(first published 2003)
Concepts such as the One Reality, Maya and Karma have permeated Indian consciousness. Indians, no matter what their class, caste, or religion are familiar with these terms, which date back to the Upanishads, the Brahma Sutra and Shankara. Since then, there have been numerous refinements and analyses of these concepts, and notable among those who provided a fresh view of these ideas, is Sri Aurobindo.
Born in Kolkata on 15 August 1872, Aurobindo Ghose was a philosopher, poet and mystic. He was educated mainly in England and after his return to India in 1892 and took up various administrative and teaching posts and then began to seriously study Yoga. Between 1905 and 1908, he was one of the main nationalist leaders of the extremist school. Imprisoned in 1908, he experienced a ‘divine revelation’, and two years later when there was again a threat of imprisonment, escaped from British India to the French territory of Pondicherry (now Puducherry) where he started an ashram. He was joined in his ashram in 1920 by ‘The Mother’, a Frenchwoman named Mirra Richard, who took over the running of the ashram, while Aurobindo devoted himself to reading, studying ancient texts, and writing philosophical works including The Life Divine, Integral Yoga, the epic Savitri , a poem of 24,000 lines, as well as commentaries on The Bhagavad Gita, the major Upanishads, and other texts.
In these works, Aurobindo, a profound thinker, presented his philosophy and ideas. His basic assumption was that life is still evoving, and a human being is not the highest stage of evolution – a higher being will one day emerge. The light and power of the spirit, called by him, the ‘Supermind’, presiding over human evolution, would transform human consciousness and remould life on earth.
To Aurobindo, there is One Reality, but there are also individual souls. The world is not Maya or an illusion, but real, and needs to be perfected through the spiritual and material evolution of every living being. On karma, Sri Aurobindo challenges the popular concept of a divine accounting system which extends through the successive lives of a person. Instead, he dwells on the nature of cosmic energy, which incorporating all the complexities of one’s inner and outer life, takes one in a particular direction, depending on one’s inclinations and stage of lif. Karma is thus linked with the process of evolution. Growth requires experiences of different kinds, both pleasurable and painful, and Aurobindo says, “the soul may of itself accept or choose poverty, misfortune and suffering as helpful to its growth, stimulants of a rapid development, and reject riches and prosperity and success as dangerous and conducive to a relaxation of spiritual effort... Cosmic existence is not a vast administrative system of universal justice with a cosmic law of recompense and retribution.” Instead it is a movement of the energy of nature, which provides, within the cycle of rebirth, whatever is needed for the next step in its evolution.
Sri Aurobindo died in 1950. His works need to be better known, as he provides a vision of a different world, a perfect creation, which will arise when each individual evolves. For him, there is no nirvana or moksha, providing an escape from sorrow and impermanence, but rather the material world made immortal, through the descent of the divine spirit.
Friday, December 26, 2008
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Jawaharlal Nehru - A Writer and Visionary
(First published 2003)
“ Last month I went back to Kashmir after an absence of twenty-three years. I was only there for twelve days, but those days were filled with beauty, and I drank in the loveliness of that land of enchantment. I wandered about the Valley and climbed a glacier, and felt that life was worthwhile.”
These words were written by Jawaharlal Nehru in 1940, in the midst of political struggles and prison sentences. Today we tend to forget that Nehru was not merely a leader of the fredom movement and India’s first prime minister, but also an accomplished writer. His books include Glimpses of World History, Discovery of India, and An Autobiography, as well as collections of essays, and of thousands of his letters and speeches.
During the course of the freedom struggle, Nehru was imprisoned by the British authorities for a total of more than nine years. In this enforced isolation from political activity, he found time to think, reflect, and write.
Glimpses of World History offers a panoramic sweep of the history of the world, and was written mainly between 1930 and 1933, in the form of letters to his young daughter, Indira. He writes about the Greeks, about Asia and Europe, Africa and America, about Mohenjodaro which has just been discovered, and intersperses his account with advice to Indira, and comments on life in jail.
Discovery of India was written in Ahmadnagar Fort, where he was imprisoned from 9 August 1942, the start of the Quit India Movement, to 28 March 1945. Though he begins with ancient India, the best sections are of the India in which he lives, the India that is struggling for independence. His style is graphic, fluent and compelling. Thus on the Bengal famine of 1943, he writes “ Famine came, ghastly, staggering, horrible beyond words. In Malabar, in Bijapur, in Orissa and, above all in the rich and fertile province of Bengal, men and women and little children died in thousands daily, for lack of food.” Adding his personal comments, as he usually does in most of his writing, he says, “Death was common enough everywhere. But here death had no purpose, no logic, no necessity; it was the result of man’s incompetence and callousness, man-made, a slow creeping thing of horror, with nothing to redeem it”.
He writes also about the personalities which shaped India, and tries to understand the growth of communalism, the strange idea of partition. Jinnah puzzles him. He was head and shoulders above other members of the Muslim League, he says and that is how he became their leader. Once Jinnah was considered the apostle of Hindu-Muslim unity, but now, “ Some destiny or course of events had thrown him among the very people for whom he had no respect.” This book thus looks at history from within, through the eyes of a man who participated in and created history, and should be compulsory reading for anyone wishing to understand the tumultous years befor independence.
His Autobiography, the most introspective of his books, was written mainly in Dehra Dun jail between 1934 and 1935. Here he writes not only of his life and the ongoing political struggle, but of his jail companions – hordes of wasps, bats, a puppy he nursed through a serious illness, a kitten he made friends with; he describes the weather, the incessant rain, and the glorious view on a freezing cold day, of the mountains, covered with snow.
All these books were written before independence. After 1947, he continued to write thousands of letters. His Speeches have been collected in five volumes, and reflect India’s growth and problems in the early years of independence.
Nehru’s historical perspective, wide knowledge, philosophical approach and subtle wit, make whatever he has written worth reading even today.
“ Last month I went back to Kashmir after an absence of twenty-three years. I was only there for twelve days, but those days were filled with beauty, and I drank in the loveliness of that land of enchantment. I wandered about the Valley and climbed a glacier, and felt that life was worthwhile.”
These words were written by Jawaharlal Nehru in 1940, in the midst of political struggles and prison sentences. Today we tend to forget that Nehru was not merely a leader of the fredom movement and India’s first prime minister, but also an accomplished writer. His books include Glimpses of World History, Discovery of India, and An Autobiography, as well as collections of essays, and of thousands of his letters and speeches.
During the course of the freedom struggle, Nehru was imprisoned by the British authorities for a total of more than nine years. In this enforced isolation from political activity, he found time to think, reflect, and write.
Glimpses of World History offers a panoramic sweep of the history of the world, and was written mainly between 1930 and 1933, in the form of letters to his young daughter, Indira. He writes about the Greeks, about Asia and Europe, Africa and America, about Mohenjodaro which has just been discovered, and intersperses his account with advice to Indira, and comments on life in jail.
Discovery of India was written in Ahmadnagar Fort, where he was imprisoned from 9 August 1942, the start of the Quit India Movement, to 28 March 1945. Though he begins with ancient India, the best sections are of the India in which he lives, the India that is struggling for independence. His style is graphic, fluent and compelling. Thus on the Bengal famine of 1943, he writes “ Famine came, ghastly, staggering, horrible beyond words. In Malabar, in Bijapur, in Orissa and, above all in the rich and fertile province of Bengal, men and women and little children died in thousands daily, for lack of food.” Adding his personal comments, as he usually does in most of his writing, he says, “Death was common enough everywhere. But here death had no purpose, no logic, no necessity; it was the result of man’s incompetence and callousness, man-made, a slow creeping thing of horror, with nothing to redeem it”.
He writes also about the personalities which shaped India, and tries to understand the growth of communalism, the strange idea of partition. Jinnah puzzles him. He was head and shoulders above other members of the Muslim League, he says and that is how he became their leader. Once Jinnah was considered the apostle of Hindu-Muslim unity, but now, “ Some destiny or course of events had thrown him among the very people for whom he had no respect.” This book thus looks at history from within, through the eyes of a man who participated in and created history, and should be compulsory reading for anyone wishing to understand the tumultous years befor independence.
His Autobiography, the most introspective of his books, was written mainly in Dehra Dun jail between 1934 and 1935. Here he writes not only of his life and the ongoing political struggle, but of his jail companions – hordes of wasps, bats, a puppy he nursed through a serious illness, a kitten he made friends with; he describes the weather, the incessant rain, and the glorious view on a freezing cold day, of the mountains, covered with snow.
All these books were written before independence. After 1947, he continued to write thousands of letters. His Speeches have been collected in five volumes, and reflect India’s growth and problems in the early years of independence.
Nehru’s historical perspective, wide knowledge, philosophical approach and subtle wit, make whatever he has written worth reading even today.
Friday, December 19, 2008
Batya Gur: Writer and Journalist
(first published 2004)
The troubled conditions in Israel have forced Batya Gur, Israeli writer and journalist, to comment on politics, though she is better known for her mystery novels.
At a conference in Brussels to celebrate International Women’s Day she said, “The suicide bombers sadden me and are destroying my heart”. But, she added, it was the Israeli leaders who were responsible for this tragic situation.
A frequent writer for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Gur recounted in an recent article how she was arrested when she asked three young policewomen why they were harrassing a Palestinian, old enough to be their grandfather. She wrote, “I found myself saying that I refuse to feel like a German walking past an abused Jew in Nazi Germany and turn away indifferently or fearfully. ‘You’re calling us Nazis!’ shrieked the soldiers, and within a minute the word became a precious possession on their lips. They rejoiced in their justice and I could already imagine all the self-righteous people gloating over the use of this word.”
Batya Gur, currently living in Jerusalem, is not a political figure, just an ordinary citizen trying to live her own life. She taught literature for several years before writing her first novel, in which she created the sensitive and intelligent detective Michael Ohayon. Though she writes fiction, her writing reflects the social, economic and political realities of Israel.
In Literary Murder, the background is the academic setting of Hebrew University. Saturday Morning Murder takes a look at the world of psychoanalysis. Murder on a Kibbutz, includes an interesting sociological and historical analysis of the changes and development of the institution of the Kibbutz. A Kibbutz member recollects, “ It’s difficult to transmit what the first contact with the land was like. The hardship, the dryness, the water, the hunger. Especially the hunger, and the hard work. Twelve hours at a stretch sometimes, clearing and ploughing and gradually building…” But as the years passed the Kibbutz movement and its communal way of life was questioned, and individual freedom became more important.
The next book, Murder Duet is about a murder in a musical family, and rich in detail on music and the life of musicians. Another in the Michael Ohayon series, Bethlehem Road Murder is to be released later this year. Gur’s other books include I didn’t Imagine It Would Be This Way and Stone For Stone.
Writing in Hebrew, her books have been translated into several languages, while Saturday Morning Murder has been televised.
The history of Israel and Palestine in some ways reminds us of India and Pakistan, and causes one to reflect on problems that seem created and fanned by political decisions. Batya Gur’s political views may be questioned, but what she writes has relevance, as both in her books and her articles she looks beyond man-made conflicts, at the common humanity of all people. Regarding her support of the old Palestinian, she says, “ I know very well that such an act by a woman like me, someone who avoids any political activity or any consistent struggle for human rights, is actually a sentimental act. Such a trivial act of protest is a bit like sweeping the path to my own private garden ….”. Yet it is perhaps such trivial and seemingly irrelevant acts, that could one day bring about positive change.
The troubled conditions in Israel have forced Batya Gur, Israeli writer and journalist, to comment on politics, though she is better known for her mystery novels.
At a conference in Brussels to celebrate International Women’s Day she said, “The suicide bombers sadden me and are destroying my heart”. But, she added, it was the Israeli leaders who were responsible for this tragic situation.
A frequent writer for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Gur recounted in an recent article how she was arrested when she asked three young policewomen why they were harrassing a Palestinian, old enough to be their grandfather. She wrote, “I found myself saying that I refuse to feel like a German walking past an abused Jew in Nazi Germany and turn away indifferently or fearfully. ‘You’re calling us Nazis!’ shrieked the soldiers, and within a minute the word became a precious possession on their lips. They rejoiced in their justice and I could already imagine all the self-righteous people gloating over the use of this word.”
Batya Gur, currently living in Jerusalem, is not a political figure, just an ordinary citizen trying to live her own life. She taught literature for several years before writing her first novel, in which she created the sensitive and intelligent detective Michael Ohayon. Though she writes fiction, her writing reflects the social, economic and political realities of Israel.
In Literary Murder, the background is the academic setting of Hebrew University. Saturday Morning Murder takes a look at the world of psychoanalysis. Murder on a Kibbutz, includes an interesting sociological and historical analysis of the changes and development of the institution of the Kibbutz. A Kibbutz member recollects, “ It’s difficult to transmit what the first contact with the land was like. The hardship, the dryness, the water, the hunger. Especially the hunger, and the hard work. Twelve hours at a stretch sometimes, clearing and ploughing and gradually building…” But as the years passed the Kibbutz movement and its communal way of life was questioned, and individual freedom became more important.
The next book, Murder Duet is about a murder in a musical family, and rich in detail on music and the life of musicians. Another in the Michael Ohayon series, Bethlehem Road Murder is to be released later this year. Gur’s other books include I didn’t Imagine It Would Be This Way and Stone For Stone.
Writing in Hebrew, her books have been translated into several languages, while Saturday Morning Murder has been televised.
The history of Israel and Palestine in some ways reminds us of India and Pakistan, and causes one to reflect on problems that seem created and fanned by political decisions. Batya Gur’s political views may be questioned, but what she writes has relevance, as both in her books and her articles she looks beyond man-made conflicts, at the common humanity of all people. Regarding her support of the old Palestinian, she says, “ I know very well that such an act by a woman like me, someone who avoids any political activity or any consistent struggle for human rights, is actually a sentimental act. Such a trivial act of protest is a bit like sweeping the path to my own private garden ….”. Yet it is perhaps such trivial and seemingly irrelevant acts, that could one day bring about positive change.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
In the Herb Garden: The Cadfael Chronicles
(first published 2003)
It’s the twelfth century, and in England there is civil war, with the Empress Maud and King Stephen contending for the throne, and various groups allying behind them. In the midst of all this, the Benedictine Abbey of St Peter and St. Paul in the countryside of Shrewsbury, remains a tranquil oasis. Here the monks lead their peaceful lives, praying and performing various tasks, delicately painting and copying manuscripts, studying, or planting herbs in the garden. Yet it is not as peaceful as it seems, and once in a way the monastery is disturbed by a murder, either in the premises or somewhere nearby. Then Brother Cadfael who is in charge of the herb garden, leaves his herbs for a while, and somehow solves the mystery.
Ellis Peters has written twenty books in this series, with Brother Cadfael, the sensitive and astute Welsh monk, as the detective. The historical background is authentic, and we learn about twelfth century England, the endless wars, the prevailing dogmas, the relationship with Wales and other neighbours. Each book has not only a murder, but a love story, with two young people who go through many problems before they are finally united in happiness. Fast paced and interesting, the books nevertheless retain a lyrical, peaceful quality, as no matter what happens, the monks pray and give thanks, for the blessings of another day.
Brother Cadfael has spent many years in the world before he joins the monastery at a late age, and this gives him tolerance, a philosophical view of life, and an understanding of human nature, that few other monks have. The Cadfael Chronicles, as the series is called, begins with A Morbid Taste for Bones. In this Cadfael is asked to go to Wales, and bring back the body of Saint Winifred interred there, so that the Abbey may have its own saint. How he does this, while leaving her there at the same time, and in the process discovering a murder, forms the plot of this book. In the second volume, One Corpse Too Many, the war impinges more directly on the monastery . “If he lifted his head from digging compost into the cabbage bed he could see the sluggish plumes of smoke hanging over the abbey roofs and the town and castle beyond, and smell the acrid residue of yesterday’s fires.” Soon Cadfael is asked to bury a number of corpses, and finds one extra.
Each book has a similarly intriguing story. In the twentieth volume Brother Cadfael’s Penance, he leaves the monastery to help his own son. In addition to these, there are three long stories in which Cadfael is the main character. The books have been translated into many languages, and form a television series shown all over the world.
Ellis Peters’ real name was Edith Pargeter. She wrote a number of other books, including mysteries set in modern times and historical novels, and won several awards. In addition she translated English classics into Czech. She died in 1995, and though there will be no more Cadfael Chronicles, Shrewsbury Abbey in Shropshire is famous because of her work. Visitors and fans from all over the world, still come there to see the remains of the Abbey, the home of the fictional Cadfael, and once one of the richest monasteries of England.
It’s the twelfth century, and in England there is civil war, with the Empress Maud and King Stephen contending for the throne, and various groups allying behind them. In the midst of all this, the Benedictine Abbey of St Peter and St. Paul in the countryside of Shrewsbury, remains a tranquil oasis. Here the monks lead their peaceful lives, praying and performing various tasks, delicately painting and copying manuscripts, studying, or planting herbs in the garden. Yet it is not as peaceful as it seems, and once in a way the monastery is disturbed by a murder, either in the premises or somewhere nearby. Then Brother Cadfael who is in charge of the herb garden, leaves his herbs for a while, and somehow solves the mystery.
Ellis Peters has written twenty books in this series, with Brother Cadfael, the sensitive and astute Welsh monk, as the detective. The historical background is authentic, and we learn about twelfth century England, the endless wars, the prevailing dogmas, the relationship with Wales and other neighbours. Each book has not only a murder, but a love story, with two young people who go through many problems before they are finally united in happiness. Fast paced and interesting, the books nevertheless retain a lyrical, peaceful quality, as no matter what happens, the monks pray and give thanks, for the blessings of another day.
Brother Cadfael has spent many years in the world before he joins the monastery at a late age, and this gives him tolerance, a philosophical view of life, and an understanding of human nature, that few other monks have. The Cadfael Chronicles, as the series is called, begins with A Morbid Taste for Bones. In this Cadfael is asked to go to Wales, and bring back the body of Saint Winifred interred there, so that the Abbey may have its own saint. How he does this, while leaving her there at the same time, and in the process discovering a murder, forms the plot of this book. In the second volume, One Corpse Too Many, the war impinges more directly on the monastery . “If he lifted his head from digging compost into the cabbage bed he could see the sluggish plumes of smoke hanging over the abbey roofs and the town and castle beyond, and smell the acrid residue of yesterday’s fires.” Soon Cadfael is asked to bury a number of corpses, and finds one extra.
Each book has a similarly intriguing story. In the twentieth volume Brother Cadfael’s Penance, he leaves the monastery to help his own son. In addition to these, there are three long stories in which Cadfael is the main character. The books have been translated into many languages, and form a television series shown all over the world.
Ellis Peters’ real name was Edith Pargeter. She wrote a number of other books, including mysteries set in modern times and historical novels, and won several awards. In addition she translated English classics into Czech. She died in 1995, and though there will be no more Cadfael Chronicles, Shrewsbury Abbey in Shropshire is famous because of her work. Visitors and fans from all over the world, still come there to see the remains of the Abbey, the home of the fictional Cadfael, and once one of the richest monasteries of England.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Vaclav Havel : Writer and Politician
(First published in Hindustantimes.com in 2003)
Vaclav Havel, the ex-Czech president, has just been awarded the Gandhi Peace Prize for keeping alive ‘the flame of democracy’ at a time when Czechoslovakia was under Communist rule. His involvement in politics has overshadowed the fact that he is also a well-known playwright and political essayist. His writings reflect the struggle and turmoil in Czechoslovakia, particularly before the formation of the Czech Republic.
His first play, The Garden Party, was performed in 1963, and is a satire on the beaurocracy. This was followed by The Memorandum, in 1965. Both these topical plays explore the use of language. In The Garden Party, the protagonist rises in the beaurocratic set up, because he learns to use an ‘official’ language, i.e., one that makes little sense to most people. In The Memorandum, the characters use an artificial language, meant to help communication, but are finally unable to communicate at all. In 1968, in his play The Increased Difficulty of Concentration, he again focused on language, and mocked the indiscriminate use of socialist and other terminology.
His plays, translated into several languages, gained popularity abroad. His work was banned for some years in his own country, but in 1978, he was back on the literary scene with three one-act plays, Audience, Private View, and Protest, which reflect, through his character Vanek, his own life and problems as a writer.
Havel was imprisoned in 1979 for his activities against the Communist regime, but released in 1983 because of illness, and his plays after this mark a new trend. In Largo desolato (1985), the main character who is again a writer, is not a straightforward ‘dissident’ but an individual confused and burdened by the expectations of both friends and enemies. Temptation, which appeared in 1986, is based on the myth of Faust.
After this Havel was drawn further into politics. He led the so-called Velvet Revolution, and by the end of 1989, was elected president. Though he lost in 1992, he was again elected president, now of the Czech Republic, in 1993, and served for two terms till February 2003. During these years, he wrote essays mainly on political themes. He believed that those who spoke freely, and lived in truth, had a revolutionary potential in any society. This was certainly true in his own life, where standing up for what he felt was the truth, finally led to him becoming president, just as it was true in India of Mahatma Gandhi. In his Summer Meditations, written in his second term as president, he wrote: ‘ Despite the political distress I face every day, I am still deeply convinced that politics is not essentially a disreputable business; and to the extent that it is, it is only disreputable people that make it so.’ And further, a statement that many would doubt: ‘ If your heart is in the right place and you have good taste, not only will you pass muster in politics, you are destined for it.’
Havel is not without his critics. Being against Communism, he is popular in the West, particularly in the US. He praises America’s role in the world, and supported their action in Iraq. Thus Noam Chomsky finds his views ‘morally repugnant’, and he has several critics in his own country. A recent controversial biography of Havel by John Keane, Vaclav Havel, A Political Tragedy in Six Acts, is also critical of him, though this in turn has been sharply criticised for a lack of scholarship.
It’s rare that a writer and political dissident becomes the president of a country. And perhaps it affects the quality of writing, the objectivity and distance, essential for a writer.
Havel’s plays, available in translation, are worth reading, and now that he is no longer president, one looks forward to more of his work.
Vaclav Havel, the ex-Czech president, has just been awarded the Gandhi Peace Prize for keeping alive ‘the flame of democracy’ at a time when Czechoslovakia was under Communist rule. His involvement in politics has overshadowed the fact that he is also a well-known playwright and political essayist. His writings reflect the struggle and turmoil in Czechoslovakia, particularly before the formation of the Czech Republic.
His first play, The Garden Party, was performed in 1963, and is a satire on the beaurocracy. This was followed by The Memorandum, in 1965. Both these topical plays explore the use of language. In The Garden Party, the protagonist rises in the beaurocratic set up, because he learns to use an ‘official’ language, i.e., one that makes little sense to most people. In The Memorandum, the characters use an artificial language, meant to help communication, but are finally unable to communicate at all. In 1968, in his play The Increased Difficulty of Concentration, he again focused on language, and mocked the indiscriminate use of socialist and other terminology.
His plays, translated into several languages, gained popularity abroad. His work was banned for some years in his own country, but in 1978, he was back on the literary scene with three one-act plays, Audience, Private View, and Protest, which reflect, through his character Vanek, his own life and problems as a writer.
Havel was imprisoned in 1979 for his activities against the Communist regime, but released in 1983 because of illness, and his plays after this mark a new trend. In Largo desolato (1985), the main character who is again a writer, is not a straightforward ‘dissident’ but an individual confused and burdened by the expectations of both friends and enemies. Temptation, which appeared in 1986, is based on the myth of Faust.
After this Havel was drawn further into politics. He led the so-called Velvet Revolution, and by the end of 1989, was elected president. Though he lost in 1992, he was again elected president, now of the Czech Republic, in 1993, and served for two terms till February 2003. During these years, he wrote essays mainly on political themes. He believed that those who spoke freely, and lived in truth, had a revolutionary potential in any society. This was certainly true in his own life, where standing up for what he felt was the truth, finally led to him becoming president, just as it was true in India of Mahatma Gandhi. In his Summer Meditations, written in his second term as president, he wrote: ‘ Despite the political distress I face every day, I am still deeply convinced that politics is not essentially a disreputable business; and to the extent that it is, it is only disreputable people that make it so.’ And further, a statement that many would doubt: ‘ If your heart is in the right place and you have good taste, not only will you pass muster in politics, you are destined for it.’
Havel is not without his critics. Being against Communism, he is popular in the West, particularly in the US. He praises America’s role in the world, and supported their action in Iraq. Thus Noam Chomsky finds his views ‘morally repugnant’, and he has several critics in his own country. A recent controversial biography of Havel by John Keane, Vaclav Havel, A Political Tragedy in Six Acts, is also critical of him, though this in turn has been sharply criticised for a lack of scholarship.
It’s rare that a writer and political dissident becomes the president of a country. And perhaps it affects the quality of writing, the objectivity and distance, essential for a writer.
Havel’s plays, available in translation, are worth reading, and now that he is no longer president, one looks forward to more of his work.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Knut Hamsun
(First published 2003)
There has been a recent revival of interest in the works of Knut Hamsun, the Norwegian writer who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1920. This is reflected in a new biography of Hamsun, the first part of which was published in Norway in September 2003. This 500 page volume, called Svermeren, is written by Ingar Sletten Kolloen, and the second part is expected next year.
Knut Hamsun, who died in 1952 at the age of 92, was a brilliant and prolific writer. His commitment to perfection in his writing, is reflected in his own words: “Language must resound with all the harmonies of music. The writer must always, at all times, find the tremulous word which captures the thing and is able to draw a sob from the soul by its very rightness.” Though he began writing at a young age, and had some works published, his first major success was with his novel Sult (Hunger), published in 1890. Several other successes followed, including Mysteries (1892), Pan (1894), Victoria (1898), Children of the Age (1913), Segelfoss Town (1915), and Growth of the Soil (1917), which won him the Nobel Prize. In this book he describes the idyllic life of a tiller of the soil, and gives the world a message of the need to return to a harmonious way of life, in tune with nature. Further success followed in the 30s with his great trilogy, Wanderers, August, and The Road Leads On, describing the free life of a wandering tramp, and analysing the philosophy of freedom. The sense of alienation he displays, both in Hunger, and in this trilogy, reminds one of Herman Hesse’s Steppenwolf and Knulp. Hamsun was favourably compared with both Hesse and Thomas Mann, and considered among the greatest writers of all time.
Why then is he so little known today? Hamsun fell out of favour with the Norwegian government, and the ‘liberal’ public, for his political views. During the Second World War, he inclined towards the Norwegian Nazi Party -- he never joined it, but wrote favourably of it, and of Hitler. After the war, he was persecuted by his government, incarcerated in a mental asylum, and forced to pay an enormous sum to them, which ruined him financially. His wife had to spend three years in prison. Yet he wrote one more wonderful work in 1949, On Overgrown Paths, an account of his experiences, which has detachment, pathos, philosophy, and resignation.
Hamsun had also written several other works, including poems, essays, and plays. Not all of them are available in English, and even what is translated is difficult to find.
In Wanderers, he wrote “That’s how I see it: there are some who pick themselves up after a fall and continue on their way through life with their blue and yellow bruises. And there are others who never rise again”. Despite the disasters in the last years of his life, Hamsun was a survivor, and despite his political views (which are not reflected in his fiction), his writings deserve to survive and to be known. One hopes the publication of a major biography in Norway, marks the beginning of more translations and a better availability of his work.
There has been a recent revival of interest in the works of Knut Hamsun, the Norwegian writer who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1920. This is reflected in a new biography of Hamsun, the first part of which was published in Norway in September 2003. This 500 page volume, called Svermeren, is written by Ingar Sletten Kolloen, and the second part is expected next year.
Knut Hamsun, who died in 1952 at the age of 92, was a brilliant and prolific writer. His commitment to perfection in his writing, is reflected in his own words: “Language must resound with all the harmonies of music. The writer must always, at all times, find the tremulous word which captures the thing and is able to draw a sob from the soul by its very rightness.” Though he began writing at a young age, and had some works published, his first major success was with his novel Sult (Hunger), published in 1890. Several other successes followed, including Mysteries (1892), Pan (1894), Victoria (1898), Children of the Age (1913), Segelfoss Town (1915), and Growth of the Soil (1917), which won him the Nobel Prize. In this book he describes the idyllic life of a tiller of the soil, and gives the world a message of the need to return to a harmonious way of life, in tune with nature. Further success followed in the 30s with his great trilogy, Wanderers, August, and The Road Leads On, describing the free life of a wandering tramp, and analysing the philosophy of freedom. The sense of alienation he displays, both in Hunger, and in this trilogy, reminds one of Herman Hesse’s Steppenwolf and Knulp. Hamsun was favourably compared with both Hesse and Thomas Mann, and considered among the greatest writers of all time.
Why then is he so little known today? Hamsun fell out of favour with the Norwegian government, and the ‘liberal’ public, for his political views. During the Second World War, he inclined towards the Norwegian Nazi Party -- he never joined it, but wrote favourably of it, and of Hitler. After the war, he was persecuted by his government, incarcerated in a mental asylum, and forced to pay an enormous sum to them, which ruined him financially. His wife had to spend three years in prison. Yet he wrote one more wonderful work in 1949, On Overgrown Paths, an account of his experiences, which has detachment, pathos, philosophy, and resignation.
Hamsun had also written several other works, including poems, essays, and plays. Not all of them are available in English, and even what is translated is difficult to find.
In Wanderers, he wrote “That’s how I see it: there are some who pick themselves up after a fall and continue on their way through life with their blue and yellow bruises. And there are others who never rise again”. Despite the disasters in the last years of his life, Hamsun was a survivor, and despite his political views (which are not reflected in his fiction), his writings deserve to survive and to be known. One hopes the publication of a major biography in Norway, marks the beginning of more translations and a better availability of his work.
Sunday, December 7, 2008
The Age of Trivia
In The Glass Bead Game, Hermann Hesse writes of an age preceding that of the highly intellectual Game, as an age when scholars and writers produced trivia.
Some extracts:
‘Among the favourite subjects of such essays were anecdotes taken from the lives or correspondence of famous men and women. They bore titles as “Friedrich Nietzsche and Women’s Fashions of 1870”, or "The Composer Rossini’s Favourite Dishes", or “The Role of the Lapdog in the Lives of Great Courtesans”, and so on. Another popular type of article was the historical background piece about what was being talked about among the well-to-do, such as “The Dream of Creating God Through the Centuries” or “Psycho-Chemical Experiments in Influencing the Weather”, and hundreds of similar titles.’
Hesse also goes on to describe how celebrities were asked their opinion on practically everything, from the causes of financial crises to the merits of being a bachelor. ‘All that mattered in these pieces was to link a well-known name with a topic of current interest.’
Does any of this sound familiar today?
Some extracts:
‘Among the favourite subjects of such essays were anecdotes taken from the lives or correspondence of famous men and women. They bore titles as “Friedrich Nietzsche and Women’s Fashions of 1870”, or "The Composer Rossini’s Favourite Dishes", or “The Role of the Lapdog in the Lives of Great Courtesans”, and so on. Another popular type of article was the historical background piece about what was being talked about among the well-to-do, such as “The Dream of Creating God Through the Centuries” or “Psycho-Chemical Experiments in Influencing the Weather”, and hundreds of similar titles.’
Hesse also goes on to describe how celebrities were asked their opinion on practically everything, from the causes of financial crises to the merits of being a bachelor. ‘All that mattered in these pieces was to link a well-known name with a topic of current interest.’
Does any of this sound familiar today?
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