From Sangli to Bhopal: Via Chandigarh and Dahiwadi

The first quarter of 2010 was probably the busiest quarter of a year for me. It started with my trip to Sangli in early Jan as a subject expert to talk about the issues related to translation of poetry and ended with my trip to Bhopal  to read my poems at Kavi Bharti-5 organized by Vagarth, Centre for Indian Poetry at Bharat Bhavan, Bhopal between 19 th and 21st of March. In the mean time, I also went to Dahiwadi, a small town near Pune, to read my poems and deliver a talk on the Post Nineties Marathi poetry in Jan. I went to Chandigarh to attend the International Conference of Melus-Melow on the Contemporary Literature after the Eighties in Feb and to Ahmedabad to talk about the implications of the language vs. literature debate in the present context at Smt AP Arts and NP Patel Commerce college, PK Patel Vidya Sankul, Naroda . Phew! Never ran around so much. Plus I had to work towards moving our residence from the university quarters where I stay to our new house at Gorwa. So in all probability this might be the last of my blog entries from the quarters.The best part of it, however, was catching up with many new and old friends!The places I visited were also wonderful, especially, Chandigarh and Bhopal. The intellectual level of discussion at these places too was far better than expected. It was fun.

In all the seminars and conferences, my attempt was to think out the box. Though creative writing, critical discourse and translation are three different discursive domains, I feel that the basic thrust of all the three is very much the same: renewal of language which is nothing less than renewal of the ways of thinking, perceiving and being. Sounds too contentious and ambitious? Recall Shelley's slogan that the poets are unacknowledged legislators of the world. The people who find this proposition too Romantic, idealistic and outrageous read the word ` legislators' too literally. No, we dont make traffic rules or penal laws. What we do make is language, and all these things are made from it. Like the great inventors, innovators and discoverers, we invent, innovate and discover the things not discovered or invented before. However, its because we deal primarily with language, people feel that language is not a big deal as everyone uses it all the time. Hence, the word `unacknowledged'. 

Like Oscar Wilde, I think criticism is an art too, because it is also a ways of seeing, perceiving and thinking about art. When people start thinking, perceiving and talking about art in obvious and cliched ways, its the time for the critic to invent a new language, a new way of talking about art and a new way of thinking about it. It follows that the challenges before criticism are in many ways similar to those before creative writing. Like art, it has to be interesting and stimulating and fresh. 

Going back to more mundane matters, the exam season has started and I am now neck deep with examination work. I also purchased a new bike-Bajaj-Discover DTS-Si -today as I would have to commute a great deal from my new home and am enjoying my learning lessons. Actually, I rode my Bajaj Super for a decade. I am yet to get proper control over the gears using my foot. Neways, I am enjoying it.

One Man's Relativism : Relativism and the Aesthetic Criterion

Relativism, after all, is also an `-ism', a theory which claims to be universal. The logical contradiction lies in the statements such as these. When I say, `Everything is relative', I have uttered an absolute statement. I have problem with the absolutism in the argument that `the good and the bad are relative things'. Conclusion: Everyone is working with some absolutism and some criteria. Whether one is aware of it or not or whether one is honest enough to acknowledge it or not is a different issue.

My criterion is this: poetry with cliché, obvious turns of phrase, and usual content is an ordinary one. This I take as a working definition of interesting poetry.

The question would be `what is cliché or obviousness' when it comes to poetry? Well the answer would be largely empirical based on reading of a range of texts. If the phrases, images, rhetorical figures and ideas which recur in quantitatively large number of texts are found in a poem you are reading, the poem becomes an ordinary work. Bad poetry refuses to reinvent the language and move beyond its limits.

I am not sure if I agree with the idea that a good critical analysis would not change my view of the poem under consideration. A good critical analysis can do amazing things, and Oscar Wilde was unfailingly correct when he considered criticism as a form of art. I had never thought of Freud as a creative writer until, I read Harold Bloom's essay ` Freud: A Shakespearean Reading' in the Western Canon.( notice it is not Shakespeare a Freudian reading').People who dislike criticism are people who dislike art because good criticism is also an art: art of discovering, inventing, uncovering and moving beyond the obvious and the habitual modes of reading. In India probably due to the influence of medieval Bhakti movement, there is a tendency to consider criticism as an unnecessary evil. This is largely due to anti-intellectualism among Indian middle class. If anti-intellectualism comes, can fascism and totalitarianism be far behind?