Visitors Create In #697: My two extra cents on Serious Literature – Aspect Three
By G Waugh
‘One of literature’s applications is to give hope to the hopeless.’
I have viewed some of the finest critics making an attempt to determine the intent of art and literature as presented earlier mentioned. I have noticed some of them reject even the most actually original works of art as undeserving of their adulation and recognition for only one particular rationale – the depressing result they leave on their ‘consumers’. Even a person as eminent as the Sahitya Akademi winner, Su Venkatesan informed in one of his speeches about his novel Velpari that he chose to conclusion his story on a favourable notice, irrespective of historic proof that factors to the opposite. According to historical sources, Paari, the chieftain of Parambu is defeated by the mixed forces of the a few fantastic kings of Tamizhagam – the Cheras, the Cholas and the Pandyas and his land of Parambu finally arrives beneath their rule. But Su Ve finishes his novel the way his viewers including me would have wished it to – Paari with the assist of his soundest understanding on the character of the landscape where by the fight is fought outmaneuvers the 3 kings and chases them absent back to their homeland. Why? Su Ve claims he desired his novel to give his audience hope and optimism so that the lessons they consider from the story empower them to encounter the struggles of their serious life with resilience and inspiration.
It is Su Ve’s literary license to conclusion his novel the way he would have desired it to and I am nobody to dilemma that. But the bone of competition right here is something unique – if the high quality of a work of artwork is to be identified based mostly on whether or not it presents hope and solace to the reader, are not we in the procedure ending up ‘reducing’ the extremely reason of its existence? Does an artwork perform have an obligation to the reader to provide as a supplementary dose to his day by day diet program of caffeine, failing which it ought to be ‘sequestered’ from its canon and authorized to rot in a ghetto of oblivion and infamy?
In my pretty confined expertise of looking at literature, art serves multiple functions, 1 of which is to reflect with as a great deal sincerity and conviction, the psyche of the writer in dilemma. This definition much too in my viewpoint I admit, is really reductive but this is not the area to scale the importance of artwork, its purposes and importance in all its lots of dimensions. My position however is only this – if another person asks me what art has provided me, I can say a person issue pretty emphatically,
‘Art has comforted me occasionally when I have felt depressed and frustrated me when I have felt comforted’.
Frankly, when I experienced joined the IT market a 10 years or so back again, when I was wallowing in the early opulence it was offering me in conditions of decadent functions, expensive wardrobe, multiplex cinema, branded sneakers and unique delicacies, I had the prospect to go through Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck in my leisure time. As quite a few may possibly have recognised, the novel is a re-telling of how tens of 1000’s of farmers and each day wage laborers in the United States identified on their own pauperized and how they migrated from one state to a further in look for of positions for survival throughout the Good Despair of 1929. The depth of the suffering they had endured shook me out of the comforts of my residing, depressed me for so lengthy and eventually set me in the path of learning far more and a lot more about poverty, unemployment, inflation, their causes and ways to tackle them.
The same issue transpired when I was apprehensive about the fragility of democracy in our individual India, how our citizens had no consciousness about their legal rights and privileges and how simply the governing administration could turn ‘autocratic’ each time it experienced felt that its authority was waning. When I was attempting to master how other nations were being working with concerns these types of as these, I experienced the possibility to study The Unbearable Lightness of Getting by Milan Kundera. It was in some means an indirect assault on the authoritarian point out that existed in Czechoslovakia in the next 50 percent of the last century before the collapse of the USSR. And some much more novels and films (Resort Rwanda, 2004) about other international locations assisted me master how a great deal of nations in the globe that were liberated alongside India have deteriorated into anarchy, riots and genocide in excess of the past few decades and how most of these societies are even now as we discuss, grappling with the question of how to address these problems. In some techniques, even if these stories have been depressing, they ended up serving me as a great source of ease and comfort at the exact time, serving to me comprehend how significantly far more peaceful, steady and democratic in comparison, our have India has been and how blessed I was to be born in these types of an atmosphere.
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On the own front as well, novels and movies have experienced the similar result. I don’t forget a line from a track in K Viswanath’s Salangai Oli,
“Vaazhkai mudiumbodhu thodangum, thodangumbodhu mudium!”
I recall examining David Copperfield by Charles Dickens extra than a decade back again. During the full story, younger David would have remained smitten by a beautiful girl, Dora Spenlow if my memory serves me ideal. A pretty long part of the tale would have been devoted by Dickens towards this – the blooming of this romance, the progress and its ripening at their marriage. When the reader is expecting a extended tale about how the younger pair lived and grew aged, Dora dies all of a sudden because of to a miscarriage if I don’t forget accurately. All alongside David in parallel, would have experienced a close buddy named Agnes who remains his conscience-keeper throughout. David spirals into a despair and soon after many yrs of crafting to Agnes, he out of the blue finds appreciate in her. They marry just about every other and a new everyday living commences of study course, out of the blue.
The story may possibly appear really normal to quite a few in some means, just heading by how I have narrated it in just a handful of lines offered earlier mentioned. But if you browse the novel, Agnes would have been shown as somebody who is like a Shobana to Dhanush’s Thiruchitrambalam- a close friend, nothing at all far more, nothing fewer. She could have been a Partha to Udhayanidhi Stalin’s Saravanan and the romance would not experience extremely dissimilar, the only variation being her gender. She stays with him when he is in pursuit of Dora, weeps with him when he fails and cheers when he succeeds. And Dickens would have woven this connection in these a way that you would uncover totally no hint of romance concerning these two. And when Dora dies soon after her relationship with David, the reader I am certain would have felt so frustrated like how we felt whilst viewing a Mahalakshmi dying in the 2004 blockbuster, M Kumaran Son of Mahalakshmi. Dora till then, as a character would have remained the giant propeller at the rear of the whole story’s motion and when she gets killed off by Dickens abruptly, the reader would have felt like a bewildered 23rd Pulikesi all of a sudden locating himself towards a wall when strutting in his palace about discussing keenly with his advisors.
But Dickens proceeds the tale and after some agonizing several years of mere correspondence with Agnes, David overcomes his despair and attempts to commence a new lifestyle. The second where he finds appreciate in his lifestyle-prolonged companion Agnes is a lovely episode and personally, the minute felt glorious and epiphanic for me, for explanations that shall shortly adhere to.
If I think deeply about why I was strike so deeply at these kinds of a second, I understand a whole lot of items. The cause why the tale of all our lives is so intriguing and depressing at the similar time is only a single – its utter unpredictability. I try to remember my father telling me that possessing done his schooling without his parents’ support in the early 70s, he was forced to pursue a Diploma in Commerce for pecuniary motives in a area Polytechnic. He had to review this remarkably unpopular class in spite of his entire despise in direction of the issue only for the reason that his brothers could not afford having to pay for other ‘lucrative’ ones. But as months went on, he tried to acquire a liking towards the matter. He quickly grew up to go after a Masters in Commerce and came out unexpectedly, in flying hues. He experienced until then assumed that Commerce was likely to be his life and had begun making use of for positions that necessary his talent. Inside of a couple months, he discovered out that the system of receiving a position was not heading to be brief and easy and to escape the wrath of his brothers for remaining idle till then, he enrolled himself for a element-time course in shorthand and type-producing, with of training course dislike and equivalent disinterest.
As months handed, he understood that a work in his field of desire and proficiency was not going to be easy to get and that he experienced to put himself in the support of anybody who was willing to consider him in, at minimum for the time getting, irrespective of the character of perform. He worked for a couple of months as a stenographer in a number of personal companies and with this working experience, he was delighted to be invited 1 great working day, for an job interview for a position in the Central Government. He succeeded in passing the pertinent exams and observed himself soon proudly leaning versus a wood chair in a single of the musty rooms of a Central governing administration place of work, prepared to form out a letter for his outstanding, on his proud, new possession – a mechanical Remington typewriter.
Shorthand and typewriting, that he had initially identified himself indifferent to and pursued only as an accent skill, grew to become the initially stepping stone in his 3 10 years-long, illustrious profession in the services of the govt. Inside decades, he was able to clear a handful of departmental examinations in the same business and by his center age, he uncovered his name embossed in a government seal, prepared to attest files for my mates enrolling by themselves in engineering colleges.
These parts of his daily life, which he utilised to emphasize usually remind me about nothing but the intriguing unpredictability of the extremely story identified as lifestyle. Proper from childhood, we believe that in specific items and throw our bodyweight driving specific possibilities that we presume to be great and effective for us in the extended term. At some unexpected moment, issues choose a convert, the benefits turn out in any other case and our hopes are permanently dashed. We all of a sudden discover ourselves in a blind alley devoid of a clue on which route to turn in the direction of. But as excellent art in some cases shows, lifestyle can restart in fully unpredictable methods and acquire us in a new route.
This is one of the good reasons why I identified the relationship of David and Agnes really touching and epiphanic. These portions of the novel all of a sudden felt so everyday living-like and relatable to me that I retain telling my buddies about them each time I obtain them frustrated and hopeless.
Once more, I would like to remind my reader that only mainly because the novel David Copperfield did not have a unhappy ending like owning David vomit blood at the corners of the open sewers of 19th century London and die with the reminiscences of Dora, I favored the novel and I nonetheless savor quite a few portions of it. Certainly not. When Agnes married David, I was delighted at David’s redemption no question. But when Dora died prior to, I was not only sad but also incredibly appalled at the perils of life’s unpredictability as nicely.
Not only David Copperfield, V.S.Naipaul’s A Dwelling for Mr Biswas, Thi Janakiraman’s masterpiece Mohamul and my latest favourite, Devibharathi’s Neervazhipaduoom – all of them have a singular quality. They supply me as a result of their wide canvas, a slice of the wholesomeness of the tale of life. When I use the term ‘wholesomeness’ I refer specially to the numerous opportunities that exist for a character within just a story. A character in a novel just really much like us, may possibly have quite a few acquaintances and have many networks of interactions with them, some central and some peripheral. Most stories that we see in films or novels do not contact on a majority of these networks and get the a lot easier path of heading from level A to issue B producing use of only the networks that instantly make perception to the major thread for pushing the tale ahead. For example, Jayakanthan’s Oru Nadigai Nadagam Parkiral is very considerably a really like tale and the main thread by yourself is supplied the highest worth – the partnership of Kalyani and Rangaswamy and how they shift from being strangers to turning into companions for existence, overcoming many hurdles. By confining them selves only to the primary thread, these stories, in spite of obtaining persuasive arcs at the exact same time, do not endeavor to emulate everyday living or contact on its huge alternatives.
Only by becoming ‘wholesome’, by replicating serious-daily life networks of associations onto the canvas of a story and checking out teeming possibilities inherent in them, a author in my humble impression raises his function from the level of its ability to ‘dispense hope and succor’ to the reader to one of ‘imparting the perception of possessing lived the existence of another person else’ to the reader. Only when I sense I have entered into the head of a fictional character and lived his lifestyle via all his ups and downs, does a function of artwork experience entire for me. Following exiting out of the character and returning to the realities of my very own life, I have to feel like I have gained at minimum anything in terms of practical experience. For the duration of joyful times in my lifestyle, I will have to be cautious from that experience that these are only fleeting and when I am sad, I should cheer myself for the extremely exact same purpose.
In other words and phrases, to paraphrase Sundara Ramasamy, it is totally not the task of the writer whose reserve I read to massage my ankles at the end of just one of life’s longest treks. Therefore, I would somewhat not count on it from him.
To stop with a estimate, I will go with 1 of my most effective pickup-traces:
‘She is like artwork. She is not gorgeous. Artwork is not intended to be beautiful (or inspiring). It just has to make you feel something’.
