and fear. K.G. Shrivastava's views in his elaboration of the controversial term katharsis capture our attention :
It is true that the plot is the expression or representation of the poetic vision itself is the structure because in order to be fully bodied force, it has got to be identical with the plot17.
Shrivastava's identification of plot with vision ratifies the importance of plot and consequently Aristotlean thesis on plot in connection with the plot structure of a tragedy.
In the definition of tragedy Aristotle speaks of 'catharsis' as the specific function of a tragedy. For centuries tragedy was considered to produce specific moral effect. Through purification of passions most of the critics until nineteenth century like Jacob, Bernays firmly established the fact that catharsis is a metaphor taken from medical science. Even John Miltons was of the same view. The reason behind the critics' inclination towards this kind of interpretation is probably the fact that Aristotle was some of a physician. F. L. Lucas asserts that catharsis "A definitely medical metaphor" – A metaphor of an apparent. S. H. Butcher and B. Y. Water are prone more to purgation theory. The views of B. Y. Water invite our attention. I hope it is not rash to surmise that the much depated word Katharsis, purification or 'purgation', may have come into Aristotle's mouth from the same source. It has all the appearance of being an old word which is accepted and re–interpreted by Aristotle rather than a word freely chosen by him to denote the exact phenomenon he wishes to describe.
Plato in his appreciation of a tragedy discusses the excitation of pity as function of a tragedy and Aristotle adds fear to it. Aristotle in his Rhetoric regards pity and fear as two sister emotions. Probably through Catharsis of pity and fear he means that the function of tragedy is to make us fear for ourselves the distress we pity in others. The doctrine is based on the fact that the person capable of pity is the person who nurtures the possibility of fear. The person capable of pity is the person with rich and strong imagination and is, therefore, capable of experiencing the pain and ego such as that which we see affecting of threatening a person pitied. It is thus obvious from the above description that the Katharsis of pity and fear is not a process in two different steps but it is a singular and composite response of a man capable of thought and imagination. To the action around which the whole tragic framework has been composed. The views of Stephen Halelo invite our attention. He points out :
Pity and fear (though, of course, not these alone) are to be regarded not as uncontrollable instincts or forces, but as responses to reality which are possible for a mind in which thought and emotion are integrated and interdependent.
Halliwell further justifies the same idea of integrated response to tragic action and says :
But is also helps us to see how Aristotle conceives of the tragic emotions not as overwhelming waves of material of poetic drama. The framework for the experience of these emotions is nothing other than the cognitive understanding of the mimetic representation of human action and character.
In Rhetoric Aristotle defines fear as a form of pain or disturbance arising from an impression which is destructive or painful. He defines pity as a form of pain act – an evident evil of a destructive or painful variety in the case of one who does not deserve it. If the object of pity shares with us our essentials a pity is gradually transformed into fear. Thus, pity and fear are correlated feelings and we pity others where under like circumstance we fear for ourselves. It is important to note that fear is not caused by the direct apprehension of misfortune impending over our life but it is a sympathetic shudder we feel for a hero who in his essentials resembles us. The fear in case of a tragedy does not paralyse the mind of stun and sense as this is the direct of some impending calamity. The fear in the case of a tragedy is based on our imaginative, intellectual union with the hero. The spectator through the enlarging power of pity is elevated out of himself and identifies himself with the fade of mankind. He quits the narrow sphere of an individual and identifies himself with the fate of mankind.
Tragedy must possess a typical universal value depicting the combination of the inevitable and the unexpected. Pity and fear, awakened in connection with larger aspects of human suffering become universalised emotion sparing what is personal and self regarding. In the grow of tragic excitement, these feelings are so transformed that the net result is in noble emotional satisfaction. The emotion of pity and fear, thus hold immense significance as they bring about the catharsis and decide the fate of tragedy. If there is only pity, the tragedy would become unjustly sentimental. If there is only fear, the work becomes the melodrama. Catharsis is surely the principle expressing how emotions of an individual are made impersonal and how they are universalised. It is clear then that Aristotle theory of catharsis gives us the larger vision of the world around us by assimilating various paradoxes of spontaneity and consciousness, of intellect and emotions and of inward and outward dynamics of human mind.
References
1Aristotle, On the Art of Poetry Trans. Ingram Byewater (New Delhi : Oxford University Press, 1925) 23.
2Aristotle, On the Art of Poetry 26–27.
3Aristotle, On the Art of Poetry 35.
4David Daiches, Critical Approaches to Literature (London : Longmans, 1959) 24.
5Daiches 28.
6Daiches 28.
7Aristotle, Poetics, Tr. S. H. Butcher, Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art, (New Delhi : Kalyani, Reprint 1987) 27.
8Aristotle, Poetics, S. H. Butcher, Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art, 31.
9Butcher 31.
10Humphry House, Aristotle's Poetics (New Delhi : Kalyani, 1988) 49.
11Humphry House 59.
12Humphry House 59.
13Humphry House 59.
14Butcher 41.
15J. W. H. Alknis, Literary Criticism in Antiquity (London : Methuen, 1973) 19.
16Stephen Helliwel, Aristotle's Poetics (London : Duckworth, 1986) 213.
17E. M. Forster, The Aspects of Novel (1927; London : Penguin, 1990) 87.
18E. M. Forster 88.
19Bernard Bergonzi, The Situation of the Novel (London : Pelican Books, 1971) 252.
20K. G. Shrivastava, Aristotle's Doctrine of Tragic Catharsis (Allahabad : Kitab Mahal, 1982) 159.
21F. L. Lucas, Tragedy : Serious Drama in Relation to Aristotle's Poetics (New York : Collier Books, 1967) 123.
22Ingram Bywater, Aristotle on the Art of Poetry (New Delhi : Oxford University Press, 1985) 15–16.
23Halliwell, 173–174.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
ARISTOTLE(PART-1)
Aristotle takes all species of aesthetic expression to be nothing but a form of mimesis. He in a beginning of his trities makes his views on the origin of poetry and fine art very clear. He says :
Epic poetry is tragedy, as also comedy Dithysambic poetry and most flute playing and lyre–playings are all, viewed, as a whole, modes of imitation. But at the same time they differ from one another in three ways, either by a difference of kind in their means, or by differences of the objects, or in the manner of their imitations1.
Aristotle defines the whole space of mimesis along three main axes. The object of imitation, the medium of imitation and the manner of imitation from the point of view of dramatic presentation he lays emphasis on two main types of man, those above the average and those below the average. It is obvious that these two types of object account for two different genres : Tragedy and Comedy. He asserts :
This difference is that distinguishes Tragedy and comedy also; the one would make it personages worse, and the other, than the men of the present day2.
It is this clear that the object of imitation accounts for the principal discussion between tragedy and comedy, thus, the difference of the objects of imitation accounts for these two different and distinct form of dramatic imitation.
The manner of imitation is another very important factor which determines the genre and nature of imitation. The imitator may imitate a common object in a same medium yet the output may be different from each other. The writer of an epic and that of tragedy imitate a man above the average but if the manner of imitation is dramatic he produces a tragedy and if he imitates in a descriptive manner he produces an epic.
Aristotle firmly asserts that tragedy is supreme of all forms of imitations. Probably it is so far the simple reason that a tragedy skillfully assimilate two different forms of imitation. It presents a unique synthesis of speech and action. Speech is imitated in speech and action is rendered in action. Aristotle defines :
A tragedy, then, is the imitation of an action that is serious and also, as having magnitude, complete in itself; in language with pleasurable accessories, each kind brought in separately in the parts of the work, in a dramatic, not in a narrative form; with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions3
The above quoted definition can be divided into four different clauses – The first clause comes out with a general and generic identity of tragedy. The second clause gives us a nature of the action, i.e. imitated by the playwright which makes us infer the nature of object of imitation. The third clause tells about a medium and manner of imitation and the fourth clause which is better known as catharsis clause tells us about the function of a tragedy. Thus, in the first three clause he makes clear the object medium and manner of the tragic composition and in fourth clause he discusses at length about function of a tragedy.
The concept of plot is almost as old a phenomenon in the history of criticism as is criticism itself which always acquired privileged status among other elements. Aristotle was, however, the first great critic who analysed the term carefully and its different constituents. It is, however, a pleasant irony that Aristotle's discussion on plot and other constituent elements has survived all the major attacks on it and his Poetics provides us with the most authentic discussion on the structural elements of a work of art. Aristotle, with his elaborate discussion on plot and other constituent elements of tragedy provides us with first methodological interpretation of a tragedy and initiates the tradition of textual criticism as against the moral approach of Plato. The words of David Daiches capture our attention here. He, in his famous book "Critical Approaches to Literature", says :
Aristotle's method is essentially one of examining observed phenomenon with a view to noting their qualities and characteristics. His concern is the ontological one of discovering what in fact literature is rather than the normative one of describing what it should be. He is describing, not legislating, yet his description is so organised as to make an account of the nature of literature involve emerges in terms of its function1.
Aristotle devotes around fourteen chapters in the Poetics to the study of tragedy and the greatest importance is given to the study of plot. The other five elements, character, thought, diction, songs and spectacles are placed in subordination to plot. It is this element which constructs the aesthetics of a tragedy. By plot, Aristotle doesn't mean the "mere summarizable epitome of events"2, but it is a determination of the dynamics of the action; "the whole causal change which leads to the final outcome"3. This is principally the reason why Aristotle imparts inordinate importance to plot and takes it to be "the soul of the tragedy". This also seems to be the justification to the controversial statement that "there can be a tragedy without a character but not without a plot"4.
Aristotle's ideal of a proper construction are manifest in his famous statement that a tragedy must have a beginning, a middle and an end. It is obligatory to analyse three division of a plot. About the beginning, Aristotle says :
That a beginning is that which does not itself follow anything by casual necessity or comes to be5.
The first one imitates the structure of a tragedy without any violation and the second one constricts the structure of first kind to the middle alone. In the second type much is left to the imagination of the reader about the beginning and the end which accounts for a kind of amorphous function which is pre–characteristic of short story only. Aristotle in his discussion on the plot of a tragedy lays optimum stress on unity and length. Aristotle while discussing the unity and length lays emphasis on the completeness and order. He says :
Again, a beautiful object, whether it be a living organism or any whole composed of parts, must not only have an orderly arrangement of parts, but must also be of a certain magnitude; for beauty depends on magnitude and order6.
It is obvious here that Aristotle lays greater stress on the orderly manifestation of the constituents of a tragedy. Here Aristotle compares a work of art with the living creatures and hence denies the possibility that he speaks in terms of a formally imposed inanimate unity. The words of Humphry House capture our attention. He says :
This comparison of the unity of a work of art to that of a "living creature" is so important because it provides a vivid refutation of the charge that Aristotle is describing a formal, dead, mechanical kind of unity7.
It is an interesting observation here that the observations of Aristotle are applicable even today without any variation to almost every species of creative writing, even short story which is comparatively a new birth. The short story despite the novelty of form and genre shows its commitments to Aristotlean concept of completeness and order. Aristotle lays stress on the two criteria of probability and necessity for the purpose of coherence in the dramatic structure. There are numerous interpetations for these two words as they offer a variety of them. The word probable, in conjugation with necessary refers to Aristotle's insistence on the organic manifestation of events in the plot structure. To understand and interpret the word probable, Humphry House follows a method of contrast and examines the world 'improbability'. He says :
We can better understand what is meant by this double criteria by considering the word which Aristotle used to describe its opposite8.
Humphry House's study establishes the term meaning as rational and convincing. Obviously, Aristotle's stress here is on the organic correlation among the events. The criteria probable and necessary in mutual complementation with each other refers to a higher degree of organic rationality and an outright denial to the inclusion of superfluous incidents. Humphry House infers that "probable and necessary" taken together, imply a higher degree of rationality"9. He further says that "in this respect the criteria is intended to exclude from the play such things as chance; unrelated events for which adequate origins are not shown within the play itself ......"10.
It is again an interesting observation that the criteria of probability and necessity are as much relevant in the structure of short story as they are in the structure of a tragedy, an epic or a novel. In the case of in the structure of a short story the criteria of probability and necessity makes an inevitable structural need as the logical coherence is always an undeniable need in the plot structure of a short story as it deals with greater compactness than any other work of literature.
Aristotle describes two kinds of plot, Simple and Complex. the complex plot involves the two defining elements – Peripety and Anagnorisis. Peripety is defined as "a change from one state of thing within the play to its opposite of the kind described and that too in the probable or necessary sequence of events"11. Consequent upon peripety is anagnorisis. Aptly translated as discovery, it is defined by Aristotle as a change from ignorance to knowledge. J.W.H. Atknis elaborates the concept and takes it to be "the reversal of intention, a deed done in blindness"12. The plot structure of a tragedy involves both these elements nearly in a cause and effect relationship. Stephen Helliwell thinks that – "Aristotle conceives the recognition and reversal ideal in combination"13.
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